prompt:
Chapter: We had made an appointment to meet the ladies at the dining-hall for
dinner, after which, having some engagement, they left us sitting at
table there, discussing our wine and cigars with a multitude of other
matters.

"Doctor," said I, in the course of our talk, "morally speaking, your
social system is one which I should be insensate not to admire in
comparison with any previously in vogue in the world, and especially
with that of my own most unhappy century. If I were to fall into a
mesmeric sleep to-night as lasting as that other, and meanwhile the
course of time were to take a turn backward instead of forward, and I
were to wake up again in the nineteenth century, when I had told my
friends what I had seen, they would every one admit that your world
was a paradise of order, equity, and felicity. But they were a very
practical people, my contemporaries, and after expressing their
admiration for the moral beauty and material splendor of the system,
they would presently begin to cipher and ask how you got the money to
make everybody so happy; for certainly, to support the whole nation at
a rate of comfort, and even luxury, such as I see around me, must
involve vastly greater wealth than the nation produced in my day. Now,
while I could explain to them pretty nearly everything else of the
main features of your system, I should quite fail to answer this
question, and failing there, they would tell me, for they were very
close cipherers, that I had been dreaming; nor would they ever believe
anything else. In my day, I know that the total annual product of the
nation, although it might have been divided with absolute equality,
would not have come to more than three or four hundred dollars per
head, not very much more than enough to supply the necessities of life
with few or any of its comforts. How is it that you have so much
more?"

"That is a very pertinent question, Mr. West," replied Dr. Leete, "and
I should not blame your friends, in the case you supposed, if they
declared your story all moonshine, failing a satisfactory reply to it.
It is a question which I cannot answer exhaustively at any one
sitting, and as for the exact statistics to bear out my general
statements, I shall have to refer you for them to books in my library,
but it would certainly be a pity to leave you to be put to confusion
by your old acquaintances, in case of the contingency you speak of,
for lack of a few suggestions.

"Let us begin with a number of small items wherein we economize wealth
as compared with you. We have no national, state, county, or
municipal debts, or payments on their account. We have no sort of
military or naval expenditures for men or materials, no army, navy, or
militia. We have no revenue service, no swarm of tax assessors and
collectors. As regards our judiciary, police, sheriffs, and jailers,
the force which Massachusetts alone kept on foot in your day far more
than suffices for the nation now. We have no criminal class preying
upon the wealth of society as you had. The number of persons, more or
less absolutely lost to the working force through physical disability,
of the lame, sick, and debilitated, which constituted such a burden on
the able-bodied in your day, now that all live under conditions of
health and comfort, has shrunk to scarcely perceptible proportions,
and with every generation is becoming more completely eliminated.

"Another item wherein we save is the disuse of money and the thousand
occupations connected with financial operations of all sorts, whereby
an army of men was formerly taken away from useful employments. Also
consider that the waste of the very rich in your day on inordinate
personal luxury has ceased, though, indeed, this item might easily be
over-estimated. Again, consider that there are no idlers now, rich or
poor,--no drones.

"A very important cause of former poverty was the vast waste of labor
and materials which resulted from domestic washing and cooking, and
the performing separately of innumerable other tasks to which we apply
the cooperative plan.

"A larger economy than any of these--yes, of all together--is effected
by the organization of our distributing system, by which the work done
once by the merchants, traders, storekeepers, with their various
grades of jobbers, wholesalers, retailers, agents, commercial
travelers, and middlemen of all sorts, with an excessive waste of
energy in needless transportation and interminable handlings, is
performed by one-tenth the number of hands and an unnecessary turn of
not one wheel. Something of what our distributing system is like you
know. Our statisticians calculate that one eightieth part of our
workers suffices for all the processes of distribution which in your
day required one eighth of the population, so much being withdrawn
from the force engaged in productive labor."

"I begin to see," I said, "where you get your greater wealth."

"I beg your pardon," replied Dr. Leete, "but you scarcely do as yet.
The economies I have mentioned thus far, in the aggregate, considering
the labor they would save directly and indirectly through saving of
material, might possibly be equivalent to the addition to your annual
production of wealth of one-half its former total. These items are,
however, scarcely worth mentioning in comparison with other prodigious
wastes, now saved, which resulted inevitably from leaving the
industries of the nation to private enterprise. However great the
economies your contemporaries might have devised in the consumption
of products, and however marvelous the progress of mechanical
invention, they could never have raised themselves out of the slough
of poverty so long as they held to that system.

"No mode more wasteful for utilizing human energy could be devised,
and for the credit of the human intellect it should be remembered that
the system never was devised, but was merely a survival from the rude
ages when the lack of social organization made any sort of cooperation
impossible."

"I will readily admit," I said, "that our industrial system was
ethically very bad, but as a mere wealth-making machine, apart from
moral aspects, it seemed to us admirable."

"As I said," responded the doctor, "the subject is too large to
discuss at length now, but if you are really interested to know the
main criticisms which we moderns make on your industrial system as
compared with our own, I can touch briefly on some of them.

"The wastes which resulted from leaving the conduct of industry to
irresponsible individuals, wholly without mutual understanding or
concert, were mainly four: first, the waste by mistaken undertakings;
second, the waste from the competition and mutual hostility of those
engaged in industry; third, the waste by periodical gluts and crises,
with the consequent interruptions of industry; fourth, the waste from
idle capital and labor, at all times. Any one of these four great
leaks, were all the others stopped, would suffice to make the
difference between wealth and poverty on the part of a nation.

"Take the waste by mistaken undertakings, to begin with. In your day
the production and distribution of commodities being without concert
or organization, there was no means of knowing just what demand there
was for any class of products, or what was the rate of supply.
Therefore, any enterprise by a private capitalist was always a
doubtful experiment. The projector having no general view of the field
of industry and consumption, such as our government has, could never
be sure either what the people wanted, or what arrangements other
capitalists were making to supply them. In view of this, we are not
surprised to learn that the chances were considered several to one in
favor of the failure of any given business enterprise, and that it was
common for persons who at last succeeded in making a hit to have
failed repeatedly. If a shoemaker, for every pair of shoes he
succeeded in completing, spoiled the leather of four or five pair,
besides losing the time spent on them, he would stand about the same
chance of getting rich as your contemporaries did with their system of
private enterprise, and its average of four or five failures to one
success.

"The next of the great wastes was that from competition. The field of
industry was a battlefield as wide as the world, in which the workers
wasted, in assailing one another, energies which, if expended in
concerted effort, as to-day, would have enriched all. As for mercy or
quarter in this warfare, there was absolutely no suggestion of it. To
deliberately enter a field of business and destroy the enterprises of
those who had occupied it previously, in order to plant one's own
enterprise on their ruins, was an achievement which never failed to
command popular admiration. Nor is there any stretch of fancy in
comparing this sort of struggle with actual warfare, so far as
concerns the mental agony and physical suffering which attended the
struggle, and the misery which overwhelmed the defeated and those
dependent on them. Now nothing about your age is, at first sight, more
astounding to a man of modern times than the fact that men engaged in
the same industry, instead of fraternizing as comrades and co-laborers
to a common end, should have regarded each other as rivals and enemies
to be throttled and overthrown. This certainly seems like sheer
madness, a scene from bedlam. But more closely regarded, it is seen to
be no such thing. Your contemporaries, with their mutual
throat-cutting, knew very well what they were at. The producers of the
nineteenth century were not, like ours, working together for the
maintenance of the community, but each solely for his own maintenance
at the expense of the community. If, in working to this end, he at the
same time increased the aggregate wealth, that was merely incidental.
It was just as feasible and as common to increase one's private hoard
by practices injurious to the general welfare. One's worst enemies
were necessarily those of his own trade, for, under your plan of
making private profit the motive of production, a scarcity of the
article he produced was what each particular producer desired. It was
for his interest that no more of it should be produced than he himself
could produce. To secure this consummation as far as circumstances
permitted, by killing off and discouraging those engaged in his line
of industry, was his constant effort. When he had billed off all he
could, his policy was to combine with those he could not kill, and
convert their mutual warfare into a warfare upon the public at large
by cornering the market, as I believe you used to call it, and putting
up prices to the highest point people would stand before going without
the goods. The day dream of the nineteenth century producer was to
gain absolute control of the supply of some necessity of life, so that
he might keep the public at the verge of starvation, and always
command famine prices for what he supplied. This, Mr. West, is what
was called in the nineteenth century a system of production. I will
leave it to you if it does not seem, in some of its aspects, a great
deal more like a system for preventing production. Some time when we
have plenty of leisure I am going to ask you to sit down with me and
try to make me comprehend, as I never yet could, though I have
studied the matter a great deal, how such shrewd fellows as your
contemporaries appear to have been in many respects ever came to
entrust the business of providing for the community to a class whose
interest it was to starve it. I assure you that the wonder with us is,
not that the world did not get rich under such a system, but that it
did not perish outright from want. This wonder increases as we go on
to consider some of the other prodigious wastes that characterized it.

"Apart from the waste of labor and capital by misdirected industry,
and that from the constant bloodletting of your industrial warfare,
your system was liable to periodical convulsions, overwhelming alike
the wise and unwise, the successful cut-throat as well as his victim.
I refer to the business crises at intervals of five to ten years,
which wrecked the industries of the nation, prostrating all weak
enterprises and crippling the strongest, and were followed by long
periods, often of many years, of so-called dull times, during which
the capitalists slowly regathered their dissipated strength while the
laboring classes starved and rioted. Then would ensue another brief
season of prosperity, followed in turn by another crisis and the
ensuing years of exhaustion. As commerce developed, making the nations
mutually dependent, these arises became world-wide, while the
obstinacy of the ensuing state of collapse increased with the area
affected by the convulsions, and the consequent lack of rallying
centres. In proportion as the industries of the world multiplied and
became complex, and the volume of capital involved was increased,
these business cataclysms became more frequent, till, in the latter
part of the nineteenth century, there were two years of bad times to
one of good, and the system of industry, never before so extended or
so imposing, seemed in danger of collapsing by its own weight. After
endless discussions, your economists appear by that time to have
settled down to the despairing conclusion that there was no more
possibility of preventing or controlling these crises than if they had
been drouths or hurricanes. It only remained to endure them as
necessary evils, and when they had passed over to build up again the
shattered structure of industry, as dwellers in an earthquake country
keep on rebuilding their cities on the same site.

"So far as considering the causes of the trouble inherent in their
industrial system, your contemporaries were certainly correct. They
were in its very basis, and must needs become more and more maleficent
as the business fabric grew in size and complexity. One of these
causes was the lack of any common control of the different industries,
and the consequent impossibility of their orderly and coordinate
development. It inevitably resulted from this lack that they were
continually getting out of step with one another and out of relation
with the demand.

"Of the latter there was no criterion such as organized distribution
gives us, and the first notice that it had been exceeded in any group
of industries was a crash of prices, bankruptcy of producers, stoppage
of production, reduction of wages, or discharge of workmen. This
process was constantly going on in many industries, even in what were
called good times, but a crisis took place only when the industries
affected were extensive. The markets then were glutted with goods, of
which nobody wanted beyond a sufficiency at any price. The wages and
profits of those making the glutted classes of goods being reduced or
wholly stopped, their purchasing power as consumers of other classes
of goods, of which there was no natural glut, was taken away, and, as
a consequence, goods of which there was no natural glut became
artificially glutted, till their prices also were broken down, and
their makers thrown out of work and deprived of income. The crisis was
by this time fairly under way, and nothing could check it till a
nation's ransom had been wasted.

"A cause, also inherent in your system, which often produced and
always terribly aggravated crises, was the machinery of money and
credit. Money was essential when production was in many private hands,
and buying and selling was necessary to secure what one wanted. It
was, however, open to the obvious objection of substituting for food,
clothing, and other things a merely conventional representative of
them. The confusion of mind which this favored, between goods and
their representative, led the way to the credit system and its
prodigious illusions. Already accustomed to accept money for
commodities, the people next accepted promises for money, and ceased
to look at all behind the representative for the thing represented.
Money was a sign of real commodities, but credit was but the sign of a
sign. There was a natural limit to gold and silver, that is, money
proper, but none to credit, and the result was that the volume of
credit, that is, the promises of money, ceased to bear any
ascertainable proportion to the money, still less to the commodities,
actually in existence. Under such a system, frequent and periodical
crises were necessitated by a law as absolute as that which brings to
the ground a structure overhanging its centre of gravity. It was one
of your fictions that the government and the banks authorized by it
alone issued money; but everybody who gave a dollar's credit issued
money to that extent, which was as good as any to swell the
circulation till the next crises. The great extension of the credit
system was a characteristic of the latter part of the nineteenth
century, and accounts largely for the almost incessant business crises
which marked that period. Perilous as credit was, you could not
dispense with its use, for, lacking any national or other public
organization of the capital of the country, it was the only means you
had for concentrating and directing it upon industrial enterprises. It
was in this way a most potent means for exaggerating the chief peril
of the private enterprise system of industry by enabling particular
industries to absorb disproportionate amounts of the disposable
capital of the country, and thus prepare disaster. Business
enterprises were always vastly in debt for advances of credit, both to
one another and to the banks and capitalists, and the prompt
withdrawal of this credit at the first sign of a crisis was generally
the precipitating cause of it.

"It was the misfortune of your contemporaries that they had to cement
their business fabric with a material which an accident might at any
moment turn into an explosive. They were in the plight of a man
building a house with dynamite for mortar, for credit can be compared
with nothing else.

"If you would see how needless were these convulsions of business
which I have been speaking of, and how entirely they resulted from
leaving industry to private and unorganized management, just consider
the working of our system. Overproduction in special lines, which was
the great hobgoblin of your day, is impossible now, for by the
connection between distribution and production supply is geared to
demand like an engine to the governor which regulates its speed. Even
suppose by an error of judgment an excessive production of some
commodity. The consequent slackening or cessation of production in
that line throws nobody out of employment. The suspended workers are
at once found occupation in some other department of the vast workshop
and lose only the time spent in changing, while, as for the glut, the
business of the nation is large enough to carry any amount of product
manufactured in excess of demand till the latter overtakes it. In such
a case of over-production, as I have supposed, there is not with us,
as with you, any complex machinery to get out of order and magnify a
thousand times the original mistake. Of course, having not even money,
we still less have credit. All estimates deal directly with the real
things, the flour, iron, wood, wool, and labor, of which money and
credit were for you the very misleading representatives. In our
calculations of cost there can be no mistakes. Out of the annual
product the amount necessary for the support of the people is taken,
and the requisite labor to produce the next year's consumption
provided for. The residue of the material and labor represents what
can be safely expended in improvements. If the crops are bad, the
surplus for that year is less than usual, that is all. Except for
slight occasional effects of such natural causes, there are no
fluctuations of business; the material prosperity of the nation flows
on uninterruptedly from generation to generation, like an ever
broadening and deepening river.

"Your business crises, Mr. West," continued the doctor, "like either
of the great wastes I mentioned before, were enough, alone, to have
kept your noses to the grindstone forever; but I have still to speak
of one other great cause of your poverty, and that was the idleness of
a great part of your capital and labor. With us it is the business of
the administration to keep in constant employment every ounce of
available capital and labor in the country. In your day there was no
general control of either capital or labor, and a large part of both
failed to find employment. 'Capital,' you used to say, 'is naturally
timid,' and it would certainly have been reckless if it had not been
timid in an epoch when there was a large preponderance of probability
that any particular business venture would end in failure. There was
no time when, if security could have been guaranteed it, the amount of
capital devoted to productive industry could not have been greatly
increased. The proportion of it so employed underwent constant
extraordinary fluctuations, according to the greater or less feeling
of uncertainty as to the stability of the industrial situation, so
that the output of the national industries greatly varied in different
years. But for the same reason that the amount of capital employed at
times of special insecurity was far less than at times of somewhat
greater security, a very large proportion was never employed at all,
because the hazard of business was always very great in the best of
times.

"It should be also noted that the great amount of capital always
seeking employment where tolerable safety could be insured terribly
embittered the competition between capitalists when a promising
opening presented itself. The idleness of capital, the result of its
timidity, of course meant the idleness of labor in corresponding
degree. Moreover, every change in the adjustments of business, every
slightest alteration in the condition of commerce or manufactures, not
to speak of the innumerable business failures that took place yearly,
even in the best of times, were constantly throwing a multitude of men
out of employment for periods of weeks or months, or even years. A
great number of these seekers after employment were constantly
traversing the country, becoming in time professional vagabonds, then
criminals. 'Give us work!' was the cry of an army of the unemployed at
nearly all seasons, and in seasons of dullness in business this army
swelled to a host so vast and desperate as to threaten the stability
of the government. Could there conceivably be a more conclusive
demonstration of the imbecility of the system of private enterprise as
a method for enriching a nation than the fact that, in an age of such
general poverty and want of everything, capitalists had to throttle
one another to find a safe chance to invest their capital and workmen
rioted and burned because they could find no work to do?

"Now, Mr. West," continued Dr. Leete, "I want you to bear in mind that
these points of which I have been speaking indicate only negatively
the advantages of the national organization of industry by showing
certain fatal defects and prodigious imbecilities of the systems of
private enterprise which are not found in it. These alone, you must
admit, would pretty well explain why the nation is so much richer than
in your day. But the larger half of our advantage over you, the
positive side of it, I have yet barely spoken of. Supposing the system
of private enterprise in industry were without any of the great leaks
I have mentioned; that there were no waste on account of misdirected
effort growing out of mistakes as to the demand, and inability to
command a general view of the industrial field. Suppose, also, there
were no neutralizing and duplicating of effort from competition.
Suppose, also, there were no waste from business panics and crises
through bankruptcy and long interruptions of industry, and also none
from the idleness of capital and labor. Supposing these evils, which
are essential to the conduct of industry by capital in private hands,
could all be miraculously prevented, and the system yet retained; even
then the superiority of the results attained by the modern industrial
system of national control would remain overwhelming.

"You used to have some pretty large textile manufacturing
establishments, even in your day, although not comparable with ours.
No doubt you have visited these great mills in your time, covering
acres of ground, employing thousands of hands, and combining under one
roof, under one control, the hundred distinct processes between, say,
the cotton bale and the bale of glossy calicoes. You have admired the
vast economy of labor as of mechanical force resulting from the
perfect interworking with the rest of every wheel and every hand. No
doubt you have reflected how much less the same force of workers
employed in that factory would accomplish if they were scattered, each
man working independently. Would you think it an exaggeration to say
that the utmost product of those workers, working thus apart, however
amicable their relations might be, was increased not merely by a
percentage, but many fold, when their efforts were organized under one
control? Well now, Mr. West, the organization of the industry of the
nation under a single control, so that all its processes interlock,
has multiplied the total product over the utmost that could be done
under the former system, even leaving out of account the four great
wastes mentioned, in the same proportion that the product of those
millworkers was increased by cooperation. The effectiveness of the
working force of a nation, under the myriad-headed leadership of
private capital, even if the leaders were not mutual enemies, as
compared with that which it attains under a single head, may be
likened to the military efficiency of a mob, or a horde of barbarians
with a thousand petty chiefs, as compared with that of a disciplined
army under one general--such a fighting machine, for example, as the
German army in the time of Von Moltke."

"After what you have told me," I said, "I do not so much wonder that
the nation is richer now than then, but that you are not all
Croesuses."

"Well," replied Dr. Leete, "we are pretty well off. The rate at which
we live is as luxurious as we could wish. The rivalry of ostentation,
which in your day led to extravagance in no way conducive to comfort,
finds no place, of course, in a society of people absolutely equal in
resources, and our ambition stops at the surroundings which minister
to the enjoyment of life. We might, indeed, have much larger incomes,
individually, if we chose so to use the surplus of our product, but we
prefer to expend it upon public works and pleasures in which all
share, upon public halls and buildings, art galleries, bridges,
statuary, means or transit, and the conveniences of our cities, great
musical and theatrical exhibitions, and in providing on a vast scale
for the recreations of the people. You have not begun to see how we
live yet, Mr. West. At home we have comfort, but the splendor of our
life is, on its social side, that which we share with our fellows.
When you know more of it you will see where the money goes, as you
used to say, and I think you will agree that we do well so to expend
it."

"I suppose," observed Dr. Leete, as we strolled homeward from the
dining hall, "that no reflection would have cut the men of your
wealth-worshiping century more keenly than the suggestion that they
did not know how to make money. Nevertheless, that is just the verdict
history has passed on them. Their system of unorganized and
antagonistic industries was as absurd economically as it was morally
abominable. Selfishness was their only science, and in industrial
production selfishness is suicide. Competition, which is the instinct
of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while
combination is the secret of efficient production; and not till the
idea of increasing the individual hoard gives place to the idea of
increasing the common stock can industrial combination be realized,
and the acquisition of wealth really begin. Even if the principle of
share and share alike for all men were not the only humane and
rational basis for a society, we should still enforce it as
economically expedient, seeing that until the disintegrating influence
of self-seeking is suppressed no true concert of industry is
possible."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: That night after dinner, the women once again leave the men to discuss the new society. This time, the discussion centers around the wealth of the nation. Julian West is curious as to how much wealth is available in this new society. He says that if he had to go back to his time and explain everything to his fellow citizens, they would say it was all a dream unless he could explain how everything was funded. Doctor Leete first explains that the wastes of capitalism, when eliminated, would equal half the wealth of the nation. On top of that, the new industrial system is more efficient, and thus produces much more wealth. First, Doctor Leete lists the many sources of savings in the new society. There are no national, state, county or municipal debts, and no military or internal revenue service. The judiciary system is very small. There is no criminal class. There are very few physically and mentally disabled people. There are no wasteful rich people. There is no waste in households when cooking and cleaning is done communally. The distribution system of the government also prevents the huge wastes of the old system, since there are no middlemen and very little handling of the products. Next, Doctor Leete numbers the wastes of capitalism in four major areas. First, there is the waste of capitalists undertaking enterprises without any clear way of knowing if they will succeed or fail. Second, there are the wastes of competition among capitalists in the same market. Third, there is the waste caused by periodic gluts and crises. Fourth, there is the waste of idle capital and labor. Doctor Leete offers lengthy explanations of each of these four areas. He is especially interested in explaining the second of these, the wastes caused by competition. He notes that the producers of the nineteenth century worked for their own profit at the expense of the community. If the common good benefited from their machinations, it was only by chance. As often, the capitalists would increase their private hoards by practices injurious to the general welfare. All capitalists dreamed of gaining complete control over some necessity of life and then making people pay huge amounts for it. He tells Julian West that people of the twentieth century are always astounded that this was called a system of production, when in fact, it seems more like a system for preventing production. Doctor Leete explains that part of the cause of the continual ups and downs of the market was the use of money and credit . The empty promises of these two representative systems caused horrible pain and suffering. Doctor Leete next describes the how the nation can be so wealthy in the twentieth century. Most of it has to do with efficiency. The nation sees clearly where the demand is, and so it never wastes labor in producing products that are not going to be used. It is big enough to hold onto products that are temporarily over-supplied without putting people out of work. This means workers are never idle. He tells Julian West that he has still not seen the real wealth of the nation because it is spent mostly on public amusements and aesthetics. He sums up the philosophy that motivates his society in the following: competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the seed of efficient production. That evening, Julian West is enjoying music with Edith Leete. He asks her about the conversation he heard when he was coming to consciousness on his first day in the new world. He had heard her make her father promise not to tell him something. Her father had hesitated and had complied only after she and her mother both persuaded him. When he brings this topic up, Edith Leete blushes intensely. She turns up the music and only later asks him not to ask her or anyone else this question. He agrees, but then he cannot sleep all night wondering about it. He cannot figure out how she would know something about him when she had never seen him before the day of his awakening.


prompt:
Chapter: That evening, as I sat with Edith in the music room, listening to some
pieces in the programme of that day which had attracted my notice, I
took advantage of an interval in the music to say, "I have a question
to ask you which I fear is rather indiscreet."

"I am quite sure it is not that," she replied, encouragingly.

"I am in the position of an eavesdropper," I continued, "who, having
overheard a little of a matter not intended for him, though seeming to
concern him, has the impudence to come to the speaker for the rest."

"An eavesdropper!" she repeated, looking puzzled.

"Yes," I said, "but an excusable one, as I think you will admit."

"This is very mysterious," she replied.

"Yes," said I, "so mysterious that often I have doubted whether I
really overheard at all what I am going to ask you about, or only
dreamed it. I want you to tell me. The matter is this: When I was
coming out of that sleep of a century, the first impression of which I
was conscious was of voices talking around me, voices that afterwards
I recognized as your father's, your mother's, and your own. First, I
remember your father's voice saying, 'He is going to open his eyes. He
had better see but one person at first.' Then you said, if I did not
dream it all, 'Promise me, then, that you will not tell him.' Your
father seemed to hesitate about promising, but you insisted, and your
mother interposing, he finally promised, and when I opened my eyes I
saw only him."

I had been quite serious when I said that I was not sure that I had
not dreamed the conversation I fancied I had overheard, so
incomprehensible was it that these people should know anything of me,
a contemporary of their great-grandparents, which I did not know
myself. But when I saw the effect of my words upon Edith, I knew that
it was no dream, but another mystery, and a more puzzling one than any
I had before encountered. For from the moment that the drift of my
question became apparent, she showed indications of the most acute
embarrassment. Her eyes, always so frank and direct in expression, had
dropped in a panic before mine, while her face crimsoned from neck to
forehead.

"Pardon me," I said, as soon as I had recovered from bewilderment at
the extraordinary effect of my words. "It seems, then, that I was not
dreaming. There is some secret, something about me, which you are
withholding from me. Really, doesn't it seem a little hard that a
person in my position should not be given all the information possible
concerning himself?"

"It does not concern you--that is, not directly. It is not about
you--exactly," she replied, scarcely audibly.

"But it concerns me in some way," I persisted. "It must be something
that would interest me."

"I don't know even that," she replied, venturing a momentary glance at
my face, furiously blushing, and yet with a quaint smile flickering
about her lips which betrayed a certain perception of humor in the
situation despite its embarrassment,--"I am not sure that it would
even interest you."

"Your father would have told me," I insisted, with an accent of
reproach. "It was you who forbade him. He thought I ought to know."

She did not reply. She was so entirely charming in her confusion that
I was now prompted, as much by the desire to prolong the situation as
by my original curiosity, to importune her further.

"Am I never to know? Will you never tell me?" I said.

"It depends," she answered, after a long pause.

"On what?" I persisted.

"Ah, you ask too much," she replied. Then, raising to mine a face
which inscrutable eyes, flushed cheeks, and smiling lips combined to
render perfectly bewitching, she added, "What should you think if I
said that it depended on--yourself?"

"On myself?" I echoed. "How can that possibly be?"

"Mr. West, we are losing some charming music," was her only reply to
this, and turning to the telephone, at a touch of her finger she set
the air to swaying to the rhythm of an adagio. After that she took
good care that the music should leave no opportunity for conversation.
She kept her face averted from me, and pretended to be absorbed in the
airs, but that it was a mere pretense the crimson tide standing at
flood in her cheeks sufficiently betrayed.

When at length she suggested that I might have heard all I cared to,
for that time, and we rose to leave the room, she came straight up to
me and said, without raising her eyes, "Mr. West, you say I have been
good to you. I have not been particularly so, but if you think I have,
I want you to promise me that you will not try again to make me tell
you this thing you have asked to-night, and that you will not try to
find it out from any one else,--my father or mother, for instance."

To such an appeal there was but one reply possible. "Forgive me for
distressing you. Of course I will promise," I said. "I would never
have asked you if I had fancied it could distress you. But do you
blame me for being curious?"

"I do not blame you at all."

"And some time," I added, "if I do not tease you, you may tell me of
your own accord. May I not hope so?"

"Perhaps," she murmured.

"Only perhaps?"

Looking up, she read my face with a quick, deep glance. "Yes," she
said, "I think I may tell you--some time;" and so our conversation
ended, for she gave me no chance to say anything more.

That night I don't think even Dr. Pillsbury could have put me to
sleep, till toward morning at least. Mysteries had been my accustomed
food for days now, but none had before confronted me at once so
mysterious and so fascinating as this, the solution of which Edith
Leete had forbidden me even to seek. It was a double mystery. How, in
the first place, was it conceivable that she should know any secret
about me, a stranger from a strange age? In the second place, even if
she should know such a secret, how account for the agitating effect
which the knowledge of it seemed to have upon her? There are puzzles
so difficult that one cannot even get so far as a conjecture as to the
solution, and this seemed one of them. I am usually of too practical a
turn to waste time on such conundrums; but the difficulty of a riddle
embodied in a beautiful young girl does not detract from its
fascination. In general, no doubt, maidens' blushes may be safely
assumed to tell the same tale to young men in all ages and races, but
to give that interpretation to Edith's crimson cheeks would,
considering my position and the length of time I had known her, and
still more the fact that this mystery dated from before I had known
her at all, be a piece of utter fatuity. And yet she was an angel, and
I should not have been a young man if reason and common sense had been
able quite to banish a roseate tinge from my dreams that night.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: That evening, Julian West is enjoying music with Edith Leete. He asks her about the conversation he heard when he was coming to consciousness on his first day in the new world. He had heard her make her father promise not to tell him something. Her father had hesitated and had complied only after she and her mother both persuaded him. When he brings this topic up, Edith Leete blushes intensely. She turns up the music and only later asks him not to ask her or anyone else this question. He agrees, but then he cannot sleep all night wondering about it. He cannot figure out how she would know something about him when she had never seen him before the day of his awakening.


prompt:
Chapter: In the morning I went down stairs early in the hope of seeing Edith
alone. In this, however, I was disappointed. Not finding her in the
house, I sought her in the garden, but she was not there. In the
course of my wanderings I visited the underground chamber, and sat
down there to rest. Upon the reading table in the chamber several
periodicals and newspapers lay, and thinking that Dr. Leete might be
interested in glancing over a Boston daily of 1887, I brought one of
the papers with me into the house when I came.

At breakfast I met Edith. She blushed as she greeted me, but was
perfectly self-possessed. As we sat at table, Dr. Leete amused himself
with looking over the paper I had brought in. There was in it, as in
all the newspapers of that date, a great deal about the labor
troubles, strikes, lockouts, boycotts, the programmes of labor
parties, and the wild threats of the anarchists.

"By the way," said I, as the doctor read aloud to us some of these
items, "what part did the followers of the red flag take in the
establishment of the new order of things? They were making
considerable noise the last thing that I knew."

"They had nothing to do with it except to hinder it, of course,"
replied Dr. Leete. "They did that very effectually while they lasted,
for their talk so disgusted people as to deprive the best considered
projects for social reform of a hearing. The subsidizing of those
fellows was one of the shrewdest moves of the opponents of reform."

"Subsidizing them!" I exclaimed in astonishment.

"Certainly," replied Dr. Leete. "No historical authority nowadays
doubts that they were paid by the great monopolies to wave the red
flag and talk about burning, sacking, and blowing people up, in order,
by alarming the timid, to head off any real reforms. What astonishes
me most is that you should have fallen into the trap so
unsuspectingly."

"What are your grounds for believing that the red flag party was
subsidized?" I inquired.

"Why simply because they must have seen that their course made a
thousand enemies of their professed cause to one friend. Not to
suppose that they were hired for the work is to credit them with an
inconceivable folly.[4] In the United States, of all countries, no
party could intelligently expect to carry its point without first
winning over to its ideas a majority of the nation, as the national
party eventually did."

"The national party!" I exclaimed. "That must have arisen after my
day. I suppose it was one of the labor parties."

"Oh no!" replied the doctor. "The labor parties, as such, never could
have accomplished anything on a large or permanent scale. For purposes
of national scope, their basis as merely class organizations was too
narrow. It was not till a rearrangement of the industrial and social
system on a higher ethical basis, and for the more efficient
production of wealth, was recognized as the interest, not of one
class, but equally of all classes, of rich and poor, cultured and
ignorant, old and young, weak and strong, men and women, that there
was any prospect that it would be achieved. Then the national party
arose to carry it out by political methods. It probably took that name
because its aim was to nationalize the functions of production and
distribution. Indeed, it could not well have had any other name, for
its purpose was to realize the idea of the nation with a grandeur and
completeness never before conceived, not as an association of men for
certain merely political functions affecting their happiness only
remotely and superficially, but as a family, a vital union, a common
life, a mighty heaven-touching tree whose leaves are its people, fed
from its veins, and feeding it in turn. The most patriotic of all
possible parties, it sought to justify patriotism and raise it from
an instinct to a rational devotion, by making the native land truly a
father land, a father who kept the people alive and was not merely an
idol for which they were expected to die."

[Footnote 4: I fully admit the difficulty of accounting for the course
of the anarchists on any other theory than that they were subsidized
by the capitalists, but, at the same time, there is no doubt that the
theory is wholly erroneous. It certainly was not held at the time by
any one, though it may seem so obvious in the retrospect.]

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The next morning, Julian West tries to find Edith alone, but does not see her inside the house. He goes outside to find her and decides to visit the underground chamber again. He notices some newspapers from his time on a table and brings them up for Doctor Leete. At breakfast, he sees Edith, who blushes, but is otherwise calm. Doctor Leete reads aloud some of the articles of the paper, most of which are about labor strikes. Doctor Leete claims that the anarchists were paid by the capitalists in order to prevent progress from happening. Julian West notes that this is not true, but that the presumption makes sense because of the fact that no party could gain a hearing without getting a majority. Julian West wonders if there was eventually a Labor Party. Doctor Leete says the Labor Partys concerns were too narrow, but that another party, the National Party, came along and succeeded in including everyone: all classes, all education levels, men and women, old and young. Doctor Leete obviously feels a great debt to the National Partys progressive thinking.


prompt:
Chapter: The personality of Edith Leete had naturally impressed me strongly
ever since I had come, in so strange a manner, to be an inmate of her
father's house, and it was to be expected that after what had happened
the night previous, I should be more than ever preoccupied with
thoughts of her. From the first I had been struck with the air of
serene frankness and ingenuous directness, more like that of a noble
and innocent boy than any girl I had ever known, which characterized
her. I was curious to know how far this charming quality might be
peculiar to herself, and how far possibly a result of alterations in
the social position of women which might have taken place since my
time. Finding an opportunity that day, when alone with Dr. Leete, I
turned the conversation in that direction.

"I suppose," I said, "that women nowadays, having been relieved of the
burden of housework, have no employment but the cultivation of their
charms and graces."

"So far as we men are concerned," replied Dr. Leete, "we should
consider that they amply paid their way, to use one of your forms of
expression, if they confined themselves to that occupation, but you
may be very sure that they have quite too much spirit to consent to be
mere beneficiaries of society, even as a return for ornamenting it.
They did, indeed, welcome their riddance from housework, because that
was not only exceptionally wearing in itself, but also wasteful, in
the extreme, of energy, as compared with the cooperative plan; but
they accepted relief from that sort of work only that they might
contribute in other and more effectual, as well as more agreeable,
ways to the common weal. Our women, as well as our men, are members of
the industrial army, and leave it only when maternal duties claim
them. The result is that most women, at one time or another of their
lives, serve industrially some five or ten or fifteen years, while
those who have no children fill out the full term."

"A woman does not, then, necessarily leave the industrial service on
marriage?" I queried.

"No more than a man," replied the doctor. "Why on earth should she?
Married women have no housekeeping responsibilities now, you know, and
a husband is not a baby that he should be cared for."

"It was thought one of the most grievous features of our civilization
that we required so much toil from women," I said; "but it seems to me
you get more out of them than we did."

Dr. Leete laughed. "Indeed we do, just as we do out of our men. Yet
the women of this age are very happy, and those of the nineteenth
century, unless contemporary references greatly mislead us, were very
miserable. The reason that women nowadays are so much more efficient
co-laborers with the men, and at the same time are so happy, is that,
in regard to their work as well as men's, we follow the principle of
providing every one the kind of occupation he or she is best adapted
to. Women being inferior in strength to men, and further disqualified
industrially in special ways, the kinds of occupation reserved for
them, and the conditions under which they pursue them, have reference
to these facts. The heavier sorts of work are everywhere reserved for
men, the lighter occupations for women. Under no circumstances is a
woman permitted to follow any employment not perfectly adapted, both
as to kind and degree of labor, to her sex. Moreover, the hours of
women's work are considerably shorter than those of men's, more
frequent vacations are granted, and the most careful provision is made
for rest when needed. The men of this day so well appreciate that they
owe to the beauty and grace of women the chief zest of their lives and
their main incentive to effort, that they permit them to work at all
only because it is fully understood that a certain regular requirement
of labor, of a sort adapted to their powers, is well for body and
mind, during the period of maximum physical vigor. We believe that
the magnificent health which distinguishes our women from those of
your day, who seem to have been so generally sickly, is owing largely
to the fact that all alike are furnished with healthful and
inspiriting occupation."

"I understood you," I said, "that the women-workers belong to the army
of industry, but how can they be under the same system of ranking and
discipline with the men, when the conditions of their labor are so
different."

"They are under an entirely different discipline," replied Dr. Leete,
"and constitute rather an allied force than an integral part of the
army of the men. They have a woman general-in-chief and are under
exclusively feminine regime. This general, as also the higher
officers, is chosen by the body of women who have passed the time of
service, in correspondence with the manner in which the chiefs of the
masculine army and the President of the nation are elected. The
general of the women's army sits in the cabinet of the President and
has a veto on measures respecting women's work, pending appeals to
Congress. I should have said, in speaking of the judiciary, that we
have women on the bench, appointed by the general of the women, as
well as men. Causes in which both parties are women are determined by
women judges, and where a man and a woman are parties to a case, a
judge of either sex must consent to the verdict."

"Womanhood seems to be organized as a sort of _imperium in imperio_ in
your system," I said.

"To some extent," Dr. Leete replied; "but the inner _imperium_ is one
from which you will admit there is not likely to be much danger to the
nation. The lack of some such recognition of the distinct
individuality of the sexes was one of the innumerable defects of your
society. The passional attraction between men and women has too often
prevented a perception of the profound differences which make the
members of each sex in many things strange to the other, and capable
of sympathy only with their own. It is in giving full play to the
differences of sex rather than in seeking to obliterate them, as was
apparently the effort of some reformers in your day, that the
enjoyment of each by itself and the piquancy which each has for the
other, are alike enhanced. In your day there was no career for women
except in an unnatural rivalry with men. We have given them a world of
their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure
you they are very happy in it. It seems to us that women were more
than any other class the victims of your civilization. There is
something which, even at this distance of time, penetrates one with
pathos in the spectacle of their ennuied, undeveloped lives, stunted
at marriage, their narrow horizon, bounded so often, physically, by
the four walls of home, and morally by a petty circle of personal
interests. I speak now, not of the poorer classes, who were generally
worked to death, but also of the well-to-do and rich. From the great
sorrows, as well as the petty frets of life, they had no refuge in the
breezy outdoor world of human affairs, nor any interests save those of
the family. Such an existence would have softened men's brains or
driven them mad. All that is changed to-day. No woman is heard
nowadays wishing she were a man, nor parents desiring boy rather than
girl children. Our girls are as full of ambition for their careers as
our boys. Marriage, when it comes, does not mean incarceration for
them, nor does it separate them in any way from the larger interests
of society, the bustling life of the world. Only when maternity fills
a woman's mind with new interests does she withdraw from the world for
a time. Afterwards, and at any time, she may return to her place among
her comrades, nor need she ever lose touch with them. Women are a very
happy race nowadays, as compared with what they ever were before in
the world's history, and their power of giving happiness to men has
been of course increased in proportion."

"I should imagine it possible," I said, "that the interest which girls
take in their careers as members of the industrial army and candidates
for its distinctions might have an effect to deter them from
marriage."

Dr. Leete smiled. "Have no anxiety on that score, Mr. West," he
replied. "The Creator took very good care that whatever other
modifications the dispositions of men and women might with time take
on, their attraction for each other should remain constant. The mere
fact that in an age like yours, when the struggle for existence must
have left people little time for other thoughts, and the future was so
uncertain that to assume parental responsibilities must have often
seemed like a criminal risk, there was even then marrying and giving
in marriage, should be conclusive on this point. As for love nowadays,
one of our authors says that the vacuum left in the minds of men and
women by the absence of care for one's livelihood has been entirely
taken up by the tender passion. That, however, I beg you to believe,
is something of an exaggeration. For the rest, so far is marriage from
being an interference with a woman's career, that the higher positions
in the feminine army of industry are intrusted only to women who have
been both wives and mothers, as they alone fully represent their sex."

"Are credit cards issued to the women just as to the men?"

"Certainly."

"The credits of the women, I suppose, are for smaller sums, owing to
the frequent suspension of their labor on account of family
responsibilities."

"Smaller!" exclaimed Dr. Leete, "oh, no! The maintenance of all our
people is the same. There are no exceptions to that rule, but if any
difference were made on account of the interruptions you speak of, it
would be by making the woman's credit larger, not smaller. Can you
think of any service constituting a stronger claim on the nation's
gratitude than bearing and nursing the nation's children? According to
our view, none deserve so well of the world as good parents. There is
no task so unselfish, so necessarily without return, though the heart
is well rewarded, as the nurture of the children who are to make the
world for one another when we are gone."

"It would seem to follow, from what you have said, that wives are in
no way dependent on their husbands for maintenance."

"Of course they are not," replied Dr. Leete, "nor children on their
parents either, that is, for means of support, though of course they
are for the offices of affection. The child's labor, when he grows up,
will go to increase the common stock, not his parents', who will be
dead, and therefore he is properly nurtured out of the common stock.
The account of every person, man, woman, and child, you must
understand, is always with the nation directly, and never through any
intermediary, except, of course, that parents, to a certain extent,
act for children as their guardians. You see that it is by virtue of
the relation of individuals to the nation, of their membership in it,
that they are entitled to support; and this title is in no way
connected with or affected by their relations to other individuals who
are fellow members of the nation with them. That any person should be
dependent for the means of support upon another would be shocking to
the moral sense as well as indefensible on any rational social theory.
What would become of personal liberty and dignity under such an
arrangement? I am aware that you called yourselves free in the
nineteenth century. The meaning of the word could not then, however,
have been at all what it is at present, or you certainly would not
have applied it to a society of which nearly every member was in a
position of galling personal dependence upon others as to the very
means of life, the poor upon the rich, or employed upon employer,
women upon men, children upon parents. Instead of distributing the
product of the nation directly to its members, which would seem the
most natural and obvious method, it would actually appear that you had
given your minds to devising a plan of hand to hand distribution,
involving the maximum of personal humiliation to all classes of
recipients.

"As regards the dependence of women upon men for support, which then
was usual, of course, natural attraction in case of marriages of love
must often have made it endurable, though for spirited women I should
fancy it must always have remained humiliating. What, then, must it
have been in the innumerable cases where women, with or without the
form of marriage, had to sell themselves to men to get their living?
Even your contemporaries, callous as they were to most of the
revolting aspects of their society, seem to have had an idea that this
was not quite as it should be; but, it was still only for pity's sake
that they deplored the lot of the women. It did not occur to them that
it was robbery as well as cruelty when men seized for themselves the
whole product of the world and left women to beg and wheedle for their
share. Why--but bless me, Mr. West, I am really running on at a
remarkable rate, just as if the robbery, the sorrow, and the shame
which those poor women endured were not over a century since, or as if
you were responsible for what you no doubt deplored as much as I do."

"I must bear my share of responsibility for the world as it then was,"
I replied. "All I can say in extenuation is that until the nation was
ripe for the present system of organized production and distribution,
no radical improvement in the position of woman was possible. The root
of her disability, as you say, was her personal dependence upon man
for her livelihood, and I can imagine no other mode of social
organization than that you have adopted, which would have set woman
free of man at the same time that it set men free of one another. I
suppose, by the way, that so entire a change in the position of women
cannot have taken place without affecting in marked ways the social
relations of the sexes. That will be a very interesting study for me."

"The change you will observe," said Dr. Leete, "will chiefly be, I
think, the entire frankness and unconstraint which now characterizes
those relations, as compared with the artificiality which seems to
have marked them in your time. The sexes now meet with the ease of
perfect equals, suitors to each other for nothing but love. In your
time the fact that women were dependent for support on men made the
woman in reality the one chiefly benefited by marriage. This fact, so
far as we can judge from contemporary records, appears to have been
coarsely enough recognized among the lower classes, while among the
more polished it was glossed over by a system of elaborate
conventionalities which aimed to carry the precisely opposite meaning,
namely, that the man was the party chiefly benefited. To keep up this
convention it was essential that he should always seem the suitor.
Nothing was therefore considered more shocking to the proprieties than
that a woman should betray a fondness for a man before he had
indicated a desire to marry her. Why, we actually have in our
libraries books, by authors of your day, written for no other purpose
than to discuss the question whether, under any conceivable
circumstances, a woman might, without discredit to her sex, reveal an
unsolicited love. All this seems exquisitely absurd to us, and yet we
know that, given your circumstances, the problem might have a serious
side. When for a woman to proffer her love to a man was in effect to
invite him to assume the burden of her support, it is easy to see that
pride and delicacy might well have checked the promptings of the
heart. When you go out into our society, Mr. West, you must be
prepared to be often cross-questioned on this point by our young
people, who are naturally much interested in this aspect of
old-fashioned manners".[5]

"And so the girls of the twentieth century tell their love."

"If they choose," replied Dr. Leete. "There is no more pretense of a
concealment of feeling on their part than on the part of their lovers.
Coquetry would be as much despised in a girl as in a man. Affected
coldness, which in your day rarely deceived a lover, would deceive him
wholly now, for no one thinks of practicing it."

"One result which must follow from the independence of women I can see
for myself," I said. "There can be no marriages now except those of
inclination."

"That is a matter of course," replied Dr. Leete.

"Think of a world in which there are nothing but matches of pure love!
Ah me, Dr. Leete, how far you are from being able to understand what
an astonishing phenomenon such a world seems to a man of the
nineteenth century!"

"I can, however, to some extent, imagine it," replied the doctor. "But
the fact you celebrate, that there are nothing but love matches, means
even more, perhaps, than you probably at first realize. It means that
for the first time in human history the principle of sexual selection,
with its tendency to preserve and transmit the better types of the
race, and let the inferior types drop out, has unhindered operation.
The necessities of poverty, the need of having a home, no longer tempt
women to accept as the fathers of their children men whom they neither
can love nor respect. Wealth and rank no longer divert attention from
personal qualities. Gold no longer 'gilds the straitened forehead of
the fool.' The gifts of person, mind, and disposition; beauty, wit,
eloquence, kindness, generosity, geniality, courage, are sure of
transmission to posterity. Every generation is sifted through a little
finer mesh than the last. The attributes that human nature admires are
preserved, those that repel it are left behind. There are, of course,
a great many women who with love must mingle admiration, and seek to
wed greatly, but these not the less obey the same law, for to wed
greatly now is not to marry men of fortune or title, but those who
have risen above their fellows by the solidity or brilliance of their
services to humanity. These form nowadays the only aristocracy with
which alliance is distinction.

"You were speaking, a day or two ago, of the physical superiority of
our people to your contemporaries. Perhaps more important than any of
the causes I mentioned then as tending to race purification has been
the effect of untrammeled sexual selection upon the quality of two or
three successive generations. I believe that when you have made a
fuller study of our people you will find in them not only a physical,
but a mental and moral improvement. It would be strange if it were not
so, for not only is one of the great laws of nature now freely working
out the salvation of the race, but a profound moral sentiment has come
to its support. Individualism, which in your day was the animating
idea of society, not only was fatal to any vital sentiment of
brotherhood and common interest among living men, but equally to any
realization of the responsibility of the living for the generation to
follow. To-day this sense of responsibility, practically unrecognized
in all previous ages, has become one of the great ethical ideas of the
race, reinforcing, with an intense conviction of duty, the natural
impulse to seek in marriage the best and noblest of the other sex. The
result is, that not all the encouragements and incentives of every
sort which we have provided to develop industry, talent, genius,
excellence of whatever kind, are comparable in their effect on our
young men with the fact that our women sit aloft as judges of the
race and reserve themselves to reward the winners. Of all the whips,
and spurs, and baits, and prizes, there is none like the thought of
the radiant faces which the laggards will find averted.

"Celibates nowadays are almost invariably men who have failed to
acquit themselves creditably in the work of life. The woman must be a
courageous one, with a very evil sort of courage, too, whom pity for
one of these unfortunates should lead to defy the opinion of her
generation--for otherwise she is free--so far as to accept him for a
husband. I should add that, more exacting and difficult to resist than
any other element in that opinion, she would find the sentiment of her
own sex. Our women have risen to the full height of their
responsibility as the wardens of the world to come, to whose keeping
the keys of the future are confided. Their feeling of duty in this
respect amounts to a sense of religious consecration. It is a cult in
which they educate their daughters from childhood."

After going to my room that night, I sat up late to read a romance of
Berrian, handed me by Dr. Leete, the plot of which turned on a
situation suggested by his last words, concerning the modern view of
parental responsibility. A similar situation would almost certainly
have been treated by a nineteenth century romancist so as to excite
the morbid sympathy of the reader with the sentimental selfishness of
the lovers, and his resentment toward the unwritten law which they
outraged. I need not describe--for who has not read "Ruth Elton?"--how
different is the course which Berrian takes, and with what tremendous
effect he enforces the principle which he states: "Over the unborn our
power is that of God, and our responsibility like His toward us. As we
acquit ourselves toward them, so let Him deal with us."

[Footnote 5: I may say that Dr. Leete's warning has been fully
justified by my experience. The amount and intensity of amusement
which the young people of this day, and the young women especially,
are able to extract from what they are pleased to call the oddities of
courtship in the nineteenth century, appear unlimited.]

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Julian West has become so impressed with Edith Leete that his curiosity about womens position in the new society is finally aroused. He finds her more like a noble and innocent boy than any girl ever known. He broaches the topic with Doctor Leete by stating that women must have no other occupation nowadays, aside from the cultivation of charm and beauty. Doctor Leete corrects him. Women are members of the industrial army but they have shorter terms: five to fifteen years. They do not leave it when they get married. Women work shorter hours than men and have more frequent vacations. Men permit women to work because they know work is good for women both physically and mentally. Julian West objects that women cannot be under the same discipline and ranking as men. Doctor Leete assures him that they are not. Women have their own general-in-chief. The womens chief sits on the Presidents cabinet and has veto power over any legislation that has to do with women. Women also serve as judges. If a woman is tried, her judge will be a woman. Doctor Leete argues that the twentieth century reformers went wrong in theorizing that women and men should be treated the same. He finds profound differences between the genders. He is horrified that the nineteenth century provided no employment to women except that in unnatural rivalry with men. He adds that men have given women a world of their own and that women are happy in it. He compares the happy women of the twentieth century to the sickly and unhappy women of the nineteenth century. He notes that in this time, women marry out of love, not out of economic necessity, and they are therefore more capable of making men happy. Julian West wonders if careers keep women from marrying. Doctor Leete assures him that women still like to marry. In fact, only women who have been married and have had children are allowed to enter the higher positions in the industrial army. Doctor Leete also notes that women are issued credit cards of the same amount as anyone else. Women are not dependent on their husbands, and children are not dependent on their parents for financial support. All individuals receive support directly from the state, not through any intermediary. He exclaims over the lack of dignity and humanity of the old system that made people rely on their relations to survive. Julian West admits to being complicit in the nineteenth-century subjection of women. However, he then adds that the condition of women could not have been improved until the general economy was improved. To change womens economic dependence on men, the state had to change the mode of social organization. Doctor Leete tells him that the change in the relations between women and men has been significant, especially in courtship. Now there is no guile or coquetry. Doctor Leete goes on to explain that since there are no economic constraints on marriage choices, the principle of natural selection is in place and the species has improved both mentally and physically.