U8RARY
CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO
presented to the
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO
by
Tom Ham
The Storj of a Millennial Realm, and Its Law.
By FRANK ROSEWATER.
"They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and
another eat." ISAIAH, LXV., 22.
"Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields,
which is of you kept back by fraud, crith; and the cries of them that have
reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth." JAMES, V., 4.
GENTRY PUBLISHING CO.
OMAHA, NKBR.
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY FRANK ROSEWATER.
" * * * would to Heaven I could persuade you of
this world-old fact * * That Truth and Justice alone are
capable of being 'conserved' and preserved! The thing which is
unjust, which is not according to God's Law, will you, in a
God's Universe, try to conserve that? It is old, say you? Yes,
and the hotter haste ought you, of all others, to be in to let it
grow no older! * * hasten for the sake of conservatism itself,
to probe it vigorously, to cast it forth at once and forever if
guilty." Thomas Carlyle.
"We shall never win for our Master the allegiance of the
strong men of this world until we show them that he has the
power and the purpose to rule the shop and the factory and the
counting room as well as the church and the home." Rev.
Washington Gladden.
" * * You are not true soldiers, if you only mean
to stand at a shop door, to protect shopboys who are cheating
inside. A soldier's vow to his country is that he will die for the
guardianship of her domestic virtue, of her righteous laws, and
of her anyway challenged or endangered honor. A state with-
out virtue, without laws, and without honor, he is bound not to
defend; nay, bound to redress by his own right hand that which
he sees to be base in her." John Ruskin.
THE ROBERTS PTG. CO., OMAHA, NEBR.
PREFACE.
While identical in purpose with Socialism, the system on
which this story is founded is nevertheless so much at variance
with it in diagnosis as well as in the remedy to be applied, that
a separate name was regarded appropriate, and adopted. Attrib-
uting capitalism to the fact that under the division of labor at-
tending all advanced states of industry, the consumer and pro-
ducer are helplessly severed, and in consequence subjected to
repellent and predatory influences, the proposed system, called
Centrisin, mends this unfortunate breach by supplying a medium
through which to unite them. This. medium is a currency re-
quired to be given in acknowledgment of patronage to all con-
sumers, and constituting orders on trade or jobs, all of which
are thus conserved exclusively for the consumer, as the sole
creator and owner of them. The exclusion of the non-consumer
from all industrial opportunities, as well as from the competi-
tion for them, at one and the same time establishes a true ratio
of supply and demand, correct values, and a just distribution of
wealth. Instead of eradicating private property, Centrism thus
extends its sphere so as to include property in jobs, the ex-
posure of which to predatory rapine being the well spring of
capitalism.
To the great truths brought to light by socialistic doctrines,
as well as to lessons derived from the American protective sys-
tem, the author is especially indebted, as stepping stones leading
to the ideas embodied in Centrism.
In picturing Temploria as an ideal realm, there was no in-
tention of dogmatic insistence upon this particular form of con-
struction, the aim being merely to display some of the possibil-
ities of Centrism in contrast with prevailing industrial condi-
tions. F. R.
Omaha, Neb., December, 1907.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. The Millennial Secret 9
II. The Quest of Labor's Knighthood 34
III. The City of Red Cross - 43
IV. A Youthful Wage Earner - 55
V. Everybody's Sabbath 70
VI. A Career of Forgeries 80
VII. Spectacular Coloria 96
VIII. Prior to Centrism - 105
IX. The Great Transition Era 123
X. To Edenize the Outworld 140
XL Where Art Thou, Adam - 154
XII. Homeward Bound - - 166
The Modern Prometheus.
CHAPTER I.
The Millennial Secret.
" * * foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."
Shakespeare.
"Property in jobs as well as in products is the
corner stone of our millennium," declared Grandpa
Zeke. "Upon this rock of justice is planted the
temple of our industrial state. This crowning glory,
property in jobs, sheds upon our hearths the light of
peace, the spirit of progress and the joys of pros-
perity. Our millennium is indeed so wonderful, I
can only hint the fullness of its blessings; but if
you'll bring your chairs nearer, I'll tell you more
about it. ' '
The few hours transpired since our arrival in
this realm had been one round of great surprises
and amazing visions; the reader may therefore
imagine the eagerness with which we responded to
the patriarch's request.
"Our blissful state of prosperity," the vener-
able speaker resumed, "is due entirely to the fact
that we recognize the consumer as the sole creator,
and therefore the sole owner of jobs. We not only
conserve his jobs for him, but by excluding the non-
consumer from the competition fOr jobs, we enable
him to secure the freeman's wage the full
product. ' '
"A capital idea!" exclaimed Joseph Carson,
formerly a steel magnate, from Philadelphia. " It
10
The Making of a Millennium.
is certainly a striking departure, differing from any-
thing I ever heard of. But how in the world do you
parcel out your jobs so as to distinguish the con-
sumer from the non-consumer? '
11 We make the consumer prove his claim, "
was the response, " through the payment of centry.
Oh, I forgot to say, centry is a currency we use in
acknowledging the receipt of patronage. It is given
to the buyer one centret for every dollar he parts
with."
I UNITED TEMPLES o/TEMPLORIA.
%6> 'Deafer is entiZfedJapcLfronageJa T/ie
Amount of DM DOLLAR, upon surrender offfushitt t
A Templorian Centret.
"The centret is an order on jobs an order in
fact, on any trade or patronage," explained our
host, Robert Manoah, a son of Grandpa Zeke, "just
as a dollar is an order on commodities or services.
Under Centrism, you see, we never part with one
dollar without receiving a handle to the next. We
don't regard a doJlar as honest, if it fails to fulfill
this obligation to the consumer. We consider the
cycle of trade too sacred to be violated; for trade
must go on; it must keep pace with the ceaseless
hunger of human want a perpetual cycle of need,
The Millennial Secret. 11
to supply which Nature has amply provided for.
There is a God-made union of wants and
means, which only man's ignorance and avarice
sever ; and it is against the severance, of this sacred
bond that Centrism aims."
" Indeed, I have heard it said," interposed Mrs.
Robert Manoah, "that outside of Temploria the con-
sumer is given no claim on opportunities, and he is
even told that, coming as a consumer, he must
have previously had his opportunity. Such stupid-
ity ! It was like telling a starving man that since he
was still alive, he must have had food last week, and
therefore should now go without food. With such
idiocy dominating the fundamental laws of their
system, what wonder their lofty ideals so often
proved to be a mere mask of villainy. ' '
' ' The freedom with which the circle of outworld
trade could be broken,", resumed Grandpa Zeke,
"was a caution! If a cloud of mistrust passed over
the land, everybody at once became a non-consumer,
thus cutting the cables of trade at all points and
wrecking its mechanism, till starvation and riot
filled the land with horror. The license permitted in
cutting the life chords of trade formed a terrible
weapon in the hands of the selfish and unscrupulous.
It was a power to exile men from industry to
starve, to kill, and between such vile alternatives to
plunder men a piratic power, placing at the helm
of state the skull and cross bones of unrestrained
vandalism. Thanks to Centrism, such horrors are
unknown in Temploria. Here the circle of trade is
never broken, and no man must ever remain idle.''
"Begging your pardon, my dear sir," ejacu-
lated the former steel magnate, "I realty fail to see
12 The Making of a Millennium.
it in that light. In my country any one can get work,
whether he has centry or no. ' '
' 'Quite true, quite true;" responded the aged
Templorian, "but of a kind, that slaves get such a
plenty of on mere subsistence terms. They get
slave work, but not freeman's work afc the full-
product wage. What you referred to as getting wqrk
without centry was in reality being kept out of one 's
job out of the freeman's full-product work dis-
employed and only allowed the alternative of either
starving or slaving. In reality you had to work two
days without pay as the price paid for each day al-
lowed to work wholly for yourselves. Was that any-
thing less than slavery?"
"I see how it works," exclaimed Doctor Rem-
ington, who had been an eager listener. "When jobs
are given exclusively to consumers, the jobs never
run short the consumer always creating a labor
demand proportional to that he supplies with his
labor. The non-consumer, on the other hand,
creates no demand merely exhausting the supply
of jobs and trade, and depriving the consumers of
jobs rightfully belonging to them. Not only this,
but by their unwarranted participation in the com-
petition, they cause a spurious disparity between
supply and demand, and a short valuation of labor,
that both robs and enslaves the consumer. As I see it,
the intrusion of the non-consumer is in effect a bur-
glary of the consumer's opportunities and a concur-
rent plunder of his wage. One might equally as well
break into the consumer's house and carry off his
valuables. ' '
"The situation, "said Robert Manoah, "sug-
gests to me a bound Prometheus a helpless Titan,
The Millennial Secret. 13
whom the blade of abstinence has exposed to the
devouring greed of innumerable parasites from
within and vultures from without. The wide gap it
has ripped between consumer and producer has
drawn between them the breed of multitudinous
grafts that leech industry and against whose greed
the employer himself is helpless. What is the em-
ployer? A mere puppet in the fierce whirlpool of
trade. Is it not clear that the employer is taxed with
grafts in the hire of capital, in rents, in the carrying
of credits, in the cost of materials, in the cost of se-
curing trade, and in a thousand lesser forms for
all of which he, as a middleman, is obliged to either
tax the consumer and reimburse himself, or else get
out of business ? ' '
"I trust no one will misconstrue Centrism," ex-
plained Grandpa Zeke, "as opposing the accumula-
tion of wealth. Far from it. It aims not to check
savings for future use, but rather to encourage them
by the removal of all unjust impediments and all ex-
traneous influences tending to dispossess men of
their wealth. A man may save without becoming a
non-consumer, provided he keep within the limits of
his own present or future use of things, acquiring
his own home and his own share of operative wealth.
Such wealth is not capital, nor does it abridge the
privilege to accumulate on the part of. others. But
when men place no limit to their accumulations,
forestalling the opportunities of others and either
indirectly, in the guise of investment, lending their
surplus to the depleted multitude, or making direct
loans of money, for the sake of profits, they are cap-
italists, and to that extent also non-consumers
economic vandals and robbers."
14
The Making of a Millennium.
"Capitalism, no doubt, involves grave abuses,"
Mr. Carson apologetically remarked, "but what sys-
tem is faultless? And who will dispute the inestim-
able service it has rendered industry ? ' '
"Every brigand delivers an inestimable ser-
vice," responded Grandpa Zeke, "whenever an ab-
CHILDREN RELEASED
SUBJECT TO
RETURN DOUB
IN NUMBER
EVERY S
YZARS.
An Inestimable Service.
ducted child is restored to its mother. The question
of liis authority to abduct is nevertheless pertinent.
No one questions the service rendered in allowing
men to slave in preference to starving; but I fear
there are some who will question the authority on
which the poor man's opportunities are abducted
and withheld for ransom. Yes, and a worse form of
ransom than brigands are accustomed to exact; for
capital merely lends the abducted child, requiring a
The Millennial Secret. 15
return, after a period doubled in number. The wel-
comed return of an abducted child should not be con-
*
strued as a glorification of abduction."
' ' A greater brigandage than capitalism, ' ' added
our hostess, "were unimaginable. Extending from
the dim ages of the past, its insidious rapine has
ever been widening the gulf between rich and poor
and injecting into the body of society the most re-
pellent and hideous forces wars and rebellions, riot
and corruption, in every form all the bitter fruits
of hate and malice, of greed and envy. Its brazen
abstinence, like the claws of a mighty beast, have
rent the industrial world into bleeding fragments
and poisoned its blood with festering sores."
"In comparison with capitalism," resumed
Grandpa Zeke, "Centrism is as the light unto the
darkness its very antithesis. Instead of repelling
consumer and producer, and in their helpless sep-
aration subjecting them to an ever-increasing in-
fliction of predatory rapine, Centrism closes the gap
between consumer and producer, causing trade to
spin in one continuous round of consuming and pro-
duction an unbreakable chain of industrial activ-
ity, in perfect harmony with the ceaseless and un-
bounded hunger of human want. There are no un-
certain notes in her trade neither hysterics nor
paralytic strokes nor the froth and foam of de-
lusive wealth that betray and misapply efforts.
Every latent energy is liberated and directed to ef-
fective service, through the searching eye of its un-
fettered demand."
"What a grand engine," exclaimed Robert
Manoah, "is the unfettered demand of Centrism.
What a power it wields, with every living energy
16
The Making of a Millennium.
The Millennial Secret. 17
resurrected and brought under full steam; with all
her mechanism in full accord and harmony, and re-
lieved of all parasitical impediments and super-
fluous burdens all the drags and pullback in-
fluences of capitalism. Compare this with the irra-
tional crankiness of the engine of capitalism, whose
A Sad Predicament.
source of power abstinence is repellent, discord-
ant, paralyzing a very ripsaw of industrial an-
archy. See all its unabsorbed surpluses of redund-
ant product injected between the wheels of the in-
dustrial mechanism, impeding it everywhere and
jarring its every fiber. Look at its vast burdens of
idol wealth the gods of mammon dead inutilities
that tax the blind worshippers with sacrifices of en-
ormous energy. Against all these impediments have
18 The Making of a Millennium.
the forces of heart and hand and brain, the spirit
of science, art and morality to strive, in pushing
onward the train of Progress; and what speed this
train has ever made, whatever distance it has con-
quered, has been in spite of the retarding influence
x)f this backward-pulling engine of capitalism
this ditcher of nations and slayer of men. ' '
"It seems to me," declared Richard Burton, a
Boston labor leader, "as if opportunity might well
be compared with a horse in the hands of the horse-
thief, who being now mounted enslaves the dis-
mounted owner of the horse through this advantage
he holds over him; and afterward he perpetuates
his mastery through the whip of short demand, in
his hand."
"In my mind's eye," remarked Mark Oswald,
a St. Louis socialist, "I can see King Capital as an
'Old Man of the Sea,' with his bloated paunch of
redundant wealth, and with his iron limbs clutched
around the slender-shanked Sinbad of industry.
Poor Sinbad ! I can see him staggering and reeling
with "his overwhelming burden and his unbalanced
supporting limbs. I can see the awkward contor-
tions of those uneven limbs the lengthy limb of
supply and the abreviated stump of demand, fran-
tically lunging in all directions in their difficult task
of reciprocating to each other. What a devil's own
march they lead our industrial Sinbad now drag-
ging heavily and anon floundering madly in spas-
modic zeal, and half the time laying him flat on his
back in the mires of depression, paralyzed with un-
certainty or bathed in the blood of revolution or
war. Following- his steps like a haunting shadow
stalks the ever-present Ogre of Abstinence, paternal
The Millennial Secret.
19
The Industrial Sinbad.
20 The Making of a Millennium.
ancestor of the King, hacking with his uplifted axe
of non-consuming, slice after slice from the stumpy
limb of our staggering Sinbad. What hope that
crippled industry will ever be able to walk erect or
keep out of the hell-ditch of depression, as long as
that one-eyed fiend is permitted to follow, axe in
hand, in his wake hacking and hacking at his short-
demand limb, depleting his blood, and paralyzing his
energies as the years roll by. ' '
"The more I think of it," ejaculated Doctor
Remington, "the more I admire the surgery of
Centrism. How beautifully it seams the gap be-
tween consumer and producer. There is no blind
tugging and tearing at the wound. There is no de-
lusive shifting of the sphere of disease. It goes right
to the source, in the foreign wedges of abstention
those malignant tormentors and tyrants that attack
the living tissues and pester and distort the growth
of the industrial body with their life-sapping and
corruption-bred tumors. Centrism, by the expulsion
of these venomous intruders from the befouled sys-
tem, leaves Nature undisturbed; and the wounds of
industry, thoroughly cleansed, simply close and heal
themselves."
* ' The system impresses me, ' ' added Miss Helen
Oswald, Mark's sister, "as an admirable scheme to
keep money in circulation. I'm satisfied it must pre-
vent hoarding and make the exaction of usury im-
possible."
"Centrism prevents usury in any form," re-
responded the venerable Templorian, "whether as
investment profits, as land rents or as plain interest
that is, when evasion through capitalistic invest-
ment is effectually prohibited."
The Millennial Secret. 21
. .
'I fail to see why such investments should be
regarded as evasions," the Philadelphian remon-
strated. "Are they not preferable to money hoard-
ing I"
"That is very true," was the prompt response,
"but because one evil is preferable to another is no
reason why it should be desired. The mere use of
centry will prevent money hoarding; so that evil
is out of the question. Capitalistic investments,
however, are another form of hoarding property-
hoarding and if licensed, it were equivalent to al-
lowing the makers of these investments to derive
centry on the strength of consuming done by others.
It is the occupants of buildings and the users of the
products of factories who are the REAL consumers
of these properties, and not the investors or owners.
The owner is merely the servant and agent of the
consumer the consumer both using and paying for
the wear of the properties and being debarred
from possession for want of the full measure of op-
portunity as well as of his rightful earnings. Pro-
hibiting capitalistic investments is simply a way of
protecting the consumer in the possession of the in-
vestment opportunity belonging to him as actual
user of of the property. ' '
"Patronage deserves a better reward than
smiles and curtesies," concluded Robert Manoah.
"It is a sad reflection to note how the outworld
workman will content himself with smiles for his
patronage while his children starve at-home with
frowns and beatings added to their hunger. Thank
heaven the industries of Temploria constitute an
honest job bank. Here every consumer is regarded
as a job depositor and is given centry as his deposit
22
The Making of a Millennium.
slip; and through these he can draw at will on the
general job supply as one would draw on his own
bank account. The jobs are sacredly conserved for
the job depositors the consumers no non-con-
sumer being permitted to draw on them any more
than a non-depositor would be permitted to draw on
the deposits of any honest bank. Our industrial sys-
Smiles for Patronage.
tern is not a mere trick bank like the industries of
capitalism always open to receive the trade-creat-
ing, job-producing patronage of the consumer, and
always closed to drafts on the jobs. The great cap-
tains of its industry lack the supreme wit by which
to seize the entire job deposits and exploit them un-
der a 'free' competition open to every non-con-
sumer, to be had only on such terms as ancient pris-
oners accepted for the privilege of living slavery
bare subsistence. ' '
The Millennial Secret.
23
24 The Making of a Millennium.
1 'It's the old story over again," remarked
Mark Oswald, "in which the powers of the people
entrusted in the hands of the monarch for purposes
of government are feloniously appropriated and the
State becomes 'Me.' In the case of capitalism it's
the industrial state that is paternalistically swal-
lowed and becomes 'Me.'
Our hostess here announced a brief intermis-
sion for refreshments; and thereupon, flourishing
aloft a dainty wand evidently as a signal the
room suddenly responded, as if by magic, passing
through a wonderful metamorphosis and merging
by degrees into a veritable fairyland. The surround-
ing objects now appeared to be bathed in the most
gorgeous hues, due to a network of radiant wires
overhead from which were suspended innumerable
prismatic crystals, whose refracted lights frescoed
the ceiling in dazzling splendor and draped the more
distant walls with weird hangings of flickering
shadow tints. In an apparent space back of the
shadowy hangings, dim figures seemed to be whirl-
ing in a slow waltz to the faint echo of deliciously
sweet music.
A trio of charming young women, being pre-
sented by our hostess, waited upon us with remark-
able grace and tact. They were accomplished enter-
tainers and deemed it an honor to serve in a capacity
requiring so much art; for the service was inter-
larded with varied entertainment, embracing songs,
recitations, toasts, short addresses, and often orig-
inal sallies, sparkling with wit and of surpassing ex-
cellence. The following ballad, "The Mermaid's
Plight," was one of these:
The Millennial Secret. 25
Alas, for my mermaid's necklace!
I have lost it in the sea;
Its pearls are scattered far and wide
They are lost forever, to me!
"Your very life is in these gems,"
Said the sibyl who gave them to me;
"There's lasting health in every pearl
But death, if they part from thee!"
Some wizard hand from far away,
Across the trackless sea,
Hath cut the cord that bound them;
He has severed them from me!
L shouldn't have placed the slightest trust
In the hollow film of faith,
But a fiber of firmest substance
Should have sought from some sea wraith!
In tears, I now wait by the sea shore,
For my pearls to come back to me;
But the dreary waste gives no answer,
Save the chilling blasts of the sea!
A pall of darkness, like a shroud,
Comes creeping o'er my soul;
I feel the icy hand of death;
I hear my death knell toll!
O heed my words, ye workmen:
Prize not your jobs so slight,
Lest some day ye should lose them,
And be left in the mermaid's plight !
Your jobs are all precious as pearls,
As bread, and water, and breath;
They are the doorways to life;
They bar the entrance of death.
And there's many a wizard waiting,
'Long the byways of the land,
To sever the cord that binds them,
And snatch them from your hand!
Quite long ye may wait by the sea shore;
In vain bemoan your loss;.
But nary a pearl of a job
May e'er return from across!
It's only a thread of faith,
By which job pearls are bound;
It's the merest freak of chance,
If ever a lost pearl's found!
So seek ye the stout cord of centry
A cord no wizard can break
And hold fast your necklace of jobs;
Upon these your lives are at stake!
26 The Making of a Millennium.
A comic recital closed the intermission, leaving
us in a happy mood the three graces having in the
meanwhile vanished, during the transition of the
room to its former appearance.
It was indeed a land of the millennium into
which I had drifted owing to a peculiar chain of
circumstances, of which more will be said hereafter.
Rescued by the noble efforts of my host, Robert
Manoah, I had spent the best portion of my first
day in a long nap; and refreshed in the evening, I
was agreeable surprised by a visit from a body of
rescued shipmates whom I had regarded as lost
when the Falcon went down on the night preceding.
How glad I was to embrace my kind friend, Doctor
Remington, and to meet his companions foremost
among whom was Captain Clark the former com-
mander of our ship. The remaining members of the
party were Mark and Helen Oswald, Richard Burton
and Joseph Carson, of whom mention has already
been made; Miss Lydia Carson, a daughter of the
steel magnate; and Mrs. Jane Luzby, a progressive
young club woman hailing from the windy city.
The Manoah household comprised three genera-
tions, of which Grandpa Zeke, a well-preserved oc-
togenarian, was the patriarch; Robert and Mary
Manoah, our hosts, were next in lineage, and the two
young daughters, Ruth and Ray, the latter away
on a brief absence completed its membership. They
were all so uniformly genial, and Mrs. Manoah was
so pleasant and informal in her manners, that I felt
from the start very much as if I had been one of the
family returned after a prolonged absence. Even
little Ruth, a daughter not yet in her teens, clung to
me as to an elder brother.
The Millennial Secret. 27
They had so much to tell so many features of
their wonderful realm to explain and there was so
much they were anxious to learn concerning the
latest affairs of the "outworld" as everything out
side of Temploria is called, that our tongues were
kept busy. without apparent cessation; and it was not
long before they elicited from me the story of the
strange incidents through which I had been brought
into this realm.
The entire family, including little Ruth, listened
to the narrative with bated breath, while Grandpa
Zeke fairly went wild over one incident in which an
eloquent young woman had exhorted a body of work-
ingmen to lay aside their strifes and jealousies over
the available jobs, advising them rather to in-
crease the number of these even if they had to
compel the capitalist to spend all his surplus wealth.
"God bless the good woman," the venerable patri-
arch exclaimed, overjoyed that outworld workmen
were beginning to have their eyes opened. "It's
just those additional jobs that have emancipated
labor in Temploria."
Then he began telling me all about economic
conditions in this realm, picturing a land that was
little short of a grander paradise. It was a place
where the lion and the lamb could indeed lie side
by side with perfect security; where each husband-
man could sit as it were under his own fig tree ; and
where the sword had been veritably turned into a
pruning hook. Here the warp of work and the woof
of pleasure were interwoven into a beautiful idyl,
and perennial peace reigned in the midst of great
activity and progress. There were no vultureg here
to snatch the bread from the mouths of little ones.
28 The Making of a Millennium.
There was no specter of starvation to haunt, and no
cloud of insecurity to darken, the home. The sun of
opportunity shed his rays of warmth from the in-
dustrial sky and inbued with marvelous energy
every faculty and organism of social and individual
life.
It was a land of prodigious wealth wealth
not the disease-infected and .distorted organs of
production and shelter held as loans to the enslaved
multitudes. It was all owned and controlled by in-
dividuals, subordinate to wholesome law, and oper-
ated through voluntary co-operative organizations
whose elected representatives constituted the gov-
ernment. Everybody was free to produce and ac-
cumulate all the wealth he pleased, provided he al-
lowed the same privilege to others; and it was be-
cause no abstainer could rob him of employment,
and forbid him to produce, that labor was here in-
dustrially as well as in all other respects free. Cap-
italism, the parent of a thousand tyrannies, was
dead; and freedom breathed a purer atmosphere.
The intermission over, it was not long before
the conversation again reverted to the doctrine of
Centrism; and Captain Clark, who was a staunch
advocate of freedom of trade, confessed a difficulty
in seeing why the time-honored "supply and de-
mand" value scales, without interference, should
not be good enough for all the purposes of industry.
"Your attitude reminds me ' Grandpa Zeke
replied, with a long drawl, as he drew himself up in
his chair, ' ' it reminds me of an incident my grand-
father often alluded to, occurring in the good old
days before he landed in Temploria.
The Millennial Secret.
29
"In the little village of Powaska down in old
Connecticut, lived a thrifty merchant whose store
was the only one within a large radius. Honest
John did a thriving business, doing so well in fact,
that he finally had to send to Hartford for an extra
clerk.
Unperjured Testimony.
1 ' The clerk speedily arrived, a young fellow full
of business, and ready to manage affairs from the
very start. He had scarcely got into harness though,
before the two had a fight. It was all on account of
Honest John's ideal scales; and from abusing each
other over it with hard words they were soon bat-
tering each other with hard fists, until the neigh-
bors parted them and they were brought up before
the village squire.
30 The Making of a Millennium.
1 'Squire Jones sat in austere majesty, listening
to their successive recriminations; and being un-
able to arrive at any conclusion, he ordered the
scales to be brought into court. They were placed
before him; and thereupon, before the eyes of the
entire village, the trick was exposed and John not
only rebuked, but ignominiously dragged from the
room and hurried to the county jail.
"The scales had testified for themselves. They
had spoken an unperjured testimony. At a point
about one inch from the center was visible the stain
of rust, indicating where the beam had rested all
these years. Its pounds had been over an ounce
short. The silent testimony of the scales had con-
victed him.
"While his customers had been in the habit of
riveting their eyes upon the scale pans, the falsely
centered beam had been indiscriminately cheating
them all."
"I don't see what this scales had to do with the
outworld supply and demand value scales," pro-
tested the unconvinced free trader, after the speaker
had finished.
""It had this to do with it," responded the story
teller: "that the adjustment of the supply and de-
mand beam in your outworld value scales is subject
to tampering and is interfered with by thousands of
Honest Johns ; for it rests a great deal further from
its center than did John's cheating scales."
"I don't see anything wrong in the fact that
supply and demand vary," protested the Captain,
"what's to determine values if there's to be no fluc-
tuation?"
The Millennial Secret. 31
" Fluctuations of value," retorted the Tempor-
ian, "relate to particular forms of demand or sup-
ply, but not to the total supply or total demand,
neither of which are subjects of valuation. The total
supply, in fact, being a response to and correlative
of the total demand, should never exceed it. Like
the ends of the beam, the total supply and the total
demand should be neutral always balancing. Cen-
PEMAND fl BEC suppkL
The Templorian Wage Scale.
trism, keeps the suppy and demand beam perfectly
centered; and from this service it derives its name.
Its values denote the relation one service bears to
another; whereas the capitalistic scales register
merely the minimum share of the product that labor
will consent to accept as its wage a result quite re-
mote from value. It's like putting a man into a
press and measuring his height by seeing into how
short a compass he could be squeezed. The fact that
the license of abstention permitted indefinite short-
ening of the demand or lengthening of the supply
arm of the beam, gave it a cheating capacity ten
times as great as the scales of our 'Honest John.'
32 The Making of a Millennium.
The truth is, it scarcely gave to labor a quarter of its
real value."
"If it delivered a mere quarter of labor's val-
ue," ironically remonstrated the Philadelphian,
"what do you suppose became of the other three
quarters 1 Did it remain upon the scale pans ? ' '
"One would think something remained on the
pans," responded the venerable Templorain, "the
way all the agencies of out world commerce scramble
and scuffle for control of the weighing. What stays
on the pan is the gross profit, the bulk of which is
wasted in your scrambling and scuffling to do the
weighing. Between what you put into the creation
of vastly redundant and superfluous business capital
and into the hire of whole armies of men to uselessly
fight for trade with grip and sword, and the hazards
you have to assume in this tooth and nail struggle,
what you find in the pan is after all a gilded delu-
sion ! In spite of all your desperate efforts to gath-
er trade, you stir up only froth and foam, the bulk
of trade remaining latent stifled by your absten-
tions. You cannot make the goddess of trade sing by
throttling her ; nor can you kill her children and re-
vive the corpses with all your armies of trade-
patching surgeons."
"It's just as we socialists have always contend-
ed," remarked young Mr. Oswald. "We have al-
ways regarded the outworld supply and demand
value scales as a sort of 'Honest John,' although
its mechanism has never been so fully exposed as
under the lime light of Centrism. Surely, no better
cheating device has ever been imposed upon a credu-
lous humanity. Take off your hats, all you gamblers
with your marked cards, loaded dice, wheels of
fortune, green goods and other gold bricks; and all
The Millennial Secret.
33
I Told You So.
you short-weight grocers and coal men, you long-
priced ice men, you short-measure hucksters, and
all other petty practicers of larceny; come one and
all of you, and make your obeisance to this king of
cheats. What are all your pilferings in comparison
with a wage scales that pares wages down to a mere
quarter of the workingman's production, and makes
him feel thankful, to boot, for this rescue from star-
vation.
''And all you free voters whose liberties confine
you within the necessity of accepting with thanks
the thin slices doled out to you, I pray you, paint on
your banners of prosperity the image of this historic
and world-famed wage scales this badge of your
equality, as industrial slaves."
CHAPTER II.
The Quest of Labor's Knighthood.
"Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward." Milton.
The startling revelations embodied in the gospel
of Centrism clothed with deeper significance an in-
cident immediately preceding my advent in this
realm, in which this doctrine was vaguely fore-
shadowed.
Assigned, as a reporter on one of the news-
papers of the American metropolis, to investigate
certain labor troubles, I happened early one June
morning, just before sunrise, to be sauntering in the
vicinity of the East River docks, when I fell in with
a compact body of workingmen silently forging their
way through the darkness. A moment later, accom-
panied with derisive shouts, a shower of missiles
came whirling by passing fortunately over their
heads.
With a crowd of incensed union men directly in
their path, the sturdy fellows nevertheless kept right
on, until a pitched battle seemed imminent.
At this critical juncture, as if risen from the
very bowels of the earth, the apparition of a seem-
ingly tall woman appeared between the opposing
forces. The sun had meanwhile come out, piercing
the mists with his shimmering rays, and adding no
little to the startling effect of the intervention.
Quest of Labor's Knighthood.
35
"My good friends," the woman began, address-
ing the rival forces, "why is it you are here, arrayed
one against the other brother against brother,
workman against workman? Why are you facing
each other in this hostile attitude 1 Is it not because
of a scarcity of jobs, and that one set or the other
The Peace Maker.
of you must be condemned to idleness? Is there
any other cause for your hostility?"
"Not much." "No!" and "You bet not,"
were among the numerous replies spontaneously
proceeding from a score or more of lusty throats.
"Then, my friends," the fair speaker resumed,
"if there are only thirty jobs to be had for every hun-
dred men, will scrambling for them make a single
job more, or net you any better return, than would
36 The Making of a Millennium.
an amicable rotation in their apportionment? With
each man assured ids share of work would you not
stand in a better position to command a just wage
tjian ununited to be engulfed in perpetual strife?
Eemember it is the lone traveler who has to sur-
render his purse.
"The mightiest arm, however, to protect you,
my friends, is that of a full demand the call of a
hundred jobs for every hundred men.
"You are all consumers, are you not? And as
consumers, are you not also job makers? Are you
not day after day creating jobs ? Yet you never ask
what becomes of them. Is it not time you asked?
Are you so prosperous that you can afford to take
thirty jobs in place of a hundred? Can you afford
to confine your struggle merely to the thirty jobs,
completely losing sight of the other seventy? I
tell you, it's the other seventy you want the full
demand of a hundred jobs for every hundred men.
Secure the full demand, and I warrant, you will be
able to command honorable terms as well as the full
wage. ' '
' l Take my advice, brothers, ' ' she resumed after
a lengthy pause during which she was cheered to the
echo, "consolidate in amicable distribution of the
available jobs; and spare no efforts to acquire the
other seventy. To secure the other seventy is the
real quest of labor's knighthood."
I do not recall the exact drift of the words used
by this eloquent woman in further expatiating with
her auditors, but well I remember the solemn earn-
estness of that pale face, and the sweet, sympathetic
tone of her appeal to their fellow feeling and their
sense of duty. I also remember the nice precision
Quest of Labor's Knighthood. 37
with which she reasoned to impress on them the ne-
cessity of compelling the capitalist to spend his in-
come, regardless of profits even his principal un-
til there was work for all. Even granted the cap-
italist's principal had been honestly earned, every
dollar of it represented an amount of opportunity
shared in excess of what had been due him as a con-
sumer, and the restitution of this opportunity was
asking but mild justice. The quest of labor's knigh-
hood was not fulfilled in a blind and bitter strife for
the thirty jobs ordinarily available, but in securing
the other seventy.
It was this call for the other seventy jobs that
has ever since impressed me as a genuine forecast
of Centrism; and the bitter strife over the ordinary
thirty seemed a perfect counterpart to the fatuous
contentment of buyers with the fluctuating pans of
the capitalistic wage-scales while blindly tolerating
the grossest deviations in the position of its beam.
Its short-demand, abridged through capital-
breeding abstentions, represented the very jobs
charged as missing the other seventy. These
comprised opportunities non-productively applied
in the creation and operation of grossly redundant
enterprises, and production of a redundancy of
profits all of which was like fruitless pyramid
building slave work.
The calm earnestness of this woman inspired
a reverence and awoke in the breasts of these men
a hope that was almost divine. They drank the
words from her lips as if they had been sent from
heaven; and in their frenzy of admiration they
would have kissed the very ground she trod. Both
38 The Making of a Millennium.
factions were affected alike the germ of fellowship,
like a divine spark, welding their hearts.
It was an impressive scene to behold the erst-
while foes now mingling in brotherly communion
fervidly grasping each other's hands as they buried
all past animosities and began proceedures toward
sealing a more permanent bond of peace.
In the midst of this happy scene, the fair orator
mysteriously vanished; and all I could afterwards
glean from desultory remarks overheard was the
fact that her name was Margaret and that she was a
settlement worker residing in the vicinity.
So thoroughly had I been absorbed in this dra-
matic incident that I had failed to discern the ap-
proach of footsteps from behind until, startled by
the cry of "scabs." I turned, and behold a second
body of union men were almost upon us. In a mo-
ment the air was thick with flying stones and clubs,
and a heavy blow upon the back of my head was my
last recollection of the incident.
Upon recovery of consciousness I found myself
laid out upon a couch in the quarters of Doctor Rem-
ington, aboard the steamer Falcon on its way to
the Philippines. My wound had been carefully
dressed, and apart from a long gash, consisted of a
slight fracture of the outer portion of the bone at
the place where I had been struck.
I had very fortunately been discovered by the
ship's steward, more dead than alive, doubled up in
a cask that had evidently been smuggled aboard as
an easy way to get rid of an incriminating "corpse."
On the day following I was obliged to undergo
a slight operation for the removal of a splinter from
the battered portion of my skull. I still recall the
Quest of Labor's Knighthood.
39
peculiar anesthetic used and the heavy drowsiness it
occasioned conjuring up strange visions in which I
was carried through the region along the East Kiver
wharves, where I again beheld the hostile labor for-
ces prepared to spring at each other like enraged
lions. The scene changed, and a great parade swept
SHORT IN JOBS--
5HORT \NWAGES.
COMPEL
CAPITAL {
COMPETE
A Great Parade.
by, composed of squads of workingmen bearing ban-
ners inscribed, "A Hundred Jobs for Every Hun-
dred Men." "Give Us the Other Seventy Jobs,"
"Compel Capital to Compete," and "Short in Jobs,
Short in Wages." Many of these bodies were sing-
ing as they marched along their songs all appeal-
ing for the other seventy jobs. One began in this
way:
40 The Making of a Millennium.
"With thirty jobs to a hundred men
The bogey men have got us
A lot of slaves, to work for them
On terms as if they'd bought us.
Then the chorus chimed in :
"Oh the bogey men, the bogey men,
The bogey men have, got us
A flock of geese, to feed and pluck,
To deceive, and to besot us."
Another jingle frequently repeated ran :
Only thirty jobs,
Only thirty cents,
On every hundred!
That will never do:
Someone has blundered;
We 'want what's due,
Full measure true,
We want the hundred!"
Many days must have elapsed before I was suffi-
ciently recovered to receive visitors, and already I
was congratulating myself upon the prospect of soon
being permitted to go at large about the vessel, when
I was one night suddenly aroused by a violent jar
that pitched me out of my bunk. The way the vessel
groaned and creaked, I looked every moment to see
her timbers part. . Surely, something dreadful had
happened. Our ship must have struck a reef.
Not a moment was there to lose. In less than a
jiffy I was dressed and had burst through the cabin
door, to be greeted by a weird and uncanny spec-
tacle. Was I awake or only dreaming? Upon the
deck, wherever I chanced to gaze, ghastly corpses
lay their glassy eyes staring vacantly at the ob-
scured skies. The sight filled me with terror.
Scarcely had I regained self-possession after
this shock, than a peculiar odor assailed my nostrils,
Quest of Labor's Knighthood. 41
and my attention was also drawn to a sort of
lustrous mist hovering over the vessel.
The extraordinary appearance of the mist,
coupled with a vague sense of stupor I felt coming
over me, aroused my suspicion; and thereupon it
flashed upon my mind that this shroud of mist was
in reality a poisonous gas. What else could have
produced all these ghastly corpses? Thanks to my
close confinement, my life had thus far been spared.
No wonder the vessel had run upon a reef !
I realized at once it would never do to remain
aboard. The open sea was a more welcome spot
than this sepulcher. Hurriedly donning a life pre-
server, I rushed to the vessel's side, and without a
moment's pause, I leaped into the foaming depths.
It proved a lucky move, for I had scarcely col-
lected my senses, after the plunge, than the ship
started to list sternward. Then followed a vicious
lurch, and she sank before I could as much as catch
my breath.
For the first time now, floating helplessly upon
the billows of an unknown sea, the awfulness of the
calamity dawned upon me ; and with no help in sight,
my heart sank within me.
Far off upon the horizon I soon after discerned
the dim outlines of a great city; and this vision,
faint as it was, kindled new hope in my breast. It
had an invigorating influence, neutralizing much of
the numbing effect of the immersion. My hopes
were further heightened when a pale streak of light
in the east signaled the approach of day.
Short lived, however, were all my hopes; for
no sooner had the momentary excitement subsided
42 The Making of a Millennium.
than the deadly vapor was again in evidence. There
was no escape from its tightening clutch. Steadily,
steadily in spite of all resistance my senses were
becoming numbed and my faculties absorbed in a
sweeping vision that raked over the pettiest details
of my past career, from childhood up. I seemed to be
sinking into a dark abyss, which I fancied the ap-
proach of death, but from whose yawning depths I
was fortunately extricated, as the reader is already
aware, to awaken under the generous care of the
Manoahs.
CHAPTER III.
The City of Bed Cross.
"Come, bright improvement! on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime!
Thy handmaid Art, shall every wild explore,
Trace every wave, and culture every shore."
Campbell.
As in a dream, my first week in Temploria flitted
away one swift succession of astonishing revela-
tions. It seemed as if, held in a spell of witchery
and woilder, the whole world had .been completely
transformed all former criterions shattered and
the new, with bold audacity, defying every sense and
challenging all preconceived ideas. Eye, ear and
soul were ravished with its endless charm of novelty
and wonder.
With what fond delight I still look back upon
the halcyon days of those wanderings, accompanied
by the Manoahs, among the novel institutions and
delightful rendezvous of this wonderful city of Bed
Cross. Above all shone the buoyant spirits of the
lithe Templorians, in whose radiant light the cloudy
moodiness of my outworld soul was revealed to me
as never before and almost obliterated from the
first consciousness of this contrast.
Aside from the remarkable charm of these peo-
ple, I was at every step and turn delighted and
amazed by strange devices, wonderful appointments,
miraculous tricks and numberless inventions many
revealing secrets in Nature seemingly incredible.
The tracings of art in a thousand and one forms, and
44
The Making of a Millennium.
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The City of Bed Cross. 45
in types of exquisite subtletry, greeted the specta-
tor's eye upon every side all lending their happy
mood towards enlivening a city that was far more
than beautiful.
Imagine a series of parks long parallel
streaks of brilliant foliage, extending for miles
across the entire length of the city flanked on
either side, at uniform intervals, with groups of
stately edifices back of which lay nestled clusters
of red roofed cottages that checkered the rich land-
scape like dots of coral reef.
There were seven of these leafy avenues, called
parkways, running a mile or so apart; while alter-
nating between and occupying half the intervening
territory were six long vistas known as farmways,
devoted to truck farming, poultry raising and more
or less dairy produce.
Bisecting the ribs of alternate parkway and
farmway, like a mammoth spine, a great shopway
crossed the city at a right angle to the other ways.
Parked like the other thoroughfares, the shopway,
as might be inferred from its name, was faced
on either side with tiers of stalwart factories, mam-
moth power plants, monster warehouses and a great
variety of additional structures all mighty build-
ings, clean, odorless and throbbing with the rumble
and buzz of industrial activity. Everything about
these places was suggestive of the highest excellence
especially the safeguards to life and limb, the fa-
cilities for light, ventilation and temperature regu-
lation, and in fact all devices that enhanced the
health and security of the inmates. Even the walls
and ceilings were in most places decorated to in-
46 The Making of a Millennium.
spire a feeling of cheerfulness among the operatives,
to whom this was a home during working hours.
In the heart and center of the city was a great
square known as the Grand Temple, within which
were located assembly halls, theaters, art galleries,
libraries, the City Hall and Hall of Justice, Central
Postoffice and ~Bank, Inter-Urban Depot, All-Tem-
ploria -Rotating Museum, and many other structures
of lesser importance. They were all detached, fire
proof buildings no Moloch being permitted to erect
his altars here for human sacrifices. Neither were
there any sky-scraping shafts to be seen, lifting their
heads as if to reproach the heavens with land stingi-
ness.
Let us now return to the parkways. Taking a
glance at one of these verdant avenues, in addition
to the imposing array of beautiful and symmetrical
edifices, the eye is everywhere feasted with glimpses
of tall monuments, statuary, images of man or beast
in natural posture and in natural colors carved
lions quenching their thirst from limpid pools;
crouching panthers peering through the thick fol-
iage ; sighing lovers in sequestered bowers ; and here
and there a stalwart woodman cleaving the huge
trunk of some arborial monarch. There were also
beautiful glades and antiquated groves from whose
midst the warbling notes of feathered songsters
rang, blending with soft strains issuing from innum-
erable automatic instruments concealed among the
shrubbery. Glistening fountains and thousands of
lesser sprays moistened the surrounding verdure
and cooled the atmosphere, while scores of fantastic
pavilions afforded rest and comfort for the weary;
here and there were also plots of ground devoted to
The City of Bed Cross. 47
outdoor games and exercises, all combining to en-
hance the extraordinary attractiveness of these
thoroughfares.
Passing through the full length of each park-
way, hidden underneath a series of diminutive
hedges, lay a double track of rails sunk in a bed ly-
ing a trifle below the way level. Over these tracks
sped a continuous succession of noiseless carriages,
impelled by some invisible power, and making regu-
lar stops at the queer little marbled passenger sta-
tions fronting each of its residence groups. The
ground level was exclusively devoted to passengers,
while a subway underneath was used as the avenue
for the conveyance of freights.
Penetrating all the parkways as well as the
shopways, every shop and residence in the entire
city is made accessible to the lines; and the farm-
ways and inter-urban lines are also brought in direct
touch with the system. The lines did all the trans-
portation within the boundaries of the city, carrying
passengers to all places and distributing parcels
and freight to and from all quarters all of which
was done at a surprisingly low cost. Beasts of bur-
den and private vehicles were utterly superfluous;
nor were they permitted. For this reason there were
no streets having exposed surfaces to gather
and disseminate dirt and filth and to spread disease.
Those desiring to indulge in pleasure drives started
on their tours from the numerous garages and
stables scattered on the outskirts.
Without being a city of either millionaires or
princes, Bed Cross possessed a beauty and attrac-
tiveness peculiarly its own, heightened incompar-
ably above any outworld city by the uniformity of
48 The Making of a Millennium.
its excellences and the absence of any slum districts
to detract from it, like a filthy kitchen attached to
a palace.
The parkways, constituting its principal thor-
oughfares, were faced on either side by groups of
buildings called " temples," the residents of which
were united into one social body enjoying therein a
delightful, semi-communal home life. The finest
edifices of the temple fronted the way usually the
club house, temple hall, hotel and restaurant and the
parcels and postoffice station. Back of these stood
several- scores of detached residences supple-
mented by the infant nursery, kindergarten, hos-
pital, library and reading room, museum and art
gallery, bath house, gymnasium, light and power
depot, heating and cooling house, and other features
varying in different temples.
Without departure from the strictest privacy
of the home, the communal life of the temple pro-
vided a healthier field for development than could
have been furnished under the isolated roof even
supplemented by the earlier prototypes of church
and tavern, with their mental and physical stimu-
lents, which in the temple are supplanted by mental
and physical exercise.
How conveniently the communal features of the
temple supplement the individual homes with re-,
serve accommodations for guests and visitors, in the
event of sickness, or under any unusual draft upon
its resources ; and what superior facilities it affords
for either social or business gatherings, which do so
much to vitalize all human activities. Through the
co-operation of the restaurant the family may at any
time reinforce its menu, supply entire meals, or al-
The City of Bed Cross. 49
together dispense with separate kitchen; all temple
service is at cost, its labor minimized and its table
supplies, mostly brought fresh from the farmway
adjoining, secured at trifling outlay there being no
intervening superfluity of middlemen to deal with.
Finely equipped reading rooms and libraries,
connected with the Grand Temple library through a
pneumatic tube, were accessible in the temple. The
rotating art gallery and museum, whose exhibits
periodically circulated from temple to temple, ex-
erted an educational and refining influence rivaling
that of the libraries. Even the club, among a peo-
ple uniformly educated and pursuing their studies
in groups all through life, combined with its pleas-
ures the intellectuality of the French salon, in which
the most fascinating subjects and' vital topics were
discussed.
Classes and associations of various kinds for
both amusement and edification met daily in the va-
rious halls and kept the atmosphere impregnated
with the spirit of progress.
The temple hospital, situated in a secluded por-
tion of. the grounds, occupied an intermediate po-
sition between the general hospital and the separate
homes. Here, during hours designated by the physi-
cians, especially during convalscence, patients were
allowed to receive the visits of their friends and
loved ones.
There were nurseries also at which infants and
children of tender age could be left at intervals,
which was a great relief to the mother when other
duties demanded attention.
It was particularly in the communal features of
the temple that much of the superior wealth of this
50 The Making of a Millennium.
realm was manifest. Under the communal roof also
much of the leisure, droned away in the outworld in
either wasteful overwork or unprofitable idleness.
was applied to the pleasures of refinement and cul-
ture.
' ' One thing I can 't get used to here, ' ' said I one
morning at breakfast, "is your total absence of
streets. This parked environment seems too dainty
for an outworld barbarian. It reminds me of the re-
straint I felt as a boy, every time I had to don my
Sunday clothes."
"I suppose" you'd rather wade in mud and filth,
with the dust flying into your face and soot and cin-
ders falling all over you," my hostess naively .re-
marked, laughing heartily at my odd notion.
"Is it true, * Mr. Rusk," little Ruth furtively
asked', "that your first outworld streets grew out of
cow paths! I heard that many of them were formed
like fishhooks and ramshorns. I heard also that
some were so narrow as to permit neighbors to
shake hands from oposite balconies."
"We had such streets, my dear," I answered.
' l in the. more antiquated cities ; but they were very
scarce in America."
"America may have emancipated herself from
crooked streets," her father retorted, "but not from
the lengthiness of the magnificently superfluous dis-
tances her land greed has imposed on her. Her tax
payers may well groan at the five-fold cost of im-
provement taxes, cartage, freights, railroad and
street car fares, delays and inconveniences all bit-
ter fruits of land greed."
"Would you believe it, Ben," my hostess fol-
lowed, "that our entire temple system is supplied
The City of Red Cro^s. 51
with a dry, well-lighted and ventilated subway con-
taining all our pipes and wires, and enabling us to
reach our car stations in bad weather without the
slightest exposure. We get along without those
what do you call them! those spreading cloths used
in the outworld to ward off the rain those
those?"
''Umbrellas, I suppose you mean," I suggested.
"Yes, yes, umbrellas. We never see them here
except in the museum. ' '
"Your city is a perfect Zion," I declared.
"Where is another outside of Temploria that can be
compared with it? Where else do parks take the
place of streets? Where else does the iron roadway
supplant all the private vehicles and the beasts of
burden, its carriages gliding noiselessly from sta-
tion to station, and connecting every home in the
city with every other home! Where else is the de-
livery of all freights and parcels so quietly and un-
ostentatiously carried on, and moreover so easily
attended to? Where else are building operations so
handled as not to disturb or blockade the roadways ;
and where else are the building materials so con-
veniently and economically brought to the spot?
Where, also, does the door to the home open into
the broader parlor of communal life, with all its va-
ried resources for amusement and edification? The
same home faces the gaiety of the parkway and the
rural charm of the farmway. With the choicest facil-
ities of a great city focused in the temple, you breathe
the unsullied and crisp air of the country and par-
take of its products unstaled by middlemen delays
and laid down at prices untainted by the curse of
52 The Making of a Millennium.
waste and profits. Why, even the educational value
of blending city and country thus is a priceless pearl.
"What a broad roof also the temple system
forms. Extending throughout the remotest parts of
your realm, it forms a single roof for all a shelter
for every soul. With all towns and cities threaded
together by means of the inter-urbans and all rail-
road fares as well as temple service at cost, the di-
vine spirit of brotherhood may well be said to ac-
company one everywhere. One feels here as if one 's
country and one's home were identical, literally
God's country. What with the glorious boon of
Centrism, which keeps the doors of employment al-
ways open and one's purse always filled, your in-
numerable attractive features fairly make my head
swim. ' '
"I am delighted, Ben, at your appreciation of
our temples," my hostess remarked. "Per-
haps it will be of interest to you to know that all
the land of which our farmways are composed cov-
ers no more space than what your outworld cities
put into streets. These tracts are a clear saving to
us. Isn't it strange outworld people should be so
thoughtless in the disposition of their lands while
holding them at such enormous valuations?"
1 ' From a Templorian standpoint,.' ' her husband
remarked, "your outworld cities wouldn't be re-
garded worth ten cents on the dollar. They'd be
compared to obsolete machines that are only fit for
the junk pile, once the up-to-date machine is ready
for installation."
"You would hardly class such cities as New
York, Chicago, or London among the worthless ones,
would you?" I asked.
The City of Bed Cross. 53
"Being of abnormal growth," my amiable host
replied, "they will all some day have to undergo a
change and gradually pass away, as did the ante-
diluvian monsters. Remove the abnormal conditions
in which they are at present rooted, and with the
cessation of further growth, a process of disinte-
gration will begin, emigration and deaths slowly de-
cimating the ranks of their inhabitants until only
walls remain to monument their pristine glory."
It seemed hard to believe, yet who will deny the
power of economic law, which inexorably moulds
and shapes all industrial institutions. By imper-
ceptible degrees these cities would succumb to the
same wizard touch that turns all flesh to ashes.
Breakfast over, my hostess escorted me to the
parlor, to expose the mysteries of the remarkable
transformation I had several times witnessed in the
appearance of the rooms. Lifting an obscure cur-
tain covering a small aperture in the wall, she dis-
played to my view a diminutive apparatus on the
face of which were a dozen or more buttons, three of
which she simultaneously touched, when lo and be-
hold. I could scarcely believe my eyes! The room
had been suddenly converted into a smiling orchard
whose drooping boughs were dotted with innumer-
able rosy-cheeked apples. Another combination of
buttons was touched, and lo, a dream of palace halls
encircled us. A third adjustment transplanted us in
the midst of a strikingly dramatic scene taken from
a famous historic trial. Scene after scene were thus
presented in rapid succession, each instantaneously
and completely transforming our surroundings.
Among other odd features was a peculiarly con-
structed apparatus known as a sightophone. By its
54 The Making of a Millennium.
use one was enabled simultaneously to see and hear
at long range. Calling up a sister in a distant city,
my hostess, after giving me an introduction, with-
drew. The young lady, a bright-eyed brunette,
smiling graciously, requested me to be seated in the
chair beside her an offer I gratefully accepted.
4 'How do you like Temploria?" she inquired,
blushing deeply, while I stared in a sort of dumb
amazement, finally stammering a highly complimen-
tary response.
"I'm glad you like it here," she responded, ex-
tending, her hand in an endeavor to congratulate me.
Joyfully I reached out to grasp her proffered
hand, but to my chagrin I" merely clasped a shadow
the shadow of a hand some forty odd miles away.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Rusk," returned the
beautiful apparition, with an air of repentance, "I
quite forgot in my delight that I was merely look-
ing upon an image. I trust you will forgive this
unintentional deception. At another time I hope
in the near future we may clasp hands in person
instead of merely in shadow. I'll have May bring
you along the next time I have her up and for the
present, I'll not detain you longer. So adieu!
Adieu!"
Her disappearance was as sudden as her com-
ing, but it left behind a pang, a sense of strange
lonesomeness that lingered in my mind like a haunt-
ing dream.
That night, while deploring the necessity of
burying so many of my former ideas, Grandpa Zeke
advised me not to worry about them. "Let the dead
bury the dead," said he.
CHAPTER IV.
A Youthful Wage Earner.
"Cursed be the social wants that sin against .the strength of
youth !
Cursed be the social lies thah warp us from the living truth!
Tennyson.
It was a red letter day at the house when Bay,
a sister two years the senior of little Ruth, returned
after a fortnight's absence on a class tour through
Aurosia, a district in southern Temploria. Her en-
tire class, accompanied by their school mistress, had
been away on their Spring quarterly, observing Na-
ture on farm and in forest botanizing, visiting in-
dustrial temples, sketching and taking occasional
snap shots.
These trips were a splendid reinforcement to
their everyday training, besides imbuing their fu-
ture studies with a living interest. They provided
not only a delightful recreation but also an invig-
orating influence.
Wherever the little folks went they were cheer-
fully welcomed and entertained, finding in the tem-
les at which they stopped as congenial homes as
those they had left behind. Reared in the broader
home of temple life, enjoying the companionship of
classmates, and charmed with constant novelty
they were never known to become homesick on these
excursions.
Miss Ray had a winning way "about her, and
soon had me absorbed listening to the varied details
56 The Making of a Millennium.
of her itinerary. Aside from her own observations
and experiences, she had gleaned quite a store of in-
formation from contact with children hailing from
other parts of the country.
From her I learned some interesting facts re-
lating to the country lands. These were kept in
large reservations circumscribed by temple-lined
parkways on which were threaded, as it were, in-
numerable towns and villages, with now and then a
city. The cities, though composed of aggregates of
temples and parkways similar to those of Bed Cross,
were not all laid out after the same fashion, many
omitting the farmways, but invariably retaining
the main characteristics, especially the parked
streets and the exclusion of private vehicles. The in-
teriors of these reservations were each devoted to
some special branch of agriculture, stock raising,
forestry, fish culture or other pursuit requiring
either more room or other conditions than were
available on the farmways.
Smooth and substantial roadways encircled
these spacious fields great speeding courses, sep-
arating them from the outer circle of inhabited park-
ways. On these courses, upon days set apart when
ordinary driving was prohibited, they had their
races and maneuvering exhibitions, upon which oc-
casions the myriads of shaded stands and benches
along the route would be thronged with joyous spec-
tators.
Fine roadways also traversed the inner lands,
connecting all parts with the rapid transit lines that
traversed the outer circle of parkways. This en-
abled the products of the field to be transported on
A Youthful Wage Earner. 57
power vehicles to the respective shipping stations,
and thence to reach all parts of Temploria.
"Now -tell me something about the outworld,"
Mr. Rusk," the little maiden pleaded, after she had
become tired of talking. "Tell me something about
the itineraries your classes made when you went to
school?"
"Itineraries, my dear girl," I ejaculated, "why,
we never dreamed of such luxuries. We felt quite
fortunate to have an annual picnic, of one whole day,
at the most."
"That was too bad! Why didn't they let you
have them for a week or two at a time as they do
here?"
"You've heard why Jack didn't eat his supper,
I suppose. Well, it 's for the same reason we had no
itineraries. They were quite beyond our means.
You must remember, my dear girl, there were no
temples over there with such fine accommodations
and such low rates. Nor had we decent railroad
facilities for such itineraries, our trains com-
ing and going at hours altogether unfit for youthful
travelers. ' '
"Papa says these roads were badly managed,
because the men in control made them subordinate
altogether to profits. ' '
"There is no doubt, Ray, that outworld profits
doubled and trebled all costs the moment we crossed
our thresholds ; and heaven knows we had skimping
enough at home."
"That must have made your home a sort of
prison. I don't wonder so many of your boys tried
to run away. I heard about them. ' '
58 The Making of a Millennium.
"I once tried that myself," I admitted, "and I
found it like jumping from the frying pan into the
fire."
"It's just as Papa told me. In the smaller
towns you had no hotels able to accommodate one of
our classes, and in -the larger places the irregularity
of the patronage occasioned such hasty cooking and
such noisy clatter in the service, it was enough to
produce indigestion. ' '
' l You were fortunate in being born here, Bay, ' '
I remarked. "But how about poor children, espe-
cially in large families they surely can't afford
these luxuries ! ' '
"That don't make a particle of difference,^' the
little miss replied. "School children earn wages
here, and the more there are in the family the more
they can afford to spend. ' '
"You don't mean to say, Bay, that school chil-
dren are obliged to work here," I exclaimed, perfect-
ly astonished. "I'm surprised at such a thing, in
this land of prosperity. "
"Why, of course we do," she expostulated with
an injured air, glancing reproachfully at me. "You
think perhaps going to school is play. If it isn't do-
ing any good, what's the use of going! Our people
view early training in the same way as we do the
planting of trees which may be years before yielding
any fruit. It's just like planning the beginning,
and often the most important part of the work. If
you don't pay children in the outworld for their
school studies, it's because you're too poor, and for
that reason never thought of it. . Wouldn 't I like to
go to school there! Work till you're tired out, and
never a penny for all your trouble! Instead of get-
A Youthful Wage Earner.
59
ting money you often got whippings, just like
slaves!"
"Don't cry, my darling," I urged, observing the
tears in her eyes. "You must bear in mind that the
outworld is very dull in some matters; it is civilized,
I admit, but far from being humanized. ' '
Sympathetic Tears.
A light suddenly beamed in her tear-stained
eyes, and I thought I discerned a mischievous
twinkle.
"I know why they don't pay their school chil-
dren," she resumed.
"Why, my little breadwinner?" I responded.
"Because they had nothing left after paying
grown folks for their studies."
60 The Making of a Millennium.
"Paying grown folks! What do you mean by
that?"
1 ' Oh pshaw, you know. Grown folks studied all
sorts of schemes for making fortunes, and Papa
says fortunes were only respectable robber castles.
When a man had a fortune he didn't have to work,
while everybody else had to starve and work extra
to make up for it; such men could dispense favors,
and were courted and flattered like princes. These
men studied merely how to scoop up everything
that wasn't held down by iron clad law, and with the
lever of money to pry loose even the iron bars of
law, as fast as enacted. They studied the art of
gathering wealth, not producing it, and the question
of right or wrong or whether any good was being
done never troubled them."
"But everybody had the same chance, didn't
they, Bay?" I asked.
"Oh, Mr. Eusk! Do you believe that? Do you
think anyone possessed with the least conscience
could enter with any spirit into the merciless, treach-
erous and coldblooded scramble of outworld com-
merce ? Papa says neither the best nor the smartest
men could come to the top in its corrupt atmosphere,
any more than they could under any system of uni-
versal piracy and "brigandage. Papa says the char-
acter of the system dictates the character of the men
it elevates. He says they had the sharpness of crim-
inals, and were, taken all in all, men of very narrow
intellect. Oh I just hate those capitalists ! I wonder
what the horrid creatures look like. Wouldn't I pull
their ears, though, if I had the chance ! ' '
"Would you pull my ears also, Bay, if I were
to confess having been one of them in a small
way?" I asked.
A Youthful Wage Earner. 61
' ' Not if you promise never to become one again.
Will you promise?"
"You little vixen. How dare you be so rude,"
her father interposed, having arrived upon the scene
in time to overhear her last remark.
"She's all right, Bob," I explained. "She's
been doing good missionary service. She has taught
me that even the studies of a child are productive,
and worthy of a wage. ' '
"I'm glad you concede the justice of such a
wage," my host retorted, "for the principle in-
volved is one of the cardinal points of our distribu-
tive system. We aim to recognize all effort or ex-
ertion made for either present or future good
whether done by the woman in the household, the
child at school, the apprentice learning his trade, the
student of any profession or occupation requiring
special training, the philosopher, the discoverer, the
artist, the inventor, or any person devoting his ef-
forts for either the remote or the general good. ' '
"You must have rivers of gold here," said I,
"to be able to maintain pay rolls for all these.
Where do you secure the means?"
"Out of the products of the past labors of a
similar class," was the reply. "The fact that their
labors culminate at a more remote period or in a
diffused utility is no reason why they should not be
entitled to present pay equally as well as other pro-
ducers. The District Temples see to it that each
producing temple contributes its proper share to-
ward this out of its gross revenues. The District
Temples is paymaster for all those whose produc-
tion does not accrue to any individual temple."
"Don't you glut your prof essions ?" I asked.
62 The Making of a Millennium.
' ' Far from it, ' ' was the quick response. ' l They
are no more crowded than are other fields. The
period of training being much longer than in most
occupations, and the tests of ability being also more
severe, keep it from ever becoming so crowded as to
lower the attraction of success. Nor is success here
jeopardized by the presence of a wealthy mediocrity ;
for the only rank receiving recognition is that of
merit. ' '
"The District Temple," my friend, in response
to an inquiry from me, afterwards explained., "is a
higher temple comprising representatives chosen
from the various industrial, residence and agricul-
tural temples of the district. It is empowered to
govern all their necessary interrelations and to aid
them in all endeavors to unify methods and forms
whenever preferred. It vitalizes the social energies
of the temples even as the latter vitalize those of
their individual members."
"Where, if I may ask," I inquired, "does the
authority of your temple government begin?"
"All powers inhere in the individual," was the
reply, "except insofar as they are temporarily dele-
gated to other authorities. Each temple exercises
authority over its members through officials chosen
by the members a majority of whom determine all
matters, and never a minority disguised under re-
quirements of a two-third vote. A minority rule in-
trenched is only a premium put on rebellion; it is a
pyramid resting on its apex, and instead of insuring
stability is in the long run the obverse. It is the bad
law and not the good one that needs fear of securing
a majority. Of course, our political machinery is
simpler, having none of the bribery and corruption
A Youthful Wage Earner. 63
of capitalism to contend with and no weakness to
shield through despotic laws. Our judiciary also
confines its power to advisory functions that supple-
ment the work of the legislators and are never per-
mitted to usurp their authority. The property in
self-protecting, law-making power, that inheres in
the people, cannot be usurped under pretense of
shielding any special property; for unless the com-
mon property of all is uniformly shielded the bul-
wark of property rights is destroyed and the whole
fabric must fall."
''You have no need of labor unions, I suppose?"
I asked.
"Not such as exist in the outwork," .was the
reply. "Our industrial temples fill their place, and
Gentry does away with aggressive labor movements.
Open shops are perfectly safe and harmless here,
and our District Temples guard the admission to
crafts and professions, as well as to apprenticeship.
They see to it that no monopoly bars anyone's ad
mission and that all applicants are amply informed
and, so far as can be determined, fitted for the avo-
cation selected."
Favorably impressed with these regulations,
I mentioned the fact to my friend.
"That is only a small part of .what we do," ho
responded. "On admission to his craft fellowship
or to his profession, as tiio case may be. the gradu-
ate is given his craft patrimony consisting of an
amount of temple stock gauged according to his
earning capacity and subject to future alteration on
that basis."
"Do they ever speculate with that stock?" I
asked.
64 The Making of a Millennium.
"The stock is made inalienable --at least so far
as its equivalent is concerned."
"What is .the good of having it," 1 asked, "if
you can't sell it, since no dividends can accrue un-
der Centrism?"
"You are mistaken as to dividends, Ben," my
friend responded. ' ' We have, for example, one div-
idend called the wage surplus, paid quarterly, which
is a portion of the wage withheld to obviate possible
overdraft, in case the actual earning fell behind the
fixed wage standard. Then there is another called
the superwage which consists in the amount earned
over and above the fixed standard. This dividend
is not an economic profit, but a legitimate product of
superior management which may be due to various
causes, such for example, as the selection of ex-
ceptionally able managers, harmonious co-operation,
the early adoption of superior machinery in fact,
any honorable method by which their work as a
-whole is made exceptionally effective. This divi-
dend corresponds with the increase in the earnings
of skilled as compared with unskilled labor. It real-
ly represents a species of collective skill and it pro-
duces an 'increased product, in no sense a graft on
anyone else 's product, such as capitalistic profits. ' '
Through this allotment of stocks among the pro-
ducers it seemed to me their wealth was kept thor-
oughly diffused as much so as if owned collective-
ly, while going further than common ownership by
also distributing its custody and management; also
diffused in the hands of those especially qualified
for the handling of the particular forms of wealth
and industries to be dealt with. This equilibrium
of wealth answered all the ends of socialization, ac-
A Youthful Wage Earner. 65
complishing at the same time the otherwise diffi-
cult task of its administration.
Soon after the advent of Centrism every wage
earner was required to acquire a competence, em-
bracing both a home and work equipment propor-
tional to the rental paid or the wage earned, wheth-
er paid for, or acquired subject to monthly instal-
ments. After these were acquired a perpetuation
tax was levied on all owners, by which the compe-
tence was perpetuated, enhanced from generation
to generation to meet the improvement in standards
and the increase in number of the population. It
was a light tax representing about 5 per cent, of the
principal involved in the competence, or about 3 per
cent, of what the gross principal involved in out-
world properties would have been, where land cost
and profits together with the great redundancy of
business capital swelled the principal enormously
and taxed industry on this basis with interest, wear
and risks from 10 to 15 per cent as compared with 3
per cent here- at least three to five-fold the amount
Templorians had to pay for like benefits.
The heritage of each successive generation was
thus insured against the rapacity of the capitalist,
as well as against the indigence of reckless or
thoughtless parents. The young tortoise is not to
be sent adrift parted from its shell, at the mercy of
every predatory creature of the field; both parents
and statutes must be subordinated to the greater
law of life.
"How about the management of business?" I
inquired. "Isn't itTather difficult where everybody
has a voice in the affairs?"
66 The Making of a Millennium.
' ' On the contrary, ' ' was the response, " the fact
that everybody has a voice is a great aid to the man-
agement which receives valuable suggestions such
as would never be given where the antagonism of in-
terests and mutual mistrust of capitalism prevailed.
The secret briberies, grafts and other influences that
inject themselves into all forms of association under
the profit system tended to isolate the management
from the co-operation of those who worked, and the
tenure of a job was so fickle that workers seldom
took a deeper interest in affairs than would secure
their wage. You must also bear in mind the. fact
that the voice of our laity is not so dangerous
here where business seldom results contrary to the
judgment of plain, ordinary reason. Neither are the
ways of the practices of business so fickle, nor the
difficulties of getting it or of financing it so precar-
ious. The tests of success do not involve
the iniquities nor the secrecies that, forbid extensive
co-operation."
"Do women also receive patrimony?" I next in-
quired.
"Women are the principal operatives in the
residence temples," he answered, "and its stock is
mostly in their control. Woman is not only queen
of the parlor and the kitchen, but of all institutions
directly relating to the home."
"And in the political field," added Mrs. Man-
oah, joining us, "woman is on a perfect equality
with man. After you observe the purity of our poli-
tics you will readily understand why men no longer
dreaded our admission into this field. Considering
the corrupted currents of outworld commerce, your
politics black as they have appeared were cleanli-
A Youthful Wage Earner.
67
ness itself. The childish delusion of expecting to
cleanse politics while united with the inky pool of
commercial corruption was very amusing, and the
more so, in view of the open confession of the secret
ballot made imperative in the face of the irrespon-
sible despotism or commerce."
Rope, Length, Freedom.
How many nations boasting of liberty would
dare put it- to the test of an open ballot? What sort
of liberty indeed is this rope-length freedom by
which men stand tethered within its circle, strained
and starving faculties, and beyond, the desert of un-
employment and utter starvation?
"Is it not monotonous," I asked my hostess,
"to spend all one's days in a single residence or
work temple!"
"Monotonous! What makes you think so, Ben,"
she exclaimed in evident astonishment. "With the
latitude allowed us in selecting our hours of work;
68 The Making of a Millennium.
in taking vacations ; in travel ; in club life ; in pursuit
of the varied professional, trade, scientific, art, phil-
osophic and other cults; and with the resources of
recreation and amusement, of outdoor life on park-
way and farmway, so available ; how could life ever
become monotonous?
"As to being chained to a single temple why
should this be necessary? Nowhere is it easier or
less costly to make a removal, for all our household
appointments are designed with foresight covering
facilities for removals, and our transportation also
is so gauged that a side track holding a car is avail-
able to each temple. The cars furnished are also
equipped to facilitate the stowage of goods without
much special wrapping and packing. Served also
at cost, it is very little expense to move to the re-
motest sections. You are also given for your tem-
ple stock a par-value order, transferable for the
stock of any other temple, so that you virtually
trade homes without having suffered a particle of
loss."
"After all though, you are still tenants," I
protested. "You pay a regular stipend similar to
rent, and you can't dispose of your homes as you
please. ' '
"From one point of view," my hostess re-
sponded, "we would never consider that a home
which could be severed from the family at the whim
of any one or two of its members. A home is some-
thing more than brick and mortar transferable for
any mess of Esau's pottage. It is an institution
sanctified to the family in its broadest sense, to be
passed down enlarged and enhanced through all the
generations an intact wealth suffering no child to
A Youthful Wage Earner. 69
forfeit its due heritage or be bent under the burden
of incumbrances. The mess of pottage shall sell no
child into bondage or cast it adrift a homeless
wanderer.
1 'As to the stipends we pay, they must not be
compared with rents. They are the cost of repro-
duction a sacred obligation that perpetuates its
sanctity; they do not involve sacrifice of the bread
belonging to our children, nor otherwise violate the
sanctity of its roof."
CHAPTER V.
Everybody's Sabbath.
"And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."
Longfellow.
"Ting-a-ling."
"That's for me," exclaimed Robert Manoah,
stepping hurriedly to the phone.
"Hello! At the mechanical exhibit? Pshaw!
I'd come immediately, Carson, if this wern't a holi-
day. You know, we're on Pleasant parkway
' ' Yes the Push league will make a test model
"The Push League! It's a body authorized by
the District Temple to promote enterprises in art,
literature, invention or other fields, that are too
large for single-handed undertaking
"About that smelting project? That's to be
put to an 'ay or nay' vote. If it carries, the District
Temples will raise the necessary funds by a uniform
levy on all the temples. If voted down a private
company may then be organized and may operate
until it either fails or has earned for itself the full
hundred per cent, of risk profit allowed under the
law
"After that? Oh, after that the properties are
all turned over to the District Temples at cost and
thereafter operated like all established industries,
on a cost basis
Everybody's Sabbath. 71
"Raising sufficient funds? No trouble at all
if the scheme is at all feasible
"Oh, 'no, no scarcity at all. One can raise ten
to one as compared with the outworld I would
hazard saying fifty to one. Legitimate affairs have
the field here all to themselves only new and un-
At the 'Phone.
redundant enterprises requiring merely the small-
est mite of the available resources
"I can comprehend the difficulty, of raising
money in the outworld where a pestiferous. redun-
dancy of enterprises is always clamoring for it and
where the fearful hazards of business are a power-
ful deterrent.
"Our investors are a different type altogether,
bear in mind, from those in the outworld; they don't
72 The Making of a Millennium.
expect fortunes, and their motive is seldom merely
the money that is to be made. They largely invest
because of their sympathy with the enterprise as one
deserving of promotion. Pardon my remark, but it
appears to me as if that habit of being actuated
merely by the profits to be acquired made you judge
human flesh in the same manner buying and sell-
ing, hiring, marrying, and entering into all occupa-
tions and into all sorts of communion on a similarly
cold-blooded 'business' basis
"Pardon me, but I'm merely giving you my
view of these matters as they appear from Tem-
ploria."
"That's Carson, May you heard me mention
his name. He 's the queer Philadelphian who always
talks about money and stocks. He's looking for a
scheme to promote here in which he could make a
new fortune like that he had in the outworld. I'm
afraid, however, it will be sour grapes he'll pick in
this vineyard."
"I wondered why he wanted your services to-
day," his cheerful spouse responded. "Poor fel-
low ! He is unable to stop thinking of money making.
He talks of nothing else. There's no question about
his ideas of business being sound by outworld stand-
ards, but his expectations of making a quick for-
tune here are a trifle Quixotic. ' '
"Excuse me, Bob, if I'm intruding in private
matters," I interrupted, "but didn't I hear you
talking of profits? I thought profits were impos-
sible under Centrism. I see, like Banquo's ghost,
they are bound to be cropping up eh?"
"Eavesdroppers seldom hear much good said
about them," my friend retorted. "I should have
Everybody's Sabbath. 73
used the word 'riskage' instead of 'risk profits.'
Kiskage is merely the actual hazard of an undertak-
ing, but involves no element of economic profits.
This allowance merely throws open to private in-
' itiative such enterprises as are rejected by the Dis-
trict Temples, after having been submitted to popular
vote; and the fact of a concentrated responsibility
behind them often insures a more careful
management and renders the hazard in this manner
less costly than when conducted by the District
Temples."
"I see you also have to encourage art more or
less in such a manner;" said I, "it surely must miss
the powerful support of a wealthy class."
"On the contrary," explained Mrs. Manoah,
"the absence of a wealthy class has been a blessing
to it. What healthy plant could grow in a dungeon
of dependence? And what sort of an audience for
art is a mammon-minded world? It is the general
opinion here that what art lost under capitalism for
want of a broad and inspired audience of inde'pend-
ent souls was poorly compensated by the paltry
crumbs doled out to it from the wealthy. ' '
"Changing the subject," her husband now in-
terposed," where are we to go today! This being
our sabbath, Ben, I suggest that you observe the day
with us. What say you?"
I must have looked rather sheepish at this ref-
erence to the sabbath the day being Thursday.
"Why not Thursday!" he protested, observing
my bewilderment. "It's as good a day as Sunday;
in fact, a better one for us. We make the day a
real holiday a complete day of rest a day of re-
laxation, on which the cares of both this world and
74 The Making of a Millennium.
the next are laid aside, while we surrender ourselves
entirely to the bliss of innocent enjoyments. ' '
"That sounds very nice," I protested, "but who
in the meantime prepare your meals? Who oper-
ate your cars ? Who do all the little chores and nec-
essary drudgeries of the household a thousand and
one indispensable details'?"
"Sweet angels from heaven come down to do
these things for us," my amiable hostess twittingly
remarked. "All through Pleasant parkway our
household help is on a strike today. We are not lift-
ing a hand. It must seem very strange, I know, to
you ; for in the outworld this would doubtless be con-
sidered household anarchy, or perhaps domestic
treason. ' '
"If you revert to Puritanical simplicity, and
deny yourselves everything," I retorted, "in what
respect is the strain of your self denial- a greater re-
lief from effort than work itself?"
"Deny ourselves everything? Why, Ben, we
really" have more enjoyments on the sabbath than
on any other day."
"Until you explain how it is done, I assure
you," said I, "it will remain as much a puzzle to
me as ever. What I don't see is how you can have
so much fiddling without fiddlers."
"I see, Ben, you don't believe in angels from
heaven. Our heaven in this instance is the unity of
the temple system, and the angels are a corps of
workers whom the District Temples sends to relieve
us. Each of the parkways has its own separate sab-
bath day on which a special corps comes to relieve
it. This gives us what we call the alternate or spe-
cialized sabbath."
Everybody's Sabbath. 75
How often had I deplored the modern inroads
upon the sanctity of the outworld sabbath its in-
congruous sandwich of pious solemnities and grimy
impieties. What a compromise it made with the
imperious demands of commerce, the tyranny of
hunger and the cry for comforts and attentions.
What a travesty of contradictions. What a" patch-
work of strain and denials to offer at the altar of
rest. Sweet psalms and soothing sermons may soft-
en the harsh notes of discord, but the self-satisfied
rest in which but few can indulge is not the sabbath
ordained by the Lord. Even an all day rest on Sun-
day is no sabbath, if paid for with weekday over-
work. The employer who merely allows his men
rest on one day, after being taxed the difference in
overtime on the other six days, has not kept the sab-
bath day holy.
"Your church services, I should imagine," said
I, after some pause, 1 1 are held on week days. ' '
"We do not hold formal services," Grandpa
Zeke responded. "Our worship conforms to our
conception as to our place in life. With us it is a
reality that Grod is everywhere and sees everything.
As we view life, the whole realm of existence is His
house and all the years witness His continuous crea-
tion, in which we within our narrow limits are
of His instruments not merely passive clay, but
molding as well as being molded. The spirit of the
Divinity and of the demoniac are both lodged within
us within all being the essence of religion being
to us an open-eyed struggle to rise.
"Searching for higher ideals and striving for
their achievement, we participate in the grand
everyday creation led, as it were, like children, by
76 The Making of a Millennium.
God 's hand. Is not progress the spirit of creation-
God 's hand at work each creature being an instru-
ment in His hand to serve its purpose? What higher
worship then than that of serving progress and
hearkening to the voice that speaks to us today in
clearer tone than in all ages past? What Babel-
building worship is it that would circumscribe the
infinite within finite limitations and forestall the in-
finite expansion of growth with rigid creed and dog-
ma ? Are not these all idol creeds and idol dogmas
another idol worship ?
"To us the Creator is interpretable only in
terms of creation of progress growth life in-
telligence. No fatherhood is worshipped through
arbitrary creeds charged with repellent elements
hostile to brotherhood. Only sin and ruin lie in the
course of these growth-denying and God-denying
yokes. Not by mere words is the Lord worshipped,
but by deeds deeds that go hand in hand with His
work of creation."
"From your remarks I should judge," said I,
1 1 you do not take the Bible literally. ' '
"No more than we take the earth literally," he
replied. "Should we have allowed the earth to re-
main just as we had found it unchallenged ac-
cepting its raw state as final and unimprovable-
allowing it to remain uncultivated, with never a
weed pulled, a rock removed, a marsh filled, or a
beast of the forest subdued? If the gift of the ma-
terial world was bestowed in crude form to be de-
veloped through the sweat of our brows, is it not
also evident that the spiritual world' has for us a
similar mission to lift our minds and souls out of
the mires of slothful indolence? Has it not come to
Everybody's Sabbath. 77
us in dull crudity, like the uncultivated earth,
rich in substance, full of heavenly gems, though re-
quiring to be plucked of its tares and weeds to
have its thorns cut down, its mountains leveled and
its marshes filled, and all its dark places lightened?
What greater irreverence can be imagined than a
mock worship in which there is no understanding.
The book is desecrated when held before the eye to
hide from view the broader book of life God-given,
with greater truth and greater signs of miracle than
this mere word in the greater book. This sacred
book of life is the Templorian Bible as broad as
life and as expansive as growth in perfect allign-
ment with both the work and the spirit of creation
a book in which all man-made, books are but as lines
and paragraphs of its broad pages.
"The true reverence for our Creator lies in a
humble attitude to the decrees of being to law
subordinating all our man-governing laws to its
light, without which they will give but a flickering
service and possibly yield a blighting curse. There
is no reverence in a closed eye, a heart seared with
cowardice or a truth hidden from men through mis-
trust of knowledge. There is only atrophy and
death in blind worship, aimless sacrifices and empty
standards."
The ride to the pleasure resort at which we
spent the day was itself a source of delight, the ab-
sence of jar and discomfort enabling us to enjoy the
varied scenery along the way. I could not after-
wards avoid contrasting it with the customary Sun-
day excursions in my own country, where passen-
gers were usually packed in like salted herrings with
78
The Making of a Millennium.
a few mammoth specimens dangling over the steps
of the cars.
Wherever we visited there was convenience,
comfort and ample provision for all wants. There
was no note of feverish haste and flurry, and no
catch-penny discord to mar the quiet harmony of our
Packed Like Salted Herrings.
surroundings. Everything possible seems to have
been arranged for the enhancement of our pleasure,
the keynote of all the attentions bestowed on us be-
ing an unobtrusive service. Neither was our free-
dom marred by narrow rules for the true spirit of
freedom which comes of a due respect for the liberty
of others, seemed to be strongly inculcated in all per-
sons with whom we came in contact.
Nowhere did we encounter the faintest hint of
drunkenness or rowdyism, exhibitions of which I
Everybody's Sabbath. 79
was told were as extinct here as the dodo ; these
weaknesses and vulgarities had long ago evaporated
along with a large number of other petty vices that
clung to the skirts of capitalism.
Let no one, however, imagine that because of
the absence of jostling crowds and noise of
catch-penny gimcracks, we had anything like a Qua-
ker celebration. "We made the welkin ring with song
and speech, declaiming and rehearsing dramatic
scenes, telling good old reminiscent stories, crossing
swords in discussion, and what with bathing, rowing
and general romping, we passed the day as frolick-
some as children.
Altogether there was no disputing the practical
value of the Templorian sabbath. Its alternating
vitalized the day into a real sabbath, each parkway
having its own separate day into which it could enter
with heart and soul. It was a real day of rest for all,
such as modern conditions could give in no other
way.
How strangely it now seemed to me that out-
worlders should be doing all their catering with the
same senseless rush and stew and with the same ex-
travagance in cost as characterized their Sunday
service. They were constantly congesting their ca-
pricious trade into holiday seasons, fair weeks, and
hand-to-mouth feast-and-famine fluctuations, follow-
ing every whim of the seasons and of the weather
and constantly adding to the risks of the individual
merchant as well as the cost of the service. It some-
how seemed to be lacking in order, in unity, in har-
mony, with the spirit of life ; there was something in
it that appealed to me as ungodly.
CHAPTER VI.
A Career of Forgeries.
"And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope."
Shakespeare.
"If solidarity is any criterion, I'd class Cen-
trism as socialistic," said Captain Clark, in the
course of a discussion among a coterie of Falcon
survivors. They were seated in the temple hall ante
room, awaiting the moment, soon to arrive, for their
public installation into Templorian citizenship.
"As it appears to me," responded Dick Bur-
ton, the former labor leader, "it's a happy blend of
individualism and collectivism, with capitalism
squeezed out. It might just as well be called econo-
mic unionism a union in which consumer and pro-
ducer are made inseparable, scabbing impossible,
and strikes unnecessary."
"And why not call it the economic brotherhood
of man?" added Mrs. Luzby. "Unless Christian
ethics are to be vitalized in the industrial life of
mankind, they must be regarded a mere pick pocket 's
accomplice, to hold public attention while the com-
mon pocket is being picked. ' '
The conversation was here abruptly terminated,
the lights having been turned on in full blaze,
while to the accompaniment of music we marched
into the main hall, to be received with hearty cheers
A Career of Forgeries. 81
by a large party of spectators. The ceremonies of
installation were very brief, sincere and earnest
opening with an appropriate address of welcome, in
the course of which our new home was glowingly al-
luded to as a grander Eden a land of the millen-
num.
Toward the close, a tall gentleman of rather
prepossessing appearance, Mr. Edgar Blake, was
presented as a delegate of the District Temples, who
was to officiate temporarily as our custodian and
tutor. He briefly outlined his mission as intended
merely during the initial period of our new citizen-
ship, while receiving instruction in the customs and
ways of the realm, and until we had each been pro-
vided with his proper patrimony as a free citizen of
Temploria. The patrimony embraced the following
items :
A home for each individual or family group,
An adult's share of temple stock,
Purse of a hundred dollars and a hundred centrets,
Weekly allowance of twenty dotfars while serving a whole or
part apprenticeship in any specialized occupation.
The last item represented the minimum allow-
ance of any craft, and the sum will buy as much as
thirty dollars would in America.
The. ceremony over, we were escorted to the
Grand Temple. We spent the entire afternoon here,
visiting its various institutions. Among these was
a certain Zoological collection notable for the pecu-
liar oddity of its specimens, two of which were so un-
usually strange I cannot refrain from mention of
their freakish relationship.
You have often heard of queer bed fellows in
the animal kingdom such for example as the owl,
gopher and rattlesnake a trio nesting in the same
82
The Making of a Millennium.
burrow ; but I dare say, you never before heard of a
partnership like that holding together the sweat
fowl and the cuckoo snake.
The sweat fowl is a bird of slender and graceful
form, a little larger than an ordinary hen. It is
gifted with pearly white plumage, covered with a
The Sweat Fowl.
light sprinkling of gold. This bird were a paragon
of beauty but for its emaciated body and dejected
visage appearing so indescribably sad, one might
readily imagine it an incarnated fancy of a Poe or a
Dante.
The other creature its mate was at first
scarcely noticeable, resembling a piece of thick cord
twined around its body. The apafently insignificant
A Career of Forgeries. 83
coil however suddenly relaxed, exposing itself as a
horrid little serpent, the fierce malignancy of whose
eyes belied her leering smile. This creature was
known as the cuckoo snake.
While gazing at this odd pair, our attention was
attracted to a similar couple in another apartment
Vain Pride.
going through a curious performance. Her snake-
ship in this instance was bloated nigh to bursting,
and was engaged in covering her prostrate and
groaning mate with a coat of thick, yellowish saliva.
Passing by later on we witnessed the same bird, now
somewhat revived, getting on its feet her snake-
ship once more coiled around its body, as compla-
cently as if she had been some natural organ or limb
grown there.
84 The Making of a Millennium.
"Of all the queer things!" exclaimed Miss Os-
wald. "Why, I looked every minute to see the poor
fowl gulped down. The feast has doubtless been de-
ferred for a more auspicious appetite. ' '
Presently the fowl drew its head up proudly
and began strutting across the floor of its apart-
ment, its eyes turned admiringly upon the new glit-
ter of its plumage. The saliva had done its work;
it had re-animated the feathery garment as well as
the physical vigor of the fowl.
"You will pay dearly, my sweet bird," our tu-
tor remarked, as if admonishing the bird, ' ' for your
borrowed shine and vigor. Tomorrow you will
again be sweating blood, while your unnatural mate
will begin once more her custom of daily absorbing
it to her body. From day to day you will degener-
ate in strength and in spirit, as well as in the splen-
dor of your plumage, until again prostrated and de-
pendent upon the healing saliva. Thus with each
successive relapse you will become weaker until
either languishing in paralysis or relieved by
death."
Watching the curious couple on another occa-
sion we observed the bird unearth a fat worm which
it was studiously eyeing. The tid bit, however, was
no sooner exposed to view than her snakeship, with a
quick thrust of her head, had it grasped and stowed
away, before the very eyes of the bewildered fowl.
"Isn't that a shame!" cried Miss Carson, ob-
serving the outcome of the poor fowl's industry.
"This partnership is not a very profitable one
for the poor fowl," Mr. Blake assured us, "her
snakeship invariably snatching every morsel in
sight, and requiring to be gorged, before she will
A Career of Forgeries. 85
permit the bird to share the least particle. Between
the theft of its food and the absorption of its blood,
the saliva scarcely replenishes a fourth part of the
loss, merely serving to deceive the bird into sub-
missive tolerance of a deadly drainage. It's all a
one-sided partnership. I've never been able to fig-
ure it out any other way."
''Look at her " he resumed awhile later,
"with those deceitful and fiery eyes. She is simply
holding the bird under a hypnotic spell the poor
deluded creature unconsciously thinking as her
snake ship directs."
"I should think," Mrs. Luzby suggested, "that
the fowl would be seeking a divorce from so abom-
inable a partner."
"If it would only awaken to the truth ' our
tutor added, "if it wasn't hypnotized into the idea
that the two creatures were parts of one body in-
separable partners. Partners indeed! Would you
believe it, the vile creature even mingles her eggs
with those of the fowl ; and the chick no sooner pokes
its tiny head out of the shell than a snakelet coils
around its tiny body, to remain there through
life. So from one generation to the next, the sweat
fowl's burden clings to it like a vested wrong fast-
ened upon the neck of an outraged people."
"Its remarkable tenacity of adherence," re-
marked Mr. Oswald, ' ' reminds me of the way capital
in the outworld, hatched by the serpent of absten-
tion, fastens itself upon the neck of industry in-
cessantly reiterating its long cherished delusion that
it is an integral factor in industry entitled to a share
in the product.
86 The Making of a Millennium.
11 Every move of this serpent reminds me of
some attitude assumed by outworld capital. Snatch-
ing all the choice morsels scratched up by the fowl is
just the way the capitalist absorbs to his own use,
and for his favorites, all the opportunities the work-
ingman as consumer has created. Absorbing the
poor fowl's blood is merely a duplicate of the way
capital absorbs to itself the products of all kinds of
labor through interest, rents and profits. The swell-
ing of the serpent's body until ready to burst, and
the depletion of the poor fowl's flesh and vitality
until no longer able to support the swollen body of
her snakeship, what do these more resemble than
the way capital puffs itself into a vast body of re-
dundancy until industry, depleted by its abstentions,
is no longer able 'to sustain the terrible burden and
collapses in financial depression. These depressions,
recur periodically, never ceasing until either a lower
vitality or permanent paralysis has set in, or else the
national life has been swept into the desert of obli-
vion. Even the relief by the application of the yel-
low saliva has its counterpart in the loans and invest-
ments that finally respond to returning animation ;
and after these depressions nations usually
indulge in a great deal of boasting of the wonderful
achievements performed by the reigning political
party, so much resembling the vain strut of the de-
luded fowl on the rejuvenation of its faded plum-
age. ' '
"An admirable comparison, Mr. Oswald," our
tutor approvingly remarked, "and also a true por-
traiture of the false pretensions of capital, in its re-
lation to labor. From an entirely different view-
point this hideous cuckoo snake also exemplifies the
A Career of Forgeries.
87
treason of your root-of-evil dollar the dollar of the
abstainer. This dollar is constantly deserting the
true orbit of money, which should be in the service of
production, to enter one of pure acquisition a vic-
ious circle of successive forgeries as brazen in char-
acter as they are appalling in magnitude and conse-
An Astonished Magnate.
quence. This abstainer's dollar was furthermore
passed at par by men whose services in obtaining it
had been doubtful pennyworths."
''That is utterly unimaginable much less be-
lievable!'' the former steel magnate exclaimed,
shocked at the remark and violently shaking his gray
head. "How could such forgeries ever escape de-
tection ! ' '
88 The Making of a Millennium.
"Simply because no one distinguished between
the labor of the consumer and that of the abstain-
er," responded our tutor. "The labor of the con-
sumer was always worth par; but that of the ab-
stainer was unquestionably worthless. ' '
"Why should the labor of the abstainer be
worthless ? How can you make such an assertion ! ' '
indignantly exclaimed the the Philadelphian.
"No labor applied to the production of articles
that are never, to be used," was the prompt re-
sponse, "can have any economic value. Whatever
the labor cost of any article, its inability to elicit
buyers must deprive it of all claim to value. The
abstainer's product is really a surplus commodity,
without a market. The mere fact that it had been
successfully foisted upon the market after having
displaced consumers and appropriated a market
legitimately belonging to others, would not help to
qualify it other than as a surplus product. To credit
it as legitimate were on a par with crediting as genu-
ine the counterfeit bills of a crook because lie had
succeeded in passing them on others. The fact re-
mains indisputable that the abstainer had never con-
tributed the shadow of a market, but had merely suc-
ceeded in marketing his product after having, by
abstention, appropriated that belonging exclusively
to the consumer. He was virtually a cuckoo, a thief
of markets. To therefore regard his product in any
other light than as an unmarketable surplus product,
were as far from truth as to regard counterfeit bills
once passed as forever after genuine.
"In order to further illustrate my meaning, let
us group the abstainers and the consumers into two
separate bodies. Among the abstainers the practice
A Career of Forgeries. 89
of producing without consuming must result in
either a deadlock, for want of demand for products,
or else an overproduction, netting merely an un-
marketable surplus; but in neither case was there
created the first iota of value. What value could
their products have, piled up to the skies, without a
user? The consumer, on the other hand, who uses
products as fast as produced, would not be deterred
from producing without cessation and without the
slightest depreciation from the par value, the col-
lective producers drawing as their collective wage
the total product. ' '
"How comes it," asked Mrs. Luzby, "that out-
world economists should not have detected so gross
a flaw in the system?"
"That was due," replied Mr. Blake, "to their
strong leaning to the existing order of society in
preference to God's order an inherent blindness
and weakness of character similar to that which has
largely in all ages afflicted the political and ecclesias-
tical leaders of men, making it necessary for pro-
gressive thought to emanate out side of their ranks,
and imposing a species of exile, as well as other
martyrdoms, upon all who dared to depart from
orthodox doctrine. Instead of probing for its deep-
er truths, proud authority left the social fabric to
rest upon the false prop of fear-born assent and
banished disputation. Beginning with an investiga-
tion of the laws governing the wealth of nations, in
which the welfare of the individual as such was
ignored, they have remained almost altogether in
the ruts formed by this first important vehicle.
Though great stress had been laid upon the vast eco-
nomy effected through what is known as division or
90 The Making of a Millennium.
specialization of labor, scarcely any further atten-
tion was given to this fundamental basis of the in-
dustrial process earning by its consequent im-
potence the name of 'dismal science,' and often be-
ing eschewed as a purely sordid pursuit. It seemed
as if the more they penetrated its labyrinthian
depths the more confusion they drew forth one
endless profusion of perplexed wisdom that melted
like wax in the rival flames of their own factional
reason. They spun beautiful webs of microscopic
thread that glittered to the untutored eye. but which
were no sooner exposed to the test of experience
than their shadowy threads gave way and the fabric
of hope on which labor's Prometheus had gazed,
vanished in darkness and new-born despair. ' '
"The division of labor, I imagine," remarked
Mrs. Luzby, "lay at the very threshold of the indus-
trial science; and scornfully leaping over it, they
plunged into the midst of inextricable confusion."
"The division of labor," responded the Tem-
plorian, "is a vast co-operation in. which millions
and millions participate each operating separately,
whether as producer or as consumer. Their collec-
tive patronage naturally limits the amount of work
to be dispensed; and for this reason no one should
be permitted to draw on the work except in response
to the amount of opportunity his consuming ha's
created. To overdraw is nothing less than trespass-
ing upon the opportunities belonging to others and
needful to them in bargaining the terms of their em-
ployment. ' '
1 ' I wonder if any credit whatever is due the ab-
stainer for his labor," exclaimed the Philadelphian,
in a sarcastic vein.
, A Career of Forgeries. 91
"At the most," responded our tutor, "he couid
claim no more for his dollars than his efforts could
have produced with himself as his sole market. Of
what value were his skill, as a mechanic or as a pro-
fessional man, with himself alone to serve I It were
at the best worth mere pennyworths on the dollar of
ordinary value. The difference, the remaining
ninety-nine cents, is the value of the market, or in
other words, the value of the privilege of co-opera-
tion it represents. The abstainer, contributing no
element to the power of co-operation, and moreover
operating in direct antagonism to the harmony of its
mechanism, is surely not entitled to any of its bene-
fits. He is industrially an anarchist and counter-
feiter, on a colossal scale an economic criminal
whom no orderly society would countenance.
"Yet this forgery of doubtful pennyworths into
par dollars is only his initial step in a continuous
career of diabolical forgeries ! ' '
"Who would have believed so monstrous a sys-
tem of forgery could have been possible among in-
telligent beings ! ' ' Mrs. Luzby exclaimed, her face a
picture of horror.
"The truth in this instance is really stranger
than fiction, ' ' Mr. Blake resumed. ' ' What I have been
telling you is merely the first act in its drama of
fraud. Its second act was no less unique. By the
very act of hoarding the holder forged his face-value
dollars from the perishable commodities of com-
merce subject to corrosion and decay, which they
represented and merely substituted, into the full en-
during power of its imperturable face. It arrogated
to itself a value in storage capacity way beyond the
commodities it stood for, and thereby foisted on the
92 The Making of a Millennium.
consumer the costs of storage and wear. In addition
to imposing on the consumer the burden of paying
for the preservation of the capitalist's principal,
its exemption from this tax thus became a stepping
stone to the greatest and most colossal of all the for-
geries chargeable to the abstainer's dollars form-
ing the third act in the remarkable drama of value
forgeries :
"Owing to this exemption from the storage
costs and wear involved in the preservation of other
forms of legitimate wealth, our immutable face-
' value dollar was enabled to defy with impunity the
demands of commerce, playing hooky in his hoard-
ing hole as -long as he pleased, or until bribed to re-
turn to the channels of commerce by the assurance
of profits, invariably withdrawing in the absence
of these inducements. Compounding thereafter all
these repeated drafts of usury and profits, it kept on
in an everlasting series of these value forgeries
forging its own forgeries into an ever-expanding
series and piling Ossa upon Pelion until it had plant-
ed a vast tumor of redundant and superfluous capital
upon the back of industry, coagulating its blood with
hoarding and again through profits sapping its
every artery and devouring its substance.
"The abstainer's dollar was a robber from the
start, whether in the role of counterfeit surplus pro-
duct; whether secluded as an idler in his hoarding
den ; exempted from the tax of wear and storage, or
out upon his errands of extortion in which he
stifled commerce till it yielded his profits forming
one endless series of successive forgeries. Instead
of serving as a respectable working implement, loyal
to the obligation of reciprocal production and con-
A Career of Forgeries. 93
suming, this tool of trade had degenerated into a
gross counterfeit, an instrument of blackmail and
a garroter of industry. Could a greater treason to
industry be imagined than the acts of this fickle
dollar? Here was a dollar privileged to repudiate
the products its owner had created, converting its
credit for these worthless surplus products into
loans at par to displaced consumers who had been
denied the right to redeem with their services .the
dollars spent. These dollars received from the con-
sumer were evidently not subject to redemption;
they were irredeemable and could be withheld by
the abstainer and converted into capital without
limit, particularly into deadly hoards of currency.
. Here was indeed an irredeemable currency and
an unbridled mintage whose perennial flow of cap-
ital overran the fields of commerce both in advance
and in the wake of the usual currency expansions,
like one of those terrible genii of the Arabian Nights
an uncorked monster utterly dwarfing and im-
poverishing industry by its vast redundancy, though
in the midst of its money carnivals. ' '
"And in the face of all this utter failure of its
redemption," Mr. Oswald followed, "the tardy
loans and investments, representing money due in
redemption of commodities produced, but withheld
altogether from expenditure except by investment
after profits were assured these long overdue
hoards of fugitive wealth, diverted to the obstruc-
tion and plunder of industry, were being extolled
by the apologists of capital as ' advances' made 'in
the furtherance of industry,' and were moreover
humorously alluded to as 'productive consuming.'
Their explanation was a capital joke, worthy of Lu-
94 The Making of a Millennium.
cifer. I can hear his fire-lit vaults still ringing with
the echoes of laughter provoked by this splendid out-
world witticism!"
1 ' Traced to its source, ' ' added the astute Doctor
Remington, "the whole body of capital is nothing
but a few tainted pennyworths of surplus product
forged by the abstainer into par, perpetuated by
fraud at public expense and then inflated by the com-
pounding of feloniously-extracted usuries until its
original value, no bigger than a flea's shadow,
has swelled into a mountain of gold planted upon, the
back of prostrate industry. ' '
"What else is this face-value abstainer's dol-
lar," exclaimed Mr. Oswald, "but the leering, lying
face of another cuckoo snake out of whose lies eman-
ate the coils and coils of capital that envelop the
sweat fowl of industry? Never will these deadly
coils release their grip until the redemption of pro-
ducts is made compulsory until the act of redemp-
tion is imposed upon money through a medium such
as centry a badge of industrial citizenship by which
the consumer shall be distinguished, and the ab-
stainer repelled. The counterfeit dollar, must be
thrown out ; and every dollar traveling the highways
of industry must faithfully serve the unceasing ro-
tation of consuming and producing. There must be
no breaks in the flow of trade; neither should its
highways become a robbers' causeway. The prime
function of money is to circulate without deviation
to connect services with the wants demanding them.
It must not only record efforts but test their fitness
and responsiveness to actual wants; for efforts not
adapted to or responsive to actual wants are as
valueless as mere wants unaccompanied with efforts
to satisfy them. ' '
A Career of Forgeries. 95
; ' I have always regarded the outworld as a lost
paradise," remarked Miss Oswald, "but never did I
imagine it could be so outrageously scandalous.
Never did I conceive the possibility of so colossal-
a carnival of frauds and forgeries."
"Just think of it!" exclaimed Doctor Beming-
ton. ' ' That we should all these years have been rec-
onciled to such evils, and so long have lived in self-
satisfied delusion. What infamy this license of ab-
stinence this iniquitous power this serpent of de-
ception pretending to serve trade, while robber-
like holding consumer and producer apart, allowed
a mere partial union, and that solely as slaves,
wearing the short-wage shackles. Oh shame ! shame !
That god 's image should be so trodden in the dust-
debased, corrupted, degraded! What an adder's
tooth this abstinence! Death in the guise of Life!
Shame in the guise of Honor! Its gifts venom, its
charity corruption! How long is this cuckoo snake
to rule the outworld sweat fowl ? How long, ere the
blind creature open its eyes, and awaken to the
truth? How long ere it shake off this tyrant, and
go free I When, Oh when is this day of resurrection
to arrive the beginning of the outworld millen-
nium I ' '
CHAPTER VII.
Spectacular Coloria.
"Thou bright Futurity, whose prospect beams,
In dawning radiance on our daylight dreams;
Whose lambent meteors and ethereal forms,
Gild the dark clouds, and glitter through the storms;
On thy broad canvas fancy loves to trace
Her brilliant Iris, drest in vivid grace;
Paints fair creatures in celestial dyes,
Tints of the morn and blushes of the skies;
And bids her scenes perfection's robes assume,
The mingling flush of light, and life, and bloom."
Hemans.
Twenty dollars a week in Temploria was not
quite as attractive to Mr. Carson as had been his
princely outworld income. The former steel magnate
was less conspicuous here ; he received less flattering
attentions ; and he also lacked the hosts of sycophants
whose manifold ways of stooping make the smallest
man feel a veritable giant. The barbaric license of
his past environment was here painfully absent a
condition to which he seemed unable to become rec-
onciled. There was something in fact in the pre-
vailing atmosphere of independence that grated
harshly upon his soul.
Mr. Carson was also arriving at an age when,
considered either mentally or physically, he was
falling into the sere of decrepitude. His swelling
ego now called for as many attentions as the swell-
ing of his gouty limb, both mind and body craving
artificial props. It thus happened to be an unfor-
tunate period of his career for turning over a new
leaf just at the time his joints were beginning to
Spectacular Coloria. 97
twitch, his muscles to relax, his face to assume an
unethereal blue, his eyes to blear and his nose to
take on an ungraceful prominence.
With money in his purse all these symptoms of
degeneracy would have remained invisible, their out-
cries hushed in the cheer of mingling bowl and song ;
but without this salve of deferment temporary
leveler of Nature's roughest lines they glared at
him with all the malignancy of fiends. Poor fellow!
Temploria, with all her good intentions, was to him
more prison than paradise.
Quite possibly his gay daughter, Miss Lydia,
might have been another of those whose apprecia-
tion of duty went no further than the outworld cus-
tom of returning thanks for patronage and there-
with closing the account. At any rate, this young
woman seemed now to have quite forgotten there
was such a thing as filial obligation. Had she not
been trained to receive bounties from parental hands
as a mere matter of course ; and coming from other
sources, they had been mere baits, anticipating pat-
ronage. The idea of obligation had not yet entered
her head.
It was no wonder therefore, that when a party
of Falconers, along with the Manoahs, started out
one fine morning for a stroll through Coloria park-
way the pretty Miss Lydia allowed her father to re-
main alone, bound to his chair with gout while she
thoughtlessly joined the merrymakers.
In the party was the young socialist, Mark Os-
wald, at whose handsome countenance she frequent-
ly cast admiring glances, but who in turn seemed to
be utterly oblivious of the fact, his mind complete-
98 The Making of a Millennium.
ly absorbed in the marvelous coloring of the foliage
and vegetation for which Coloria is famed.
Glancing up the parkway the view presented a
perfect realm of enchantment a scenic spectacle
beggaring description, in fact, one of the triumphs
of Templorian horticulture.
The remarkable appearance of this avenue rep-
resented an entire century of successive experiments
and studies, culminating in the acquirement of a
power to impart to their vegetation any desirable
color or shade. Through this means the landscape
gardener has here at his command a range and per-
fection of coloring simply unimaginable. No paint-
er's palette could rival the brilliance attainable, or
the daintiness of the tints imparted to the natural
canvas of lawn and bough.
What masses of solid gorgeousness overhung
the broad walks and winding pathways! What
charming vistas of color splendor carpeted the
earth here in scarlet banks like vast geranium beds,
there in framed mossaics edged with trimmings as
delicate and fanciful as silk embroideries !
. Golden leaves, silver leaves, leaves of pearl and
ruby and of sapphire, fluttered upon the arching tree
tops; endless lengths of beautifully tinted stream-
ers interlaced the walks, twining gracefully around
the trunks of giant trees and embracing in the course
of their meanderings all the beautiful monuments
and carved figures ornamenting the grounds.
From the top of a knoll all draped in crimson
arose an emerald fountain its tall crest bulging
into a wide circle and then bursting into a million
glittering jewels, that -tinkled sweetly as they pat-
tered into the liquid emerald of the pool beneath.
Spectacular Coloria. 99
There were also fountains that shot up ruby spires
and showered a fire-flecked spray ; others there were
with treble streams, twining in their vertical ascent
until at a great height they broadened into a wide-
spread canopy of vapory sheen, of a thousand hues
and tints, on which the blazing sun glimmered in one
fantastic symphony of light.
Nowhere else could have been seen such a be-
wildering variety of color, sparkle and symmetry,
or such a medley of fantastic figures and designs
all blending into one grand panorama of attractive-
ness.
The way was everywhere peopled with life and
gaiety parties of young and old, in every variety
of tasteful and fanciful attire, engaging in healthful
exercise and holiday pursuits; and every breeze
bore snatches of gay melody, blending harmoniously
with the laughter of the happy throng.
Several hours were passed in this enchanting
paradise of color; and when we withdrew, turning
into a narrow cross lane, it seemed as if suddenly en-
tering another world.
We were now facing rural scenes amid the wav-
ing fields and smiling orchards of one of the great
farmways. Green patches of vegetation, flocks of
noisy fowl, great storehouses and mammoth vehicles
and implements, were everywhere in evidence.
Such abundance, such magnificent specimens of
mouth-watering fruit! At each successive outburst
of our admiration Robert Manoah would respond
with a shrug of his shouldersand the remark : ' ' Only
science plus time ! ' '
"Very true," responded Doctor Remington,
"but none the less creditable; without the aid of sup-
100 The Making of a Millennium.
plementary Nature from the human brain your crab
apple would to this day have remained a sour and
bitter snip. ' '
"That's what we call grafting from the tree of
knowledge," the young Templorian facetiously re-
plied. * l Our system of specialized farming is indeed
a very profitable graft upon Nature. ' '
1 i This specialization of occupations also entered
into the household, I imagine, did it not?" in-
quired Miss Oswald.
"Oh yes, and it brought its members into closer
touch with the world," Mrs. Manoah responded. "It
banded the tillers of the soil into village temples sim-
ilar to those of the cities, connecting them by rail
with all parts of Temploria. It completely trans-
formed the home, bringing to it, in addition to su-
perior service, the facilities of education, society,
travel, refinement, independence everything in fact
that outworld wealth could at its best indulge; and
it also supplied a degree of fellowship that was not
purchasable with wealth."
In these farm temples every man is a specialist
in some distinct branch of the farming industry. The
lands are everywhere brought up to the highest ca-
pacity for production, artificially reinforced with
every missing ingredient; and no efforts were
spared in the treatment accorded to flocks and herds,
whose feeding and housing received the closest study
and attention. Every implement also, and the
number of these was legion, had its specialist oper-
atives ; and even the transporting of the varied pro-
ducts and materials used, was in the hands of men
especially skilled for the work. None of the work is
done by beasts of burden, Nature having provided
Spectacular Coloria. 101
forces more economic by far, and liberating a vast
acreage previously needed to support the horse and
ox, for more direct service to man.
"Have any of you visited the temple nursery?"
asked Captain Clark while we were taking a rest in
one of the shady bowers on our return to Pleasant
parkway. "I had a great time there yesterday
watching the little tots. It was a sight to observe
the intense eagerness written on their faces. What
do you think of a tiny stage a sort of fairy world
peopled with all sorts of grotesque characters, com-
ing and going, some ship shape and some groggy.
They were good and bad ; and they made their grim-
aces and little speeches, sang, danced, cut all sorts of
capers now bursting into lusty laughter and again
sobbing as if their hearts were to break. There were
frolicksome dwarfs, elves, brownies, fairies, and
stupid beasts. The jabber of their voices, which
would have left Punch and Judy in the shade, had all
been inspired through an automatic mechanical ven-
triloquist concealed behind a curtain. I was more
tickled with the exhibition perhaps than any of the
youngsters. A single performance in the slowly
darkening room, and a soft lullaby at the close, lands
every blessed tot in dreamland. ' '
" Visiting the Grand Temple bazaar yester-
day," Mrs. Luzby remarked, "I was simply astound-
ed at the speed with which I could do my shopping.
Almost everything is sold from samples or cata-
logues, and a few steps cover so much ground!
There is no rush, no clatter, no confusion, no long
waiting; and apart from placing the samples before
you very little of the clerk's time is required. The
card going with each sample tells you all about it
102 The Making of a Millennium.
and supplies far more complete and reliable infor-
mation than the average out wo rid clerk is able to
give, were he so disposed. All you do after each se-
lection is to have it entered by number on your or-
der card and proceed. The stand of each clerk has
its number, and a printed store guide handed you on
entering helps you to arrange the order of your pur-
chases. They deliver goods out of stock at an ad-
vance of five per cent. This is due to the cost of
storage and sales risks otherwise assumed, and it
forms another reason, apart from the fact that cen-
try is given for advance payments, why people order
things in 'advance, and very far in advance at that.
I can see now how ridiculous it is doing so much of
our buying in the outworld from hand to mouth and
depending so much upon credit. How many of our
wants are there but can be foreseen months and
years ahead. Most of them are continuous, year in
and year out, and there is no reason for making their
supply depend upon such fickle purchasing. Of
course we have to pay and pay dearly for such slov-
enly business methods! With a vast body of pre-
paid orders in all lines accumulated far in advance,
nobody must ever be out of work here and no one
must submit to tyranny as to the number of hours he
must work. A poor manager it would be who couldn't
accommodate his" help so that they could determine
the hours they would work ; and a smart manager it
would be who could dictate to the man equipped with
centry. ' '
"If there is one thing I am thankful for," re-
marked Miss Oswald, " it is the absence here of those
myriads of corner grocers with their petty stocks
of staled goods, done up in handsomely labeled pack-
Spectacular Coloria. 103
ages which were usually more costly than the con-
tents. I'm glad to note also that most foodstuffs
are brought to us in bulk, and direct either from the
farm or the laboratory."
''Nothing pleases me more," added Mrs. Luzby,
' ' than the fact that garment sewing and a great va-
riety of other light labor is performed in the home
temples which are provided with ladies' working
parlors. That is due to the fact that there are no
congested districts and no labor displacement
through which a congested population could be hired
at abnormally low figures."
"Will you inform me, Mrs. Manoah," asked
Doctor Remington, "what has become of the ser-
vant girl under Centrism ? ' '
"When Centrism began to raise wages," my
hostess replied, "it provided such assurances of
ample and stable income to young men that few
longer hesitated in making proposals for matrimony.
So wide spread was the epidemic of matrimony fol-
lowing, that few marriageable girls remained single.
The demand for servants was enhanced, and the sup-
ply lowered to such an extent that the few remaining
available had to be bribed with salaries such as only
millionaires could afford.
"This exodous of the servant girl into the
Canan of matrimony left a void in so many house-
holds as to cause a profound impression. It taught
the lesson that isolated housekeeping was a delusion
a sham completely exposed as soon as the burden
of its extravagances could no longer be shifted upon
other shoulders. The exodous of the servant girl
thus became also the genesis of the co-operative
home, out of which the temple ultimately evolved.
104 The Making of a Millennium.
All branches of housework became thereafter spe-
cialized, and its standards in all branches were ma-
terially improved. The lady of the house was there-
by enabled in a few hours to perform her share of all
the laborious duties ; was well paid for it, and had a
good balance -of time left for self -development. The
working woman became the lady, and the only lady.
True merit was respected as never before. Authority
was revered, but not the sham authority of surrep-
titiously acquired power. ' '
"Yes, and our puddings are no longer spoiled
by too many cooks," added her husband. "The day
of a separate cook for every household, thanks to
templism, is past. Without the least disparagement
of the sex, we now see how foolish it was to imagine
so exalted an art as cooking could be mastered by
every woman. It might as well have been assumed
that every woman should become a musician, a
painter, a physician or a lawyer. The feeding of the
human body with hygienic and palatable nutrition
an everyday process is now regarded as of equal if
not more importance in keeping the body in health
than medical treatment after maladies have set in.
Whatever profession or art everybody assumes, you
may rely on it, will soon forfeit common respect. Spe-
cialization fits each person to his place and puts in
every place the most capable of the kind; and the
process of constant fitting tends to constantly ele-
vate its standards. It has put life into our homes
and rescued them from the stagnation that is ever
a breeder of sin. ' '
CHAPTER VIII.
Prior to Centrism.
"Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the
suns." Tennyson.
"Templorian history begins with the fifteenth
century," said Miss Oswald in the course of one of
our Falconer class recitations. "The country was
first settled by the Dutch at a place where Bed Cross
now stands. All its adult male population had been
ruthlessly slaughtered by a band of British bucca-
neers while in a state of stupefaction after a holiday
carousal. The pirates thereupon hoisted their black
flag, whose bloodstained s&ill and cross bones gave
rise to the name, 'Red Cross.' "
' ' What kind of a life did the pirates lead 1 ' ' our
instructor now asked.
' ; They became polygamous, each taking to him-
self a number of the Dutch widows, and adopting
the children together with the cattle and sheep. After
that they became gentlemen of leisure, depending
upon the women and children for all the onerous
work. ' '
"Very good, Miss Oswald; you may be seated.
Now Mr. Rusk, will you explain how they were able
to maintain order in a society composed of such tur-
bulent and unruly characters?"
"The new proprietors began recklessly," I an-
swered, "abandoning themselves to their bestial
appetites; they had no thought of the morrow, and
106 The Making of a Millennium.
were in the habit also of foraging upon one anoth-
er's supplies to an extent destroying all incentive to
produce beyond the requirements of a hand to
mouth living. In the simplicity of their untutored
minds one form of acquisition seemed as good as an-
other. Their chief, however, old Jack Horn, after
whom the 'land had been named Jack's Land, after-
wards spelled J-a-x-1-a-n-d was the first to recog-
nize their error. A shrinking deficit in his revenues
had set him to thinking ; and the truth finally dawned
upon him that unbridled acquisition, whether as a
wealth or a revenue producer, was a dead failure.
They must hereafter distinguish between acquisi-
tion by theft and that founded upon labor or service.
Otherwise to produce more than one could immedi-
ately use would merely invite thieves to come in the
night and possibly take the owner's life as well as
his goods. As it was, the owner was obliged to de-
fend his little wealth against all comers, and this re-
quirement converted ownership into a virtual pen-
alty, as if it had been a crime. This state of affairs
would not do. The force of the community must be
directed against the thief and not against the pro-
ducer.
"Old Jack had in his day overcome many a
stubborn obstacle, and was not to be balked in the
present emergency. Calling to himself a few burly
followers he instituted a 'law and order' league.
Then in lieu of written code he had one thief exe-
cuted and severed the right ear from another a
form of code his followers were not slow to interpret.
The code worked like a charm, the deadlock of in-
security coming to an end and habits of thrift and in-
dustry becoming more firmly rooted with the en-
Prior to Centrism. 107
hanced security of possession. As anticipated,
Jack's income was also materially enhanced with the
rising tide of prosperity."
"Now Miss Carson, will you be kind enough,"
requested our tutor, ' ' to tell us how Jaxland became
separated from the outworld?"
"On the night of January 21, in the year 1497,"
was the reply, "an earthquake swayed the island
like the rocking of a huge cradle. It worked fearful
In Lieu of Written Code.
havoc. Several severe shocks followed and were
succeeded by a strange paleness of the skies at the
horizon's edge. The next morning a vast barrier
surrounded the island, to all appearances a great
wall of ice cliffs, but in reality a huge belt of lustrous
and soporific gas which was deadly if too long in-
haled. The theory is that this gas escapes from fis-
sures in the rocky bed underlying the sea at varying
distances from the coast line. The fact however re-
mains, whatever the source of this gas may be, that
nobody has thus far succeeded in crossing the fatal
108 The Making of a Millennium.
barrier except shipwrecked voyagers. It is indeed
the influx of these unfortunates that keeps us in
touch with the progress of the outworld though
unable to communicate with it."
"We will now hear from Doctor Remington,"
our tutor interposed, "concerning the evolution of
its government."
"The government of Jaxland," responded the
disciple of Aesculapius, "was at first openly des-
potic, reacting into radical democracy and by de-
grees becoming more and more republican ; with the
increased redundancy of its wealth, however, the
government became more positively despotic in
spite of republican pretensions. The truth did not
seem to dawn upon the people that financial anarchy
could not reign without despotic authority, and that
what the laws did not openly grant, would be secret-
ly appropriated. Underneath the beautiful veil of
liberty could easily be seen the glittering mail of
financial autocracy. Wielding an almost unlimited
patronage, which it was free to. employ in either
bribing or intimidating men into support of its
measures, it could well laugh at all restrictions upon
direct bribery or upon direct intimidation ; nor durst
its puppet press cry 'stop thief at the real culprit.
It could even laugh in its sleeve while outwardly
frothing at the mouth over attempts to regulate the
methods of its robberies regulations that were to
restrain commercial while sanctifying the greater
evil of economic plunder.
* l Plutocracy, standing behind the throne of gov-
ernmental authority, had neither politics, religion
nor principle. It was a wealth-sucking leech on the
body of industry exhausting and deadly. Bred in
Prior to Centrism. 109
the filthy pool of commerce, it had neither soul nor
character ; it was a leech. Once in a while it lifted it-
self up to the plane of philanthropy, but the days in
which it went forth as Jekyl were the exception
and Hyde played Jekyl so much that it ceased to be
safe to trust either. As like as not your extended
hand would be badly bitten. Plutocracy could never
keep its greedy hands from the power funds of social
trust. The filth of its commercial anarchy was trace-
able in every domain of organization, however lofty
its purpose.
"Wealth in ancient times bought armies and
often governed nations;' and why could not modern
wealth do the same hiring political troops, and
through their support wielding the truncheon of po-
litical authority? Starving men with nothing to do
readily attach themselves to any standard, and such
have been the mercenaries who have supported
power-seeking adventures in all ages. Change but
the sword for the ballot, and presto you have your
feudalism back again. Put your billionaire dollars
in place of Caesar's legions; and Bed Cross in place
of Rome; and all your statutes forthwith spell the
will of Caesar. You may girdle the earth with a
rainbow spelling the golden rule ; but while you spell
license in your fundamental laws it will only orna-
ment a rule of steel and blood. ' '
"Mr. Burton I see wears a cheerful smile," our
instructor facetiously remarked, "perhaps he would
like telling us how the vast accumulations of wealth
affected the industrial development of Jaxland."
' * There was no pact or voluntary contract in the
silent trust of capitalism," begin the former labor
leader. "It rested solely upon the license permitted
110 The Making of a Millennium.
the capitalist to short- job the market and thereby
evade competition in bidding for labor. Cap-
ital was manifestly the greatest of all trusts in fact
the mother of all trust power limited only by the
endurance of its slaves. Simultaneous with each
act of abstention went the correlative deprivation
or dispossession of the consumer, made thereby pro-
portionally more dependent on the loan of the ab-
stainer's accumulating surplus or its use in some
form of borrowing whether as tenant or employe.
As previously said, the market for capital
was only limited by the . ability of the dispos-
sessed to support it; and as a natural outcome, its
accumulations were injected into the fields of com-
merce and industry in the form of a vast redun-
dancy of enterprises, which, through their repellent
attitude toward each other, absorbed an enormous
superfluity of capital and diverted an incalculable
amount of labor from productive pursuits. The in-
crease of capital, instead of lowering the cost of
their operation, rather enhanced it, in proportion as
trade became more fragmentary a condition to
to which redundancy tended and which was not cor-
rected by the custom of exacting the highest prices
possible, by division through inheritances, by the
continuous influx of fresh capital or by the increas-
ing birth rate of wage slaves.
1 ' The whole trend of capital was to withhold ex-
penditures until profits were assured a result in
the end forthcoming as the consequence of the con-
current increase in the amount of abstention.
The employment of men and the service to
commerce were merely incidental accompaniments
Prior to Centrism. Ill
to the exaction of profits; and these exactions
always left" industry more impeded and dependent
than before. In seeking outlets, every avenue and
means of impeding industry and mulcting it through
the power of impediment was sought not for the
love of impeding trade, but for the love of profits.
Whatever commodities or necessities it could control
on a basis offering profits it would purchase ; every
privilege, right of way, or strip of land, whose pos-
session could be used to withhold necessities sub-
ject to usury, were eagerly bought. Business en-
terprises of all kinds, franchises and stocks in cor-
porations, were sought and purchased at prices
based on the amount of the profits they might enable
the owner to exact. Money was borrowed and credit
extended for the exploitation of enterprises, as well
as by consumers who borrowed and resorted to
credit out of sheer necessity, due to insufficient
employment and insufficient wages.
"The support of all this vast redundancy of
capital, with its multiple profits and multiple repro-
duction costs, and with its enormous diversion of
labor to repellant and non-productive occupations,
was no small burden to heap on the shoulders of the
consumer, and was bound to absorb the cream of the
benefits accruing from the concurrent increase in
material production due to the influence of science
and education."
"In order to realize how repellent these vast
accumulations were," Mr. Blake here interposed,
"we will listen to Mr. Busk, who will inform us of its
action in relation to lands. ' '
112 The Making of a Millennium.
LANDS.
"In granting titles to lands," I responded, "the
government had failed to make any distinction as
to the purpose for which they were to be used. It
was not asked whether they were to be tilled by the
purchaser, or merely retained for the sake of the
profits that might be extorted for their use from
those otherwise excluded. This privilege was an al-
together unique manner of rendering extortions and
restraint of trade lawful, which, according to fund-
amental principles of law, were manifestly unlawful.
"The titles to land thus recklessly granted
seemed to be founded on the idea that services
rendered, or a price paid for them, justified their ex-
tortions as a reward for the investment a theory
that would also justify murder, if only a price were
paid for the privilege. That the purchase money
was a fugitive currency evading the redemption of
products, and a subject for confiscation rather than
reward, ,was of course Overlooked. In effect the
granting of these titles put a further premium on
abstention by allowing investments in the forestall-
ment of access to lands. It resulted in shutting men
out upon all sides, either being driven into the wild-
erness, economically and sociallly ostracised, or else
compelled to pay tribute to the land owner.
"The license embodied in land ownership thus
worked immeasurable injury, scattering people over
the country in the most haphazard and unreasonable
manner. This was directly due to the unlimited
graft held by the land owners, who vied with one an-
other in asking as high sales and rental prices as
their locations would permit, thereby leveling to
the prospective buyer or tenant all the inherent dis-
Prior to Centrism. 113
tinctions that should otherwise have determined his
choice of location. Every advantage being offset
by proportionate advances in the prices charged, lo-
cations were all reduced to one level of desirability
and looked alike to either tenant or buyer. This in-
evitably led to the most extravagantly promiscuous
distribution scattering population helter skelter,
twixt utter isolation and the meanest congestion.
"Through speculative land ownership the habi-
tations of men were as capriciously scattered, as if
shaken out of some monster seive. Every hamlet,
town or city had from its infancy grown in this de-
sultory manner, spread out in defiance of distance
the citizens ever mumbling and grumbling about the
exorbitant taxes, yet never giving utterance to a syl-
lable of complaint against the colossal tax imposed
by this scatternalia. Think of compelling everybody
to go by foot, by rail, or by other means, over the
long stretches of inferior walks and drives; to be
subjected to cartage, freight and expressage costs;
to be plagued with countless delays and annoyances ;
to provide the various road and street improvements
over a stretch of territory five times as long as would
under & proper distribution have been needed. Think
what this vast extravagance of distance means and
the great increase in the number of middlemen it
imposes, taxing producer and consumer both, on
everything passing between the farm and the city
homes and factories.
"Taxing the average landowner far more than
the amount of revenue he derives from it, how much
greater burden is this tax upon those who have no
revenues to counteract its burdens ! Scarcely one in
twenty land owners profits by the ownership. Scat-
114 The Making of a Millennium.
tered about so unreasonably, they dwell in houses
resting veritably upon stilts, requiring the tall lad-
ders of extra distance or extra improvement taxes to
be climbed, before they can be reached. Coming and
going, it is all up or down the long stairs of super-
fluous distance separating shop and farm. Every-
thing that went or came had to travel the frightful
ups and downs the superfluous distances, regis-
tered in stilted bills for fares and freights, for gas
and water and sewerage, for street and sidewalk
paving, for telephone service and in fact for every-
thing that went upon the table or in the household ;
for whatever middlemen had to contribute towards
these extravagances was well charged for in the
prices of merchandise. And what of the thousands
maimed and murdered by the lax patrol of these
vistas of distance the railroad and other accidents
by flood and field a frightful bill hardly to be reck-
oned in dollars and cents.
"Was ever a greater delusion than these land
values, unless it were possibly the cargoes of fool's
gold once sent across the seas in the belief that the
glittering rocks contained the precious metal? While
the average landowner derives some revenue from
his land it may be regarded a very poor compensa-
tion to set against the heavy tax ; and as long as the
system imposing the tax is in operation he may con-
tent himself with his revenue and flatter himself
with the delusion that he is netting a balance justi-
fying the value placed upon his land.
' ' The utter absurdity of this land rapacity bears
indeed a humorous resemblance to the fashion in
vogue in my country in the middle of the nineteenth
Prior to Centrism.
115
century, when an approaching crinoline would drive
the courteous gentlemen pedestrain into the gutter. "
"Very good, Mr. Busk; Captain Clark will now
tell us what he knows concerning business invest-
ments;" and Mr. Blake added, "he probably knows
Diminutive Land Grabbing.
some facts concerning the treachery of the sea of
commerce as well as of other seas. ' '
"The free and unlimited mintage of capital in
the commercial arena," observed our nautical
friend, "let loose great torents of wealth to engage
in a general battle for supremacy, one man's wealth
against another's. It was a battle in which little
mercy was shown. As in gladiatorial combats, its
116 The Making of a Millennium.
victims soon passed from view, while those victor-
ious were constantly paraded before the public eye
as successful men and multi-millionaires. Glitter,
pomp and splendor dazzled the eyes of the people;
for even the gladiators of commerce had to smile
lest their credit and their nerve fail them; ahd
safety always compelled a man to put on an appear-
ance of prosperity, and to hide the load of debt and
difficulty under which he staggered. Such was the
seething conflict into which came pouring a constant
stream of newly recruited capital all seeking re-
munerative occupation man arrayed against man;
village, town and city each against the other; and
section against section, throughout all Jaxland.
The very brain and brawn of the living was crowded
out by dead surplus wealth.
"Surplus wealth forced its way into the com-
mercial arena as capital, whether there was really
need of it or no ; for commerce was a divided camp ;
and capital forced itself upon the warring mer-
chants, Hessian-like, going to one's rival to be used
against him if he failed to avail himself of its ser-
vice. It was altogether mercenary, going to the
highest bidder, constantly intensifying the severity
of the conflict, and involving in its moil the working
man whose only merchandise was the labor he had to
dispose of.
"In their craze for supremacy the rival mer-
chants dispatched whole armies of trade-seeking
emissaries to intercept the demand for commodities,
the control of which enabled the exaction of profits.
Profits represented the remainder left after the
wage earner had been shortweighed on the fraudu-
lent demand and supply value scale ; and in order to
Prior to Centrism.
117
gather the biggest share of this undelivered re-
mainder the mercantile world dispatched these
hordes of drummers, canvassers, hucksters, fakirs
and what not, all tramping and traveling at enor-
mous cost up and down the land, from house to
Trade-Seeking Emissaries.
house, from town to town and from hamlet to ham-
let, duplicating each other's paths by the score, and
all exerting themselves to the utmost to secure a
trade which became only the more fragmentary and
costly as their number increased.
' ' Come high as it would, no establishment could
safely evade this necessity. Little trade would come
to them of its own accord; for not only were men
everywhere actively engaged in forstalling it, but
118 The Making of a Millennium.
other trade-coaxing devices were also being resorted
to, particularly advertising, applied in a thousand
and one different ways, including the use of news-
paper space, music, costly signs, show windows, fairs,
and many other devices all combining to heap bur-
den upon burden upon the shoulders of labor, the
final paymaster.
"The universal practice of taxing industry all
the traffic would bear was a leveling system in busi-
ness as well as in land ownership. It kept alive the
most uneconomic little store by the side of the big-
gest establishments the incentives to true economy
being dormant or only feebly aroused.
"Look at the disposition of these vast warring
forces, divided into millions of antagonistic enter-
prises from the common peanut stand to great
steamship lines and inter-continental railways the
bulk of them retail stores duplicated in ten and
twenty fold redundancy and employing a twenty fold
redundancy of capital, thereby taxing industry with
a proportional redundancy of profits, risks, repro-
duction costs, and general expenses an appalling
aggregate of taxes heaped upon the shoulders of
labor with the merest mite of service to represent
them.
"What a motley array of petty corporalships
and lieutenancies and captaincies are displayed in
this most wonderful of all armies this army of in-
dustrial undiscipline which seeks to conquer econ-
omy through waste, order through disorder, organi-
zation through antagonism and peace through anti-
tipathies ! Romantic vision, this crusade of the mod-
ern knights of the golden fleece! Heavenly dream,
in which all the earth and all that it contains body
Prior to Centrism. 119
and soul are to be made captives in the meshes of
the golden fleece ! Glorious knights these doughty
generals of the money bag army ! Disturb them not ;
let them dream on.
"Is it not a pity that outworld industry should
be cursed with this vast cancer of redundancy, eat-
ing the flesh of industry at a thousand points-
mangling, distorting, diverting, and devouring a
tax robbing it of more than three-fourths of its pro-
duct as compared with despotic Pharoah's petty
tenth! Why must labor submit to the penalty of
this awful drain this prolonged torment and tor-
ture? Why must it undergo this industrial cruci-
fixion? Is it all for the glory of a respectable green
goods system of finance, and for the building up of
mountains of soap bubble wealth as glittering as
delusive 1
"And what of the myriads of dealers in de-
pravities of all sorts all the mind and body de-
bauching instrumentalities, criminalities and frauds,
against which all the statutory laws seem unable to
cope? Why are all these so persistent? Why, but
for the reason that the strain to make ends meet has
weakened the moral sense as well as the moral in-
fluence of every mastership from the man in the
pulpit, on the press, on the bench, or at any post of
prominence, down to the rank and file in whatsoever
walk.
"In addition to all the previous inventory of
pillage and destruction through profits and wastage,
the supplementary armies carrying knapsacks in
place of grips, and seeking to take lives instead of
orders this vast agency for both offensive and de-
fensive use in the battle for trade the struggle in
120 The Making of a Millennium.
which great bodies of men engage to acquire for
capital more profits and to purloin jobs abroad with
which to cover up the deficiencies produced at home
by its abstentions with its tax of blood and its har-
vest of widows and orphans, is no insignificant bur-
den added to those I have already mentioned. Was
not all this thunder of war and rain of blood mainly
the outcome of the primary antagonism engendered
by the insistence of the abstainer on his iniquitous
privilege to steal jobs and pillage wages?"
"Mrs. Luzby will inform us," our tutor now an-,
nounced, "how the system fitted men into occupa-
tions."
"Its influence in fitting people to suitable oc-
cupations was deplorable," responded the brilliant
club woman, "the majority of beginners being
launched into any occupation offering itself. Poverty
forbid a reasonable selection, constantly forcing
square pegs into round holes. Not only were they
sadly misplaced but their faculties were impaired
and their powers dwarfed by early overwork and
improper hygienic surroundings, often spending
their days in dark and damp places or exposed to
undue severity of weather, and required also to en-
dure the full strain of the long hours exacted from
adults.
"The firstlings of all opportunity were also in
the hands of the wealthy who dispensed these among
themselves, their relatives and their favorites.
Worth was always subordinate, and unless obse-
quious and cringing to the Lords of Industry, was
ignored and often persecuted. A silent despotism
permeated all fields. Men of ability and insight who
Prior to Centrism. 121
were candid and outspoken, particularly in matters
wherein opinions radically differed, and especially
matters relating to this pernicious system had only
crumbs to expect, and were often belittled and ma-
ligned in order to dwarf the importance of their
words. It was a common thing for them to be os-
tracised and abused as enemies of society.
"The whole trend of the system was to train
inferiors and to drive talent and genius into obscur-
ity, where the faculties of men would either fail to
develop, or rust unused. It put a premium upon
hypocricy, requiring monstrous falsehoods and con-
cealments of truth to sustain in quasi respectability
its low character. Many a stupid and inferior per-
son was paid an exorbitant salary for silence rather
than for actual service. A lie is ever a costly luxury,
and the colossal lie of capitalism has not been sup-
ported and worshipped all these years without leav-
ing its world-wide stain of deformity and corruption.
Not in vain has money been designated the root of
evil ; for out of its defections has grown the tree of
evil the tree of capitalism a spreading upas
plant, whose pestilential vapors still fill the dark at-
mosphere of our outworld life. It needs merely the
light of truth to dispel its baneful exhalations and
kill the hideous plant.
"If there is much misfortune and much sin in
the world, it is largely due to the vast amount of dis-
placement and misplacement of men ; for you cannot
displace men without also displacing manhood.
Every ailment must be dealt with according to its
source; that which is purely an individual trouble
may be treated through the individual; but that
122 The Making of a Millennium.
which is due altogether to social causes can only be
remedied through social means. It is therefore not
enough to preach individual morality, unless in-
cluding within its scope the exercise also of social
morality effort at reform in the moral structure of
society itself."
CHAPTER IX.
The Great Transition Era.
"I will divide my goods;
Call in the wretch and slave;
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but toil shall have."
Emerson.
"Our lesson today will deal with the transfor-
mation of turbulent Jaxland into the peaceful mil-
lennium of our present Temploria."
With the above words Mr. Blake announced the
subject of our next class meeting, after which Mr.
Oswald was called on to explain how the change be-
gun.
"The new epoch had its beginning in Aurosia,"
cheerfully responded the young Missourian, "at a
time when Jaxland was prostrated with a severe at-
tack of industrial depression. Aurosia was a pros-
perous, newly settled state, whose properties had
fallen largely into the hands of non-residents. The
alienated holdings caused a constant outflow of cur-
rency in the payment of interest and dividends to
the non-resident owners; and when these non-resi-
dents failed to reinvest this outflow it gradually
drained the channels of Aurosian currency until it
stranded most of her enterprises.
"Drained of her currency, the wheels of Auro-
sian industry were gradually blocked as if the power
had somehow been shut off. There was soon a great
dearth of work in the shops, and a superabundance
124
The Making of a Millennium.
of idle men in the streets. By and by the fever of
hunger began to gnaw and agitate, and the super-
heated steam of popular wrath began to escape like
sparks from a fire-spitting cloud. It was a sullen
cloud, black, ominous, and full of dark forebodings.
Idleness Is Busy.
The state had been forbidden by law to issue
credit currency; yet no provision to relieve such a
situation had accompanied the prohibitory enact-
ment; and the Jaxland government was crippled to
absolute impotence.
"What was poor Aurosia to do ? She could not
rely on this will-o'-the-wisp currency which had
clearly deserted its post as circulating medium.
"Deeply the Aurosians pondered over the sit-
uation. They traced the flow of the currency, and
The Great Transition Era. 125
asked themselves why it did not return to Aurosia.
For the first time now they noted that its return was
purely optional, and that it should have been com-
pulsory. They soon reached the conclusion that
money is and should be nothing else than a medium
a constantly movable and rotating medium, and
not a merely optional redeemer of its credit on prod-
ucts. Products must become fully as redeemable in
money as money in products; for the purpose of
money was to facilitate and not to impede the inter-
change of services. Upon that basis they proceeded,
and it was not long before the scheme of Centrism
was devised.
'.'No time was now to be lost; and before a
month had passed every adult in Aurosia had been
provided with a purse containing a hundred centrets
and a hundred dollars in Aurosian currency. Gentry
was also given to business institutions, which were
allowed an amount equal to one-month's payroll.
New currency was also issued until its volume
equalled that of the centry, and the old was gradu-
ally redeemed by the general government, but with-
out giving centry in return.
"The joint use of centry with money deprived
the money of all thoSe objectionable defects- inher-
ent in credit currency, and obviated the charge of
violating Jaxland law. Further investment in prop-
erties for revenue-yielding were also prohibited as
evasions of product redemption.
"Out of the valley of industrial death Aurosia
now arose as from a trance, her markets shielded
from the suicidal throttling of Jaxland abstinence
and no longer terrorized by its fickleness. Soon the
forges of industry were all blazing away till the light
126
The Making of a Millennium.
of the new prosperity radiated in every countenance
and upon every hearth.
"The boom in Aurosia differed from all pre-
vious eras of prosperity. There was no speculation
in the moil of its activity. Stocks and lands seemed
perfectly stagnant, rather tending to decline, while
WEVE TIME
TO LIVE AND
SOMETHING
TO LIVE ~
Prosperity Arrived.
legitimate industry in all branches was stirred to its
utmost capacity. Wages rose at a much faster pace
than the prices of products, while interest, rents and
profits were falling; and pay rolls greatly exceeded
the volume of the immediate popular expenditures,
leaving an exceptional margin for the acquisition of
homes and productive plants. The doors of oppor-
tunity had been opened gates of an earthly para-
The Great Transition Era. 127
dise of possession and the multitude came pouring
in to secure their inheritance.
' * Shops and factories ran full blast, many being
unable to keep up with the orders pouring in from
all sides. From factory to store, and from store to
household, the products of labor fairly flew filling
larder and wardrobe, and bringing into the home de-
vices for comfort and convenience, as well as beau-
tifying adornments.
"The capitalist was now obliged to give centry
in order to take in his customary revenues; and he
was unable to obtain centry except through expen-
ditures for commodities. This brought into the
market a demand for commodities largely in excess
of the former volume, simultaneously with the prop-
erty investments of the people supplying them with
the surplus revenues needed for these property pur-
chases; and through the surplus labor demand, it
simultaneously enhanced the price of labor and
greatly facilitated the acquisitions. The process of
capitalism was now merely being reversed, and the
depletion of the people being stopped. It seemed as
if it had been the capitalists who were being de-
pleted ; but this was far from the truth, for as said,
it was merely the restoration of normal conditons
and the arrest of further capitalistic depredations.
"Property investments were meanwhile con-
fined to non-profit enterprises; and as few people
had sufficient money for such purposes, and the cap-
italist had an insufficient store of centry, such sales
were usually made on long time, the purchase price
being smaller in proportion as the time was ex-
tended. It was worth a premium to help preserve
128 The Making of a Millennium.
wealth for those who could not immediately use it
and had no other legitimate method available for its
preservation.
' ' A striking feature of the day was the universal
conversion of the tenant into a home owner, the
employe into a proprietor, the idler into a worker;
and in thousands of channels, non-productive into
productive labor.
1 1 Such a piece of industrial magic as Aurosia
presented had been undreamed of. The capitalist
rubbed his eyes, wondering whether he was asleep
or awake. Little did it occur to him that the pre-
vious state of affairs had also been a piece of magic
dark and awful magic by which a handful of
men had been enabled to gather as their own what
all the rest had produced. Prior to this, the capital-
ist had been the sleeper the dreamer and he was
now for the first time awake.
"In Jaxland the depression was meanwhile
gnawing her very heart strings ; and but for the ap-
proach of a near election, Centrism would no doubt
have been as peremptorily inaugurated there as in
Aurosia.
"Beports of Aurosian prosperity now caused
all attention to be directed to the new system, and a
large number of centry clubs were organized, spread-
ing the gospel of Centrism, preparatory to forming
a political party through which to promulgate the
issue until victory should be achieved. The majority
parties, being controlled by capitalists, naturally op-
posed the movement, while a minority party al-
ready committed to the cause of industrial regen-
eration undertook to pledge itself to the task. It
thereby won to its ranks myriads of recruits from
The Great Transition Era. 129
workers in all stations and gained followers so rap-
idly that election day closed with Centrism triumph-
ant."
' * Now let us hear about the behavior of Centrism
in Jaxland," our tutor resumed. "Perhaps Mr.
Eusk will supply us with this information. ' '
' ' Following the introduction of Centrism, " I re-
sponded, l ' came a revival of indutsry similar to that
which had awakened Aurosia.
"A striking feature of this era was the enor-
mous increase in the demand for labor in all fields of
legitimate production, coupled with a remarkable
diversion of effort from redundant and trade-divert-
ing occupations into channels of direct production.
Getting orders became quite a different thing from
getting the goods with which to fill them or the labor
with which the commodities were to be produced.
The volume of unsolicited trade was now so great as
to absorb the capacity of most manufacturers. The
result was that employers soon realized the folly of
paying for orders that they would be unable to de-
liver. A single solicitor also would now often take
more orders in one day than previously in a week.
As a result a large part of the money previously
applied to the getting of trade was now added, to
wages as an inducement for more help for a man's
trade now depended on the number and quality of
his help. The bulk of those previously engaged in
soliciting and allied pursuits now also found more
lucrative employment in direct production.
"Owing to the more severe competition in the
getting of help and the getting of goods, the smaller
dealers of all sorts were obliged to seek other oc-
cupations or else consolidate ; for now only business
130 The Making of a Millennium.
that was organized on a large scale and well man-
aged could pay the prices necessary to meet the ad-
vance in wages and in prices of goods. Eeal com-
petition had at last set in the test of getting as
close to cost as possible the cost of service as dic-
tated by the most economic union of consumer and
producer instead of that resulting from their reck-
less separation. Obliged to give centry now with all
his sales, and excluded from acquiring these through
capitalistic investments, competition compelled the
merchant to limit margins according to the value of
his actual service a test he had also to meet in view
of the fact that his clerks were now acquiring the
necessary surplus with which to embark for them-
selves in co-operative cost stores.
''The barbarous and lavish display indulged in
by the former retail merchants became a thing of the
past; and now very small stocks were carried, in
conjunction with elaborate lines of samples. Goods
were usually wanted as fast as they could be pro-
cured, leaving them no chance to accumulate upon
the store shelves and become staled and shopworn
while waiting for customers. The dominant idea in
these stores was no -longer to dazzle and bewilder the
customer, but to deliver the most effectual service.
The expenses of brass bands and show windows
were dispensed with, and better light, heat and ven-
tilation supplied to clerks and public ; and both pub-
lic and clerks shared the benefit of the economies as
well as the better service.
"Instead of having to assume the hazards and
extra outlays involved in the giving of extensive
credits, the dealer was now paid far in advance
buyers not only aiming to secure an earlier registry
The Great Transition Era. 131
<
and delivery of their orders, but also to receive the
centry through which they facilitated their further
employment. They liked to keep a good stock of
centry ahead just as well as money, preferring them
as long as the money was applied to things they
needed. The centry thus proved to be the most ac-
complished salesmen commerce had ever known, and
perhaps the greatest of all labor-saving devices. Dif-
fering however from all other such inventions they,
instead of accelerating abstention, gave it its final
quietus.
""With all the advantages accruing from consol-
idation and from the reduced volume of the mercan-
tile stocks to be carried, and the saving in rents and
general expenses wrought by this change ; with a re-
duction both in interest rate and volume of capital
required; with the enormous outlays formerly ex-
pended in efforts to get trade fairly obliterated;
and with the losses incurred through the giving of
credit and the assumption of all sorts of competitive
hazards eliminated, an incalculable saving in the
interest of better wages and lower prices had been
achieved. Managers also earned more than before,
all grades of work being better rewarded. The ex-
travagances which were good management under
commercialism, were utterly superfluous under Cen-
trism.
"Accompanying the gradual rise in wages, cap-
ital was fast losing its grip both the margin of
profits and the interest rate steadily falling until
not only the zero mark was reached, but until a
bonus often as high as five per cent, was paid for the
return in full of the amounts borrowed. This op-
plied to non-profit investments. It represented snr-
The Making of a Millennium.
plus wealth which the owner was not ready to use
and which he could not store in any other way with-
out greater loss. Men who owned excessive wealth
which it would take years to consume, netted
very little out of their excess portion, for in twenty
years it would eat itself out in cost of preserva-
Wages Upward; Profits Coming Down.
tion. As it was they preferred selling such prop-
erties on long time without interest and at figures
that were low in proportion to the time covered.
They thus received all and much more for it than
it was worth as a surplus product. Under capitalism,
labor had been made largely a surplus product, for
want of distinguishing between consumer and ab-
stainer, and it had suffered gross undervaluation.
The Great Transition Era. 138
"In the meantime, the large surplus funds ac-
cumulating in the hands of employes; the smaller
volume of stocks required for business; the help of
prepayments and liberation from the necessity to
give credits; the far greater ease of getting busi-
ness, and the greater difficulty profit-making estab-
lishments had in securing employes; all these in-
fluences combined to enable employes to acquire,
usually through purchase, establishments of their
own operated on the cost basis. Controlling their
own labor, they now had control of the situation, and
by degrees the co-operative stores entirely super-
seded those run on a profit basis.
"Curious institutions in the shape of centry
banks now came into existence to accommodate the
needs of persons wishing to sell properties who were
short in their supply of centry. It scarcely concerned
the general public, the shorts having to pay the
longs interest in money or centry for their use, vary-
ing from five to ten per cent, per annum. People
often availed themselves of these banks when saving
with a view to some exceptionally large future ex-
penditure.
"In order that the change might not cause any
hardships to persons who were unable to work,
whom the benefits of the system could not directly
reach, the government provided liberal annuities for
them. Provision was also made to convert the prop-
erties of dependent widows and orphans into gov-
ernment annuities on a basis that would prevent
them from suffering loss through the downfall of the
profit system. A widows and orphans annuity con-
tract was also provided, purchasable at rates cal-
culated by skilled actuaries, so that such benefi-
134 The Making of a Millennium.
ciaries of insurance might avail themselves thereof;
and steps were also taken to unify all insurance com-
panies and associations under one management,
levying a uniform rate such as would cover the cost
of the current death payments from year to year and
would exclude none from the benefits, a condition
impossible to private associations and feasible only
under governmental or united management. The
percentage of bad risks does not vary much in the
whole body of society, but a single company accept-
ing them would repel the good and draw the bad
ones, to its inevitable ruin. The insurance was also
made compulsory in a minimum amount propor-
tional to each man's earnings. The protection to
the widow and orphan should be universal and not
confined to a limited number.
1 'Through the use of centry commerce was thus
completely revolutionized and reduced to a rational
simplicity and a degree of freedom and reliability
in striking contrast with its former delusive and en-
snaring tyrannies.'-'
MANUFACTURING ESTABLISHMENTS.
"Will you tell us now, Mr. Burton," our tutor
asked, "what effect Centrism had upon the manu-
facturing industries'?"
"It ended the career of monopoly prices," re-
plied the Bostonian. "Competition had previously
been merely spasmodic, seldom penetrating below
the level of the prices dictated by abstinence-born
monopoly. Centrism was destroying the source of
monopoly, its prices sinking gradually to the level
of cost. The sham competition of capitalism was giv-
ing way to the real competition of Centrism which
The Great Transition Era. 135
drove profits to zero and raised wages to the full
measure of production. Monopoly prices accom-
panied with spasmodic competition had scattered
trade promiscuously from one end of the land to the
other, obliging each competitor to cover ten fold the
territory needed, and to reach ten fold the num-
ber of dealers; this was mainly due to cutting
prices and meeting competition mainly at remote
points in which they were at a disadvantage to their
rivals. When the accelerated trade produced by
Centrism found them unable to fill orders, and caused
buyers to press for precedence, it at once became
apparent that further expenditures in the getting of
trade could be almost entirely curtailed, and that
more expenditures must be made in the getting of
operatives, the number of employes being an absolute
limit to the amount of trade to be handled. The get-
ting of orders counted for little ; the getting of help
was everything. The wage worker was king, and
wages went on rising as the evolution proceeded.
What trade the manufacturer had lost in remote
regions he more than regained in contiguous trade
surrendered by remote manufacturers, thereby
greatly reducing the circle of territory to be covered
without any loss in its volume.
''Accompanying these changes a large number
of operatives organized co-operative establishments,
finding good locations in interior regions where
within an ample radius they had every advantage
over competitors, being able to acquire lands at nom-
inal figures and to deal direct with the farmer for
their household supplies. Many of these migrated
from the larger cities, relieving much of their con-
gestion and also helping to lower the exorbitant rents
136 The Making of a Millennium.
and land prices. These establishments were also
operated on the cost basis, as required of all new es-
tablishments ; and these, owing to the fact that op-
eratives were rapidly acquiring surplus funds, su-
perseded the profit establishments.
EFFECT ON CITY LANDS.
' ' The effect upon the prices of city lands, ' ' said
Mr. Carson in response to another query, "was to
produce a gradual decline, continuing until nothing
was left of the former values but the improve-
ments."
"That was a strange phenomenon. Can you ex-
plain it?" was asked.
"I will endeavor to do so," the former steel
magnate responded. "When all further investment
in lands for speculation or for revenue-yielding was
debarred, two factors helped to prevent a rapid an-
nihilation of land values. One was the fact that the
advantages for social, shopping or manufacturing
utility inhering in their particular localities had not
been altered; and the other was the fact that the
multitude now began to accumulate large funds
which were applied to the purchase of homes and
sites. These funds were soon utilized in forming
home-acquiring associations, in which each contrib-
utor became a proportional stockholder, and through
which they began to acquire suburban acreage upon
which to erect homes in groups. By this method
of operation they were able to occupy settled local-
ities affording advantages they could not otherwise
have secured except at much higher purchase prices.
Not only did they effect a large saving thus in the
purchase price of the land, but they were able to
The Great Transition Era. 137
build in this manner at a decidedly lower cost. As
these groups increased in number, and as congestion
was being relieved by emigration to country dis-
tricts, they reduced the prices of both rents and
properties in the cities, gradually driving them to a
point at which no value was left, apart from the im-
provements, 'and the cost of their perpetuation was
all that remained incorporated in the rents.
''A similar fate overtook business lots and busi-
ness rents. This was due to the elimination of the
smaller middlemen and to the reduction of the re-
dundant and excessively large stocks carried by mer-
chants, now requiring less room; and the fact of
no longer being so dependent on locality for the get-
ting of business, also facilitated the fall in these
rents and prices.
EFFECT OF THE FAEM.
"Miss Oswald will now enlighten us as to the
effect Centrism had upon the agricultural inter-
ests, ' ' Mr. Blake now announced.
"Upon the farm, as in other industries, Cen-
trism inaugurated a better state of affairs," re-
sponded the fair socialist. ' ' The wages of farm labor
rose responsive to the general advance in the price
of labor, by degrees approximating so nearly to the
gross returns as to leave but little for the proprietor
apart from the enhanced value of his own labor and
superintendence. The mere fact of owning lands
made little difference in the net returns. They net-
ted more for their produce now than ever before,
for their trade was becoming constantly more direct
the consumer depending less upon the middle-
man's credit, and the number of middlemen being
138 The Making of a Millennium.
greatly reduced; and the purchasers had also now
more means than ever with which to buy. The pas-
sing of the middleman far more than compensated
the conversion of profits into wages ; it not only en-
hanced the net earnings of the farm, but enhanced
both wages and superintendence in a still greater de-
gree. Thus, as I have already said, the mere own-
ership of lands was netting constantly less and less.
"Accompanying the elimination of profits, land
values naturally began a downward course, proprie-
tors selling small tracts of their surplus acreage at
low figures its tillage with hired help no longer
having the attraction it formerly had; intensive
farming and the breeding of superior grades of
stock also stimulated this tendency. As a conse-
quence, many farms remote from markets, on which
a bare existence was all the reward labor met apart
from the expectation of a rise in the land value,
were abandoned in favor of these small tracts nearer
to markets. Others from towns and cities migrated
to these tracts; and as these regions naturally be-
came more thickly settled and the cost of improve-
ments could be divided between a larger number of
persons who also had more surplus means at their
disposal, it brought many material improvements, in
roadways and walks, in water, heating and lighting
facilities, in sewerage, in rapid transit lines and in
numerous other conveniences. The labor of con-
struction and maintenance of these improvements,
together with the accession of manufacturing plants
from the cities responsive to the greater facilities
promised by the improvements, brought producer
and consumer into still closer touch, and by its larger
purchasing power lowered the cost of the service
The Great Transition Era. 139
in the local cost store. The farmer could now buy
cheaper and sell dearer than ever before ; but he was
not doing it at the expense of a half or quarter
paid hired help. ' '
Thus, from remote regions inward, and from
congested districts outward, a vast redistribution of
population had begun, impelled by individual in-
terest and controlled by healthy economic relations.
Its result was in time to completely remodel both
city and country, locating people at the points of
greatest productive economy.
In the cities the elimination of land values re-
moved one of the most stubborn obstacles to the pro-
gressive enhancement of the design and utility in
the allignment and grouping of its structures.
The elimination' of land values also removed
one of the foremost obstacles to co-operative farm-
ing, which eventually came into vogue and finally al-
together superseded isolated effort. Isolated farm-
ing had held its own merely at the expense or its un-
paid hired help.
Both in city and country homes were now built
in groups that co-operated in varying degrees, out
of which gradually evolved our present templism
with its specialization of all branches of housework,
some of them performed by males.
CHAPTER X.
To Edenize the Outworld.
"Light is the one thing wanted for the world. Put wisdom in
the head of the world, the world will fight its battle victoriously,
and be the best world man can make it." Carlyle.
Ever since the inauguration of Centrism the
Templorians had felt a serious longing to communi-
cate the glad tidings of its success to the outworld.
All their endeavors, however, to penetrate the so-
porific barrier had unfortunately proven futile, and
often disastrous. The last experiments attempted
had been a series of tunnels bored at a great depth,
designed to emerge upon one of the numerous is-
lands lying beyond the impenetrable belt. A single
one of these tunnels, opening from a place in the
suburbs of Bed Cross, was still in progress of con-
struction at the time of our advent, the others hav-
ing long been abandoned, and the project regarded
as a forlorn hope.
Imagine therefore the excitement and furore oc-
casioned when the report one day came into circu-
lation that a practical outlet had been achieved. It
is true the bore of this tunnel would require consid-
erable additional work before it would be fit for
practical use, but the union of the two worlds was
nevertheless regarded as an accomplished fact.
The whole city now became one blaze of uproar ;
and as the reports were confirmed and the momen-
tousness of the event dawned upon men's minds it
thrilled their hearts with an indescribable joy. All
To Edenize the Outworld. 141
Temploria was roused to a pitch of the utmost en-
thusiasm. The daily journals everywhere made the
event conspicuous through mammoth head lines-
something unusual to their style and their columns
rang with notes of jubilant glee. All day long can-
non boomed, trumpets resounded, and thrilling mu-
sic filled the air along the parkways and in the tem-
ples. All places were thronged with joyous multi-
tudes, and all work and business was set aside in
favor of merriment and festivity.
The Millennial Symbol.
*
The effect of the news upon the Falconers was
indescribable. It so completely turned our heads,
we acted like school children dismissed for a holiday.
As the wilder excitement subsided, our enthusiasm
found further vent in an irresistible impulse to re-
turn to our native land bearing the message of Cen-
trism.
Prompted by this spirit, our class was soon re-
solved into an organization we called the " Modern
Crusade," and in our zeal for the cause we began
at once to discuss all phases of the project, not over-
looking that of securing passage on the first vessel
to make the voyage. Frequent meetings were there-
after held, and our interest in the cause was never
permitted to lag. We even designed an emblem in
142 The Making of a Millennium.
the form of a balanced scales enclosed within a cir-
cle formed of alternate coins and centry, which sym-
bolized the unbroken continuity of trade, and full-
product values. This was to be the symbol of the
millennial era.
IMPERATIVE NEED OF CENTRISM.
Mr. Burton urged the need of Centrism in the
United States as a check upon further financial de-
pression. He charged the vacilating state of its in-
dustries to its inefficient currency, its redundant cap-
ital and the contamination of its wealth with a vast
body of worthless surplus products and empty
credits the latter based upon profits to be derived
from labor as yet unperformed. No wonder the
goose that laid the golden eggs proved a delusion
whenever opened for inspection to see if its enor-
mous value was really inside.
Whenever society is able to 'dispense with law
and maintain order through the innate righteousness
of man, then also perhaps will it be able to belt the
wheels of commerce with hot air strings and with
this phantom chord, keep them moving in regular
and continuous rotation. But until that day arrives
will its chimerical mechanism be constantly run-
ning amuck. It wants a more substantial belt than
childish confidence. There must be no broken cogs
in its mechanism; but cog against cog centry
against money job orders in return for commodity
orders must reciprocate the transfer of commer-
cial force into a ceaseless rotation. Nor is its al-
chemy to conjure up any swarms of capitalistic
harpies, in the guise of service, to forever gnaw at
its chords of life. It must purge itself of delusions
To Edenize the Out wo rid.
143
and break through the crust of its dark insanity. Its
imbecility and darkness are not a perpetual doom;
they are phantoms that will vanish at the awaken-
ing, at the parting of the true from the false.
Widow's Mite Is Not Spared.
In the vortex of ruin which capitalism, by its
successive depressions precipitates, oceans of
wealth shrink and melt into vapory mist, while the
sacred hoards of plutocracy stored in money,
bonds and mortgages, appreciate in purchasing
power. Not even stored labor, though coined into
material substance, is exempt from the flames of
shrinkage. They are subject to the same immutable
144 The Making of a Millennium.
law that refuses to impart value to labor in the
absence of demand for its product. Even the wid-
ow's mite is devoured by the remorseless flames,
which know no discrimination except for the hoarded
money and mortgages of the modern miser. The
blind holocaust of financial depression knows but a
harsh equality; and the hollow eye of hunger does
not separate the just from the unjust.
Let no man delude himself into the thought that
mere banking laws will prevent the recurrence of
these plagues visited upon our industrial Egypt.
Deeper than the banks lies the cause of these ter-
rible visitations. Is not the Israel of Labor in bond-
age today to the modern Pharaoh 1 ? Well then for
the modern Pharaoh to let his Israel go to set this
people free to restore to them the full measure
of opportunity belonging to freemen to consume
his surplus wealth and beware lest it continue to
bind the arms and brain of industry with its insid-
ious chains ! Were the banks ever so safe, these
plagues would still beset us; for as soon as prices
cease to rise begins the rush for money and its quick
coagulation into hoard. Are not all the investment
properties of capitalism one vast bank into which
men deposit their money by buying and draw again
in selling, repeating the process so often that their
credits exceed their deposits twenty fold a bank
that can in no way pay out more money than it has
available. When all wish to draw out and none
to pay in, its doors also close being in a remote
sense the bank of all banks, and the model upon
which none other can improve except in semblance,
when harping on the strings of confidence.
To Edenize the Outworld.
145
Why should the wisdom, the foresight and the
character of the American citizen expose his country
to the prolongation or the repetition of such catas-
trophes? Why longer tolerate such criminal care-
lessness in its industrial organism? Why put up
with an industrial fabric that seeks to sustain the
The Bridge of Confidence.
welfare of the world on a single thread of clumsy
basting, a thread whose snapping in any part of
the globe will throw the entire body into convulsions
a mere thread of wax which a shadow of doubt can
melt? Small satisfaction the financial wreck derives
to know that the snapping thread by which he was
dropped into the abyss of ruin had a golden tinge!
Small satisfaction is it to the penniless man to know
that the invisible coin had not been melted in the fires
146 The Making of a Millennium.
of dissolution that each blessed gold piece was
still sound and would reappear with merry jingle in
the industrial resurrection that was to come !
Why should a civilized nation a nation claim-
ing to be Christian in spirit neglect the property of
the consumer in the opportunities his consuming
creates a property on whose recognition the prop-
erty of the product of his hand and brain his wage
depends? Why not give all property its due pro-
tection, and not merely one form the bulk of which
is composed of the fruit of predatory plunder? Is
not a man's wage his property? Why then should
its pillage be tolerated, and property be made of
the very plunder torn from it? What sort of title
can there be to acquisition obtained without effort
of hand or brain obtained through the pillage of
other men's labor? Is it merely this questionable
form of "property" for which the solicitude of the
law is to be invoked and its strong arm raised?
HOURS AND PRICES.
Doctor Remington rejoiced in the fact that Cen-
trism would allow men full liberty to work as few or
as many hours as they chose no man's hours pre-
venting his neighbor from enjoying the same liberty.
The man who would work more hours must consume
proportionately more and therefore cause a propor-
tional increase in the amount of work available.
The same freedom would also apply to the price
at which a man offered his services, since the amount
of labor he could possibly offer would be limited by
the amount of his consuming. His cheaper labor
could not substitute that of others, and therefore
could not affect the labor of others detrimentally,
To Edenize the Outworld.
147
on the contrary enabling them to buy necessities at
a lower figure. By the use of centry all trade was
obliged to comply with the test of balancing, and
goods offered at low figures meant what they said.'
They could not be worthless surplus products, or
EVERY MANS
MARKET IS AS
BIG AS HE
MAKES
His Centry Measures His Market.
virtual gold bricks, which like thefts may be a gain
to the individual, but which, like mutual thieveries,
would be mutually disastrous.
Every man was to be guaranteed a market as
large as the amount of his consuming- a market he
could expand o"r contract according to his will, and
one also that no one else could invade. To whatever
148 The Making of a Millennium.
race lie belonged, oriental or occidental, whatever
his color, creed, previous nationality, sectional or
other distinction, he stood upon a pedestal of inde-
pendence that was not to be shaken. His full meas-
ure of opportunity and his full wage were equally in-
violable.
REFUGE ZONES.
Mrs. Luzby believed that through the deflation
of land values ultimately ensuing new territorial al-
lignments would result, leaving vacant large tracts
that would become available for special colonization
or as zones of refuge for classes seeking to escape
odious environments. Such tracts would also offer
means for various experiments of a scientific or so-
ciological nature.
THE CRUSADE FOR CENTRISM.
' ' The first step in our crusade, ' ' remarked Cap-
tain Clark, "will be to conduct an educational cam-
paign in behalf of Centrism, distributing literature,
delivering speeches and utilizing every possible man-
ner of demonstration by which to attract attention
to the cause.
"We shall particularly appeal to the President
and to Congress, inviting attention to the defects
of our currency and the abuses to which it subjects
the workingman, as well as the complications with
foreign powers threatened by arbitrary defense of
our markets. Abstention is indisputably a restraint
of trade, the remedy for which is in the province of
Congress to apply through -the institution of an
ample currency system. The unrestrained counter-
To Edenize the Outworld. 149
felting of values to which the present currency sub-
jects the consumer, as well as the danger of financial
catastrophe in which it places the nation, makes it
imperative that early and prompt action be taken.
It is not necessary for Congress to delay until the
last embers of the financial holocaust have been ex-
tinguished. Its powers are defined, and in the face
of necessity, are imperative duties. It is not neces-
sary for it to wait until the thunder of the popular
will drive it to action. The rumble of that thunder
is already echoed in the powers assigned to it and
the duties incumbent upon it. Let it not turn a deaf
ear to the cry of humanity whose call began from
the clouds of Sinai, from the Mount of- Olives and
from the Declaration of Independence, demanding
justice and the privilege to pursue unmolested the
blessings of life, liberty and happiness. Congress
need not wait for further instruction. So far as in
its power lies, its plain duty is to regulate trade, and
as a sentinel, to guard it against all unrighteous re-
straint and all catastrophe that can be prevented.
"The appeal to Congress will not preclude any
state government desiring protection to inaugurate
at home the system of Centrism, since neither centry
nor money, issued to operate inseparably, can by any
manner of strain be construed as a bill of credit. ' '
POPULAR REFORMS.
Regarding projects of municipal or government
ownership, it was deemed inadvisable to consider
them apart from the proposition of Centrism. They
particularly cautioned against the steam power rail-
roads which they thought obsolete and doomed to be
superseded. The tendency under Centrism would be
150 The Making of a Millennium.
toward short hauls and short trips, and the demand
would be for frequent and regular trains as well as
a degree of cleanliness such as would attract instead
of repelling residence, along the way. Aside from
these facts, these giants would be shorn of their in-
iquitous power under Centrism and would cease to
menace the integrity of government.
As to trusts, these also would be shorn of their
power for evil, the longer Centrism was in force. The
trust is merely a gnat bred in the slough of cap-
italism, and the right way to slap it is to drain the
slough. What a deal of quibbling there is over
the manner in which our dear wage earner is to be
fleeced whether by a visible four-ounce-to-the-
pound supply and demand value scales, or by an in-
visible one apparently an arbitrary dictation of
prices, but nevertheless one profiting mainly out of
salvage derived by obviating redundancy in methods.
Its dictations are seldom if ever absolute ; for it has
to contend with the ghosts of dead rivals threaten-
ing to materialize, new rivals seeking birth in the
accumulating redundancy of capital, the ghosts of
reduced demand, importations, substitutes, and
lastly even confiscation in the event of glaring of-
fenses. You may kill open competition, but not the
ghosts the invisible forces that arise out of the
depths of capitalism and persist in the deadly, sui-
cidal tendencies inherited from mother capital her-
self and which will keep on asserting themselves as
long as the mother evil lasts.
It should be borne in mind that back of the
trusts is the greater evil of capitalism; and back of
this evil is the freedom of repudiation, or privileged
hoarding, whose derangements, throttling industry,
To Edenize the Outworld. 151
make even capitalism as a rule preferable. No
amount of moon-baying fury nor of arbitrary sup-
pressions, will much avail, unless hoarding itself is
checked; and nothing short of Centrism will effect-
ually do this.
As to the project known as Single Tax, by which
taxes were to be withdrawn from all other forms of
property and imposed upon lands, this was demon-
strated to be futile, merely scotching the snake, but
not killing it or materially helping. Land ownership
is merely an objective a receptacle for the accumu-
lating funds of capitalism, but far from being the
only receptacle. Were this receptacle closed, re-
dundant loans and material capitalistic investments
would simply multiply the more. The license of ab-
stention, which is the source of monopoly, would not
be checked, its outlet being diverted but not
stopped ; for land is economically but water, and this
substantial barrier to production is but the shadow of
monopoly the real barrier being the possession of
the means by which to purchase it and the opportun-
ity through which its purchase price as well as other
requirements to industrial independence were to be
acquired.
HISTORY REPEATED.
In the temple of modern industrialism capital is
the money changer defiling its sanctuary. What is
to be done with this sacrilegious intruder this
abomination of desolation ?
Will this ungainly behemoth recognize his utter
unfitness there the pollution of his presence in the
sacred precincts of this temple of life! Will he re-
tire peaceably and becomingly? Or will he intrench
152 The Making of a Millennium.
behind the wall of his financial power and convert it
into a barricade of absolutism 1 ? Will he engage in
intrigue to precipitate foreign war, and seek under
the protection of foreign power to extend his base
dominion? Will he possibly take refuge behind the
methods of Russian despotism and repeat the blood-
curdling atrocities that gave birth to the second
French empire?
Failing to meet the charges involved in Cen-
trism, the efforts of the capitalist to perpetuate the
system would make of him an abettor of thievery
and crime. His offense would no longer constitute
a mere blind struggle in behalf of a faulty and erring
system, but a deliberate and willful act a crime
no less odious and culpable for its insidious method,
its gigantic proportions or the hoary antiquity of its
parentage.
There can be no doubt as to where the majority
of capitalists and their apologists will stand. They
will repudiate conscious and voluntary brigandage.
Great wrongs can only thrive where a realization of
their existence is either totally absent or very much
obscured; but when the wrong is made so over-
whelmingly palpable as in this case, honorable men
will part with its company. They can afford to lend
it neither countenance nor support.
The identification of capitalism with property is
no longer tenable. The very antithesis of property,
its acts are one succession of aggressions upon the
opportunities of men and the products of their labor.
Nor is capital 'longer to be identified with either in-
dustrial or social order, being a source of endless
strife and discord a vein of destructive antagonism
coursing through the arteries of commerce like a
To Edenize the Outworld. 153
stream of venom. It can lay no possible claim as
either a courier of progress or a harbinger of peace.
Blockading industry at every step, it acts as a dead-
lock upon an incalculable volume of the world's
latent vitalities, and is forever pitting man against
man and nation against nation in bloody and piti-
less conflict.
Capital in commerce is the essence of anarchy
a perpetual rebellion against industrial law which,
were it knowingly and willfully persisted in, would
put it upon no higher plane than border lawless-
ness.
For ages the industrial world has lingered in
the dark shadows of this borderland, the outskirts
of a new order an order dimly foreshadowed by
the prophets of old and by the great minds of all
ages; and now, as the light comes breaking through
its cloudy canopy, the message can be clearly read
bidding adieu to its long reign of power and plunder.
The flaming sword will no longer exclude mankind
from its inheritance. The inward gate has been lo-
cated, and through this gate humanity will triumph-
antly march into its nobler paradise.
CHAPTER XI.
Where Art Thou, Adam?
"We are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
India's prehistoric clay;
Whoso drew the longest bow,
Ran his brother down, you know,
As we run men down today.
Kipling.
Mr. Carson was the only member of the Falcon-
ers not in full accord with the purpose of the pro-
jected crusade. He had joined the Modern Crusade,
not for the sake of spreading its gospel, but in order
to facilitate the recovery of his former millions
which now stood in the foreground of his thoughts.
A regular attendant of their meetings, he differed
with their views and motives, unconsciously acquir-
ing a strong and positive aversion to Centrism as
his prospective affluence became more assuring.
Upon one occasion, nevertheless, hearing the
American protective system lauded as the cradle of
Centrism, his former ardor as a protectionist was
aroused, drawing from his lips an unqualified en-
dorsement of the Temporian system. "Protection,"
said he, "was the first movement to repel spurious
surplus products. It recognized the displacement of
labor through the admission of spurious products
and the delusion of their cheapness. It rejected the
price standards of foreign markets, clinging rather
to its own standard, derived from its larger meas-
ure of available opportunity. It challenged the pro-
155
priety of buying by price only, and it treated the
home market as the property of the nation ; and time
has demonstrated the wisdom of its conclusions."
''I admit the protective principle is the germ of
Centrism," followed Mr. Oswald, "yet we must not
forget that early Jewish, Roman and Christian laws,
in their attitude against usury; and the lofty and
broad ideals of socialism, were also torchbearers of
the new creed."
"The doctrine of protection," resumed the
Philadelphian, "has lifted our American industries
to a pedestal of matchless glory. From the dark-
ness of obscurity it has 'placed us in the foremost
rank among nations. What a grand achievement ! I
shall be indebted to it as long. as I live."
"You have reason enough to be proud of this
system," responded Grandpa Zeke, who happened
to be present, "but if your people wish to be con-
sistent in their loyalty to protection, let them extend
its mantle, and protect the market of each individual
consumer. Let them adopt Centrism! Why should
you repel the industrial venom of surplus products
coming from abroad and meanwhile permit its viru-
lent poison to be injected without restriction at
home! Why also stop with a communistic home
market whose opportunities are merely the collec-
tive property of the nation, but to which the con-
sumers have no title proportional to their individual
consuming? If it is good for the individual nation
it is no less good for the individual citizen whose
consuming has produced it. I would therefore sug-
gest that you complete your protective system and
individualize your home market!"
156 The Making of a Millennium.
"Individualize the home market! Inaugurate
Centrism! Not while my name is Joseph Carson!"
the staunch protectionist vigorously responded.
"Are not our people prosperous enough? There is
no need of Centrism in America ! Humph, I'm not re-
turning for the purpose of dissipating my fortune;
nor to spend the last penny of my half million in-
come ! I can live sumptuously on ten per cent, of it,
and the rest I can invest profitably, I guess! I'd
be a fool to want Centrism. I'd simply have to spend
all my income ; and forbidden to place any in new in-
vestments, my properties would by degrees dissi-
pate themselves leaving me pauperized! It's likely
I 'd advocate Centrism, isn 't it ?
"What was it, by the way, the ant said to the
cricket! 'You chirped gaily in the summer while I
was busy gathering stores ; my stores are all in now,
and I wouldn't mind lending you a bite occasionally
whenever I can see a safe return and a little profit
guaranteed.' The ant's reply was very good, and I
make the same reply to Centrism. ' '
"Centrism accepts your reply," retorted the
Templorian. "You offer to lend products, but you
forget that Centrism does not ask for loans. On the
contrary, it requests the return of loans long over-
due. You have lost sight of the music the crickets
furnished while you were storing provisions. It's
their turn now to store while you return the music
you borrowed. This music of consuming, you can-
not deny, has a real value; it represents demand
the biggest part of value, as values go under
commercialism and having benefited from it,
it is no more than right it should be re-
turried. We are not longing to have any more debt
Where Art Thou, Adam? 157
links added to our chain of bondage; our aim is to
shorten this chain until there is nothing' left of it.
Eemember also that this 'borrowed' music will be-
come stolen music if its return is refused. Centrism
extends the domain of the command 'thou shalt not
steal.' "
"Who would consider such a wholesale dispos-
session as Centrism would produce," protested the
former steel magnate. "We capitalists would never
give it "our consent."
' ' You certainly do not mean what you say, Mr.
Carson," Grandpa Zeke reproachfully answered.
"You would not refuse consent to a project at once so
wholesome and just! You would not have justice
degraded into a mere instrument of selffishness an
armor to shield the nobility of wealth, but withheld
from the impoverished multitudes? In past ages
the multitude have been denied arms, education,
liberty of thought, voice in government every
weapon of defense against their 'noble' masters
and now the weapon of justice is to be withheld, so
as to perpetuate their bondage ! In an age of light
all crime is darker, and this one, perpetrated in the
full knowledge of its infamy, were thereby made the
darkest of them all !
"Why should the glitter of gold appeal to you
in the full light of its iniquity and shame never
again to become a badge of merit or distinction un-
til Centrism make worth and wealth synonymous ? Do
you really believe the liberality, charity and other
fineries with which you surround your immediate
self can stay the finger of accusation pointing to the
poverty, the crime and the bloodshed directly
158 The Making of a Millennium.
chargeable to the system you would support and
from which your fineries are derived?
"Look at things as they really are, and not
through the false light by which they have been
seen in the past ; ask yourself whether It were better
to be dispossessed of a tainted affluence, but not
pauperized as you put it, or to be dispossessed of
all respect and manhood?
' ' If you consider it an affliction to part with this
unrighteous privilege, what language shal> define
the horrors to which the multitude has for ages been
subjected under your system of merciless and real
pauperization! Imagine a world-wide disposses-
sion in progress from day to day, from year to year,
from century to century! A maddening disposses-
sion that stripped the workingman to the very bone,
that corrupted his soul, that Jiounded his life with
indescribable misery and wretchedness !
11 Consider the economic situation: Opportun-
ity, the key to God's household, in the hands of the
abstainer; and no man permitted to enter without
the price of admission the pound of flesh. What
else were the profits exacted but so much flesh liv-
ing flesh, imbued with soul and dripping with blood
a reality and no mere metaphor ! What else were
those margins of profit but bricks of the house of
possession bricks that were to keep the body in
flesh, the mind informed, the soul cheered. They
were bricks of liberty if retained, but if parted
with, death and bondage. And these bricks had to
be sacrificed as the only alternative to exclusion as
outcasts, starvelings, tramps!
"Seemingly harmless and beautiful, the smiling
serpent of abstention was a dragon from whose
Where Art Thou, Adam? 159
body, as from the fabled hedgehog, poured myriads
of invisible little daggers of dispossession. Onward
advanced this smiling but terrible monster this ir-
resistible battery of daggers which no man saw but
which all men felt. Onward strode the devouring
beast, more powerful than all mankind. Onward
sped the bristling monster, like a conqueror, driv-
ing all before him ! How it drove men, pell mel.1, into
a whirl of rout and confusion and into a bitterness of
strife in which they tore one another to pieces ! It
was indeed a rout of shame a rout of madness!
" Shorn of opportunity, driven by the relent-
less fury of this pauperizing monster, they one by
one, and each by piecemeal, lost what little they had
of home, of shop, of wares laboring through the
generations that went and came, as in a treadmill,
in which they slaved and slaved and made delusive
progress. All they had the routed multitudes flung
to the winds in their flight of despair and abandon-
ment, parting not alone with wealth Ibut with char-
acter, self respect, manhood, even to the last ves-
tige of human semblance, leaving their thousands
spoiled to the nakedness of beasts !
"What answer could these mortals have given,
had the call come from the Lord, 'Where art thou,
Adam?'
' ' Aye, where art thou ? What art thou doing to
stem the tide of rout? What doing to defend thy
Eden? Hast let into thy garden the serpent of ab-
stention with his lying tongue, false cheapness? Hast
listened to him? Hast tasted of his fruit loans,
hired homes and hireling jobs, hired roadways and
hired public utilities? Hast worn these gilded fet-
ters? Hast been down upon thy face worshipping
160
The Making of a Millennium.
Where Art Thou, Adam? 161
the serpent of abstention the god of mammon?
Craven souls, what answer shall ye give when the
call again comes, 'Where art thou, Adam?'
"Will you answer, saying, 'Lord, all is well; we
have seen no serpent in the garden. We are not
living in the nakedness of dispossession.' Will ye
lie to Him with the shamelessness of the serpent?
Will ye deny the rout the deadly stampede of blind-
ed selfishness in which ye trample over one another
like beasts, every tie of brotherhood rent a divided
being whose visionless hands pluck out his very
eyes ? Will ye seek to hide from heaven the naked-
ness of your status, fallen tcr the uttermost depths?
Will ye still deny the division of your house and the
flight of dispossession?
"Ah, my friend," the venerable speaker re-
sumed after a pause, turning to the former steel
magnate, "the disinheritance of mankind is quite a
different dispossession from that which would be
imposed upon outworld capitalists by Centrism.
They would not be sent adrift as outcasts; they
would not* be rendered homeless, nor left encumb-
ered ; they would not be severed from opportunity,
a prey to starvation. They would be merely trans-
ferred from an atmosphere of delusion into a world
of realty a world not of extremes, but of healthy
prosperity and honest thrift. In the dignity of man-
hood and self respect they would stand as far above
their previous selves as an honest man towers above
the level of the thief ! What becomes of the boasted
charity of your wealthy citizens, if restitution, which
should precede charity, is to be denied? Where
shall they stand hereafter, coming into court for
protection to their property, yet denying protection
162 The Making of a Millennium.
to that of others yea, with the taint of their falsely-
acquired wealth still clinging to them? What inter-
est will a denuded multitude have in lending their
support to laws making flesh of the rich man's
wealth and fish of the poor man 's wage f ' '
"Were the evils of abstention but half as bad
as you have painted them," the Philadelphian coldly
protested, after some reflection, "I would be ready
to concede the wisdom of putting Centrism in force.
In my judgment, however, there is little need of
them in my country; a poor man there is always
able by thrift and enterprise to rise to the pinnacle
of wealth. ' '
"Every poor boy in our country," replied Mr.
Oswald, "is said to have a chance to become presi-
dent some day; but you'll agree it wouldn't be very
wise in him to barter away any political rights for
that chance. Do you think it were wise in the work-
ing classes to forego the two-thirds or three-rourths
of the wage they are now losing, for the sake of one
chance in a thousand of acquiring a fortune. I would
rather advise them, if they wanted fortunes, to in-
vest in a lottery and thus win them more honestly
and with less delusion than by such thrift. The
thrift, that carries in it theft of opportunity, cannot
be cozened into respectability. Let the workingman
have what -is due him; that is all he asks were it
even less than his fathers had before him."
"I can see clearly," Mr. Carson finally admit-
ted, "that we capitalists would have a poor case to
take into court; and yet, on my return to the out-
world, I dare say, I'll try to bluff it out. Nothing
succeeds like success; and I've seen more than one
poor case successfully pulled through the courts. I
will very likely simply keep cool and hold the fort."
Where Art Thou, Adam? 163
"You are at liberty to hold the fort if you de-
sire to," indignantly retorted Mr. Oswald, "you
may go on sowing dragon's teeth; but when they
crop up, each separate tooth an armed warrior
bent on destruction, on whom will be the blame?
You may go on sowing the seeds of repulsion in-
jecting your thousands of toll gates along the high-
ways of human necessity, excluding all who refuse
your tolls and driving them into the byways of
wasteful isolation. You may exclude the multitude
from free co-operation, and with your sharp wedges
of ejection sever all the bonds^of affiliation driving
man from man in every field of occupation and along
every phase of existence rending, dwarfing and
distorting every faculty of mind, every organ of the
body building up one vast overgrown abnormity of
both individual and collective development, all
weakened and diseased and deformed. You may
continue your man-killing and nation-killing devas-
tations as in the past, inscribing on every page of
history the skull and cross bones of your piracy!
You may fill the earth with the tombs of buried na-
tions, and lead on, fettered in chains of bondage,
your paralytic survivors, whose anaemic industrial
bodies have other causes than capitalism to thank
for their prolonged existence. But for periods of
respite gained in new and not yet capital-burdened
lands; but for the undercurrent of progress, im-
pelled onward through science and education but
for these, and other mighty resistances to low stand-
ards, the suicidal influence of capitalism had long
ago swept this earth like a devouring pestilence,
leaving it one vast burial ground of desolation." %
164 The Making of a Millennium.
Reflecting afterwards upon the remarks I had
overheard, I was perfectly horror stricken. The
thought of the millions in the outworld eking out a
wretched existence in the slums was sickening
enough; and the wrangling hell of war and strife,
of overwork and worry, and gnawing disappoint-
ment, what an appalling array of separate tor-
tures these added to the load of woe this groaning
Atlas had to bear a burden so full of horrors that
the human eye sees but its shadows, and keen imag-
ination dares but hint at them.
Not labor, not honest sweat, had been Adam's
curse. These are natural to man's happiness; they
belonged in Eden. But the outcast status to labor
by permission, seeking place upon cringed knee, in
the sweat of strife, with his hand against his broth-
er to decide which shall trample, which be trampled
on; which work, which starve in dispossession the
rack of this ignoble status, this was Adam's curse.
This was the curse. The tempter had come to
our first parents holding to their gaze the apple of
loan the fruit of abstinence, which was the for-
bidden fruit. The serpent told them it was good.
They had not yet learned to doubt. In their inno-
cence they were blind, and they partook of the ac-
cursed fruit. From that moment, by imperceptible
degrees, the fair garden began to fade-^its charm,
its abundance, its security, its innocence and then
also division and dissensions arose strife, blood-
shed and agonies untold. The sky frowned ever
blacker; dark clouds shot swift arrows of hate into
man's bosom;' and the battle of the ages began to
rage till the rivers ran red with the blood of a mil-
lion Abels. Lo, the broad vistas of Eden were being
Where Art Thou, Adam? 165
encircled by the serpent, and the earth had no longer
room for the children of man. The human family had
become accursed wanderers homeless, fatherless,
Godless. Godless indeed, with every man's hand
raised against his brother. Well indeed might the
call be made in this day of our nakedness : 1 1 Where
art thou, Adam?"
CHAPTER XII.
Homeward Bound.
"Men of thought! be up and stirring
Night and day:
Sow the seed withdraw the curtain
Clear the way!
Men of action, aid and cheer them
As ye may!
There's a fount about to stream,
There's a light about to beam,
There's a warmth about to glow,
There's a flower about to blow;
There's a midnight blackness changing
Into gray;
Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way."
Mackay.
Without waiting for the enlargement of the tun-
nel an expedition was organized under command of
Captain Clark to explore the region of its outlet
upon Outworld Island, which was to become the gate -
way between the two worlds; and no one felt more
thankful than myself on learning that my offer to
join had been accepted.
It was a long and arduous journey, having to
drag our luggage through this narrow aperture, and
not only' being obliged to stoop all the way, but
suffering terribly from the foul atmosphere within.
All our distress was nevertheless soon forgotten,
after emerging into the fair daylight, where the
crisp air, the crimson glory of a semi-trophical sun-
set, and the exercise of our cramped limbs, seemed
to refresh all our energies.
Homeward Bound. 167
Not twenty yards from the spot at which we had
emerged was a fine stream by the side of which we
pitched our tents, retiring at an early hour. In the
morning, scarcely having been allowed sufficient time
to fairly gulp down my breakfast, I was required to
join our chief in the ascent of a peak overlooking the
camp. We were to locate a place up there for a sig-
nal station from which to hail passing vessels.
The upward journey was naturally circuitous,
but on an easy incline, our worst difficulty being to
force our way through the dense tangles of brush
and brier. Here and there we passed through beau-
tiful glades shaded by stately palms, under whose
friendly shelter we frequently" lingered to recuper-
ate our exhausted limbs. At intervals, when in range
of the camp, we would signal to our comrades below,
whose responses were a welcome sound in the awful
solitude of the region.
Delicious wild fruits, grapes and berries were
occasionally encountered, and thousands of monster
rabbits infested the brush, one of whom caught by
my companion in the fork of a notched stick had
afterwards followed us quite a distance, like a pet
dog. Birds of brilliant plumage were also in abund-
ant evidence ; but I do not recall a single songster.
Ascending to a great height, far beyond signal-
ing distance, we turned a sharp curve, upon which
the Captain raised his field glass, and after some ef-
fort, managed to sight the camp.
"By Jupiter!" he suddenly exclaimed, "they're
hailing us to come back. What the deuce can they
mean?"
Then a pistol shot rang out, and was followed
by another; and then several more, until the hills
echoed with their reverberations.
168 The Making of a Millennium.
My companion handed me the glass, and as I
gazed in the direction of the camp, I could see the
whole crowd rushing toward the mouth of the tun-
nel.
What could it mean! We were both at our wit's
end to account for their strange action. It certainly
boded no good.
The Captain took another glance, only to con-
firm what I had seen.
"Shiver my timbers!" the old salt exclaimed,
"I believe something has hapened to the tunnel, and
something very serious; or else they would have
waited for us."
By the time we had each taken another look
through the glass, not a man of them was to be seen.
Instinctively, without another word, we both
started to go back, recklessly tumbling and sliding
down many a steep declivity to shorten the distance.
Arriving finally at the. camp, our worst fears
were realized, a note tacked at the door of our tent
informing us that a leak had been discovered in the
tunnel. The latter was in danger of flooding and
complete destruction in less than three hours unless
in the meantime ~a permanent repair should be ef-
fected.
I was about to start on a rush for the tunnel
when my companion caught me by the arm.
"Hold on, Ben," he cried, "what d' ye mean
flying into that death trap ! ' '
"We don't want to be marooned!" I exclaimed,
endeavoring to tear myself away. "Why not save
ourselves?"
"We'll be more likely to save ourselves by re-
maining right here than by flying into that hole. As
Homeward Bound. 169
to being marooned, this place isn't so Bad with
food plentiful, and as lovely a spot as one could well
imagine. Besides, if the tunnel's gone up, we're on
the right side here to reach the outworld with Tem-
ploria's message."
I made no further attempt to enter the dark hole
of the tunnel, and well enough for me ; for about an
hour later, a pebble thrown into its depths resound-
ed with a splash that told the whole story. The un-
derground passage was flooded. We were now doubly
marooned, exiled from either world doomed pos-
sibly to remain here for the rest of our days. Who
could tell.
" We arose in good spirits nevertheless on the fol-
lowing morning, resuming the ascent so abruptly
terminated on the previous day. The erection of a
signal station was now more than ever imperative.
By evening we had already located a favorable spot
for the station, and we felt greatly relieved when we
threw ourselves upon the ground to enjoy our
night's rest.
Eeturning to camp on the following day, we
cached the bulk of the supplies and commenced car-
rying the remainder in installments to the station
on the summit a task occupying the best part of a
week.
Settled down finally in our new quarters, we
went to work with a vim, gathering a store of fire-
wood and cutting down timbers for our signal sta-
tion, whose plan my companion would not divulge.
I worked faithfully under his orders neverthe-
less, assisting him in what ways I could. Five pairs
of tall poles had first to be set up in a row, facing
the sea, no easy task with the limited facilities at
170
The Making of a Millennium.
our command. Under the Captain's direction, how-
ever, with the aid of tough grape vines in lieu of
ropes, we managed by a slow but gradual process to
set in place the bulky timbers.
Our Distress Signal.
After the poles were up I had the pleasure of
watching my companion interweave the portion of
space between with leafy branches, his work by de-
grees acquiring a sufficient completeness to reveal
the formation of distinct alphabetical letters. The
letters "H" and'"L" were the first I could de-
cipher; and soon after the letters of the word
"HJELP" appeared, formed as legibly as if it had
been chalked out on a wall. There it stood, the word
"HELP" in bold capital letters, their base elevated
Homeward Bound. 171
about four feet above the ground. Back of it the
ground sloped upward, leaving a nearly level strip
on which to light the bon fire that was to illumnate
and attract attention to it. That word was to be our
first message to the outworld. Would it ever attract
the passing mariner's eye? And should we be finally
saved, how about that greater message the torch
of Centrism that was to cast its rays upon the dark
waters of the sea of commerce ? Would the beclouded
and despairing mariners upon that sea heed the
dangerous rocks and be piloted by Centrism?
We had a beautiful outlook from our lofty emin-
ence, with the unbroken expanse of sea upon one
side, and on the other, looming up in matchless
splendor, the vast wall of luminous vapor that sep-
arated Temploria from the outworld. Like massive
ice cliffs they towered aloft, blending with the skies
in a strange radiance that capped the blissful island
like a crown of glory.
While my nautical friend was completing his
ingenious device I was busily engaged starting an
immense bon fire on the elevated strip of ground
back of it; and as its broad blaze afterwards shot
up high in air, its glow thrilled me with joy and hope.
What vessel could pass without reading that
single eloquent word! It's four letters spoke vol-
umes, communicating to the passing vessel the fact
that this was no idle bon fire built for savage festi-
vities but a cry of distress from a party of Anglo
Saxons.
From the hour the great blaze began to flicker
we kept on feeding our "baby" as we dubbed it,
never ceasing to add armful after armful of com-
bustibles; and this task kept us both so busy there
172 The Making ot a Millennium.
was no time left for worry or anxiety. From morn-
ing till night and from night till morning we took
turns at this work, to which we soon became thor-
oughly habituated.
Several weeks drifted by in this manner with-
out the first sign of a ship. One night, I believe it
was in the fourth week, while my nautical friend was
on guard, as usual feeding the "baby" and alter-
nately gazing seaward as he paced to and fro, it
seemed to him as if the outline of a vessel were dim-
ly visible. The hour was just before dawn, and while
staring intently to further assure himself, old. Sol
came quietly bobbing up, his great candle exposing
the vessel so distinctly that doubt was no longer pos-
sible.
Overjoyed at this revelation, he ran forthwith to
the tent where I was lying asleep ; and shaking me up
most unceremoniously, he went on shouting and
prancing as if possessed.
The suddenness of my waking startled me, and
the sight of my companion carrying on like a wild
man served only to intensify my bewilderment.
"A ship! a ship, Ben, we're saved!" he cried
at the top of his voice ; and he kept on repeating the
words as if he had gone daft.
As the meaning of these words dawned upon
me, a great thrill of joy filled my heart and I rushed
out, determined to see for myself.
By this time it was clear daylight, and the ves-
sel was plainly visible to the naked eye.
It was now my turn to lose self control; and I
flew at once into the Captain's arms, hugging and
whirling him around in a wild dance over the rough
sod.
Homeward Bound. 173
Clearer and clearer grew the outlines of the ap-
proaching vessel, and as we took turns soon after in
glancing through our field glass, we could discern a
boat that had been lowered, a mere speck on the
horizon, heading for the shore.
Without a moment's further delay we now
started on the downward journey; hurrying along
at a breakneck speed; performing acrobatic feats
and odd stunts we would never ordinarily have
dared to risk, and finally arriving at the beach just
as the small boat was pulling in. We waded out to
meet it, and were soon being borne onward toward
the great ship.
To make a long story short, we were taken safe-
ly aboard the British steamer " Huxley," bound for
Liverpool with a cargo of Australian wheat.
The captain of the vessel at first flatly refused
to believe our story ; and not until we had gone over
all the details of our experience, explaining the
magic of Centrism and describing the wonderful fa-
cilities of templism and the unique features of Bed
Cross, would he give our words any credence.
My companion fortunately had friends in Liver-
pool from whom we secured the means of return to
New York, where our arrival had been anticipated
through Liverpool dispatches, taken by wireless
prior to our landing there, and cabled to New York
on the same day.
My parents had already given me up for dead,
and their joy may be imagined first on receiving
the news of my rescue by the " Huxley," and after-
wards on greeting me as I stepped ashore.
With what eagerness the old folks listened to my
narrative, now nodding approval and anon shaking
174 The Making of a Millennium.
their heads with doubt, at its strange incidents. On
explaining to father how Centrism had dissolved the
old order, completely eradicating capitalism, he
seemed staggered at the revelation. His mind was
in a strange quandary, shocked at this reversal of all
previous experience, yet able to interpose no ra-
tional objection to its truth and consistency. Doubt
the achievement as he would, its clear philosophy
soon dissipated the last remnant of fog lingering in
his mind, and his repugnance was soon turned into
an unbounded enthusiasm in its favor. He even
went so far as to maintain it was the only salvation
for modern society.
One of the first things I did after my home ar-
rival was to visit the scene of the labor fracas to
which my remarkable adventure was due. Strange
to say, no one in the vicinity seemed to recall that
singular event. Even the whereabouts of Margaret
was a mystery I was unable to solve until on the sec-
ond day of my search, when I accidentally stumbled
upon her settlement home, now deserted. Through
neighbors I was directed to her place of residence,
learning also to my chagrin that she was confined
there in the last stage of consumption.
Calling at the residence, it was only after con-
siderable persuasion that I was permitted to see her.
A pale, emancipated woman with flushed cheeks,
regular features and a pair of singularly sparkling
blue eyes, greeted me, modestly apologizing for not
rising to meet me.
Reciting briefly the incidents of the memorable
clash between the rival labor factions, I introduced
myself, asking her if she could still recall the inci-
dent.
Homeward Bound. 175
1 1 Yes, yes, I remember ; ' ' she quickly responded,
"were you there?"
I thereupon narrated the sequel to this incident
telling how I had been injured by a flying missile,
* my revival aboard ship and the delirium in which I
had witnessed squads of workingmen parading with
I Tell My Story.
banners calling for "A Hundred Jobs for Every
Hundred Men."
"Oh that your dream had been true!" she ex-
claimed with a fierce earnestness. "That getting of
the full hundred jobs is the real quest of labor's
knighthood. There should be a job for every man;
and until there is, there will never be a full wage."
She remained silent for a while after the exer-
tion of this speech, and then resumed, confiding to
176 The Making of a Millennium.
me her sympathy for the scheme of socialism which
in her opinion was some day to be perfected. Be-
lieving thus, she had devoted herself to settlement
work and had urged upon the working classes the
quest for the full hundred jobs, warning them not to '
allow their energies to become completely absorbed
in the strife for the poorly paid thirty they now had.
Margaret had evidently no idea of Centrism,
whose fundamental principal her keen intuitive
judgment had anticipated in her call for the full
hundred jobs.
On relating my Templorian experiences and de-
tailing the features of Centrism, her countenance as
sumed a wonderful radiance; and raising herself
from the pillow, she gazed at me with a rapture I
had never before seen in mortal face. Every word
and sentence she seemed to weigh as it came from my
lips, with marvelous apprehension.
To my surprise after I had finished, she rose
from her couch, and grasping my hand, fervently
thanked me for the good tidings.
' l Though I shall not survive to witness the glor-
ies of the coming social resurrection, my brother,"
she resumed, reclining once more upon her pillow,
' ' the light of my life shall not go out like a ship sink-
ing in the midst of storm and darkness, but as one
entering upon a pleasant voyage, in the full reful-
gence of day. My soul will take wing gazing toward
the heaven of that higher plane foreshadowed in
your message a new environment for humanity
a new soil for that great tree of which we are as the
leaves and in whose greater life our lives are truly
made immortal."
Homeward Bound. 177
' l You evidently believe in the unity and the eter-
nity of life ? " I interrogated.
"Life is a great pendulum, beating across the
eternities;" she resumed, "back and forth, back and
forth it swings twixt waking and slumber, forma-
tion and. dissolution, parting and reunion, life and
death one eternal coming and going, accompanied
with endless rounds of lights and shades joy and
sorrow, pleasure and pain, hope and despair. No
extreme but reacts ; naught leaving but returns. In
the pathway of voluntary activity there is but one
guiding star the light that leads onward, upward
toward growth, expansion, progress.
"I do not know what is your belief, my brother,
but to me our here is yesterday's hereafter; and to-
morrow will be the hereafter of today. We are the
same life remoulded; and although individual con-
nection with past beings cannot be traced, are we
any less the likenesses of those who have preceded
us composites of the self-same attributes, the same
affections, the same vision and impulse, given the
same flesh and moved by the same heart throbs-
differing less perhaps than the self-same mortal
passing his journey from infancy to ripe age? Can
we strain our fancy to embrace as one being the tiny
infant, the prancing schoolboy, the stalwart adult
and the bent and shrunken graybeard, and yet stare
blankly at returning friends and lovers because the
grave and the mask of place and time intervene to
hide their identity! To me every love and every af-
finity, is the resurrection of a former love, and there
is no break in the chain of life or love. I revere the
dead most in honoring the living; for the living are
the dead, whose lives are carried forward through
178 The Making of a Millennium.
the living. Nothing dieth but to be born again, even
as the dead planets are absorbed to the living ones ;
and so in all life the living absorbs the dying and the
dead. Like the circling orbs of heaven we meet
again in endlessly repeated cycles, and it is our own
fault if we fail to greet the new loves as the return
of parted ones.
"Rightly we are dual creatures, each a distinct
but inseparable part of the one body that is man-
kind, the immortal man; and living this dual life,
feeling with and responding to the collective as well
as the individual impulses living the life of the all-
self that is humanity as well as the individual self,
the fullness of our life as well as its immortality will
be realized. If we do our part, striving for the good
of all as well as for the good of the narrower self,
believe me, no grave will e 'er seem narrow -no night
seem dark."
Deeply impressed by the remarkable views of
this woman, I remained silent, wrapt in contem-
plation the patient meanwhile, fatigued by her ex-
treme effort, sinking gradually into a profound
slumber.
Calling again upon the following day, T was
shocked and sorely grieved to learn that our heroine
had passed away in the early hours of the morning,
having been delirious much of the time. In some of
these spells she had fancied herself addressing hosts
of workingmen, urging them to strike for "the full
hundred jobs." "Strike, I tell you, strike!" she
would cry out in the dead hours, "Strike at the bal-
lot box, for Centrism; for a hundred jobs to every
hundred men!" These were her last words.
Homeward Bound. 179
Two days later I attended the funeral and saw
laid away the remains of this heroic woman, mar-
tyred in the rescue of fellow beings whose lives had
been warped on the rack of modern commercialism ;
and then I asked myself how many more martyrs
this monster will crave. How long will this mino-
taur continue to ravage the earth?
The following day I began again to mingle in
the bustle of outworld activity; and how strangely
now a baneful gloom, as of some new thraldom,
seemed to darken my horizon. The atmosphere of
my surroundings boded an v indescribable but awful
change. I felt as if somehow plunged centuries and
centuries back into some dark age in which one had
to grovel and stoop, constantly dodging and hiding
in order to escape its daily downpour of abuse. Did
I really belong here, where people would stare at me
and look askant at each candid expression of my
thoughts or sentiments'? How they would whisper
and wink with knowing looks, and keep at a distance,
as if I had been an escaped lunatic. How many
thoughts I had to conceal to avoid misinterpretation
and abuse and to obviate the waste of my faculties
in petty strife !
With all its frivolities, its dominant note was
sad and depressing its faces dark with anxiety,
worry, despair and weariness. The great majority
rushed hither and thither as if driven by a relent-
less fate. No man was behind them, yet whips
ever so invisible -were impelling them on as truly
as ever lash fell upon the back of a slave. Shop
windows and all exposed surfaces on the streets
180 The Making of a Millennium.
seemed to be placarded with appeals pitifully im-
ploring attention. Behind the eloquent posters and
between their lines I could detect men down upon
their knees, and not poor men either, begging for
trade, so as to secure as profits the portion of
value which the short-value wage scales of com-
merce failed to deliver. I could almost hear the mad
bull bellowing of the successful and the groans of
the defeated competitors in this gladiatorial busi-
ness arena. Seldom I opened a newspaper but to be
confronted with glaring head lines booming with the
the roar of cannon and lurid with the flash of cursed
death missiles being poured into God's temples of
human flesh. Over these murders no coroner sits;
no nation asks for accounting, and the voice of the
press is dumb with impotence. The heavens them-
selves are silent; for whatever evil is in man's
power to remedy he suffers justly, while the evil
lasts.
What is to be expected of thrones resting on the
hunger for unearned revenue and the thirst for un-
earned dominion 1 ? Even the throne of public opin-
ion, the press, is a commercial kite a barometer of
affairs registering only the pressure of the monetary
atmosphere, and therefore degenerated into a mere
handbill and slave of a corrupt commerce. When the
public ear dare not believe half that is said by the
public tongue its own heart beats drowned in the
clamor of hireling notes it is an ominous token.
Every day, wherever I chose to go, I met hu-
manity dragging its chain, scraping, fawning, beg-
ging from early morning till late in the night all
going to market to dispose of their services, without
a centret to show with no more claim upon the op-
Homeward Bound. 181
portunities they had brought into existence than had
the slave upon the products his labor had brought
into existence. Degraded into dependence, men were
sinking deeper and deeper into the mire drifting
whither chance led, impelled alternately by hunger,
by despair and by the ignis fatuus of wealth.
A keenly sensitive man, unless in some manner
especially gifted or favored and not always then
had no more place under its unsocial roof than
had the white laborer in the ante bellum South,
where common labor was all done by slaves. The
sensitive man, like this white laborer, was simply
relegated into industrial exile as one of the "poor
white trash" of modern commercialism.
I heard men in turn groan over their helpless-
ness and anon jest and trifle with the very causes
making them so treading among serpents indif-
ferent, cold, blind and alive only after their own
blood is infected and their own flesh agonized by the
reptile fangs. Is it not time humanity were roused
to see the hell raging within itself! Is it not time
the flame of the narrower selfishness were smothered
that humanity shook off its cuckoo snake this de-
vouring monster still coiled around the quivering
sweat fowl of industry? It it not time the soul of
humanity were awakened to its shame to realize
the dreadful stain upon its name the brand of
slavery? Is it not time to cleanse itself of this vile
sin and prepare for the resurrection yea, for the
coming of the kingdom?
How 1 sighed for Temploria Temploria, that
mist-encircled realm forecasting the prophesied
182 The Making of a Millennium.
messianic reign that fairer world in which the rack
of poverty, the depravities of vice and the butcher-
ies of war are unknown.
But for the hope of a new Temploria I could not
have endured the shocking conditions that prevailed
so painful to me, after my sojourn in that distant
land of the millennium. I should indeed have sunk
in despair but for hope's candle peering through
every cloud heralding the near approach of God's
kingdom.
The darkness of my surroundings was in reality
a dream, whose hideous image was soon to fade in
the light of the approaching day: for Temploria
the potential is the real world, ordained to live
long after the present order has disappeared in the
gloaming of history's night.
The creeds of the world adhering to the old or-
der and combating progress at every step holding
their faces ever backward turned shall all petrify
like Lot, dead monuments of disobedience to the
bugle call of God's creative march.
It matters not where I^go or whither I turn, I
can see Temploria a queen of beauty, mounted
upon the eternal rocks and glittering in the pure
light of truth and justice the sun of the coming
day resplendent to all but evil eyes and owlish
ignorance. She rests upon no false pillars of priv-
ilege and unbelief. Her sword is justice, and her
church is truth. Her people walk erect, proud men,
humanized no longer creeping ape-like, nor lean-
ing upon the crutch of blind authority.
The . grand edict, the decalogue, forbidding
theft and murder, proclaimed a fundamental and
wide-spread liberty the liberty of each man to live
Homeward Bound. 183
and to enjoy unmolested the fruit of his own in-
dustry. Not from the clouds of Sinai speaks the
Lord today, but from the great heart of humanity,
re-asserting His command, "Thou shalt not steal."
Thou shalt not steal; nor veiled by indirection, rob
thy brother of either opportunity or of bread. Nor
shalt thou starve thy brother, goading him to strife
and bloodshed ; nor shalt thou wantonly, in the name
of law, destroy thy fellow man. The name of the law
shall not be used in vain.
Behold, the blood-bespattered Babylon of mod-
ern mammon that hoary empire spewed from the
mouth of hell still thrones her upstart rulers ; still
reigns through stealthy scepters ; still crowns power
above law!
Woe to her dynasty ! Woe unto her reign !
The secret of her sorcery is revealed : the mask
torn from her lying visage. The fountain of her
darkness has been brought to light : the source of all
her mockeries her empty titles and her shallow
crowns, her bloated gods and stilted palaces all the
deceptive sheen and glitter of her pomp. Her bub-
ble of false glory has been burst her day-masked
darkness swept into the bosom of oblivion !
For lo, the end is nigh! Again is the writing
upon the wall the final verdict:
Mene. Mene. Tekel. Upharsin.
Thy kingdom is ended. It hath been weighed,
and found wanting. The judgment is upon it.
(FINIS).
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