CHAPTER IX.

Before bringing into comparison one of our cities it will be necessary to explain to you some of the processes which have rendered our present civilization possible. You already have a hint, from what I have said, of the very striking difference between the society of Mars and that of the Earth, in their handling of labor interests. While with your careless and indifferent treatment, labor remains degraded, we have raised it to a point of honor. We have arrived at our methods of its treatment by that philosophical induction which has interpreted to us the many reliable and unerring decrees of the divine will. Nature, upon whom we depend for all we know of the supreme wishes, has furnished indubitable signs that physical diligence is a saving and wholesome quality, inseparable from intelligence, in its extended sense as we know it, upon which the very existence of all material things rests. But even the activities of nature are not more indispensable to the firmness of the Earth, than individual mental and physical energy is to the well-being and progress of[Pg 169] your society. Since one of these energies is as useful as the other in the economy of the world, we can conceive no reason why you should allow one of them to dominate the other; nor how you can justify yourselves in bestowing upon one all the honors and emoluments, while to the other you pursue a course denying opportunities, and in all ways bringing upon it an inferior social scale.

We met these natural tendencies ages ago, by a determination to equalize, as far as possible, the burdens of life among all classes, and to this end we have chiefly directed our efforts to sustain the interests of those who, by a struggle for the necessities of life, are obliged to toil. Some very remarkable results have followed. We have achieved that degree of justice where the skillful artisan, by virtue of his manual cunning alone, can acquire a certain elevation in our society, and whose occupation is not subordinated by any other on our planet. We have a very numerous class amongst us, known by the best interpretation of your language as officers of industry, who secure truer and more lasting honor than your military heroes. Our admiration of them arises from the fact that they assist to build up and restore the waste of those industrial products which sustain our lives. The official[Pg 170] grades among these compare somewhat with your military system. Their insignia of office is permanently worn on their dress, and to achieve distinction in this line is the hope of all, since without having worn the badge of office in some of these grades, social or political distinction is difficult. By methods, long ago in vogue, we have united our intellectual and manual training so that there should be no social separation between them. But while equal distinction awaits the skillful pursuit of either path, the highest honors are achieved by those who excel in both. Consequently our youth, encouraged by their parents and teachers, become emulous of the qualities of physical endurance attached to labor, and serve their terms among the toilers with a will that nothing but a high ambition could create. This greater respect and consideration for physical industry than yours would have been impossible, were it not that we have avoided the various causes which either suppress or degrade it. In the first place, we have decreed that it shall receive a fair share of its earnings. Chiefly in furtherance of this, we have ordained that no individual holder of land shall rob it by taking to himself that appreciation in values which its diligence produces. To this end also we have provided that wealth and capital[Pg 171] shall not bear down upon it in the various monopoly exactions common with you. But a measure of justice, scarcely less effectual than these to elevate and sustain labor, is our governmental system of fixing its rates of wages.

From what has been said it will not be hard for you to believe that a working man holds a very different position in society with us than with you. Upon the Earth, driven by the necessities of life, and a cruel and unrestrained competition, he is obliged to forego nearly all those opportunities which refine and elevate the mind. He has little of leisure, without the depression of muscular fatigue. His habiliments are the badges of inferiority in your social scale, and he trudges along on his tiresome, hopeless journey, bearing his condition as one under the prohibition of better things by an inexorable fate. No competency rewards his unremitting toil, though with the skill of his hands he is building the wealth of the world. To the sordid and cunning comes fortune in possessions and estates; while to him comes only the privilege to dwell in another’s house, and to partake of that fare whose chief quality shall be its capacity to restore the wasting energies of his body.

[Pg 172]With us the pursuit of manual labor is attended with better conditions. By securing to industry its rightful rewards, it has been adopted by choice instead of compulsion, as the best way to gain independence. Having no road to wealth, except through the sterling qualities of industry and prudence, industry and probity are the indispensable qualities which lead to the upper stratum of our society. Thus, you will perceive, the natural laws of progression and development are encouraged to work out their beneficial results in the life of every individual.

Since, from the cradle to the grave, all are surrounded with the living rewards of goodness, we have no need of sermons. We know no gilded vice. It bears no fruits with us but destruction. You preach against it and reward it in the same breath. You denounce it in empty words, and at the next moment honor it with a bow. You sanction the wholesale injury which your system inflicts upon each one, hoping in the scramble to pocket the losses of others. The most desirable condition of life with you is that in which the attainment of wealth shall furnish personal gratification, the accomplishment of which, in most cases, is through a line of public and private wrongs. The better conditions of life with us are[Pg 173] acquired in the fertilization of innumerable schemes for the common welfare.

You are not to make the mistake by supposing that our society has arrived at the dead level of equality. We have no castes, as you have, holding apart from each other with marked distinctions of wealth. But we have social grades, as you have, with the great difference that each one enjoys unenvied the pleasures within reach; not the least of which is to share the cares as well as the delights of life with each other. The feeling of contempt for one another is entirely unknown among the people of Mars. We have provided that there shall be no unlettered and vulgar substratum in our society to pity or condemn, as you have. The even justice of our system has bestowed upon all equal opportunities of knowledge and cultivation. As a result, there is no individual living upon our planet who is superior to another, except by a more assiduous exercise of mental or physical gifts, or a higher cultivation of his spiritual nature.

A marked indication of our advanced social development is, that we utterly refuse the performance of any act which is an injury, even in a remote degree, to our fellows; while in the intense selfishness of your present state, you[Pg 174] are constantly sacrificing each other’s interests. With sentiments like these prevailing, it is easy for you to understand why we have no class among us perpetually under less favored conditions than another class, and why, acting under the great lesson of nature which has sent us all into life upon an equality, we have ordained in all possible ways that the journey thereafter shall be fair and equal to all.

It is not possible for you to thoroughly understand or appreciate what I am to lay before you, in a description of our society in municipal life, without a further knowledge of some of our methods. One of the most important of these, is the perfection which we have brought to our science of statistics, and the indispensable service it is made to perform in our political economy. This branch of science is pursued by us as the most serviceable and practical of all. We learn from it in a positive way many truths which your economists fail to reach, and we have discovered by it many errors which have existed as the result of sophistical reasoning. We use it as a rule and square to measure the speculations of philosophy, as well as an every-day guide in the practical affairs of life. Its better value for us lies in the fact that our conclusions[Pg 175] from it are adduced out of the records of centuries. It is to social science what analysis is to chemistry. It is only by a systematic and orderly record of the occurrences of nature, and the changes and events of society, that we have arrived at the many profound truths so deeply concerning our lives. By it we have discovered how astonishingly nature holds, concealed from common eyes, so many of her processes, coquetting with us, as it were, in withholding her greatest favors without prolonged and incessant interrogation. But although our store of scientific knowledge has been increased by these statistical labors, we hold them of no less importance in managing the practical affairs of life.

Our bureau of statistics is without question the most valuable department of our government. It has been brought to its perfected condition by centuries of practice and improvement, and upon it rests, in a great measure, the prosperity and happiness of our people. By it, mainly, we are enabled to save our population from the distresses of over-production, and the chance occurrences of uneven labor demand. Your experience has shown you that in times of depression the causes were plainly apparent. We have merely arranged to anticipate these causes, to[Pg 176] sound the general alarm, and to forestall them. Outside of the defects of your currency, and your speculation, which are most prolific sources of industrial disaster, comes that blind over-production, entirely undirected by any reliable or authoritative knowledge of the existing capacity to consume. You are having at times a large amount of misdirected labor in the form of products slow of sale; and for the time being a supply, so much in excess of demand, does not return a full equivalent for the labor invested. These frequent errors of production depress wages, and are altogether more calamitous to labor than to capital; because labor is variously skilled, and cannot readily transplant itself from one department of production to another, and is obliged, under the conditions, either to accept reduced wages or to remain idle. Capital does not suffer as labor does in these constantly occurring over-supplies. On the other hand, it finds its opportunity, either by waiting from a low to a high market for its returns, or by changing its field of investment. In these frequent partial or complete suspensions in the production of over-supplied commodities, labor is therefore the chief sufferer.

We have nearly a complete remedy for this in our[Pg 177] system of statistics. Our planet in all its habitable parts is divided into districts, in each of which is kept an accurate and systematic record of all available labor, as well as an account of its different classes, with the separate capacity of each for production. In connection therewith is also kept an account of all products turned out. The information furnished in this way determines the surplus or deficiency of all commodities produced.

We are enabled thereby to know, almost at a glance, the drift of all labor energies, and to direct them safely from any great redundancy of supply. When engaged in the production of food supplies, where nature becomes of necessity a party to this great co-operative arrangement, we have devised a method that saves those who toil from the embarrassment and the frequent distress of an intermittent cost of living. We had observed that the tendency of cheap food to lower the wages of labor, and of dear food to raise them, was not equal, wages being much more easily lowered than raised under this natural influence. Our government has undertaken therefore to establish a fair and equitable adjustment between the cost of living and wage rates, to be modified when occasion requires.

[Pg 178]You are not to expect me to go into detail in these matters; but as it may seem impracticable to you, how any arbitrary rate of wages may be made to rule fairly among so many different people, I will give you some account of our system of grading labor, by which this difficulty is overcome. We have formed out of the three qualities of SKILL, STRENGTH and ACTIVITY a basis upon which to reckon the value of all individual labor. Each of these is divided into three grades, and the highest valued workman is he who stands first in all. The first grade in skill is considered equal to both the first and second grades of strength and activity in estimating wages; and there is no first grade of skill allowed, except in those industrial operations requiring much manual training.

The workman begins his career usually in the lowest grades of each, although at times strength and activity are raised one grade at the beginning. The wages of all labor are uniformly established by the government, in accordance with the standing of the individual and the certificate he holds, according him his status under this method of estimating his ability. From middle life to old age changes usually occur in his grade, and his[Pg 179] apportionment of wages is consequently modified; but so long as he retains his skill it goes far to keep up the allotment of fair wages against the loss of strength and activity.

This is merely an outline of our system. Its importance will be understood, when you consider that by it we have established a uniform rate of wages for all, and have saved our workmen from helplessly submitting themselves to the natural competition of dependent numbers, and to the exacting patronage of a selfish and independent few. Although we have achieved this desideratum of uniform wages we are not unaware of the economic impossibility of rendering them constant, and we have accordingly arranged that the rate shall be changed to correspond with the varying cost of living. Each year therefore, after the gathering of our harvests, our statistical bureau makes a report of food supply; when any change, if necessary, is made in the rate of wages for the ensuing year, thereby determining that labor shall enjoy a fair share of the wealth which it produces.

Outside of the handicraft of the workmen, we have established a scale for estimating a just rate of pay for all employees in professional and business pursuits. This[Pg 180] arrangement is based upon the qualities of TALENT, INTELLIGENCE and CAPABILITY. Each one of these is divided into three grades, and whoever stands first in all of them is entitled, of course, to the highest pay for his services. Usually, however, these high qualifications secure a reward beyond the scale. This system of rewarding labor has a far-reaching effect in our political economy, and is a complete uniformity with the general tendency of our efforts to promote steady values. The most important element of cost in all commodities offered for sale is labor, and that can never be cheapened. We have not a single product of industry in our list which represents in its labor cost, as many of yours do, the underpain, gaunt and hopeless toil of some fellow creature struggling for the scanty means to live.

Owing to our many concessions physical industry has been curtailed of that excessively wearisome and exhausting character known to you. Without the oppressions which bear down upon it on your planet, its pursuit never reaches that forced extremity which brings the bent form and care-worn face.

A considerate custom has fixed our period of daily labor at six hours; one-half of which, under the equitable[Pg 181] adjustment of our wage rates, affords sufficient pay, under ordinary circumstances, to furnish a liberal enjoyment of life. Under our system three hours of work each day affords a share of wealth somewhat in excess of the share usually obtained by the workmen of the Earth for their average of ten hours’ labor. Our industrial force has, therefore, a facility of expansion and contraction, without distressful results, which yours does not possess. No serious changes are wrought with us by a reduction of working force to half time, and consequent half pay; while more or less pinching and misery are sure to follow such an occurrence with you.

From these careful attentions to the interests of labor, we have brought it into repute as one of the most honorable as well as the most profitable pursuits of life. I have endeavored to show you some of the ways by which this grand purpose has been attained. I must not, however, omit to remind you, that as our government takes upon itself to perform innumerable enterprises, which on the Earth are left to individuals and organizations of men, its direct dealings with those who toil are more intimate and extensive than yours. It is better enabled thereby to carry into operation those methods which distinguish our[Pg 182] system. The greater part of the energies of our government and the wisdom of our statesmanship have been directed to this end of supporting labor, and out of it, without question, comes the general serenity and contentment which prevail.