| Chapter 9
| 0 | |
| Dr. and Mrs. Leete were evidently not a little startled to learn,
when they presently appeared, that I had been all over the city
alone that morning, and it was apparent that they were agreeably
surprised to see that I seemed so little agitated after the
experience.
| 1 | |
| "Your stroll could scarcely have failed to be a very interesting
one," said Mrs. Leete, as we sat down to table soon after. "You
must have seen a good many new things."
| 2 | |
| "I saw very little that was not new," I replied. "But I think
what surprised me as much as anything was not to find any
stores on Washington Street, or any banks on State. What have
you done with the merchants and bankers? Hung them all,
perhaps, as the anarchists wanted to do in my day?"
| 3 | |
| "Not so bad as that," replied Dr. Leete. "We have simply
dispensed with them. Their functions are obsolete in the
modern world."
| 4 | |
| "Who sells you things when you want to buy them?" I
inquired.
| 5 | |
| "There is neither selling nor buying nowadays; the distribution
of goods is effected in another way. As to the bankers,
having no money we have no use for those gentry."
| 6 | |
| "Miss Leete," said I, turning to Edith, "I am afraid that your
father is making sport of me. I don't blame him, for the
temptation my innocence offers must be extraordinary. But,
really, there are limits to my credulity as to possible alterations
in the social system."
| 7 | |
| "Father has no idea of jesting, I am sure," she replied, with a
reassuring smile.
| 8 | |
| The conversation took another turn then, the point of ladies'
fashions in the nineteenth century being raised, if I remember
rightly, by Mrs. Leete, and it was not till after breakfast, when
the doctor had invited me up to the house-top, which appeared
to be a favorite resort of his, that he recurred to the subject.
| 9 | |
| "You were surprised," he said, "at my saying that we got along
without money or trade, but a moment's reflection will show
that trade existed and money was needed in your day simply
because the business of production was left in private hands, and
that, consequently, they are superfluous now."
| 10 | |
| "I do not at once see how that follows," I replied.
| 11 | |
| "It is very simple," said Dr. Leete. "When innumerable
different and independent persons produced the various things
needful to life and comfort, endless exchanges between individuals
were requisite in order that they might supply themselves
with what they desired. These exchanges constituted trade, and
money was essential as their medium. But as soon as the nation
became the sole producer of all sorts of commodities, there was
no need of exchanges between individuals that they might get
what they required. Everything was procurable from one source,
and nothing could be procured anywhere else. A system of direct
distribution from the national storehouses took the place of
trade, and for this money was unnecessary."
| 12 | |
| "How is this distribution managed?" I asked.
| 13 | |
| "On the simplest possible plan," replied Dr. Leete. "A credit
corresponding to his share of the annual product of the nation is
given to every citizen on the public books at the beginning of
each year, and a credit card issued him with which he procures at
the public storehouses, found in every community, whatever he
desires whenever he desires it. This arrangement, you will see,
totally obviates the necessity for business transactions of any sort
between individuals and consumers. Perhaps you would like to
see what our credit cards are like.
| 14 | |
| "You observe," he pursued as I was curiously examining the
piece of pasteboard he gave me, "that this card is issued for a
certain number of dollars. We have kept the old word, but not
the substance. The term, as we use it, answers to no real thing,
but merely serves as an algebraical symbol for comparing the
values of products with one another. For this purpose they are
all priced in dollars and cents, just as in your day. The value of
what I procure on this card is checked off by the clerk, who
pricks out of these tiers of squares the price of what I order."
| 15 | |
| "If you wanted to buy something of your neighbor, could you
transfer part of your credit to him as consideration?" I inquired.
| 16 | |
| "In the first place," replied Dr. Leete, "our neighbors have
nothing to sell us, but in any event our credit would not be
transferable, being strictly personal. Before the nation could
even think of honoring any such transfer as you speak of, it
would be bound to inquire into all the circumstances of the
transaction, so as to be able to guarantee its absolute equity. It
would have been reason enough, had there been no other, for
abolishing money, that its possession was no indication of
rightful title to it. In the hands of the man who had stolen it or
murdered for it, it was as good as in those which had earned it
by industry. People nowadays interchange gifts and favors out of
friendship, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent
with the mutual benevolence and disinterestedness which
should prevail between citizens and the sense of community of
interest which supports our social system. According to our
ideas, buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its
tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of
others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school
can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilization."
| 17 | |
| "What if you have to spend more than your card in any one
year?" I asked.
| 18 | |
| "The provision is so ample that we are more likely not to
spend it all," replied Dr. Leete. "But if extraordinary expenses
should exhaust it, we can obtain a limited advance on the next
year's credit, though this practice is not encouraged, and a heavy
discount is charged to check it. Of course if a man showed
himself a reckless spendthrift he would receive his allowance
monthly or weekly instead of yearly, or if necessary not be
permitted to handle it all."
| 19 | |
| "If you don't spend your allowance, I suppose it accumulates?"
| 20 | |
| "That is also permitted to a certain extent when a special
outlay is anticipated. But unless notice to the contrary is given, it
is presumed that the citizen who does not fully expend his credit
did not have occasion to do so, and the balance is turned into
the general surplus."
| 21 | |
| "Such a system does not encourage saving habits on the part
of citizens," I said.
| 22 | |
| "It is not intended to," was the reply. "The nation is rich, and
does not wish the people to deprive themselves of any good
thing. In your day, men were bound to lay up goods and money
against coming failure of the means of support and for their
children. This necessity made parsimony a virtue. But now it
would have no such laudable object, and, having lost its utility, it
has ceased to be regarded as a virtue. No man any more has any
care for the morrow, either for himself or his children, for the
nation guarantees the nurture, education, and comfortable
maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave."
| 23 | |
| "That is a sweeping guarantee!" I said. "What certainty can
there be that the value of a man's labor will recompense the
nation for its outlay on him? On the whole, society may be able
to support all its members, but some must earn less than enough
for their support, and others more; and that brings us back once
more to the wages question, on which you have hitherto said
nothing. It was at just this point, if you remember, that our talk
ended last evening; and I say again, as I did then, that here I
should suppose a national industrial system like yours would find
its main difficulty. How, I ask once more, can you adjust
satisfactorily the comparative wages or remuneration of the
multitude of avocations, so unlike and so incommensurable, which
are necessary for the service of society? In our day the market
rate determined the price of labor of all sorts, as well as of
goods. The employer paid as little as he could, and the worker
got as much. It was not a pretty system ethically, I admit; but it
did, at least, furnish us a rough and ready formula for settling a
question which must be settled ten thousand times a day if the
world was ever going to get forward. There seemed to us no
other practicable way of doing it."
| 24 | |
| "Yes," replied Dr. Leete, "it was the only practicable way
under a system which made the interests of every individual
antagonistic to those of every other; but it would have been a
pity if humanity could never have devised a better plan, for
yours was simply the application to the mutual relations of men
of the devil's maxim, `Your necessity is my opportunity.' The
reward of any service depended not upon its difficulty, danger, or
hardship, for throughout the world it seems that the most
perilous, severe, and repulsive labor was done by the worst paid
classes; but solely upon the strait of those who needed the
service."
| 25 | |
| "All that is conceded," I said. "But, with all its defects, the
plan of settling prices by the market rate was a practical plan;
and I cannot conceive what satisfactory substitute you can
have devised for it. The government being the only possible
employer, there is of course no labor market or market rate.
Wages of all sorts must be arbitrarily fixed by the government. I
cannot imagine a more complex and delicate function than that
must be, or one, however performed, more certain to breed
universal dissatisfaction."
| 26 | |
| "I beg your pardon," replied Dr. Leete, "but I think you
exaggerate the difficulty. Suppose a board of fairly sensible men
were charged with settling the wages for all sorts of trades under
a system which, like ours, guaranteed employment to all, while
permitting the choice of avocations. Don't you see that, however
unsatisfactory the first adjustment might be, the mistakes would
soon correct themselves? The favored trades would have too
many volunteers, and those discriminated against would lack
them till the errors were set right. But this is aside from the
purpose, for, though this plan would, I fancy, be practicable
enough, it is no part of our system."
| 27 | |
| "How, then, do you regulate wages?" I once more asked.
| 28 | |
| Dr. Leete did not reply till after several moments of meditative
silence. "I know, of course," he finally said, "enough of the
old order of things to understand just what you mean by that
question; and yet the present order is so utterly different at this
point that I am a little at loss how to answer you best. You ask
me how we regulate wages; I can only reply that there is no idea
in the modern social economy which at all corresponds with
what was meant by wages in your day."
| 29 | |
| "I suppose you mean that you have no money to pay wages
in," said I. "But the credit given the worker at the government
storehouse answers to his wages with us. How is the amount of
the credit given respectively to the workers in different lines
determined? By what title does the individual claim his particular
share? What is the basis of allotment?"
| 30 | |
| "His title," replied Dr. Leete, "is his humanity. The basis of
his claim is the fact that he is a man."
| 31 | |
| "The fact that he is a man!" I repeated, incredulously. "Do
you possibly mean that all have the same share?"
| 32 | |
| "Most assuredly."
| 33 | |
| The readers of this book never having practically known any
other arrangement, or perhaps very carefully considered the
historical accounts of former epochs in which a very different
system prevailed, cannot be expected to appreciate the stupor of
amazement into which Dr. Leete's simple statement plunged
me.
| 34 | |
| "You see," he said, smiling, "that it is not merely that we have
no money to pay wages in, but, as I said, we have nothing at all
answering to your idea of wages."
| 35 | |
| By this time I had pulled myself together sufficiently to voice
some of the criticisms which, man of the nineteenth century as I
was, came uppermost in my mind, upon this to me astounding
arrangement. "Some men do twice the work of others!" I exclaimed.
"Are the clever workmen content with a plan that
ranks them with the indifferent?"
| 36 | |
| "We leave no possible ground for any complaint of injustice,"
replied Dr. Leete, "by requiring precisely the same measure of
service from all."
| 37 | |
| "How can you do that, I should like to know, when no two
men's powers are the same?"
| 38 | |
| "Nothing could be simpler," was Dr. Leete's reply. "We
require of each that he shall make the same effort; that is, we
demand of him the best service it is in his power to give."
| 39 | |
| "And supposing all do the best they can," I answered, "the
amount of the product resulting is twice greater from one man
than from another."
| 40 | |
| "Very true," replied Dr. Leete; "but the amount of the
resulting product has nothing whatever to do with the question,
which is one of desert. Desert is a moral question, and the
amount of the product a material quantity. It would be an
extraordinary sort of logic which should try to determine a moral
question by a material standard. The amount of the effort alone
is pertinent to the question of desert. All men who do their best,
do the same. A man's endowments, however godlike, merely fix
the measure of his duty. The man of great endowments who
does not do all he might, though he may do more than a man of
small endowments who does his best, is deemed a less deserving
worker than the latter, and dies a debtor to his fellows. The
Creator sets men's tasks for them by the faculties he gives them;
we simply exact their fulfillment."
| 41 | |
| "No doubt that is very fine philosophy," I said; "nevertheless
it seems hard that the man who produces twice as much as
another, even if both do their best, should have only the same
share."
| 42 | |
| "Does it, indeed, seem so to you?" responded Dr. Leete.
"Now, do you know, that seems very curious to me? The way it
strikes people nowadays is, that a man who can produce twice as
much as another with the same effort, instead of being rewarded
for doing so, ought to be punished if he does not do so. In the
nineteenth century, when a horse pulled a heavier load than
a goat, I suppose you rewarded him. Now, we should have
whipped him soundly if he had not, on the ground that, being
much stronger, he ought to. It is singular how ethical standards
change." The doctor said this with such a twinkle in his eye that
I was obliged to laugh.
| 43 | |
| "I suppose," I said, "that the real reason that we rewarded
men for their endowments, while we considered those of horses
and goats merely as fixing the service to be severally required of
them, was that the animals, not being reasoning beings, naturally
did the best they could, whereas men could only be induced to
do so by rewarding them according to the amount of their
product. That brings me to ask why, unless human nature has
mightily changed in a hundred years, you are not under the same
necessity."
| 44 | |
| "We are," replied Dr. Leete. "I don't think there has been any
change in human nature in that respect since your day. It is still
so constituted that special incentives in the form of prizes, and
advantages to be gained, are requisite to call out the best
endeavors of the average man in any direction."
| 45 | |
| "But what inducement," I asked, "can a man have to put
forth his best endeavors when, however much or little he
accomplishes, his income remains the same? High characters
may be moved by devotion to the common welfare under such a
system, but does not the average man tend to rest back on his
oar, reasoning that it is of no use to make a special effort, since
the effort will not increase his income, nor its withholding
diminish it?"
| 46 | |
| "Does it then really seem to you," answered my companion,
"that human nature is insensible to any motives save fear of
want and love of luxury, that you should expect security and
equality of livelihood to leave them without possible incentives
to effort? Your contemporaries did not really think so, though
they might fancy they did. When it was a question of the
grandest class of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they
depended on quite other incentives. Not higher wages, but
honor and the hope of men's gratitude, patriotism and the
inspiration of duty, were the motives which they set before their
soldiers when it was a question of dying for the nation, and
never was there an age of the world when those motives did not
call out what is best and noblest in men. And not only this, but
when you come to analyze the love of money which was the
general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of
want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which
the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the
more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and
reputation for ability and success. So you see that though we
have abolished poverty and the fear of it, and inordinate luxury
with the hope of it, we have not touched the greater part of the
motives which underlay the love of money in former times, or
any of those which prompted the supremer sorts of effort. The
coarser motives, which no longer move us, have been replaced by
higher motives wholly unknown to the mere wage earners of
your age. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer
self-service, but service of the nation, patriotism, passion for
humanity, impel the worker as in your day they did the soldier.
The army of industry is an army, not alone by virtue of its
perfect organization, but by reason also of the ardor of self-
devotion which animates its members.
| 47 | |
| "But as you used to supplement the motives of patriotism
with the love of glory, in order to stimulate the valor of your
soldiers, so do we. Based as our industrial system is on the
principle of requiring the same unit of effort from every man,
that is, the best he can do, you will see that the means by which
we spur the workers to do their best must be a very essential part
of our scheme. With us, diligence in the national service is the
sole and certain way to public repute, social distinction, and
official power. The value of a man's services to society fixes his
rank in it. Compared with the effect of our social arrangements
in impelling men to be zealous in business, we deem the
object-lessons of biting poverty and wanton luxury on which you
depended a device as weak and uncertain as it was barbaric. The
lust of honor even in your sordid day notoriously impelled men
to more desperate effort than the love of money could."
| 48 | |
| "I should be extremely interested," I said, "to learn something
of what these social arrangements are."
| 49 | |
| "The scheme in its details," replied the doctor, "is of course
very elaborate, for it underlies the entire organization of our
industrial army; but a few words will give you a general idea of
it."
| 50 | |
| At this moment our talk was charmingly interrupted by the
emergence upon the aerial platform where we sat of Edith Leete.
She was dressed for the street, and had come to speak to her
father about some commission she was to do for him.
| 51 | |
| "By the way, Edith," he exclaimed, as she was about to leave
us to ourselves, "I wonder if Mr. West would not be interested
in visiting the store with you? I have been telling him something
about our system of distribution, and perhaps he might like to
see it in practical operation."
| 52 | |
| "My daughter," he added, turning to me, "is an indefatigable
shopper, and can tell you more about the stores than I can."
| 53 | |
| The proposition was naturally very agreeable to me, and Edith
being good enough to say that she should be glad to have my
company, we left the house together.
| 54 | |
|