prompt:
Chapter: The questions which I needed to ask before I could acquire even an
outline acquaintance with the institutions of the twentieth century
being endless, and Dr. Leete's good-nature appearing equally so, we
sat up talking for several hours after the ladies left us. Reminding
my host of the point at which our talk had broken off that morning, I
expressed my curiosity to learn how the organization of the industrial
army was made to afford a sufficient stimulus to diligence in the lack
of any anxiety on the worker's part as to his livelihood.

"You must understand in the first place," replied the doctor, "that
the supply of incentives to effort is but one of the objects sought in
the organization we have adopted for the army. The other, and equally
important, is to secure for the file-leaders and captains of the
force, and the great officers of the nation, men of proven abilities,
who are pledged by their own careers to hold their followers up to
their highest standard of performance and permit no lagging. With a
view to these two ends the industrial army is organized. First comes
the unclassified grade of common laborers, men of all work, to which
all recruits during their first three years belong. This grade is a
sort of school, and a very strict one, in which the young men are
taught habits of obedience, subordination, and devotion to duty. While
the miscellaneous nature of the work done by this force prevents the
systematic grading of the workers which is afterwards possible, yet
individual records are kept, and excellence receives distinction
corresponding with the penalties that negligence incurs. It is not,
however, policy with us to permit youthful recklessness or
indiscretion, when not deeply culpable, to handicap the future careers
of young men, and all who have passed through the unclassified grade
without serious disgrace have an equal opportunity to choose the life
employment they have most liking for. Having selected this, they enter
upon it as apprentices. The length of the apprenticeship naturally
differs in different occupations. At the end of it the apprentice
becomes a full workman, and a member of his trade or guild. Now not
only are the individual records of the apprentices for ability and
industry strictly kept, and excellence distinguished by suitable
distinctions, but upon the average of his record during apprenticeship
the standing given the apprentice among the full workmen depends.

"While the internal organizations of different 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. According to his standing as
an apprentice a young man is assigned his place as a first, second, or
third grade worker. Of course only young men of unusual ability pass
directly from apprenticeship into the first grade of the workers. The
most fall into the lower grades, working up as they grow more
experienced, at the periodical regradings. These regradings take place
in each industry at intervals corresponding with the length of the
apprenticeship to that industry, so that merit never need wait long to
rise, nor can any rest on past achievements unless they would drop
into a lower rank. One of the notable advantages of a high grading is
the privilege it gives the worker in electing which of the various
branches or processes of his industry he will follow as his specialty.
Of course it is not intended that any of these processes shall be
disproportionately arduous, but there is often much difference between
them, and the privilege of election is accordingly highly prized. So
far as possible, indeed, the preferences even of the poorest workmen
are considered in assigning them their line of work, because not only
their happiness but their usefulness is thus enhanced. 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
have been provided for, and often he has to put up with second or
third choice, or even with an arbitrary assignment when help is
needed. This privilege of election attends every regrading, and when a
man loses his grade he also risks having to exchange the sort of work
he likes for some other less to his taste. The results of each
regrading, giving the standing of every man in his industry, are
gazetted in the public prints, and those who have won promotion since
the last regrading receive the nation's thanks and are publicly
invested with the badge of their new rank."

"What may this badge be?" I asked.

"Every industry has its emblematic device," replied Dr. Leete, "and
this, in the shape of a metallic badge so small that you might not see
it unless you knew where to look, is all the insignia which the men of
the army wear, except where public convenience demands a distinctive
uniform. This badge is the same in form for all grades of industry,
but while the badge of the third grade is iron, that of the second
grade is silver, and that of the first is gilt.

"Apart from the grand incentive to endeavor afforded by the fact that
the high places in the nation are open only to the highest class men,
and that rank in the army constitutes the only mode of social
distinction for the vast majority who are not aspirants in art,
literature, and the professions, various incitements of a minor, but
perhaps equally effective, sort are provided in the form of special
privileges and immunities in the way of discipline, which the superior
class men enjoy. These, while intended to be as little as possible
invidious to the less successful, have the effect of keeping
constantly before every man's mind the great desirability of attaining
the grade next above his own.

"It is obviously important that not only the good but also the
indifferent and poor workmen should be able to cherish the ambition of
rising. Indeed, the number of the latter being so much greater, it is
even more essential that the ranking system should not operate to
discourage them than that it should stimulate the others. It is to
this end that the grades are divided into classes. The grades as well
as the classes being made numerically equal at each regrading, there
is not at any time, counting out the officers and the unclassified and
apprentice grades, over one-ninth of the industrial army in the lowest
class, and most of this number are recent apprentices, all of whom
expect to rise. Those who remain during the entire term of service in
the lowest class are but a trifling fraction of the industrial army,
and likely to be as deficient in sensibility to their position as in
ability to better it.

"It is not even necessary that a worker should win promotion to a
higher grade to have at least a taste of glory. While promotion
requires a general excellence of record as a worker, honorable
mention and various sorts of prizes are awarded for excellence less
than sufficient for promotion, and also for special feats and single
performances in the various industries. There are many minor
distinctions of standing, not only within the grades but within the
classes, each of which acts as a spur to the efforts of a group. It is
intended that no form of merit shall wholly fail of recognition.

"As for actual neglect of work, positively bad work, or other overt
remissness on the part of men incapable of generous motives, the
discipline of the industrial army is far too strict to allow anything
whatever of the sort. A man able to do duty, and persistently
refusing, is sentenced to solitary imprisonment on bread and water
till he consents.

"The lowest grade of the officers of the industrial army, that of
assistant foremen or lieutenants, is appointed out of men who have
held their place for two years in the first class of the first grade.
Where this leaves too large a range of choice, only the first group of
this class are eligible. No one thus comes to the point of commanding
men until he is about thirty years old. After a man becomes an
officer, his rating of course no longer depends on the efficiency of
his own work, but on that of his men. The foremen are appointed from
among the assistant foremen, by the same exercise of discretion
limited to a small eligible class. In the appointments to the still
higher grades another principle is introduced, which it would take
too much time to explain now.

"Of course such a system of grading as I have described would have
been impracticable applied to the small industrial concerns of your
day, in some of which there were hardly enough employees to have left
one apiece for the classes. You must remember that, under the national
organization of labor, all industries are carried on by great bodies
of men, many of your farms or shops being combined as one. It is also
owing solely to the vast scale on which each industry is organized,
with coordinate establishments in every part of the country, that we
are able by exchanges and transfers to fit every man so nearly with
the sort of work he can do best.

"And now, Mr. West, I will leave it to you, on the bare outline of its
features which I have given, if those who need special incentives to
do their best are likely to lack them under our system. Does it not
seem to you that men who found themselves obliged, whether they wished
or not, to work, would under such a system be strongly impelled to do
their best?"

I replied that it seemed to me the incentives offered were, if any
objection were to be made, too strong; that the pace set for the young
men was too hot; and such, indeed, I would add with deference, still
remains my opinion, now that by longer residence among you I have
become better acquainted with the whole subject.

Dr. Leete, however, desired me to reflect, and I am ready to say that
it is perhaps a sufficient reply to my objection, that the worker's
livelihood is in no way dependent on his ranking, and anxiety for that
never embitters his disappointments; that the working hours are short,
the vacations regular, and that all emulation ceases at forty-five,
with the attainment of middle life.

"There are two or three other points I ought to refer to," he added,
"to prevent your getting mistaken impressions. In the first place, you
must understand that this system of preferment given the more
efficient workers over the less so, in no way contravenes the
fundamental idea of our social system, that all who do their best are
equally deserving, whether that best be great or small. I have shown
that the system is arranged to encourage the weaker as well as the
stronger with the hope of rising, while the fact that the stronger are
selected for the leaders is in no way a reflection upon the weaker,
but in the interest of the common weal.

"Do not imagine, either, because emulation is given free play as an
incentive under our system, that we deem it a motive likely to appeal
to the nobler sort of men, or worthy of them. Such as these find their
motives within, not without, and measure their duty by their own
endowments, not by those of others. So long as their achievement is
proportioned to their powers, they would consider it preposterous to
expect praise or blame because it chanced to be great or small. To
such natures emulation appears philosophically absurd, and despicable
in a moral aspect by its substitution of envy for admiration, and
exultation for regret, in one's attitude toward the successes and the
failures of others.

"But all men, even in the last year of the twentieth century, are not
of this high order, and the incentives to endeavor requisite for those
who are not must be of a sort adapted to their inferior natures. For
these, then, emulation of the keenest edge is provided as a constant
spur. Those who need this motive will feel it. Those who are above its
influence do not need it.

"I should not fail to mention," resumed the doctor, "that for those
too deficient in mental or bodily strength to be fairly graded with
the main body of workers, we have a separate grade, unconnected with
the others,--a sort of invalid corps, the members of which are
provided with a light class of tasks fitted to their strength. All our
sick in mind and body, all our deaf and dumb, and lame and blind and
crippled, and even our insane, belong to this invalid corps, and bear
its insignia. The strongest often do nearly a man's work, the
feeblest, of course, nothing; but none who can do anything are willing
quite to give up. In their lucid intervals, even our insane are eager
to do what they can."

"That is a pretty idea of the invalid corps," I said. "Even a
barbarian from the nineteenth century can appreciate that. It is a
very graceful way of disguising charity, and must be grateful to the
feelings of its recipients."

"Charity!" repeated Dr. Leete. "Did you suppose that we consider the
incapable class we are talking of objects of charity?"

"Why, naturally," I said, "inasmuch as they are incapable of
self-support."

But here the doctor took me up quickly.

"Who is capable of self-support?" he demanded. "There is no such thing
in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of society so
barbarous as not even to know family cooperation, each individual may
possibly support himself, though even then for a part of his life
only; but from the moment that men begin to live together, and
constitute even the rudest sort of society, self-support becomes
impossible. As men grow more civilized, and the subdivision of
occupations and services is carried out, a complex mutual dependence
becomes the universal rule. Every man, however solitary may seem his
occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as
the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence
should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support; and that it did
not in your day constituted the essential cruelty and unreason of your
system."

"That may all be so," I replied, "but it does not touch the case of
those who are unable to contribute anything to the product of
industry."

"Surely I told you this morning, at least I thought I did," replied
Dr. Leete, "that the right of a man to maintenance at the nation's
table depends on the fact that he is a man, and not on the amount of
health and strength he may have, so long as he does his best."

"You said so," I answered, "but I supposed the rule applied only to
the workers of different ability. Does it also hold of those who can
do nothing at all?"

"Are they not also men?"

"I am to understand, then, that the lame, the blind, the sick, and the
impotent, are as well off as the most efficient, and have the same
income?"

"Certainly," was the reply.

"The idea of charity on such a scale," I answered, "would have made
our most enthusiastic philanthropists gasp."

"If you had a sick brother at home," replied Dr. Leete, "unable to
work, would you feed him on less dainty food, and lodge and clothe him
more poorly, than yourself? More likely far, you would give him the
preference; nor would you think of calling it charity. Would not the
word, in that connection, fill you with indignation?"

"Of course," I replied; "but the cases are not parallel. There is a
sense, no doubt, in which all men are brothers; but this general sort
of brotherhood is not to be compared, except for rhetorical purposes,
to the brotherhood of blood, either as to its sentiment or its
obligations."

"There speaks the nineteenth century!" exclaimed Dr. Leete. "Ah, Mr.
West, there is no doubt as to the length of time that you slept. If I
were to give you, in one sentence, a key to what may seem the
mysteries of our civilization as compared with that of your age, I
should say that it is the fact that the solidarity of the race and the
brotherhood of man, which to you were but fine phrases, are, to our
thinking and feeling, ties as real and as vital as physical
fraternity.

"But even setting that consideration aside, I do not see why it so
surprises you that those who cannot work are conceded the full right
to live on the produce of those who can. Even in your day, the duty of
military service for the protection of the nation, to which our
industrial service corresponds, while obligatory on those able to
discharge it, did not operate to deprive of the privileges of
citizenship those who were unable. They stayed at home, and were
protected by those who fought, and nobody questioned their right to
be, or thought less of them. So, now, the requirement of industrial
service from those able to render it does not operate to deprive of
the privileges of citizenship, which now implies the citizen's
maintenance, him who cannot work. The worker is not a citizen because
he works, but works because he is a citizen. As you recognize the duty
of the strong to fight for the weak, we, now that fighting is gone by,
recognize his duty to work for him.

"A solution which leaves an unaccounted-for residuum is no solution at
all; and our solution of the problem of human society would have been
none at all had it left the lame, the sick, and the blind outside with
the beasts, to fare as they might. Better far have left the strong and
well unprovided for than these burdened ones, toward whom every heart
must yearn, and for whom ease of mind and body should be provided, if
for no others. Therefore it is, as I told you this morning, that the
title of every man, woman, and child to the means of existence rests
on no basis less plain, broad, and simple than the fact that they are
fellows of one race--members of one human family. The only coin
current is the image of God, and that is good for all we have.

"I think there is no feature of the civilization of your epoch so
repugnant to modern ideas as the neglect with which you treated your
dependent classes. Even if you had no pity, no feeling of brotherhood,
how was it that you did not see that you were robbing the incapable
class of their plain right in leaving them unprovided for?"

"I don't quite follow you there," I said. "I admit the claim of this
class to our pity, but how could they who produced nothing claim a
share of the product as a right?"

"How happened it," was Dr. Leete's reply, "that your workers were able
to produce more than so many savages would have done? Was it not
wholly on account of the heritage of the past knowledge and
achievements of the race, the machinery of society, thousands of years
in contriving, found by you ready-made to your hand? How did you come
to be possessors of this knowledge and this machinery, which represent
nine parts to one contributed by yourself in the value of your
product? You inherited it, did you not? And were not these others,
these unfortunate and crippled brothers whom you cast out, joint
inheritors, co-heirs with you? What did you do with their share? Did
you not rob them when you put them off with crusts, who were entitled
to sit with the heirs, and did you not add insult to robbery when you
called the crusts charity?

"Ah, Mr. West," Dr. Leete continued, as I did not respond, "what I do
not understand is, setting aside all considerations either of justice
or brotherly feeling toward the crippled and defective, how the
workers of your day could have had any heart for their work, knowing
that their children, or grand-children, if unfortunate, would be
deprived of the comforts and even necessities of life. It is a mystery
how men with children could favor a system under which they were
rewarded beyond those less endowed with bodily strength or mental
power. For, by the same discrimination by which the father profited,
the son, for whom he would give his life, being perchance weaker than
others, might be reduced to crusts and beggary. How men dared leave
children behind them, I have never been able to understand."

    NOTE.--Although in his talk on the previous evening Dr. Leete
    had emphasized the pains taken to enable every man to
    ascertain and follow his natural bent in choosing an
    occupation, it was not till I learned that the worker's
    income is the same in all occupations that I realized how
    absolutely he may be counted on to do so, and thus, by
    selecting the harness which sets most lightly on himself,
    find that in which he can pull best. The failure of my age in
    any systematic or effective way to develop and utilize the
    natural aptitudes of men for the industries and intellectual
    avocations was one of the great wastes, as well as one of the
    most common causes of unhappiness in that time. The vast
    majority of my contemporaries, though nominally free to do
    so, never really chose their occupations at all, but were
    forced by circumstances into work for which they were
    relatively inefficient, because not naturally fitted for it.
    The rich, in this respect, had little advantage over the
    poor. The latter, indeed, being generally deprived of
    education, had no opportunity even to ascertain the natural
    aptitudes they might have, and on account of their poverty
    were unable to develop them by cultivation even when
    ascertained. The liberal and technical professions, except by
    favorable accident, were shut to them, to their own great
    loss and that of the nation. On the other hand, the
    well-to-do, although they could command education and
    opportunity, were scarcely less hampered by social prejudice,
    which forbade them to pursue manual avocations, even when
    adapted to them, and destined them, whether fit or unfit, to
    the professions, thus wasting many an excellent
    handicraftsman. Mercenary considerations, tempting men to
    pursue money-making occupations for which they were unfit,
    instead of less remunerative employments for which they were
    fit, were responsible for another vast perversion of talent.
    All these things now are changed. Equal education and
    opportunity must needs bring to light whatever aptitudes a
    man has, and neither social prejudices nor mercenary
    considerations hamper him in the choice of his life work.

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

completion: Julian Wests next questions center around the notion of incentives to work. As usual, after the women leave, he and Doctor Leete continue their conversation. The doctor describes the organization of men at work as an army with several grades of rank achieved by merit. The most superior men are the captains of the force, and they keep the men under their charge from lagging. The first grade is that of common workers. It is like a school where young men are taught habits of obedience, subordination, and devotion to duty. Records are kept on each man. Each industry is divided into first, second and third grades, and often these grades are subdivided into first and second classes. The advantage of achieving a high grade is the privilege of election; that is, each man gets to join the trade of his first choice. The lowest grade men often must go with their second or third choice of a trade. Those who receive promotion receive the nations thanks, and their names are printed in the newspaper. They get a badge of their new rank. These badges are graded also: grade one is gilt, grade two is silver, and grade three is iron. Aside from the incentive of the high ranks, these men also enjoy special privileges and immunities from discipline. It is also regarded as very important that the majority of men, even those of lesser abilities, aspire to rise in rank. Many ways of recognizing merit are therefore devised. In the case of a person who is able to work and refuses, he is sentenced to solitary confinement on bread and water until he changes his mind. Doctor Leete asks Julian West if he now understands that incentive is provided in this new system without the idea of varying wages. Julian West thinks the incentives are too strong. He tells his readers, in fact, that he still thinks so after having learned many things about this system. Doctor Leete explains that there is so much leisure in the life of a worker, that the pace is never too much for him. He also reminds Julian West about the fundamental precept that all who do their best are equally deserving, whether the best be great or small. Doctor Leete then explains that there is a separate corps for those who are infirm, called the invalid corps. All those who are physically, mentally, or emotionally handicapped are assigned to duties that fit their abilities. When Julian West calls this admirable charity, since they are incapable of self-support, Doctor Leete objects to the term. He asserts that no one in an advanced civilization is capable of self-support. The whole system operates on a complex mutual dependence within which the tasks are specialized. He adds that the fact that the nineteenth century did not recognize this constituted its essential cruelty and unreason. Julian West continues to object on the basis that such people (the invalid corps) do not produce anything. Doctor Leete reiterates the point that all people have a right to be maintained by virtue of their humanity, not according to their abilities. Julian West is astounded that the handicapped receive the same income as the others. Doctor Leete draws the analogy of taking care of a sick brother. Instead of feeding and clothing him with lesser care, people would be more likely to give him even better care than the norm. Julian West again objects, saying that the analogy is not sound because a brother is not the same as a fellow citizen. Doctor Leete tells him that it is in this kind of thinking that Julian West shows himself to be of the nineteenth century. He adds that the solidarity of the race is the same as physical kinship in this twentieth-century society. For Doctor Leete, if a solution leaves a group of people unaccounted for, it is not really a solution. Doctor Leete explains his logic in another way. He says that the advances that led to the industrial revolution were a long time in the making. They had been produced by previous generations and were therefore like an inheritance for the nineteenth century. When the able-bodied took this inheritance and kept it to themselves, leaving nothing for the sickly, they were stealing the birthright of their fellow citizens. Julian West is unable to reply to this idea. Doctor Leete sighs, saying he can never understand what motivated the workers of the nineteenth century to work, since it was so clear that their children could easily be cast outside and starved. Julian West adds a note to this chapter on the idea of giving everyone an opportunity to choose the field that best suits his abilities and inclinations. He notes that this was one of the great wastes of his own age. Most people of the nineteenth century were forced by circumstances to enter a trade and were never given a choice in the matter. Even the wealthy were kept from finding work that suited their natural aptitude, because class prejudice ruled out certain crafts and labor. With the habit of forcing people to do things they did not like based on the incentive of money alone, most people chose a trade that did not suit their abilities and were therefore not very productive.


prompt:
Chapter: As Edith had promised he should do, Dr. Leete accompanied me to my
bedroom when I retired, to instruct me as to the adjustment of the
musical telephone. He showed how, by turning a screw, the volume of
the music could be made to fill the room, or die away to an echo so
faint and far that one could scarcely be sure whether he heard or
imagined it. If, of two persons side by side, one desired to listen to
music and the other to sleep, it could be made audible to one and
inaudible to another.

"I should strongly advise you to sleep if you can to-night, Mr. West,
in preference to listening to the finest tunes in the world," the
doctor said, after explaining these points. "In the trying experience
you are just now passing through, sleep is a nerve tonic for which
there is no substitute."

Mindful of what had happened to me that very morning, I promised to
heed his counsel.

"Very well," he said, "then I will set the telephone at eight
o'clock."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He explained that, by a clock-work combination, a person could arrange
to be awakened at any hour by the music.

It began to appear, as has since fully proved to be the case, that I
had left my tendency to insomnia behind me with the other discomforts
of existence in the nineteenth century; for though I took no sleeping
draught this time, yet, as the night before, I had no sooner touched
the pillow than I was asleep.

I dreamed that I sat on the throne of the Abencerrages in the
banqueting hall of the Alhambra, feasting my lords and generals, who
next day were to follow the crescent against the Christian dogs of
Spain. The air, cooled by the spray of fountains, was heavy with the
scent of flowers. A band of Nautch girls, round-limbed and
luscious-lipped, danced with voluptuous grace to the music of brazen
and stringed instruments. Looking up to the latticed galleries, one
caught a gleam now and then from the eye of some beauty of the royal
harem, looking down upon the assembled flower of Moorish chivalry.
Louder and louder clashed the cymbals, wilder and wilder grew the
strain, till the blood of the desert race could no longer resist the
martial delirium, and the swart nobles leaped to their feet; a
thousand scimitars were bared, and the cry, "Allah il Allah!" shook
the hall and awoke me, to find it broad daylight, and the room
tingling with the electric music of the "Turkish Reveille."

At the breakfast-table, when I told my host of my morning's
experience, I learned that it was not a mere chance that the piece of
music which awakened me was a reveille. The airs played at one of the
halls during the waking hours of the morning were always of an
inspiring type.

"By the way," I said, "I have not thought to ask you anything about
the state of Europe. Have the societies of the Old World also been
remodeled?"

"Yes," replied Dr. Leete, "the great nations of Europe as well as
Australia, Mexico, and parts of South America, are now organized
industrially like the United States, which was the pioneer of the
evolution. The peaceful relations of these nations are assured by a
loose form of federal union of world-wide extent. An international
council regulates the mutual intercourse and commerce of the members
of the union and their joint policy toward the more backward races,
which are gradually being educated up to civilized institutions.
Complete autonomy within its own limits is enjoyed by every nation."

"How do you carry on commerce without money?" I said. "In trading with
other nations, you must use some sort of money, although you dispense
with it in the internal affairs of the nation."

"Oh, no; money is as superfluous in our foreign as in our internal
relations. When foreign commerce was conducted by private enterprise,
money was necessary to adjust it on account of the multifarious
complexity of the transactions; but nowadays it is a function of the
nations as units. There are thus only a dozen or so merchants in the
world, and their business being supervised by the international
council, a simple system of book accounts serves perfectly to regulate
their dealings. Customs duties of every sort are of course
superfluous. A nation simply does not import what its government does
not think requisite for the general interest. Each nation has a bureau
of foreign exchange, which manages its trading. For example, the
American bureau, estimating such and such quantities of French goods
necessary to America for a given year, sends the order to the French
bureau, which in turn sends its order to our bureau. The same is done
mutually by all the nations."

"But how are the prices of foreign goods settled, since there is no
competition?"

"The price at which one nation supplies another with goods," replied
Dr. Leete, "must be that at which it supplies its own citizens. So you
see there is no danger of misunderstanding. Of course no nation is
theoretically bound to supply another with the product of its own
labor, but it is for the interest of all to exchange some commodities.
If a nation is regularly supplying another with certain goods, notice
is required from either side of any important change in the relation."

"But what if a nation, having a monopoly of some natural product,
should refuse to supply it to the others, or to one of them?"

"Such a case has never occurred, and could not without doing the
refusing party vastly more harm than the others," replied Dr. Leete.
"In the first place, no favoritism could be legally shown. The law
requires that each nation shall deal with the others, in all respects,
on exactly the same footing. Such a course as you suggest would cut
off the nation adopting it from the remainder of the earth for all
purposes whatever. The contingency is one that need not give us much
anxiety."

"But," said I, "supposing a nation, having a natural monopoly in some
product of which it exports more than it consumes, should put the
price away up, and thus, without cutting off the supply, make a profit
out of its neighbors' necessities? Its own citizens would of course
have to pay the higher price on that commodity, but as a body would
make more out of foreigners than they would be out of pocket
themselves."

"When you come to know how prices of all commodities are determined
nowadays, you will perceive how impossible it is that they could be
altered, except with reference to the amount or arduousness of the
work required respectively to produce them," was Dr. Leete's reply.
"This principle is an international as well as a national guarantee;
but even without it the sense of community of interest, international
as well as national, and the conviction of the folly of selfishness,
are too deep nowadays to render possible such a piece of sharp
practice as you apprehend. You must understand that we all look
forward to an eventual unification of the world as one nation. That,
no doubt, will be the ultimate form of society, and will realize
certain economic advantages over the present federal system of
autonomous nations. Meanwhile, however, the present system works so
nearly perfectly that we are quite content to leave to posterity the
completion of the scheme. There are, indeed, some who hold that it
never will be completed, on the ground that the federal plan is not
merely a provisional solution of the problem of human society, but the
best ultimate solution."

"How do you manage," I asked, "when the books of any two nations do
not balance? Supposing we import more from France than we export to
her."

"At the end of each year," replied the doctor, "the books of every
nation are examined. If France is found in our debt, probably we are
in the debt of some nation which owes France, and so on with all the
nations. The balances that remain after the accounts have been cleared
by the international council should not be large under our system.
Whatever they may be, the council requires them to be settled every
few years, and may require their settlement at any time if they are
getting too large; for it is not intended that any nation shall run
largely in debt to another, lest feelings unfavorable to amity should
be engendered. To guard further against this, the international
council inspects the commodities interchanged by the nations, to see
that they are of perfect quality."

"But what are the balances finally settled with, seeing that you have
no money?"

"In national staples; a basis of agreement as to what staples shall be
accepted, and in what proportions, for settlement of accounts, being a
preliminary to trade relations."

"Emigration is another point I want to ask you about," said I. "With
every nation organized as a close industrial partnership, monopolizing
all means of production in the country, the emigrant, even if he were
permitted to land, would starve. I suppose there is no emigration
nowadays."

"On the contrary, there is constant emigration, by which I suppose you
mean removal to foreign countries for permanent residence," replied
Dr. Leete. "It is arranged on a simple international arrangement of
indemnities. For example, if a man at twenty-one emigrates from
England to America, England loses all the expense of his maintenance
and education, and America gets a workman for nothing. America
accordingly makes England an allowance. The same principle, varied to
suit the case, applies generally. If the man is near the term of his
labor when he emigrates, the country receiving him has the allowance.
As to imbecile persons, it is deemed best that each nation should be
responsible for its own, and the emigration of such must be under
full guarantees of support by his own nation. Subject to these
regulations, the right of any man to emigrate at any time is
unrestricted."

"But how about mere pleasure trips; tours of observation? How can a
stranger travel in a country whose people do not receive money, and
are themselves supplied with the means of life on a basis not extended
to him? His own credit card cannot, of course, be good in other lands.
How does he pay his way?"

"An American credit card," replied Dr. Leete, "is just as good in
Europe as American gold used to be, and on precisely the same
condition, namely, that it be exchanged into the currency of the
country you are traveling in. An American in Berlin takes his credit
card to the local office of the international council, and receives in
exchange for the whole or part of it a German credit card, the amount
being charged against the United States in favor of Germany on the
international account."

*    *    *    *    *

"Perhaps Mr. West would like to dine at the Elephant to-day," said
Edith, as we left the table.

"That is the name we give to the general dining-house of our ward,"
explained her father. "Not only is our cooking done at the public
kitchens, as I told you last night, but the service and quality of the
meals are much more satisfactory if taken at the dining-house. The
two minor meals of the day are usually taken at home, as not worth the
trouble of going out; but it is general to go out to dine. We have not
done so since you have been with us, from a notion that it would be
better to wait till you had become a little more familiar with our
ways. What do you think? Shall we take dinner at the dining-house
to-day?"

I said that I should be very much pleased to do so.

Not long after, Edith came to me, smiling, and said:--

"Last night, as I was thinking what I could do to make you feel at
home until you came to be a little more used to us and our ways, an
idea occurred to me. What would you say if I were to introduce you to
some very nice people of your own times, whom I am sure you used to be
well acquainted with?"

I replied, rather vaguely, that it would certainly be very agreeable,
but I did not see how she was going to manage it.

"Come with me," was her smiling reply, "and see if I am not as good as
my word."

My susceptibility to surprise had been pretty well exhausted by the
numerous shocks it had received, but it was with some wonderment that
I followed her into a room which I had not before entered. It was a
small, cosy apartment, walled with cases filled with books.

"Here are your friends," said Edith, indicating one of the cases, and
as my eye glanced over the names on the backs of the volumes,
Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Defoe, Dickens,
Thackeray, Hugo, Hawthorne, Irving, and a score of other great writers
of my time and all time, I understood her meaning. She had indeed made
good her promise in a sense compared with which its literal
fulfillment would have been a disappointment. She had introduced me to
a circle of friends whom the century that had elapsed since last I
communed with them had aged as little as it had myself. Their spirit
was as high, their wit as keen, their laughter and their tears as
contagious, as when their speech had whiled away the hours of a former
century. Lonely I was not and could not be more, with this goodly
companionship, however wide the gulf of years that gaped between me
and my old life.

"You are glad I brought you here," exclaimed Edith, radiant, as she
read in my face the success of her experiment. "It was a good idea,
was it not, Mr. West? How stupid in me not to think of it before! I
will leave you now with your old friends, for I know there will be no
company for you like them just now; but remember you must not let old
friends make you quite forget new ones!" and with that smiling caution
she left me.

Attracted by the most familiar of the names before me, I laid my hand
on a volume of Dickens, and sat down to read. He had been my prime
favorite among the book-writers of the century,--I mean the nineteenth
century,--and a week had rarely passed in my old life during which I
had not taken up some volume of his works to while away an idle hour.
Any volume with which I had been familiar would have produced an
extraordinary impression, read under my present circumstances, but my
exceptional familiarity with Dickens, and his consequent power to call
up the associations of my former life, gave to his writings an effect
no others could have had, to intensify, by force of contrast, my
appreciation of the strangeness of my present environment. However new
and astonishing one's surroundings, the tendency is to become a part
of them so soon that almost from the first the power to see them
objectively and fully measure their strangeness, is lost. That power,
already dulled in my case, the pages of Dickens restored by carrying
me back through their associations to the standpoint of my former
life. With a clearness which I had not been able before to attain, I
saw now the past and present, like contrasting pictures, side by side.

The genius of the great novelist of the nineteenth century, like that
of Homer, might indeed defy time; but the setting of his pathetic
tales, the misery of the poor, the wrongs of power, the pitiless
cruelty of the system of society, had passed away as utterly as Circe
and the sirens, Charybdis and Cyclops.

During the hour or two that I sat there with Dickens open before me, I
did not actually read more than a couple of pages. Every paragraph,
every phrase, brought up some new aspect of the world-transformation
which had taken place, and led my thoughts on long and widely
ramifying excursions. As meditating thus in Dr. Leete's library I
gradually attained a more clear and coherent idea of the prodigious
spectacle which I had been so strangely enabled to view, I was filled
with a deepening wonder at the seeming capriciousness of the fate that
had given to one who so little deserved it, or seemed in any way set
apart for it, the power alone among his contemporaries to stand upon
the earth in this latter day. I had neither foreseen the new world nor
toiled for it, as many about me had done regardless of the scorn of
fools or the misconstruction of the good. Surely it would have been
more in accordance with the fitness of things had one of those
prophetic and strenuous souls been enabled to see the travail of his
soul and be satisfied; he, for example, a thousand times rather than
I, who, having beheld in a vision the world I looked on, sang of it in
words that again and again, during these last wondrous days, had rung
in my mind:--

    For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see.
    Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

    Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled.
    In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world.

    Then the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
    And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

    For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
    And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

What though, in his old age, he momentarily lost faith in his own
prediction, as prophets in their hours of depression and doubt
generally do; the words had remained eternal testimony to the seership
of a poet's heart, the insight that is given to faith.

I was still in the library when some hours later Dr. Leete sought me
there. "Edith told me of her idea," he said, "and I thought it an
excellent one. I had a little curiosity what writer you would first
turn to. Ah, Dickens! You admired him, then! That is where we moderns
agree with you. Judged by our standards, he overtops all the writers
of his age, not because his literary genius was highest, but because
his great heart beat for the poor, because he made the cause of the
victims of society his own, and devoted his pen to exposing its
cruelties and shams. No man of his time did so much as he to turn
men's minds to the wrong and wretchedness of the old order of things,
and open their eyes to the necessity of the great change that was
coming, although he himself did not clearly foresee it."

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

completion: That night, Doctor Leete helps Julian West to adjust the music in his room. The musical instruments are so finely adjusted to each individual that it is possible for one person to listen while another, standing in the same room, hears nothing. He sleeps soundly, having left his insomnia in the nineteenth century, and wakes with a fantasy about being a Turkish leader. The music that wakes him is the Turkish Reveille. At breakfast, he learns from Doctor Leete about the international situation in the twentieth century. All the nations of Europe, Australia, Mexico, and parts of South America are organized on the model of the United States. The more backward races are gradually being educated up to civilized institutions. Every nation, nevertheless, enjoys full autonomy. The nations carry on commerce without money, but by the use of account ledgers that are balanced regularly. The prices charged to a foreign nation must be the same as those charged to a nations own citizens. All nations receive the same prices. Doctor Leete explains that everyone is looking forward to the consolidation of all the nations of the world under one head, and good will is extended to other nations, just as it is extended to fellow citizens. People are allowed to immigrate to other countries. The two countries involved make an exchange on that basis. Only imbeciles are not allowed to immigrate. People are also allowed to travel at will. They change their credit cards into those of the host nation, just as people in the nineteenth century used to change their money into the currency of the country they were visiting. As they leave the breakfast table, Edith Leete suggests they dine that evening at the Elephant, a public dining room, where most people have the main meal of the day. Julian West agrees that he would like to and the plan is set. When he finds himself alone later that day, Julian West encounters Edith Leete, who asks him if he would like to talk to some of his nineteenth-century friends. These turn out to be all the books of his time. She takes him to a library, where he picks up Dickens, who had always been his favorite. He can read only a few sentences because the contrast between Dickens time and the twentieth century is so great. Reading Dickens, Julian West is humbled at the thought that it is he, rather than someone more deserving, who gets to see the twentieth century. He also reads Tennysons Locksley Hall, wherein the poet imagines a future with no war, where universal law keeps everyone at peace. Doctor Leete finds him in the library hours later and is delighted that Julian West has chosen Dickens, a favorite in the twentieth century because his great heart beat for the poor.


prompt:
Chapter: A heavy rainstorm came up during the day, and I had concluded that the
condition of the streets would be such that my hosts would have to
give up the idea of going out to dinner, although the dining-hall I
had understood to be quite near. I was much surprised when at the
dinner hour the ladies appeared prepared to go out, but without either
rubbers or umbrellas.

The mystery was explained when we found ourselves on the street, for a
continuous waterproof covering had been let down so as to inclose the
sidewalk and turn it into a well lighted and perfectly dry corridor,
which was filled with a stream of ladies and gentlemen dressed for
dinner. At the corners the entire open space was similarly roofed in.
Edith Leete, with whom I walked, seemed much interested in learning
what appeared to be entirely new to her, that in the stormy weather
the streets of the Boston of my day had been impassable, except to
persons protected by umbrellas, boots, and heavy clothing. "Were
sidewalk coverings not used at all?" she asked. They were used, I
explained, but in a scattered and utterly unsystematic way, being
private enterprises. She said to me that at the present time all the
streets were provided against inclement weather in the manner I saw,
the apparatus being rolled out of the way when it was unnecessary. She
intimated that it would be considered an extraordinary imbecility to
permit the weather to have any effect on the social movements of the
people.

Dr. Leete, who was walking ahead, overhearing something of our talk,
turned to say that the difference between the age of individualism and
that of concert was well characterized by the fact that, in the
nineteenth century, when it rained, the people of Boston put up three
hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth
century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.

As we walked on, Edith said, "The private umbrella is father's
favorite figure to illustrate the old way when everybody lived for
himself and his family. There is a nineteenth century painting at the
Art Gallery representing a crowd of people in the rain, each one
holding his umbrella over himself and his wife, and giving his
neighbors the drippings, which he claims must have been meant by the
artist as a satire on his times."

We now entered a large building into which a stream of people was
pouring. I could not see the front, owing to the awning, but, if in
correspondence with the interior, which was even finer than the store
I visited the day before, it would have been magnificent. My companion
said that the sculptured group over the entrance was especially
admired. Going up a grand staircase we walked some distance along a
broad corridor with many doors opening upon it. At one of these, which
bore my host's name, we turned in, and I found myself in an elegant
dining-room containing a table for four. Windows opened on a courtyard
where a fountain played to a great height and music made the air
electric.

"You seem at home here," I said, as we seated ourselves at table, and
Dr. Leete touched an annunciator.

"This is, in fact, a part of our house, slightly detached from the
rest," he replied. "Every family in the ward has a room set apart in
this great building for its permanent and exclusive use for a small
annual rental. For transient guests and individuals there is
accommodation on another floor. If we expect to dine here, we put in
our orders the night before, selecting anything in market, according
to the daily reports in the papers. The meal is as expensive or as
simple as we please, though of course everything is vastly cheaper as
well as better than it would be if prepared at home. There is actually
nothing which our people take more interest in than the perfection of
the catering and cooking done for them, and I admit that we are a
little vain of the success that has been attained by this branch of
the service. Ah, my dear Mr. West, though other aspects of your
civilization were more tragical, I can imagine that none could have
been more depressing than the poor dinners you had to eat, that is,
all of you who had not great wealth."

"You would have found none of us disposed to disagree with you on that
point," I said.

The waiter, a fine-looking young fellow, wearing a slightly
distinctive uniform, now made his appearance. I observed him closely,
as it was the first time I had been able to study particularly the
bearing of one of the enlisted members of the industrial army. This
young man, I knew from what I had been told, must be highly educated,
and the equal, socially and in all respects, of those he served. But
it was perfectly evident that to neither side was the situation in the
slightest degree embarrassing. Dr. Leete addressed the young man in a
tone devoid, of course, as any gentleman's would be, of
superciliousness, but at the same time not in any way deprecatory,
while the manner of the young man was simply that of a person intent
on discharging correctly the task he was engaged in, equally without
familiarity or obsequiousness. It was, in fact, the manner of a
soldier on duty, but without the military stiffness. As the youth left
the room, I said, "I cannot get over my wonder at seeing a young man
like that serving so contentedly in a menial position."

"What is that word 'menial'? I never heard it," said Edith.

"It is obsolete now," remarked her father. "If I understand it
rightly, it applied to persons who performed particularly disagreeable
and unpleasant tasks for others, and carried with it an implication of
contempt. Was it not so, Mr. West?"

"That is about it," I said. "Personal service, such as waiting on
tables, was considered menial, and held in such contempt, in my day,
that persons of culture and refinement would suffer hardship before
condescending to it."

"What a strangely artificial idea," exclaimed Mrs. Leete, wonderingly.

"And yet these services had to be rendered," said Edith.

"Of course," I replied. "But we imposed them on the poor, and those
who had no alternative but starvation."

"And increased the burden you imposed on them by adding your
contempt," remarked Dr. Leete.

"I don't think I clearly understand," said Edith. "Do you mean that
you permitted people to do things for you which you despised them for
doing, or that you accepted services from them which you would have
been unwilling to render them? You can't surely mean that, Mr. West?"

I was obliged to tell her that the fact was just as she had stated.
Dr. Leete, however, came to my relief.

"To understand why Edith is surprised," he said, "you must know that
nowadays it is an axiom of ethics that to accept a service from
another which we would be unwilling to return in kind, if need were,
is like borrowing with the intention of not repaying, while to enforce
such a service by taking advantage of the poverty or necessity of a
person would be an outrage like forcible robbery. It is the worst
thing about any system which divides men, or allows them to be
divided, into classes and castes, that it weakens the sense of a
common humanity. Unequal distribution of wealth, and, still more
effectually, unequal opportunities of education and culture, divided
society in your day into classes which in many respects regarded each
other as distinct races. There is not, after all, such a difference as
might appear between our ways of looking at this question of service.
Ladies and gentlemen of the cultured class in your day would no more
have permitted persons of their own class to render them services they
would scorn to return than we would permit anybody to do so. The poor
and the uncultured, however, they looked upon as of another kind from
themselves. The equal wealth and equal opportunities of culture which
all persons now enjoy have simply made us all members of one class,
which corresponds to the most fortunate class with you. Until this
equality of condition had come to pass, the idea of the solidarity of
humanity, the brother hood of all men, could never have become the
real conviction and practical principle of action it is nowadays. In
your day the same phrases were indeed used, but they were phrases
merely."

"Do the waiters, also, volunteer?"

"No," replied Dr. Leete. "The waiters are young men in the
unclassified grade of the industrial army who are assignable to all
sorts of miscellaneous occupations not requiring special skill.
Waiting on table is one of these, and every young recruit is given a
taste of it. I myself served as a waiter for several months in this
very dining-house some forty years ago. Once more you must remember
that there is recognized no sort of difference between the dignity of
the different sorts of work required by the nation. The individual is
never regarded, nor regards himself, as the servant of those he
serves, nor is he in any way dependent upon them. It is always the
nation which he is serving. No difference is recognized between a
waiter's functions and those of any other worker. The fact that his is
a personal service is indifferent from our point of view. So is a
doctor's. I should as soon expect our waiter to-day to look down on me
because I served him as a doctor, as think of looking down on him
because he serves me as a waiter."

After dinner my entertainers conducted me about the building, of which
the extent, the magnificent architecture and richness of
embellishment, astonished me. It seemed that it was not merely a
dining-hall, but likewise a great pleasure-house and social rendezvous
of the quarter, and no appliance of entertainment or recreation seemed
lacking.

"You find illustrated here," said Dr. Leete, when I had expressed my
admiration, "what I said to you in our first conversation, when you
were looking out over the city, as to the splendor of our public and
common life as compared with the simplicity of our private and home
life, and the contrast which, in this respect, the twentieth bears to
the nineteenth century. To save ourselves useless burdens, we have as
little gear about us at home as is consistent with comfort, but the
social side of our life is ornate and luxurious beyond anything the
world ever knew before. All the industrial and professional guilds
have clubhouses as extensive as this, as well as country, mountain,
and seaside houses for sport and rest in vacations."

    NOTE. In the latter part of the nineteenth century it became
    a practice of needy young men at some of the colleges of the
    country to earn a little money for their term bills by
    serving as waiters on tables at hotels during the long summer
    vacation. It was claimed, in reply to critics who expressed
    the prejudices of the time in asserting that persons
    voluntarily following such an occupation could not be
    gentlemen, that they were entitled to praise for vindicating,
    by their example, the dignity of all honest and necessary
    labor. The use of this argument illustrates a common
    confusion in thought on the part of my former contemporaries.
    The business of waiting on tables was in no more need of
    defense than most of the other ways of getting a living in
    that day, but to talk of dignity attaching to labor of any
    sort under the system then prevailing was absurd. There is no
    way in which selling labor for the highest price it will
    fetch is more dignified than selling goods for what can be
    got. Both were commercial transactions to be judged by the
    commercial standard. By setting a price in money on his
    service, the worker accepted the money measure for it, and
    renounced all clear claim to be judged by any other. The
    sordid taint which this necessity imparted to the noblest and
    the highest sorts of service was bitterly resented by
    generous souls, but there was no evading it. There was no
    exemption, however transcendent the quality of one's service,
    from the necessity of haggling for its price in the
    market-place. The physician must sell his healing and the
    apostle his preaching like the rest. The prophet, who had
    guessed the meaning of God, must dicker for the price of the
    revelation, and the poet hawk his visions in printers' row.
    If I were asked to name the most distinguishing felicity of
    this age, as compared to that in which I first saw the light,
    I should say that to me it seems to consist in the dignity
    you have given to labor by refusing to set a price upon it
    and abolishing the market-place forever. By requiring of
    every man his best you have made God his task-master, and by
    making honor the sole reward of achievement you have imparted
    to all service the distinction peculiar in my day to the
    soldier's.

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

completion: A heavy rainstorm hits the city, but this does not stop the characters from going out to dinner, because all the sidewalks are covered by a vast waterproof covering. Doctor Leete draws a comparison between Julian Wests time and that of the twentieth century, insofar as the two ages deal with the rain. In the age of individualism, everyone had a separate umbrella; in this new age, a communal umbrella covers all. The dining hall is very elegant. The Leetes have their own dining room. A waiter comes in to take their orders and Julian West notices him with great interest. When he leaves, Julian West exclaims over his ease of manner in performing such a menial task as waiting tables. Edith Leete points out that the word, menial, is obsolete. Doctor Leete explains that all work is regarded as equally dignified. Here, the waiters are part of the unclassified grade of the industrial army. In fact, Doctor Leete served as a waiter in his youth. After dinner they go to a public hall so magnificent that Julian West is astonished. It has every kind of entertainment the community may need and is sumptuously decorated. Doctor Leete explains that all the nations wealth goes to the public space and common needs, and people live simply in their private lives. He says that all the industrial and professional guilds have such clubhouses and that there are also many of these clubhouses in mountain and seaside resorts. At the end of the chapter, Julian West offers a note to his readers about the late nineteenth-century practice of young college men working as waiters during their summer breaks to help pay their expenses during the year. People of the ruling class raised an uproar about this, saying that these men could never be gentlemen if they worked as waiters. Julian West notes that such shame will always be inherent in any system that sets a price on service. He praises his twentieth-century readers for the dignity they have given labor by refusing to set a price on it and abolishing the marketplace forever. By making honor the only reward for service, they have given all work the distinction that only soldiers got in the nineteenth century.


prompt:
Chapter: When, in the course of our tour of inspection, we came to the library,
we succumbed to the temptation of the luxurious leather chairs with
which it was furnished, and sat down in one of the book-lined alcoves
to rest and chat awhile.

"Edith tells me that you have been in the library all the morning,"
said Mrs. Leete. "Do you know, it seems to me, Mr. West, that you are
the most enviable of mortals."

"I should like to know just why," I replied.

"Because the books of the last hundred years will be new to you," she
answered. "You will have so much of the most absorbing literature to
read as to leave you scarcely time for meals these five years to come.
Ah, what would I give if I had not already read Berrian's novels."

"Or Nesmyth's, mamma," added Edith.

"Yes, or Oates' poems, or 'Past and Present,' or, 'In the Beginning,'
or,--oh, I could name a dozen books, each worth a year of one's
life," declared Mrs. Leete, enthusiastically.

"I judge, then, that there has been some notable literature produced
in this century."

"Yes," said Dr. Leete. "It has been an era of unexampled intellectual
splendor. Probably humanity never before passed through a moral and
material evolution, at once so vast in its scope and brief in its time
of accomplishment, as that from the old order to the new in the early
part of this century. When men came to realize the greatness of the
felicity which had befallen them, and that the change through which
they had passed was not merely an improvement in details of their
condition, but the rise of the race to a new plane of existence with
an illimitable vista of progress, their minds were affected in all
their faculties with a stimulus, of which the outburst of the mediaeval
renaissance offers a suggestion but faint indeed. There ensued an era
of mechanical invention, scientific discovery, art, musical and
literary productiveness to which no previous age of the world offers
anything comparable."

"By the way," said I, "talking of literature, how are books published
now? Is that also done by the nation?"

"Certainly."

"But how do you manage it? Does the government publish everything that
is brought it as a matter of course, at the public expense, or does
it exercise a censorship and print only what it approves?"

"Neither way. The printing department has no censorial powers. It is
bound to print all that is offered it, but prints it only on condition
that the author defray the first cost out of his credit. He must pay
for the privilege of the public ear, and if he has any message worth
hearing we consider that he will be glad to do it. Of course, if
incomes were unequal, as in the old times, this rule would enable only
the rich to be authors, but the resources of citizens being equal, it
merely measures the strength of the author's motive. The cost of an
edition of an average book can be saved out of a year's credit by the
practice of economy and some sacrifices. The book, on being published,
is placed on sale by the nation."

"The author receiving a royalty on the sales as with us, I suppose," I
suggested.

"Not as with you, certainly," replied Dr. Leete, "but nevertheless in
one way. The price of every book is made up of the cost of its
publication with a royalty for the author. The author fixes this
royalty at any figure he pleases. Of course if he puts it unreasonably
high it is his own loss, for the book will not sell. The amount of
this royalty is set to his credit and he is discharged from other
service to the nation for so long a period as this credit at the rate
of allowance for the support of citizens shall suffice to support him.
If his book be moderately successful, he has thus a furlough for
several months, a year, two or three years, and if he in the mean time
produces other successful work, the remission of service is extended
so far as the sale of that may justify. An author of much acceptance
succeeds in supporting himself by his pen during the entire period of
service, and the degree of any writer's literary ability, as
determined by the popular voice, is thus the measure of the
opportunity given him to devote his time to literature. In this
respect the outcome of our system is not very dissimilar to that of
yours, but there are two notable differences. In the first place, the
universally high level of education nowadays gives the popular verdict
a conclusiveness on the real merit of literary work which in your day
it was as far as possible from having. In the second place, there is
no such thing now as favoritism of any sort to interfere with the
recognition of true merit. Every author has precisely the same
facilities for bringing his work before the popular tribunal. To judge
from the complaints of the writers of your day, this absolute equality
of opportunity would have been greatly prized."

"In the recognition of merit in other fields of original genius, such
as music, art, invention, design," I said, "I suppose you follow a
similar principle."

"Yes," he replied, "although the details differ. In art, for example,
as in literature, the people are the sole judges. They vote upon the
acceptance of statues and paintings for the public buildings, and
their favorable verdict carries with it the artist's remission from
other tasks to devote himself to his vocation. On copies of his work
disposed of, he also derives the same advantage as the author on sales
of his books. In all these lines of original genius the plan pursued
is the same,--to offer a free field to aspirants, and as soon as
exceptional talent is recognized to release it from all trammels and
let it have free course. The remission of other service in these cases
is not intended as a gift or reward, but as the means of obtaining
more and higher service. Of course there are various literary, art,
and scientific institutes to which membership comes to the famous and
is greatly prized. The highest of all honors in the nation, higher
than the presidency, which calls merely for good sense and devotion to
duty, is the red ribbon awarded by the vote of the people to the great
authors, artists, engineers, physicians, and inventors of the
generation. Not over a certain number wear it at any one time, though
every bright young fellow in the country loses innumerable nights'
sleep dreaming of it. I even did myself."

"Just as if mamma and I would have thought any more of you with it,"
exclaimed Edith; "not that it isn't, of course, a very fine thing to
have."

"You had no choice, my dear, but to take your father as you found him
and make the best of him," Dr. Leete replied; "but as for your
mother, there, she would never have had me if I had not assured her
that I was bound to get the red ribbon or at least the blue."

On this extravagance Mrs. Leete's only comment was a smile.

"How about periodicals and newspapers?" I said. "I won't deny that
your book publishing system is a considerable improvement on ours,
both as to its tendency to encourage a real literary vocation, and,
quite as important, to discourage mere scribblers; but I don't see how
it can be made to apply to magazines and newspapers. It is very well
to make a man pay for publishing a book, because the expense will be
only occasional; but no man could afford the expense of publishing a
newspaper every day in the year. It took the deep pockets of our
private capitalists to do that, and often exhausted even them before
the returns came in. If you have newspapers at all, they must, I
fancy, be published by the government at the public expense, with
government editors, reflecting government opinions. Now, if your
system is so perfect that there is never anything to criticise in the
conduct of affairs, this arrangement may answer. Otherwise I should
think the lack of an independent unofficial medium for the expression
of public opinion would have most unfortunate results. Confess, Dr.
Leete, that a free newspaper press, with all that it implies, was a
redeeming incident of the old system when capital was in private
hands, and that you have to set off the loss of that against your
gains in other respects."

"I am afraid I can't give you even that consolation," replied Dr.
Leete, laughing. "In the first place, Mr. West, the newspaper press is
by no means the only or, as we look at it, the best vehicle for
serious criticism of public affairs. To us, the judgments of your
newspapers on such themes seem generally to have been crude and
flippant, as well as deeply tinctured with prejudice and bitterness.
In so far as they may be taken as expressing public opinion, they give
an unfavorable impression of the popular intelligence, while so far as
they may have formed public opinion, the nation was not to be
felicitated. Nowadays, when a citizen desires to make a serious
impression upon the public mind as to any aspect of public affairs, he
comes out with a book or pamphlet, published as other books are. But
this is not because we lack newspapers and magazines, or that they
lack the most absolute freedom. The newspaper press is organized so as
to be a more perfect expression of public opinion than it possibly
could be in your day, when private capital controlled and managed it
primarily as a money-making business, and secondarily only as a
mouthpiece for the people."

"But," said I, "if the government prints the papers at the public
expense, how can it fail to control their policy? Who appoints the
editors, if not the government?"

"The government does not pay the expense of the papers, nor appoint
their editors, nor in any way exert the slightest influence on their
policy," replied Dr. Leete. "The people who take the paper pay the
expense of its publication, choose its editor, and remove him when
unsatisfactory. You will scarcely say, I think, that such a newspaper
press is not a free organ of popular opinion."

"Decidedly I shall not," I replied, "but how is it practicable?"

"Nothing could be simpler. Supposing some of my neighbors or myself
think we ought to have a newspaper reflecting our opinions, and
devoted especially to our locality, trade, or profession. We go about
among the people till we get the names of such a number that their
annual subscriptions will meet the cost of the paper, which is little
or big according to the largeness of its constituency. The amount of
the subscriptions marked off the credits of the citizens guarantees
the nation against loss in publishing the paper, its business, you
understand, being that of a publisher purely, with no option to refuse
the duty required. The subscribers to the paper now elect somebody as
editor, who, if he accepts the office, is discharged from other
service during his incumbency. Instead of paying a salary to him, as
in your day, the subscribers pay the nation an indemnity equal to the
cost of his support for taking him away from the general service. He
manages the paper just as one of your editors did, except that he has
no counting-room to obey, or interests of private capital as against
the public good to defend. At the end of the first year, the
subscribers for the next either reelect the former editor or choose
any one else to his place. An able editor, of course, keeps his place
indefinitely. As the subscription list enlarges, the funds of the
paper increase, and it is improved by the securing of more and better
contributors, just as your papers were."

"How is the staff of contributors recompensed, since they cannot be
paid in money."

"The editor settles with them the price of their wares. The amount is
transferred to their individual credit from the guarantee credit of
the paper, and a remission of service is granted the contributor for a
length of time corresponding to the amount credited him, just as to
other authors. As to magazines, the system is the same. Those
interested in the prospectus of a new periodical pledge enough
subscriptions to run it for a year; select their editor, who
recompenses his contributors just as in the other case, the printing
bureau furnishing the necessary force and material for publication, as
a matter of course. When an editor's services are no longer desired,
if he cannot earn the right to his time by other literary work, he
simply resumes his place in the industrial army. I should add that,
though ordinarily the editor is elected only at the end of the year,
and as a rule is continued in office for a term of years, in case of
any sudden change he should give to the tone of the paper, provision
is made for taking the sense of the subscribers as to his removal at
any time."

"However earnestly a man may long for leisure for purposes of study or
meditation," I remarked, "he cannot get out of the harness, if I
understand you rightly, except in these two ways you have mentioned.
He must either by literary, artistic, or inventive productiveness
indemnify the nation for the loss of his services, or must get a
sufficient number of other people to contribute to such an indemnity."

"It is most certain," replied Dr. Leete, "that no able-bodied man
nowadays can evade his share of work and live on the toil of others,
whether he calls himself by the fine name of student or confesses to
being simply lazy. At the same time our system is elastic enough to
give free play to every instinct of human nature which does not aim at
dominating others or living on the fruit of others' labor. There is
not only the remission by indemnification but the remission by
abnegation. Any man in his thirty-third year, his term of service
being then half done, can obtain an honorable discharge from the army,
provided he accepts for the rest of his life one half the rate of
maintenance other citizens receive. It is quite possible to live on
this amount, though one must forego the luxuries and elegancies of
life, with some, perhaps, of its comforts."

When the ladies retired that evening, Edith brought me a book and
said:--

"If you should be wakeful to-night, Mr. West, you might be interested
in looking over this story by Berrian. It is considered his
masterpiece, and will at least give you an idea what the stories
nowadays are like."

I sat up in my room that night reading "Penthesilia" till it grew gray
in the east, and did not lay it down till I had finished it. And yet
let no admirer of the great romancer of the twentieth century resent
my saying that at the first reading what most impressed me was not so
much what was in the book as what was left out of it. The
story-writers of my day would have deemed the making of bricks without
straw a light task compared with the construction of a romance from
which should be excluded all effects drawn from the contrasts of
wealth and poverty, education and ignorance, coarseness and
refinement, high and low, all motives drawn from social pride and
ambition, the desire of being richer or the fear of being poorer,
together with sordid anxieties of any sort for one's self or others; a
romance in which there should, indeed, be love galore, but love
unfretted by artificial barriers created by differences of station or
possessions, owning no other law but that of the heart. The reading of
"Penthesilia" was of more value than almost any amount of explanation
would have been in giving me something like a general impression of
the social aspect of the twentieth century. The information Dr. Leete
had imparted was indeed extensive as to facts, but they had affected
my mind as so many separate impressions, which I had as yet succeeded
but imperfectly in making cohere. Berrian put them together for me in
a picture.

[Footnote 3: I cannot sufficiently celebrate the glorious liberty that
reigns in the public libraries of the twentieth century as compared
with the intolerable management of those of the nineteenth century, in
which the books were jealously railed away from the people, and
obtainable only at an expenditure of time and red tape calculated to
discourage any ordinary taste for literature.]

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

completion: The characters next visit the library of a social club. It is very comfortable and books are easily accessible. Julian West contrasts this scene to the libraries of the nineteenth century, when books were closely guarded and borrowing was difficult. Mrs. Leete and Edith Leete tell Julian West of the joy he will have in reading the twentieth-century writers. The subject brings up more economic questions, this time about how writers are paid. Doctor Leete explains that anyone who writes a book must pay for the cost of its printing out of his own credit. Then, if the book is accepted by the public, the writer is compensated. If the book is liked well enough, the writer could receive enough credit to take time off from the industrial army in order to write. Depending on how well his books sell, the writer could possibly write full time for many years. Because everyone is so well educated, the public is qualified to judge whether a writer is producing good literature. And since there is no favoritism at play, every writer has the same chance. Julian West asks about the other arts. Doctor Leete explains that all the arts operate on similar lines, except that people vote on accepting statues and paintings for public buildings. There are also literary, artistic, and scientific institutes that support creative thinkers. These carry even more prestige than the presidency. Next, Julian West inquires about newspapers and periodicals. He assumes that these must be published by the state and therefore are subject to censorship. Julian West expresses the commonly held belief that the newspaper presses were free in the nineteenth century, since they were not owned by the government. Doctor Leete notes, however, that the newspapers of the nineteenth century were not the best vehicle for social criticism because they were used as a moneymaking business and served only secondarily as a mouthpiece for the people. He adds that from what he has seen of nineteenth-century newspapers, their journalism was not that impressive. They usually made crude and flippant judgments that were also deeply colored by prejudice. If they expressed the public opinion of the time, they likewise give a poor impression of popular intelligence in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, if a person has a serious opinion, it is published in a book or pamphlet. There are newspapers, however, which are paid for by subscriptions. People who take the paper pay for its publication and choose its editor. After Julian West has learned how the contributors to the papers are paid, and how the subscribers exert their influence on the editor, he exclaims over the fact that no one in this society seems to be able to get out of work. Doctor Leete agrees, but he adds that if a man wants to stop working at the age of thirty-three, he can take a reduction in maintenance. That night, Edith Leete brings him a copy of her favorite writer, Berrian. Julian West reads it far into the night. He finds it fascinating, not only for its literary merit, but for its subject matter. He contrasts it to the novels of his own time. The novels of earlier centuries hinged on conflict that was almost always class based. For instance, the difficulties of lovers from different economic classes was commonly featured. Berrians novel, Penthesilia, gives Julian West a clear view of the vast changes in this new society. The next morning, when Julian West leaves his room, Edith Leete comes out of the dining room to check on him. He realizes she has been getting up very early every morning to make sure he does not leave the house because she fears that he will have another crisis. He is very touched by her concern and calls her an angel. He asks her if she knows who her nineteenth-century ancestors were. She says she does, but then she is too absorbed in arranging the flowers to tell him their names. Doctor Leete comes in, and Julian West takes up the question of what he should do to enter the system of this new society. Doctor Leete tells him that he is quite happy to have him as a guest for a long time since he is so interesting. He adds that when the time comes, Julian West might like to take up a lectureship at one of the universities teaching nineteenth-century history. Julian West is greatly relieved at this news.


prompt:
Chapter: Next morning I rose somewhat before the breakfast hour. As I descended
the stairs, Edith stepped into the hall from the room which had been
the scene of the morning interview between us described some chapters
back.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, with a charmingly arch expression, "you thought
to slip out unbeknown for another of those solitary morning rambles
which have such nice effects on you. But you see I am up too early for
you this time. You are fairly caught."

"You discredit the efficacy of your own cure," I said, "by supposing
that such a ramble would now be attended with bad consequences."

"I am very glad to hear that," she said. "I was in here arranging some
flowers for the breakfast table when I heard you come down, and
fancied I detected something surreptitious in your step on the
stairs."

"You did me injustice," I replied. "I had no idea of going out at
all."

Despite her effort to convey an impression that my interception was
purely accidental, I had at the time a dim suspicion of what I
afterwards learned to be the fact, namely, that this sweet creature,
in pursuance of her self-assumed guardianship over me, had risen for
the last two or three mornings at an unheard-of hour, to insure
against the possibility of my wandering off alone in case I should be
affected as on the former occasion. Receiving permission to assist her
in making up the breakfast bouquet, I followed her into the room from
which she had emerged.

"Are you sure," she asked, "that you are quite done with those
terrible sensations you had that morning?"

"I can't say that I do not have times of feeling decidedly queer," I
replied, "moments when my personal identity seems an open question. It
would be too much to expect after my experience that I should not have
such sensations occasionally, but as for being carried entirely off my
feet, as I was on the point of being that morning, I think the danger
is past."

"I shall never forget how you looked that morning," she said.

"If you had merely saved my life," I continued, "I might, perhaps,
find words to express my gratitude, but it was my reason you saved,
and there are no words that would not belittle my debt to you." I
spoke with emotion, and her eyes grew suddenly moist.

"It is too much to believe all this," she said, "but it is very
delightful to hear you say it. What I did was very little. I was very
much distressed for you, I know. Father never thinks anything ought to
astonish us when it can be explained scientifically, as I suppose this
long sleep of yours can be, but even to fancy myself in your place
makes my head swim. I know that I could not have borne it at all."

"That would depend," I replied, "on whether an angel came to support
you with her sympathy in the crisis of your condition, as one came to
me." If my face at all expressed the feelings I had a right to have
toward this sweet and lovely young girl, who had played so angelic a
role toward me, its expression must have been very worshipful just
then. The expression or the words, or both together, caused her now to
drop her eyes with a charming blush.

"For the matter of that," I said, "if your experience has not been as
startling as mine, it must have been rather overwhelming to see a man
belonging to a strange century, and apparently a hundred years dead,
raised to life."

"It seemed indeed strange beyond any describing at first," she said,
"but when we began to put ourselves in your place, and realize how
much stranger it must seem to you, I fancy we forgot our own feelings
a good deal, at least I know I did. It seemed then not so much
astounding as interesting and touching beyond anything ever heard of
before."

"But does it not come over you as astounding to sit at table with me,
seeing who I am?"

"You must remember that you do not seem so strange to us as we must to
you," she answered. "We belong to a future of which you could not form
an idea, a generation of which you knew nothing until you saw us. But
you belong to a generation of which our forefathers were a part. We
know all about it; the names of many of its members are household
words with us. We have made a study of your ways of living and
thinking; nothing you say or do surprises us, while we say and do
nothing which does not seem strange to you. So you see, Mr. West, that
if you feel that you can, in time, get accustomed to us, you must not
be surprised that from the first we have scarcely found you strange at
all."

"I had not thought of it in that way," I replied. "There is indeed
much in what you say. One can look back a thousand years easier than
forward fifty. A century is not so very long a retrospect. I might
have known your great-grand-parents. Possibly I did. Did they live in
Boston?"

"I believe so."

"You are not sure, then?"

"Yes," she replied. "Now I think, they did."

"I had a very large circle of acquaintances in the city," I said. "It
is not unlikely that I knew or knew of some of them. Perhaps I may
have known them well. Wouldn't it be interesting if I should chance
to be able to tell you all about your great-grandfather, for
instance?"

"Very interesting."

"Do you know your genealogy well enough to tell me who your forbears
were in the Boston of my day?"

"Oh, yes."

"Perhaps, then, you will some time tell me what some of their names
were."

She was engrossed in arranging a troublesome spray of green, and did
not reply at once. Steps upon the stairway indicated that the other
members of the family were descending.

"Perhaps, some time," she said.

After breakfast, Dr. Leete suggested taking me to inspect the central
warehouse and observe actually in operation the machinery of
distribution, which Edith had described to me. As we walked away from
the house I said, "It is now several days that I have been living in
your household on a most extraordinary footing, or rather on none at
all. I have not spoken of this aspect of my position before because
there were so many other aspects yet more extraordinary. But now that
I am beginning a little to feel my feet under me, and to realize that,
however I came here, I am here, and must make the best of it, I must
speak to you on this point."

"As for your being a guest in my house," replied Dr. Leete, "I pray
you not to begin to be uneasy on that point, for I mean to keep you a
long time yet. With all your modesty, you can but realize that such a
guest as yourself is an acquisition not willingly to be parted with."

"Thanks, doctor," I said. "It would be absurd, certainly, for me to
affect any oversensitiveness about accepting the temporary hospitality
of one to whom I owe it that I am not still awaiting the end of the
world in a living tomb. But if I am to be a permanent citizen of this
century I must have some standing in it. Now, in my time a person more
or less entering the world, however he got in, would not be noticed in
the unorganized throng of men, and might make a place for himself
anywhere he chose if he were strong enough. But nowadays everybody is
a part of a system with a distinct place and function. I am outside
the system, and don't see how I can get in; there seems no way to get
in, except to be born in or to come in as an emigrant from some other
system."

Dr. Leete laughed heartily.

"I admit," he said, "that our system is defective in lacking provision
for cases like yours, but you see nobody anticipated additions to the
world except by the usual process. You need, however, have no fear
that we shall be unable to provide both a place and occupation for you
in due time. You have as yet been brought in contact only with the
members of my family, but you must not suppose that I have kept your
secret. On the contrary, your case, even before your resuscitation,
and vastly more since, has excited the profoundest interest in the
nation. In view of your precarious nervous condition, it was thought
best that I should take exclusive charge of you at first, and that you
should, through me and my family, receive some general idea of the
sort of world you had come back to before you began to make the
acquaintance generally of its inhabitants. As to finding a function
for you in society, there was no hesitation as to what that would be.
Few of us have it in our power to confer so great a service on the
nation as you will be able to when you leave my roof, which, however,
you must not think of doing for a good time yet."

"What can I possibly do?" I asked. "Perhaps you imagine I have some
trade, or art, or special skill. I assure you I have none whatever. I
never earned a dollar in my life, or did an hour's work. I am strong,
and might be a common laborer, but nothing more."

"If that were the most efficient service you were able to render the
nation, you would find that avocation considered quite as respectable
as any other," replied Dr. Leete; "but you can do something else
better. You are easily the master of all our historians on questions
relating to the social condition of the latter part of the nineteenth
century, to us one of the most absorbingly interesting periods of
history; and whenever in due time you have sufficiently familiarized
yourself with our institutions, and are willing to teach us something
concerning those of your day, you will find an historical lectureship
in one of our colleges awaiting you."

"Very good! very good indeed," I said, much relieved by so practical a
suggestion on a point which had begun to trouble me. "If your people
are really so much interested in the nineteenth century, there will
indeed be an occupation ready-made for me. I don't think there is
anything else that I could possibly earn my salt at, but I certainly
may claim without conceit to have some special qualifications for such
a post as you describe."

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

completion: The next morning, when Julian West leaves his room, Edith Leete comes out of the dining room to check on him. He realizes she has been getting up very early every morning to make sure he does not leave the house because she fears that he will have another crisis. He is very touched by her concern and calls her an angel. He asks her if she knows who her nineteenth-century ancestors were. She says she does, but then she is too absorbed in arranging the flowers to tell him their names. Doctor Leete comes in, and Julian West takes up the question of what he should do to enter the system of this new society. Doctor Leete tells him that he is quite happy to have him as a guest for a long time since he is so interesting. He adds that when the time comes, Julian West might like to take up a lectureship at one of the universities teaching nineteenth-century history. Julian West is greatly relieved at this news.