Chapter: I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857. "What!"
you say, "eighteen fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He means nineteen
fifty-seven, of course." I beg pardon, but there is no mistake. It was
about four in the afternoon of December the 26th, one day after
Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I first breathed the east
wind of Boston, which, I assure the reader, was at that remote period
marked by the same penetrating quality characterizing it in the
present year of grace, 2000.

These statements seem so absurd on their face, especially when I add
that I am a young man apparently of about thirty years of age, that no
person can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what
promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity. Nevertheless I
earnestly assure the reader that no imposition is intended, and will
undertake, if he shall follow me a few pages, to entirely convince him
of this. If I may, then, provisionally assume, with the pledge of
justifying the assumption, that I know better than the reader when I
was born, I will go on with my narrative. As every schoolboy knows, in
the latter part of the nineteenth century the civilization of to-day,
or anything like it, did not exist, although the elements which were
to develop it were already in ferment. Nothing had, however, occurred
to modify the immemorial division of society into the four classes, or
nations, as they may be more fitly called, since the differences
between them were far greater than those between any nations nowadays,
of the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant. I myself was
rich and also educated, and possessed, therefore, all the elements of
happiness enjoyed by the most fortunate in that age. Living in luxury,
and occupied only with the pursuit of the pleasures and refinements of
life, I derived the means of my support from the labor of others,
rendering no sort of service in return. My parents and grandparents
had lived in the same way, and I expected that my descendants, if I
had any, would enjoy a like easy existence.

But how could I live without service to the world? you ask. Why should
the world have supported in utter idleness one who was able to render
service? The answer is that my great-grandfather had accumulated a sum
of money on which his descendants had ever since lived. The sum, you
will naturally infer, must have been very large not to have been
exhausted in supporting three generations in idleness. This, however,
was not the fact. The sum had been originally by no means large. It
was, in fact, much larger now that three generations had been
supported upon it in idleness, than it was at first. This mystery of
use without consumption, of warmth without combustion, seems like
magic, but was merely an ingenious application of the art now happily
lost but carried to great perfection by your ancestors, of shifting
the burden of one's support on the shoulders of others. The man who
had accomplished this, and it was the end all sought, was said to live
on the income of his investments. To explain at this point how the
ancient methods of industry made this possible would delay us too
much. I shall only stop now to say that interest on investments was a
species of tax in perpetuity upon the product of those engaged in
industry which a person possessing or inheriting money was able to
levy. It must not be supposed that an arrangement which seems so
unnatural and preposterous according to modern notions was never
criticised by your ancestors. It had been the effort of law-givers and
prophets from the earliest ages to abolish interest, or at least to
limit it to the smallest possible rate. All these efforts had,
however, failed, as they necessarily must so long as the ancient
social organizations prevailed. At the time of which I write, the
latter part of the nineteenth century, governments had generally given
up trying to regulate the subject at all.

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the
way people lived together in those days, and especially of the
relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do
better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach
which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely
along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and
permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow.
Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a
road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at
the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and
comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the
scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the
straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the
competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in
life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his
child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat
to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by
which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so
easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the
coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground,
where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help
to drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It
was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat,
and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends
was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very
luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of
their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that
their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for
fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes;
commiseration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who
had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place
in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep
hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their
agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger,
the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a
very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable
displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the
passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope,
exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of possible
compensation in another world for the hardness of their lot, while
others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and
injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should
be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief when the
specially bad piece of road was gotten over. This relief was not,
indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always some
danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would
lose their seats.

It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of
the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers'
sense of the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to
hold on to them more desperately than before. If the passengers could
only have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever
fall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the
funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselves
extremely little about those who dragged the coach.

I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of the
twentieth century an incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts,
both very curious, which partly explain it. In the first place, it was
firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in which
Society could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the
few rode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement even
was possible, either in the harness, the coach, the roadway, or the
distribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it always
would be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy
forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.

The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singular
hallucination which those on the top of the coach generally shared,
that they were not exactly like their brothers and sisters who pulled
at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher
order of beings who might justly expect to be drawn. This seems
unaccountable, but, as I once rode on this very coach and shared that
very hallucination, I ought to be believed. The strangest thing about
the hallucination was that those who had but just climbed up from the
ground, before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon their
hands, began to fall under its influence. As for those whose parents
and grandparents before them had been so fortunate as to keep their
seats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the essential
difference between their sort of humanity and the common article was
absolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling
for the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophical
compassion is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I can
offer for the indifference which, at the period I write of, marked my
own attitude toward the misery of my brothers.

In 1887 I came to my thirtieth year. Although still unmarried, I was
engaged to wed Edith Bartlett. She, like myself, rode on the top of
the coach. That is to say, not to encumber ourselves further with an
illustration which has, I hope, served its purpose of giving the
reader some general impression of how we lived then, her family was
wealthy. In that age, when money alone commanded all that was
agreeable and refined in life, it was enough for a woman to be rich to
have suitors; but Edith Bartlett was beautiful and graceful also.

My lady readers, I am aware, will protest at this. "Handsome she might
have been," I hear them saying, "but graceful never, in the costumes
which were the fashion at that period, when the head covering was a
dizzy structure a foot tall, and the almost incredible extension of
the skirt behind by means of artificial contrivances more thoroughly
dehumanized the form than any former device of dressmakers. Fancy any
one graceful in such a costume!" The point is certainly well taken,
and I can only reply that while the ladies of the twentieth century
are lovely demonstrations of the effect of appropriate drapery in
accenting feminine graces, my recollection of their great-grandmothers
enables me to maintain that no deformity of costume can wholly
disguise them.

Our marriage only waited on the completion of the house which I was
building for our occupancy in one of the most desirable parts of the
city, that is to say, a part chiefly inhabited by the rich. For it
must be understood that the comparative desirability of different
parts of Boston for residence depended then, not on natural features,
but on the character of the neighboring population. Each class or
nation lived by itself, in quarters of its own. A rich man living
among the poor, an educated man among the uneducated, was like one
living in isolation among a jealous and alien race. When the house had
been begun, its completion by the winter of 1886 had been expected.
The spring of the following year found it, however, yet incomplete,
and my marriage still a thing of the future. The cause of a delay
calculated to be particularly exasperating to an ardent lover was a
series of strikes, that is to say, concerted refusals to work on the
part of the brick-layers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and
other trades concerned in house building. What the specific causes of
these strikes were I do not remember. Strikes had become so common at
that period that people had ceased to inquire into their particular
grounds. In one department of industry or another, they had been
nearly incessant ever since the great business crisis of 1873. In fact
it had come to be the exceptional thing to see any class of laborers
pursue their avocation steadily for more than a few months at a time.

The reader who observes the dates alluded to will of course recognize
in these disturbances of industry the first and incoherent phase of
the great movement which ended in the establishment of the modern
industrial system with all its social consequences. This is all so
plain in the retrospect that a child can understand it, but not being
prophets, we of that day had no clear idea what was happening to us.
What we did see was that industrially the country was in a very queer
way. The relation between the workingman and the employer, between
labor and capital, appeared in some unaccountable manner to have
become dislocated. The working classes had quite suddenly and very
generally become infected with a profound discontent with their
condition, and an idea that it could be greatly bettered if they only
knew how to go about it. On every side, with one accord, they
preferred demands for higher pay, shorter hours, better dwellings,
better educational advantages, and a share in the refinements and
luxuries of life, demands which it was impossible to see the way to
granting unless the world were to become a great deal richer than it
then was. Though they knew something of what they wanted, they knew
nothing of how to accomplish it, and the eager enthusiasm with which
they thronged about any one who seemed likely to give them any light
on the subject lent sudden reputation to many would-be leaders, some
of whom had little enough light to give. However chimerical the
aspirations of the laboring classes might be deemed, the devotion
with which they supported one another in the strikes, which were their
chief weapon, and the sacrifices which they underwent to carry them
out left no doubt of their dead earnestness.

As to the final outcome of the labor troubles, which was the phrase by
which the movement I have described was most commonly referred to, the
opinions of the people of my class differed according to individual
temperament. The sanguine argued very forcibly that it was in the very
nature of things impossible that the new hopes of the workingmen could
be satisfied, simply because the world had not the wherewithal to
satisfy them. It was only because the masses worked very hard and
lived on short commons that the race did not starve outright, and no
considerable improvement in their condition was possible while the
world, as a whole, remained so poor. It was not the capitalists whom
the laboring men were contending with, these maintained, but the
iron-bound environment of humanity, and it was merely a question of
the thickness of their skulls when they would discover the fact and
make up their minds to endure what they could not cure.

The less sanguine admitted all this. Of course the workingmen's
aspirations were impossible of fulfillment for natural reasons, but
there were grounds to fear that they would not discover this fact
until they had made a sad mess of society They had the votes and the
power to do so if they pleased, and their leaders meant they should.
Some of these desponding observers went so far as to predict an
impending social cataclysm. Humanity, they argued, having climbed to
the top round of the ladder of civilization, was about to take a
header into chaos, after which it would doubtless pick itself up, turn
round, and begin to climb again. Repeated experiences of this sort in
historic and prehistoric times possibly accounted for the puzzling
bumps on the human cranium. Human history, like all great movements,
was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of
indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination,
with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet
better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and
sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the
perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its
nether goal in the regions of chaos.

This, of course, was an extreme opinion, but I remember serious men
among my acquaintances who, in discussing the signs of the times,
adopted a very similar tone. It was no doubt the common opinion of
thoughtful men that society was approaching a critical period which
might result in great changes. The labor troubles, their causes,
course, and cure, took lead of all other topics in the public prints,
and in serious conversation.

The nervous tension of the public mind could not have been more
strikingly illustrated than it was by the alarm resulting from the
talk of a small band of men who called themselves anarchists, and
proposed to terrify the American people into adopting their ideas by
threats of violence, as if a mighty nation which had but just put down
a rebellion of half its own numbers, in order to maintain its
political system, were likely to adopt a new social system out of
fear.

As one of the wealthy, with a large stake in the existing order of
things, I naturally shared the apprehensions of my class. The
particular grievance I had against the working classes at the time of
which I write, on account of the effect of their strikes in postponing
my wedded bliss, no doubt lent a special animosity to my feeling
toward them.





The thirtieth day of May, 1887, fell on a Monday. It was one of the
annual holidays of the nation in the latter third of the nineteenth
century, being set apart under the name of Decoration Day, for doing
honor to the memory of the soldiers of the North who took part in the
war for the preservation of the union of the States. The survivors of
the war, escorted by military and civic processions and bands of
music, were wont on this occasion to visit the cemeteries and lay
wreaths of flowers upon the graves of their dead comrades, the
ceremony being a very solemn and touching one. The eldest brother of
Edith Bartlett had fallen in the war, and on Decoration Day the family
was in the habit of making a visit to Mount Auburn, where he lay.

I had asked permission to make one of the party, and, on our return to
the city at nightfall, remained to dine with the family of my
betrothed. In the drawing-room, after dinner, I picked up an evening
paper and read of a fresh strike in the building trades, which would
probably still further delay the completion of my unlucky house. I
remember distinctly how exasperated I was at this, and the
objurgations, as forcible as the presence of the ladies permitted,
which I lavished upon workmen in general, and these strikers in
particular. I had abundant sympathy from those about me, and the
remarks made in the desultory conversation which followed, upon the
unprincipled conduct of the labor agitators, were calculated to make
those gentlemen's ears tingle. It was agreed that affairs were going
from bad to worse very fast, and that there was no telling what we
should come to soon. "The worst of it," I remember Mrs. Bartlett's
saying, "is that the working classes all over the world seem to be
going crazy at once. In Europe it is far worse even than here. I'm
sure I should not dare to live there at all. I asked Mr. Bartlett the
other day where we should emigrate to if all the terrible things took
place which those socialists threaten. He said he did not know any
place now where society could be called stable except Greenland,
Patagonia, and the Chinese Empire." "Those Chinamen knew what they
were about," somebody added, "when they refused to let in our western
civilization. They knew what it would lead to better than we did. They
saw it was nothing but dynamite in disguise."

After this, I remember drawing Edith apart and trying to persuade her
that it would be better to be married at once without waiting for the
completion of the house, spending the time in travel till our home
was ready for us. She was remarkably handsome that evening, the
mourning costume that she wore in recognition of the day setting off
to great advantage the purity of her complexion. I can see her even
now with my mind's eye just as she looked that night. When I took my
leave she followed me into the hall and I kissed her good-by as usual.
There was no circumstance out of the common to distinguish this
parting from previous occasions when we had bade each other good-by
for a night or a day. There was absolutely no premonition in my mind,
or I am sure in hers, that this was more than an ordinary separation.

Ah, well!

The hour at which I had left my betrothed was a rather early one for a
lover, but the fact was no reflection on my devotion. I was a
confirmed sufferer from insomnia, and although otherwise perfectly
well had been completely fagged out that day, from having slept
scarcely at all the two previous nights. Edith knew this and had
insisted on sending me home by nine o'clock, with strict orders to go
to bed at once.

The house in which I lived had been occupied by three generations of
the family of which I was the only living representative in the direct
line. It was a large, ancient wooden mansion, very elegant in an
old-fashioned way within, but situated in a quarter that had long
since become undesirable for residence, from its invasion by tenement
houses and manufactories. It was not a house to which I could think of
bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Edith Bartlett. I had
advertised it for sale, and meanwhile merely used it for sleeping
purposes, dining at my club. One servant, a faithful colored man by
the name of Sawyer, lived with me and attended to my few wants. One
feature of the house I expected to miss greatly when I should leave
it, and this was the sleeping chamber which I had built under the
foundations. I could not have slept in the city at all, with its never
ceasing nightly noises, if I had been obliged to use an upstairs
chamber. But to this subterranean room no murmur from the upper world
ever penetrated. When I had entered it and closed the door, I was
surrounded by the silence of the tomb. In order to prevent the
dampness of the subsoil from penetrating the chamber, the walls had
been laid in hydraulic cement and were very thick, and the floor was
likewise protected. In order that the room might serve also as a vault
equally proof against violence and flames, for the storage of
valuables, I had roofed it with stone slabs hermetically sealed, and
the outer door was of iron with a thick coating of asbestos. A small
pipe, communicating with a wind-mill on the top of the house, insured
the renewal of air.

It might seem that the tenant of such a chamber ought to be able to
command slumber, but it was rare that I slept well, even there, two
nights in succession. So accustomed was I to wakefulness that I minded
little the loss of one night's rest. A second night, however, spent in
my reading chair instead of my bed, tired me out, and I never allowed
myself to go longer than that without slumber, from fear of nervous
disorder. From this statement it will be inferred that I had at my
command some artificial means for inducing sleep in the last resort,
and so in fact I had. If after two sleepless nights I found myself on
the approach of the third without sensations of drowsiness, I called
in Dr. Pillsbury.

He was a doctor by courtesy only, what was called in those days an
"irregular" or "quack" doctor. He called himself a "Professor of
Animal Magnetism." I had come across him in the course of some amateur
investigations into the phenomena of animal magnetism. I don't think
he knew anything about medicine, but he was certainly a remarkable
mesmerist. It was for the purpose of being put to sleep by his
manipulations that I used to send for him when I found a third night
of sleeplessness impending. Let my nervous excitement or mental
preoccupation be however great, Dr. Pillsbury never failed, after a
short time, to leave me in a deep slumber, which continued till I was
aroused by a reversal of the mesmerizing process. The process for
awaking the sleeper was much simpler than that for putting him to
sleep, and for convenience I had made Dr. Pillsbury teach Sawyer how
to do it.

My faithful servant alone knew for what purpose Dr. Pillsbury visited
me, or that he did so at all. Of course, when Edith became my wife I
should have to tell her my secrets. I had not hitherto told her this,
because there was unquestionably a slight risk in the mesmeric sleep,
and I knew she would set her face against my practice. The risk, of
course, was that it might become too profound and pass into a trance
beyond the mesmerizer's power to break, ending in death. Repeated
experiments had fully convinced me that the risk was next to nothing
if reasonable precautions were exercised, and of this I hoped, though
doubtingly, to convince Edith. I went directly home after leaving her,
and at once sent Sawyer to fetch Dr. Pillsbury. Meanwhile I sought my
subterranean sleeping chamber, and exchanging my costume for a
comfortable dressing-gown, sat down to read the letters by the evening
mail which Sawyer had laid on my reading table.

One of them was from the builder of my new house, and confirmed what I
had inferred from the newspaper item. The new strikes, he said, had
postponed indefinitely the completion of the contract, as neither
masters nor workmen would concede the point at issue without a long
struggle. Caligula wished that the Roman people had but one neck that
he might cut it off, and as I read this letter I am afraid that for a
moment I was capable of wishing the same thing concerning the laboring
classes of America. The return of Sawyer with the doctor interrupted
my gloomy meditations.

It appeared that he had with difficulty been able to secure his
services, as he was preparing to leave the city that very night. The
doctor explained that since he had seen me last he had learned of a
fine professional opening in a distant city, and decided to take
prompt advantage of it. On my asking, in some panic, what I was to do
for some one to put me to sleep, he gave me the names of several
mesmerizers in Boston who, he averred, had quite as great powers as
he.

Somewhat relieved on this point, I instructed Sawyer to rouse me at
nine o'clock next morning, and, lying down on the bed in my
dressing-gown, assumed a comfortable attitude, and surrendered myself
to the manipulations of the mesmerizer. Owing, perhaps, to my
unusually nervous state, I was slower than common in losing
consciousness, but at length a delicious drowsiness stole over me.





"He is going to open his eyes. He had better see but one of us at
first."

"Promise me, then, that you will not tell him."

The first voice was a man's, the second a woman's, and both spoke in
whispers.

"I will see how he seems," replied the man.

"No, no, promise me," persisted the other.

"Let her have her way," whispered a third voice, also a woman.

"Well, well, I promise, then," answered the man. "Quick, go! He is
coming out of it."

There was a rustle of garments and I opened my eyes. A fine looking
man of perhaps sixty was bending over me, an expression of much
benevolence mingled with great curiosity upon his features. He was an
utter stranger. I raised myself on an elbow and looked around. The
room was empty. I certainly had never been in it before, or one
furnished like it. I looked back at my companion. He smiled.

"How do you feel?" he inquired.

"Where am I?" I demanded.

"You are in my house," was the reply.

"How came I here?"

"We will talk about that when you are stronger. Meanwhile, I beg you
will feel no anxiety. You are among friends and in good hands. How do
you feel?"

"A bit queerly," I replied, "but I am well, I suppose. Will you tell
me how I came to be indebted to your hospitality? What has happened to
me? How came I here? It was in my own house that I went to sleep."

"There will be time enough for explanations later," my unknown host
replied, with a reassuring smile. "It will be better to avoid
agitating talk until you are a little more yourself. Will you oblige
me by taking a couple of swallows of this mixture? It will do you
good. I am a physician."

I repelled the glass with my hand and sat up on the couch, although
with an effort, for my head was strangely light.

"I insist upon knowing at once where I am and what you have been doing
with me," I said.

"My dear sir," responded my companion, "let me beg that you will not
agitate yourself. I would rather you did not insist upon explanations
so soon, but if you do, I will try to satisfy you, provided you will
first take this draught, which will strengthen you somewhat."

I thereupon drank what he offered me. Then he said, "It is not so
simple a matter as you evidently suppose to tell you how you came
here. You can tell me quite as much on that point as I can tell you.
You have just been roused from a deep sleep, or, more properly,
trance. So much I can tell you. You say you were in your own house
when you fell into that sleep. May I ask you when that was?"

"When?" I replied, "when? Why, last evening, of course, at about ten
o'clock. I left my man Sawyer orders to call me at nine o'clock. What
has become of Sawyer?"

"I can't precisely tell you that," replied my companion, regarding me
with a curious expression, "but I am sure that he is excusable for not
being here. And now can you tell me a little more explicitly when it
was that you fell into that sleep, the date, I mean?"

"Why, last night, of course; I said so, didn't I? that is, unless I
have overslept an entire day. Great heavens! that cannot be possible;
and yet I have an odd sensation of having slept a long time. It was
Decoration Day that I went to sleep."

"Decoration Day?"

"Yes, Monday, the 30th."

"Pardon me, the 30th of what?"

"Why, of this month, of course, unless I have slept into June, but
that can't be."

"This month is September."

"September! You don't mean that I've slept since May! God in heaven!
Why, it is incredible."

"We shall see," replied my companion; "you say that it was May 30th
when you went to sleep?"

"Yes."

"May I ask of what year?"

I stared blankly at him, incapable of speech, for some moments.

"Of what year?" I feebly echoed at last.

"Yes, of what year, if you please? After you have told me that I shall
be able to tell you how long you have slept."

"It was the year 1887," I said.

My companion insisted that I should take another draught from the
glass, and felt my pulse.

"My dear sir," he said, "your manner indicates that you are a man of
culture, which I am aware was by no means the matter of course in your
day it now is. No doubt, then, you have yourself made the observation
that nothing in this world can be truly said to be more wonderful than
anything else. The causes of all phenomena are equally adequate, and
the results equally matters of course. That you should be startled by
what I shall tell you is to be expected; but I am confident that you
will not permit it to affect your equanimity unduly. Your appearance
is that of a young man of barely thirty, and your bodily condition
seems not greatly different from that of one just roused from a
somewhat too long and profound sleep, and yet this is the tenth day
of September in the year 2000, and you have slept exactly one hundred
and thirteen years, three months, and eleven days."

Feeling partially dazed, I drank a cup of some sort of broth at my
companion's suggestion, and, immediately afterward becoming very
drowsy, went off into a deep sleep.

When I awoke it was broad daylight in the room, which had been lighted
artificially when I was awake before. My mysterious host was sitting
near. He was not looking at me when I opened my eyes, and I had a good
opportunity to study him and meditate upon my extraordinary situation,
before he observed that I was awake. My giddiness was all gone, and my
mind perfectly clear. The story that I had been asleep one hundred and
thirteen years, which, in my former weak and bewildered condition, I
had accepted without question, recurred to me now only to be rejected
as a preposterous attempt at an imposture, the motive of which it was
impossible remotely to surmise.

Something extraordinary had certainly happened to account for my
waking up in this strange house with this unknown companion, but my
fancy was utterly impotent to suggest more than than the wildest guess
as to what that something might have been. Could it be that I was the
victim of some sort of conspiracy? It looked so, certainly; and yet,
if human lineaments ever gave true evidence, it was certain that this
man by my side, with a face so refined and ingenuous, was no party to
any scheme of crime or outrage. Then it occurred to me to question if
I might not be the butt of some elaborate practical joke on the part
of friends who had somehow learned the secret of my underground
chamber and taken this means of impressing me with the peril of
mesmeric experiments. There were great difficulties in the way of this
theory; Sawyer would never have betrayed me, nor had I any friends at
all likely to undertake such an enterprise; nevertheless the
supposition that I was the victim of a practical joke seemed on the
whole the only one tenable. Half expecting to catch a glimpse of some
familiar face grinning from behind a chair or curtain, I looked
carefully about the room. When my eyes next rested on my companion, he
was looking at me.

"You have had a fine nap of twelve hours," he said briskly, "and I can
see that it has done you good. You look much better. Your color is
good and your eyes are bright. How do you feel?"

"I never felt better," I said, sitting up.

"You remember your first waking, no doubt," he pursued, "and your
surprise when I told you how long you had been asleep?"

"You said, I believe, that I had slept one hundred and thirteen
years."

"Exactly."

"You will admit," I said, with an ironical smile, "that the story was
rather an improbable one."

"Extraordinary, I admit," he responded, "but given the proper
conditions, not improbable nor inconsistent with what we know of the
trance state. When complete, as in your case, the vital functions are
absolutely suspended, and there is no waste of the tissues. No limit
can be set to the possible duration of a trance when the external
conditions protect the body from physical injury. This trance of yours
is indeed the longest of which there is any positive record, but there
is no known reason wherefore, had you not been discovered and had the
chamber in which we found you continued intact, you might not have
remained in a state of suspended animation till, at the end of
indefinite ages, the gradual refrigeration of the earth had destroyed
the bodily tissues and set the spirit free."

I had to admit that, if I were indeed the victim of a practical joke,
its authors had chosen an admirable agent for carrying out their
imposition. The impressive and even eloquent manner of this man would
have lent dignity to an argument that the moon was made of cheese. The
smile with which I had regarded him as he advanced his trance
hypothesis did not appear to confuse him in the slightest degree.

"Perhaps," I said, "you will go on and favor me with some particulars
as to the circumstances under which you discovered this chamber of
which you speak, and its contents. I enjoy good fiction."

"In this case," was the grave reply, "no fiction could be so strange
as the truth. You must know that these many years I have been
cherishing the idea of building a laboratory in the large garden
beside this house, for the purpose of chemical experiments for which I
have a taste. Last Thursday the excavation for the cellar was at last
begun. It was completed by that night, and Friday the masons were to
have come. Thursday night we had a tremendous deluge of rain, and
Friday morning I found my cellar a frog-pond and the walls quite
washed down. My daughter, who had come out to view the disaster with
me, called my attention to a corner of masonry laid bare by the
crumbling away of one of the walls. I cleared a little earth from it,
and, finding that it seemed part of a large mass, determined to
investigate it. The workmen I sent for unearthed an oblong vault some
eight feet below the surface, and set in the corner of what had
evidently been the foundation walls of an ancient house. A layer of
ashes and charcoal on the top of the vault showed that the house above
had perished by fire. The vault itself was perfectly intact, the
cement being as good as when first applied. It had a door, but this we
could not force, and found entrance by removing one of the flagstones
which formed the roof. The air which came up was stagnant but pure,
dry and not cold. Descending with a lantern, I found myself in an
apartment fitted up as a bedroom in the style of the nineteenth
century. On the bed lay a young man. That he was dead and must have
been dead a century was of course to be taken for granted; but the
extraordinary state of preservation of the body struck me and the
medical colleagues whom I had summoned with amazement. That the art of
such embalming as this had ever been known we should not have
believed, yet here seemed conclusive testimony that our immediate
ancestors had possessed it. My medical colleagues, whose curiosity was
highly excited, were at once for undertaking experiments to test the
nature of the process employed, but I withheld them. My motive in so
doing, at least the only motive I now need speak of, was the
recollection of something I once had read about the extent to which
your contemporaries had cultivated the subject of animal magnetism. It
had occurred to me as just conceivable that you might be in a trance,
and that the secret of your bodily integrity after so long a time was
not the craft of an embalmer, but life. So extremely fanciful did this
idea seem, even to me, that I did not risk the ridicule of my fellow
physicians by mentioning it, but gave some other reason for postponing
their experiments. No sooner, however, had they left me, than I set on
foot a systematic attempt at resuscitation, of which you know the
result."

Had its theme been yet more incredible, the circumstantiality of this
narrative, as well as the impressive manner and personality of the
narrator, might have staggered a listener, and I had begun to feel
very strangely, when, as he closed, I chanced to catch a glimpse of my
reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall of the room. I rose and
went up to it. The face I saw was the face to a hair and a line and
not a day older than the one I had looked at as I tied my cravat
before going to Edith that Decoration Day, which, as this man would
have me believe, was celebrated one hundred and thirteen years before.
At this, the colossal character of the fraud which was being attempted
on me, came over me afresh. Indignation mastered my mind as I realized
the outrageous liberty that had been taken.

"You are probably surprised," said my companion, "to see that,
although you are a century older than when you lay down to sleep in
that underground chamber, your appearance is unchanged. That should
not amaze you. It is by virtue of the total arrest of the vital
functions that you have survived this great period of time. If your
body could have undergone any change during your trance, it would long
ago have suffered dissolution."

"Sir," I replied, turning to him, "what your motive can be in reciting
to me with a serious face this remarkable farrago, I am utterly unable
to guess; but you are surely yourself too intelligent to suppose that
anybody but an imbecile could be deceived by it. Spare me any more of
this elaborate nonsense and once for all tell me whether you refuse to
give me an intelligible account of where I am and how I came here. If
so, I shall proceed to ascertain my whereabouts for myself, whoever
may hinder."

"You do not, then, believe that this is the year 2000?"

"Do you really think it necessary to ask me that?" I returned.

"Very well," replied my extraordinary host. "Since I cannot convince
you, you shall convince yourself. Are you strong enough to follow me
upstairs?"

"I am as strong as I ever was," I replied angrily, "as I may have to
prove if this jest is carried much farther."

"I beg, sir," was my companion's response, "that you will not allow
yourself to be too fully persuaded that you are the victim of a trick,
lest the reaction, when you are convinced of the truth of my
statements, should be too great."

The tone of concern, mingled with commiseration, with which he said
this, and the entire absence of any sign of resentment at my hot
words, strangely daunted me, and I followed him from the room with an
extraordinary mixture of emotions. He led the way up two flights of
stairs and then up a shorter one, which landed us upon a belvedere on
the house-top. "Be pleased to look around you," he said, as we reached
the platform, "and tell me if this is the Boston of the nineteenth
century."

At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by trees
and lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuous
blocks but set in larger or smaller inclosures, stretched in every
direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with
trees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late
afternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an
architectural grandeur unparalleled in my day raised their stately
piles on every side. Surely I had never seen this city nor one
comparable to it before. Raising my eyes at last towards the horizon,
I looked westward. That blue ribbon winding away to the sunset, was it
not the sinuous Charles? I looked east; Boston harbor stretched before
me within its headlands, not one of its green islets missing.

I knew then that I had been told the truth concerning the prodigious
thing which had befallen me.





I did not faint, but the effort to realize my position made me very
giddy, and I remember that my companion had to give me a strong arm as
he conducted me from the roof to a roomy apartment on the upper floor
of the house, where he insisted on my drinking a glass or two of good
wine and partaking of a light repast.

"I think you are going to be all right now," he said cheerily. "I
should not have taken so abrupt a means to convince you of your
position if your course, while perfectly excusable under the
circumstances, had not rather obliged me to do so. I confess," he
added laughing, "I was a little apprehensive at one time that I should
undergo what I believe you used to call a knockdown in the nineteenth
century, if I did not act rather promptly. I remembered that the
Bostonians of your day were famous pugilists, and thought best to lose
no time. I take it you are now ready to acquit me of the charge of
hoaxing you."

"If you had told me," I replied, profoundly awed, "that a thousand
years instead of a hundred had elapsed since I last looked on this
city, I should now believe you."

"Only a century has passed," he answered, "but many a millennium in
the world's history has seen changes less extraordinary."

"And now," he added, extending his hand with an air of irresistible
cordiality, "let me give you a hearty welcome to the Boston of the
twentieth century and to this house. My name is Leete, Dr. Leete they
call me."

"My name," I said as I shook his hand, "is Julian West."

"I am most happy in making your acquaintance, Mr. West," he responded.
"Seeing that this house is built on the site of your own, I hope you
will find it easy to make yourself at home in it."

After my refreshment Dr. Leete offered me a bath and a change of
clothing, of which I gladly availed myself.

It did not appear that any very startling revolution in men's attire
had been among the great changes my host had spoken of, for, barring a
few details, my new habiliments did not puzzle me at all.

Physically, I was now myself again. But mentally, how was it with me,
the reader will doubtless wonder. What were my intellectual
sensations, he may wish to know, on finding myself so suddenly dropped
as it were into a new world. In reply let me ask him to suppose
himself suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, transported from earth,
say, to Paradise or Hades. What does he fancy would be his own
experience? Would his thoughts return at once to the earth he had just
left, or would he, after the first shock, wellnigh forget his former
life for a while, albeit to be remembered later, in the interest
excited by his new surroundings? All I can say is, that if his
experience were at all like mine in the transition I am describing,
the latter hypothesis would prove the correct one. The impressions of
amazement and curiosity which my new surroundings produced occupied my
mind, after the first shock, to the exclusion of all other thoughts.
For the time the memory of my former life was, as it were, in
abeyance.

No sooner did I find myself physically rehabilitated through the kind
offices of my host, than I became eager to return to the house-top;
and presently we were comfortably established there in easy-chairs,
with the city beneath and around us. After Dr. Leete had responded to
numerous questions on my part, as to the ancient landmarks I missed
and the new ones which had replaced them, he asked me what point of
the contrast between the new and the old city struck me most forcibly.

"To speak of small things before great," I responded, "I really think
that the complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is the detail
that first impressed me."

"Ah!" ejaculated my companion with an air of much interest, "I had
forgotten the chimneys, it is so long since they went out of use. It
is nearly a century since the crude method of combustion on which you
depended for heat became obsolete."

"In general," I said, "what impresses me most about the city is the
material prosperity on the part of the people which its magnificence
implies."

"I would give a great deal for just one glimpse of the Boston of your
day," replied Dr. Leete. "No doubt, as you imply, the cities of that
period were rather shabby affairs. If you had the taste to make them
splendid, which I would not be so rude as to question, the general
poverty resulting from your extraordinary industrial system would not
have given you the means. Moreover, the excessive individualism which
then prevailed was inconsistent with much public spirit. What little
wealth you had seems almost wholly to have been lavished in private
luxury. Nowadays, on the contrary, there is no destination of the
surplus wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which all
enjoy in equal degree."

The sun had been setting as we returned to the house-top, and as we
talked night descended upon the city.

"It is growing dark," said Dr. Leete. "Let us descend into the house;
I want to introduce my wife and daughter to you."

His words recalled to me the feminine voices which I had heard
whispering about me as I was coming back to conscious life; and, most
curious to learn what the ladies of the year 2000 were like, I
assented with alacrity to the proposition. The apartment in which we
found the wife and daughter of my host, as well as the entire interior
of the house, was filled with a mellow light, which I knew must be
artificial, although I could not discover the source from which it was
diffused. Mrs. Leete was an exceptionally fine looking and well
preserved woman of about her husband's age, while the daughter, who
was in the first blush of womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I had
ever seen. Her face was as bewitching as deep blue eyes, delicately
tinted complexion, and perfect features could make it, but even had
her countenance lacked special charms, the faultless luxuriance of her
figure would have given her place as a beauty among the women of the
nineteenth century. Feminine softness and delicacy were in this lovely
creature deliciously combined with an appearance of health and
abounding physical vitality too often lacking in the maidens with whom
alone I could compare her. It was a coincidence trifling in comparison
with the general strangeness of the situation, but still striking,
that her name should be Edith.

The evening that followed was certainly unique in the history of
social intercourse, but to suppose that our conversation was
peculiarly strained or difficult would be a great mistake. I believe
indeed that it is under what may be called unnatural, in the sense of
extraordinary, circumstances that people behave most naturally, for
the reason, no doubt, that such circumstances banish artificiality. I
know at any rate that my intercourse that evening with these
representatives of another age and world was marked by an ingenuous
sincerity and frankness such as but rarely crown long acquaintance. No
doubt the exquisite tact of my entertainers had much to do with this.
Of course there was nothing we could talk of but the strange
experience by virtue of which I was there, but they talked of it with
an interest so naive and direct in its expression as to relieve the
subject to a great degree of the element of the weird and the uncanny
which might so easily have been overpowering. One would have supposed
that they were quite in the habit of entertaining waifs from another
century, so perfect was their tact.

For my own part, never do I remember the operations of my mind to have
been more alert and acute than that evening, or my intellectual
sensibilities more keen. Of course I do not mean that the
consciousness of my amazing situation was for a moment out of mind,
but its chief effect thus far was to produce a feverish elation, a
sort of mental intoxication.[1]

Edith Leete took little part in the conversation, but when several
times the magnetism of her beauty drew my glance to her face, I found
her eyes fixed on me with an absorbed intensity, almost like
fascination. It was evident that I had excited her interest to an
extraordinary degree, as was not astonishing, supposing her to be a
girl of imagination. Though I supposed curiosity was the chief motive
of her interest, it could but affect me as it would not have done had
she been less beautiful.

Dr. Leete, as well as the ladies, seemed greatly interested in my
account of the circumstances under which I had gone to sleep in the
underground chamber. All had suggestions to offer to account for my
having been forgotten there, and the theory which we finally agreed on
offers at least a plausible explanation, although whether it be in its
details the true one, nobody, of course, will ever know. The layer of
ashes found above the chamber indicated that the house had been burned
down. Let it be supposed that the conflagration had taken place the
night I fell asleep. It only remains to assume that Sawyer lost his
life in the fire or by some accident connected with it, and the rest
follows naturally enough. No one but he and Dr. Pillsbury either knew
of the existence of the chamber or that I was in it, and Dr.
Pillsbury, who had gone that night to New Orleans, had probably never
heard of the fire at all. The conclusion of my friends, and of the
public, must have been that I had perished in the flames. An
excavation of the ruins, unless thorough, would not have disclosed the
recess in the foundation walls connecting with my chamber. To be sure,
if the site had been again built upon, at least immediately, such an
excavation would have been necessary, but the troublous times and the
undesirable character of the locality might well have prevented
rebuilding. The size of the trees in the garden now occupying the site
indicated, Dr. Leete said, that for more than half a century at least
it had been open ground.

[Footnote 1: In accounting for this state of mind it must be
remembered that, except for the topic of our conversations, there was
in my surroundings next to nothing to suggest what had befallen me.
Within a block of my home in the old Boston I could have found social
circles vastly more foreign to me. The speech of the Bostonians of the
twentieth century differs even less from that of their cultured
ancestors of the nineteenth than did that of the latter from the
language of Washington and Franklin, while the differences between the
style of dress and furniture of the two epochs are not more marked
than I have known fashion to make in the time of one generation.]





When, in the course of the evening the ladies retired, leaving Dr.
Leete and myself alone, he sounded me as to my disposition for sleep,
saying that if I felt like it my bed was ready for me; but if I was
inclined to wakefulness nothing would please him better than to bear
me company. "I am a late bird, myself," he said, "and, without
suspicion of flattery, I may say that a companion more interesting
than yourself could scarcely be imagined. It is decidedly not often
that one has a chance to converse with a man of the nineteenth
century."

Now I had been looking forward all the evening with some dread to the
time when I should be alone, on retiring for the night. Surrounded by
these most friendly strangers, stimulated and supported by their
sympathetic interest, I had been able to keep my mental balance. Even
then, however, in pauses of the conversation I had had glimpses, vivid
as lightning flashes, of the horror of strangeness that was waiting to
be faced when I could no longer command diversion. I knew I could not
sleep that night, and as for lying awake and thinking, it argues no
cowardice, I am sure, to confess that I was afraid of it. When, in
reply to my host's question, I frankly told him this, he replied that
it would be strange if I did not feel just so, but that I need have no
anxiety about sleeping; whenever I wanted to go to bed, he would give
me a dose which would insure me a sound night's sleep without fail.
Next morning, no doubt, I would awake with the feeling of an old
citizen.

"Before I acquire that," I replied, "I must know a little more about
the sort of Boston I have come back to. You told me when we were upon
the house-top that though a century only had elapsed since I fell
asleep, it had been marked by greater changes in the conditions of
humanity than many a previous millennium. With the city before me I
could well believe that, but I am very curious to know what some of
the changes have been. To make a beginning somewhere, for the subject
is doubtless a large one, what solution, if any, have you found for
the labor question? It was the Sphinx's riddle of the nineteenth
century, and when I dropped out the Sphinx was threatening to devour
society, because the answer was not forthcoming. It is well worth
sleeping a hundred years to learn what the right answer was, if,
indeed, you have found it yet."

"As no such thing as the labor question is known nowadays," replied
Dr. Leete, "and there is no way in which it could arise, I suppose we
may claim to have solved it. Society would indeed have fully deserved
being devoured if it had failed to answer a riddle so entirely simple.
In fact, to speak by the book, it was not necessary for society to
solve the riddle at all. It may be said to have solved itself. The
solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution which
could not have terminated otherwise. All that society had to do was to
recognize and cooperate with that evolution, when its tendency had
become unmistakable."

"I can only say," I answered, "that at the time I fell asleep no such
evolution had been recognized."

"It was in 1887 that you fell into this sleep, I think you said."

"Yes, May 30th, 1887."

My companion regarded me musingly for some moments. Then he observed,
"And you tell me that even then there was no general recognition of
the nature of the crisis which society was nearing? Of course, I fully
credit your statement. The singular blindness of your contemporaries
to the signs of the times is a phenomenon commented on by many of our
historians, but few facts of history are more difficult for us to
realize, so obvious and unmistakable as we look back seem the
indications, which must also have come under your eyes, of the
transformation about to come to pass. I should be interested, Mr.
West, if you would give me a little more definite idea of the view
which you and men of your grade of intellect took of the state and
prospects of society in 1887. You must, at least, have realized that
the widespread industrial and social troubles, and the underlying
dissatisfaction of all classes with the inequalities of society, and
the general misery of mankind, were portents of great changes of some
sort."

"We did, indeed, fully realize that," I replied. "We felt that society
was dragging anchor and in danger of going adrift. Whither it would
drift nobody could say, but all feared the rocks."

"Nevertheless," said Dr. Leete, "the set of the current was perfectly
perceptible if you had but taken pains to observe it, and it was not
toward the rocks, but toward a deeper channel."

"We had a popular proverb," I replied, "that 'hindsight is better than
foresight,' the force of which I shall now, no doubt, appreciate more
fully than ever. All I can say is, that the prospect was such when I
went into that long sleep that I should not have been surprised had I
looked down from your house-top to-day on a heap of charred and
moss-grown ruins instead of this glorious city."

Dr. Leete had listened to me with close attention and nodded
thoughtfully as I finished speaking. "What you have said," he
observed, "will be regarded as a most valuable vindication of Storiot,
whose account of your era has been generally thought exaggerated in
its picture of the gloom and confusion of men's minds. That a period
of transition like that should be full of excitement and agitation was
indeed to be looked for; but seeing how plain was the tendency of the
forces in operation, it was natural to believe that hope rather than
fear would have been the prevailing temper of the popular mind."

"You have not yet told me what was the answer to the riddle which you
found," I said. "I am impatient to know by what contradiction of
natural sequence the peace and prosperity which you now seem to enjoy
could have been the outcome of an era like my own."

"Excuse me," replied my host, "but do you smoke?" It was not till our
cigars were lighted and drawing well that he resumed. "Since you are
in the humor to talk rather than to sleep, as I certainly am, perhaps
I cannot do better than to try to give you enough idea of our modern
industrial system to dissipate at least the impression that there is
any mystery about the process of its evolution. The Bostonians of your
day had the reputation of being great askers of questions, and I am
going to show my descent by asking you one to begin with. What should
you name as the most prominent feature of the labor troubles of your
day?"

"Why, the strikes, of course," I replied.

"Exactly; but what made the strikes so formidable?"

"The great labor organizations."

"And what was the motive of these great organizations?"

"The workmen claimed they had to organize to get their rights from the
big corporations," I replied.

"That is just it," said Dr. Leete; "the organization of labor and the
strikes were an effect, merely, of the concentration of capital in
greater masses than had ever been known before. Before this
concentration began, while as yet commerce and industry were conducted
by innumerable petty concerns with small capital, instead of a small
number of great concerns with vast capital, the individual workman was
relatively important and independent in his relations to the employer.
Moreover, when a little capital or a new idea was enough to start a
man in business for himself, workingmen were constantly becoming
employers and there was no hard and fast line between the two classes.
Labor unions were needless then, and general strikes out of the
question. But when the era of small concerns with small capital was
succeeded by that of the great aggregations of capital, all this was
changed. The individual laborer, who had been relatively important to
the small employer, was reduced to insignificance and powerlessness
over against the great corporation, while at the same time the way
upward to the grade of employer was closed to him. Self-defense drove
him to union with his fellows.

"The records of the period show that the outcry against the
concentration of capital was furious. Men believed that it threatened
society with a form of tyranny more abhorrent than it had ever
endured. They believed that the great corporations were preparing for
them the yoke of a baser servitude than had ever been imposed on the
race, servitude not to men but to soulless machines incapable of any
motive but insatiable greed. Looking back, we cannot wonder at their
desperation, for certainly humanity was never confronted with a fate
more sordid and hideous than would have been the era of corporate
tyranny which they anticipated.

"Meanwhile, without being in the smallest degree checked by the clamor
against it, the absorption of business by ever larger monopolies
continued. In the United States there was not, after the beginning of
the last quarter of the century, any opportunity whatever for
individual enterprise in any important field of industry, unless
backed by a great capital. During the last decade of the century, such
small businesses as still remained were fast-failing survivals of a
past epoch, or mere parasites on the great corporations, or else
existed in fields too small to attract the great capitalists. Small
businesses, as far as they still remained, were reduced to the
condition of rats and mice, living in holes and corners, and counting
on evading notice for the enjoyment of existence. The railroads had
gone on combining till a few great syndicates controlled every rail in
the land. In manufactories, every important staple was controlled by a
syndicate. These syndicates, pools, trusts, or whatever their name,
fixed prices and crushed all competition except when combinations as
vast as themselves arose. Then a struggle, resulting in a still
greater consolidation, ensued. The great city bazar crushed its
country rivals with branch stores, and in the city itself absorbed its
smaller rivals till the business of a whole quarter was concentrated
under one roof, with a hundred former proprietors of shops serving as
clerks. Having no business of his own to put his money in, the small
capitalist, at the same time that he took service under the
corporation, found no other investment for his money but its stocks
and bonds, thus becoming doubly dependent upon it.

"The fact that the desperate popular opposition to the consolidation
of business in a few powerful hands had no effect to check it proves
that there must have been a strong economical reason for it. The small
capitalists, with their innumerable petty concerns, had in fact
yielded the field to the great aggregations of capital, because they
belonged to a day of small things and were totally incompetent to the
demands of an age of steam and telegraphs and the gigantic scale of
its enterprises. To restore the former order of things, even if
possible, would have involved returning to the day of stage-coaches.
Oppressive and intolerable as was the regime of the great
consolidations of capital, even its victims, while they cursed it,
were forced to admit the prodigious increase of efficiency which had
been imparted to the national industries, the vast economies effected
by concentration of management and unity of organization, and to
confess that since the new system had taken the place of the old the
wealth of the world had increased at a rate before undreamed of. To be
sure this vast increase had gone chiefly to make the rich richer,
increasing the gap between them and the poor; but the fact remained
that, as a means merely of producing wealth, capital had been proved
efficient in proportion to its consolidation. The restoration of the
old system with the subdivision of capital, if it were possible, might
indeed bring back a greater equality of conditions, with more
individual dignity and freedom, but it would be at the price of
general poverty and the arrest of material progress.

"Was there, then, no way of commanding the services of the mighty
wealth-producing principle of consolidated capital without bowing down
to a plutocracy like that of Carthage? As soon as men began to ask
themselves these questions, they found the answer ready for them. The
movement toward the conduct of business by larger and larger
aggregations of capital, the tendency toward monopolies, which had
been so desperately and vainly resisted, was recognized at last, in
its true significance, as a process which only needed to complete its
logical evolution to open a golden future to humanity.

"Early in the last century the evolution was completed by the final
consolidation of the entire capital of the nation. The industry and
commerce of the country, ceasing to be conducted by a set of
irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their
caprice and for their profit, were intrusted to a single syndicate
representing the people, to be conducted in the common interest for
the common profit. The nation, that is to say, organized as the one
great business corporation in which all other corporations were
absorbed; it became the one capitalist in the place of all other
capitalists, the sole employer, the final monopoly in which all
previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed up, a monopoly in the
profits and economies of which all citizens shared. The epoch of
trusts had ended in The Great Trust. In a word, the people of the
United States concluded to assume the conduct of their own business,
just as one hundred odd years before they had assumed the conduct of
their own government, organizing now for industrial purposes on
precisely the same grounds that they had then organized for political
purposes. At last, strangely late in the world's history, the obvious
fact was perceived that no business is so essentially the public
business as the industry and commerce on which the people's livelihood
depends, and that to entrust it to private persons to be managed for
private profit is a folly similar in kind, though vastly greater in
magnitude, to that of surrendering the functions of political
government to kings and nobles to be conducted for their personal
glorification."

"Such a stupendous change as you describe," said I, "did not, of
course, take place without great bloodshed and terrible convulsions."

"On the contrary," replied Dr. Leete, "there was absolutely no
violence. The change had been long foreseen. Public opinion had become
fully ripe for it, and the whole mass of the people was behind it.
There was no more possibility of opposing it by force than by
argument. On the other hand the popular sentiment toward the great
corporations and those identified with them had ceased to be one of
bitterness, as they came to realize their necessity as a link, a
transition phase, in the evolution of the true industrial system. The
most violent foes of the great private monopolies were now forced to
recognize how invaluable and indispensable had been their office in
educating the people up to the point of assuming control of their own
business. Fifty years before, the consolidation of the industries of
the country under national control would have seemed a very daring
experiment to the most sanguine. But by a series of object lessons,
seen and studied by all men, the great corporations had taught the
people an entirely new set of ideas on this subject. They had seen for
many years syndicates handling revenues greater than those of states,
and directing the labors of hundreds of thousands of men with an
efficiency and economy unattainable in smaller operations. It had come
to be recognized as an axiom that the larger the business the simpler
the principles that can be applied to it; that, as the machine is
truer than the hand, so the system, which in a great concern does the
work of the master's eye in a small business, turns out more accurate
results. Thus it came about that, thanks to the corporations
themselves, when it was proposed that the nation should assume their
functions, the suggestion implied nothing which seemed impracticable
even to the timid. To be sure it was a step beyond any yet taken, a
broader generalization, but the very fact that the nation would be the
sole corporation in the field would, it was seen, relieve the
undertaking of many difficulties with which the partial monopolies had
contended."





Dr. Leete ceased speaking, and I remained silent, endeavoring to form
some general conception of the changes in the arrangements of society
implied in the tremendous revolution which he had described.

Finally I said, "The idea of such an extension of the functions of
government is, to say the least, rather overwhelming."

"Extension!" he repeated, "where is the extension?"

"In my day," I replied, "it was considered that the proper functions
of government, strictly speaking, were limited to keeping the peace
and defending the people against the public enemy, that is, to the
military and police powers."

"And, in heaven's name, who are the public enemies?" exclaimed Dr.
Leete. "Are they France, England, Germany, or hunger, cold, and
nakedness? In your day governments were accustomed, on the slightest
international misunderstanding, to seize upon the bodies of citizens
and deliver them over by hundreds of thousands to death and
mutilation, wasting their treasures the while like water; and all this
oftenest for no imaginable profit to the victims. We have no wars
now, and our governments no war powers, but in order to protect every
citizen against hunger, cold, and nakedness, and provide for all his
physical and mental needs, the function is assumed of directing his
industry for a term of years. No, Mr. West, I am sure on reflection
you will perceive that it was in your age, not in ours, that the
extension of the functions of governments was extraordinary. Not even
for the best ends would men now allow their governments such powers as
were then used for the most maleficent."

"Leaving comparisons aside," I said, "the demagoguery and corruption
of our public men would have been considered, in my day, insuperable
objections to any assumption by government of the charge of the
national industries. We should have thought that no arrangement could
be worse than to entrust the politicians with control of the
wealth-producing machinery of the country. Its material interests were
quite too much the football of parties as it was."

"No doubt you were right," rejoined Dr. Leete, "but all that is
changed now. We have no parties or politicians, and as for demagoguery
and corruption, they are words having only an historical
significance."

"Human nature itself must have changed very much," I said.

"Not at all," was Dr. Leete's reply, "but the conditions of human
life have changed, and with them the motives of human action. The
organization of society with you was such that officials were under a
constant temptation to misuse their power for the private profit of
themselves or others. Under such circumstances it seems almost strange
that you dared entrust them with any of your affairs. Nowadays, on the
contrary, society is so constituted that there is absolutely no way in
which an official, however ill-disposed, could possibly make any
profit for himself or any one else by a misuse of his power. Let him
be as bad an official as you please, he cannot be a corrupt one. There
is no motive to be. The social system no longer offers a premium on
dishonesty. But these are matters which you can only understand as you
come, with time, to know us better."

"But you have not yet told me how you have settled the labor problem.
It is the problem of capital which we have been discussing," I said.
"After the nation had assumed conduct of the mills, machinery,
railroads, farms, mines, and capital in general of the country, the
labor question still remained. In assuming the responsibilities of
capital the nation had assumed the difficulties of the capitalist's
position."

"The moment the nation assumed the responsibilities of capital those
difficulties vanished," replied Dr. Leete. "The national organization
of labor under one direction was the complete solution of what was,
in your day and under your system, justly regarded as the insoluble
labor problem. When the nation became the sole employer, all the
citizens, by virtue of their citizenship, became employees, to be
distributed according to the needs of industry."

"That is," I suggested, "you have simply applied the principle of
universal military service, as it was understood in our day, to the
labor question."

"Yes," said Dr. Leete, "that was something which followed as a matter
of course as soon as the nation had become the sole capitalist. The
people were already accustomed to the idea that the obligation of
every citizen, not physically disabled, to contribute his military
services to the defense of the nation was equal and absolute. That it
was equally the duty of every citizen to contribute his quota of
industrial or intellectual services to the maintenance of the nation
was equally evident, though it was not until the nation became the
employer of labor that citizens were able to render this sort of
service with any pretense either of universality or equity. No
organization of labor was possible when the employing power was
divided among hundreds or thousands of individuals and corporations,
between which concert of any kind was neither desired, nor indeed
feasible. It constantly happened then that vast numbers who desired to
labor could find no opportunity, and on the other hand, those who
desired to evade a part or all of their debt could easily do so."

"Service, now, I suppose, is compulsory upon all," I suggested.

"It is rather a matter of course than of compulsion," replied Dr.
Leete. "It is regarded as so absolutely natural and reasonable that
the idea of its being compulsory has ceased to be thought of. He would
be thought to be an incredibly contemptible person who should need
compulsion in such a case. Nevertheless, to speak of service being
compulsory would be a weak way to state its absolute inevitableness.
Our entire social order is so wholly based upon and deduced from it
that if it were conceivable that a man could escape it, he would be
left with no possible way to provide for his existence. He would have
excluded himself from the world, cut himself off from his kind, in a
word, committed suicide."

"Is the term of service in this industrial army for life?"

"Oh, no; it both begins later and ends earlier than the average
working period in your day. Your workshops were filled with children
and old men, but we hold the period of youth sacred to education, and
the period of maturity, when the physical forces begin to flag,
equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation. The period of
industrial service is twenty-four years, beginning at the close of
the course of education at twenty-one and terminating at forty-five.
After forty-five, while discharged from labor, the citizen still
remains liable to special calls, in case of emergencies causing a
sudden great increase in the demand for labor, till he reaches the age
of fifty-five, but such calls are rarely, in fact almost never, made.
The fifteenth day of October of every year is what we call Muster Day,
because those who have reached the age of twenty-one are then mustered
into the industrial service, and at the same time those who, after
twenty-four years' service, have reached the age of forty-five, are
honorably mustered out. It is the great day of the year with us,
whence we reckon all other events, our Olympiad, save that it is
annual."





"It is after you have mustered your industrial army into service," I
said, "that I should expect the chief difficulty to arise, for there
its analogy with a military army must cease. Soldiers have all the
same thing, and a very simple thing, to do, namely, to practice the
manual of arms, to march and stand guard. But the industrial army must
learn and follow two or three hundred diverse trades and avocations.
What administrative talent can be equal to determining wisely what
trade or business every individual in a great nation shall pursue?"

"The administration has nothing to do with determining that point."

"Who does determine it, then?" I asked.

"Every man for himself in accordance with his natural aptitude, the
utmost pains being taken to enable him to find out what his natural
aptitude really is. The principle on which our industrial army is
organized is that a man's natural endowments, mental and physical,
determine what he can work at most profitably to the nation and most
satisfactorily to himself. While the obligation of service in some
form is not to be evaded, voluntary election, subject only to
necessary regulation, is depended on to determine the particular sort
of service every man is to render. As an individual's satisfaction
during his term of service depends on his having an occupation to his
taste, parents and teachers watch from early years for indications of
special aptitudes in children. A thorough study of the National
industrial system, with the history and rudiments of all the great
trades, is an essential part of our educational system. While manual
training is not allowed to encroach on the general intellectual
culture to which our schools are devoted, it is carried far enough to
give our youth, in addition to their theoretical knowledge of the
national industries, mechanical and agricultural, a certain
familiarity with their tools and methods. Our schools are constantly
visiting our workshops, and often are taken on long excursions to
inspect particular industrial enterprises. In your day a man was not
ashamed to be grossly ignorant of all trades except his own, but such
ignorance would not be consistent with our idea of placing every one
in a position to select intelligently the occupation for which he has
most taste. Usually long before he is mustered into service a young
man has found out the pursuit he wants to follow, has acquired a great
deal of knowledge about it, and is waiting impatiently the time when
he can enlist in its ranks."

"Surely," I said, "it can hardly be that the number of volunteers for
any trade is exactly the number needed in that trade. It must be
generally either under or over the demand."

"The supply of volunteers is always expected to fully equal the
demand," replied Dr. Leete. "It is the business of the administration
to see that this is the case. The rate of volunteering for each trade
is closely watched. If there be a noticeably greater excess of
volunteers over men needed in any trade, it is inferred that the trade
offers greater attractions than others. On the other hand, if the
number of volunteers for a trade tends to drop below the demand, it is
inferred that it is thought more arduous. It is the business of the
administration to seek constantly to equalize the attractions of the
trades, so far as the conditions of labor in them are concerned, so
that all trades shall be equally attractive to persons having natural
tastes for them. This is done by making the hours of labor in
different trades to differ according to their arduousness. The lighter
trades, prosecuted under the most agreeable circumstances, have in
this way the longest hours, while an arduous trade, such as mining,
has very short hours. There is no theory, no _a priori_ rule, by which
the respective attractiveness of industries is determined. The
administration, in taking burdens off one class of workers and adding
them to other classes, simply follows the fluctuations of opinion
among the workers themselves as indicated by the rate of
volunteering. The principle is that no man's work ought to be, on the
whole, harder for him than any other man's for him, the workers
themselves to be the judges. There are no limits to the application of
this rule. If any particular occupation is in itself so arduous or so
oppressive that, in order to induce volunteers, the day's work in it
had to be reduced to ten minutes, it would be done. If, even then, no
man was willing to do it, it would remain undone. But of course, in
point of fact, a moderate reduction in the hours of labor, or addition
of other privileges, suffices to secure all needed volunteers for any
occupation necessary to men. If, indeed, the unavoidable difficulties
and dangers of such a necessary pursuit were so great that no
inducement of compensating advantages would overcome men's repugnance
to it, the administration would only need to take it out of the common
order of occupations by declaring it 'extra hazardous,' and those who
pursued it especially worthy of the national gratitude, to be overrun
with volunteers. Our young men are very greedy of honor, and do not
let slip such opportunities. Of course you will see that dependence on
the purely voluntary choice of avocations involves the abolition in
all of anything like unhygienic conditions or special peril to life
and limb. Health and safety are conditions common to all industries.
The nation does not maim and slaughter its workmen by thousands, as
did the private capitalists and corporations of your day."

"When there are more who want to enter a particular trade than there
is room for, how do you decide between the applicants?" I inquired.

"Preference is given to those who have acquired the most knowledge of
the trade they wish to follow. No man, however, who through successive
years remains persistent in his desire to show what he can do at any
particular trade, is in the end denied an opportunity. Meanwhile, if a
man cannot at first win entrance into the business he prefers, he has
usually one or more alternative preferences, pursuits for which he has
some degree of aptitude, although not the highest. Every one, indeed,
is expected to study his aptitudes so as to have not only a first
choice as to occupation, but a second or third, so that if, either at
the outset of his career or subsequently, owing to the progress of
invention or changes in demand, he is unable to follow his first
vocation, he can still find reasonably congenial employment. This
principle of secondary choices as to occupation is quite important in
our system. I should add, in reference to the counter-possibility of
some sudden failure of volunteers in a particular trade, or some
sudden necessity of an increased force, that the administration, while
depending on the voluntary system for filling up the trades as a rule,
holds always in reserve the power to call for special volunteers, or
draft any force needed from any quarter. Generally, however, all needs
of this sort can be met by details from the class of unskilled or
common laborers."

"How is this class of common laborers recruited?" I asked. "Surely
nobody voluntarily enters that."

"It is the grade to which all new recruits belong for the first three
years of their service. It is not till after this period, during which
he is assignable to any work at the discretion of his superiors, that
the young man is allowed to elect a special avocation. These three
years of stringent discipline none are exempt from, and very glad our
young men are to pass from this severe school into the comparative
liberty of the trades. If a man were so stupid as to have no choice as
to occupation, he would simply remain a common laborer; but such
cases, as you may suppose, are not common."

"Having once elected and entered on a trade or occupation," I
remarked, "I suppose he has to stick to it the rest of his life."

"Not necessarily," replied Dr. Leete; "while frequent and merely
capricious changes of occupation are not encouraged or even permitted,
every worker is allowed, of course, under certain regulations and in
accordance with the exigencies of the service, to volunteer for
another industry which he thinks would suit him better than his first
choice. In this case his application is received just as if he were
volunteering for the first time, and on the same terms. Not only
this, but a worker may likewise, under suitable regulations and not
too frequently, obtain a transfer to an establishment of the same
industry in another part of the country which for any reason he may
prefer. Under your system a discontented man could indeed leave his
work at will, but he left his means of support at the same time, and
took his chances as to future livelihood. We find that the number of
men who wish to abandon an accustomed occupation for a new one, and
old friends and associations for strange ones, is small. It is only
the poorer sort of workmen who desire to change even as frequently as
our regulations permit. Of course transfers or discharges, when health
demands them, are always given."

"As an industrial system, I should think this might be extremely
efficient," I said, "but I don't see that it makes any provision for
the professional classes, the men who serve the nation with brains
instead of hands. Of course you can't get along without the
brain-workers. How, then, are they selected from those who are to
serve as farmers and mechanics? That must require a very delicate sort
of sifting process, I should say."

"So it does," replied Dr. Leete; "the most delicate possible test is
needed here, and so we leave the question whether a man shall be a
brain or hand worker entirely to him to settle. At the end of the term
of three years as a common laborer, which every man must serve, it is
for him to choose, in accordance to his natural tastes, whether he
will fit himself for an art or profession, or be a farmer or mechanic.
If he feels that he can do better work with his brains than his
muscles, he finds every facility provided for testing the reality of
his supposed bent, of cultivating it, and if fit of pursuing it as his
avocation. The schools of technology, of medicine, of art, of music,
of histrionics, and of higher liberal learning are always open to
aspirants without condition."

"Are not the schools flooded with young men whose only motive is to
avoid work?"

Dr. Leete smiled a little grimly.

"No one is at all likely to enter the professional schools for the
purpose of avoiding work, I assure you," he said. "They are intended
for those with special aptitude for the branches they teach, and any
one without it would find it easier to do double hours at his trade
than try to keep up with the classes. Of course many honestly mistake
their vocation, and, finding themselves unequal to the requirements of
the schools, drop out and return to the industrial service; no
discredit attaches to such persons, for the public policy is to
encourage all to develop suspected talents which only actual tests can
prove the reality of. The professional and scientific schools of your
day depended on the patronage of their pupils for support, and the
practice appears to have been common of giving diplomas to unfit
persons, who afterwards found their way into the professions. Our
schools are national institutions, and to have passed their tests is a
proof of special abilities not to be questioned.

"This opportunity for a professional training," the doctor continued,
"remains open to every man till the age of thirty is reached, after
which students are not received, as there would remain too brief a
period before the age of discharge in which to serve the nation in
their professions. In your day young men had to choose their
professions very young, and therefore, in a large proportion of
instances, wholly mistook their vocations. It is recognized nowadays
that the natural aptitudes of some are later than those of others in
developing, and therefore, while the choice of profession may be made
as early as twenty-four, it remains open for six years longer."

A question which had a dozen times before been on my lips now found
utterance, a question which touched upon what, in my time, had been
regarded the most vital difficulty in the way of any final settlement
of the industrial problem. "It is an extraordinary thing," I said,
"that you should not yet have said a word about the method of
adjusting wages. Since the nation is the sole employer, the government
must fix the rate of wages and determine just how much everybody shall
earn, from the doctors to the diggers. All I can say is, that this
plan would never have worked with us, and I don't see how it can now
unless human nature has changed. In my day, nobody was satisfied with
his wages or salary. Even if he felt he received enough, he was sure
his neighbor had too much, which was as bad. If the universal
discontent on this subject, instead of being dissipated in curses and
strikes directed against innumerable employers, could have been
concentrated upon one, and that the government, the strongest ever
devised would not have seen two pay days."

Dr. Leete laughed heartily.

"Very true, very true," he said, "a general strike would most probably
have followed the first pay day, and a strike directed against a
government is a revolution."

"How, then, do you avoid a revolution every pay day?" I demanded. "Has
some prodigious philosopher devised a new system of calculus
satisfactory to all for determining the exact and comparative value of
all sorts of service, whether by brawn or brain, by hand or voice, by
ear or eye? Or has human nature itself changed, so that no man looks
upon his own things but 'every man on the things of his neighbor?' One
or the other of these events must be the explanation."

"Neither one nor the other, however, is," was my host's laughing
response. "And now, Mr. West," he continued, "you must remember that
you are my patient as well as my guest, and permit me to prescribe
sleep for you before we have any more conversation. It is after three
o'clock."

"The prescription is, no doubt, a wise one," I said; "I only hope it
can be filled."

"I will see to that," the doctor replied, and he did, for he gave me a
wineglass of something or other which sent me to sleep as soon as my
head touched the pillow.

 The narrator, thirty-year-old Julian West, was born in the nineteenth century, a time when a tiny minority of the human race, including him, enjoyed an unequal share of the world's wealth. Although the privileged few sometimes tried to ameliorate the suffering of the impoverished masses, they were first and foremost concerned with retaining their wealth. In general, however, they believed there was no way to narrow the gap between the rich and poor. Moreover, many members of Julian's class felt that they were intrinsically superior to the toiling masses. Julian was engaged to Edith Bartlett a beautiful, graceful Boston aristocrat. They planned to marry when their new house was finished, but frequent strikes by the builders delayed the completion of the project for over a year. Strikes were common during that time, but they frequently failed to win the desired concessions from tight-fisted employers. On May 30, 1887, Julian celebrated Decoration Day, a holiday honoring Union soldiers, with Edith's family. After visiting the grave of Edith's older brother, they retired to the Bartletts' home, where they bitterly discussed the most recent strikes. Julian suffered from frequent insomnia, so he slept in an underground chamber in his house that shielded him from the noises of the street. He also enlisted the aid of Doctor Pillsbury a mesmerist who never failed to put him into a deep sleep. Doctor Pillsbury taught Julian's servant, Sawyer, how to rouse Julian in the mornings. There was a danger that someone who was mesmerized into sleep would fall into a deep trance, but Julian considered the risk manageable. With Pillsbury's help, Julian settled into a deep slumber that night. Afterwards, Pillsbury traveled to New Orleans to take a promising new job. Julian awakes in a strange house to unfamiliar faces and voices. In response to the strangers' questions, Julian explains that he fell asleep the night before, on May 30, 1887. The strangers inform him that the date is September 10, 2000, as he drifts back to sleep. When he awakes, Julian wonders if his friends are playing a joke on him. However, his host, Doctor Leete assures him that this is not the case. Julian's house burned down the night of May 30, 1887, but Julian was protected by his underground chamber. Leete discovered the chamber when he began preparing the site for the construction of a new laboratory. Inside, he discovered Julian in a deep trance, unaged because his vital functions were completely suspended. To prove his point, he shows him the modern Boston landscape. Julian is astonished to see a beautiful, clean city with open spaces and impressive public buildings. After introducing Julian to Mrs. Leete and his daughter, Edith Doctor Leete explains that Boston is so clean and prosperous because the old economy of private capital has evolved into an economy of public capital, a natural outcome of the increasing concentration of private capital into fewer and fewer hands. Now, the nation itself owns, manages, and distributes all capital. War no longer exists because the main function of government is to protect the citizens against hunger and poverty. There are no political parties and no corrupt public officials. The citizens are a well-organized labor force that produces all of the nation's goods. Every citizen begins working at twenty-one and retires at forty-five. During their educations, citizens explore possible careers, so that most men are assigned to occupations that suit them. To ensure that there is neither an excess nor a shortage in volunteers for any trade, shorter hours are required for more arduous trades and longer hours for less arduous ones. Workers can also change careers if they find that their original choice was not a good one. Until the age of thirty, citizens can apply for professional training, but only those who pass the rigorous entrance exams attend professional schools. Julian asks how the matter of wages has been settled, but Leete advises him to rest.

