Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887

  Chapter 13

  As Edith had promised he should do, Dr. Leete accompanied me to mybedroom when I retired, to instruct me as to the adjustment of themusical telephone. He showed how, by turning a screw, the volume of themusic could be made to fill the room, or die away to an echo so faintand far that one could scarcely be sure whether he heard or imaginedit. If, of two persons side by side, one desired to listen to music andthe other to sleep, it could be made audible to one and inaudible toanother.

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

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

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

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

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

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

  I dreamed that I sat on the throne of the Abencerrages in thebanqueting hall of the Alhambra, feasting my lords and generals, whonext day were to follow the crescent against the Christian dogs ofSpain. The air, cooled by the spray of fountains, was heavy with thescent of flowers. A band of Nautch girls, round-limbed andluscious-lipped, danced with voluptuous grace to the music of brazenand stringed instruments. Looking up to the latticed galleries, onecaught a gleam now and then from the eye of some beauty of the royalharem, looking down upon the assembled flower of Moorish chivalry.Louder and louder clashed the cymbals, wilder and wilder grew thestrain, till the blood of the desert race could no longer resist themartial delirium, and the swart nobles leaped to their feet; a thousandscimetars were bared, and the cry, "Allah il Allah!" shook the hall andawoke me, to find it broad daylight, and the room tingling with theelectric music of the "Turkish Reveille."

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

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

  "Yes," replied Dr. Leete, "the great nations of Europe as well asAustralia, Mexico, and parts of South America, are now organizedindustrially like the United States, which was the pioneer of theevolution. The peaceful relations of these nations are assured by aloose form of federal union of world-wide extent. An internationalcouncil regulates the mutual intercourse and commerce of the members ofthe union and their joint policy toward the more backward races, whichare gradually being educated up to civilized institutions. Completeautonomy within its own limits is enjoyed by every nation."

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

  "Oh, no; money is as superfluous in our foreign as in our internalrelations. When foreign commerce was conducted by private enterprise,money was necessary to adjust it on account of the multifariouscomplexity of the transactions; but nowadays it is a function of thenations as units. There are thus only a dozen or so merchants in theworld, and their business being supervised by the internationalcouncil, a simple system of book accounts serves perfectly to regulatetheir dealings. Customs duties of every sort are of course superfluous.A nation simply does not import what its government does not thinkrequisite for the general interest. Each nation has a bureau of foreignexchange, which manages its trading. For example, the American bureau,estimating such and such quantities of French goods necessary toAmerica for a given year, sends the order to the French bureau, whichin turn sends its order to our bureau. The same is done mutually by allthe nations."

  "But how are the prices of foreign goods settled, since there is nocompetition?"

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

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

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

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

  "When you come to know how prices of all commodities are determinednowadays, you will perceive how impossible it is that they could bealtered, except with reference to the amount or arduousness of the workrequired respectively to produce them," was Dr. Leete's reply. "Thisprinciple is an international as well as a national guarantee; but evenwithout it the sense of community of interest, international as well asnational, and the conviction of the folly of selfishness, are too deepnowadays to render possible such a piece of sharp practice as youapprehend. You must understand that we all look forward to an eventualunification of the world as one nation. That, no doubt, will be theultimate form of society, and will realize certain economic advantagesover the present federal system of autonomous nations. Meanwhile,however, the present system works so nearly perfectly that we are quitecontent to leave to posterity the completion of the scheme. There are,indeed, some who hold that it never will be completed, on the groundthat the federal plan is not merely a provisional solution of theproblem of human society, but the best ultimate solution."

  "How do you manage," I asked, "when the books of any two nations do notbalance? Supposing we import more from France than we export to her."

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

  "But what are the balances finally settled with, seeing that you haveno money?"

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

  "Emigration is another point I want to ask you about," said I. "Withevery nation organize
d as a close industrial partnership, monopolizingall means of production in the country, the emigrant, even if he werepermitted to land, would starve. I suppose there is no emigrationnowadays."

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

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

  "An American credit card," replied Dr. Leete, "is just as good inEurope as American gold used to be, and on precisely the samecondition, namely, that it be exchanged into the currency of thecountry you are traveling in. An American in Berlin takes his creditcard to the local office of the international council, and receives inexchange for the whole or part of it a German credit card, the amountbeing charged against the United States in favor of Germany on theinternational account."

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

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

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

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

  "Last night, as I was thinking what I could do to make you feel at homeuntil you came to be a little more used to us and our ways, an ideaoccurred to me. What would you say if I were to introduce you to somevery nice people of your own times, whom I am sure you used to be wellacquainted with?"

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

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

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

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

  "You are glad I brought you here," exclaimed Edith, radiant, as sheread in my face the success of her experiment. "It was a good idea, wasit not, Mr. West? How stupid in me not to think of it before! I willleave you now with your old friends, for I know there will be nocompany for you like them just now; but remember you must not let oldfriends make you quite forget new ones!" and with that smiling cautionshe left me.

  Attracted by the most familiar of the names before me, I laid my handon a volume of Dickens, and sat down to read. He had been my primefavorite among the bookwriters of the century,--I mean the nineteenthcentury,--and a week had rarely passed in my old life during which Ihad not taken up some volume of his works to while away an idle hour.Any volume with which I had been familiar would have produced anextraordinary impression, read under my present circumstances, but myexceptional familiarity with Dickens, and his consequent power to callup the associations of my former life, gave to his writings an effectno others could have had, to intensify, by force of contrast, myappreciation of the strangeness of my present environment. However newand astonishing one's surroundings, the tendency is to become a part ofthem so soon that almost from the first the power to see themobjectively and fully measure their strangeness, is lost. That power,already dulled in my case, the pages of Dickens restored by carrying meback through their associations to the standpoint of my former life.

  With a clearness which I had not been able before to attain, I saw nowthe past and present, like contrasting pictures, side by side.

  The genius of the great novelist of the nineteenth century, like thatof Homer, might indeed defy time; but the setting of his pathetictales, the misery of the poor, the wrongs of power, the pitilesscruelty of the system of society, had passed away as utterly as Circeand the sirens, Charybdis and Cyclops.

  During the hour or two that I sat there with Dickens open before me, Idid not actually read more than a couple of pages. Every paragraph,every phrase, brought up some new aspect of the world-transformationwhich had taken place, and led my thoughts on long and widely ramifyingexcursions. As meditating thus in Dr. Leete's library I graduallyattained a more clear and coherent idea of the prodigious spectaclewhich I had been so strangely enabled to view, I was filled with adeepening wonder at the seeming capriciousness of the fate that hadgiven to one who so little deserved it, or seemed in any way set apartfor it, the power alone among his contemporaries to stand upon theearth in this latter day. I had neither foreseen the new world nortoiled for it, as many about me had done regardless of the scorn offools or the misconstruction of the good. Surely it would have beenmore in accordance with the fitness of things had one of thoseprophetic and strenuous souls been enabled to see the travail of hissoul and be satisfied; he, for example, a thousand times rather than I,who, having beheld in a vision the world I looked on, sang of it inwords that again and again, during these last wondrous days, had rungin my mind:

  For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled. In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world.

  Then the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

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

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