prompt:
Chapter: I found the processes at the warehouse quite as interesting as Edith
had described them, and became even enthusiastic over the truly
remarkable illustration which is seen there of the prodigiously
multiplied efficiency which perfect organization can give to labor. It
is like a gigantic mill, into the hopper of which goods are being
constantly poured by the train-load and ship-load, to issue at the
other end in packages of pounds and ounces, yards and inches, pints
and gallons, corresponding to the infinitely complex personal needs of
half a million people. Dr. Leete, with the assistance of data
furnished by me as to the way goods were sold in my day, figured out
some astounding results in the way of the economies effected by the
modern system.

As we set out homeward, I said: "After what I have seen to-day,
together with what you have told me, and what I learned under Miss
Leete's tutelage at the sample store, I have a tolerably clear idea of
your system of distribution, and how it enables you to dispense with a
circulating medium. But I should like very much to know something more
about your system of production. You have told me in general how your
industrial army is levied and organized, but who directs its efforts?
What supreme authority determines what shall be done in every
department, so that enough of everything is produced and yet no labor
wasted? It seems to me that this must be a wonderfully complex and
difficult function, requiring very unusual endowments."

"Does it indeed seem so to you?" responded Dr. Leete. "I assure you
that it is nothing of the kind, but on the other hand so simple, and
depending on principles so obvious and easily applied, that the
functionaries at Washington to whom it is trusted require to be
nothing more than men of fair abilities to discharge it to the entire
satisfaction of the nation. The machine which they direct is indeed a
vast one, but so logical in its principles and direct and simple in
its workings, that it all but runs itself; and nobody but a fool could
derange it, as I think you will agree after a few words of
explanation. Since you already have a pretty good idea of the working
of the distributive system, let us begin at that end. Even in your day
statisticians were able to tell you the number of yards of cotton,
velvet, woolen, the number of barrels of flour, potatoes, butter,
number of pairs of shoes, hats, and umbrellas annually consumed by the
nation. Owing to the fact that production was in private hands, and
that there was no way of getting statistics of actual distribution,
these figures were not exact, but they were nearly so. Now that every
pin which is given out from a national warehouse is recorded, of
course the figures of consumption for any week, month, or year, in the
possession of the department of distribution at the end of that
period, are precise. On these figures, allowing for tendencies to
increase or decrease and for any special causes likely to affect
demand, the estimates, say for a year ahead, are based. These
estimates, with a proper margin for security, having been accepted by
the general administration, the responsibility of the distributive
department ceases until the goods are delivered to it. I speak of the
estimates being furnished for an entire year ahead, but in reality
they cover that much time only in case of the great staples for which
the demand can be calculated on as steady. In the great majority of
smaller industries for the product of which popular taste fluctuates,
and novelty is frequently required, production is kept barely ahead of
consumption, the distributive department furnishing frequent estimates
based on the weekly state of demand.

"Now the entire field of productive and constructive industry is
divided into ten great departments, each representing a group of
allied industries, each particular industry being in turn represented
by a subordinate bureau, which has a complete record of the plant and
force under its control, of the present product, and means of
increasing it. The estimates of the distributive department, after
adoption by the administration, are sent as mandates to the ten great
departments, which allot them to the subordinate bureaus representing
the particular industries, and these set the men at work. Each bureau
is responsible for the task given it, and this responsibility is
enforced by departmental oversight and that of the administration; nor
does the distributive department accept the product without its own
inspection; while even if in the hands of the consumer an article
turns out unfit, the system enables the fault to be traced back to the
original workman. The production of the commodities for actual public
consumption does not, of course, require by any means all the national
force of workers. After the necessary contingents have been detailed
for the various industries, the amount of labor left for other
employment is expended in creating fixed capital, such as buildings,
machinery, engineering works, and so forth."

"One point occurs to me," I said, "on which I should think there might
be dissatisfaction. Where there is no opportunity for private
enterprise, how is there any assurance that the claims of small
minorities of the people to have articles produced, for which there is
no wide demand, will be respected? An official decree at any moment
may deprive them of the means of gratifying some special taste, merely
because the majority does not share it."

"That would be tyranny indeed," replied Dr. Leete, "and you may be
very sure that it does not happen with us, to whom liberty is as dear
as equality or fraternity. As you come to know our system better, you
will see that our officials are in fact, and not merely in name, the
agents and servants of the people. The administration has no power to
stop the production of any commodity for which there continues to be a
demand. Suppose the demand for any article declines to such a point
that its production becomes very costly. The price has to be raised in
proportion, of course, but as long as the consumer cares to pay it,
the production goes on. Again, suppose an article not before produced
is demanded. If the administration doubts the reality of the demand, a
popular petition guaranteeing a certain basis of consumption compels
it to produce the desired article. A government, or a majority, which
should undertake to tell the people, or a minority, what they were to
eat, drink, or wear, as I believe governments in America did in your
day, would be regarded as a curious anachronism indeed. Possibly you
had reasons for tolerating these infringements of personal
independence, but we should not think them endurable. I am glad you
raised this point, for it has given me a chance to show you how much
more direct and efficient is the control over production exercised by
the individual citizen now than it was in your day, when what you
called private initiative prevailed, though it should have been
called capitalist initiative, for the average private citizen had
little enough share in it."

"You speak of raising the price of costly articles," I said. "How can
prices be regulated in a country where there is no competition between
buyers or sellers?"

"Just as they were with you," replied Dr. Leete. "You think that needs
explaining," he added, as I looked incredulous, "but the explanation
need not be long; the cost of the labor which produced it was
recognized as the legitimate basis of the price of an article in your
day, and so it is in ours. In your day, it was the difference in wages
that made the difference in the cost of labor; now it is the relative
number of hours constituting a day's work in different trades, the
maintenance of the worker being equal in all cases. The cost of a
man's work in a trade so difficult that in order to attract volunteers
the hours have to be fixed at four a day is twice as great as that in
a trade where the men work eight hours. The result as to the cost of
labor, you see, is just the same as if the man working four hours were
paid, under your system, twice the wages the other gets. This
calculation applied to the labor employed in the various processes of
a manufactured article gives its price relatively to other articles.
Besides the cost of production and transportation, the factor of
scarcity affects the prices of some commodities. As regards the great
staples of life, of which an abundance can always be secured,
scarcity is eliminated as a factor. There is always a large surplus
kept on hand from which any fluctuations of demand or supply can be
corrected, even in most cases of bad crops. The prices of the staples
grow less year by year, but rarely, if ever, rise. There are, however,
certain classes of articles permanently, and others temporarily,
unequal to the demand, as, for example, fresh fish or dairy products
in the latter category, and the products of high skill and rare
materials in the other. All that can be done here is to equalize the
inconvenience of the scarcity. This is done by temporarily raising the
price if the scarcity be temporary, or fixing it high if it be
permanent. High prices in your day meant restriction of the articles
affected to the rich, but nowadays, when the means of all are the
same, the effect is only that those to whom the articles seem most
desirable are the ones who purchase them. Of course the nation, as any
other caterer for the public needs must be, is frequently left with
small lots of goods on its hands by changes in taste, unseasonable
weather, and various other causes. These it has to dispose of at a
sacrifice just as merchants often did in your day, charging up the
loss to the expenses of the business. Owing, however, to the vast body
of consumers to which such lots can be simultaneously offered, there
is rarely any difficulty in getting rid of them at trifling loss. I
have given you now some general notion of our system of production,
as well as distribution. Do you find it as complex as you expected?"

I admitted that nothing could be much simpler.

"I am sure," said Dr. Leete, "that it is within the truth to say that
the head of one of the myriad private businesses of your day, who had
to maintain sleepless vigilance against the fluctuations of the
market, the machinations of his rivals, and the failure of his
debtors, had a far more trying task than the group of men at
Washington who nowadays direct the industries of the entire nation.
All this merely shows, my dear fellow, how much easier it is to do
things the right way than the wrong. It is easier for a general up in
a balloon, with perfect survey of the field, to manoeuvre a million men
to victory than for a sergeant to manage a platoon in a thicket."

"The general of this army, including the flower of the manhood of the
nation, must be the foremost man in the country, really greater even
than the President of the United States," I said.

"He is the President of the United States," replied Dr. Leete, "or
rather the most important function of the presidency is the headship
of the industrial army."

"How is he chosen?" I asked.

"I explained to you before," replied Dr. Leete, "when I was describing
the force of the motive of emulation among all grades of the
industrial army, that the line of promotion for the meritorious lies
through three grades to the officer's grade, and thence up through the
lieutenancies to the captaincy or foremanship, and superintendency or
colonel's rank. Next, with an intervening grade in some of the larger
trades, come the general of the guild, under whose immediate control
all the operations of the trade are conducted. This officer is at the
head of the national bureau representing his trade, and is responsible
for its work to the administration. The general of his guild holds a
splendid position, and one which amply satisfies the ambition of most
men, but above his rank, which may be compared--to follow the military
analogies familiar to you--to that of a general of division or
major-general, is that of the chiefs of the ten great departments, or
groups of allied trades. The chiefs of these ten grand divisions of
the industrial army may be compared to your commanders of army corps,
or lieutenant-generals, each having from a dozen to a score of
generals of separate guilds reporting to him. Above these ten great
officers, who form his council, is the general-in-chief, who is the
President of the United States.

"The general-in-chief of the industrial army must have passed through
all the grades below him, from the common laborers up. Let us see how
he rises. As I have told you, it is simply by the excellence of his
record as a worker that one rises through the grades of the privates
and becomes a candidate for a lieutenancy. Through the lieutenancies
he rises to the colonelcy, or superintendent's position, by
appointment from above, strictly limited to the candidates of the best
records. The general of the guild appoints to the ranks under him, but
he himself is not appointed, but chosen by suffrage."

"By suffrage!" I exclaimed. "Is not that ruinous to the discipline of
the guild, by tempting the candidates to intrigue for the support of
the workers under them?"

"So it would be, no doubt," replied Dr. Leete, "if the workers had any
suffrage to exercise, or anything to say about the choice. But they
have nothing. Just here comes in a peculiarity of our system. The
general of the guild is chosen from among the superintendents by vote
of the honorary members of the guild, that is, of those who have
served their time in the guild and received their discharge. As you
know, at the age of forty-five we are mustered out of the army of
industry, and have the residue of life for the pursuit of our own
improvement or recreation. Of course, however, the associations of our
active lifetime retain a powerful hold on us. The companionships we
formed then remain our companionships till the end of life. We always
continue honorary members of our former guilds, and retain the keenest
and most jealous interest in their welfare and repute in the hands of
the following generation. In the clubs maintained by the honorary
members of the several guilds, in which we meet socially, there are no
topics of conversation so common as those which relate to these
matters, and the young aspirants for guild leadership who can pass the
criticism of us old fellows are likely to be pretty well equipped.
Recognizing this fact, the nation entrusts to the honorary members of
each guild the election of its general, and I venture to claim that no
previous form of society could have developed a body of electors so
ideally adapted to their office, as regards absolute impartiality,
knowledge of the special qualifications and record of candidates,
solicitude for the best result, and complete absence of self-interest.

"Each of the ten lieutenant-generals or heads of departments is
himself elected from among the generals of the guilds grouped as a
department, by vote of the honorary members of the guilds thus
grouped. Of course there is a tendency on the part of each guild to
vote for its own general, but no guild of any group has nearly enough
votes to elect a man not supported by most of the others. I assure you
that these elections are exceedingly lively."

"The President, I suppose, is selected from among the ten heads of the
great departments," I suggested.

"Precisely, but the heads of departments are not eligible to the
presidency till they have been a certain number of years out of
office. It is rarely that a man passes through all the grades to the
headship of a department much before he is forty, and at the end of a
five years' term he is usually forty-five. If more, he still serves
through his term, and if less, he is nevertheless discharged from the
industrial army at its termination. It would not do for him to return
to the ranks. The interval before he is a candidate for the presidency
is intended to give time for him to recognize fully that he has
returned into the general mass of the nation, and is identified with
it rather than with the industrial army. Moreover, it is expected that
he will employ this period in studying the general condition of the
army, instead of that of the special group of guilds of which he was
the head. From among the former heads of departments who may be
eligible at the time, the President is elected by vote of all the men
of the nation who are not connected with the industrial army."

"The army is not allowed to vote for President?"

"Certainly not. That would be perilous to its discipline, which it is
the business of the President to maintain as the representative of the
nation at large. His right hand for this purpose is the inspectorate,
a highly important department of our system; to the inspectorate come
all complaints or information as to defects in goods, insolence or
inefficiency of officials, or dereliction of any sort in the public
service. The inspectorate, however, does not wait for complaints. Not
only is it on the alert to catch and sift every rumor of a fault in
the service, but it is its business, by systematic and constant
oversight and inspection of every branch of the army, to find out what
is going wrong before anybody else does. The President is usually not
far from fifty when elected, and serves five years, forming an
honorable exception to the rule of retirement at forty-five. At the
end of his term of office, a national Congress is called to receive
his report and approve or condemn it. If it is approved, Congress
usually elects him to represent the nation for five years more in the
international council. Congress, I should also say, passes on the
reports of the outgoing heads of departments, and a disapproval
renders any one of them ineligible for President. But it is rare,
indeed, that the nation has occasion for other sentiments than those
of gratitude toward its high officers. As to their ability, to have
risen from the ranks, by tests so various and severe, to their
positions, is proof in itself of extraordinary qualities, while as to
faithfulness, our social system leaves them absolutely without any
other motive than that of winning the esteem of their fellow citizens.
Corruption is impossible in a society where there is neither poverty
to be bribed nor wealth to bribe, while as to demagoguery or intrigue
for office, the conditions of promotion render them out of the
question."

"One point I do not quite understand," I said. "Are the members of the
liberal professions eligible to the presidency? and if so, how are
they ranked with those who pursue the industries proper?"

"They have no ranking with them," replied Dr. Leete. "The members of
the technical professions, such as engineers and architects, have a
ranking with the constructive guilds; but the members of the liberal
professions, the doctors and teachers, as well as the artists and men
of letters who obtain remissions of industrial service, do not belong
to the industrial army. On this ground they vote for the President,
but are not eligible to his office. One of its main duties being the
control and discipline of the industrial army, it is essential that
the President should have passed through all its grades to understand
his business."

"That is reasonable," I said; "but if the doctors and teachers do not
know enough of industry to be President, neither, I should think, can
the President know enough of medicine and education to control those
departments."

"No more does he," was the reply. "Except in the general way that he
is responsible for the enforcement of the laws as to all classes, the
President has nothing to do with the faculties of medicine and
education, which are controlled by boards of regents of their own, in
which the President is ex-officio chairman, and has the casting vote.
These regents, who, of course, are responsible to Congress, are chosen
by the honorary members of the guilds of education and medicine, the
retired teachers and doctors of the country."

"Do you know," I said, "the method of electing officials by votes of
the retired members of the guilds is nothing more than the application
on a national scale of the plan of government by alumni, which we used
to a slight extent occasionally in the management of our higher
educational institutions."

"Did you, indeed?" exclaimed Dr. Leete, with animation. "That is quite
new to me, and I fancy will be to most of us, and of much interest as
well. There has been great discussion as to the germ of the idea, and
we fancied that there was for once something new under the sun. Well!
well! In your higher educational institutions! that is interesting
indeed. You must tell me more of that."

"Truly, there is very little more to tell than I have told already," I
replied. "If we had the germ of your idea, it was but as a germ."

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

completion: Doctor Leete takes Julian West to visit the warehouse and to see how products are distributed. He is amazed at the perfect organization that all this efficiency can give to labor. They walk home, and on the way Julian West raises the question of how all these products are produced efficiently and without waste. Doctor Leete explains that the process is very simple. Under capitalism, the business owner always had to worry about a fluctuating market and the machinations of competitors, but the new industrial army knows exactly what the demand is at any point and can therefore keep supplies in tact. The distributive department estimates staples as much as a year in advance, but most products can be estimated based on the weekly state of demand. Doctor Leete adds that all of production and construction is divided into ten huge departments. The distributive department sends estimates to these ten departments. Each level inspects the products carefully and is able to send a faulty product back to a particular worker. Julian West wonders if items that are not in great demand are accounted for. Doctor Leete assures him that great pains are taken to keep products in circulation even when they have a very small consumer base. He adds that control over production is much more directly exercised by the citizens than it was under capitalism. Doctor Leete then explains that the general of the industrial army is the president of the United States. He is chosen by the alumni members of the various industries, that is, by those men who have retired from service at forty-five years of age, but who keep an active interest in their industry. In this way, no one can vie for the votes of his fellow workers. The voters are those who have no personal interest in the presidency. The president is a person who begins in the industrial army and rises to the level of head of one of the ten departments. After holding that position, he has to have been retired for five years, gaining an identification with the whole nation, as opposed to identifying exclusively with his own guild. Julian West also finds out that no one who has not gone through the industrial army can become president. That means that no one in the professions or the arts can become president. The president, for his own part, cannot exercise control over these fields, but he does sit on the boards of directors. Julian West informs Doctor Leete that this system of voting seems to derive from the institutions of higher education in the nineteenth century, when alumni ran the universities and colleges. Doctor Leete is happy to learn this fact because historians have not been able to discover the origin of this practice. That evening Doctor Leete and Julian West have another talk. Julian West is surprised at the early age of retirement. He thinks it seems too early to put people out of work when they have plenty of good years ahead of them. Doctor Leete answers that people work only for duty, but they all look forward to the age of forty five as the best time of their life because it begins the time of the higher and larger activities. If they are not interested in independent scholarship or art, they can simply travel and live a leisurely existence. They also discuss the sports of the twentieth century. The prizes are never monetary. The various guilds compete against one another with a healthy rivalry.


prompt:
Chapter: That evening I sat up for some time after the ladies had retired,
talking with Dr. Leete about the effect of the plan of exempting men
from further service to the nation after the age of forty-five, a
point brought up by his account of the part taken by the retired
citizens in the government.

"At forty-five," said I, "a man still has ten years of good manual
labor in him, and twice ten years of good intellectual service. To be
superannuated at that age and laid on the shelf must be regarded
rather as a hardship than a favor by men of energetic dispositions."

"My dear Mr. West," exclaimed Dr. Leete, beaming upon me, "you cannot
have any idea of the piquancy your nineteenth century ideas have for
us of this day, the rare quaintness of their effect. Know, O child of
another race and yet the same, that the labor we have to render as our
part in securing for the nation the means of a comfortable physical
existence is by no means regarded as the most important, the most
interesting, or the most dignified employment of our powers. We look
upon it as a necessary duty to be discharged before we can fully
devote ourselves to the higher exercise of our faculties, the
intellectual and spiritual enjoyments and pursuits which alone mean
life. Everything possible is indeed done by the just distribution of
burdens, and by all manner of special attractions and incentives to
relieve our labor of irksomeness, and, except in a comparative sense,
it is not usually irksome, and is often inspiring. But it is not our
labor, but the higher and larger activities which the performance of
our task will leave us free to enter upon, that are considered the
main business of existence.

"Of course not all, nor the majority, have those scientific, artistic,
literary, or scholarly interests which make leisure the one thing
valuable to their possessors. Many look upon the last half of life
chiefly as a period for enjoyment of other sorts; for travel, for
social relaxation in the company of their lifetime friends; a time
for the cultivation of all manner of personal idiosyncrasies and
special tastes, and the pursuit of every imaginable form of
recreation; in a word, a time for the leisurely and unperturbed
appreciation of the good things of the world which they have helped to
create. But whatever the differences between our individual tastes as
to the use we shall put our leisure to, we all agree in looking
forward to the date of our discharge as the time when we shall first
enter upon the full enjoyment of our birthright, the period when we
shall first really attain our majority and become enfranchised from
discipline and control, with the fee of our lives vested in
ourselves. As eager boys in your day anticipated twenty-one, so men
nowadays look forward to forty-five. At twenty-one we become men, but
at forty-five we renew youth. Middle age and what you would have
called old age are considered, rather than youth, the enviable time of
life. Thanks to the better conditions of existence nowadays, and above
all the freedom of every one from care, old age approaches many years
later and has an aspect far more benign than in past times. Persons of
average constitution usually live to eighty-five or ninety, and at
forty-five we are physically and mentally younger, I fancy, than you
were at thirty-five. It is a strange reflection that at forty-five,
when we are just entering upon the most enjoyable period of life, you
already began to think of growing old and to look backward. With you
it was the forenoon, with us it is the afternoon, which is the
brighter half of life."

After this I remember that our talk branched into the subject of
popular sports and recreations at the present time as compared with
those of the nineteenth century.

"In one respect," said Dr. Leete, "there is a marked difference. The
professional sportsmen, which were such a curious feature of your day,
we have nothing answering to, nor are the prizes for which our
athletes contend money prizes, as with you. Our contests are always
for glory only. The generous rivalry existing between the various
guilds, and the loyalty of each worker to his own, afford a constant
stimulation to all sorts of games and matches by sea and land, in
which the young men take scarcely more interest than the honorary
guildsmen who have served their time. The guild yacht races off
Marblehead take place next week, and you will be able to judge for
yourself of the popular enthusiasm which such events nowadays call out
as compared with your day. The demand for '_panem et circenses_'
preferred by the Roman populace is recognized nowadays as a wholly
reasonable one. If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is
a close second, and the nation caters for both. Americans of the
nineteenth century were as unfortunate in lacking an adequate
provision for the one sort of need as for the other. Even if the
people of that period had enjoyed larger leisure they would, I fancy,
have often been at a loss how to pass it agreeably. We are never in
that predicament."

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

completion: That evening Doctor Leete and Julian West have another talk. Julian West is surprised at the early age of retirement. He thinks it seems too early to put people out of work when they have plenty of good years ahead of them. Doctor Leete answers that people work only for duty, but they all look forward to the age of forty five as the best time of their life because it begins the time of the higher and larger activities. If they are not interested in independent scholarship or art, they can simply travel and live a leisurely existence. They also discuss the sports of the twentieth century. The prizes are never monetary. The various guilds compete against one another with a healthy rivalry.


prompt:
Chapter: In the course of an early morning constitutional I visited
Charlestown. Among the changes, too numerous to attempt to indicate,
which mark the lapse of a century in that quarter, I particularly
noted the total disappearance of the old state prison.

"That went before my day, but I remember hearing about it," said Dr.
Leete, when I alluded to the fact at the breakfast table. "We have no
jails nowadays. All cases of atavism are treated in the hospitals."

"Of atavism!" I exclaimed, staring.

"Why, yes," replied Dr. Leete. "The idea of dealing punitively with
those unfortunates was given up at least fifty years ago, and I think
more."

"I don't quite understand you," I said. "Atavism in my day was a word
applied to the cases of persons in whom some trait of a remote
ancestor recurred in a noticeable manner. Am I to understand that
crime is nowadays looked upon as the recurrence of an ancestral
trait?"

"I beg your pardon," said Dr. Leete with a smile half humorous, half
deprecating, "but since you have so explicitly asked the question, I
am forced to say that the fact is precisely that."

After what I had already learned of the moral contrasts between the
nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it was doubtless absurd in me
to begin to develop sensitiveness on the subject, and probably if Dr.
Leete had not spoken with that apologetic air and Mrs. Leete and Edith
shown a corresponding embarrassment, I should not have flushed, as I
was conscious I did.

"I was not in much danger of being vain of my generation before," I
said; "but, really"--

"This is your generation, Mr. West," interposed Edith. "It is the one
in which you are living, you know, and it is only because we are alive
now that we call it ours."

"Thank you. I will try to think of it so," I said, and as my eyes met
hers their expression quite cured my senseless sensitiveness. "After
all," I said, with a laugh, "I was brought up a Calvinist, and ought
not to be startled to hear crime spoken of as an ancestral trait."

"In point of fact," said Dr. Leete, "our use of the word is no
reflection at all on your generation, if, begging Edith's pardon, we
may call it yours, so far as seeming to imply that we think ourselves,
apart from our circumstances, better than you were. In your day fully
nineteen twentieths of the crime, using the word broadly to include
all sorts of misdemeanors, resulted from the inequality in the
possessions of individuals; want tempted the poor, lust of greater
gains, or the desire to preserve former gains, tempted the well-to-do.
Directly or indirectly, the desire for money, which then meant every
good thing, was the motive of all this crime, the taproot of a vast
poison growth, which the machinery of law, courts, and police could
barely prevent from choking your civilization outright. When we made
the nation the sole trustee of the wealth of the people, and
guaranteed to all abundant maintenance, on the one hand abolishing
want, and on the other checking the accumulation of riches, we cut
this root, and the poison tree that overshadowed your society
withered, like Jonah's gourd, in a day. As for the comparatively small
class of violent crimes against persons, unconnected with any idea of
gain, they were almost wholly confined, even in your day, to the
ignorant and bestial; and in these days, when education and good
manners are not the monopoly of a few, but universal, such atrocities
are scarcely ever heard of. You now see why the word "atavism" is used
for crime. It is because nearly all forms of crime known to you are
motiveless now, and when they appear can only be explained as the
outcropping of ancestral traits. You used to call persons who stole,
evidently without any rational motive, kleptomaniacs, and when the
case was clear deemed it absurd to punish them as thieves. Your
attitude toward the genuine kleptomaniac is precisely ours toward the
victim of atavism, an attitude of compassion and firm but gentle
restraint.

"Your courts must have an easy time of it," I observed. "With no
private property to speak of, no disputes between citizens over
business relations, no real estate to divide or debts to collect,
there must be absolutely no civil business at all for them; and with
no offenses against property, and mighty few of any sort to provide
criminal cases, I should think you might almost do without judges and
lawyers altogether."

"We do without the lawyers, certainly," was Dr. Leete's reply. "It
would not seem reasonable to us, in a case where the only interest of
the nation is to find out the truth, that persons should take part in
the proceedings who had an acknowledged motive to color it."

"But who defends the accused?"

"If he is a criminal he needs no defense, for he pleads guilty in most
instances," replied Dr. Leete. "The plea of the accused is not a mere
formality with us, as with you. It is usually the end of the case."

"You don't mean that the man who pleads not guilty is thereupon
discharged?"

"No, I do not mean that. He is not accused on light grounds, and if he
denies his guilt, must still be tried. But trials are few, for in most
cases the guilty man pleads guilty. When he makes a false plea and is
clearly proved guilty, his penalty is doubled. Falsehood is, however,
so despised among us that few offenders would lie to save themselves."

"That is the most astounding thing you have yet told me," I exclaimed.
"If lying has gone out of fashion, this is indeed the 'new heavens and
the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,' which the prophet
foretold."

"Such is, in fact, the belief of some persons nowadays," was the
doctor's answer. "They hold that we have entered upon the millennium,
and the theory from their point of view does not lack plausibility.
But as to your astonishment at finding that the world has outgrown
lying, there is really no ground for it. Falsehood, even in your day,
was not common between gentlemen and ladies, social equals. The lie of
fear was the refuge of cowardice, and the lie of fraud the device of
the cheat. The inequalities of men and the lust of acquisition offered
a constant premium on lying at that time. Yet even then, the man who
neither feared another nor desired to defraud him scorned falsehood.
Because we are now all social equals, and no man either has anything
to fear from another or can gain anything by deceiving him, the
contempt of falsehood is so universal that it is rarely, as I told
you, that even a criminal in other respects will be found willing to
lie. When, however, a plea of not guilty is returned, the judge
appoints two colleagues to state the opposite sides of the case. How
far these men are from being like your hired advocates and
prosecutors, determined to acquit or convict, may appear from the fact
that unless both agree that the verdict found is just, the case is
tried over, while anything like bias in the tone of either of the
judges stating the case would be a shocking scandal."

"Do I understand," I said, "that it is a judge who states each side of
the case as well as a judge who hears it?"

"Certainly. The judges take turns in serving on the bench and at the
bar, and are expected to maintain the judicial temper equally whether
in stating or deciding a case. The system is indeed in effect that of
trial by three judges occupying different points of view as to the
case. When they agree upon a verdict, we believe it to be as near to
absolute truth as men well can come."

"You have given up the jury system, then?"

"It was well enough as a corrective in the days of hired advocates,
and a bench sometimes venal, and often with a tenure that made it
dependent, but is needless now. No conceivable motive but justice
could actuate our judges."

"How are these magistrates selected?"

"They are an honorable exception to the rule which discharges all men
from service at the age of forty-five. The President of the nation
appoints the necessary judges year by year from the class reaching
that age. The number appointed is, of course, exceedingly few, and
the honor so high that it is held an offset to the additional term of
service which follows, and though a judge's appointment may be
declined, it rarely is. The term is five years, without eligibility to
reappointment. The members of the Supreme Court, which is the guardian
of the constitution, are selected from among the lower judges. When a
vacancy in that court occurs, those of the lower judges, whose terms
expire that year, select, as their last official act, the one of their
colleagues left on the bench whom they deem fittest to fill it."

"There being no legal profession to serve as a school for judges," I
said, "they must, of course, come directly from the law school to the
bench."

"We have no such things as law schools," replied the doctor, smiling.
"The law as a special science is obsolete. It was a system of
casuistry which the elaborate artificiality of the old order of
society absolutely required to interpret it, but only a few of the
plainest and simplest legal maxims have any application to the
existing state of the world. Everything touching the relations of men
to one another is now simpler, beyond any comparison, than in your
day. We should have no sort of use for the hair-splitting experts who
presided and argued in your courts. You must not imagine, however,
that we have any disrespect for those ancient worthies because we have
no use for them. On the contrary, we entertain an unfeigned respect,
amounting almost to awe, for the men who alone understood and were
able to expound the interminable complexity of the rights of property,
and the relations of commercial and personal dependence involved in
your system. What, indeed, could possibly give a more powerful
impression of the intricacy and artificiality of that system than the
fact that it was necessary to set apart from other pursuits the cream
of the intellect of every generation, in order to provide a body of
pundits able to make it even vaguely intelligible to those whose fates
it determined. The treatises of your great lawyers, the works of
Blackstone and Chitty, of Story and Parsons, stand in our museums,
side by side with the tomes of Duns Scotus and his fellow scholastics,
as curious monuments of intellectual subtlety devoted to subjects
equally remote from the interests of modern men. Our judges are simply
widely informed, judicious, and discreet men of ripe years.

"I should not fail to speak of one important function of the minor
judges," added Dr. Leete. "This is to adjudicate all cases where a
private of the industrial army makes a complaint of unfairness against
an officer. All such questions are heard and settled without appeal by
a single judge, three judges being required only in graver cases. The
efficiency of industry requires the strictest discipline in the army
of labor, but the claim of the workman to just and considerate
treatment is backed by the whole power of the nation. The officer
commands and the private obeys, but no officer is so high that he
would dare display an overbearing manner toward a workman of the
lowest class. As for churlishness or rudeness by an official of any
sort, in his relations to the public, not one among minor offenses is
more sure of a prompt penalty than this. Not only justice but civility
is enforced by our judges in all sorts of intercourse. No value of
service is accepted as a set-off to boorish or offensive manners."

It occurred to me, as Dr. Leete was speaking, that in all his talk I
had heard much of the nation and nothing of the state governments. Had
the organization of the nation as an industrial unit done away with
the states? I asked.

"Necessarily," he replied. "The state governments would have
interfered with the control and discipline of the industrial army,
which, of course, required to be central and uniform. Even if the
state governments had not become inconvenient for other reasons, they
were rendered superfluous by the prodigious simplification in the task
of government since your day. Almost the sole function of the
administration now is that of directing the industries of the country.
Most of the purposes for which governments formerly existed no longer
remain to be subserved. We have no army or navy, and no military
organization. We have no departments of state or treasury, no excise
or revenue services, no taxes or tax collectors. The only function
proper of government, as known to you, which still remains, is the
judiciary and police system. I have already explained to you how
simple is our judicial system as compared with your huge and complex
machine. Of course the same absence of crime and temptation to it,
which make the duties of judges so light, reduces the number and
duties of the police to a minimum."

"But with no state legislatures, and Congress meeting only once in
five years, how do you get your legislation done?"

"We have no legislation," replied Dr. Leete, "that is, next to none.
It is rarely that Congress, even when it meets, considers any new laws
of consequence, and then it only has power to commend them to the
following Congress, lest anything be done hastily. If you will
consider a moment, Mr. West, you will see that we have nothing to make
laws about. The fundamental principles on which our society is founded
settle for all time the strifes and misunderstandings which in your
day called for legislation.

"Fully ninety-nine hundredths of the laws of that time concerned the
definition and protection of private property and the relations of
buyers and sellers. There is neither private property, beyond personal
belongings, now, nor buying and selling, and therefore the occasion of
nearly all the legislation formerly necessary has passed away.
Formerly, society was a pyramid poised on its apex. All the
gravitations of human nature were constantly tending to topple it
over, and it could be maintained upright, or rather upwrong (if you
will pardon the feeble witticism), by an elaborate system of
constantly renewed props and buttresses and guy-ropes in the form of
laws. A central Congress and forty state legislatures, turning out
some twenty thousand laws a year, could not make new props fast enough
to take the place of those which were constantly breaking down or
becoming ineffectual through some shifting of the strain. Now society
rests on its base, and is in as little need of artificial supports as
the everlasting hills."

"But you have at least municipal governments besides the one central
authority?"

"Certainly, and they have important and extensive functions in looking
out for the public comfort and recreation, and the improvement and
embellishment of the villages and cities."

"But having no control over the labor of their people, or means of
hiring it, how can they do anything?"

"Every town or city is conceded the right to retain, for its own
public works, a certain proportion of the quota of labor its citizens
contribute to the nation. This proportion, being assigned it as so
much credit, can be applied in any way desired."

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

completion: The next morning, Julian West goes for a walk and realizes that the state prison in Charleston is missing. When he gets back, Doctor Leete explains that there are no prisons and that cases of atavism are treated in the hospitals. Atavism, Julian West learns, refers to behavior that comes from the past and does not belong in the present age. Julian West feels embarrassed at this idea, since the behavior of his age is considered backward and criminal. Edith Leete tells him to consider the twentieth century his age now, and Doctor Leete explains the thinking behind this term. In the nineteenth century, most crime resulted from inequalities in peoples possessions. He compares the need for money to the tap root of a vast poisonous growth. It required all the law, police, and government resources to keep this growth from overpowering the whole of society. Making everyone fully equal was like cutting the tap root. The small number of crimes that were not caused by poverty were largely eradicated by improvements in the education of the populace. Now, all crime is treated as an illness, and perpetrators are treated with firm kindness. Doctor Leete next explains how criminals are tried. There are no lawyers in this utopia. The criminals usually plead honestly as to their guilt or innocence, and a judge decides the case. In serious cases, three judges hear the case. No jury is used. The president of the nation appoints the judges. There are no law schools because the laws are so simple. They see the great legal minds of the nineteenth century as very smart men who were experts in an abstract subject of study that no longer has a practical application. Julian West wonders about state governments. Doctor Leete says they have been abolished, central government being more efficient and logical, but that municipal governments are still intact. Julian West wonders how they get legislation passed when their congress meets only once every five years. He finds out that this society has almost no legislation, since the fundamental principles on which the society is founded settle for all time the strifes and misunderstandings which called for legislation in the nineteenth century. Since the laws of Julian Wests time were set up mainly to protect private property and the relations between buyers and sellers, the disappearance of these entities makes such laws obsolete. Doctor Leete compares the structure of nineteenth-century society to an upside down pyramid. It was always threatening to fall over, and the only way to maintain it was with all kinds of props, like laws. Now society rests on its base and does not need artificial supports.


prompt:
Chapter: That afternoon Edith casually inquired if I had yet revisited the
underground chamber in the garden in which I had been found.

"Not yet," I replied. "To be frank, I have shrunk thus far from doing
so, lest the visit might revive old associations rather too strongly
for my mental equilibrium."

"Ah, yes!" she said, "I can imagine that you have done well to stay
away. I ought to have thought of that."

"No," I said, "I am glad you spoke of it. The danger, if there was
any, existed only during the first day or two. Thanks to you, chiefly
and always, I feel my footing now so firm in this new world, that if
you will go with me to keep the ghosts off, I should really like to
visit the place this afternoon."

Edith demurred at first, but, finding that I was in earnest, consented
to accompany me. The rampart of earth thrown up from the excavation
was visible among the trees from the house, and a few steps brought us
to the spot. All remained as it was at the point when work was
interrupted by the discovery of the tenant of the chamber, save that
the door had been opened and the slab from the roof replaced.
Descending the sloping sides of the excavation, we went in at the door
and stood within the dimly-lighted room.

Everything was just as I had beheld it last on that evening one
hundred and thirteen years previous, just before closing my eyes for
that long sleep. I stood for some time silently looking about me. I
saw that my companion was furtively regarding me with an expression of
awed and sympathetic curiosity. I put out my hand to her and she
placed hers in it, the soft fingers responding with a reassuring
pressure to my clasp. Finally she whispered, "Had we not better go out
now? You must not try yourself too far. Oh, how strange it must be to
you!"

"On the contrary," I replied, "it does not seem strange; that is the
strangest part of it."

"Not strange?" she echoed.

"Even so," I replied. "The emotions with which you evidently credit
me, and which I anticipated would attend this visit, I simply do not
feel. I realize all that these surroundings suggest, but without the
agitation I expected. You can't be nearly as much surprised at this as
I am myself. Ever since that terrible morning when you came to my
help, I have tried to avoid thinking of my former life, just as I have
avoided coming here, for fear of the agitating effects. I am for all
the world like a man who has permitted an injured limb to lie
motionless under the impression that it is exquisitely sensitive, and
on trying to move it finds that it is paralyzed."

"Do you mean your memory is gone?"

"Not at all. I remember everything connected with my former life, but
with a total lack of keen sensation. I remember it for clearness as if
it had been but a day since then, but my feelings about what I
remember are as faint as if to my consciousness, as well as in fact, a
hundred years had intervened. Perhaps it is possible to explain this,
too. The effect of change in surroundings is like that of lapse of
time in making the past seem remote. When I first woke from that
trance, my former life appeared as yesterday, but now, since I have
learned to know my new surroundings, and to realize the prodigious
changes that have transformed the world, I no longer find it hard, but
very easy, to realize that I have slept a century. Can you conceive of
such a thing as living a hundred years in four days? It really seems
to me that I have done just that, and that it is this experience which
has given so remote and unreal an appearance to my former life. Can
you see how such a thing might be?"

"I can conceive it," replied Edith, meditatively, "and I think we
ought all to be thankful that it is so, for it will save you much
suffering, I am sure."

"Imagine," I said, in an effort to explain, as much to myself as to
her, the strangeness of my mental condition, "that a man first heard
of a bereavement many, many years, half a lifetime perhaps, after the
event occurred. I fancy his feeling would be perhaps something as mine
is. When I think of my friends in the world of that former day, and
the sorrow they must have felt for me, it is with a pensive pity,
rather than keen anguish, as of a sorrow long, long ago ended."

"You have told us nothing yet of your friends," said Edith. "Had you
many to mourn you?"

"Thank God, I had very few relatives, none nearer than cousins," I
replied. "But there was one, not a relative, but dearer to me than any
kin of blood. She had your name. She was to have been my wife soon. Ah
me!"

"Ah me!" sighed the Edith by my side. "Think of the heartache she must
have had."

Something in the deep feeling of this gentle girl touched a chord in
my benumbed heart. My eyes, before so dry, were flooded with the tears
that had till now refused to come. When I had regained my composure, I
saw that she too had been weeping freely.

"God bless your tender heart," I said. "Would you like to see her
picture?"

A small locket with Edith Bartlett's picture, secured about my neck
with a gold chain, had lain upon my breast all through that long
sleep, and removing this I opened and gave it to my companion. She
took it with eagerness, and after poring long over the sweet face,
touched the picture with her lips.

"I know that she was good and lovely enough to well deserve your
tears," she said; "but remember her heartache was over long ago, and
she has been in heaven for nearly a century."

It was indeed so. Whatever her sorrow had once been, for nearly a
century she had ceased to weep, and, my sudden passion spent, my own
tears dried away. I had loved her very dearly in my other life, but it
was a hundred years ago! I do not know but some may find in this
confession evidence of lack of feeling, but I think, perhaps, that
none can have had an experience sufficiently like mine to enable them
to judge me. As we were about to leave the chamber, my eye rested upon
the great iron safe which stood in one corner. Calling my companion's
attention to it, I said:--

"This was my strong room as well as my sleeping room. In the safe
yonder are several thousand dollars in gold, and any amount of
securities. If I had known when I went to sleep that night just how
long my nap would be, I should still have thought that the gold was a
safe provision for my needs in any country or any century, however
distant. That a time would ever come when it would lose its purchasing
power, I should have considered the wildest of fancies. Nevertheless,
here I wake up to find myself among a people of whom a cartload of
gold will not procure a loaf of bread."

As might be expected, I did not succeed in impressing Edith that there
was anything remarkable in this fact. "Why in the world should it?"
she merely asked.

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

completion: Edith Leete asks Julian West if he has thought about visiting the underground vault where he had slept all those years. He tells her he has avoided it for fear of arousing painful feelings, but now he feels strong enough to do so. When they go down to the room, he is amazed at how removed he feels from his former life. He feels as if he has actually lived all these years and that time has healed the wounds of his departure. When Edith asks him about his family and friends, he tells her about Edith Bartlett and weeps. Edith Leete weeps with him. When he recovers, she tells him to remember that Edith Bartlett wept for his death over a hundred years ago and that she has been in heaven now for years. He feels comforted by this and is again amazed at how removed he feels from his former feelings for Edith Bartlett. As they are leaving the room, he notices his safe and exclaims over how odd it is that all the money and gold in his safe would not buy him even a loaf of bread now.


prompt:
Chapter: It had been suggested by Dr. Leete that we should devote the next
morning to an inspection of the schools and colleges of the city, with
some attempt on his own part at an explanation of the educational
system of the twentieth century.

"You will see," said he, as we set out after breakfast, "many very
important differences between our methods of education and yours, but
the main difference is that nowadays all persons equally have those
opportunities of higher education which in your day only an
infinitesimal portion of the population enjoyed. We should think we
had gained nothing worth speaking of, in equalizing the physical
comfort of men, without this educational equality."

"The cost must be very great," I said.

"If it took half the revenue of the nation, nobody would grudge it,"
replied Dr. Leete, "nor even if it took it all save a bare pittance.
But in truth the expense of educating ten thousand youth is not ten
nor five times that of educating one thousand. The principle which
makes all operations on a large scale proportionally cheaper than on a
small scale holds as to education also."

"College education was terribly expensive in my day," said I.

"If I have not been misinformed by our historians," Dr. Leete
answered, "it was not college education but college dissipation and
extravagance which cost so highly. The actual expense of your colleges
appears to have been very low, and would have been far lower if their
patronage had been greater. The higher education nowadays is as cheap
as the lower, as all grades of teachers, like all other workers,
receive the same support. We have simply added to the common school
system of compulsory education, in vogue in Massachusetts a hundred
years ago, a half dozen higher grades, carrying the youth to the age
of twenty-one and giving him what you used to call the education of a
gentleman, instead of turning him loose at fourteen or fifteen with no
mental equipment beyond reading, writing, and the multiplication
table."

"Setting aside the actual cost of these additional years of
education," I replied, "we should not have thought we could afford the
loss of time from industrial pursuits. Boys of the poorer classes
usually went to work at sixteen or younger, and knew their trade at
twenty."

"We should not concede you any gain even in material product by that
plan," Dr. Leete replied. "The greater efficiency which education
gives to all sorts of labor, except the rudest, makes up in a short
period for the time lost in acquiring it."

"We should also have been afraid," said I, "that a high education,
while it adapted men to the professions, would set them against manual
labor of all sorts."

"That was the effect of high education in your day, I have read,"
replied the doctor; "and it was no wonder, for manual labor meant
association with a rude, coarse, and ignorant class of people. There
is no such class now. It was inevitable that such a feeling should
exist then, for the further reason that all men receiving a high
education were understood to be destined for the professions or for
wealthy leisure, and such an education in one neither rich nor
professional was a proof of disappointed aspirations, an evidence of
failure, a badge of inferiority rather than superiority. Nowadays, of
course, when the highest education is deemed necessary to fit a man
merely to live, without any reference to the sort of work he may do,
its possession conveys no such implication."

"After all," I remarked, "no amount of education can cure natural
dullness or make up for original mental deficiencies. Unless the
average natural mental capacity of men is much above its level in my
day, a high education must be pretty nearly thrown away on a large
element of the population. We used to hold that a certain amount of
susceptibility to educational influences is required to make a mind
worth cultivating, just as a certain natural fertility in soil is
required if it is to repay tilling."

"Ah," said Dr. Leete, "I am glad you used that illustration, for it is
just the one I would have chosen to set forth the modern view of
education. You say that land so poor that the product will not repay
the labor of tilling is not cultivated. Nevertheless, much land that
does not begin to repay tilling by its product was cultivated in your
day and is in ours. I refer to gardens, parks, lawns, and, in general,
to pieces of land so situated that, were they left to grow up to weeds
and briers, they would be eyesores and inconveniences to all about.
They are therefore tilled, and though their product is little, there
is yet no land that, in a wider sense, better repays cultivation. So
it is with the men and women with whom we mingle in the relations of
society, whose voices are always in our ears, whose behavior in
innumerable ways affects our enjoyment,--who are, in fact, as much
conditions of our lives as the air we breathe, or any of the physical
elements on which we depend. If, indeed, we could not afford to
educate everybody, we should choose the coarsest and dullest by
nature, rather than the brightest, to receive what education we could
give. The naturally refined and intellectual can better dispense with
aids to culture than those less fortunate in natural endowments.

"To borrow a phrase which was often used in your day, we should not
consider life worth living if we had to be surrounded by a population
of ignorant, boorish, coarse, wholly uncultivated men and women, as
was the plight of the few educated in your day. Is a man satisfied,
merely because he is perfumed himself, to mingle with a malodorous
crowd? Could he take more than a very limited satisfaction, even in a
palatial apartment, if the windows on all four sides opened into
stable yards? And yet just that was the situation of those considered
most fortunate as to culture and refinement in your day. I know that
the poor and ignorant envied the rich and cultured then; but to us the
latter, living as they did, surrounded by squalor and brutishness,
seem little better off than the former. The cultured man in your age
was like one up to the neck in a nauseous bog solacing himself with a
smelling bottle. You see, perhaps, now, how we look at this question
of universal high education. No single thing is so important to every
man as to have for neighbors intelligent, companionable persons. There
is nothing, therefore, which the nation can do for him that will
enhance so much his own happiness as to educate his neighbors. When it
fails to do so, the value of his own education to him is reduced by
half, and many of the tastes he has cultivated are made positive
sources of pain.

"To educate some to the highest degree, and leave the mass wholly
uncultivated, as you did, made the gap between them almost like that
between different natural species, which have no means of
communication. What could be more inhuman than this consequence of a
partial enjoyment of education! Its universal and equal enjoyment
leaves, indeed, the differences between men as to natural endowments
as marked as in a state of nature, but the level of the lowest is
vastly raised. Brutishness is eliminated. All have some inkling of the
humanities, some appreciation of the things of the mind, and an
admiration for the still higher culture they have fallen short of.
They have become capable of receiving and imparting, in various
degrees, but all in some measure, the pleasures and inspirations of a
refined social life. The cultured society of the nineteenth
century,--what did it consist of but here and there a few microscopic
oases in a vast, unbroken wilderness? The proportion of individuals
capable of intellectual sympathies or refined intercourse, to the mass
of their contemporaries, used to be so infinitesimal as to be in any
broad view of humanity scarcely worth mentioning. One generation of
the world to-day represents a greater volume of intellectual life than
any five centuries ever did before.

"There is still another point I should mention in stating the grounds
on which nothing less than the universality of the best education
could now be tolerated," continued Dr. Leete, "and that is, the
interest of the coming generation in having educated parents. To put
the matter in a nutshell, there are three main grounds on which our
educational system rests: first, the right of every man to the
completest education the nation can give him on his own account, as
necessary to his enjoyment of himself; second, the right of his
fellow-citizens to have him educated, as necessary to their enjoyment
of his society; third, the right of the unborn to be guaranteed an
intelligent and refined parentage."

I shall not describe in detail what I saw in the schools that day.
Having taken but slight interest in educational matters in my former
life, I could offer few comparisons of interest. Next to the fact of
the universality of the higher as well as the lower education, I was
most struck with the prominence given to physical culture, and the
fact that proficiency in athletic feats and games as well as in
scholarship had a place in the rating of the youth.

"The faculty of education," Dr. Leete explained, "is held to the same
responsibility for the bodies as for the minds of its charges. The
highest possible physical, as well as mental, development of every one
is the double object of a curriculum which lasts from the age of six
to that of twenty-one."

The magnificent health of the young people in the schools impressed me
strongly. My previous observations, not only of the notable personal
endowments of the family of my host, but of the people I had seen in
my walks abroad, had already suggested the idea that there must have
been something like a general improvement in the physical standard of
the race since my day, and now, as I compared these stalwart young men
and fresh, vigorous maidens with the young people I had seen in the
schools of the nineteenth century, I was moved to impart my thought to
Dr. Leete. He listened with great interest to what I said.

"Your testimony on this point," he declared, "is invaluable. We
believe that there has been such an improvement as you speak of, but
of course it could only be a matter of theory with us. It is an
incident of your unique position that you alone in the world of to-day
can speak with authority on this point. Your opinion, when you state
it publicly, will, I assure you, make a profound sensation. For the
rest it would be strange, certainly, if the race did not show an
improvement. In your day, riches debauched one class with idleness of
mind and body, while poverty sapped the vitality of the masses by
overwork, bad food, and pestilent homes. The labor required of
children, and the burdens laid on women, enfeebled the very springs of
life. Instead of these maleficent circumstances, all now enjoy the
most favorable conditions of physical life; the young are carefully
nurtured and studiously cared for; the labor which is required of all
is limited to the period of greatest bodily vigor, and is never
excessive; care for one's self and one's family, anxiety as to
livelihood, the strain of a ceaseless battle for life--all these
influences, which once did so much to wreck the minds and bodies of
men and women, are known no more. Certainly, an improvement of the
species ought to follow such a change. In certain specific respects we
know, indeed, that the improvement has taken place. Insanity, for
instance, which in the nineteenth century was so terribly common a
product of your insane mode of life, has almost disappeared, with its
alternative, suicide."

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

completion: Doctor Leete takes Julian West on a tour of the universities. He says that the compulsory education of the nineteenth century has been extended in the twentieth century to the age of twenty-one. All men and women go to the university. When Julian West wonders about the cost of this education, Doctor Leete assures him that the principle which makes all operations on a large scale proportionally cheaper than on a small scale holds as to education also. He adds that the high cost of education in the nineteenth century was largely a result of the extravagance of the wealthy class. Doctor Leete says that the reason for placing so much importance on higher education is the belief that it would be unbearable to be educated and to have to live among uneducated people. In earlier times, the educated and the uneducated appeared so different from each other that they were like two different species. He gives three main reasons for the emphasis on universal higher education: everyone should get the most complete education possible; everyone deserves educated neighbors; all children deserve educated parents. Julian West is struck by the emphasis placed on physical education. He thinks there must have been a real improvement in the human body over time. Doctor Leete is glad to get this information. He thinks that since the wealthy of the nineteenth century spent their lives in debauchery and leisure, they did not get much physical exercise. And the poor were so caught up in making a living that their physical health suffered. It is no wonder that Julian West is impressed with the physical health of people of the twentieth century. Doctor Leete also notes that insanity and suicide are very rare now. That night after dinner, the women once again leave the men to discuss the new society. This time, the discussion centers around the wealth of the nation. Julian West is curious as to how much wealth is available in this new society. He says that if he had to go back to his time and explain everything to his fellow citizens, they would say it was all a dream unless he could explain how everything was funded. Doctor Leete first explains that the wastes of capitalism, when eliminated, would equal half the wealth of the nation. On top of that, the new industrial system is more efficient, and thus produces much more wealth. First, Doctor Leete lists the many sources of savings in the new society. There are no national, state, county or municipal debts, and no military or internal revenue service. The judiciary system is very small. There is no criminal class. There are very few physically and mentally disabled people. There are no wasteful rich people. There is no waste in households when cooking and cleaning is done communally. The distribution system of the government also prevents the huge wastes of the old system, since there are no middlemen and very little handling of the products. Next, Doctor Leete numbers the wastes of capitalism in four major areas. First, there is the waste of capitalists undertaking enterprises without any clear way of knowing if they will succeed or fail. Second, there are the wastes of competition among capitalists in the same market. Third, there is the waste caused by periodic gluts and crises. Fourth, there is the waste of idle capital and labor. Doctor Leete offers lengthy explanations of each of these four areas. He is especially interested in explaining the second of these, the wastes caused by competition. He notes that the producers of the nineteenth century worked for their own profit at the expense of the community. If the common good benefited from their machinations, it was only by chance. As often, the capitalists would increase their private hoards by practices injurious to the general welfare. All capitalists dreamed of gaining complete control over some necessity of life and then making people pay huge amounts for it. He tells Julian West that people of the twentieth century are always astounded that this was called a system of production, when in fact, it seems more like a system for preventing production. Doctor Leete explains that part of the cause of the continual ups and downs of the market was the use of money and credit . The empty promises of these two representative systems caused horrible pain and suffering. Doctor Leete next describes the how the nation can be so wealthy in the twentieth century. Most of it has to do with efficiency. The nation sees clearly where the demand is, and so it never wastes labor in producing products that are not going to be used. It is big enough to hold onto products that are temporarily over-supplied without putting people out of work. This means workers are never idle. He tells Julian West that he has still not seen the real wealth of the nation because it is spent mostly on public amusements and aesthetics. He sums up the philosophy that motivates his society in the following: competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the seed of efficient production. That evening, Julian West is enjoying music with Edith Leete. He asks her about the conversation he heard when he was coming to consciousness on his first day in the new world. He had heard her make her father promise not to tell him something. Her father had hesitated and had complied only after she and her mother both persuaded him. When he brings this topic up, Edith Leete blushes intensely. She turns up the music and only later asks him not to ask her or anyone else this question. He agrees, but then he cannot sleep all night wondering about it. He cannot figure out how she would know something about him when she had never seen him before the day of his awakening.