DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/lookingforwardOOmich 
 
' ^N 
 
Lookiii,^ Forward 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD MICHAELIS, 
 
 Editor Chicago "Freie Presse." 
 
 AN ANSWER TO 
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD 
 
 EDWARD BELLAMY. 
 
 Copyrighted iSgo, by Richard Michaelis. 
 
5E2n 16 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Every seeker after truth and reform is entitled to 
 recognition, even if his ways and methods are not 
 ours. Mr. Edward Bellamy's book: "'Looking Back- 
 ward", is an effort to improve the lot of mankind 
 and therefore commendable, but his reform proposi- 
 tion, stripped of its fine coloring, is nothing but 
 communism, a state of society, which has proved a 
 failure whenever established without a religious basis 
 and which without such basis is en vogue today only 
 among some barbarous and cannibal tribes. 
 
 Chicago has for the last fourteen years been the 
 centre of the communistic and anarchistic agitation 
 in the United States, and in defending the fundamen- 
 tal principles of American institutions against these 
 theories, that were imported from the overcrowded 
 industrial centres of Europe, I became cpiite familiar 
 with them as well as with the notions and peculiari- 
 ties of social reformers, who imagine themselves in 
 possession of an infallible receii)t to perfect not only 
 all human institutions but also human nature. 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 Of course Mr, Bellamy holds more moderate views 
 than those Spies and Parsons proclaimed, but he 
 has this much in common with the Anarchists and 
 Communists of Chicago: he has become incapable 
 of passing a fair judgement upon our present institu- 
 tions, conditions and men ; he overlooks all difhcul- 
 ties in the introduction of his proposed changes, he 
 really believes his socialistic air-castles must spring 
 into existence very soon and without obstruction, 
 and he populates his fairy palaces with angelic human 
 beings, who would never by any possibility do any- 
 thing wrong. The surmise, that men and women in 
 a communistic state, would put off ;dl selfishness, 
 envy, hate, jealousy, wrangling and desire to rule is 
 just as reasonable as the supposition, that a man can 
 sleep one hundred and thirteen years and rise there- 
 after as young and fresh as he went to bed. 
 
 What queer methods reformers sometimes advo- 
 cate! John Most would in the name of equal rights 
 to all, first kill all men who are not in absolute sym 
 pathy with his opinions, then abolish all laws and all 
 officers, and then let nature take its course. — Mr. 
 Bellamy on the other hand would, also in the name 
 of equal rights, deprive all the clever and industrious 
 workers of a large or the largest part of the products 
 of their labor for the benefit of their awkward, stupid 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 or lazy comrades ! And this would be what Mr. 
 Bellamy is pleased to style justice and equality! 
 
 And for the purpose of reaching this state of mock- 
 equality, Mr. Bellamy would as a matter of course 
 have to sacrifice competition, the gigantic power 
 that elevated us all and Mr. Bellamy with us to the 
 present state of evolution! It is true that competiti(m 
 has been and is now abused, but every institution is 
 subject to abuse and the misuse of a thing does not 
 demonstrate that the thing in itself is wrong. Nobody 
 can deny that competition during the centuries of 
 Christian civilization has developed the brains and 
 muscles of the human race and that the continuous 
 best efforts of humanity, stimulated by competition 
 during these many centuries, have lifted our race to 
 a standard where the mode of living of common 
 laborers is more comfortable and desirable than 
 the everyday existence of the Kings of which Homer 
 sings. 
 
 Every generation has to battle with certain prob- 
 lems, and it is the lot of ours to overcome the diffi- 
 culties between capital and labor, that have been 
 increased by the change in the methods of production 
 since the discovery of steam power. 
 
 We have to find ways and means not to avoid 
 productive ivork ( — spoken of by Mr. Bellamy as 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 an e7>t7 — ), but to cure the brain cancer of our days: 
 the permanent uncertainty of subsistance and the 
 fear of poverty. And we accomplish this by co- 
 operation and by mutual insurance companies, with- 
 out retrograding to communism, that most barbarous 
 state of society. 
 
 The imperfect nature of man characterizes, as a 
 matter of course, all human institutions and it is the 
 easiest thing in the world, by "/o(?ki7?g backward"", to 
 find fault with living men as well as with the present 
 state of affairs and to build air castles inhabited by 
 angels only. 
 
 I will now look forward I By demonstrating what 
 would be the logical conclusion of Mr. Bellamy's 
 story, if fairly continued, T purpose to show that he 
 first tries to establish absolute equality and then, 
 despairing of success, advocates an inequality in 
 many respects more oppressive than the present state 
 of things, I intend to demonstrate, that under the 
 regime, proposed by Mr. Bellamy, favoritism and 
 corruption would be very potent factors in public 
 life. I expect to set forth that personal liberty would 
 fare so badly in Mr. Bellamy's United States, that 
 the proud and independent American people would 
 never tolerate such a system, and to prove beyond a 
 reasonable doubt, that the people would be much 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 poorer in Mr. Bellamy's condition of affairs, than at 
 the present time. 
 
 I do not deny that our society stands in need of 
 many desirable reforms; but I am not prepared to fol- 
 low blindly Mr. Bellamy, John Most, or anybody else, 
 who pretends that he is ready to deliver humanity from 
 all evils on short notice, and I do not intend to jump 
 head over heels into the dark. 
 
 If Mr. Bellamy and his followers are quite sure 
 that they can establish the millennium, /^/ ///^m try 
 it, like the communists ot the Amana Society who 
 have started a community in the state of Iowa on a 
 religious basis. There are many thousands of acres 
 of good governmeni lands left, where Mr. Bellamy 
 and his friends may settle and show the world what 
 they can do! But they should not ask the i)eople of 
 the United States to break up their present form of 
 government and state of society, before the)- have 
 given their theories a trial and proved thai their 
 calculations are correct. 
 
 Richard Michaelis. 
 
 Chicago, April 1890. 
 
lOQUm FORWAED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 For the purpose of introducing myself to those 
 readers of this book, who are not familiar with the 
 contents of "Looking Backward", edited by Mr. 
 Edward Bellamy, I will recapitulate the remarkable 
 events of my life up to the end of that extraordinary 
 narrative. 
 
 Born in Boston on the 26th day of December 
 1857, I was baptized Julian West, was educated in 
 the schools and colleges of my city, but, being in 
 possession of a handsome fortune, did not devote 
 myself to any particular profession or trade. I be- 
 came engaged to Miss Edith Bartlett, a young lady 
 of great beauty, and it was our intention to marry 
 as soon as my new house should be ready for occu- 
 pation. The completion 01 the building was fre- 
 quently delayed by strikes of masons and carpenters, 
 and I occupied still the old fashioned house, where 
 my family had lived for three generations. 
 
 Suffering from insomnia, I had prepared in the 
 basement and under the foundations of the old build- 
 
lo LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 ing, a large vault, where the noises of a great city 
 would not disturb me. This vault was absolutely 
 fire-proof, and fresh air was assured by means of a 
 small pipe running up to the roof of the house. 
 
 To obtain sleep I was frequently forced to avail 
 myself of the services of a mesmerist, and it happened 
 that on the 30th day of May 1887, after two sleepless 
 nights, I sent my colored servant Sawyer to a Dr. Pills- 
 bury, whom I was in the habit of employing. The 
 doctor was about to leave the city to establish him- 
 self in New Orleans, and this was therefore the last 
 time he would be able to treat me, I instructed 
 Sawyer to rouse me at nine o'clock the next morning, 
 and under the manipulations of the mesmerist I soon 
 fell into a deep slumber. 
 
 When I opened my eyes again I found that I had 
 slept 113 years, 3 months, and 11 days. 
 
 I discovered that the old house had been destroyed 
 by fire and that Sawyer had perished in the flames. 
 Dr. Pillsbury had left Boston, the existence of the 
 vault where I slept was unknown to my friends, the 
 house had not been rebuilt and so I remained in a 
 mesmerized condition for over a hundred years, until 
 a Dr. Leete, the occupant of a house which was being 
 erected on a part of the old lot, commenced to build 
 a laboratory and unearthed my vault in the year 
 2000. 
 
 I learned that Edith Bartlett, after mourning my 
 loss fourteen years, had married, that Dr. Leete's 
 wife was Edith Bartlett's granddaughter, and that his 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. ii 
 
 daughter Edith was therefore the great-granddaughcr 
 of the young lady who had been my promised bride 
 113 years before. 
 
 The vigor of my manhood of thirty years overcame 
 the shock of these discoveries. I soon felt myself 
 at home in Dr. Leete's house, the more so, because 
 young Edith soon occupied the place in my heart 
 once filled by Edith Bartlett, and it was not long before 
 Edith Leete, a somewhat romantic, compassionate 
 girl, consented with grace to become the successor of 
 her great-grandmother; to be my bride. 
 
 But the turn of my own fate is even less remark- 
 able, than the change that has taken place in the 
 social order of things. Dr. Leete explained to me 
 the new organization of society. 
 
 Individual enterprises have ended. The nation 
 creates everything that individuals and corporations 
 were producing at the end of the nineteenth century. 
 Every able bodied man, every healthy woman 
 belongs to the ^'industrial army". They enter the 
 force at the age of 21 and are released at 45. Only 
 in rare cases of necessity are men over 45 years of 
 age summoned to work. 
 
 Money is abolished, but all inhabitants of the 
 United States receive an equal share of the results of 
 the work of the industrial army in the form of a 
 credit card, a piece of paste board on which dollars 
 and cents are marked. There is one store in each 
 ward where people can select such goods as they 
 may desire. The value of the goods, one purchases, 
 
12 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 is pricked out of his credit card and his account is 
 charged in tlie Government books with the amount 
 of goods so purchased. 
 
 The meals are furnished by large cooking houses. 
 Washing and repairing are done in large laundries. 
 One may take his meals home or eat them at the 
 cooking house. The bill of fare is very elaborate 
 and one may have even a special dining room. The 
 amount to be paid for the meals differs of course 
 according to the bill of fare ordered and to the place 
 where the meal is taken. 
 
 Each family occupies a separate house; the furni- 
 ture being the property of the tenant. The rent, 
 which depends on the size of the house, is also 
 pricked out of the credit card. 
 
 All inhabitants of the United States are obliged to 
 attend school until they have reached the age of 21. 
 Then they become members of the industrial army. 
 During the first three years of their services they are 
 called recruits or apprentices and have to do the 
 common labor under the absolute command of the 
 officers or overseers. A record is kept, in which are 
 entered the ability and behavior of each recruit. 
 
 After the first three years of service, each recruit 
 may select a profession or a trade. As far as possi- 
 ble the volunteers are placed in the trades they 
 prefer. Recruits with the best records are given the 
 first choice. Some of them have to take a second or 
 third choice, and some are obliged to accept 
 positions assigned to them by their superiors. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 13 
 
 All members of the army are, according to their 
 ability and behavior, divided into three grades, and 
 apprentices with a first-class record may, after their 
 three years service, enter at once the first grades of 
 the different trades selected by them. 
 
 The general of the guild appoints all the officers of 
 his trade. The lieutenants must be taken from the 
 members of the first grades. The captains are chosen 
 by the general from the lieutenants, the colonels from 
 the captains. The general of the guild himself is 
 elected by the former members of the trade, that is, 
 those who have passed the age of forty-five. The ex- 
 members of all the guilds also elect the chiefs of the 
 ten great departments or groups of allied trades. The 
 chiefs are taken from the generals of the guilds. And 
 the former guild members also elect the President of 
 the United States, who is taken from the ranks of 
 the retired chiefs of the ten great departments. The 
 President, the ten chiefs of the great departments and 
 the generals of all the guilds live in Washington. 
 
 The members of the industrial army have not the 
 right to vote for any of the officers by whom they 
 are governed. They have no representation during their 
 24 years of service ; but if they have a complaint 
 against one of their superiors, they may bring their 
 case before a judge whose decision is final. 
 
 The judges are appointed by the President from 
 the ranks of the retired members of the guild for the 
 term of five years. 
 
 Courts, lawyers, jails, sheriffs, tax-assessors, collec- 
 
14 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 tors and many other officers have been abolished. 
 Criminals are treated in hospitals as persons men- 
 tally ill. 
 
 The National Government regulates the production. 
 When it sees that certain trades attract a very large 
 number of volunteers, while other trades fall short, 
 the administration increases the working time of the 
 preferred trades and shortens the working hours of 
 those needing more volunteers. 
 
 The women have their own officers, generals, 
 judges, and form an auxiliary army of industry. 
 They receive the same credit cards as the men. 
 Since the cooking and washing and repairing of 
 household goods are done outside, the women of the 
 twentieth century have more time for productive 
 labor than had the women of a hundred years ago. 
 
 Recruits who have passed three years service, 
 during which they are assignable to any work at the 
 discretion of their superiors, may enter schools of 
 technology, medicine, art, etc.; but if they cannot 
 keep pace with the classes, they must withdraw. 
 Physicians, who do not find sufficient employment, 
 are assigned to work of another character. 
 
 If people desire the publication of a newspaper, 
 they must club together and give up enough of their 
 credit cards to compensate the nation for the loss of 
 the work of the persons editing and printing the 
 paper. 
 
 If one desires to publish a book, he can write it in 
 his hours of leisure and can have it printed by giving 
 
LOOK I m FORWARD. 15 
 
 up a part of his credit card. For the copies sold he 
 receives again a new credit. 
 
 Preachers are in a similar way employed by per- 
 sons who desire to hear their sermons 
 
 Cripples or other people unable to do full work 
 
 or any work at all, receive their full credit cards, 
 
 because the fact, that they are human beings, entitles 
 
 them to their full share of all good things produced 
 on earth. 
 
 The state governments within the United States 
 have been abolished as useless. 
 
 All xother civilized nations have organized them- 
 selves on a similar basis and are exchanging goods 
 with each other. The yearly balances are settled 
 with national staple articles. 
 
 The new order of things enables people to live 
 without cares, and one of the consequences is the 
 fact, that most of the men and women of an average 
 constitution live from eighty-five to ninety years. — 
 
 Such was the description of the new order of 
 things given me by Dr. Leete in a number of conver- 
 sations. The doctor is very enthusiastic over the 
 organization of society of the twentieth century and 
 does not hesitate to call it the millennium. 
 
 The fear and uncertainty which I entertained in 
 regard to my employment were set at rest by Dr. 
 Leete, who said, that I could, if I wished, have the 
 position of professor of the history of the nineteenth 
 century in the Shawmut College of Boston. I have 
 accepted the offer and shall enter upon my duties 
 next Monday. 
 
CHAPTER IL 
 
 When I first entered the large hall of Shawmut 
 College, where I was to deliver ray lectures, I noticed 
 near the door of the room a gentleman of about forty 
 years of age. He was too old to be one of the 
 students and as I had not seen him when Dr. Leete 
 introduced me to the professors of the institution, 
 I was somewhat curious to know in what capacity 
 he honored my debut. 
 
 The cordial reception I had met at the hands of 
 the professors, the fact that every seat of the large 
 hall was occupied, acted as a stimulus and when Dr. 
 White, the president of Shawmut College had intro- 
 duced me with a few complimentary remarks as a 
 living witness of the nineteenth century, I began 
 my first lecture in the best of spirits. 
 
 My speech contained naturally many of the points 
 that Dr. Leete had most dwelt upon, when, in his 
 conversations with me, he had compared the organ- 
 ization of society of the nineteenth and that of the 
 twentieth centuries. 
 
 I said in substance, that my hearers must not 
 expect a synopsis of the civilization of the two cen- 
 turies or a panegyric of the present state of affairs. 
 I would point out but a few conditions, regulations 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 17 
 
 and institutions that could serve as criterion of the 
 spirit of their times. 
 
 As characteristic of the spirit of the civilization of 
 the nineteenth century, I described the insane com- 
 petition, where a man in a foul fight must '-cheat, 
 overreach, supplant, defraud, buy below worth and 
 sell above, break down the business by which his 
 neighbor fed his young ones, tempt men to buy what 
 they ought not and to sell what they should not, 
 grind their laborers, sweat their debtors, cozen their 
 creditors,"*) in order to be able to support those 
 dependent on him. I showed "that there had been 
 many a man among the people of the nineteenth 
 century who, if it had been merely a question of his 
 own life would sooner have given it up than nour- 
 ished it by bread snatched from others."!) I pictured 
 the consequences of this insane and annihilating 
 competition as a constant wear on the brains and 
 bodies of the past generation, intensified by the per- 
 manent fear of poverty. The spectre of uncertainty 
 walked constantly beside the man of the nineteenth 
 century, sat at his table and went to bed with him, 
 even whispering in his ears: ''Do your work ever so 
 well, rise early and toil till late, rob cunningly or 
 serve faithfully, you shall never know security. 
 
 *) Such parts of Mr. Bellamy's book as are characteristic of 
 his manner of dealing with the present and with the future, I 
 give with marks of quotation, adding in a foot note the page of 
 " Lookuig l>ackward," where the sentence may be found. The 
 above remarks are taken from page 277. 
 
 f) I'^^gL^ 277. 
 
i8 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 Rich you may be now and still come to poverty at 
 last. Leave ever so much wealth to your children, 
 you can not buy the assurance, that your son may 
 not be the servant of your servant or that your 
 daughter will not sell herself for bread."**) 
 
 And while one hundred and thirteen years ago all 
 men worked like slaves, until completely exhausted, 
 without having even a guaranty that they would not die 
 in poverty or from hunger, the men of the twentieth 
 century were walking in the sunlight of freedom, 
 security, happiness and equality. After receiving an 
 excellent education in standard schools and then 
 passing through an apprenticeship of three years, the 
 young people of the twentieth century select their 
 vocation. Short hours of work permit them, even 
 during the years of service in the industrial armyj 
 to spend more time for the continuation of their 
 studies and for recreation than the people who lived 
 a hundred years ago had ever believed to be consist- 
 ent with a successful management of industries, 
 farming or public affairs. 
 
 Free from all cares, in perfect harmony with each 
 other, without the disturbing influence of political 
 parties, enjoying a wealth unprecedented in the histo- 
 ry of nations, we might verily say: '*The long and 
 weary winter of our race is ended. Its summer has 
 begun. Humanity has burst the chrysalis. The 
 heavens are before it!"'f*f) 
 
 **) I'age 321. 
 ft) Page 292. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 19 
 
 I had spoken with enthusiasm, yes, even with deep 
 emotion and I expected, if not a warm, at least a sym- 
 pathetic reception of my address. But only a faint 
 and very cold applause followed my remarks. I had 
 the impression that not one fourth of the young men 
 present had found it worth their while to show their 
 approval of my lecture, and that the applause of even 
 these few had been an act of courtesy rather than a 
 spontaneous outburst of feeling. The chilly re- 
 ception was such a great disappointment to me that 
 I could not rally courage enough to leave my chair 
 and pass through the students as they were leaving 
 the hall. 
 
 I busied myself at the little desk before me until 
 everybody had gone with the exception of the gentle- 
 man who had arrested my attention when I entered 
 the room. He remained at the door evidently waiting 
 for me. 
 
 "You belong to the college ?" I asked, to hide my 
 embarrassment. 
 
 "Indeed I do", he answered with a light smile, that 
 challenged another question. 
 
 "I supjjose I have the ])leasure of meeting one of 
 my colleagues", I continued. ''My name is West". 
 
 "Until about a month ago I was Professor Forest, 
 your ])redecessor in teaching the history of the nine- 
 teenth century ; to-day I am one of the janitors and 
 my chief has been good enough to recommend this 
 room to my care." 
 
 I had during the last few days seen and heard so 
 
20 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 many new and strange things, that I was prepared to 
 be surprised at nothing, however astounding. 
 
 But the information, that to a professor of history 
 was assigned the duty of cleaning the rooms, where 
 he had once lectured, sounded so incredible and 
 opened such an unpleasing prospect for my own 
 career, that I could not conceal my amazement. 
 
 ''And what has caused this singular change of posi- 
 tion", I inquired. 
 
 ''In comparing the lot of humanity in 1900 and 
 2000 I came to conclusions very different from yours", 
 responded Mr. Forest. 
 
 ''You do not mean to say, that the condition of 
 the people of the nineteenth century was better than 
 that of the present generation ?" I asked with some 
 curiosity. 
 
 "That is my opinion", said Mr. Forest. 
 
 "The only way I can understand you holding such 
 extraordinary views, is that you are personally quite 
 unacquainted with the civilization of which you speak 
 so highly," I declared. 
 
 'T have a as matter of course, drawn my information 
 from our libraries, and I am forced to admit that you 
 can supjjort your argument in regard to the civiliza- 
 tion of the last century by pointing to your personal 
 knowledge. But I am afraid that you are not so 
 familiar with the present state of affairs, at the 
 fountain of your information in regard to the twenti- 
 eth century is only one man, Dr. Leete. I may 
 therefore claim that mv information of tlie ci\ilization 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 21 
 
 of your days is better than yours of our institutions, 
 because mine is based on the testimony of more wit- 
 nesses than one." 
 
 "Then you must of course disapprove the views 
 developed in my lecture ? " 
 
 "Your address will undoubtedly be published in 
 extenso in all the administration organs, that is, in 
 nearly every newspaper in the land', said Mr. Forest, 
 evading a direct answer to my question. 
 
 "Administration organs you say", i asked with sur- 
 prise: "Has the administration organs, and why does 
 it need them ? " 
 
 "Of course the administration has organs", answered 
 Forest. "And it is both difficult and unpleasant to 
 edit an opposition paper. Therefore we have only a 
 few of them." 
 
 "But Dr. Leete said: "We have no parties or poli- 
 ticians and as for demagoguery and corruption, they 
 are words having only a historical significance."*) 
 And yet you speak of opposition and of administra- 
 tion papers?" I said this very likely with an express- 
 ion of some doubt in my eyes. 
 
 My companion broke into a loud laugh, after which 
 he asked: "Excuse, please, my merriment, but Dr. 
 Leete is a great joker, who never fails to "bringdown 
 the house " Well ! Well ! That is too good. I wish 
 I could have seen his face when he gave you that 
 information." 
 
 And Mr. Forest laughed again. 
 
 *) Page 60. 
 
22 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 "1 beg your pardon, Mr. West", he continued, when 
 I met his merriment with silence; "but you would not 
 only excuse but share my laughter, if you were famil- 
 iar with our public life, if you knew Dr. Leete ls well 
 as I do and then learned that he had claimed, we were 
 suffering from a want of politicians. But I wish to say 
 right here", added Mr. Forest in a more composed 
 tone, "that I have not a poor opinion of Dr. Leete. 
 He is a practical joker a shrewd politician, but other- 
 wise as good a man as our time can produce." 
 
 "Dr. Leete is a politician?" I asked in the utmost 
 astonishment. 
 
 "Yes. Dr. Leete is the most influential leader of 
 the administration party in Bostor). I owe it to his 
 kind interference, that I am still connected with the 
 college." 
 
 Noticing that I did not know how to construe this 
 statement, Mr. Forest added: 
 
 "When, in comparing the civilization of your days 
 with ours, I came to the conclusion, that communism 
 had proved a failure, I was accused of misleading and 
 corrupting the students and the usual sentence in such 
 cases: "confinement in an insane asylum", was passed. 
 Because, it is claimed, that only a madman could find 
 fault with the best organization of society ever intro- 
 duced. Dr. Leete, however, declared, that my in 
 sanity was so harmless, that confinement in an asylum 
 seemed unnecessary, besides being too expensive. I 
 could still earn my living by doing light work about 
 the college building; and my case would serve as a 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 23 
 
 warning to all the professorvS and students to be care- 
 ful. in their expressions and teachings. So I retained 
 the liberty in which we glory and was spared doing 
 street cleaning or some such work, which is generally 
 awarded to "kickers" against the administration." 
 
 "The students seem to share your opinion, at least 
 they received my remarks very coldly," I remarked, 
 in order to avoid a discussion of the qualities of my 
 host. 
 
 Mr. Forest's keen grey eyes rested for a moment 
 upon my face, and then he said in a friendly tone: 
 
 "I believe you were convinced of what you said, 
 Mr. West; but did it not occur to you, that you treated 
 your time and your contemporaries very severely ? 
 Did competition really demand, that one should de- 
 fraud his neighbor, grind his laborers, sweat his debtors 
 and snatch the bread from others? Were the majority 
 of the men of your time swindlers and Shylocks? Were 
 the laborers all slaves, working each day until com 
 pletely exhausted? I remember distinctly, that the 
 wage-workers of your time struck frequently for eight 
 hours, declining to work nine or ten hours per diem 
 for good pay. I think you had a strong, proud and 
 independent class of laborers, who could not fairly be 
 regarded as slaves. And as for the girls, I have seen 
 the statements and complaints, that help for house- 
 keeping was very scarce in your days and was paid 
 from I2. to $5. per week, with board, so that there was 
 no excuse for any decent girl to sell herself for bread. — 
 Of course your state of civilization was very fai from 
 
24 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 being faultless; in fact there is no such thing as per- 
 fection in anything. But your description of the 
 civilization of the nineteenth century is painted in 
 such dark colors, that our students, who are somewhat 
 familiar with the history of those days, could not very 
 well enthuse over your lecture; especially as many of 
 these young men do not regard our present institutions 
 with such complete admiration as you do: I speak 
 frankly, Mr. West, and I hope you will excuse my 
 frankness, because of my desire to serve you in de- 
 scribing men, things and institutions as I see them." 
 
 The warm tone of his voice and the sympathetic 
 expression of his eyes caused me to shake hands with 
 Forest, although everything he had said went directly 
 against my friends, my views, my feelings and my 
 interests. I left him in an uneasy mood and walked 
 home revolving in my mind his criticism of my 
 lecture. 
 
 I met Dr. Leete and the ladies, and Edith inquired 
 whether my debut as professor had satisfied my expec- 
 tations. 
 
 I have always tried to be frank and true : so I 
 gave Dr. Leete and his family a synopsis of my 
 speech, mentioned the cool reception of my address 
 and my disappointment. I spoke of Mr. Forest's 
 criticism, leaving out, of course, his observations rela- 
 tive to Dr. Leete, and confessed that his censure was 
 not wholly undeserved inasmuch as I had gone too far 
 in charging upon the whole people the bad qualities 
 which reckless competition had stamped on certain 
 individuals. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 25 
 
 Dr. Leete was evidently not altogether pleased with 
 my remarks. After a short pause he said: '-I think 
 the reckless competition of the last part of the nine- 
 teenth century could not fail to demoralize more or 
 less, in most cases more, all the people, who were 
 conducting a business or who had to work for a liv- 
 ing. I think furthermore that your lecture was an 
 excellent exposition of principles and that you have 
 no reason to yield an inch of your position. The 
 cold reception you met with, ought not to worry you. 
 It is due to Forest, who has planted in the hearts of 
 our students his idiosyncrasy, his blind admiration of 
 competition and his aversion to our form of civiliza- 
 tion. It is your task to enlighten the young men in 
 regard to the comparative merits of the two orders of 
 things. — Mr. Forest is placing a heavy tax on the 
 patience of his fellow citizens by his persistent efforts 
 to mislead the students. — Did he mention the fact 
 that he was your predecessor ?" 
 
 "He did, when I asked hmi if he were a member of 
 the college staff of teachers. He said that he was 
 discharged for his heresy and that he owed his com- 
 paratively lenient treatment to you." 
 
 "It is not Forest's habit to conceal his opinicms 
 and he may have given you a nice idea of Dr. Leete", 
 my host said with a smile. 
 
 I thought best under the circumstances to repeat 
 Forest's remarks in regard to Dr. Leete, which remarks 
 were very good natured and rather complimentary to 
 my host. I may add that 1 desired very much to 
 
26 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 know what Dr. Leete would say in answer to the 
 charge of being a politician and a leader of the ad- 
 ministration party. 
 
 So I said: "Mr. Forest laughed heartily when I 
 repeated your remarks that you have no party nor 
 politicians. He called you a great practical joker, a 
 shrewd politician, the leader of the administration 
 party in Boston and a good man." 
 
 Dr. Leete smiled somewhat grimly as he replied: 
 "That is a character I ought to be grateful for, con- 
 sidering that it comes from a faultfinder like Forest. 
 Concerning his references to me as a politician I will 
 say that I never held an office, but that the administra- 
 tion has occasionally consulted me and other citizens 
 on important questions. Political parties we have 
 not. There are of course a few incurable faultfinders 
 like Mr. Forest and a few radical growlers, but we 
 pay but little attention to them so long as they do 
 not disturb the public peace. If they do, we send 
 them to a hospital where they receive proper treat- 
 ment." 
 
 Althoug-. these words were spoken in the tone of 
 light conversation, they impressed me deeply. "If they 
 do, we send them to a hospital, where they receive 
 proper treatment." Did not this confirm Forest's 
 statement, that the usual sentence against the oppo- 
 nents of communism was confinement in an insane 
 asylum?" 
 
 My unpleasant thoughts were interrupted by Edith's 
 sweet voice remarking: "I think Mr. Forest is an 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 27 
 
 honest well meaning gentleman and he should be ]jer- 
 mitted to express his views, even if they are wrong 
 and queer. The students will certamly eventually be 
 convinced that our order of things is as good as it 
 can be made, and besides it is so entertaining to hear 
 once in a while another opinion." 
 
 With an expression of fatherly love. Dr. Leete 
 placed his right hand on Edith's thick hair and said: 
 "The ladies of the court of Louis XVI. of France also 
 considered very entertaining the ideas that caused the 
 revolution and cost many of the '^entertained" ladies 
 and gentlemen their heads beneath the guillotine. — 
 Ideas are little sparks. They may easily cause a 
 conflagration if not watched". 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 My studies had never been directed to questions 
 of national economy. I had never thought of com- 
 paring the merits of competition with those of com- 
 munism. When Dr. Leete had explained in his ])osi- 
 tive and still fascinating manner the new order of 
 things I had hardly noticed that it was based on 
 communistic principles. I thought humanity had 
 reached at last the millennium, and when Dr. Leete 
 stated that his easy and even luxurious way of living 
 represented the average style of the people of the 
 tw^entieth century, I had no doubt that everybod" 
 was satisfied with the new order of things. 
 
 My cool reception by the students and my conver- 
 sation with Mr. Forest had convinced me, that not 
 every inhabitant of the United States in the 2000th 
 year of our Lord considered the present order of 
 things the millennium and I must say that I noticed 
 the dissatisfaction with sincere sorrow. For a sweet 
 peace, a tranquillity never felt before, had filled my 
 heart, when Dr. Leete spoke of the absolute happiness 
 of the men of the twentieth century. 
 
 My new profession imjjosed upon me the duty of 
 studying national economy. Of course I could have 
 pictured simply the social and political circumstan- 
 ces, in which the people of the United States had 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 29 
 
 lived 113 years ago, but this woulfl not have satisfied 
 me. I desired to learn, how the civilizations of the 
 two centuries, if impartially judged, would compare. 
 Therefore I cultivated my accpiaintance with Mr. 
 Forest, to hear from him the arguments against the 
 theories set forth by Dr. Leete, although a feeling of 
 discomfort always overwhelmed me, whenever the 
 thought came to me, that Forest's ideas might prove 
 victorious over the principles advanced by Dr. Leete. 
 For a victory won by Forest could mean nothing else 
 but a return to a state of affairs, which I thoroughly 
 disliked, and which 1 knew to be full of cares and 
 discomforts. 
 
 I confined my next lecture to an accurate discrip- 
 tion of the state of the labor market of Boston in 
 1887. Avoiding carefully all exaggerations, I drew 
 only indisputable conclusions from the facts given, 
 showing how capital and labor had lost equally by 
 the numerous strikes in those days and compliment- 
 ing the present order of things, for making such 
 irrational economical conflicts impossible. 
 
 After my lectures I always conversed with Mr. 
 Forest, who was quite as willing to discuss the new 
 order of society as Dr. Leete. 
 
 ''The friends of tlie administration are calling me 
 a fault-finder", said AL". Forest, "and they are right, 
 although they might exj^ress their opinion with more 
 civility, if they said, that I am critically disposed. 
 1 would criticise every administration under which it 
 chanced to be my destiny to live, however good or 
 
.-^o LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 bad that administration might be. I do not harbor 
 any animosity against the men, who rule the United 
 States to-day. I even admit that they exercise a 
 little more wisdom, energy and tolerance, than did 
 the members of the government, which ruled twelve 
 years ago. But the fundamental principle of their 
 system is decidedly wrong and so the consequences 
 must be bad ; — whatever the members of the admin- 
 istration may do to patch up the shortcomings of 
 their system". 
 
 "So you think that the present system is absolutely 
 wrong?" I queried. 
 
 "Can you entertain any doubts?" answered Forest. 
 "Look around! Is the leading principle in creation 
 equality or variety ? You find sometimes similitude but 
 never conformity. Botanists have carefully compared 
 thousands of leaves, which looked exactly alike at 
 the first glance, but which after close examination 
 were found to possess striking dissimilarities. Inequal- 
 ity is the law of nature and the attempt to establish 
 equality is therefore unnatural and absurd. Where- 
 ever such experiments have been made, they have 
 ended in unqualified failure. Even some of the first 
 Christians, moved by brotherly love and charity, 
 failed in their efforts to establish communism perma- 
 nently. And the lamented Procrustes used two bed- 
 steads in which he placed his victims. He could not 
 get along with one size for everybody. We may just 
 as well try to make every man six feet long, forty-two 
 inches around his chest, with a Grecian nose, blue 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 31 
 
 eyes, light hair and a lyric tenor voice, as to atteni])l 
 to equalize all lives and reduce them to a communistic 
 state. — Now consider, in connection with the differ- 
 ence in the mental and physical powers of men, their 
 different inclinations and tastes, the variety of their 
 occupations, and then say, whether the establishment 
 of society on the basis of communism, of absolute 
 equality, is possible." 
 
 "If I have formed a just appreciation of the organi- 
 zation of your society, you have recognized the right 
 of all men to a living by giving everybody an equal 
 share of the products of labor", I objected; "but at 
 the same time you give everybody the chance to 
 select the profession or trade most to his taste and 
 you have graded the men, belonging to ?. guild, thus 
 inciting the ambition of the worker, to reach a higher 
 grade, and creatiug a diversity of positions, adapted 
 
 to that disimilarity of men, you were just speaking 
 of". 
 
 "Yes", said Forest, "we first established the principle 
 
 of equality and then proceeded to arrange our system 
 
 upon a basis of inequality, thus avoiding an open 
 
 avowal that the new organization of society was a 
 
 failure in both theory and practice. The question 
 
 before us is a very plain one: ^^Are we all alike'' ? If 
 
 we are, then communism is the proper form of society 
 
 and everybody should have an equal share of the 
 
 products of labor. If we are not alike, if we differ 
 
 in mental power and in physical ability, if the results 
 
 of the labor of men are dift'erent, then there is no 
 
 reason, why the wealth of the nation should be 
 
33 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 equally divided. But we first proclaim equality and 
 pretend that we divide the products of labor equally 
 among all; and then we divide the "workers into 
 first, second and third grades, according to ability, 
 and these grades are sitbdivided \Vi\.o first and second 
 classes. ""^^ Here we see the workers subdivided into 
 six classes for the reason, expressly stated, that their 
 ability differs. That their diligence also differs is 
 not admitted, but it is nevertheless the fact. The 
 inequality of men is thus distinctly recognized, but 
 the products of labor are equally divided in the name 
 of equality! Now, everybody has a natural right to 
 the products of his activity, but we are taking a large 
 share of the results of the labor of a clever worker of 
 class A of the first grade to give it to a lazy fellow of 
 class B of the third grade. This is downright robbery, 
 not even hidden beneath the shabby cloak of the lead- 
 ing principle governing all the acts of the adminis- 
 tration ; and all those who can not admire this steal- 
 ing, are denounced as enemies of the best organiza- 
 tion of society, ever known in the history of 
 mankind". 
 
 "You are to a certain extent an admirer of the 
 civilization'of the nineteenth century", 1 answered ; 
 'and yet in our times the employers were accused by 
 some of the labor agitators of "stealing" a large 
 amount of the products of work by reaping very 
 large profits and paying small wages. I would rather 
 favor an ecpial division of all properties than a 
 
 *) Page 125. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 33 
 
 system, by which a comparatively small number of 
 employers can enrich themselves at the expense of 
 the masses of the laboring people." 
 
 "I am not an admirer of the civilzation of the nine- 
 teenth century, Mr. West," Forest exclaimed. "I 
 simply maintain, that the principles of competition 
 under which society worked a hundred years ago was 
 far superior to the covimunisvi, under which we are 
 laboring. The unjust profits of the employers, of 
 which you complain, could have been easily done 
 away with, if your workmen had organized themselves 
 into co-partnerships or associations. There was no 
 law a hundred years ago to prevent a dozen shoe- 
 makers renting a loft with steam power, purchasing 
 a few sewing and other machines and making boots 
 and shoes at their own risk. There was no law to 
 prevent all the other workingmen buying their boots 
 and shoes at the shop of the co-operative association, 
 thus securing for the members of the latter the profits 
 of the manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and work- 
 man. The laborers of all the different trades "had a 
 perfect right to organize such co-operative societies 
 and thus secure all the profit that was in their labor. 
 If the workmen preferred not to make use of this 
 chance, if they did not care to assume the cares and 
 risks of conducting a business for themselves, if they 
 would rather work for an employer, leaving the cares 
 and risks of the managements entirelv to him, they 
 had certainly no reason to complain of the profit of 
 
34 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 the employer. And if they were not satisfied with 
 their treatment they could at any time seek other em- 
 ployment ; — a thing that the workmen of our days 
 can not do, for there is only one employer, the 
 national administration. — The principle, that a man 
 has a right to what he produces, was not questioned 
 under your form of production. But we have in 
 the name of equality and justice established the 
 ''right" to rob an industrious man of a part of the 
 product of his labor and give this booty to his lazy 
 comrade. If the workingmen of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, instead of sacrificing enormous sums in strikes, 
 had organized one trade after another into co-ope- 
 rative associations, they would have solved what they 
 styled the social questions with comparatively little 
 trouble. And they would have saved us from the 
 present outrageous form of society." 
 
 "The strikes were an effect merely of the concen- 
 tration of capital in greater masses, than had ever 
 been known before", I said, repeating the views of 
 Dr. Leete on this question. "Before this concentra- 
 tion began. . . .the individual workman was relatively 
 important and independent in his relations to his 
 employers. Moreover, when a little capital or a new 
 idea was enough to start a man in business for 
 himself, workingmen were constantly becoming 
 employers and there was no hard or fast line between 
 the two classes. Labor unions were needless then 
 and general strikes out of the question".*) 
 
 *) t'agc 52. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 35 
 
 "In your place, Mr. West, I would not endorse 
 those sentences of Dr. Leete", said Forest with a 
 smile, ^'for the Doctor has had frequent occasions to 
 change his mind on this subject and persists in 
 repeating his erroneous statements, although I and 
 others have disproved them until further repetitions 
 of our arguments became tedious. Strikes are not, 
 as Dr. Leete pretends to believe, comparatively late 
 appearances on the battle fields of national economy. 
 One of the biggest strikes that ever occurred, the 
 ''secessio in montem sacrum", took place in Rome 
 as early as 494 before Christ, and, during the centuries 
 of the middle ages, strikes for higher wages frequently 
 occurred, although in those days labor was much 
 better organized (in trades unions, guilds and 
 "Zuenfte") and more powerful than capital. And as 
 for the impossibility of laborers ever becoming em- 
 ployers, I can show you in the college library a copy 
 of the German paper, the "Freie Presse", published 
 in the city of Chicago anno 1888, where the editor, 
 in contradicting similar statements of the communists 
 of those days, points to the fact, that in 1888 there 
 were 12,000 German house owners, manufacturers and 
 well to do or rich business men in Chicago, who ail 
 had come to the city poor. When these Germans 
 came to Chicago only a very few of them spoke 
 English, still they were able to acumulate fortunes. 
 This disi)roves the statement, that the people at the 
 end of the last century were in the clutches of cajji- 
 tal and unable to free themselves. — It is the easiest 
 
36 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 thing in the world to make wild statements, but it is 
 sometimes difficult to substantiate them. And Dr. 
 Leete is an adapt at making statements'\ 
 
 *'But are you not getting along in good style?"' 1 
 asked, hoping to stop Forest's complaints, by point- 
 ing to an undisputable fact. "Are you not enjoying 
 an unprecedented prosperity and is not this general 
 result, the definite annihilation of poverty, an achieve- 
 ment worth small sacrifices ? '' 
 
 "We are not getting along in good style. We are 
 not enjoying an unprecedented prosperity. You will 
 discover very soon, that you are overestimating the 
 character and the fruits of our civilization. And so 
 far as the annihilation of poverty is concerned, it 
 amounts practically to nothing but the enrichment of 
 the awkward, stupid and lazy people, with the pro- 
 ceeds of the work of the clever and industrious 
 women and men. You could have done that 113 
 years ago, but you were not foolish and unjust 
 enough to commit such a robbery." 
 
 "If the people don't like the present organization 
 of society, why do they not change it?" I asked. 
 "From your remarks, I have drawn the conclusion, 
 that you have no opposition jjarty worth speaking of, 
 for you said, there are only a few opposition papers 
 published in the country. This seems to prove that 
 the people are satisfied with the present state of 
 affairs". 
 
 Forest looked very severe as he answered: "You 
 are uf course under the impression, that we are acting 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 37 
 
 with the same Hberty yon were enjoying 113 years 
 ago. But everything in political life has changed 
 since those days. With the exception of a limited 
 number of government officials and a few contractors, 
 your citizens were perfectly independent of the ad- 
 ministration ; to-day the administration rules every- 
 thing, and everybody is more or less dependent upon 
 the good will of our rulers. Whoever dares to openly 
 oppose the ruling spirits may be sure that all the 
 wrath and all the unpleasantness at the command of 
 the administration, will be piled upon him and his 
 relatives and friends. Therefore the number of men 
 who are daring enough to challenge the ire of the 
 goverLmjut is ^•ery small, although a great many are 
 discontented with the present state of affairs." 
 
 "But why don't people elect men to congress, who 
 would pass laws, that would change a state of things, 
 so unsatisfactory to the masses?" I asked, satisfied, 
 that Forest in his fault-finding mood, was using his 
 dark })aint altogether to freely. 
 
 ''Congress has very little influence nowadays", 
 Forest answered. "The power rests almost entirely 
 with the president and the chiefs of the ten great 
 departments. They liave well nigh absolute power 
 and resemble somewhat the council of ten in Venice, 
 when that aristocratic Republic was at the height of 
 its power. As it lies within their discretion to 
 assign each and every jjerson to a good or a poor 
 position for twenty-four years antl even to order a 
 draft from the ranks of the men over forty-five years 
 
38 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 of age, thus being able to get disliked men back 
 under the direct discipline of the industrial army, 
 they have a power over all the people that no tyrant 
 of your times ever dreamed of establishing". 
 
 "You know of course", Mr. Forest continued, ''that 
 all recruits belong for the first three years of their 
 service to the class of unskilled or common laborers. 
 It is not until after this period, during which he is 
 assignable to any work at \.\\q discretion of his superi- 
 ors, that the young man is allowed to select a special 
 avocation".*) You can readily see that the young 
 man is during these three years at the absolute mercy 
 of his superiors. They may assign him to easy and 
 clean work, or they may send him to do a dirty and 
 unhealthy job. He has to obey orders. For "a man 
 able to do duty and persistently refusing, is sentenced 
 to solitary imprisonment on bread and water until he 
 consents". f) 
 
 '•You know furthermore, that "individual records 
 are kept and that excellence receives distinction, cor- 
 responding with the penalties that negligence incurs." 
 Dr. Leete has undoubtedly told you this and further- 
 more "that it is not policy with us to permit youth- 
 ful recklessness or indiscretion, when not deeply 
 culpable, to handicap the future careers of young 
 men and that all who have passed the unclassified 
 grade without serious disgrace, have an equal oppor- 
 tunity to choose the life employment they have the 
 
 *) I'i^g^" 70. 
 
 f) Page 128. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 39 
 
 most liking for .... Now not only are the individual 
 records of these apprentices for ability and industry 
 strictly kept and excellency distinguished by suitable 
 distinctions, but upon the average of his record dur- 
 ing his apprenticeship the standing given the appren- 
 tice among the full workmen depends. . . .*) While 
 the internal organizations of the various industries, 
 mechanical and agricultural, differ according to their 
 peculiar conditions, they agree in a general division 
 of their workers into first, second and third grades, 
 according to ability, and these grades are in many 
 cases subdivided into first and second classes. Ac- 
 cording to his staiiding as an apprefitice, a young 
 man is assigned his place as ^ first, second or tJiird 
 grade worker. Regradings take place in each in 
 dustry at intervals, corresponding with the length of 
 the apprenticeship. .. . One of the notable advan- 
 tages of a high grading, is the privilege it gives the 
 worker to select which of the various branches or 
 processes of his industry he will follow as his spe- 
 cialty"f) .... Dr. Leete has of course further in- 
 formed you, "that so far as possible, the })references 
 of the poorest workman are considered in assigning 
 him his line of work.... While however the wish 
 of the lower grade man is consulted so far as the 
 exigencies of the service permit, he is considered only 
 after the upper grade men are provided for, and often 
 he has to put u}) with second or third choice or even 
 
 *) Page 124. 
 f) Page 125. 
 
4'> LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 with an arbitrary assignment when help is needed. 
 This privilege of selection attends every regrading, 
 and when a man loses his grade, he also risks having 
 to exchange the sort of work he likes best for some 
 other less to his taste .... High places in the nation 
 are open only to the highest class men."*) 
 
 These regulations bear out what I just said in regard 
 to the power of the administration. The lieutenants, 
 captains and colonels, are appointed by the generals 
 of the guild, who in turn are under the command of 
 the ten chiefs of the ten great departments. These 
 officers may give their young friends, who enter the 
 industrial army as apprentices, easy jobs and good 
 records and enable their friends on the strength of 
 their records, as soon as they have j^assed the first 
 three years of service, to enter the first class of the 
 first grade of a trade. And such a favorite, who, 
 backed by influential friends, has passed an easy time 
 as an apprentice and who has received at once the 
 first class of the first grade of his trade is immediately 
 appointable to a lieutenantship and he can run up to 
 the higher honors in a few years. — You can not deny, 
 Mr. West, that orr regulations permit such a favor- 
 itism." 
 
 I had to admit that such things were possible. 
 
 Mr. Forest continued: "On the other hand, the 
 young men, who are not the sons and friends of our 
 leaders, are fortunate if they can secure a second 
 grade position, with a record, that does not exclude 
 
 *) Pages 125 and 126. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 4^ 
 
 all hopes of further promotion. Relatives of out- 
 spoken opponents of the administration, can be 
 placed in the second class of the third grade of their 
 trade, and their record can be so kejU, that they can 
 never hope to secure a higher position. And such a 
 favoritism is not only possible, but it absolutely does 
 exist. The sons and relatives of men, who are known 
 as opponents of the administration, have jjractically 
 to live worse than slaves, and are sometimes treated 
 like foot balls". 
 
 ''Is there no court of appeals?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes, such an abused man or woman can go to a 
 Judge", Mr. Forest answered. "But, the minor Judges 
 are merely men who have passed the 45 th year of age 
 and have been appointed to such a position for five 
 years by the president. They — as Dr. Leete of 
 course told you— adjudicate all cases where a member 
 of the industrial army makes a complaint of unfair- 
 ness against an officer. All such questions are /iea?-d 
 and settled without appeal by a single Judge, three 
 Judges being required only in graver cases. The 
 efficiency of industry requires the st?'ictest discipline 
 in the army of labor"*) — The men appointed by the 
 President are of course trustworthy friends of the 
 administration and not expected to decide in such 
 cases against the officers of the government and in 
 favor of the "Kickers". And as such cases are 
 settled without appeal, the ill-used member of the 
 industrial army has to go back to his old position, 
 
 *) Page 206. 
 
42 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 where the superior, whom he has accused, will cer- 
 tainly not treat him better than before. On the 
 contrary, such an officer has a first-class chance to 
 "get even" with his dissatisfied subordinate, especially 
 at the next regrading, when he can put him into the 
 last class and grade, if the unfortunate fellow is not 
 already there. If such is the case, the offended 
 officer can at least assign the "Kicker" to the most 
 objectionable work". 
 
 The picture, thus drawn by Mr. Forest, appeared 
 so dreadful, especially when compared by me with 
 the descriptions of Dr. Leetfe, that I could not collect 
 myself sufficiently to try an argument against the 
 conclusions of my predecessor in the professorship 
 of the history of the nineteenth century.. 
 
 After a short pause the present janitor continued: 
 "Now consider in connection with all the facts and 
 institutions that I have mentioned, that "///^ workers 
 have no suffrage to exercise or anything to say about 
 the choice''' of their superiors.'^) — "The general of 
 the guild appoints to the ranks under him, but he 
 himself is not appointed, but chosen by suffrage 
 among the superintendents by vote of the honorary 
 members of the guilds, that is by those who have 
 served their time in the guild and received their dis- 
 charge"f). — So my dear Mr. West, the members of 
 the industrial army are twenty-four years absolutely 
 at the mercy of their superiors. If they desire to 
 
 *) Page 277. 
 f) Page 189. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 43 
 
 have a good time they must blindly obey orders and 
 seek favor by all means in their power. They must 
 influence their friends who have votes not only to 
 stand by the administration, but to do it in a demon- 
 strative manner. Occasional presents of wines and 
 cigars may secure the friendship of some of the 
 officers. Otherwise the member of the industrial 
 army may lead for twenty-four years a life, compared 
 with which the lot of a plantation slave or of the poor- 
 est coal digger 150 years ago would be called an en- 
 viable fate. For a plantation slave was considered a 
 valuable piece of property and not recklessly destroyed, 
 while the poorest coal digger could leave his job and 
 go to some other place, until he found more suit- 
 able employment. A member of our industrial army, 
 who has drawn down upon himself the ire of the 
 officers of the administration or who is placed on the 
 list of the enemies of society on account of the oppo- 
 sition of his voting relatives, leads a life that may 
 be termed as ''twenty four years of hell on eanh"! 
 I have demonstrated to you now, Mr. West, why 
 congress has no influence. The vast majority of its 
 members are continually trying to please the admin- 
 istration, for the purpose of securing favors for them- 
 selves, their relatives and their friends," said Mr. 
 Forest in conclusion. ^'And this is the equality of 
 the best organization society ever had ; this is what 
 Dr. Leete calls the millennium". 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "It is in conformity with the laws of nature and, 
 therefore, right that a man should push liis son, his 
 relatives and friends, and I would not blame a man 
 for doing this ; I should rather denounce him for not 
 doing it — always provided, of course, that said son, 
 said relatives or friends were qualified to fill the 
 positions to which they are appointed", said Mr. 
 Forest at our next conversation. '-I remember that I 
 have read in certain books a great deal about the 
 nepotism shown at your time in the distribution of 
 the .federal patronage, and that General Grant was 
 accused of always preferring his relatives and friends 
 in making appointments. I sympathize with that 
 great commander in the sturdiness with which he 
 stood by his friends, and I am inclined to excuse the 
 mistakes, he sometimes made in his appointments, 
 because they were mistakes of his heart that was al 
 ways true to his friends and sometimes was inclined 
 to overestimate their ability, or sense of h(mor. If 
 the ties of blood and friendship are not to be consid- 
 ered, what else should be ? And since a man is bound 
 to know the character and ability of his relatives and 
 friends better than the qualities of other people, he 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 45 
 
 should certainly first api)()int those next to him to 
 positions for which they are (lualified." 
 
 ''But the trouble with our ])olitical and social sys- 
 tem is, that it is bound to breed not only favoritism, 
 but also corruption on the largest scale. One hun- 
 dred and thirteen years ago, the men at the head of 
 the National Government or those who were influen- 
 tial with them were also sometimes filling places, 
 where for little work a good salary was i)aid, with 
 unworthy women and men, but such sinecures were 
 comparatively few and far between. The number of 
 ^-"ederal officials in your days was, if I am not mis- 
 taken about 80,000, and the postmasters of the small 
 country towns, who made up the largest part of the 
 80,000 were paid such a beggarly commission for the 
 sale of postage stamps, that no one could afford to 
 accept such positions except trades people, who kept 
 a store, ^yhere they had to be all day anyhow, and to 
 whom the honor and small profits were an object. 
 And then the incumbents of all the offices that could 
 be classed as sinecures, were changed exery four or 
 eight years. Our administrations have a very long 
 life. The one ousted twelve years ago lasted twenty- 
 six years. And the number of positions at the com- 
 mand of the government is very large. There is onj 
 lieutenant or overseer to about each and every twelve 
 men or women, not to mention the cajjtains, colonels, 
 etc. ; and the amount of bookkeeping done, is sim])ly 
 enormous. We are kee])ing in)oks as you kncnv, I 
 suppose, in all the producing as well as in the distribu- 
 
4^ LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 ting departments, and more than that: every citizen 
 ha:; an account in the police books*). 
 
 ''When you take into consideration our great and 
 growing population, you can form some idea of how 
 enormous this work is. You are aware, that the 
 North American territory, formerly under British rule, 
 has been annexed to the United States, and that the 
 population, according to the census of 1990, numbered 
 414,000,000. It is now estimated at 500,000,000**). 
 The complicated system of bookkeeping , required by 
 the communistic plan of production, and the short- 
 ness of working hours granted to the bookkeepers, 
 who are all preferred men and women, favorites of 
 the members of the administration, m.ade it necessary 
 to appoint a bookkeeper for every fifty people. Un- 
 der the former administration we had one bookkeeper 
 for every forty-two people. This gives to the gov- 
 ernment a chance to provide, at its own pleasure, 
 over 10,000,000 of men and women with clean aud 
 easy work. Add to these 10,000,000 bf positions about 
 10,000,000 officers of the industrial army, from the 
 lieutenantships up to the positions of colonel ; add, 
 furthermore, the clerkships in the distributing places 
 
 *) Page 87. 
 
 **) The first census of the United States was taken in 1790, 
 when 3,929,314 people were counted. In i83o the population 
 numbei-ed 50,155,738, and in 1890 it is about 68,000,000. In one 
 hundred years it has been multiplied l:)y 16. Ifthe rate of increase 
 should continue t(j be the same, the United States would have in 
 1990, without the population of Canada, about 1,040,000,000 of 
 people. I have figured an increase of about twenty percent f )r 
 each decade, which would give for the year 2000 about 500 
 millions of inhabitants for the United States and Canada. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 47 
 
 and many other preferred positions, and you can see 
 at a glance what an enormous power the administra- 
 tion possesses and how tempting this power is." 
 
 "But is it not necessary for those applying for the 
 responsible position of a bookkeeper to have jjassed 
 through a course of study in order to be qualified for 
 such important duties? " I inquired. 
 
 "Bookkeeping is part of the instruction in our 
 schools", Mr. Forest answered, "and the bookkeeping 
 m the public offices is not well done. So the respons- 
 ibility, resting on the shoulders of the favorites of the 
 members of the administration, does not harass the 
 minds of these preferred people very much. It 
 is, of course, impossible for an outsider to obtain an in- 
 sight into the workings of the present admmistration, 
 and to know how the books are kept. But when the late 
 administration went out of office twelve years ago, an 
 unfathomable pool of corruption was uncovered. An 
 inventory of the goods on hand was taken, and it was 
 stated that the books showed a shortage of more than 
 four hundred and thirty-two million dollars. The 
 members of the ousted administration declared this 
 statement to be entirely false, that it had been "doc- 
 tored" by the ex])erts of the administration, for the 
 jjurpose of casting discredit upon the members of the 
 old government. The accused officers admitted that 
 shortages were possible, for the reason, that all the 
 rlerks whose duty it was to measure goods, were 
 inclined to give the people good weight and large 
 measure, but that these shortages would not reach the 
 
4S LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 figure of $432,000,000, and that the deficiency couid 
 not be considered as a proof of want of honesty on 
 the part of the old officers. On the other hand, the 
 new officers claimed, that the enormous shortages 
 were due to the corruption of the members and 
 prominent supporters of the ousted administration, 
 who had always overdrawn their accounts, and had 
 not been charged with the goods taken out in excess 
 of their credit cards". 
 
 I asked Mr. Forest what ne thought of these 
 charges . 
 
 "I think, they were to a large extent well founded. 
 The temptation under our wretched system is too 
 great. That the leaders should give to their relatives 
 and next friends good positions would not be blame- 
 worthy, if the appointees were fit to fill the places 
 given them. But the best places, numbering in all 
 about twenty millions, are not filled with the best and 
 most able men. They go, so far as they are not given 
 to the relatives and friends of the leaders, to friends 
 of the administration, in order to keep the latter in 
 power. They are given to the sons and relatives and 
 friends of the most active supporters of the govern- 
 ment. And even this would be tolerable, if the 
 favoritism stopped there, at the boundary of corrup- 
 tion and tyranny. But it does not". 
 
 *'Are you accusing the present administration and 
 all its friends of corruption and tyranny ?" I asked, 
 feeling that I should have to end my conversations 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 49 
 
 with Mr. Forest, if he should make disparaging 
 charges, even indirectly, against my host. 
 
 ''I am speakmg of a system and I am mentioning 
 only such facts and deeds as I can prove", Mr. Forest 
 answered. "I am not accusing men for any pleasure 
 it gives me to do so. I know that your question refers 
 to Dr. Leete and, though it is not a direct one, yet I 
 will meet it squarely. I regard Dr. Leete as one of 
 the best and purest of men among the party -leaders; 
 but he, also, is making use of the advantages that our 
 system offers to the men in power." 
 
 ''Will you be kind enough to substantiate what you 
 say?" I asked quietly, but sharply. 
 
 "I will leave it to you to say, whether I am going 
 too far in my statement", Forest continued. "Did 
 not Dr. Leete inform you that he has been "cherishing 
 the idea of building a laboratory in the large garden 
 of his house?"*) And did he not tell you that he sent 
 for the workmen and that they unearthed the vault 
 in which you slept?"f) 
 
 "Indeed, Dr. Leete said that he intended to build a 
 chemical laboratory", I admitted; "but is not the 
 amount of his credit-card large enough to permit him 
 such an expenditure?" 
 
 Forest looked somewhat amused and asked me, if I 
 had ever looked at the total amount the credit-caid 
 called for. I confessed that I never had; noticing 
 that the style of living of Dr. Leete was luxurious 
 
 *) T'age 34. 
 t) Page 34. 
 
50 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 enough for anybody, I had not troubled myself to 
 ascertain how much the country allowed each and 
 every inhabitant per year. 
 
 "Well", said Mr. Forest, *'we will discuss the wealth 
 of the nation at some other time To-day we will 
 continue to investigate the tendency of the commun- 
 istic system to breed favoritism, corruption, servility 
 and suppression of opponents. — As for Dr. Leete, 
 he is building his laboratory in spite of the fact, that 
 such an enterprise is entirely against the intention and 
 spirit of our institutions. There is a very good labo- 
 ratory of the kind in the basement of this college, 
 and Dr. Leete would certainly be welcome, if he should 
 ask permission to experiment there at his pleasure. 
 His influence, if nothing else, would secure him a 
 permit. But vanity causes him to erect a superfluous 
 building, which will give the Radicals a new and visi- 
 ble argument against the ruling clique". 
 
 "What Radicals are you speaking of ?" I asked. 
 
 ''I am refering to the radical communists who 
 object to the present state of affairs, because they 
 desire to abolish religious services, matrimony and 
 all personal-property, institutions that are at present 
 tolerated. We will speak of our political parties and 
 their principles later. I simply desired to establish 
 to your own satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, the fact, 
 that Dr. Leete is erecting for his private use and in 
 violation of communistic principles, a chemical labo- 
 ratory, a very expensive affair, for which the credit- 
 cards of ten men would not pay, and thus challenging 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, $1 
 
 the criticism of all the enemies of the administration". 
 "Cannot Dr. Leete pay a fair rent for the labora- 
 tory?" I rejoined. "I should think that the abun- 
 dance of labor could not be used to a better advantage 
 than to erect buildings, the rent for which will in- 
 crease the income of the nation". 
 
 "But there is no abundance of labor, as you will 
 discover in due time", said Forest. "And if you will 
 imagine what would happen, if every citizen should 
 demand a similar outlay of labor and instruments to 
 please his notions, you will undoubtedly see, that Dr. 
 Leete is assuming an exceptional position, which, not 
 only savors of favoritism but, also, involves an in- 
 discreet abuse of power, calculated to create bad 
 blood". 
 
 I could not very well refute the arguments of Mr. 
 Forest, and so was silent. 
 
 "But favoritism and the occasional abuse of ])Ower 
 for the accommodation of men like Dr. Leete, are not 
 the worst features of our present form of govern- 
 ment", he continued, "and the fact that influential 
 men frequently receive presents of silks, furs, and 
 jewelry for their wives and daughters, and of wine 
 and cigars for themselves, from people seeking the 
 intercession of these powerful men, in order to i)ro- 
 cure preferred positions for themselves or for rela- 
 tives and friends, could also be borne although, of 
 course, they are proofs of political corruption. But 
 the worst consequences of this damnable communism 
 are tyranny and the possibility of brutal persecution 
 
52 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 of the opponents of the administration on the one 
 hand, and servihty, adulation and calumny on the 
 otl^er. Every man and every body of men who have 
 gained certain advantages or occupy desired posi- 
 tions will defend themselves against all attacks of 
 their opponents. So will political parties try to keep 
 themselves in power by rewarding their faithful wor- 
 kers and by crowding back their opponents. It is, 
 therefore, very dangerous to invest a great govern- 
 ment with arbitrary powers, which permit the rulers 
 to make the people dependent upon the good will of 
 their officers, even in their daily occupation, all their 
 life long". 
 
 ''According to your description the present state of 
 society appears to be an unbearable condition of 
 affairs", I said, 
 
 "If you inquire among the members of the different 
 guilds, especially among the farmers," Mr. Forest 
 continued, "you will find that I am describing things 
 just as they are. Every member of the industrial 
 army knows that ability and industry alone will secure 
 a desirable position only in exceptional cases, if at 
 all ; that political influence is. the almighty factor in 
 every affair of our lives, and that the industrial army 
 is governed by officers whom the worker must try to 
 please, by personal adulation, by presents, by a slav- 
 ish devotion to the orders of the superiors, and 
 indirectly by inducing all the members of his family 
 and all his friends to support every measure and 
 every member of the administration. If the mem- 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 53 
 
 bers of the industrial army could elect their officers, 
 
 the discipline would of course, not be so strict, as it is 
 
 now ; but even an occasional row amongst the men 
 
 would be preferable to the present state of affairs, 
 
 where every one who happens to be unpopular with 
 
 the ruling party is leading a terrible existence. The 
 
 number of suicides is therefore becoming larger every 
 
 year and is to-day four times greater than in your 
 times". 
 
 ''The number of suicides in European armies 113 
 years ago was very large", I remarked thoughtfully, 
 ''although the men had everything they needed in the 
 line of lodging, food and clothing". 
 
 "Yes," said Forest, "the necessities of life without 
 liberty are of little value. The soldiers of your 
 time threw away their lives, because they did not 
 consider a life without freedom worth living, and still 
 their term of service lasted only three or five years, 
 and they had but a comparatively easy duty to per- 
 form in times of peace. The service in our industrial 
 army lasts, at the best, 24 years of our life. The 
 men and women are at the mercy of their officers, 
 and they can appeal against maltreatment to other 
 members of the administration only to judges who 
 decide definitely such cases, generally by simply 
 sending back the complainants to their w^ork with an 
 admonishment to try to win the good will of their 
 superiors, and thus secure promotion." 
 
 "You have been speaking about politicians, Mr. 
 Forest", I said "Do many men take an active part 
 in political life?" 
 
54 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 "I should say they did", my predecessor answered. 
 "Many of the men from 45 years upwards, and many 
 women do little else, except busy themselves with 
 politics. They can live on their credit-cards wherever 
 they please, and many of them prefer to spend their 
 time in Washington, "hustling around" in a very lively 
 fashion, trying to gain favors for their friends, and for 
 such people as address themselves to the hustlers. 
 The lobby in the halls of Congress in your days is 
 described as a bad crowd, but to compare it with 
 the hustlers of our days, would be like comparing a 
 Sunday school with pandemonium. Millions of 
 people who desire better work or promotion, and who 
 have nothing to hope from the influence they are 
 able to command at home, write to the hustlers at 
 Washington to secure their services." 
 
 "But what can the seekers of favors offer to those 
 who live in Washington for the purpose of gaining 
 favor for other people, and whom we may call the 
 lobbyists of the twentieth century?" I inquired. "In 
 the present day, men do not accumulate fortunes." 
 
 "Indeed, they do not", answered Mr. Forest with a 
 smile. "But some people desire to have occasionally 
 a "high time" and to spend five or ten times the 
 amount of their credit-card during each year. Some 
 of our administration leaders keep, what we may 
 style, a "great house". They receive guests and en- 
 tertain them with delicacies and wine. Some of the 
 most prominent lobbyists do the same thing. An 
 applicant for favors has to give up a part or perhaps 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, SS 
 
 nearly all of his credit-card, and he may look to his 
 future subordinates for a rich compensation". 
 
 "But why are people not satisfied with their legiti- 
 mate income'? I asked, painfully surprised to see that 
 wire-pulling and corruption were quite as prevalent 
 as they had been 113 years ago. "Is not the income a 
 credit-card affords sufficient to support people?" 
 
 "You can never satisfy the people". Forest said. 
 "Nowadays the clever and industrious part of the 
 people feel that they are robbed for the benefit of 
 their lazy, awkward or stupid comrades, that they 
 have to submit to the impudence and blackmailing of 
 some of their superiors, or else undergo humiliating 
 treatment. And even the men and women of the 
 lowest ability, who are benefited by our present system, 
 are not all of them pleased. Some of them would 
 rather do away with personal property and separate 
 housekeeping. In fact, but a very small portion of 
 our citizens are really satisfied. — And people who 
 are fond of good cooking, costly meals and Havana 
 cigars, certainly cannot pay for such luxuries, and 
 have to depend upon others if they desire to enjoy 
 them. We have in Washington, also, a great many 
 young women, who prefer flirtation, fine meals and a 
 fast life to the regular employment in the industrial 
 army or the life of an ordinary good wife". 
 
 "Then prostitution still flourishes in Washington", 
 I exclaimed with amazement. 
 
 "Indeed it does", Mr. Forest assented. "Of course, 
 these girls hold clerical positions in the different de- 
 
^6 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 partments, but these positions are sinecures. I un- 
 derstand from friends who have seen part of the secret 
 life at the capitol, (and it is not so very secret either) 
 that some of the higher officials spend fifty times the 
 amount of their credit cards with these women. A 
 part of their income is obtained from those seeking 
 favors, who willy-nilly give up a part of their credit 
 cards. Another part of the values squandered by in- 
 fluential persons, comes from the public storehouse, 
 where only a small proportion of the value taken out 
 by the influential people, is pricked from their credit 
 cards by the clerks, who are fully aware what is ex- 
 pected of them, if they desire to retain their positions; 
 for if they should treat the leaders of the ruling party 
 like common laborers, they would be degraded to 
 class B of their third grade. The glitter of corruption 
 proves attractive to many men and women, as 1 
 have stated before, and the population of Washington, 
 therefore, exceeds that of any other city on the Ame- 
 rican continent." 
 
 "But, I cannot understand, why the people tolerate 
 such a corrupt and tyrannical government as you 
 describe," I said, "and I am satisfied that your 
 hypochondriac disposition is befogging somewhat the 
 keenness of your eyesight and the clearness of your 
 judgment." 
 
 "It is your own fault if you remain in doubt as to 
 the perfect correctness of my statements", Mr. Forest 
 said. "If you, for instance, should desire to take a 
 vacation for the purpose of giving our rulers in 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 57 
 
 Washington one of your enthusiastic lectures, you 
 will cheerfully be granted leave of absence from your 
 duties as professor and will be received at the capitol 
 in grand style. For the enthusiasm displayed by ycu 
 for our institutions, as compared with the civilization 
 of the nineteenth century, will pour water on the mill 
 wheels of our administration. You will find the state 
 of affairs precisely as I have described them to be, 
 and by conversing with the rank and file of the sup- 
 porters of the. administration, you will find that they 
 are upholding the present state for the reason that they 
 despair of their ability to improve public affairs, and 
 because they are afraid of a rule still worse, under the 
 radicals". 
 
 "How could a state of public affairs be worse than 
 the one you have pictured to me in your conversa- 
 tions", I exclaimed. 
 
 ''Many people are afraid that the Radicals would 
 prohibit marriages and would force free love with 
 all its consequences upon the people. In fact, the 
 radical newspapers - the only sheets that speak out 
 boldly against the administration and strike from the 
 shoulder — are denouncing religion, marriage, sepa- 
 rate house-keeping and the limited amount of proper- 
 ty people are permitted to own". 
 
 "But, how can the tone of the Radical press be 
 reconciled with your statement that the administra- 
 tion is treating its opponents so badly"? I asked. 
 "If it is the custom of the government to confine its 
 opponents in insane asylums, why are the Radical 
 
58 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 newspapers permitted to advocate such abominable 
 prmciples"? 
 
 Mr. Forest laughed and replied : "The Radical 
 editors are favored exceptions. They are doing 
 good service for the administration in scaring the 
 mass of the people into submission. Whenever an 
 election of generals of the guilds is near at hand, the 
 Radical press is permitted to howl to the best ability 
 of its editors. Then, a few days before the election, 
 the administration organs copy extracts from the 
 rabid and nonsensical utterances of such papers, 
 and ask the people, if they desire that kind of gov- 
 ernment, urge the voters to stand by the administra- 
 tion which can, of course, not please everybody in all 
 points, but which is the best any people on earth 
 ever had, and so forth ad infinitum". 
 
 "Then the Radical editors are simply tolerated as 
 bugbears, while the more moderate writers are not 
 permitted to oppose the administration?" 
 
 "Exactly", rejoined Mr. Forest. "But I am afraid, 
 the government is playing a very dangerous game. 
 The Radicals are undoubtedly gaining ground and 
 have amongst their followers very desperate men, 
 who may at any time raise the black flag of destruc- 
 tion. If we had a free and independent people, the 
 danger would not be so great. Then the masses of 
 free men would rally to the defence of their beloved 
 institutions. But as matters now stand, the masses 
 are accustomed to submission under a rule of a 
 minority, and the determined uprising of a body of 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 59 
 
 desperate men would find but a comparatively small 
 number of citizens ready to fight for the present 
 order of things. And it will be a bad day for human- 
 ity, when the Radicals come into power". 
 
 "But, you said that about twelve years ago the 
 government lost an election. That shows, that it 
 can be beaten in a square fight, and you further said 
 that the present rulers are better citizens than the 
 men that formed the last administration". 
 
 "There is certainly some improvement, but it is 
 nothing very remarkable. It amounted, in substance, 
 to a change of men, but not to a change of system. 
 Favoritism, corruption and prostitution have de- 
 creased somewhat, but they have not been stamped 
 out. They still flourish. People who were very 
 enthusiastic at the time of the election and hoped for 
 a clean and popular administration, have now lost 
 all confidence, that under the communistic rule there 
 can be such a thing as a just government. In sub- 
 stance, it has been, as I said, merely a change of per- 
 sonalities and, therefore, the confidence of the people 
 in the prevailing system has been destroyed. Conse- 
 quently, the change has actually done more harm 
 than good. The strongest and most reliable element 
 to-day in favor of good government is the farming 
 population ; but although the farmers are very 
 numerous, they represent one guild only. They have 
 but one general and one department chief, and are 
 outvoted by the representatives of the other guilds. 
 And on account of the opposition of the farmers to 
 
6o LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 the administration they are not treated as well as the 
 members of the other guilds". 
 
 "Do they not receive the same credit cards as 
 other people" ? I queried. 
 
 *'They do, but they complain that they receive the 
 poorest goods, and that their share of public im- 
 provements and benefits is comparatively small; and 
 whenever there is a chance to discriminate against 
 their representatives, that chance is not lost. The 
 farmers would be the most reliable opponents to the 
 Radicals, but the treatment they are receiving from 
 the administration, has created so much dissatisfac- 
 tion amongst the farming population, that we cannot 
 count upon them in a fight for the maintainance of 
 the present system or the present government. To 
 give you an instance of the discrimination against 
 the farmers, I will mention the erection of music 
 halls, theatres and other places of evolution, recrea- 
 tion and amusement. It is, of course, impossible to 
 build a theatre or a concert hall at every country 
 crossroad, but the number of such public places 
 erected in the cities is entirely out of proportion to 
 those erected in the country towns and villages The 
 administration relies for its support upon the city 
 people, upon such guilds as are recruited from the 
 population of the cities, and, therefore bends all its 
 energies to benefitting them. Then there is another 
 thing to be taken into account. The nation is fre- 
 quently left with small lots of goods on its hands, 
 through changes of taste, unseasonable weather and 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. . 61 
 
 various other causes. These have to be disposed of 
 at a sacrifice, and the loss charged up to the expenses 
 of the business*). These goods the administration 
 can dispose of at any time when it chooses to claim 
 that the best prices can be realized. The members 
 of the administration are also judges as to what 
 goods are to be sold at a sacrifice. It has been 
 charged by the representatives of the farming popu- 
 lation that such of these goods as are of poor quality 
 are largely given out to farmers, while other things 
 that are in first-class condition are disposed of in the 
 storehouses of the cities, at reduced prices, and that 
 in such instances favoritism and corruption are com- 
 ing in. I do not care to endorse all the complaints, 
 our farmers make. They may lack foundation to a 
 great extent, but they prove the existence of a deep 
 dissatisfaction, and such charges could simply not be 
 made if our administration were not clothed with 
 power hitherto unheard of in the history of mankind. 
 It is the system itself that breeds all these evils". 
 
 "Have you not, besides the radical and the admin- 
 istration parties, other organizations fighting for the 
 control of the government" ? 
 
 ''We have the temperance people who have organ- 
 ized themselves , but they are simply striving within 
 the administration party to secure the control of the 
 government. The administration does not discrimi- 
 nate against the members of this organization. It 
 
 *; Page 1S6 
 
62 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 gives them a chance to do their very best, but so far 
 they have not succeeded in making much headway". 
 
 "I notice that you are not giving the present sys- 
 tem of society much credit for anything done under 
 its auspices. Don't you think that the abolition 
 of absokite poverty, the elevation of all men and 
 women to a standard at least nearly equal, is a great 
 and priceless gain to humanity? I remember too 
 well the inexpressible sufferings of some of the poor 
 people of my days, and while I am not sufficiently 
 familiar with the present state of society, to endorse 
 or to contradict your statements, yet I prize the 
 abolishment of poverty so high, that I still cling to 
 the hope, in spite of your arguments to the contrary, 
 that the present form of society and of production 
 may overcome all the difficulties inseparable from all 
 human efforts and institutions". 
 
 "My dear Mr. West, I am glad to see you using 
 now in your last remarks in defense of communism 
 the same arguments the defenders of the old form of 
 production used against the communists of your days. 
 This simply proves two facts, viz.: that nothing is per- 
 fect under God's sun, and that every form of govern- 
 ment is forced to admit this. The abolition of abso- 
 lute poverty could have been accomplish'ed as I can 
 and will prove later on, beyond a reasonable doubt, 
 without a descent into communism and the terrible 
 consequences of this worst system of production. 
 The fact, that the members and the officers of the 
 administration may, at their pleasure, treat the friends 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 67, 
 
 of their opponents, members of the industrial army, 
 like slaves ; that even the friends of the government's 
 opponents who have gained comparatively good posi- 
 tions, can be placed in the second class of the third 
 grade at the yearly regradings, and that favoritism is 
 shown to all friends of the administration, has caused 
 adulation, servility, calumny and corruption, and 
 there was never a time in the history of the Saxon 
 race when there were in public business and social 
 life so little independence and manhood among the 
 citizens. When two hundred and thirty years ago 
 England tried to levy a tax upon tea, the Americans 
 rose up in arms, because they would not permit the 
 government to collect a tax unless it granted to the 
 Americans representation in the parliament which 
 imposed this tax. To-day the government controls 
 the labor of all men and women for twentv-four lons^ 
 years, without giving the flower of the American peo- 
 ple a chance to cast a vote, which shall shape the 
 form and policy of the government in conformity with 
 the wishes of those who produce the wealth of the 
 nation. This state of slavery which never existed 
 before in the history of, civilized nations, can not last 
 many years longer. It will go down in an ocean of 
 blood. For as the German poet Schiller says: Fear 
 not outrages from free men ; but tremble when slaves 
 break their chains". 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 From a heaven of peace and joy, from an ideal 
 state inhabited by good people only, Forest had 
 thrown me into a deep dark sea of pity and doubt. 
 
 Dr. Leete and his family noticed, of course, the 
 disturbed state of my thoughts, and while the doctor 
 was evidently waiting for me to bring about a dis- 
 cussion of the social problems, Edith was anxious to 
 console me. She seemed to think that the strange- 
 ness of my surroundings and of my present position 
 was depressing me. 
 
 I carefully avoided an explanation. I had resolved 
 to continue the conversations with Mr. Forest, but 
 to form a clear opinion of my own by examining into 
 the actual state of things, and thus find if the real 
 facts bore out the statements of Dr. Leete or those of 
 Mr. Forest. Therefore on my way to and from the 
 college I strolled along the streets and conversed with 
 all the people I met. I noticed with some surprise 
 that everybody was reserved, yes even shy, when I 
 commenced to ask about the administration of public 
 affairs, about the principles underlying our form of 
 government, about the behavior of the officers, the 
 management of the storehouses, and whether the peo- 
 ple were satisfied and pleased, or not. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 65 
 
 Hardly ever did I meet an expression either of 
 cheerful contentment, or of decided dissatisfaction. 
 Only a few Radicals expressed themselves in strong 
 language against the present state of things and 
 against the leaders of the country, and a few women 
 said that they did not like the work in the factories 
 at all. But, although people were very reserved in 
 the expression of their feelings and thoughts, I became 
 convinced that contentment is as rare a flower in the 
 garden of communism as it was in the United States 
 of 1 13 years ago. The abominable language used by 
 the Radicals against the highest officers of the coun- 
 try could not, of course, convince me that the latter 
 were guilty of the charges preferred. But I could not 
 elicit from any other man or from any other women 
 of the rank and file of the industrial army a defense 
 of the accused men. They evidently did not care to 
 antagonize anybody when they were not called upon 
 by one of their superiors to stand by the administra- 
 tion. 
 
 Thus, I was forced to the conclusion, that commu- 
 nistic rule did not create the universal happiness I 
 expected to find after my conversations with Dr. 
 Leete. But I was inclined to think that ])eople lived 
 well enough, without great cares, neither on the one 
 hand particularly content with their lot, nor on the 
 other inclined to change their system of production. 
 And it seemed to me that most of the people were 
 rather dull and did not take much interest in any- 
 thing. One day when I reached the house of Dr. 
 
66 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 Leete after one of my promenades through the streets 
 of Boston, as I entered the hall, I heard a very loud 
 conversation in one of the rooms. The first words 
 that arrested my attention, spoken in a deep voice, 
 trembling with emotion, were: "Miss Edith has en- 
 couraged me to repeat my visits"- 
 
 "We are always glad to see you here, Mr. Fest", 
 Dr. Leete replied. "We have all invited you." 
 
 "Yes, you have ; but you understand very well 
 what I mean", the deep voice continued. "I have 
 called here so frequently and have to-day asked Miss 
 Edith to become my wife, because your daughter has 
 encouraged my hopes to win her love. And now I 
 am coolly informed that I have made a great mistake, 
 and I see my suspicion confirmed, that this Bostonian 
 of the nineteenth century, dug out by you from his 
 grave in your garden, is the man whom Miss Edith 
 prefers to all others, even the one she encouraged 
 until a few days ago''. 
 
 "Mr. Fest, I wish you would represent the civiliza- 
 tion of the twentieth century with more dignity when 
 you are speaking of my daughter and of my guest", 
 said Dr. Leete with some emotion in his voice. 
 
 "Of course, I must preserve my dignity when I have 
 been fooled by a base flirtation for over a year, and 
 make the discovery that the girl I love is to marry 
 a man 143 years old, in preference to me", Mr. Fest 
 said in deep bitterness and somewhat sneeringly. 
 
 "How can you utter such cruel and untrue words," 
 Edith exclaimed with angry excitement". "Never 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 67 
 
 has the thought entered my mind that your feelings 
 toward me, your friend for over ten years, were any- 
 thing but brotherly affection". 
 
 ''It is time to end this conversation", interposed 
 Dr. Leete, "after the explanations given, Mr. Fest 
 undoubtedly feels, that our relations can not be con- 
 tinued". 
 
 "Of course, our relations can not be continued", 
 cried Mr. Fest in a rage. "I leave you now, and give 
 you, now and here, fair warning that I shall not enter 
 your house again as a friend. If I ever come again, 
 it will be as an enemy to be avenged for the destruc- 
 tion of my happiness and the peace of my heart. Be- 
 ware of that day"! 
 
 The reckless manner in which this man addressed 
 Edith and her father aroused my anger, and, entering 
 the room I said ; "Please save your cheap pathos for 
 amateur theatricals and leave this room at once". 
 
 The man before me was about six feet and three 
 inches tall, with broad shoulders and two heavy fists. 
 He looked down upon me with an ironical glance 
 and said : "I will spare you this time, old man, but 
 the next occasion that you indulge in impudent lan- 
 guage, I will put you in a bag and dump you into 
 Massachusetts Bay" . 
 
 Before I could answer this pleasing threat, Mr. Fest 
 had left the room and the house. 
 
 "Who is this man ? " I asked, turning to Dr. Leete, 
 with no attempt to conceal my displeasure. 
 
68 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 "He is a machinist, a very able man in his trade 
 and a captain in the industrial army", explained the 
 doctor. "His parents lived next door and when he 
 was a boy, he used to play with Edith". 
 
 "If [ were to judge the social manners of the offi- 
 cers of the industrial army, by the experience of this 
 hour, I should have to say that civilization has moved 
 very slowly and rather backward than ahead", I 
 remarked. 
 
 "It is an extraordinary case of atavism", said Dr. 
 Leete. "Such hotheadedness is very rare in our 
 days". 
 
 I did not c^re to begin just now, a conversation 
 that might have a very unpleasant termination. But I 
 could not repress the thought that 113 years ago the 
 manners and morals were such, that lines were drawn 
 between the two sexes that were invisible but still 
 recognized by every one having a little sense of pro- 
 priety, and that a man would hardly have felt as if he 
 had been encouraged, if it were not the case. I en- 
 tertained not the slightest doubt that Edith had 
 behaved as well as any girl of her time. It was the 
 consequence of the tendency to equalize everything 
 that had, perhaps, effaced to a certain degree the fine 
 lines existing 113 years ago between good women and 
 men. I remembered my question put to Dr. Leete: 
 "And so the girls of the twentieth century tell their 
 love"? and the doctor's answer: ''If they choose. 
 There is no more pretense of a concealment of feel- 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 69 
 
 ing on their part than on the part of their lovers".*) 
 — Yes, if girls tell their love just as men do, then the 
 fine lines between the two sexes must be obliterated, 
 and a feeling of repulsion and uneasiness took poses- 
 sion of me. 
 
 "It may become necessary to place Mr. Fest, at 
 least for a few months, under medical treatment", 
 remarked Dr. Leete thoughtfully. ''He is certainly in 
 a high state of excitement, and it is not unlikely that 
 he may commit a rash act which he would repent 
 afterwards". 
 
 "One hundred and thirteen years ago we would have 
 placed such a man under bonds to keep the peace," 
 1 said, considering with terror the idea, that a man 
 could be placed in an insane asylum for uttering a 
 few rash words. 
 
 "And if, in violation of his bond, he committed a 
 breach of the peace", said the doctor, "what did you 
 then do with such a man" ? 
 
 "We punished him according to the laws covering 
 the case, either by imprisonment or by a fine, or in 
 cases of murder, by putting the criminals to death" . 
 
 "We place a man in whom atavism makes its ap- 
 pearance, in a hospital where competent physicians 
 take care of him until they consider him sufficiently 
 cured to be released", said Dr. Leete, with an ex- 
 pression of great satisfaction and kindness, as he 
 lighted a fresh havana cigar. 
 
 "I think you are running no great risk, papa, if you 
 allow that man to attend to the duties of his posi- 
 *) Page 266. 
 
70 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 tion", Edith remarked. "He is quick tempered and 
 hot headed ; but he will soon become composed" 
 
 "I am not so sure about that", Dr. Leete said 
 slowly. ''I remember that he has always shown deep 
 strong feelings whenever he had set his heart upon 
 anything. He may, and he may not, calm down. It 
 is dangerous to take any chances with such a man". 
 
 Conflicting sentiments and ideas filled my heart 
 and head. I felt that if I continued the conversa- 
 tion it might end in a conflict with Dr. Leete, and I 
 was in no mood to engage in any discussion with him. 
 So I excused myself on the plea of a bad head ache, 
 and left the house to take a walk. 
 
 The experience of the last hour did not savor much 
 of the millennium. Here was a man holding the 
 rank of an officer of the industrial army, and roughly 
 and rudely accusing Edith of flirtation. His behavior 
 certainly did not correspond with the high praise Dr. 
 Leete gave to the culture and education of the young 
 people of the twentieth century. At all events this 
 conflict between Fest and the family of Dr. Leete 
 demonstrated that contentment is not secured to 
 humanity by the simple introduction of communism, 
 by securing for everybody lodging, clothing and 
 a suflicient quantity of good food. Envy and jealousy 
 threatened our love, and Mr. Fest seemed to be just 
 the kind of a man to make his displeasure felt. The 
 manner in which Dr. Leete proposed to prevent a 
 rash act of the enraged lover appeared to me even 
 more disagreeable than the prospect of a personal 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 71 
 
 encounter with Mr. Fest. And again the question 
 arose before my mind whether Edith Bartlett, my 
 fiancee of 1887 would ever have given a man an 
 opportunity to accuse her of flirtation or to assert 
 that she had encouraged him to declare his love. 
 
 When I met Mr. Forest after my next lecture I 
 remarked: ''I understand the girls of the twentieth 
 century are somewhat of the style that we would have 
 called emancipated". 
 
 With a short but sharp glance at my pale face 
 which testified that I had passed a sleepless night, 
 Mr. Forest replied: "The mad endeavor to equalize 
 the variety, established by nature, has not spared the 
 relations between women and men. Both sexes be- 
 long to the industrial army, both have their own 
 officers and judges, both receive the same pay. The 
 queen of your old-fashioned household has been de- 
 throned. We take our meals in great steam- feeding 
 establishments, and if our Radicals, who are in fact 
 the logical communists, are victorious, we will all 
 live together in lodging houses accommodating thou- 
 sands of people. Marriage will be abolished, together 
 with religion and all personal property ; free love 
 will be proclaimed and we will live together like a 
 flock of rabbits. The natural sense of propriety 
 which is a distinguishing quality of the finer sex, 
 fortunately prevents most of our women and girls 
 becoming victims of the low and degrading theories 
 of communism. But the real girl of our period is a 
 very remarkable although by no means agreeable 
 
72 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 specimen. Do you know Miss Cora Belong, a cousin 
 of Miss Edith Leete"? 
 
 "I have not the pleasure" 
 
 "You will not escape her", Mr. Forest predicted 
 with a smile of amusement. "Miss Cora is very en- 
 thusiastic over the absolute equality of women and 
 men. And since some of our young men are courting 
 their young lady friends. Miss Cora thinks it but fair 
 and proper that she should court some of the young 
 men. She does not hesitate to tell them that she ad- 
 mires their good looks, that she loves them ; she 
 asks them for kisses, invites them to a drink — just as 
 young men talk to young girls and just as they invite 
 them to have a plate of ice cream. — She smokes cigars 
 and plays billiards with her male friends, and is domg 
 all she can to "equalize" the sexes. And Miss Cora 
 as well as the other "girls of our period" complains 
 
 very loudly that she cannot abolish all the differences 
 between woman and man". 
 
 "I am not very anxious to make the acquaintance 
 of Miss Cora Belong", I confessed. "And I agree 
 with you from my own personal experience that the 
 old style of housekeepmg is very agreeable. I would 
 prefer it. But do not the women of the twentieth 
 century lead a more comfortable life than even the 
 wealthy ladies of my former days ? And are you not 
 getting more toil out of the wt)men than we did ? 
 Br. Leete says you are"*). 
 
 "Br. Leete is a great optimist whenever communism 
 is discussed", answered Mr. Forest. "It is, of course, 
 *) Page 266. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 73 
 
 impossible to state with any degree of certainty, how 
 much the girls and women of the year 1887 produced. 
 But I doubt very much the statement of your host 
 that we are getting a great deal more toil out of our 
 women than you did^'. 
 
 "The separate cooking, washing and ironing at the 
 end of the nineteenth century must have caused a 
 great deal more work than the present way of doing 
 these things", I remarked. ''And Dr. Leete said : 
 There is no housework to be done"*). 
 
 "This is one of the many wild statements of Dr. 
 Leete", Mr. Forest answered. "Who is sweeping the 
 rooms, making the beds, cleaning the windows, dust- 
 ing the furniture, scrubbing the floors ? I have no 
 doubt that Dr. Leete's family is an exception, because 
 women of the industrial army do a great deal, if not 
 all, this work in the house of the leader of the admin- 
 istration party. Have you ever seen Mrs. Leete or 
 Miss Edith doing any housework of the kind I have 
 mentioned" ? 
 
 I had to confess that I never had, and, indeed. 
 Miss Edith had never done anything except arrange 
 a bunch of flowers. If she were a member of the in- 
 dustrial army, it must be in a capacity, where there 
 was but very little work to do. She had never men- 
 tioned that she had duties to |)erform, and I remem- 
 bered that Dr. Leete had once spoken of his daughter 
 as an indefatigable shopper**), thus indicating that 
 she had much spare time. 
 *) Page 118. 
 **) Page 99. 
 
74 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 "In the houses occupied by the rank and file of our 
 industrial army the women have no help from other 
 members of the auxiliary corps (the women of the 
 industrial army). These women have to do all the 
 work I have mentioned, and for them the cooking in 
 the public eating houses is not such a great help as 
 Dr. Leete seems to believe", began Mr. Forest. 
 "These women have to change their dresses three 
 times a day, for they cannot appear at the table in 
 the wrapper they wear while working at home, and 
 they have to wash and dress their children, if they 
 have any. And I am inclined to believe that by 
 having the cooking done in the pubhc eating houses, 
 a great deal of material is squandered that would be 
 saved in a private house. Besides, the pubhc cooking 
 houses have to prepare a large bill of fare, and there 
 is, as a matter of course, a great deal left over that 
 can not be used afterwards. — Therefore, the women 
 who are members of the industrial army find actually 
 very httle time to do any work besides the labor con- 
 nected with housekeeping, and the majority of them 
 would rather do the cooking at home. They 
 could do it while busy with their housework, without 
 losing more time than the dressing and undressing for 
 breakfast, dinner and supper consume. And the 
 complaint has frequently been made that families 
 with many children would fare much better, and the 
 mothers of such families save much time if the cook- 
 ing were done at home. When there is sickness in 
 the family, it is very annoying to the healthy members 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 75 
 
 to be obliged to go to the eating houses to procure 
 proper fopd for the invalid. A Mrs. Hosmer said to 
 me the other day, she and her seven children had 
 frequently missed a meal, because she could not wash 
 all her little ones and dress herself and the children 
 in time". 
 
 *'Ho\v do yon employ the married women"? I 
 asked. 
 
 "This is a very weak point in our social system", 
 Mr. Forest replied. ''Most of the married women do 
 not at all relish doing outside work, and they make all 
 kinds of excuses to avoid it. Trouble with their 
 children and personal indisposition are frequently 
 used as excuses for the absence of married women 
 from their positions in the industrial army". 
 
 ''I suppose it is very difficult, even for the physi- 
 cians, to ascertain whether such statements are well 
 founded or not", I remarked. 
 
 "Of course, in the majority of cases it is impossible 
 to make the charge of shamming and prove it", Mr. 
 Forest continued. "It is this trouble with the mar- 
 ried women, and their excuses that their small children 
 })revent them doing any duty in the industrial army, 
 that the radical Communists are using in support of 
 their demand for the abolition of private housekeep- 
 ing. The Radicals claim that their system would be 
 more prosperous than ours. It would be much 
 cheaper to lodge -hundreds or thousands under one 
 roof, than to have houses for one, two or three fam- 
 ilies. They furthermore claim that if marriages were 
 
76 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 abolished and free love introduced as the principle 
 governing the relations of the two sexes, the passing 
 alliances of men and women would produce better 
 children than the offspring of the present marriages. 
 These children would be kept and nursed, after they 
 had passed their first year, in large nurseries, so that 
 the mothers would have nothing to do with them and 
 could attend all day to their work as members of the 
 industrial army". 
 
 "How beastly are these theories"! I exclaimed. 
 "To establish all human institutions, the relations of 
 the sexes, simply on a basis of calculation, and to 
 separate the mothers from their children, because it 
 is cheaper to raise two hundred mammifers by the 
 bulk even if the mortality should be ten and twenty 
 percent larger"! 
 
 "But the Radicals are the logical Communists", 
 Mr. Forest said. "The fundamental principle of 
 communism is equality. You can base the demand 
 for the equal division of the products of labor on that 
 princii)le of equality only, and if we are all equal, 
 then there is no reason why we should live in houses 
 of different architecture, why we should wear different 
 clothing, why we should have a variety of meals, why 
 one man should not have just as good a right to the 
 love of a certain girl as any and all other men, and 
 why one girl should not have just as fair a claim to 
 the love of any man she may select as any other girl 
 has. And there is no reason, why one baby should 
 have more care than another and why one mother 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 77 
 
 should spend more time on her child than another, 
 thus perhaps losing time that would have enabled her 
 to make herself useful by peeling a plate of potatoes. 
 The Radicals are the only Communists". 
 
 "But every girl can not love all the men, and every 
 man can not very well love all the girls", I objected, 
 somewhat amused by the grim humor displayed by 
 Mr. Forest, although my deep disgust for the abom- 
 inable brutality preached by the Radicals, prevented 
 real merriment. 
 
 "Our radical reformers have never been able to 
 explain to my entire satisfaction how the principle of 
 free love should be regulated, if regulated at all", Mr. 
 Forest answered. "Some of them seem disposed to 
 grant permission to live together, so long as both 
 parties like each other. But the more radical and 
 logical communists object to the stability of an insti- 
 tution as incongruous with the spirit of institutions 
 based on the principle of absolute equality. Perhaps 
 they favor the choosing of a new partner every day, 
 and in order to place both sexes on equal footing 
 they would give the right of choice to the women on 
 Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and to the men 
 on the other three week- days, leaving the Sundays in 
 addition to the ladies. And to avoid strife, when a 
 number of reformers demand the love of the same 
 girl, or when more girls than one fall in love with the 
 
78 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 same man, they could draw lots or could raffle for the 
 first chance, thus doing justice to all"*). 
 
 "It is inconceivable", I said, "that men, proudly 
 considering themselves the crown of creation, or if 
 they do not believe in God, at least considering them- 
 selves intellectual free-thinkers, can breed in their 
 brains such horrid theories. I should deplore the 
 fate of womanhood if these theories should ever be- 
 come victorious, if free love in this damnable form 
 should ever be proclaimed ; or if the nursing and 
 education of children should be taken away from the 
 mothers and entrusted to others". 
 
 "I should consider it the most terrible blow ever 
 aimed at humanity if the nursmg and the first educa- 
 tion of the young children should be transferred from 
 their mothers to other persons No women or men, 
 however good and noble they may be, can feel the 
 love and the patience for a child that fills a mother's 
 heart. The ties that bind women and men together, 
 marriage and the family, are institutions which eveu 
 our communistic Solons have so far respected. Hu-_ 
 manity is doomed to barbarism on the day family life 
 is broken up, when mothers are separated from their 
 
 *) The well known naturalist, Professor Karl Vogt in Germany, 
 famous by his nickname "Monkey-Vogt,'' is a radical philosopher, 
 who gained this sobriquet as an advocate of the theory of evolu- 
 tion, claiming Monkeys to have the same progenitors as man. But 
 even Vogt's radicalism revolted against the doctrines set forth by 
 Russian, French and German nihilists and anarchists, during a 
 "convention" held in Switzerland, Karl Vogt dedicated the 
 following lines to them: 
 
 "Wir wollen in der Sonn' spazieren, 
 Wir wollen uns mit Fett beschmieren 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 79 
 
 children, when men are alienated from the constantly- 
 elevating influence of good women, when the rela- 
 tions of men and women are stripped of that sublim- 
 ity conferred upon matrimonial life by the permanent 
 exchange of feelings and thoughts, when these rela- 
 tions are degraded to nothing but sexual intercourse. 
 Nearly all our good qualities can be traced back to 
 the influence the unfathomable love and patience of 
 the mother, in her efforts to make her beloved child 
 good and true, have exercised upon our minds and 
 hearts. Nearly all great men had good mothers. 
 There is nothing on earth that could compensate a 
 child for the loss of its mother, or that could indem- 
 nify humanity for the loss of the beneficial influence 
 mothers have on the growing generation". 
 
 "Do you suppose that your Radicals will ever have 
 power enough to dethrone the mothers and to abol- 
 ish matrimonial life"? I asked, with great curiosity. 
 
 Mr. Forest's reply to this question sounded very 
 cheerful and confident, more so than anything he 
 had thus far uttered in my presence. 
 
 Und ausgeloscht sei Mein unci Dein. 
 Wir wollen uns mit Schnapps berauschen, 
 Wir wollen uns're Weiber tauschen, 
 Wir wollen freie Manner sein!" 
 
 A free translation of which reads: 
 
 We will walk in the sun, boys, with ease, 
 We will cover our bodies with grease, 
 tor poverty there is no need. 
 We'll all get as drunk as a loon, 
 We'll swap our wives every noon. 
 And thus be inie freemen indeed. 
 
So LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 ''The Radicals may rise and overthrow the present 
 government, they may change many things", he said, 
 "and they may not meet with much resistance, be- 
 cause the great mass of the people simply tolerate 
 the present rule, have no love for it, and will not rally 
 to its defense. But the experience of our Radicals 
 will be very unpleasant if they attempt to separate 
 man and wife, mother and child. Almost every 
 mother will fight like a lioness before she will give up 
 her children, and I know one man who does not care 
 a straw for the overthrow of the present government, 
 but who would fight to his death before he would 
 yield to a separation from his spouse. For a good 
 and loving wife always has been, is, and always will 
 be the greatest blessing of God, and no man of honor 
 and courage will permit anybody to rob him of her"! 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ''Now, Mr. Forest", I said when I again met my 
 predecessor as professor of the history of the nine- 
 teenth century, ''please tell me how much is the 
 average yearly income of every inhabitant of the 
 United States of America"? 
 
 "The average yearly income was figured up to be 
 $204.", Mr. Forest answered. 
 
 '^Two hundred and four dollars you say. Is that 
 all"? I queried with astonishment. "I expected from 
 the statements of Dr. Leete and his style of living 
 that it amounted to at least three times that sum". 
 
 Forest smiled. "How much was the average 
 income of the people of the United States in your 
 days"? he asked. 
 
 I was forced to admit that I had not the faintest 
 idea. 
 
 "It was ^1^165.", said Mr. Forest, "or about twice 
 the average amount earned by the people of Cxerma- 
 ny or France". 
 
 I was perplexed. I had never looked into the 
 statistics of national economy. I had spent about 
 twenty times 8165. every year. I remembered hav- 
 ing read in the papers of my time that the average 
 yearly earnings of the working men, working women 
 
82 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 and children were over four hundred dollars, and I 
 was inclined to estimate the average yearly income 
 at about six hundred dollars. I stated this to Mr. 
 Forest. 
 
 "You have left out of your caltulation the women 
 and children who were not earning anything, but 
 who depended upon the income of their husbands, 
 fathers and brothers", Mr. Forest explained. "An in- 
 come of two hundred and four dollars for every man, 
 woman and child would, therefore, represent a large 
 increase, if the figures were fairly given. But they 
 are not correct. In order to make the income of 
 the nation appear greater than it really is, the value 
 of the various productions is quoted higher than in 
 your days. Consequently the purchasing power of 
 every dollar on our credit-cards is less than that of 
 the dollar of your time. I have carefully compared 
 the prices of all the necessities and commodities as 
 they are now and as they were in your time, and I 
 have found an increase of about 95 percent. The 
 real average yearly income of all the people of our 
 country is about one hundred and twelve dollars, so 
 there is not an increase of about 24 percent, but a 
 decrease of about t,t, percent". 
 
 "How do you account for this remarkable state- 
 ment"? I inquired. 
 
 "That is a (question easier asked than answered", 
 replied Mr. Forest. 
 
 "I am very curious to hear your explanation", I 
 remarked. "Dr. Leete has given me so many plausi- 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 83 
 
 ble reasons for the "poverty resulting from our extra- 
 ordinary industrial system"f) that I was quite con- 
 vinced of the greater wealth of your people. He 
 mentioned the frequent wrong speculations of the 
 nineteenth century, the insane competition, the peri- 
 odical overproductions and consequent crises, the 
 waste from idle capital and labor*), and he especially 
 dwelt upon the point that four or five enterprises 
 of the nineteenth century failed where one suc- 
 ceeded"**). 
 
 "Yes, I know Dr. Leete's arguments from occasion- 
 al speeches he has made, and from articles he has 
 written for the administration organs", Mr. Forest 
 responded. "And he has undoubtedly mentioned 
 many other causes that crippled the production of 
 your days. He has, or he may have, pointed to the 
 expenditures for your army and navy, to your custom 
 and revenue officials, to the tax-assessors and collec- 
 tors you employed, to the larger number of judges, 
 sheriffs and other officers you needed, to the greater 
 amount of labor made necessary by domestic wash- 
 ing and cooking, to the large number of middlemen 
 needed in handling goods before the articles made 
 their way from the factory to the retail store, the 
 latter corresponding to our storehouses And Dr. Leete 
 has or may have, mentioned the lawyers, bankers 
 and their clerks who were nominally engaged in 
 
 f) Page 42. 
 
 *) Page 229 & 230. 
 
 **) Page 230. 
 
84 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 work that was really not done, and which has all been 
 done away with to-day". 
 
 ''Indeed", I said, "Dr. Leete has enumerated most 
 of these causes of the poverty of our days, and, since 
 these evils have been abolished under your system 
 of production, I think it would be simply a matter of 
 course that the total yearly income of your people 
 should have increased, and I wonder that the increase 
 is not even greater than you have stated it to be". 
 
 "I will not waste much time in investigating all 
 these points and ascertaining how great was the loss 
 thus inflicted on the production of the nineteenth 
 century", Mr. Forest continued. "But you seem to 
 be inclined to overestimate their effects. Unlucky 
 speculations, for instance, caused sometimes heavy 
 losses to the speculator, but in most cases they pro- 
 duced values that benefitted others and increased the 
 wealth of the nation. The "insane competition" 
 made goods cheaper, thereby stimulating both pro- 
 duction and consumption and not harming, but on 
 the contrary to a certain extent benefitting humanity. 
 The statement that four or five enterprises failed 
 where one succeeded is a "licentia poetica" of which 
 Dr. Leete makes free use. You must know yourself 
 that it is a gross exaggeration. 
 
 The saving from the employment of steam-cooking 
 we have already investigated. If there is any, it is 
 small in the cities and smaller still in the country 
 districts, and offers no compensation for the loss of 
 comfort involved. Furthermore we take into consid- 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 85 
 
 eration that many of the men engaged as judges, 
 lawyers, bankers, officers, middlemen, or clerks were 
 over forty-five years or under twenty-one, so that you 
 would have to deduct them from the force that you 
 have to consider as a loss to the industrial army". 
 
 "Still, these misplacements of capital and labor, 
 these losses in various ways were enormous", I insisted, 
 "and they account for the greater poverty of the 
 people of the nineteenth century, compared with the 
 inhabitants of the United States in the year 2000". 
 "They would, undoubtedly", Mr. Forest argued, 
 "if there were no other reasons for a decrease of our 
 production. But there are causes as you will readily 
 see, when I point them out. The principle reason 
 why both the quantity and the quality of our pro- 
 duction are constantly abating, is the abolishment of 
 competition. Competition was the gigantic motor 
 that caused nearly everybody during the first nine- 
 teen centuries of Christian civilization to use all his 
 mental and physical powers to "get ahead". Since 
 the introduction of communism, since the good work- 
 men are robbed of a part of the products of their labor 
 for the benefit of the poor workers, and since every- 
 body is sure of an equal share of all the necessities 
 and commodities of life, no matter how much or how 
 little he produces, the masses of the people are be- 
 coming more and more indifferent. They are not 
 putting forth their best efforts to furnish much and 
 good work. They are taking life easy. Their men- 
 tal and physical ability has decreased. The people 
 
86 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 ot the United States, once famous for their energy, are 
 degenerating Promotion might have acted as a spur, 
 had not favoritism of the poHticians monopolized 
 all good positions for the tools of the administration". 
 **The second reason for the decrease of produc- 
 tion is the shortening of both the years and the 
 hours of work. It is difficult to ascertain how many 
 persons of different ages were employed in your time 
 in productive labor. The census of the United States 
 government taken before you went to sleep for one 
 hundred and thirteen years, the census of 1880 is in 
 many respects a very creditable work but it does not 
 give the ages of the persons who then formed the 
 industrial army. The report is very elaborate as to 
 the number of persons ot all ages, their nationality, 
 and so forth. But in regard to the age of the workers 
 it only gives three classes, one comprising all the 
 persons under 15 years of age, another, all persons 
 between 16 and 59, and the third, the number of em- 
 ployees of 60 years and over. Of the people under 
 15 years of age 1,118,356 were employed, of the men 
 and women over 60 years 933,644 were males and 
 70,873 females. The whole industrial army of your 
 day numbered, out of an entire population of 50, 155,- 
 783, not less than 17,392,099, only 2,647,157 being 
 girls and women, including the servant girls". 
 
 "I remember reading some of these figures", I 
 remarked. 
 
 ''The census of 1880 thus shows that over 12 per- 
 cent of the population of the United States belonging 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 87 
 
 to the industrial army were under 15 and over 60 
 years of age', Mr. Forest continued. ''This is, of 
 course, a very bad showing. Girls and boys under 15 
 years of age should certainly belong to the schools, 
 while people over 50 years ought to have permanent 
 rest and a good living. But there can be no doubt 
 that the working-force at the close of the last century 
 was comparatively larger than ours. According to 
 the census of 1880, there lived in the United States 
 15^527^215 persons of the age, that would make them 
 to-day members of our industrial army. You em- 
 ployed, therefore, 2,173,184 more persons than your 
 whole population between the ages of 21 10 45 num- 
 bered, and this calculation figures, that all the people 
 of that age are really active. You must consider the 
 fact, that many of our population who are of the age, 
 when they ought to do work in the industrial army, 
 are excused from service for various reasons, for in- 
 stance: permanently sick people, the weak-minded, 
 cripples, mothers of babies, etc, You must, therefore, 
 recognize that your people furnished a much stronger 
 working- force than does our generation. ' 
 
 "I guess we did", I admitted, convinced by the 
 figures quoted by Mr. Forest. 
 
 Drawing a piece of paper from his note book the 
 gentleman continued: "Here is a list of all the avoca- 
 tions you may call unproductive, taken from the 
 census of 1880. I have given every point, which 
 seems contrary to my views, the benefit of the doubt. 
 I have embraced all the trades, professions and occu- 
 
88 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 pations Dr. Leete himself could fairly claim as non- 
 productive in this compilation, though a good many 
 of the people engaged in them were, at least, saving 
 time for members of the producing classes. Many 
 men and women of your time would not have been 
 able to produce pictures and works of art, or to sing 
 in operas and so forth, if it had been impossible for 
 ihem to secure help in housekeeping. Now, in your 
 day, ihe year of our Lord 1880, the people engaged 
 in the occupations, trades and professions that Dr. 
 Leete would call nonproductive, numbered 1,654,319 
 including all the servants. Deducting these 1,654,319 
 from the 2,173,084 persons under tiie age of 15 and 
 over 60, there still would be a surplus of 518,765 
 women and men of your time over the number of 
 people, that would belong in our days to the industrial 
 force" 
 
 "Your figures are correct, as far as you state them", 
 I said, desirous to encourage Mr. Forest to proceed 
 with his argument. 
 
 "So you had, undoubtedly, in 1880 a surplus of 
 productive persons above ths age that would place 
 them in our industrial army, which amounted to over 
 one percent of the population, and to over three per- 
 cent of persons at ihe age where they, to-day, would 
 have to be members of the industrial army, even if 
 we deduct all the persons from the working force 
 whom a man like Dr. Leete would classify as non- 
 productive Now, deduct, furthermore, all our ladies 
 occupied by their duties as mothers, before and after 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 89 
 
 the birth of their children, deduct all the persons per- 
 manently sick, all the cripples and all the other people 
 unable to do productive work, and you will have to 
 admit that you had in your days a comparatively 
 much larger force engaged in productive labor than 
 we have. Consider, that these people were stimulated 
 by competition, that they desired to establish them- 
 selves on an independent basis, that they put forth 
 their best eftorts, in order to secure a life free from 
 care during their old age, and that, therefore, the years 
 of productive labor of each individual were much 
 longer than they are at present, and that the stimulus 
 to succeed was a potent fact in obtaining more and 
 better work than we can secure nowadays. 
 
 "That I will admit", I answered. 
 
 "And the working hours to-day are much shorter 
 than they were at the end of the nineteenth century", 
 proceeded Mr. Forest with an expression on his face 
 like that of a victor in a gladiatorial fight. "The 
 natural tendency of an organization of society like 
 ours is in that direction. And there are many reasons 
 to encourage such a tendency. I have mentioned 
 already that the farmers are complaining of the small 
 number of theaters and concert halls and other 
 amusements and advantages for country people, which 
 city people enjoy to the full The consequence of this 
 is, that the country people flock to the cities. The 
 nation would have suffeied from a want of agricultural 
 products if all the people crowding into the large cities 
 had been accepted. But they were not welcomed. 
 
90 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 They were appointed to farm work. That settled 
 their desire to live in the cities, and at the same time 
 destroyed their ambition. The country people are sat- 
 isfied that they cannot improve their lot, that they 
 have to do farm work and that the city people are im- 
 posing upon them. The consequence is that they 
 are working as little as possible, and the farming prod- 
 ucts have decreased to such an extent that we have to 
 appoint city workmen of class B of the third grade to 
 farm work, in order to protect the city people from 
 starvation", 
 
 "Say your worst", I remarked with a forced smile, 
 for I saw Dr. Leete's beautiful structure crumbling 
 under the fire of Mr. Forest's artillery of logic. 
 
 *'You have seen", Mr. Forest continued, ''that the 
 industrial army of 1880, engaged in productive labor, 
 was. in proportion, much larger than ours, that the 
 members were stimulated by competition to use their 
 best mental and physical efforts to 'get ahead', and 
 that they worked longer hours than we do. You must, 
 furthermore, consider that we squander a greater 
 amount of labor in overseeing and bookkeeping than 
 you ever did. Most of your retail business was trans- 
 acted on the cash basis, and the small tradespeople 
 did their own bookkeeping after closing their stores 
 and shops. We, on the other hand, have an account 
 for every man, woman and child in the country in the 
 books of the nacional administration*). We have a 
 bureau which keeps an account of the visits of all the 
 
 *) Page 87. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 91 
 
 physicians*). We have another bureau where you 
 can secure help for housework as well as for other 
 purposes, where accounts are kept, both of the help- 
 ers and of the people who demand help,**) We have 
 bureaus for each industry and they are excellent exam- 
 ples of the most thorough manner in which a gov- 
 ernment can waste human labor. The entire field of 
 productive and constructive industry is, as you know, 
 divided into ten great departments, each representing 
 a group of allied industries, each particular industry 
 being in turn represented by a subordinate bureau, 
 which has a complete record of the plant and force 
 under its control, as well as of the present product 
 and the means of increasing it. The estimates of con- 
 sumption of the distribution department (an organ- 
 ization mdependent ot the great productive depart- 
 ments) after adoption by the administration, are sent 
 as mandates to the ten great departments which allot 
 them to the subordinate bureaus representing the par- 
 ticular industries, and these set the men to work. 
 Each bureau is responsible for the task given it, and 
 the responsibility is enforced by departmental super- 
 vision and that of the administration; nor does the 
 distribution department accept the products without 
 its own inspection, while, even if in the hands of the 
 consumer, an article turns out unfit, the system en- 
 ables the fault to be traced back to the original work- 
 man". f) 
 
 *) Page 122. 
 
 **) Page 120. 
 
 f) Pages 182, I S3. 
 
92 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 "This amount of overseeing and bookkeeping, by 
 which the government can trace back to the original 
 workman a bad pin or a poorly rolled cigar, enables 
 the administration to provide for its favorites many 
 desirable places, but it certainly lessens the productive 
 power of the industrial force, thus, again, decreasing 
 the production. And at the same time the number of 
 consumers is larger than in your days". 
 
 "How do you account for this?" I inquired. 
 
 "Has not Dr. Leete informed you that persons of 
 average constitution usually live to be from eighty-five 
 to ninety years old?"*) 
 
 "Indeed, he has". 
 
 "This accounts for an increased number of con- 
 sumers who all draw their full share of the products 
 of labor in the form of a credit card", Mr. Forest 
 continued. "Our people live longer than your con- 
 temporaries did. They take life easy, and while the 
 spirit, the energy and the enterprise of our generation 
 are gradually decreasing and degenerating, their 
 bodies last longer". 
 
 "Ah! now at last you are admitting one gain", I ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 "If it is a gain, I do", rejoined Mr. Forest. "But 
 even the favored members of our industrial army do 
 not seem to consider it a very valuable acquisition. 
 Because the only way to secure a desirable position is 
 to sacrifice their own independence and that of their 
 relatives and friends, and even to employ base means 
 
 *) Page 197. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 93 
 
 of corruption, downright bribery of their superiors 
 with a part of their own credit cards, many of the 
 favorites of the administration are, in fact, enemies of 
 the leaders". 
 
 After a short pause Mr. Forest concluded his argu- 
 ments. "I suppose I have successfully demonstrated 
 that our organization of society, with its pretended 
 basis of human equality has proved to be a failure, 
 that there prevails to-day an inequality in many re- 
 spects more oppressive than that of your time, that 
 favoritism and corruption are about as potent under 
 our communistic rule as they were at the end of the 
 nineteenth century, that personal liberty is almost en- 
 tirely destroyed, that the members of the industrial 
 army, without having the right to vote at the election 
 of their superiors, are at the mercy of their officers, 
 that the members of the industrial force who are con- 
 sidered enemies of the government are leading a Hfe 
 that very properly may be styled as twenty-four years 
 of hell on earth, that since the abolishment of com- 
 petition the people are mentally degenerating for want 
 of intellectual exercise, and that not even a greater 
 wealth is a consolation for the loss of the greater lib- 
 erty and independence the people enjoyed in your 
 time. The shortening of both the years and the hours 
 of productive labor, the abolition of competition and 
 the increase in the number of consumers have reduced 
 the average daily income of the inhabitants of the 
 United States to such an extent that the amount in- 
 scribed upon our credit card is so small, that it af- 
 
94 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 fords only a very frugal living to the people of the 
 twentieth century. And there is no doubt in my mind 
 that a continuation of the present system for a few 
 hundred years more would so degrade and degenerate 
 the people that a relapse into barbarism would ensue" 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 *You have given me your ideas and objections in 
 regard to the present state of affairs", I commenced 
 my next conversation with Mr. Forest, "you have ex- 
 pressed, occasionally, your conviction that the organ- 
 ization of society at the end of the last century needed 
 reformation. Will you, now, kindly state how you 
 would have reformed the evils of my time?" 
 
 Mr. Forest smiled. *'I do not pretend to be a re- 
 former who can perfect mankind or even all human 
 institutions. Please do not forget that we are all 
 cooking with water. What many people style the so- 
 cial question is insolvable. The variety established 
 by nature will always be felt. You can never create 
 conformity. We will always have smart and stupid, 
 industrious and lazy people. The clever women and 
 men will not submit to an equal distribution of the 
 product of labor, nor feel satisfied under such a state 
 of legal robbery. And if the results of labor are dis- 
 tributed according to the ability of the workers the 
 people earning less than others will always grumble. 
 It is, therefore, impossible to make all men content 
 with their lot, no matter how you may distribute the 
 earnings of the working force. But the fact that it is 
 impossible to make everybody absolutely happy does 
 
96 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 not release us from the obligation to use our best ef- 
 forts toward improving the lot of mankind". 
 
 "I understand your position. But let me hear what 
 reforms you would have inaugurated or proposed, if 
 you had lived at the close of the last century". 
 
 '*The society of your day suffered chiefly", said Mr. 
 Forest, "from unsystematized production, the monopo- 
 lies that made possible the amassing of immense for- 
 tunes at the expense of the people, and the want of 
 intelligence on the part of the workers who would 
 either submit to these extortions or strike, instead of 
 forming mutual producing associations. Another 
 great evil was the injustice of your taxation. In all 
 the fields of human activity the workers produced 
 values without a clear knowledge of what was really 
 required. There was, generally, such a surplus of the 
 products of farming that the farmers had to sell every- 
 thing so cheap that they could hardly earn a living. 
 Some factories worked day and night until the markets 
 were overstocked with goods. Then these goods were 
 sold at any price obtainable, sometimes below cost. 
 Numerous bankruptcies followed, the factories had to, 
 stop their work, and the manufacturers as well as the 
 v/orking women and men had to suifer from a term of 
 idleness until the surplus of goods was exhausted. 
 Then a feverish activity commenced again". 
 
 "How would you have remedied this evil?" I asked. 
 
 "A national bureau of statistics should have ascer- 
 tained both the average yearly consumption and the 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 97 
 
 capacity of the different trades and their plants for 
 the production of the necessities of life". 
 
 "Should the government have given to each trade 
 an order for the work to be done during the year?" I 
 queried, "and how should the trades have divided 
 such an order among the members so that all would 
 be satisfied?" 
 
 "The National Government should simply have as- 
 certained the amount of the yearly consumption of 
 the various articles, the capacity of the respective 
 trades for furnishing such articles, and should then 
 have left the regulation of production to the members 
 of each trade. Such an arrangement would have 
 given each trade a clear idea of its task. The chosen 
 representatives of each trade could have subdivided 
 the work. A heavy overproduction would easily have 
 been prevented, while competition both among the 
 factories and the individual members would have 
 been mamtained, thus securing the best kind of work, 
 while under the present system of production we are 
 suffering from a want both of quantity and quality". 
 
 "But if any trade should have produced more goods 
 than needed", I objected. 
 
 "That would have been its own fault, and it would, 
 as a matter of course, have had to stand the conse- 
 quences", Mr. Forest replied. 
 
 "But, suppose, the members of a certain trade had 
 formed a trust, thereby forcing the people to pay ex- 
 orbitant prices for the products of their guilds?" I ob- 
 jected again. 
 
98 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 "A national law shoukl have protected the people 
 against an attempted robbery of this kind, threatening 
 all guilty parties with confiscation of all their property 
 and with the operation of all the plants by men hired 
 by the administration, until the plants could be sold 
 to operators. The importation of the respective goods 
 from other countries would cover the deficiency until 
 all the plants were again in full operation". 
 
 "But how would you have stopped the frequent 
 strikes of our days?" I asked. 
 
 "By encouraging the workman to start mutual pro- 
 ducing associations", Mr. Forest answered. "I have 
 mentioned already how mutual producing associa- 
 tions could easily have been started. A dozen tailors 
 or shoemakers could have rented lofts with steam 
 power, purchased a few sewing and other machines 
 and sold their products directly to other workmen, 
 thus securing the profits of tne manufacturer, whole- 
 saler, retailer and workman, or in other words all the 
 profit that was in the labor of the members of the as- 
 sociation. There was no law in your time to forbid 
 such enterprises or to prevent all other workmen from 
 buying their boots, shoes, clothing, furniture and al 
 other articles from such associations solely. As 
 soon as the manufacturers noticed that all the la- 
 borers were commencing to deal with mutual associa- 
 tions they would gladly have sold their plants at a 
 very fair price, and yet cheaper than a new associa- 
 tion could have procured them. I imagine there was 
 very little pleasure in conducting a factory or any 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 99 
 
 other business having many employees in 1887, judg- 
 ing from the frequent strikes that made it almost im- 
 possible for many business men to figure on prices 
 six months ahead, or to close contracts. Therefore, 
 the owners of factories would, I fancy, have sold their 
 plants at very fair prices. And the workmen could 
 not have done a smarter thing than to cause the 
 former manufacturers to remain with them as busi- 
 ness managers at a fair salary. This would have se- 
 cured a smooth running of the concern. Under such 
 an arrangement the workers would have become the 
 owners of the business concerns, paying for them in 
 installments, they would have secured full pay for 
 their work, and the former owner would have dis- 
 posed of all his former cares, receiving a fair compen- 
 sation for his plant and his services". 
 
 "I think that most of the manufacturers and busi- 
 nessmen of my days were so worried by the constantly 
 increased demands of their employees, that they 
 would have gladly sold their property", I remarked, 
 "but what would have become of the wholesale and 
 retail dealers?" 
 
 "They could have sold their goods and have either 
 joined the producing associations as salesmen or gone 
 into another business", Mr. Forest replied. "And in 
 a similar way the workmen of your time could have 
 organized one trade after another, until the entire 
 manufacturing industry had been based on large 
 guilds, the latter consisting mostly of mutual produc- 
 ing societies". 
 
loo LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 ''But our workmen preferred to avoid the responsi- 
 bility, care a-nd risk of business enterprises. They 
 would rather have worked for wages and, occasion- 
 ally tried to increase them, sometimes by striking and 
 preventing other laborers taking the places of the 
 strikers", I said. "You are aware of this state of af- 
 fairs?" 
 
 "Yes", Forest answered, "and it must have been a 
 sad spectacle to see intelligent men who could just as 
 well have been independent, remain journeymen, 
 trying to bulldoze their employer to pay them more 
 than he volunteered, and to intimidate other workers 
 from performing duties at a rate of wages that would 
 have satisfied them. The fact that your workingmen 
 did not possess sufficient enterprise, mental discipline 
 and independence, to establish mutual producing as- 
 sociations, has driven humanity into communism. 
 That this damnable form of society is a failure is a mat- 
 ter of course. When humanity was at so low a standard 
 that shoemakers had not spunk or smartness enough 
 to start and run the shoeshops on a co-operative basis, 
 and tailors could not manage tailorshops on a similar 
 plan, it was simply impossible to make successful an 
 organization which had the power to regulate all pro- 
 duction and all consumption. But the principle of 
 mutual productive associations is, in my opinion, the 
 one best adapted for the solution of the labor ques- 
 tion, because it secures for the members of the asso- 
 ciations the pay for the full real value of their labor 
 and keeps alive competition, tne strongest factor in 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. loi 
 
 securing the progress of mankind. But whether we 
 shall ever reach this solution of the labor question 
 seems doubtful". 
 
 "I am inclined to believe in your plan", I admitted' 
 *'so far as laborers engaged in manufacturing establish- 
 ments are concerned. But how would you have or- 
 ganized the work on the farms, the employment of 
 professional man, railroad officials and laborers, em- 
 ployees on streetcars, merchants and bankers and 
 their clerks and those who follow many other avoca- 
 tions?" 
 
 "Let us go slowly", Mr. Forest answered with a 
 smile. <'Let us first look into the agrarian question. 
 Reformers of society have always met the greatest 
 difficulty when they came across the farmers. Under 
 communistic rule the country people have but very little 
 love for the soil they are tilling because they knowit is not 
 theirs, that their toiling does not benefit them, and they 
 feel that the city people are favored ac their expense. If 
 I had been asked at the end of the last century how I 
 would treat the land question I would have advocated 
 a law ordaining that no farmer should have more than 
 forty acres of land. If any farmer had more at the 
 time of the passing of the bill he could keep it during 
 his lifetime, but he would be compelled to dispose of 
 it in his last will, so that a single person should not 
 receive more than forty acres. On a forty acre piece 
 a farmer can make a fair living, and although the 
 farmers were by no means prosperous in your days, 
 yet there was still a fair prospect for tht- increase of 
 
I02 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 the value of land by reason of the increase of the pop- 
 ulation, augmented as it was by immigration". 
 
 "But how would you have proposed to stop over- 
 production by the farming population through which 
 the agricultural interests were suffering in 1887?" I in- 
 quired. 
 
 "Fhe National Bureau of Statistics would have 
 served the farmers just as well as the rest of the 
 people. The farmers should have formed state asso- 
 ciations and should have laid out plans for the pro- 
 duction according to the capacity of the farms. And, 
 after ascertaining that their capacity of production 
 was far ahead of consumption, they should have used 
 the surplus of land for the productton of new things 
 that could, perhaps, find a market, or they could have 
 saved their labor by not producing more goods than 
 they could sell in supplying the real demands of the 
 market, thus working less." 
 
 "Under your plan every person would not have 
 had a right to land", I remarked. 
 
 "Yes, everybody would, who could pay the price 
 the owner demanded for it", Mr. Forest said. "Not 
 everybody can own a farm. Did you own one?" 
 
 "I did not". 
 
 "Very well. Under your communistic system no- 
 body owns a piece of ground large enough to put a 
 stick into". 
 
 "How would you have regulated the professional 
 services?" 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 103 
 
 ''By passing laws establishing rates to be charged 
 for professional services. And the laws I would have 
 simplified by doing away with the abominable confu- 
 sion resulting from the innumerable decisions forming 
 precedents. For a long time I did not believe it until 
 I found positive statements to the effect that a trad- 
 ing nation like the Americans, at the end of the nine 
 teenth century, had neither a national criminal law, 
 nor a national commerce law. This fact and the con- 
 fusion caused by the conflicting precedent decisions 
 that could always be quoted by either of the contest- 
 ing lawyers in a suit must have made the United 
 States, in your days, a paradise for swindlers and for 
 lawyers who cared not so much for the upholding of 
 the law, as for a retainer". 
 
 "Such were the charges frequently made against the 
 law and lawyers in my days", I said. "But now tell 
 me what you would have done with the railroad and 
 telegraph employees, with — " 
 
 "Let us stop right here", Mr. Forest interrupted. 
 "I would have purchased all the railroads and all the 
 telegraph lines of the country at a fair price. I would 
 have issued United States bonds to pay for them. I 
 would have used the income of the roads and lines to 
 pay running expenses and the interest on the bonds 
 issued, and the surplus in the United States treasury 
 I would have applied to paying off the bonds". 
 
 "But would not this proposition of yours, if car- 
 ried into effect, have brought about the same horrors 
 you declare the concentration of power in the hands 
 
I04 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 of the administration has brought down on humanity 
 of the twentieth century?" I asked. 
 
 "No. For that the officers would not be numerous 
 enough*', Mr. Forest replied; "and I remember dis- 
 tinctly, that in your days civil service reform had 
 been instituted, to a certain extent, in the appointment 
 of federal officers. I have read conflicting opinions 
 about it. Some writers claimed a frequent change of 
 the officers to be a fundamental principle of republican 
 institutions. Others ridiculed this notion. Every 
 man of common sense would keep a man who knew 
 and performed the duties of his position well. And 
 the nation should simply do the same regardless of 
 the party affiliations of the employee, thus securing a 
 good public service. I remember that letter carriers 
 and other employees of the postoffice department 
 could not be removed without cause. Now, if this 
 principle had been applied to all the clerical and sub- 
 ordinate officers, if all the railroad and telegraph offi- 
 cials, when the nation took charge of these institutions, 
 had been retained at the salaries they were receiving at 
 that time, so long as they did their work well, then 
 there would have been no trouble. Uncle Sam would 
 have paid just as much, if not more, than the former 
 corporations did, and by retaining the whole force he 
 could have united the railroad and telegraph lines 
 with the postal service after the fashion already pre- 
 vailing, at that time, in Germany". 
 
 "That theory sounds very plausible, certainly". 
 
 "It is very remarkable that such a smart and ener- 
 getic people, trading as much as our forefathers did. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 105 
 
 should have allowed the principal means of commerce, 
 the railroad and telegraph lines, to be in the hands of 
 private corporations which, as a matter of course, man- 
 aged them simply with a view of paying as large divi- 
 dends as possible to the shareholders, — sometimes for 
 "a wheel within a wheel", for members of the inner 
 circle. In the historical works of your time I fre- 
 quently note expressions of astonishment and wrath 
 because knights, during the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries in Europe, stopped merchants passing the 
 roads below their castles, and demanded a part of the 
 travellers' goods as a toll, or the payment of a certain 
 sum of money for which they agreed either to let the 
 merchants travel in peace or to furnish them with pro- 
 tection for the rest of their journey. These knights 
 had to risk their lives when they undertook to collect 
 a toll from the merchants, for the latter not unfre- 
 quently showed fight; they knew how to handle a lance 
 or a sword and they had their goods protected by 
 armed men. More than one of the enterprising, toll- 
 levying knights died on the highway, where he had 
 tried to attach a share of the merchant's earnings. 
 But the gentlemen controlling the highways of traffic 
 at the end of the last century could levy new tolls, 
 whenever they pleased. All they had to do was to sit 
 down in Delmonico's or some other good restaurant, 
 and over a few bottles of champagne resolve to do so. 
 There was no danger connected with this business of 
 toll levying in your days, Mr. West, except the danger 
 of a headache wheh the champagne happened to be 
 
io6 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 poor. It was a very remarkable state of affairs, and it is a 
 striking proof of the general fairness and good nature 
 of the railroad magnates of 1887 that they treated the 
 people as well as they did. Still, it was a ridiculous 
 spectacle to see the principal highways of such a 
 business people controlled by private corporations 
 that virtually did precisely what they pleased". 
 
 "The gas works, street railways and waterworks of 
 cities you would have had managed by the city authori- 
 ties, 1 suppose?" I said. 
 
 "Indeed, that is what I would have done", Mr. Forest 
 replied. "But I would first have extended the 
 power of the national administration over all the for- 
 est and mining lands then in the possession of the 
 United States. If the national government had taken 
 care of the remnants of the immense forests that once 
 covered the larger part of this vast territory, we would 
 not at present suffer from a lack of timber". 
 
 "What would you have done with the bankers and 
 merchants?" 
 
 "Nothing", Mr. Forest answered. "The different 
 mutual productive associations would have needed 
 men to manage such business affairs as were outside 
 the management of the factory, attended to by the 
 former manufacturer. For the workmen would soon 
 have found out that it required more than the manual 
 labor of the toilers to build up and run a large busi- 
 ness establishment. And the owners of grocery stores 
 would, if similar establishments had been started by 
 consuming societies, have sold their stock on hand 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 107 
 
 and secured places as managers or clerks of the new 
 stores". 
 
 "I suppose that under the system proposed by you 
 all the old-fashioned stores would have been forced 
 to close out", I said, "because the different guilds 
 would have purchased goods at wholesale and would 
 have sold them to their members at a low cash price. 
 The storekeepers that were not able to secure posi- 
 tions in the stores of the different guilds would have 
 been forced to look out for some other employment; 
 — a rather hard lot for many of them". 
 
 "The change in the mode of production would not 
 have been sudden", Mr. Forest explained, "but would 
 have been brought about gradually, thus giving the 
 business people, perhaps thirty years time, to let 
 their children join guilds instead of becoming store- 
 keepers and traders: And there is no reason why 
 enterprising merchants who had a fine taste in select- 
 ing goods, should not have retained a large number 
 of customers. It is not cheapness alone that attracts 
 buyers, and in the country, where there were no fac- 
 tories, etc., close at hand, stores would have to be 
 kept". 
 
 "You said you would have passed laws preventing far- 
 mers owning more than forty acres of land", I said^ 
 ''Would you have also limited the amount of city 
 property to be owned by any one man?" 
 
 "The possession of one house ought to have satis- 
 fied every fair-minded man", Mr. Forest continued. 
 "Nobody can deny that the accumulation of fortunes 
 
io8 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 amounting to many millions in the hands of a few 
 people, while hundreds of thousands could earn hardly 
 more than a living, was a state of affairs which made 
 this damnable communism possible". 
 
 "But how would you have been able to prevent 
 this?" I queried with some curiosity. 
 
 '•By making the taxation of inherited property the 
 principal assessment for the maintenance of the na- 
 tional, state and local governments as well as of the 
 schools. I would have proposed a tax of one percent 
 on all property inherited by a single person, amount- 
 ing upward to 1 10,000. An inheritance amounting to 
 $20,000 I would have taxed two percent, $30,000 
 three percent, $100,000 ten percent, $200,000 twenty 
 percent, ^500,000 fifty percent. If anybody left a 
 fortune yielding a larger sum than $250,000 to each 
 heir, the surplus should have been considered as an 
 income to humanity, the national, state and local 
 governments sharing therein in a just proportion', 
 
 "Would not such a law have acted as a check upon 
 the ambition and the enterprise of the people?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "If it had prevented people amassing immense for- 
 tunes it would have served a good purpose. It would 
 not have lessened but protected competition", Mr. 
 Forest answered. "Men possessing twenty or fifty 
 millions of dollars and using them without regard for 
 the rights of other people, were very dangerous. They 
 were in a position to annihilate their competitors, and 
 they frequently used their power unmercifully. Thus 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 109 
 
 by increasing their millions and by killing competition 
 they were paving the way for communism. And was 
 it not unfair that a man who had amassed by all man- 
 ner of means such an enormous fortune could leave it 
 to a son who would continue the work of killing com- 
 petitors with smaller means? What could the most 
 able man accomplish in an avocation, if he had 
 against him a man who possessed, perhaps, very little 
 ability, but who was unscrupulously using his millions 
 to attain his ends? Parents might leave their 
 children enough to place their dear ones beyond the 
 reach of want but they should not enable them to pre- 
 vent the children of poorer parents having a fair show 
 to get ahead in life". 
 
 "You would have met with considerable resistance 
 to such a proposition in my days", I remarked. 
 
 "I fancy the millionaires would have objected", Mr. 
 Forest assented. "Still, I think that such a law would 
 have served the best interest of both the children of 
 rich parents and humanity in general. Nothing but a 
 law of this kind could have stemmed the tide of com- 
 munism and anarchy. A child inheriting $250,000 
 ought to be satisfied with his lot and ought to let the 
 surplus go to the defraying of the expenses of the 
 government. By sacrificing a part of their enormous 
 fortunes, the heirs would have saved the rest, and 
 would have weakened the communistic tendency of 
 your days. And it appears more than doubtful to 
 me whether the possession of such enormous proper- 
 
no LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 ties made these wealthy people good, or even happy 
 and contented". 
 
 "If such a law had been passed in 1887 most of the 
 millionaires would have converted their property into 
 cash and emigrated to Europe", I objected. 
 
 "I suppose they would have done so", Mr. Forest 
 admitted. "But I am, nevertheless, convinced that 
 a law of this kind would not only have been just but 
 that it would have done a great deal to save humanity 
 from communism. Civilized countries would have 
 been obliged to pass a similar law at the same time". 
 
 "The temptation to avoid the consequences of the 
 statute would have been very great", I remarked. 
 "Many people would have tried to evade the tax by 
 declaring to the authorities a smaller amount of prop- 
 erty than they really owned, or by presenting during 
 their life time, a part of their fortune to their chil- 
 dren". 
 
 "Any attempt at fraud should have been punished 
 by a confiscation of all the property", said Mr. Forest. 
 *'And as for gifts they could have been taxed at the 
 same rate as inheritances from one percent up to 
 fifty. — But such a law would have been necessary only 
 during the first fifty or sixty years of a new order of 
 things. As soon as mutual producing associations 
 were in general operation, selling their goods directly 
 from the factories to the consumers, and buying all 
 the necessities of life and commodities, as far as pos- 
 sible, at wholesale, and selling them a little above 
 cost price, there would have been little occasion for 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, iii 
 
 men to amass millions of dollars. The numoer of 
 middlemen and traders would have largely decreased^ 
 Everybody would have been compelled to do work of 
 some kind and would have received a compensation 
 according to both the quantity and quality of his per- 
 formances". 
 
 "But would not cliques like the one you are charg- 
 ing with having control of your government have 
 taken possession of a mutual producing association, 
 thus depriving the clever workers of a part of their 
 earnings and paying the poorer men more for their 
 work than they deserved?" I queried. 
 
 "In such a case the good men could have left an 
 association, where they were cheated and joined an- 
 other partnership. Good laborers are always appre- 
 ciated wherever competition rules. But the associa- 
 tion, thus driving away their ablest members, would 
 soon have been unable to compete with others. Diffi- 
 culties, therefore, could have been regulated without 
 much trouble". 
 
 •'You must advocate, as a matter of course 
 mutual insurance companies among the guilds for the 
 protection of the members against accidents, sickness, 
 infirmity and old age, and these mutual insurance 
 companies would, perhaps, have also written life and 
 fire policies?" I suggested. 
 
 "That would, indeed, have been a consequence of 
 the whole system that would unite the few advantages 
 of communism with the benefits of competition", Mr. 
 Forest answered. 
 
112 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 **Woukl you have encouraged immigration?^ I 
 asked. "At the end of the nineteenth century, many 
 honest, liberal and fair-minded people, whom nobody 
 could fairly class as know-nothings, were of the opin- 
 ion that the United States had all the foreign elements 
 the country could assimilate, and that the rest of the 
 public lands should be preserved for the children of 
 the people living in the Union, in the year of our 
 Lord 1887. The objection against further immigra- 
 tion was largely due to the actions of the German 
 and Irish dynamiters". 
 
 "I can imagine", Mr. Forest answered, "that some of 
 the customs and notions of the numerous immigrants 
 of your time were objectionable to the native Ameri- 
 cans, and tliat the crimes of the anarchists, their crazy 
 revolt against the laws of a country that had offered 
 them hospitality, must naturally have created a deep 
 emotion among the Anglo-Americans. But I think 
 they had, nevertheless, many reasons for encouraging 
 immigration, especially under your form of produc- 
 tion. A strict execution of the laws of the country", 
 he continued, after a pause, "against all transgressors, 
 native as well as transplanted, would have done the 
 country good and have made all attempts to restrict 
 immigration entirely unnecessary, all the more so, as 
 the really objectionable foreigners could reach the 
 United States via Canada or Mexico if they desired 
 strongly to become inhabitants of the United States.'' 
 
 "These arguments were frequently used in my time/* 
 I remarked. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 113 
 
 "The comparatively small harm done by immigrants 
 was largely over-balanced by the many advantages the 
 citizens of the United States obtained through the 
 large influx of people from Europe", said Mr. Forest. 
 "The very fact that hundreds of thousands of able- 
 bodied people, whose rearing and education had cost 
 the European countries millions of dollars, landed on 
 American shores was a grfeat gain to the United States. 
 The very presence of these men and women increased 
 the value of the lands or city lots where they settled, 
 thus enriching the property owners. Many of the 
 immigrants were well trained laborers and mechanics, 
 others artists and scholars. All these men and women 
 were not familiar with the ways and means of their 
 new country, many of them were unable to speak tke 
 English language, and they all had, therefore, to start 
 in the very lowest places of American business life — 
 thus naturally elevating all the inhabitants of the 
 United States in a more or less degree, to higher 
 positions in life. Many of these people, coming from 
 all parts Of Europe, were ably and well trained, and 
 they became successfull competitors of those, who 
 were here before their arrival. But the constant 
 stream of people from Europe to the United States 
 was, nevertheless, steadily enriching atid elevating 
 the American people, and all the blows aimed at im- 
 migration were, therefore, unwise, and the legislators 
 who proposed such blows remind me of the man who 
 intended to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs". 
 
114 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 "It is, of course, impossible to advance social theo- 
 ries to which everybody will agree", Mr. Forest said 
 in conclusion. "I maintain, however, that all such 
 theories should be based on two fundamental princi- 
 ples. They should have as an aim the establishment 
 of a state of society, where everybody should be pro- 
 tected against an undeserved poverty, where the brain- 
 cancer, fear of an undeserved poverty, should be 
 cured; and they should preserve competition, the 
 power that is permanently spurring everybody to use 
 his best efforts to elevate himself and humanity". 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 When I left Mr. Forest after our last conversation 
 I was convinced, partly by his arguments, partly by 
 my own observations, that communism had not estab- 
 lished the millennium, as I had first supposed, after 
 the lectures of Dr. Leete; but that it had degraded hu- 
 manity in every respect. 
 
 I felt that I must speak frankly to Dr. Leete about 
 the change in my convictions, resign my position as 
 professor of Shawmut College, and that this would 
 give my Hfe in the society of the twentieth century a 
 new and unpleasant direction. 
 
 Dr. Leete had treated me with the utmost kindness, 
 and if I, from the commencement of our relations, 
 had refused to become enthusiastic over communism, 
 my amiable host, I think, would have not only tole- 
 rated my views but would have continued his friend- 
 ship for me, provided I did not join the active oppo- 
 sition to the administration. He might even have 
 consented to my marriage with Edith. But now the 
 circumstances were such, that my change of mind in- 
 volved the most unpleasant consequences for Dr. 
 Leete. He had recommended me as a man especially 
 qualified above others to become the successor of Mr. 
 Forest as professor of the history of the nineteenth 
 century. I owed my appointment solely to his influ- 
 
ri6 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 ence, and there could be no doubt that my apostacy 
 from communism would seriously injure the respect 
 in which Dr. Leete's advice had been held heretofore 
 My host would feel this keenly. The rather sudden 
 change in my opinions, the consequence of my very 
 limited knowledge of national economy, could have 
 no other effect upon Dr. Leete's family, than to destroy 
 their good opinion of me. They would be forced to 
 believe me a shallow, superficial and ungrateful man? 
 who had changed from an enthusiastic advocate of 
 communism to such a decided opponent of this theory 
 that I would resign a position granted to me through 
 Dr. Leete's efforts, and thus place my kind host in 
 an embarrassing position. 
 
 And how would Edith regard my resignation of the 
 professorship? She was attached to her father by a 
 well founded affection and esteem. Would her love 
 for me prove strong enough to overcome the shock 
 my step involved? My blind enthusiasm for the 
 present order of things had been heralded all over the 
 country by the administration organs; they had pointed 
 to the fact that I, a living witness of the civilization of 
 the nineteenth century, had become an almost fanatic 
 advocate of communism. The fact that I had changed 
 my mind after becoming familiar with the facts and 
 circumstances, would compel the administration to 
 treat me as a deceitful, unprincipled demagogue, if 
 not as a scoundrel. There was very little doubt that 
 I would be assigned to the most objectionable work, 
 even if I was spared a term in an insane asylum. And 
 
LOOKING FORWARD, 117 
 
 how could I ask Edith Leete, blooming like a beauti- 
 ful flower in a well protected garden, the house of her 
 highly esteemed father, to join her lot to a man who 
 would be regarded by most of the people either as a 
 superficial babbler or as an unmasked hypocrite, de- 
 serving his fate to be degraded to class B of the third 
 grade. 
 
 The fear of losing the love of Edith overshadowed 
 for a while all other considerations, for I loved in 
 Edith Leete Edith Bartlett! And the reflection that 
 my resignation would cause the loss of Edith to me 
 weighed upon my mind like a nightmare. Never in 
 my life had I felt so distressed and miserable as on 
 my way to Dr. Leete's hou«se after my last conversa- 
 tion with Mr. Forest. 
 
 For a moment I harbored the idea of ending my 
 misery by my own hand, but I resolved to be a man 
 and face my fate. So I walked to Dr. Leete's house 
 determined not to deceive my friends nor to shrink 
 from my duty as a man of honor. 
 
 I found Dr. Leete, who generally appeared so gentle 
 and composed, in a rather excited mood. He looked 
 both careworn and threatening. Before I could ad- 
 dress him he stepped in front of me and said: 
 
 "I have positive information that our mutual friend 
 Mr. Fest, is plotting to incite a rebellion of the Radi- 
 cals. Frequent secret meetings have taken place 
 during the last few days, and I learn that Fest intends 
 to start the rebellion here in Boston". 
 
ii8 LOOKING FORWARD, 
 
 *'What means will you employ to prevent it?" I 
 asked. "Will you call out the citizens and arrest the 
 conspirators? I am at y(nir service", I added, very 
 glad to demonstrate my readiness to serve my host at 
 least against the Radicals whose abominable theories 
 I hated — not to mention my dislike for their leader. 
 
 ''I doubt very much whether it would be good pol- 
 icy to appeal to the people", replied the doctor. 
 "Such a step would attach too much importance to the 
 conspiracy. I wish I had placed that man Fest under 
 medical care, when he left our house. He is the real 
 danger of the hour. His followers do not amount to 
 much, but under a leader like Fest, who combines a 
 certain rude eloquence with reckless audacity and 
 physical power, a rebellion may become a dangerous 
 movement. To prevent this I have given orders to 
 arrest the archconspirator and to put him in a safe 
 place under medical treatment". 
 
 I could not indorse this step although it would, 
 perhaps, prove successful. I suppressed my objec- 
 tions, however, and asked Dr. Leete if he could give 
 a few minutes attention to my own affairs, for I con- 
 sidered it my duty not to keep secret my convictions 
 any longer from Edith's father. 
 
 With his usual kindness Dr. Leete turned to me and 
 requested me to defer the conversation until next 
 morning if the delay would not be very disagreeable 
 to me. 
 
 I consented. 
 
 We took our places at the table in the dining room. 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 119 
 
 Mrs. Leete had sent for a light supper to the com- 
 mon eating house, but none of us did justice to the 
 meal. We all felt apprehensive. 
 
 Dr. Leete looked at his watch. 
 
 "By this time Fest ought to be in the care of the 
 officers and physicians", he said. *'I expect a report". 
 
 After a few uneasy minutes we heard a noise in 
 the street, as if a great number of people were coming 
 up to the house. 
 
 The housedoor was opened, and a brawling crowd 
 entered the hall and pressed forward into the dining 
 room. The mob was led by Fest, who, evidently, had 
 just been through a hot fight. His woolen shirt was 
 torn, and he swung a heavy butcher's axe stained with 
 blood, 
 
 "Here I am again. Dr. Leete", he cried in his sten- 
 torian voice. "I gave you fair warning that I would 
 not enter your house again as a friend. And since, 
 you damned old hypocritical tyrant, you have given 
 orders to imprison me in a mad-house, I have resolved 
 that you shall die this evening. The people of Boston 
 shall be relieved from your tyranny". 
 
 I seized a knife and stepping to the side of Dr. 
 Leete, I stood ready to cover his body with my own. 
 
 But at this moment the mob's attention was dis- 
 tracted by the sudden appearance in the room of 
 Forest, who jumped on the dining table and addressed 
 the crowd without losing a second. 
 
 "I suppose you know who I am", he said. "I am 
 an enemy of this man", and he pointed to Dr. Leete. 
 
I20 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 ''Because I would not defend this miserable admin- 
 istration I was removed from my place as professor 
 of Shawmut College, and it was Dr. Leete who as- 
 signed' me to the position of janitor". 
 
 "That's just like the miserable old tyrant", shouted 
 a dirty looking fellow. 
 
 "Therefore, I say: Down with an administration 
 that strangled free speech" continued Mr. Forest. 
 "Down with tyranny! But let us not butcher this 
 miserable old fellow. It is not worthy of young and 
 vigorous men like us to kill an unarmed old creature. 
 Let us place him in an insane asylum, where he in- 
 tended to imprison our friend Fest". 
 
 "Yes, yes, put him in a madhouse", the mob yelled. 
 
 It was evident that Forest was trying to save Dr. 
 Leete's life. My eye wandered to Edith. She was 
 very pale but composed. She had put her left arm 
 around her father and she met my look with an ex- 
 pression of sympathy. Unfortunately, Fest noticed 
 that expression in Edith's eyes, and his jealousy broke 
 forth with increased force. 
 
 "You damned fools", he cried in a hoarse voice, 
 "don't you see that this man Forest is trying to save 
 the life of that tricky and dangerous old tyrant? But 
 I demand my share of the booty: the life of Leete 
 and his daughter'" 
 
 "Do as you please. Bob" ! the mob yelled. 
 
 "Leave this room. Forest", commanded Robert 
 Fest. "I have no grudge against you; but if you stand 
 in my way you will have to suffer the consequences". 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 121 
 
 "So long as I live you shall not commit murder in 
 this house", Mr. Forest replied. ''You ought to be 
 ashamed, Fest, of a conduct so unworthy of a gentle- 
 man". 
 
 "Shut up, you fool", Fest screamed with rage^ 
 "That hypocritical scoundrel, Leete, has bulldozed 
 the people long enough. He must die, and if you 
 don't get out of our way, you will die with him". 
 
 A rage I had never felt before carried me away. 
 "What has this old gentleman done to challenge your 
 thirst for his blood, you mean, cruel coward?" I cried, 
 and jumped at Fest, trying to put my knife into his 
 heart. But a dozen fists disarmed me, while Fest 
 commanded: "Put that old Bostonian in a bag and 
 dump him in the harbor. Although not a gentleman 
 in the eyes of the professor I am a m.an of my word, 
 and I have promised that resurrected spectre, I would 
 drown him like a puppy when ever again he crossed 
 my path". 
 
 He lifted his axe and advanced towards Dr. Leete 
 who remained silent, with his gray eyes fixed upon his 
 brutal enemy. 
 
 Once more Forest tried to safe the life of the 
 leader of the administration, but in vain. A dirty 
 looking ruffian buried a knife in Forest's true and 
 fearless breast and with the words: "We are even, 
 Leete", he sank to the floor. Edith struggled with 
 two men who had seized her arms and were trying to 
 lead her away when Fest's axe descended on Dr. 
 Leete's gray head. Without a murmur he fell to the 
 
132 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 ground, while Edith with a loud cry fainted. Fast 
 seized her around her waist. 
 
 "She refused to be my wife" he said with a satanic 
 grin, "now she will be mine without the ridiculous 
 ceremony of marriage", and while stepping to the door 
 with Edith's lifeless body clasped by his left arm he 
 said: "Kill every friend of the administration, boys 
 I will meet you at the city hall in an hour or so". 
 
 I made a tremendous, desperate effort to shake off 
 the men who kept me back; I uttered a despairing cry 
 and — awoke in my bed, May 31, 1887. At my bedside 
 a physician, and my servant Sawyer had been busy 
 for some time awakening me from my deep mesmeric 
 slumber They had labored very hard until they suc- 
 ceeded, but more than an hour passed before I had 
 regained my ability of reasoning, and then I felt 
 greatly relieved 
 
 With the swiftness of lightning all the details of my 
 interesting but terrible dream passed through my mind. 
 I weighed all the arguments of Dr. Leete and Mr. 
 Forest carefully again, and felt delighted that I was 
 living in the nineteenth century instead of in the com- 
 munistic state that appeared to me now like a large 
 penitentiary on the eve of a rebellion of the convicts. 
 
 "I would rather work harder at liberty than remain 
 idle for a number of hours every day in a prison-like 
 life", I said reflectively, "for work is not an evil. And 
 I would rather work a few years longer and miss some 
 commodities of life than submit to communistic 
 slavery. Most of the luxuries for which we are strug- 
 
LOOKING FORWARD. 123 
 
 gling appear most desirable so long as we do not pos- 
 sess them, and we do not care much for them when 
 they are ours". 
 
 I resolved to use hereafter my best ability for the 
 advancement of all desirable reforms for the benefit 
 of mankind, and to preach contentment, the only solid 
 basis of happiness. Felicity is so independent of 
 wealth, in fact glory and opulence are almost stum- 
 bling blocks in the way of happiness. Happiness de- 
 pends largely on our acceptance of our lot. In 
 Victor Von Scheffel's famous poem "The Trumpeter 
 of Siickingen" young Werner when he parts from his 
 beloved Margaret, as he supposes forever, sings: 
 
 To life belongs this most unpleasant feature: 
 That not a rose without sharp thorns does grow. 
 
 Though love eternal stirs our human nature 
 Through pangs of parting we at last must go. 
 
 But Margaret is at last reunited to young Werner, 
 she becomes his wife, and it would have been much 
 more in consonance with the final result, if young 
 Werner, when departing from Margaret, had sung thus: 
 
 To life belongs this very pleasant feature 
 
 That next to thorns the blooming roses bend, 
 
 And love eternal conquers human nature 
 In joy uniting lovers in the end. 
 
m. mil uwM t 
 
 MAIN OFFICE: 
 
 ERIE AM UnOl^ STREETS. 
 
 HENRY LEEB, 
 
 Manager. 
 
 BOTTLING DEPARTMENT: 
 
 /\fO, 29 WEST OHIO STREET, 
 
 " EXCELSIORr 
 "PRIl^ATE stock:' 
 
 "MUENCHENERr 
 Delivered to Families. 
 
 Telephone No. 4382. 
 
 Cliioasro, 
 
 Illiiioi*!^, 
 
I 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 f 
 
 Bali's Corsets in a variety of styles. Most 
 conifortable corset ever made. Kabo Corsets 
 of perfect fit, iu various styles and lengths. 
 Kabo never breaks. Ball's Waists are the best 
 in the world for Ladies, Misses and Children. 
 All with soft ej'elets. 
 
 FOR SALE EVERYWHERE. 
 CHIC^OO COHSET CO., 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK. 
 
 0O00 0OO 000 00© 0O0 000 
 
 If you are annoyed by the bone.s in your Corset 
 breaking at the waist or hips, /ry the Kabo Cor- 
 set, the boning material in it is warranted not to 
 break or roll up with one year's wear 
 
KIMBALL 
 
 PIANOS 
 
 INDORSED BY 
 
 ADELINA PATTI, 
 
 LILY LEHMAN, 
 
 SIG. TAMAGNO, 
 
 JULIUS PEROTTI, 
 
 GRAND ITALIAN OPERA CO. 
 METROPOLITAN OPERA CO. 
 BOSTON IDEAL OPERA CO. 
 and many other prominent artists. 
 
 W. TV. KIMBALL. CO. 
 
 STATE & JACKSON STS. 
 
^reie ^ Sfteffe. 
 
 Established 1871, 
 
 BY 
 
 its present liiditor and the Publisher of 
 
 this book. 
 
 Gepman Daily, Sunday p| ly^eeKiy 
 
 MORNING AND AFTERNOON EDITIONS. 
 
 Has a vei'Y large circulation in Chicago, and 
 
 in all the North^vestern States, among 
 
 the JBest Grerman American 
 
 FamiUes. 
 
 ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 are very eflective? and are taken at 
 liberal rates. 
 
^s 
 
 ^ 
 
/i 
 
 '^■^