Title:      A Week in the Future
Author:     Catherine Helen Spence
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Title:      A Week in the Future
Author:     Catherine Helen Spence


Serialised in:
The Centennial Magazine: An Australian Monthly
December 1888-July 1889




CHAPTER I


_Introductory_


I have often observed that unmarried people, old maids and old bachelors,
take a keener interest in old family history, and in the ramifications of
the successive generations from the most remote ancestors they can claim,
than those who form the actual links in the chain of descent, and leave
children behind them to carry on the chronicle. Having lived all my life
with a mother who nearly attained the age of a century, and having a
strong interest in things past as well as in things present, I have been
steeped in memories of old times. I know how middle-class intelligent
people lived and worked, dressed and dined, worshipped God and amused
themselves, what they read for pleasure and for profit, not only so far
as her own recollections could carry the dear old lady, but two
generations farther back. In her youth she had lived much with an
intelligent grandmother, who could recollect the rebellion of 1745, and
the battle of Prestonpans, and had been of mature years during the American
War of Independence.

My own mother's youth had been the period of the gigantic struggle of
Great Britain, sometimes single-handed, against the power of the first
Napoleon. The older lady had said to her then youthful descendant that no
one could expect to see as much as she had seen in her life, which
extended from 1734 to 1817, and included the American War, the French
Revolution, and the application of machinery to so many of the arts. The
grandchild, born at the beginning of 1791, had seen five French
Revolutions, and the map of Europe strangely altered; triumphs of art and
science, countless in number; steam, gas, electricity, the railway
system; mechanical inventions which had revolutionized industry; and the
rise of mighty colonies to compensate for the loss of the United States.
In the growth of one great colony she had taken a deep personal interest,
for she had watched it from the day of very small things in 1839. As we
sat and talked together, we would wonder what there could be for me to
see that would be equal to what had unfolded before her eyes. Was there
to be federation or disintegration? Was the homogeneous yet heterogeneous
British Empire to be firmly welded together, or were the component parts
to be allowed peacefully to separate and form new states? Was the
_régime_ of unrestricted competition and free trade and individualism to
be kept up, or were these to be exchanged for protection and
collectivism? What was to be the outcome of the Irish Question, of German
Socialism, of Russian Nihilism? Was Britain to remain mistress of India,
and to keep that dependency? Was she to annex all territory which might
be supposed to preserve her open route towards it? What struggle was
there to be in central Asia between Britain and Russia? What power was
likely to demolish the terrible armed peace of Europe? Such questions as
these occupied my own mind primarily--my mother had taken the keenest
interest in them all, but latterly she cared less for the questions of
the day, and as her health gradually declined, she went further and
further back till she seemed to live more in the first ten years of the
century than in the more recent past.

When, after a long, wearing, and painful illness, I closed my mother's
eyes--my companionship and occupation both gone at once--I had to
consider how I was to take up my life again. I was poorer after her
death, because her annuity, which must have made the insurance company
the losers, died with her, and I was left with that sort of provision
which the world considers quite sufficient for an elderly single woman.

My brother Robert came the day after the funeral to talk matters over
with me. "You have had a shock, Emily," he said, "You would not save
yourself any way;--now, you must try to take life easier. What do you
yourself think of doing?"

"I mean to stay on here if I can manage it," I said.

"Don't attempt to keep house by yourself, it is too expensive, and too
much of a tie. Of course, so long as our mother lived, you had to keep a
home for her, and to stay in it, but now, if you will not come and live
with us, you had better go and board somewhere, or furnish a set of
apartments, and that would leave you at liberty. You have not work now
for two servants; if you have only one you cannot leave her by herself in
the house. Belle says she supposes I cannot persuade you to take up your
abode with us."

My sister-in-law, though in her way an excellent woman, was one of the
most abject slaves of Mrs. Grundy, and her ways were not my ways. Their
house seemed as full as it could rightly be with their own large family,
and I could not in conscience think to occupy their only decent spare
room, at present tenanted by the married daughter and her first baby. I
was not disposed to go to a little den which did duty for a stray
bachelor guest. I clung to a home of my own.

"I dislike boarding-houses and furnished apartments," I said. "After being
virtually the head of a house so long, I do not care to be a mere
pecuniary convenience to any one. I want a home to which I can invite my
friends, where I can have company or quiet as I please."

"My dear Emily," said Robert, "A single woman in your circumstances
should be quite satisfied if she has two or three comfortably furnished
apartments, and can invite a few friends to tea occasionally."

"That means that I am to be shut out henceforward from the company of
men, for the tea guests are always women."

"Of course, gentlemen all dine late, and do not appreciate even afternoon
tea much; but the social evenings of our youth are no more. You recollect
Emily? 'Come to tea and spend the evening.' Ah! those were pleasant
times. A little music and singing, a carpet dance, round games, and
flirtation. But you are past the age for that sort of thing. I did not
think you would care now for the disturbing male element in society."

"I want to mix with people who are in the world, and engaged in its
business. I have for years devoted myself to my mother, now I should like
to live my own natural life for a few years."

"You will get far more real information as to how the world goes on from
books than from any male guests you can induce to visit you at no end of
expense. I am sure the dinner guests whom we entertain, and whom Belle
and I meet elsewhere, do not give us any new ideas or much refreshment.
If I were you I should be glad of the peaceful life before you, after all
you have gone through lately; with books and needlework, and your piano,
and a little committee work such as your soul loveth, in conjunction with
a number of bright practical women. Or suppose you get one of your
friends to join you in housekeeping. That would be pleasant, and make
things easier for you. There's Mary Bell, I dare say she would be glad to
do it."

"I like Mary Bell very well, but I do not like her people, who would of
course be constantly coming and going."

"Everywhere there is a lion in the path--I repeat it, Emily, I would
gladly change with you. What between the mill of business, which is
grinding exceedingly small in these days in the way of profit--protection
and the working man have it all their own way now--and the mill of social
requirements, and the mill of family anxieties, life is hardly worth
living. As for the young people, after we have got them brought up and
educated our troubles seem only to begin. There is Frank spending all his
salary, and all I allow him besides, and always in debt, because he will
bet on races and play for high stakes with insufficient skill; and
Gerald, dangling after a girl in a restaurant who I fear will hook
him,--the two boys are not much comfort; and Florrie, who is more than
half afraid to go back to the station, and I'm sure Belle will have a
sore heart to part from her. Who would think that Alf. Henderson was a
secret drunkard, and that the delicate health that won Florrie's
compassion was the consequence of his own bad habits. And Jeannie has set
her heart on a man who has no merit whatever but that of being a good
tennis player and having a fine voice. There is no rise in him. The four
younger ones may do better, but you never can tell. I often feel as if a
large family was a mistake--at any rate now-a-days, when so much is
expected from parents."

I was very sorry for my brother's family troubles, but I felt as if he
and his wife had lived too much for society and position, and had not
taken the intelligent interest in their children, in studying their
tastes and guarding against their weaknesses, which might have saved some
disappointments. Belle, I knew, had been carried away by Mr. Henderson's
large possessions, and had disregarded some ominous signs in her future
son-in-law.

I thought Robert rather cold-blooded in his advice that I should wrench
myself from the old home where I had taken root, but the more I thought
over ways and means, I became the more afraid that he had sound reason on
his side. I, however, delayed advertising my house. I put off the evil
day till I could accustom my mind to the change.

A singular feeling of malaise oppressed me, I missed the engrossing
occupation of the last two years, and I did not recover the spring and
elasticity of body and mind which I had expected. It was on one of those
suddenly hot days which we have in an Australian August that I had walked
rather far and rather fast, and when I got home, tired and breathless, I
found Florrie Henderson come to say good-bye before she went with her
little baby boy, Hugh, to the station. Florrie threw herself into my arms
in an hysterical passion of tears, and I, instead of being able to
comfort her or steady her nerves, fainted away for the first time in my
life. Florrie's alarm about me made her throw off for the time her own
trouble; she sent for Dr. Brown, and meantime used all the simple and
ordinary remedies for restoration; but I had scarcely recovered full
possession of my faculties when he arrived. Dr. Brown had been the wise
and kind adviser of my mother, and he had often suggested that my
devotion to her should be less absorbing, and predicted that I should
suffer from the strain. He had even practised some auscultation from time
to time, which he now proceeded to repeat more minutely, and he
questioned me closely on my sensations and symptoms. I could read his
countenance like a book, and could understand his little impatient
gestures and half-uttered words. I felt that there was something
seriously wrong.

"Tell me the truth," I said. "It is the heart?"

"Yes, just the weak part of you, which I have been anxious about all
through this long nursing of Mrs. Bethel."

"And it is serious?"

"Serious? Why, that is according how you take it?"

"I take it literally. It is organic?"

"Yes, organic--but you know with ease and a quiet life, such as you may
lead now, there is no immediate danger."

"I may live--how long? Don't be afraid to tell me the truth."

"You will live a year, perhaps two, with great care. You will need to be
very careful."

"I know what that means," said I, bitterly. "I must give up all the
things that make life worth living, all the outside interests that are
the very bread of life to a solitary spinster, all the larger objects
which the best and noblest of my brothers and sisters are striving to
accomplish and absorb myself in the one idea of self-preservation."

"Oh, Auntie," said Florrie, who with wet eyes and choking sobs had
listened to the death-warrant pronounced by our old, experienced, and
kindly family physician. "You must take care for all our sakes. Think how
valuable even two years of your life is to many who love and honor you."

"Yes, valuable so long as it is life," I said, "but of no value whatever
if I shut myself up in my shell, and merely absorb nutriment and warmth,
and exclude all disturbing influences--the wind of heaven and the cares
and labors of earth."

"I did not pass so sweeping a sentence, Miss Bethel," said Dr. Brown.
"You are only to avoid all over fatigue, all excitement, and especially
all worry."

"What is life without these things?" I asked vehemently.

"It is what all old people have to do," said Dr. Brown kindly.

"And was it not this that my poor mother felt so hard? Half her misery
was occasioned by ennui. The regret that she could do nothing for herself
or for anyone else embittered the last two years of her life. And if even
she, at the age of ninety-seven, chafed at the life of inaction and
helplessness, what must I do? I am not old; I have not been severed from
life and all its interests gradually by the chilling of my sensations and
the weakening of my faculties. I can see, hear, speak, learn, observe,
reflect, aspire, as well as I ever could do in my life, and to have to
die before I have seen the problems which have puzzled me all my life
solved, or nearly solved, is to me very hard."

"Dear Auntie," said Florrie with a broken, tremulous voice, yet musical,
as her voice always was when she quoted from her beloved Tennyson:--

"To thee, dear, doubtless will be given
A life that bears immortal fruit,
In such high offices as suit
The full-grown energies of Heaven."

"Doubtless--is it doubtless? And even if these high offices were indeed
assured to me, it is here on earth that I am passionately interested. How
foreign to me with my present nature are the cares and employments of a
disembodied spirit, moving about among other equally unsubstantial
spirits, or at best reclothed in some strange new personality. It is this
world that I have loved and will continue to love," I said passionately,
to the surprise of my two listeners.

"I should have thought that you of all women sat loose to the world,"
said Dr. Brown. "And so should I," said my niece, "Mother always says
Aunt Emily is the most unworldly person she ever knew, though not in the
least sanctimonious either."

"In a certain sense I do sit loose to the world, but I know and feel
convinced by many signs that we are on the eve of a great social and
industrial revolution. I had hoped to have seen some outcome from the
groaning and travailing of all creation, and from the efforts of so many
earnest and devoted men and women for the amelioration of the conditions
under which the toiling masses live and labor. What will come out of
Irish Agitation, German Socialism, Russian Nihilism? Will India be
prepared for self-government? Is the mighty Chinese Empire really
awaking? When and how is the barbarous practice of war to be abolished?
Is the scarcely less deadly war between labor and capital to end
peacefully, or is the cut-throat competition for cheapness all over the
world to be ended by a terrible and destructive catastrophe? Is religion
to become more Catholic or more sectarian? What is a year or a
problematical two years of life, wrapped up in cotton wadding, to my
eager questioning soul? I would give the year or two of life you promise
me for ONE WEEK IN THE FUTURE. A solid week I mean. Not a glance like a
momentary vision, but one week--seven days and nights to live with the
generations who are to come, to see all their doings, and to breathe in
their atmosphere, so as to imbibe their real spirit."

"How far in the future should you like to spend your solid week--twenty
years, fifty years, a hundred years hence?" said Dr. Brown, with a
curious expression on his intelligent countenance.

"You know, Florrie, I have often said to you and to other people that I
would give anything to see the world fifty years after I left it, but as
I am not to live such a long life as my mother's by thirty-five years,
and not even the Psalmist's measure of three score and ten, and as the
changes that have to be wrought may take a long time, I think I should
prefer a hundred years to elapse before I see my WEEK IN THE FUTURE!"

"But everybody whom you knew and cared about would be dead," said
Florrie. "I should not feel the least interest in the world after a
century. A hundred years--it is like an eternity."

"Like an eternity to twenty-six, but it is only three years longer than
your grandmother's single life."

"That saw great changes certainly," said Dr. Brown, "and the progress of
events, as you must have observed, becomes more rapid with each decade; I
should myself hesitate between fifty years and a hundred--fifty has the
advantage which Mrs. Henderson feels so strongly of greater familiarity
and possible personal survivals, but a hundred years must work radical
changes, more startling, and possibly--I only say possibly--more
interesting."

More interesting to me, I feel sure. And Florrie, my affections strike
back to remote ancestors and would strike onward to remote collateral
descendants, which are all that an old maid can have. Why, Florrie, I
might see little Hugh's children and grand-children in the flesh."

"Then," said Dr. Brown, "you elect to overleap a complete century. And
how would you like to see the world of the latter end of the twentieth
century. Like Asmodeus, by unroofing the houses and spying on the doings
and misdoings of the _post nati_, or like a beneficent spirit, hovering
over the cities and fields, watching the human ants in the nest, or the
bees in the hive, or the butterflies among the flowers, and listening to
the words you hear them speak, yourself invisible and unheard."

"No, not like a spirit at all, but just in this habit as I am, like a
middle-aged or rather an elderly single woman, who surely can never be
altogether out of date in any century"

"And _where_ would you prefer to have your peep? In Melbourne, in London,
in your Scotch ancestral home, in New York, or in Pekin?"

"Every place has its charms, but as the older countries are those where
the greater need of change exists, let me be located in or close to
London."

"Pekin represents an older civilization," argued Dr. Brown.

"But too unfamiliar to be as interesting as the British metropolis. I
need all my past knowledge to throw light on the new revelations. The
language, the literature, the history, and the traditions of England are
among my most cherished possessions. A week of London for me."

"And who will give you to drink of mandragora that you may sleep away
that gap of time, and traverse, not spiritually, but in the flesh, so
many thousand miles of land and ocean?" asked Dr. Brown.

"Who but you, with your strong leaning towards the occult and the
transcendental which are the favorite study of your leisure hours?"

"Are you really serious?" said Dr. Brown more gravely

"Perfectly serious."

"It is because you believe it to be impossible that you would barter a
year, or it may be two, dating from August, 1888 for a single week in
1988. It would really be like all the bargains recorded by tradition or
supersitition between man and the arch enemy of souls, always greatly the
worse for the human party to the transaction. Why, at best, it would be
fifty-two to one."

"Not so," said I, "for I should barter a year or two of failing health
and disappointed hopes for a week of full life and intellectual
satisfaction. I should save my friends from all trouble and anxiety on my
behalf. I should at the same time save myself from the temptation to
peevish repining and exacting selfishness. I have not received your
death-warrant with the meekness and resignation which I know you expected
from me. I do not feel as if I could bear to watch the slow closing in of
life for myself, just after I have watched it for the being dearest to me
in the world, especially with the strong hold on life I have within me at
present. It puts me in mind of the terrible story I read when I was a
girl, in a _Blackwood's Magazine_, of a political offender who was seized
by the relentless arm of despotic power, and shut up in a strong prison
with thirteen windows. During the first night, by some devilish
machinery, one window was closed, and next day there was but twelve, the
next day eleven, and so on till at last the _coup de grâce_ was given,
and life was crushed out of him simultaneously with the closing of the
last window."

"But Auntie," said Florrie, softly, "you have always said life was good.
Father calls you an optimist. Mother says you always see the best side of
things and of people."

"Yes, life has been good--very good. Like Harriett (sic) Martineau, I
feel I have had a good share of life hitherto, but that has been because
I have taken an active part in it, and it has been and continues to be so
exceedingly interesting, but I should not like to linger on the scene
when I can be no longer serviceable."

"It shows how differently life is held by different people. If I had to
deal with your mother, Florrie, she would think a year or two with her
husband and children a vast deal better than a week, better than ten
years elsewhere," said Dr. Brown.

"Belle knows they would be all only too happy to have the privilege of
nursing her, and that they would do anything to prolong her valuable
life," said I.

"Oh Auntie, how glad I should be to take you with me to the station. It
is said to be so healthy, and is not exciting, and I'd be so glad of your
society, for mother won't let Jeannie go, but--," and Florrie sighed; she
had to reckon up a master of the house who was not reasonable, and was
not well disposed to his wife's family. "But anyhow you must not stay
here alone, you must go to live with your own near and dear relatives. Do
not speak as if you had nobody to whom your life is precious."

"I do not say that, Florrie, my dear, but though I have kind relatives
and dear friends, there is now no one to whom I am indispensable. Indeed,
I am doubtful if any of us is so indispensable as he or she fancies to
any one, but I always prayed that I might live while my mother needed me,
and that at least has been given."

"I fear I should have to live longer than Dr. Brown's utmost limit of two
years to see that consummation. Your parents' consent must first be
given," said I.

"I think they are a little moved now they see money is not everything."

"But Claude has to make his way, and it will take a long while before he
can earn an income sufficient for an extravagant girl like Jeannie and
the lot of you. Perhaps my death might help Jeannie better than my life."

"Don't say so, Auntie, and please don't call us extravagant. Father says
we are, but it isn't really true."

"I don't know what you call extravagant, but you girls each spend as much
on your dress and personal expenses as my father gave to his three girls,
and he was called liberal. It is a pity, however, that the requirements
of modern society make marriage, instead of the hand-in-hand travel up the
hill which it ought to be, a goal to be attained when the hill is
climbed, unless a young man inherits unearned money."

"And then it often is a curse," said Florrie bitterly.

"In most cases it is the culmination of a young man's ambition to be able
to afford to marry a young woman of education and refined tastes. How
much better for happiness and morality if it were to be the natural first
step in the life of an industrious, steady young man," I said.

"That opens out large questions, Miss Bethel," said Dr. Brown. "Will
people see things differently a hundred years hence?"

"Anyhow, Florrie, I cannot live to see Jeannie married, but she has my
best wishes. I like Claude Moore, and believe he has far more grit in him
than your father or mother can see just now. And Claude and Jeannie love
each other, which is the main point. He must work hard, and she must
reduce her ideas of an establishment to what is obtainable on moderate
means. But now, Florrie, I must really send you home. You must leave Dr.
Brown to prescribe something, for though I am set down as incurable, of
course it would be unprofessional not to give the chemist a turn, though
I dare say I would do as well with wholesome neglect and the expectancy
treatment. Come, dear, it must be good-bye."

Her hot tears fell on my cheek as she kissed me. As she went out at the
door she met the postman, who brought no letters for me, but one of those
tradesmen's circulars which are the daily annoyance of modern life, and a
book sent from England by my dear old friend Mrs. Durant. Florrie came
back with the packet in her hand which she proceeded to untie.

"I hope it is a good new novel to cheer you up. By the by, thanks for the
_Children of Gibeon_ for my birthday, Auntie. This is not a novel,
however, but a book on Scientific Meliorism and the Evolution of
Happiness, by Jane Hume Clapperton. Let me have it when you have done
with it. The subject is one after your own heart. I must say good-bye
really now. However, you really look better than you did."

Dr. Brown had taken the book out of my niece's hand, and glanced rapidly
at the running titles on the top of the pages. "I think this will give
you some speculative ideas about your week in the future. I shall
prescribe, along with a necessary sedative, the careful reading of this
book."

I was indeed deeply interested in the book, I half forgot my own
impending fate as I saw what this hopeful writer had gathered from other
authors and other observers, and had worked out for herself from the
signs of the times into a foreshadowing of the society of the future. Dr.
Brown gave me two days to read the book and then called to see how I was.

"You are better, decidedly better;' he said.

"Not organically better, however?"

"No I cannot say that, but you have been agreeably interested and
diverted from the shock of two days ago."

"It is because I have been living so much in the future."

"Still harping on the future," said the doctor. "Are you still serious
about your solid week."

"Quite so, still more eager than ever since I have read this book."

"Then will you put yourself in my hands, and I shall try what I can do to
further your wishes."

"I am all obedience and submission," I said.

"Give your maid a week's holiday, and tell her you are going for a little
change of air and scene. Pack up a few necessaries in a hand-bag. I can
wait for you, you are no dawdler."

I said what was needed to Janet, who was overjoyed at a week's holiday,
and promised to take the key of the house with a message to my brother. I
could not have written a note to save my life. I changed my dress, and
packed my Gladstone bag with more rapidity than was quite prudent,
considering the state of my heart, and I stepped into the doctor's
brougham with a curious feeling of expectancy. I was taken last in his
rounds that day, and driven not to his own home, but to a private
hospital for patients from the country in which he had a large interest,
and introduced to a quiet room at the back.

"Now," said he, "the main thing is strength of volition on your own part,
aided by all the power of will I can lend you. This _Week in the Future_
is what you long for more than all things--all other objects are excluded
by this over-mastering desire. Lie down on this couch with your bag in
your hands. Your appearance, if we succeed in our great experiment, will
be that of trance or suspended animation, and that is what I shall call
it to the nurse in attendance."

I obeyed Dr. Brown's instructions. I did not know what to expect, but I
knew what I wished.

"Are you ready for your wonderful journey?" said he, making passes over
me. I could just see him in the midst of this performance take out of his
waistcoat pocket a small phial containing a colorless liquid.

"Ready?"

"Quite ready," I whispered. I had not power to speak above my breath.

He poured out the contents into a wine glass, diluted them with a little
water, and held the potion to my lips, supporting my head on his left
hand.

"Drink and wish."

I drank, and felt a singular calm come over me for a space, it might have
been a few moments, it might have been a whole minute, but it was
ineffably sweet, all the malaise, and restlessness had gone--I was at
peace. Then came a mighty spasm like what I could conceive death to be.
This life was closed to me. I was no longer on the little couch in the
private hospital with Dr. Brown bending over me, but standing on my feet
with my hand-bag on my arm. I was not in Adelaide or Australia, but as I
had wished to be in the old country, in that England I had loved so well,
which I had left, indeed, at the age of thirteen, but which I had
revisited twenty-five years after in the full maturity of my powers of
observation and in the full glow of my womanly sympathies. This was a
suburb of London, a north-west suburb so far as I could guess. If so
removed as to place, was there not a chance that the still greater
removal as to time was also granted me?




CHAPTER II



MONDAY


_Associated Homes_


It was Friday afternoon when I took leave of life in Adelaide, South
Australia. It was on a Monday morning that I woke, and began the strange
experience of a _Week in the Future_. The first thing I was fully
conscious of was that I had completely thrown off all the uncomfortable
sensations as well as the apprehensions of the last two days. I was not
indeed young, but I was well and strong, and full of life, energy, and
hope. I stood--as I said before--in the open air. I felt the soft moist
climate of the father-land caressing me; the sun shone, not with the
summer blaze of our Australian skies, but as if through a tender haze.
Yes! this was London that lay vast, but strangely changed before me.
Where was the smoke? Was smoke one of the exploded nuisances of the
past? The gas lamps familiar to me were replaced by something
new--probably some modification of the electric light, for I could not
conceive of anything better being invented even in a hundred years, and
I hoped and almost felt that I had bridged over that length of time. And
now I seemed to see difficulties in my way. How could I, a stranger from
another hemisphere and from another century, ask for information, and
learn what I longed so much to know without subjecting myself to
suspicions of lying and imposture? How hard it would be to keep silent,
and simply watch for the changes which must have taken place in the way
of living and thinking since men lived and thought a hundred years
before. I did not like to stand like a fool or an idler, and I began to
walk briskly along a suburban street which I seemed to know, but it had
no longer rows of houses placed closely together, but large buildings,
each standing in extensive grounds. Passers-by looked well-to-do; their
clothes varied a good deal in fashion more than material. A
workman--erect, strong, and cheery, with a bag of tools on his shoulder,
whistling sweetly a tune quite unknown to me--was moving towards a large
building, which lay on the east side of the street. It was like a palace
for size, but not palatial in its style of architecture, which was plain
and simple. Garden plots lay in front of it, and a beautiful lawn, while
I could see that there were many acres of cultivated ground at the back.

"Good morning, Sir," I said to the workman. "Good morning, madam," he
replied. "It is a very fine morning;' I ventured to say. Surely the
weather could not be quite a worn out topic of conversation in the
variable climate of England--even after the lapse of a hundred years.

"Yes, it is fine after yesterday's rain. It came on handsomely and no
mistake. Bad for the harvest!"

"Are you going to work here?" said I.

"Yes, we have the contract for repairs at the Owen Home here; the rain
got in at the north wing; the first leak there for ten years, I hear; but
it is a rare strong old building."

I saw inscribed over the gateway in deep cut stone letters "Owen
Associated Home, 1900". Yes, I might have lived to have heard of the new
departure, if I had not seen it in the colonies, if I had lived twelve
years longer.

I walked with the workman to the door, which stood open and showed a
handsome entrance hall enclosed. We both touched the knob of a bell I
supposed to be electric. A young woman came to our summons, and directed,
in the first place, the workman to his job, and then asked me whom I
wished to see.

"Does Mrs. Carmichael live here?" I said, as if by inspiration.

"Yes, madam; No. 7," was the reply. "I think she is in her own room. I
shall ascertain if she objects to be disturbed."

"If not, give her my card, and say 'Miss Emily Bethel would be happy to
see her.'"

A question, telephonic, answered at once, let me know that Mrs.
Carmichael would be equally happy to see me. The attendant motioned me to
a lift, and stepped in after me, and in a few seconds we were on the
second floor, and walked along a corridor till we reached No. 7, when she
took my card

MISS BETHEL
ADELAIDE, S.A.

to the occupant of the room. A pleasant voice said "Come in," and the
young woman left me to pursue her own avocation. I entered a large,
light, airy, comfortable apartment, one half of which was furnished as a
bedroom, and the other half as a sitting-room. The weather was a little
chill outside after the rain, though the month was August, but there was
no fireplace visible, though the room was pleasantly warm. A
pleasant-faced lady of apparently my own age, though I afterwards
discovered that she was considerably older, was sitting in an easy chair
by a table, with her work and work-basket--quite like the old lady of our
own day.

"Sit down, pray," and she placed me on a sofa, close to her chair. "I am
indeed very glad to welcome a cousin from over the sea. We do not see so
much of our far-away kinsfolk as we should like. I have of course the
newspapers and books, but I have long wanted to hear by word of mouth
what these great southern lands which our forefathers planted have
attained to."

"And, alas, I cannot tell you," said I, plunging at once, _in medias
res_, "my knowledge of Australia is, unfortunately, of old date."

"I am at a loss to reconcile this with your card, which puts down
Adelaide as your present residence."

"We are now, I presume," I said making another desperate stroke, "in the
month of August, 1988."

"Just so," said Mrs. Carmichael, with a surprised look at the assertion.

"My last knowledge of Melbourne, and indeed of the world, ended in
August, 1888."

The lady looked at me as if questioning my sanity, but I stood her gaze
steadily. "I have exchanged a year of life for a Week in the Future, and
I chose to have my week a century ahead of the date of the bargain. I
have been permitted to make the exchange, and now with your good help I
want to make the most and the best of my short span of existence."

"We are very sceptical of the supernatural now-a-days," said Mrs.
Carmichael.

"Not more so than I have been," said I, earnestly. "I cannot account for
the extraordinary position in which I find myself, which is indeed
staggering to my own powers of belief, and must be tenfold more so to a
stranger, though you appear to be a remote kinsman, and might be disposed
to believe what is so marvellous. It may be that the intense longing I
had to know what was in the womb of time and ready to be delivered, has
projected me over nearly half the globe, and the lapse of a complete
century--more than three average generations. I may be now in a mere
trance or vision. This room, this Owen Home may be a mere phantasm or
mirage, and you a mere eidolon--an appearance--a shadow thrown out by my
own inner consciousness, or like a dream, which evades you when you try
to grasp it."

"Nothing so unsubstantial," said Mrs. Carmichael, "if there is anything
unreal or shadowy in presence it is yourself. You will find all things
altogether solid and coherent with us twentieth century people. If it is
indeed as you say, and you have no knowledge of recent matters, I think
it is likely that your week will be as satisfactory to yourself as it
will be most interesting to me. Be my guest for this week, at least as
far as it will serve your purpose and satisfy your desire to know all
that can be known about our life in the short space at your command."

I accepted this kind offer with gratitude, though I was not at all sure
that Mrs. Carmichael believed the strange story I told.

"I feel as anxious to know about the life in the past as you can possibly
be to learn about our present time."

"That is impossible," said I. "Books can tell you all about us and our
doings, while to all of us in all generations the future is a blank."

"Perhaps we are too much engaged with the works of our own day to give
sufficient attention to the records of the past, at least I notice this
is the case with the young people. And things are so much changed from
the days of ferment and unrest which you speak of, that it is difficult
for them to understand the language and the temper of the times. It needs
to be, as it were, translated to them, for they carry their pre-conceived
impressions into the books of old times. At least that is what my
son-in-law--who is a literary man and somewhat of an antiquarian--says.
For myself, I lived much with my grandmother, and she used to tell me of
the old days, and, old-lady-like, occasionally regretted them; though, on
the whole, she thought things much more equitably managed under the new
_régime_.

"Who then was your grandmother?" I asked eagerly.

"She was from Adelaide in Australia, and that is why my heart warmed to
your name and address when I saw it on your card. Her name was Florence
Bethel before her marriage. My father was the eldest and only surviving
child of her unhappy first marriage."

"Then your father was the little baby Hugh I knew as a baby."

"His name was Hugh. He was a very good son to my grandmother."

"And had poor Florrie--it seems disrespectful to speak thus of your
venerable grandmother," I said, laughing, "but I parted from Florrie in
the bloom of her youth a few days ago, and she will always be Florrie to
me--had she a happier fate in her second marriage after that wretched
creature (I must call your grandfather names, too) had departed this
life?"

"He did not die. They lived separated for many years, and at last she got
a divorce. Now-a-days it would have been much more promptly granted. She
married again, happily, so far as I knew, but had no children. I
recollect grandfather (as I called him) very well. He was very much
attached to his step-son."

"Then you are really my dear Florrie's grand-daughter in the flesh. Did
she ever speak of me, and of her grandmother who lived to be nearly a
hundred."

"I have often heard her speak of the old lady, a very storehouse of
memories."

"But not of me," said I, with considerable feeling. I think, seeing that
my _amour propre_ was touched, convinced Mrs. Carmichael of my identity,
and of the truth of my story more than anything else. "Oh, yes!
certainly, of you who showed so much sympathy with her troubles--the dear
Aunt Emily who died within a fortnight of the grandmother. Oh! that was
another link of association with your card!"

"It is a curious relationship," said I.

"We are sisters, rather than anything else more distant," said Mrs.
Carmichael.

This was better than looking on my senior as my great grand niece. I felt
strangely drawn to the kindly old lady, and more hopeful of getting the
information I wanted from her than from others who knew less and cared
less about the past. Nevertheless, even with her, there were
difficulties. I scarcely knew where to begin, and said so.

"You must ask questions for yourself, as well as take note with your
eyes, and pick up information casually. Things as they are, are so
familiar to us that we scarcely know what is new and what is old, but my
son-in-law could help you a good deal."

"I see a great change in the establishment of Associated Homes, for, I
suppose, this is only one amongst many."

"They are all but universal now-a-days. This, however, was one of the
oldest in the country, and our founders gave to it the name of the
pioneer in the movement."

"The experiments of Robert Owen and of Fourier, and others, were only
partially successful, but, considering the materials they had to build
with, it was wonderful how much they effected, and they led the way to
something better, I suppose?"

"Yes! We all acknowledge a deep debt of gratitude to these devoted men.
The general breaking up of the old isolated homes, and the formation of
the Associated or Unitary Homes, was due in the first place to the
domestic servant difficulty. It was the middle classes who made the first
start. The rich could always command sufficient domestic service by the
high wages, by the luxurious living, and many privileges they could give.
The working people who needed it even more did not understand the economy
and the benefits of combination, till they were shown the example by the
class above them, who had more education, and manners and tempers more
under control. Now, of course, all the community are educated up to this
standard, and all derive the full benefit of 'Associated Homes?

"How many families live in this house?" I asked.

"Twenty is our number."

"And I suppose they are of the professional and mercantile classes; not
the working classes."

"We scarcely speak of the working classes now-a-days, for all of us work.
Still I understand what you mean. Here live twenty families, descended
from many generations of educated people--many of these still cherishing
relics of past days, as you see in this apartment of mine."

"And these twenty families," said I, "would in old times have each
inhabited a home--which they accounted their castle. Each with at least
two sitting-rooms, several bedrooms, including one spare room for guests,
and must have kept from one to three servants, according to their means
and the number and ages of the family--an average of two servants in
England, if not in Australia. Whereas you"--

"Well, when twenty families combine, the forty or fifty small
sitting-rooms are exchanged,--the twenty dining-rooms for two large
well-heated but uncarpeted eating-rooms or refectories; the twenty
drawing-rooms, kept mostly for show, are represented by a large music
room, an art room, a whist and chess room, a smoking room, a dancing
room, a large library, a mechanics' room, and a ladies' work room. Twenty
families would have at least ten nurseries--we manage with two, and class
rooms for the earlier education of children before they go to the public
schools."

"And as for sleeping accommodation?" I asked.

"We have sleeping rooms to accommodate the twenty families comfortably,
arranged in suites--with some few rooms for guests. Casual hospitality is
frequent and inexpensive. There is a _pro rata_ charge for each guest,
and the table is always abundant, and the company pleasant, and some
congenial amusement open to people of ordinary tastes. My grandmother
used to tell me that one of the trials of life was the arrival of a guest
to a shabby dinner."

"There was not much chance of that at her father's house. Belle was a
most liberal housekeeper."

"Things went badly with them afterwards, I think; she also told me of the
dinner-parties and the evening-parties which cost so much, both in money
and trouble, and I did not think that they gave pleasure in proportion."

"Then how do you manage about servants?" I asked.

"The service in this as in similar homes is done by contract. The men and
women who provide for the daily comfort of our lives are as independent
and as much respected as those they wait upon. I think all our attendants
here are members of Associated Homes of their own, except two who are
engaged to sleep on the premises."

"And how many do you keep?"

"Mr. Oliphant (my son-in-law) who is one of the home committee, could
give you more exact information. I think there are sixteen in all, and
the washing is done in the home. We have every sort of labor-saving
machinery that ingenuity can devise, or money can pay for, because the
human instrument is far more costly than it ever was."

"Then, perhaps, your servants are as rich as you are yourselves?"

"I do not know, probably they are; but yet the service does not cost each
family nearly as much as it did in the old times, there are fewer of them
to keep, and there is no waste."

"The item of washing, thrown in, must make a difference to a London
household certainly. But what do you ladies do with no housekeeping to
attend to?"

"We are relieved from these cares, at least such of us are not on the
house committee of three, elected yearly, who give a general supervision,
and so we are set free to pursue the breadwinning avocation which all men
and women must betake themselves."

"And how does the Associated Home answer for domestic comfort?" I asked.
"The average Englishman as I knew him would rather be dull and cramped in
a home where he was entirely master, than better lodged and served where
he must give way on all sides to other people. The average Englishwoman
fancied her mission was to practice housekeeping, and rule over her
establishment of children and servants. Is not this combined home of
yours too like the hotel life of America--which was so bad for the
children of the family, and demoralising for the parents too?"

"No, indeed it is not like hotel life at all! for it is a _home_. This,
like most of those, founded by what were then called the middle class,
was a proprietary home from the first. Each family has a vested interest
in it. My grandmother's second husband was one of the original founders,
and he left it to his step-son, Hugh Henderson. I inherited it from my
father, as my brother has his occupation in the North of England, and my
sister married a man who took her to America. That is an old story, fifty
years ago."

"Then did Florrie end her life here?" I asked.

"Yes, certainly she did! Her husband was on a visit to Australia and met
her there, and brought her to England in the year 1900, and here he
settled till his death."

"Then this is really your own property," said I, "to have and to hold, to
bequeath or to sell as you please."'

"Not exactly; I can neither bequeath or sell--except to one who would be
agreeable to the other dwellers in the home. An upset (sic) price is
fixed, and when a vacancy occurs by death or removal, applicants are
balloted for."

"It must then be a little difficult for a young couple to settle, unless
there are constantly new homes built to be filled?"

"New homes are not often built, for the whole of our present happiness
and prosperity depends on the population remaining stationary, and the
homes are built so substantially that they will last for hundreds of
years if kept in proper repair."

"But what sort of life do you ladies lead without household cares? It
looks like all leisure, which I do not think would be either pleasant or
useful."

"Oh, by no means all leisure! I have my work to do during the day, and I
can either do it here, or in one of the pleasant public rooms down
stairs. If I want society I can seek it where it is likely to be most
congenial. My own favorite room is the art room; but if I want music I
can hear it in the music room; if I want to read I can go to the library,
where none of the readers there will disturb me. If I want a game of
cards, I can have it in the room dedicated to such quiet games. For the
closest intimacy--such as I used to have with my husband in his lifetime,
and with my children, and even now with such friends as I wish to talk
unreservedly with--as I do with you--I can have this best and sweetest of
society here."

"You have then no private sitting room?"

"No, we do not feel the want of it, and it would materially add to the
cost of building and keeping up an Associated Home if each family
required such a luxury."

"Have you been long a widow?" I asked.

"My husband died four years ago."

"You are then alone?"

"Oh no! my daughter and her husband and two of their three children live
in this home, and shortly there will be another included in the family,
for his only daughter is to be married on Thursday, and there have been
arrangements made that the young people should live here. Florrie is
young, and does not like to leave her mother."

"How many children had you?"

"I had only two who lived. One was born an idiot, owing to a fright I got
some months before, and, of course, it was destroyed at birth."

"That is a summary way of disposing of a heavy charge," said I. "In my
day there were costly idiot asylums for a few, and idiots in all the
workhouses in the kingdom. Why, I saw one in an Australian asylum
thirty-four years old, who had never been able to speak, to walk, or to
feed herself. I do not know how much longer she lived; but she must have
cost the country a large sum."

"It is really the best thing to do to put such imperfect and helpless
beings painlessly out of existence." said Mrs. Carmichael calmly. "My
other children are quite satisfactory--rather above than below the
average. My son is the manager of a large co-operative cotton factory,
and he lives with his workpeople during the day, and in an Associated
Home near it where his wife's family are established. I see him every
Sunday of my life, and occasionally on other days."

"I suppose he lives in a more luxurious way than you do."

"No, I scarcely think so. Of course each home has its little
peculiarities and specialties, but the average standard of comfort is
about the same."

"As a manager of a large concern he ought to be paid very highly."

"He has invested more capital in the factory than the operatives, and,
of course, draws a larger proportion of interest, but for his actual
services there is not the difference there would seem to be between
direction and actual production. Indeed the tendency is towards
equalisation, though that is not reached yet."

"Indeed!" said I, "that is most surprising. Who will you find to take
high and difficult positions if there is no adequate payment made?"

"Why, we find people are all eager enough to take the high positions if
they are only fit for them. It is far more interesting to direct than to
obey. And, after all, people can only eat three meals a day and wear one
suit of clothes at a time. What would more money do in adding to one's
enjoyment of life?"

"It did much in my time," said I. "Life was cramped and narrowed and
harrassed for want of money. Those who had not enough of it for
necessaries were starved physically. Those who had a bare livelihood were
starved mentally and aesthetically. A sufficient margin of money over and
above the supply of material wants meant leisure, amusement, foreign
travel, books, pictures, wines; as Charles Lamb would say, 'Money is not
dross, it is all these delightful things.' It also allowed us to be
hospitable to our friends and charitable to the poor. Cynics and ascetics
reviled it, but money was the _open sesame_ to much of the beauty and to
a great deal of the goodness of life."

"Much that you consider so desirable we obtain now-a-days by means of
combination. Much of it appears no longer so attractive as it must have
been in the time when 'every gate was barred with gold, and opened but to
golden keys,' as my grandmother used to say." I recognised my old
Tennyson-lover in the quotation.

"You have then learned to be happy with little money?"

"I do not know what you call little. We feel we have enough. As for
leisure, we have no longer what is called a leisured class, but everyone
has a great deal of leisure that may be used either for amusement, for
self-improvement, for the riding of hobbies, or for what satisfies our
modern ideas of charitable work.

"I suppose you have a general eight-hours system? What a fight there was
for that in my time."

"No! Six hours a day is reckoned a day's work in shop or factory.
Machinery, which is costly, such as that at my son's cotton factory is
worked by relays. There are some occupations and professions in which
there can be no such limit; but the general feeling is that six good
hours' work for everybody should provide all the necessaries and comforts
of life for everybody."

"Then all your people work?"

"With very few exceptions--which count for nothing--every adult man and
woman has some bread-earning occupation."

"Married women, too?" I asked.

"Certainly! My daughter, for instance, is a physician, her husband edits
a newspaper. Both of them have somewhat irregular hours of labor, but I
do not fancy they average much more than six hours daily"

"If the practice is good, and the newspaper has a large circulation they
ought to be rich, especially as they have only three children?"

"It is the full number. No one living in an Associated Home is allowed to
have more than three children--at least in Europe. I hear that four is
allowed in America and Australia."

"Then people ought to become rich with so few demands upon their purses,"
said I.

"I scarcely know how to express myself." said my kinswoman, "Incomes, I
know, were very different in your time. There is a moderate competence
within reach of all, but the opportunity of making fortunes is gone.
Everywhere co-operation and combination prevents the accumulation of
capital in single hands. The professions are not crowded; there are few
blanks, but the prizes are not great, and all the great profits which
large means used to make for a single capitalist or firm are reduced to a
minimum, while each operative gets a share of that minimum. As for my
daughter's practice, she contracts to watch over the health of the women
and children who live in the Owen Home and eight other homes. Sickness is
not so costly as it used to be, because in an Associated Home it is one
of the items of expense included in the ordinary hoard or contribution
made for housekeeping."

"Oh! I see an evolution of the working man's friendly club or lodge, and
the homes contract at a cheap rate, no doubt."

"Probably you will think so, especially as the medical adviser is
expected to look ahead, and prevent sickness as well as to minister to
it. Mrs. Oliphant does a little hospital work too, but that, of course,
is gratis."

"And her husband is on the press?"

"He is also a writer of books. He is mainly engaged during his leisure
hours in writing a complete history of the co-operative movement. He will
thus be the best man for you to consult and enquire from, as he has made
it his business to study the beginning of the social system that to us is
so old, and to you is so new and strange."

"I have then been most fortunate in the Home to which I have been
directed. Not only kinsfolk, but people especially fitted to instruct me
in the new _régime_!! So married women as well as single women work for
their livelihood now? I could see that change coming even in my day."

"Far more married women than single; for the single life lasts so short a
time. Even I am not quite off work yet, I can still earn half of my
livelihood, the other half being drawn from my own and my husband's
savings, which will last me out, even if I live to a great age."

"What was Mr. Carmichael's avocation?"

"He was an artist. I learned much from him to help me in my own calling
of a designer for calico and muslin printing; but I had also a great love
for art needlework, and as I am a little old-fashioned for the calico
printers I stick to this, and even give lessons in it to the young
people."

"I should have thought there was little demand for painting, and as
little for such work as this," and I looked more carefully at the
exquisite embroidery which my kinswoman had laid down out of respect for
me. "In the flat, dead level of conditions you live in, no one can afford
to pay for such commodities."

"There is a limited demand in the Associated Homes and in the Churches. I
have had great pleasure in giving a good deal of my work to the Owen
Home, as my husband presented to it no less than twelve of his best
pictures. We delighted to beautify our home, but I must confess that both
my husband's work and mine falls out of demand because everyone has so
much leisure, and so many have artistic taste that each home is adorned
with work of its own volunteers, but when we began life it was not so."

"The Associated Homes must furnish a market for books also?"

"Yes, our reading rooms or libraries have always a permanent library of
standard works. For the modern and ephemeral a syndicate of thirty homes
exchange with each other."

"And after running the gauntlet of thirty homes the books are pretty well
worn out I suppose?"

"Just so, but the young people, at least, have read them."

"But what about quarrelling? That was the bugbear which threatened all
associated living when it was spoken of in my time, for the idea was
already in the air a hundred years ago."

"The pioneers had to go through many hard trials. My father told me that
during the first ten years there were more changes, resignations and
expulsions than there were for fifty years after. The quarrels were
sometimes personal, sometimes about children. I am ashamed to say that
the women were worse offenders in this way than the men. Now, both men
and women have been educated into bearing and forebearing. My grandmother
told me that she was within an ace of making her husband sell out, she
was so aggravated by the dress and manners and language of the people in
the next suite of rooms, but he talked her over, and gradually the people
improved."

"Poor Florrie!" said I, "she was a fastidious young personage. Little did
she think to end her days as a unit in an Associated Home."

"It took some time, too," said my kinswoman, "to establish the rule that
no married couples should have more than three children. They stood out
that if they could afford to keep four or five they should not be
prevented, and many expulsions followed this infraction. Now it is felt
to be as disgraceful to exceed the number, as in old times it was to have
a child born out of wedlock."

"That is a curious condition of public opinion."

"It is the keystone of our whole system. Science, too, has put the
limitation of the family more completely in our power than when the rule
was laid down. People who do not care for children, have none, and some
couples who would like them are not blessed with them; so that the limit
of three keeps the population stationary."

"I suppose that almost all the children who are born grow to maturity,"
said I.

"My daughter says that nothing shows the advantages of our social order
like the small death rate, and the average long healthy life. The death
of infants is very rare indeed, most of the infantile diseases are
stamped out. Children do not need now to take measles and whooping-cough
any more than they do small-pox. Care is certainly needed during the time
of teething, and the changes of weather should be provided against; but
our babies are not such tender blossoms as those of our
great-grandmothers."

"One would think that so many mothers in a home would quarrel about their
children?"

"Well the children are kept in their place, and our nurses are
well-educated, good-principled women; but, really, as to quarrelling, the
advantages are so enormous in comfort and material well-being, as well as
for social intercourse, that people have learned to put their pride and
their susceptibilities aside. The rules of the home are seldom referred
to, but they are tacitly respected by everyone."

"I suppose it has never occurred to you that you would be happier in the
old way, the way in which it was last week suggested to me that I should
live;--in furnished apartments by myself."

"Certainly not; this is the home I was born in and married in. My
widowhood need not sever me from all society."

"Should you not prefer to live with your married daughter and her
children in a pleasant house of her own."

"Why I live with her now. I do not bore or restrain her in any way. Old
people constantly with two generations of younger ones must have been a
tie, and sometimes a nuisance. The younger might also be a nuisance to
the old. Elderly people do not like the continual worry of children, who
in your old times were very abundant and irrepressible--if I may judge by
the light literature of the period."

"I suppose, living in the same house, your daughter devotes herself to
you?" said I, recollecting my life with my mother.

"Part of every day she spends with me here. If I am ill, she is my
physician, and often my nurse, but her own professional arid public
duties carry her outside a great deal. My granddaughter who is a student
at the university, and who is to be married to another student on
Thursday, always look in on me every day; we meet of course at meals,
each family sitting together or opposite, and we see a great deal of each
other in the public rooms. But I do not depend altogether on them when I
am really ill, as I have been sometimes lately; there are six or seven
other people in the house, who have time to spare, and who are glad to
bestow it on me."

"The Associated Homes seem to be the paradise of declining years," said
I.

"If I feel disposed for society, I can mix with it, and I can choose what
group among seven or eight to attach myself to."

"And this without fatigue or expense?" said I. "And as for amusements, I
suppose there still exist theatres and concerts, or have you become too
utilitarian to care for them, or too poor to pay for the highest talent?"

"We have music and the drama certainly, and the public exhibitions in
this way are not costly; but there are entertainments of a similar kind
got up in each Associated Home at least twice a week, to which we have
the privilege of inviting our friends from outside. This Home, too, is
the first that started keeping a carriage for the older and weaker of its
members."

"Then the young and healthy do not ride in it?" said I, recollecting the
many carriages rolling about everywhere with the healthy wives and
daughters of the rich in them, while the old--perhaps infirm--fathers and
mothers were supposed to be quite satisfactorily dealt with by being left
in the close indoor atmosphere of the fireside.

"Young people can walk and cycle." She used quite a new word; indeed
there were many new words in my kinswoman's talk--as might be supposed in
a language that had been alive and changing for a hundred years--but I
guessed at her meaning by the context. "They can take the public
conveyances, but to give old people fresh air and sunshine without
fatigue is like life to them."

Our pleasant talk was here interrupted by the penetrating sound of an
electric bell. "There is the warning bell for dinner," said she, "it is
half-past twelve."

"You call your middle-day meal dinner, and not luncheon?"

"Certainly, because it is dinner."

"What are your hours for meals?"

"Breakfast at half-past seven, dinner at one, and supper at half-past six
are our hours at the Owen house."

"People engaged in business cannot all come to a middle-day meal."

"Some of the gentlemen engaged in the city take dinner there, but most of
us manage to put in an appearance at the chief meal of the day. You will
like to take off your bonnet and cloak, and to wash your hands. I shall
ring for you to be shown to your room."

"You do not dress for a middle-day dinner, I suppose?"

"Oh, I change this cap, which is good enough for my own room, for a
fresher one, and take off my apron; that is all."

"Do you dress for the evening meal, then?"

"The young folks may smarten themselves up a little, but we old folks
make no change."

I observed that Mrs. Carmichael's dress showed signs of long service,
though it was perfectly neat and spotlessly clean. The material and
fashion were both simple and inexpensive.

"I suppose," said I, "that my dress must appear as antidiluvian, as the
short-waisted white embroidered dress my mother wore tight before her
marriage, and hoarded all her life, appeared to her grand-children."

"No, your dress is rich and most elaborate, but our styles are now as
various as our tastes. My own was designed for me by my dear husband when
I began to feel I was growing old, and I keep to it. I am having a new
dress made for Florrie's wedding, as I needed one, but it is after the
old pattern. What is the meaning of that hump at the back? Is it to hide
any sort of deformity?"

"By no means. It is to hang the drapery on, and is considered--or was
considered--to be indispensable. It helps stout people like myself to
have some appearance of a waist."

"What is this rough stuff which sets off the soft woollen material of
your dress and mantle? The two blacks are so different from each other."

Had my kinswoman never heard of crape and mourning? "I got the dress
nearly a fortnight ago as mourning for my mother; my sister-in-law
ordered it for me, and it was rather more costly than I wished or could
afford, but Mrs. Grundy--if you ever heard of such a person?"

"I think I have; but I confuse her with the Philistines in some way."

"Mrs. Grundy stands for public opinion, or the opinion of the
Philistines, or the least intelligent part of the community. Well, Mrs.
Grundy requires mourning to be worn for relatives, and, regardless of
ways and means, demands that this mourning should be costly. This crape
which is new to you is the authentic and authorised sign of woe; the
greater the grief, the nearer the relative in blood to you the deeper
should be the crape which is an expensive texture made of silk--though it
has none of its lustre. In fact it is a sign of unmitigated woe to be
enveloped in crape from head to foot, but, as a shower of rain injures it
greatly, that mark of respect is only fit for people who ride in close
carriages, or keep indoors."

"I do not wonder at our giving up that practice. Of course I have read of
crape in old books, but I have never seen it before."

"Did you not make any alteration in your dress when you became a widow?"

"Certainly not," said Mrs. Carmichael, "I continued to wear the clothes
my husband had designed, and that he had seen me in, and that were
hallowed by the touch of his dying hands."

"Then you are no slaves to fashion?"

"Fashion, as far as I can gather from the records which I have read, and
from the grandmother's talk, was a capricious deity who exacted costly
service. We wear such clothes as suit us till they are worn out honestly.
We could neither afford to wear such clothes as you have on, or to change
them often; but here is Mrs. Cox, ready to show you to your room." "This
lady, Mrs. Cox, is my guest for a week; there is a guest-room vacant, I
believe?"

"Yes, No. 1, which is on this floor," said the attendant, and she led me
to a pretty little room, not quite half the size of Mrs. Carmichael's.
Everything was on a smaller scale, but in the same style. The bedstead
was a single one, and the writing-table with writing materials was half
the size of my kinswoman's; there was a cane chair, but no couch, and at
the washstand I could have both hot and cold water by turning the taps. I
laid aside my outward wrappings, and sat for five minutes at the window
to try to take in the situation. I saw from this side of the house, which
looked to the back, a garden cultivated in a manner which surpassed all I
had seen or dreamed of. Such beds of vegetables--without a weed to be
seen in them, such fruit trees on walls and espaliers to catch all they
could of the English sun. Golden apricots that reminded me of Australia,
downy peaches, rosy apples, melting pears; all the gooseberry and currant
tribe were represented, as well as raspberries; strawberries, of course,
were over--except for what appeared a late white variety. There must have
been ten acres of garden at the back, besides what I had seen from the
front. A large shadehouse and a hothouse were placed in the most
favourable aspect, so that exotic flowers and fruits might be cultivated
as well as the ordinary English varieties. This fruit and vegetable
garden appeared to be in charge of three gardeners, who, I saw, put on
their coats and go to dinner, probably to their own Associated Homes.

I rose to my feet, shook myself to feel that I was substantially here in
the flesh; I looked at myself in the mirror, and I saw that I was the
same Emily Bethel who had up to to-day lived and breathed in the
atmosphere of the nineteenth century. I took out of my bag the soft cap
which I had taken with me for my week's visit and fastened it with the
pins provided for guests in No 1 guest-room at the Owen house, which held
better than my own. Everything in my bag was as I had packed it. How real
and yet so strange was my experience!

My friend was at my door ere I was quite ready, and took me with her down
the lift. We walked into the dining-room for adults--to which children
were not admitted till they were fourteen years old.

"As a rule the families sit together at meals. I introduce you as an
Australian cousin to the community, but you must take Mr. and Mrs.
Oliphant into your confidence, as both of them can help you more than I
can to get the full value of your queer bargain." said Mrs. Carmichael.
"There, of course, is one frequent guest--soon to be a permanent
inmate--Fred. Steele; there is no keeping him away from Florrie."

I was introduced to my kinswoman's daughter, who had a shrewd, sensible
face, and a somewhat incisive way of speaking. Mr. Oliphant impressed me
even more favorably. Of their two sons, one had settled and married at
Liverpool; the other was having his Wanderjahre--his year of
travel--before he began his work in his father's newspaper office. His
tour was to include America, Africa, and Australia before he returned by
India and the Suez Canal.

I therefore could only see one of the younger generation, but I was
pleased to see in the seventeen-year-old Florrie of 1988 a great likeness
to the Florrie of 1888, especially about the eyes and the turn of the
head. After a special study of my relatives, I gave a more comprehensive
glance up and down both sides of the table, at which we were seated about
the middle, and I felt on the whole very well satisfied with the
appearance of the inhabitants of the Owen Home. The expression of
restfulness and candour and kindliness which had charmed me with my
kinswoman was to be seen on almost every countenance, old and young.
Their manners to each other, and to the attendants, were perfect. Matthew
Arnold has told us that equality is the best foundation for fine manners,
and that the vast disparities in material wealth and in intellectual
culture between different classes of society prevent the development of
that _respect_ humain which is the root of courtesy. I thought of his
words as I sat at this dinner table.

As for dress it was on the whole--though various in fashion and style of
different ages--much plainer and less expensive than that of middle-class
people in my own day. I recollect a newcomer from England asking my
mother how people dressed in Adelaide, and she said, curtly, "As well as
they can afford to do, and often a great deal better."

As for good looks, I was more than satisfied. The lovely complexion of
youth in England was where Florrie and her compeers had the advantage
over the Australian ancestors, but the complexion stood even in middle
and advanced age, and the physique was altogether finer. Both men and
women were taller, larger, and stronger than our old average.

I compared the table, at which about seventy people sat, with one at a
_table d'hôte_, or in a large ocean steamer. The appointments were good,
though not showy. The tablecloth and table napkins were tolerably fine
and beautifully white. Linen, glassware, dinner set, knives, forks and
spoons were all marked Owen Home, and could be replaced when worn out or
broken. The twenty middle-class families of the nineteenth century would
each have had at least two sets of china, stoneware and glass, and of the
more expensive an extra number for purposes of hospitality. Thus there
was a large saving made in the original outlay and maintenance for the
twenty families. The food was abundant and excellently cooked and served,
but there was far less meat on the table than I was accustomed to see.
Three of the families were absolutely vegetarians, but, independent of
that, vegetable diet took a much greater place in the food of the people
now that all classes lived alike, and when England was expected to
provide for her own population. Soups made largely from pulses, a
profusion of vegetables--some familiar to me, but others quite new,
salads, light puddings and pastry, and a large quantity of fruit--raw and
cooked, with white and brown bread _à discretion_ made up the dinner,
which I enjoyed very much. There was a large profusion of water drinkers,
but some drank light beer or wine with dinner. I was told that those paid
a little more, and the vegetarians a little less, as their contribution
for housekeeping than the average rate. Four expert waiters--two men and
two women--waited at the table. The children had had their dinner
half-an-hour earlier in their own dining-room. The meal lasted about
forty minutes or three-quarters of an hour, and was enlivened with
talk--chiefly amongst the separate families, but occasionally more
general. I was interested in some talk about the prospects of the next
Presidential election between some opposite neighbors, and I could not
help watching with interest the boy and girl, the student lovers who were
at my side.

Mrs. Oliphant went after dinner to visit some patients in a Home,
Hounslow way. The lovers went for a walk preparatory to settling down to
their afternoon work.

Mr. Oliphant--whom I took at once into my confidence--had five leisure
hours before going to his office, which he was accustomed to spend either
in the library for the preparation of his book on "Co-operation," or in
the garden--for he was an enthusiastic horticulturalist; but he was too
interested in my story to do anything but devote himself to me. My
accurate information and shrewdness up to a certain date, my ignorance
and helplessness about all subsequent matters gradually convinced him
that I was a belated fellow mortal astray in another century.

Mr. Oliphant was at this particular time a member of the house committee
of the Owen Home, and he showed me all over it. First we went to the
kitchen--with its marvellous cooking range, and the central fire which
warmed sufficiently the whole building at a very small cost for each
family even in winter. The same economy characterised the lighting of the
establishment by the electric light. The drainage was perfect, and the
consequence was that the health of the little community was generally
excellent.

Supplies were procured from co-operative stores, which again were
connected with cooperative farms and factories. All the processes of
production, distribution and consumption were made inter-dependent, and
while the cost of production and the labor employed in getting the
product to the consumer were minimised, everyone had a share in the
profit. It was difficult to compare prices with ours. Perhaps the bushel
of wheat was the nearest to accuracy. I could see that a man's work for
the day of six hours might be reckoned at the price of a
bushel-and-a-half of wheat, and a woman's at a bushel-and-a-quarter. The
relation which a bushel of wheat bore to other commodities was, however
so different from what I was used to that this unit is somewhat
misleading. Prices were marvellously steady, but on the whole the day's
work tended to procure more of the necessaries and comforts of life every
decade. Wheat was grown in England for the bulk of its supplies, but
other cereals and pulses took a large place in cultivation, while the
minor industries--too much neglected on large capitalist farms--were
developed to the utmost extent on the large co-operative farms which had
taken their place; the dairy, pigs and poultry, and fruit and vegetable
productions for consumption enormously increased. The Owen Home grew all
its own fruit and vegetables, and supplied itself with honey from the
garden. The waste from the garden and the house fed the pigs and poultry,
but milk was bought, and dairy produce as well as bread, meat, general
groceries and beer and wine from the co-operative stores with which the
Home was affiliated. The twenty families, without servants, numbered 104
old and young; for though the number of children was limited, it was so
much the custom for two or three generations to inhabit the same home
that there was more than the old average of five.

I went through the public rooms, each set apart for its specific purpose,
and I noted how the hands of various members during three generations had
beautified and enriched the common property. I saw, too, how
furniture--originally well made--would last if properly cared for and not
cast aside for fashion's sake. When the Home was founded in 1900 each
member was supposed to put in so much money for the purchase and the
furnishing. In order to economise the cost, most of the associates
contributed out of their old abandoned homes some things that would take
the place of new. Mrs. Carmichael's bedroom furniture was still in great
part what Florrie and her husband had put into it. There were still
chairs and tables in the whist room and the smoking room, and others,
which dated as far back, and the best violins in the music room, as well
as one piano, were as old. The mechanics' room was not only utilised for
all repairs, which were made properly and efficiently, but many pieces of
furniture--such as easy chairs, couches and occasional tables--were made
there with the latest improvements in comfort and economy. I saw and
admired Mr. Carmichael's paintings, and his widow's needlework.

There was nothing of the meretricious and showy decorations of the
present hotel or fashionable boarding house in the appointments and
decorations of the Associated Home. Though inhabited by as many families
as would make a hamlet or small village the place looked and felt like a
home, and I could see that each member felt an owner's pride in it.
Inside I could see traces of this everywhere, and there were quite a
dozen of the families who had a taste for gardening, and worked at the
flower beds and greenhouses--and even at the kitchen garden in their
leisure hours.

There was a committee for floral decorations, who arranged them in the
public rooms before breakfast each day. There was also an amusement
committee who arranged and carried out the programmes of the Owen Home
entertainments, week by week. When Mr. Oliphant took me round the
garden--which was his own special health-giving hobby, he showed me more
in detail that minute and extensive cultivation which was the rule in the
England of the 20th century, and dwelt upon the fact that, by the larger
and more varied use of fruit and vegetables as diet, the race had
improved in health, and, besides, the land had been able to support in
plenty a population which must have emigrated elsewhere, or been
insufficiently nourished when English manufactures no longer supplied the
rest of the world.

"To-morrow you must see agriculture proper, where the same principle is
carried out to waste nothing, and to coax mother earth to produce her
uttermost. You must also see the factory system. That will be enough for
one day. This day, it should suffice to make yourself acquainted with the
machinery of our Associated Homes, the unit in our society, from which
commercial associations proceeded, rising to national association up to
the confederation of the world for peaceful industry and interchange of
commodities and ideas."

"But you say that the export trade of England has departed:"

"In the gigantic form which it used to rear, it is no more; but there are
still some foreign goods we must buy and we must export an equivalent.
Although foreigners and colonists no longer depend on the capital, labor,
and ingenuity of England for their manufactured goods, but supply
themselves, there are still some lines which force their way into the
markets of the world, because they are better and, for the quality,
cheaper than the home product, and this, sometimes in the face of a
protective tariff. For instance, Australia cannot manufacture cottons to
compete with us, and we share that large market with the United States.
In iron goods, America, perhaps, exports more value than we do--but we
hold our own. There is a limited demand in the more backward East for
some of the comforts and conveniences of life. On the whole we export
what procures us what we need from abroad, and thus make life richer and
pleasanter for ourselves and others."

"I must make the most of my week:" I said, "but there is so much to see
and to learn that it seems all too short."

The evening meal was announced before I could take in all I wanted to do
of the Associated Home and its working. Supper, as it was called, was
different from the dinner, because there was no meat or even fish upon
the table. There was tea, coffee and cocoa, and a quite new
beverage--patronised by the vegetarians--bread, butter, preserves, light
puddings, salads, and an abundance of fruit. Meat was only eaten once a
day--even by those who were not vegetarians, but the best vegetable
substitutes in the way of pulses were largely consumed, especially at
breakfast, which I was told was a more substantial meal than supper.
Wheaten and oaten porridge and lentils or other legumes were eaten at
breakfast, with eggs prepared in various ways, bacon and fish. I never
ate more delicious bread and butter in my life than at supper--the only
recollection that came at all near to it was at Paris. Three meals a day
made the regular course. Invalids might have food more frequently, but
healthy children and adults were supposed to be abundantly nourished with
breakfast, dinner, and supper. I contrasted the meals with those of the
Melbourne well-to-do, and found that though different they were
substantially as good; but, when I contrasted them with those of the
Australian working men with meat and tea and bread three times a day, I
could see that the working men of the future had a far more healthy
dietary, and as for the children at whom I had a peep, there was no
comparison.

After supper Mr. Oliphant went to his office, but for me and all others
there was an evening, and my kinsfolk asked me where I should like to
spend it. I saw by the programme that there was a little dramatic
entertainment in which Florrie Oliphant and her lover were to take part,
so I chose to go there. The half hour before the performance began I
spent in looking through the public rooms and seeing how affinities
grouped themselves. I also had a peep at the younger children being put
to bed, but I must delay my remarks on the children until I can embrace
the whole subject.

The acting was quiet, but very pleasing and remarkably equal. I never
heard the prompter at all. Florrie reminded me even more of her great
great grandmother in the slight alteration of dress than before, but
there was very little make-up in the little play. The piece was so very
different in plot from what I was used to--and even in character--that I
did not quite know whether I liked it or not, but I knew quite well that
I liked the acting.

When I went up to my room, I took pen in hand, and sat down to the little
writing-table to commit to paper the wonderful events and experiences of
the day. This took so long a time and excited me so much that it must
have been far in the morning before I dropped off to sleep. The morning
bell awoke me before I had had half enough of the refreshing oblivion of
sleep--of deep, dreamless sleep; but I did not ask for a week in the
future to waste it in over much slumber. I rose briskly, plunged into a
cold bath--and felt a new woman--put on my clothes with a somewhat
uncomfortable feeling of being over-dressed for the morning in the Owen
Home, and hastened down to eat with excellent appetite a well served and
delicious breakfast.




CHAPTER III



TUESDAY


_Co-operative Production and Distribution_


Mr. Oliphant kindly put himself at my disposal for the day; as he did his
six hours' work and more during the night, his days were unoccupied
except by the two hobbies of literature and gardening. He felt that my
coming would throw light on the subject of his new book, as it showed how
different society was in the infancy of co-operation, so that no hobby
was equal to the pleasure of enlightening me, who could not stay to read
his book. If I did not get whole chapters fired off to me, I feel sure
that I had a great many detached sentences. The newspaper seemed to be a
very inadequate vehicle for such a man to express himself in. There did
not seem to be the same anxiety for the latest news that had
characterised the world when I knew it well. I was surprised to see the
small size of the paper which my friend edited, and especially the
handful of advertisements which appeared in it. I thought this must be a
journal with small circulation, or recently established, but in this I
was mistaken. The title was the _Daily News_, and it was the present
representative of that old Liberal paper.

"What has become of the advertisements?" said I.

"Well, people do not advertise much now-a-days. When the whole community
deal at co-operative stores, they need neither showy buildings nor
insinuating shopmen nor costly advertisements. The stores do not
overstock themselves, and therefore do not need to push their trade!"

"The advertisements used to be the very sinews of war!"

"Yes, indeed; the tail grew so strong that it wagged the head. We still
are a good deal beholden to our advertisements, though you look on them
with scorn!"

"You see a column or two of vacancies in Associated Homes, and at this
season a large number offered at the seaside, for occasional change of
air is good for everyone, though not so necessary now that we understand
sanitation. Here is a column of Lost and Found, another for situations
wanted, and for persons to fill situations. A column of shipping
advertisements and a few auction sales of cargoes, which in a general way
are consigned to special importers and are not put up to auction, some
notices of removal. Births, marriages, divorces, and deaths of course
take the first place on the first page!"

"Divorces?" I said.

"Yes; they are public matters, deserving of brief official announcement,
though not of exhaustive and exhausting reports as in old times!"

"But where are the quack medicines and the toilet requisites? Where are
Holloway's Pills, Eno's Fruit Salt, Pears' Soap, Hop Bitters, and such
like?"

"Not now worth advertising apparently. Sales are made to the stores,
which are not induced to buy by plausible advertisements!"

"Where are the new season's goods just opened,--where the tremendous
sacrifices of goods at the end of the Summer and Winter seasons, and the
detailed price-list to tempt the lover of bargains?"

"Gone for ever, I suppose, because our co-operative stores do not
over-buy in the first place, and neither charge a fancy price for what is
novel, nor reduce below cost when the article has become common or has
induced cheaper imitations. We keep our wares till the next season, we
wear out our own clothes and consume or work up our own scraps; but with
the death of the fury of competition fell the enormous profits of
newspapers on advertisements which enabled them to spend what appears to
us now fabulous sums for the latest news. I can see that you look on our
modern _Daily News_ as a very poor affair, but you may see that other
journals are in the same category."

There were five other daily papers and six weekly taken in at the Owen
Home, but all had the same characteristics. The _Times_ was larger than
the _Daily News_, and had more foreign intelligence, but no larger
advertising sheets.

I was indeed surprised. "It is not only the new goods and the season
sales that I miss, but the sales of real estate, of stock, of shares."

"I suppose there is a character of permanence in all our doings that was
unknown to you. A family goes into a home, and, as you see, remains there
for life, and often for generations. A farm or a factory, on co-operative
principles, helps its employés together, not by the week or the month,
but for the life-time. Exchanges are sometimes made, but it is
advantageous to keep together, and the element in human nature that leads
to constancy is encouraged by all our social arrangements. But this
permanence is not the thing to make newspapers either so interesting to
read, or so lucrative to manage as when people could be tempted to almost
any course of action by having it forcibly presented to them."

"Personally, I hated the advertising system. I do not think I ever bought
anything in consequence of having it presented insistently; but I must
have been an exception, or the thing could not have been kept up," said
I.

"You see that we do not get as much for a penny as you used to do. The
advertisements are fewer and cheaper. Twenty families associated do not
buy so many newspapers. We pay the employés as much or more in value for
six hours' work as was formerly paid for ten, and the price of paper
would have been raised by the high value of labor if cheaper fibre had
not been discovered, and more effective machinery applied to the
manufacture."

"It is indeed a strange industrial revolution that has been carried out.
Our prevalent idea was that things would continue to go on expanding, and
that the 20th century would go into bigger figures in every way than the
19th, but with you the general well-being of the whole population demands
checks somewhere, and I see it in the newspaper clearly enough The cost
of advertising enhances the cost of the product, and your whole system
demands the minimising of the cost of distribution, so that the producer
should get as much and the consumer pay as little as possible."

"You put the case in a nutshell," said Mr. Oliphant."

"But what do the armies of distributors do, not to speak of the
speculators, the brokers, and stock jobbers. Of actual producers every
country showed too few, and yet they appeared to produce too much for the
consumers to buy at a remunerative price. The fringe of casual workers
taken on at a push, and cast off in slack seasons, showed something very
far from sound in the industrial world, and scarcely less objectionable
was the fury of overwork alternated with none at all in many of the
season trades. Painters and decorators, for instance, were over-driven
for six months in the year, and half idle for the other six."

"Our social system now," said Mr. Oliphant, "is built on the continuous
employment of all the population. Painters and decorators, as you say,
are still living during the summer at this branch of their business, but
they are employed in making paper hangings and other material that will
keep during the winter months. Every one has a by-trade, which may be
scarcely as profitable as his ordinary one, but the misery and waste of
enforced idlenesss is saved to him. This needs organisation and
management, which you will see to advantage at our co-operative farm."

"How far is it out of London?" I asked.

"About forty miles. My brother is the manager, and will be glad to show a
stranger from Australia over the place. You will travel by a national
railway."

"That I was used to; in all the colonies railways were built and
controlled by the Government. How did the nation absorb the iron roads
built by associations of capitalists?" "Not by spoliation--the nation
gave the full value to the companies for them." "Is travelling cheapened
in consequence?"

"Yes, considerably cheapened, and made much more safe as well."

"I cannot comprehend how, in a century, the great disparities of
condition have been virtually abolished, and the nation seems in the
process to have exchanged national debt for national property. You have
no rich people now-a-days."

"Yes, we have some whom we call rich, but the very rich are extinct."

"You must have confiscated property on a large scale. It may have been
necessary, but it must often have been very cruel."

"It was not confiscation, as I understand the word," said Mr. Oliphant,
"but something had to be done when the armies of Europe were disbanded,
and the millions of non-producers, who had simply destroyed capital and
consumed the fruits of others' toil, must needs be enlisted in the
industrial army. All trades stood aghast at the threatened competition.
In old thickly-peopled countries it was not as in America at the close of
her civil war, when an enormous area of fertile land was open for new
settlement, and Europe ready to buy the produce of labor, and besides,
there the armies had been improvised recently out of industrious
citizens. The European standing armies were composed of soldiers
untrained to peaceful labor. The Continental armies were larger than the
English, no doubt, but their land system was better. It was not the mere
soldiers who had to be provided for, but there were thousands on
thousands of artisans engaged from their youth up in making rifles,
cannons, and all the munitions of war by sea and land, thrown at once out
of employment. The land system had to be revolutionised, and all of the
land utilised. Then was the tremendous stride taken in co-operative
production, and the simultaneous exchange of the isolated for the
Associated Homes. It was a terrible but a grand time to live in. In the
peaceful serenity of our present days, I have often sighed for the
opportunities of that time of transition. The wisdom and philanthropy of
the best of the educated classes were called out as they have never been
before or since, organising workshops and trade instruction, and
especially in revolutionising agriculture."

"Was it peasant properties or _petite culture_ that they went in for, or
long leases with compensation for improvements?"

"Not small peasant properties; modern agriculture to be successful, must
be carried on on a large scale, with every appliance in the way of
machinery, and the most effective division of labor that can be
accomplished. It was an age when the capital which had been gradually
earning less and less in the old channels, was poured out on the land
like water; when new fertilisers, some bulky and others minute, were
tried and tested all over the country from Land's End to John O'Groat's,
and when for the first time, the body of the people understood the
population question."

"The nation would of course save the enormous cost of the army and navy."
said I, "but in such a crisis the taxes would fall off, and would be
remitted."

"No, the taxes were not remitted. They were very severe, but the nation
used this money and the credit which still stood good, for all other
countries were passing through an equally difficult crisis, to buy up
encumbered estates. All crown lands, church lands, and waste lands are at
once nationalised, and let with absolute fixity of tenure for a rent or
land tax, call it what you will. The waste lands blossomed like the rose,
and the non-producers became producers of wealth not before dreamed of."

"We thought British farming was very advanced."

"I have the statistics at the office, which would surprise you. The
average product in food of various kinds to the acre is very much more
than when the land was cultivated by capitalist tenant farmers employing
hired labor."

"But the nation has not bought up all the land in what I gather from
conversation you now call the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Ireland."

"By no means, but all other estates are dealt with by their owners in the
same way. Many estates were so encumbered that it was impossible for the
owners to hold them longer, and they were divided and sold to
co-operative companies in blocks for farming. All entails and hindrances
to sale of land were done away with, so that the great land-owner is a
tradition of the past. Land kept up its value long because the possession
of it gave a social position which other property could not do, but with
the collapse of foreign trade, and the competition of foreign and
colonial manufactures, the large fortunes were no longer made that sought
for this Hall-mark of gentility."

"And what of the wheat growers of America, Australia, and India, not to
speak of Russia, who used to supply your industrious producers of
manufactured articles with cheap bread? Their occupation would be gone."

"There was, as I have told you, a terrible period all over the world. You
must have seen the beginning of the industrial revolution, when the
foreigners and colonists began to shake off the yoke of dependence on
Britain. This continued till the unemployed in England were counted by
millions; Capitalists stood aghast at the gradually waning profits of all
industrial undertakings, which turned indeed to a steady loss, and were
glad for years to live on their capital without looking for interest at
all. Then as I said, the preventive population check was adopted not only
by the middle class, but by artisans and laborers, and there was an
emigration for (sic) England which rivalled that from Ireland after the
famine. Australia received a large contingent during the ten years at the
close of the last century, and at the beginning of this, which she
absorbed advantageously in settling her vast territory. America, as might
be expected, received a still larger access of people. The cheapness of
transport caused a large number to go to Canada, than to your more
distant settlement. But Australasia, as might be expected now far
outnumbers Canada in population."

"But other European countries would be equally embarrassed with
over-population."

"All these countries sent large bodies of emigrants to North and South
America, and to Australasia, but England was the country _par excellence_
which had a large proportion of the people absolutely dependent on
foreign trade and foreign food."

"The great Republic grew rich on the emigration of Europe. Has that
exodus now ceased?"

"The great Republic, like other nations, has learned how to be
self-contained and self-supporting. The millionaires who had been made
rich in the mechanical inventions supplied to an intelligent people who
had abundance of land to fall back upon, and especially by the railroads,
which conveyed the produce to the sea-board, suffered in the collapse of
the export trade. Their railways became less profitable, and were
nationalised sooner than ours. America, after a period of great
expansion, has settled down to a stationary population of about one
hundred and fifty millions"

"And Australia?" I asked eagerly.

"Australasia including New Zealand, has now a population of fifty
millions, and is capable of much expansion yet."

"The United Kingdom or Commonwealth, as you call it, can no longer
maintain as its own territory the thirty-five millions of a century
back--of my yesterday."

"No, it fell through emigration, and the preventive check, to thirty
millions, and keeps stationary at that."

"This does not look like progress," I said. "All our ideas of prosperity
were connected with an increasing population."

"In a new country like yours, population was wealth--the more hands you
could enlist in developing your soil, and your vast resources, the more
general was the well being, but a limit is found at length. Of the thirty
millions who now people England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, all are
living in comfort; there are no longer a third of the community existing
in the borderland of starvation. Pauperism has died out, so that heavy
drain on the industry of the people has been removed, as well as the cost
of war, and of the fear of war, which was worse than the conflict itself.
You will find also as you become acquainted with our social system, that
many of the things which were established at great cost and which were a
continuous tax on productive industry, are carried out by armies of
volunteers in their leisure, which every one has so large a share of."

"How do you employ all your thirty millions of people. It does not need
so many to produce food and clothing, and moderate necessaries for home
consumption."

"You forget that each producer is a large consumer. That a well-to-do
working class (to use the old phrase,) which is well and plainly fed,
comfortably clothed and lodged, well educated, and well amused, makes a
large market for all sorts of commodities. A market steady and quite
unaffected by the changes of fashion."

"It was held that without the lavish expenditure of the rich, the artisan
and factory hand could not earn a living," said I, "but I always combated
that idea."

"What is the market created by one rich man waited on by say twenty
unproductive servants, compared to that of two hundred producers, fed and
clothed and lodged as we are in our Associated Homes, with the minimum of
labor required to wait on us, and set us free for our various
bread-earning avocations?" said Mr. Oliphant.

"The wealth of the past certainly was accompanied by enormous waste, and
was confronted and overbalanced by enormous want, but people justified
the lavish expenditure of the rich on the ground that it employed labor,
which was always super-abundant, and always ready to flow in any
direction which their tastes or caprice opened. Whether in the form of a
hundred guineas for a ball-dress, or a thousand pounds for the floral
decorations at a single entertainment, this circulation of money was held
to enrich the producing classes."

"How much of it stuck to the fingers of the middlemen? Are not the
dressmakers who make our wives' and our daughters' simple clothes better
paid and better treated than the fabricators of hundred guinea marvels,
and is it not better that flowers should be a part of our daily life and
seen in abundance in the homes of all the community, than that costly
exotics should be grown for the demand of millionaires? Thank God we have
done with millionaires. They had their uses in the production of capital
which stimulated invention, but they were the most demoralising of
consumers."

"I suppose more people are employed in the land than formerly. In my time
great complaints were made that machinery entered into farming so much
that agricultural laborers were at a discount, and the best of the
country people crowded into the towns or emigrated to the colonies,
leaving the old and feeble and the paupers a burden on the community."

"We employ far more machinery than ever, but we also employ more manual
labor. The great decline is in the factory hands as the foreign trade is
so small now, but machinery and inventions had not said their last word
even in your time, and we must export, not only to pay for the raw
material of other countries, such as cotton and silk, but for those
articles of food which we desire which we cannot grow in this climate."

"Tea, coffee, wine, sugar?"

"We do not import much sugar. Much of our soil is admirably fitted for
beet."

"And the sugar-growers in the West Indies and in Queensland are cut out
of their market." I remonstrated.

"We still draw some sugar from the West Indies, but these islands have
learned to vary their industries. As for Queensland and Palmerston they
supply Australasia with cane sugar, which is better liked than beet, and
as there is a fiscal union over all the colonies, they have the command
of the market."

"Would it not be cheaper and in every way better for England to import
cane sugar and other things which are not suited to her climate, than to
fight with nature to produce them?" said I, for I had been reared in the
orthodox doctrine of political economy, and I thought that to draw our
daily supplies from the farthest corners of the earth was not only
magnificent but economical.

"I cannot undertake to answer that question. Society has come to the
conclusion that whether the articles cost more or not, it is better to
pay a little higher price and be more independent of the outside world.
The hostile tariffs that the undutiful daughters of Great Britain one
after another erected as barriers against the products and manufactures
of the mother country, were probably an economical mistake for a time,
and were somewhat blindly entered into, but I believe it was thus that
the world struggled into the knowledge that the _nearest_ market is, on
the whole, the _most profitable_, and that the well-being and the varied
efficiency of our own producers are the chief things to be considered."

"Now that you have established a certain standard of living, a certain
limitation of labor, and a certain rate of wages, you will be forced to
keep out foreign competition."

"We are," said Mr. Oliphant. "Fancy coolies and Chinese coming to destroy
all we have struggled for! But this does not need legislation. Public
opinion makes it difficult if not impossible for a stranger to find
employment."

"It is like a mighty trade union," said I. "There was great exception
taken to many of the exclusive ideas and unjustifiable methods of the
trade associations in my time, but there is no doubt they did a great
deal of good."

"They occupied the transition ground between individualism and
collectivism. The interests of the single workman were lost in that of
his trade, but at first the union had no feeling for the vast mass of
inorganised labor, which had no such protection from encroachment, and
they actually made the position of these, including all female workers,
more intolerable. Now we feel all members of one body, and there is no
avocation, however humble, that serves society, that is not respected and
adequately paid for."

"But if you keep out cheap labor, you must also keep out the products of
the cheaper labor of other countries."

"The continental countries have all established systems similar to ours,
for they were ahead of us in the social revolution. The well-being of the
workman is measured by the fertility of the soil and the pressure of
population, and in a smaller degree by the capital that has been
accumulated to develop industries."

"I should also say by the intelligence of the people." said I.

"France took the lead in seeing the necessity of a stationary
population," said Mr. Oliphant. "Germany, when she worked up to the
situation, and had no longer the drain of her armies, which took from
every citizen five years of productive life, besides the cost of the
permanent force and artillery and fortifications, excelled France in the
thoroughness of her social reforms. Her soil is not so rich as that of
England or France, but the industry of her people is marvellous. In
Germany they work eight hours a day still. In France and Italy and Spain
only seven hours."

"What are the hours in America and Australia?"

"Six hours, but I believe the style of living is more luxurious than
here."

"And Russia," said I eagerly, "Has Russia obtained freedom?"

"Oh yes, long ago. It is strange to look back a hundred years. Russia is
still backward as compared to England, but there was a marvellous
movement after the fall of the Autocracy. You had the French Revolution
as your type of terrible catastrophe: that was nothing to the Russian
Revolution. Hard as was our task in reconstruction, the settlement of
Russia was harder, and there were many noble souls released from years of
prison and exile, who plunged into the work and spent themselves for
their weaker and more ignorant brethren. Russia has great, indeed immense
resources. Like America, she has every variety of soil and climate
(outside of the tropical), and enlightened agriculture has done marvels
for her, though the want of a middle class was a great hindrance for her
for a whole generation. I may say for nearly two generations."

"What heavy protective tariffs you must have to keep out foreign
products."

"Foreign products are not now so much cheaper than our own. With regard
to Europe and America and Australia, freight and charges are almost
sufficient protection. It is a matter of time with regard to the Eastern
or Asiatic commodities."

"India, China, and Japan--at least if the workman there continues to
subsist on a handful of rice--must be able to undersell your highly paid
European cultivator and artisans."

"They have not the aid of machinery, and invention, and effective
association of labor to any great extent yet, though they have made a
beginning; but as for the bare margin of subsistence they are learning
from the West to demand more, and, as the first step towards this, they
now limit their population."

"The religion of India, and that of China also, favored the reckless
multiplication of the species."

"What known religion of any antiquity did not," said Mr. Oliphant,
"except the ascetic form of medieval Christianity, which encouraged
celibacy among the most gracious and intelligent of the population, and
left the race to be perpetuated by the ignorant and violent. Every church
and creed and priesthood in the world fought to the death against the
prudential check, but religion is forced to give way, or to accept
modifications when its requirements are felt to be destructive or
subversive of happiness and progress. Female infants were always
ruthlessly murdered in China, but male infants were prized because they
alone could perform the necessary rites on the death of a parent. It is
now found that the nearest male relative can do this as well, and the
proportion of quite childless couples is even greater in China than in
India. The population of both vast territories has steadily decreased for
the last seventy years, and the well-being of the inhabitants has
advanced in a similar degree."

"Of course England no longer possesses her splendid Indian Empire."

"No! But she has the glory of having prepared this vast dependency for
self-government--not as one empire, but as a confederacy of states. Their
institutions are not closely modelled on ours, but are suited to the
genius and to the circumstances of these people."

"The British Islands have a great history." I said. "Mother of nations
planted by all waters, and, in India, the administrator and educator of a
foreign empire. It must have seemed hard to give up the vast prestige and
power of a Colonial and Indian Empire, and to have settled down to the
position--held before the days of Chatham--of a small European group of
islands, living on its means. Where are the openings now for enterprising
young men? It is difficult for me to conceive of a state of society where
different members of families were not scattered abroad. With my own
limited family connections I had relatives in Scotland, London, Victoria,
New Zealand, South Australia, Canada, Canary, the West Indies, the United
States, Ceylon, and India, China and Fiji--not to speak of others in
houses of business trading with these and other distant parts. It appears
a sad come down for Imperial Britain."

"As in the case of our ordinary families, the children have become
independent. They still love their parent State, and honor her; but they
do not depend on her. She, too, has made herself independent."

"What then are your chief industries?"

"Agriculture and horticulture; but, of course, there are still great
factories for the production of everything but the raw material. The six
hours' labor daily is aided by all the machinery and appliances which the
feverish age of competition, in which you have lived, gave birth to for
the advantage in the race of wealthy individuals. That age, indeed, was
mainly employed in equipping civilised man with economic tools to use in
a quieter and happier social order. Had the reconstruction of the
industrial world taken place a hundred years--or even fifty years
earlier--the unit of production would have been much less. Material
well-being would have been lower in degree, and procured with more
labor."

"I recollect the socialists and anarchists said that four hours' labor
daily would suffice for the wants of the world."

"We prefer six, and go beyond necessaries to comforts: but now we reap
the full advantage of the conquering machine."

"Your short day's work is wasteful for costly machinery."

"No! Such machinery is worked in shifts--as many as three shifts in the
cotton and woollen factories, and in some of the ironworks. Two shifts,
daily, in all factories. The only direction in which longer hours of work
are occasionally allowed is in agriculture. At haymaking and harvest time
all hands will work double tide (sic), if necessary."

"They do not now call in extra hands to help, as was the custom when I
knew the world."

"What could these extra hands do for the rest of the year? Our industrial
system is built upon permanent, and continuous employment. The terrible
evils of out-of-workness, or, as the French concisely termed it,
_chomage_, rose to such a height at the latter end of the nineteenth
century that it caused starvation in many cases, imperfect nutrition for
millions, put a strain upon charity and philanthropy under which they
collapsed, and threatened revolution and anarchy."

"You _had_ a revolution. It was not merely threatened."

"Yes! But not such as that of France in the 18th century, or of Russia in
the 19th. It was not anarchic but reconstructive. However, such as it
was, _chomage_ was its most dangerous element, and the thing had to be
put an end to, at whatever cost."

"I recollect, indeed, the foolish speech of a fashionable lady who had
delayed giving the order for her dress in the London season till the last
moment, and the dressmaker said it could not be done. 'Why not put on
fresh hands?"

"That meant," said Mr. Oliphant, "that outside of the regular workers
there should be a contingent to suit the caprices of employers, and to be
cast off to starve at other times."

"There is far too much of that in all season trades, I fear," said I.
_Chomage_ was one of the things that weighed heavy on my mind in the last
fifteen years of my life. But six hours seems an absurdly short day. I
recollect the alarm at the shortening of hours lest it should destroy
England's supremacy as against the cheaper labor and longer hours of
continental producers. Six hours cannot be universal. The attendants at
your Homes must be on duty much longer."

"Yes! But not at the stretch, all the time, like an operative in a
factory or workshop."

"I used to think shopmen in England, and especially barmen and barmaids
were kept on the stretch for very long days and domestic service where
employers were not considerate was not much better. On the go from early
morn till long past dewy eve."

"Our people relieve each other a good deal in the homes. Our work is done
by contract, and there is perfect organisation amongst the attendants.
There is no complaint of overwork. We have had the same staff
substantially for ten years, as the contract is renewed yearly."

"Your attendants do so much," said I, "compared with service as I
recollect it."

"Machinery lightens the work in every direction: knives and boots and
silver are cleaned by machinery; there are no fires to light or grates to
clean; sweeping is done in an ingenious method which you never heard of,
which raises no dust: nothing could give less trouble than the lighting
of the Owen Home. You saw the cooking apparatus, the boilers, roasters,
and steamers, the peelers, shellers, and choppers, which are so useful
when food has to be prepared in quantity, but which are not worth buying
for every isolated home. It is the same in every department. I feel
certain that except in the textile arts, six hours' work is as effective
now as ten when you left the world."

"The personal service must be much more effective," said I, "unless your
twenty families need far less waiting on than their ancestors."

"Probably they do. They do not ring the bell and bring a domestic up two
flights of stairs to tell what is wanted, and send her down for it. Even
with the lift, and the telephone, our attendants have little of that kind
of interruption. All necessary orderly services in the way of cleaning
the house, cooking, and serving the meals, and washing and getting up
clothes, are given to us without our having the trouble of ordering it."

"Then you are never put out because the cook has gone off in a huff on
the eve of a large dinner party, or the girl who minds the baby leaves on
short notice for an easier place."

"You observe that we call our attendants Mr., Mrs., or Miss as the case
may be. We respect them, and save them by machinery from much
disagreeable labor. We plan all we can to economise unproductive human
labor."

"And productive human labor also," said I, "because the more each worker
can turn out the better for the consumer."'

"Quite true; but a reduction in the number of those who give personal
service to others for their livelihood is one of the most remarkable
features in our civilisation. It began in a faint and tentative way
before the industrial revolution."

"I recollect going into some statistics in Victoria, where domestic
servants were more highly paid, and had more privileges than anywhere in
the world, and I noticed that while in ten years the general population
had increased so that there were twenty thousand more inhabited houses,
the number of female domestic servants had only increased by three
hundred. Our newspapers laid the blame of this on protected industries,
which attracted the girls to factories and shops, but I could not see
that so many of them went there. A large proportion seemed to prefer to
stay at home."

"It was the objection to the conditions of service that was at work
everywhere."

"The objection told hard on the mothers of young families who were not
rich. They could not get help for love or money."

"That pressure affected society in two ways," says Mr. Oliphant. "It
tended to limit the number of children to what the mother herself could
attend to, and to substitute for the old service the present independent
contract, which is best carried out in associated homes."'

This, I think, was the substance of our conversation on the railway
carriage, which took us in a little over an hour to the co-operative
farm, forty miles out of London, northward, which was managed by Mr.
George Oliphant. It was a busy time of the year, all hands were out in
the harvest-field, which, however, was so near the house that they were
able to come in for middle-day dinner, so that I could see the
agricultural laborer of the twentieth century at his work and at his
meal. Reaping machines were used, not worked by horses. In the matter of
horses, the age was most economical. Some of these machines were worked
by cable like the tramways, but those on this co-operative farm of
Ossulton were worked by pneumatic pressure by steam, but with a saving of
fuel such as I had never heard of. That also was the case with the
railway on which I had travelled. The wheat harvest was in full swing,
and the day was hot. The produce, I was told, was equal to fifty bushels
to the acre, but the reckoning was in centals, and indeed decimal coinage
and decimal weights and measures had been adopted so long ago that most
people had forgotten our old standard. The farm measured about 5,000
acres, mostly gently undulating country, but there was something like a
hill which had been cut in terraces by a steam scoop, and which took its
turn in the rotation of crops. The proportion of stock kept to the arable
was smaller than of yore, because new and less bulky manures supplanted
in part the old farm-yard compost, which was also made the most of. Great
pits of ensilage was stored, as well as turnips and mangolds, for winter
consumption for sheep and cattle. The minor industries were legion, as
well as what may be called outside crops. There was beet, and flax and
hemp, rye and a hardy millet. A choice plot was planted with hops, which
were not now confined to Kent. There were fields of peas and beans, not
exclusively for horses' food as of old. The well-being of the community
was greatly aided by the utilisation of old despised products for human
food. Vegetables were grown for sale, as well as to supply plentifully
all the hands employed on the farm. Fruit trees were planted for shelter
where I had been used to see belts of firs or other forest trees. Now
that the building trades had collapsed, and shipbuilding had also died
out, for the needs of the world were served by swift iron steamers
mostly, there was a very limited market for building timber, and so the
food-producing apple, pear, plum, and nut trees were substituted. A large
dairy farm employed continuously several of the inhabitants of Ossulton
House. Another contingent had charge of the pigs and the poultry, which
were kept in far larger proportions than in the old capitalist farms.
Poultry farming has, indeed, grown to a scientific pursuit, and it was
quite possible for every citizen to have a fowl in the pot on Sundays,
according to the kindly but ineffectual wish of _Henri Quatre_. The very
bee-hives of the farm aided in the common fund considerably. No more
eggs, butter, or cheese from abroad, and very little fruit of any kind
that the English climate could produce. In estimating the loss of foreign
trade, as Mr. Oliphant pointed out, people forget the loss and the waste,
which comes from foreigners rushing in with their supplies of what
England could very well produce. The labor on the main crops, the
cereals, was economised very much by steam ploughs and reapers, but the
more minute labor in the minor industries, the weeding and hoeing and
gathering, was very great.

"Are women as well as men employed in agricultural work," I asked.

"Certainly," said Mr. Oliphant, "there would not otherwise be enough for
the female contingent to do on the Ossulton farm, and our women must work
as well as our men."

"Are all the laborers housed in this single home for the work of this
large farm."

"No; there are two homes, each containing about 120 souls, located at
convenient distance, so that no worker is very far from his work."

"That is a great deal of labor for the land according to Australian
practice, but not as much as was bestowed on it before the days of
machinery in England. I do not see how you can employ more people in
agriculture than they used to do a hundred years ago."

"We do indeed, because the whole country is cultivated in the same minute
way. There is not half of the pasture land to the arable that there used
to be, and wastes and moors and marshes have been reclaimed, parks and
pleasure grounds in private occupation taken into cultivation, though
indeed parks and recreation grounds for the people have been enlarged and
multiplied everywhere; but that does not amount to half the other."

"Our Australian cultivation was of course wheat, wheat, wheat, which was
to be called the pioneer crop, grown with the least cost of labor of any
crop, especially in a new country. And it was held that it was far
cheaper for England to import food to supply her manufacturing
population, and to pay for this by export of manufactured goods than to
grow it on her own limited soil."

"But when the outside world would have none of her exports, what then? We
had to do the best we could with our own soil."

"And seeing the crops you grow, the best is certainly pretty
satisfactory."

"Why the dependence on foreign food paralysed all legitimate efforts at
the development of agriculture. Land in the hands of terrified and
indebted proprietors, who saw their rents decrease and the burdens on the
land in no way decrease, could never be done justice to. English capital
would go to the ends of the world buying gold mines or silver claims or
lending to insolvent States--anywhere rather than on the soil of England.
Emigration took the pick of our young men and left us with the feeble and
the feckless, with women who competed with men and each other at the
worst-paid and least-healthy of employments, with lunatics and criminals
and paupers draining the life-blood out of the country. The England you
knew did not become the mother of nations without many bitter pangs that
threatened to be death-throes."

"What a Protectionist you are! I was brought up a Free Trader," I said,
amazed at Mr. Oliphant's deprecation of what had been the pride and boast
of my own day.

"It was a great step in evolution. Much was taught by Adam Smith and his
followers even more valuable than Free Trade. They helped us to get at
the roots of things."

I was puzzled, but I could not but confess that whatever might have been
the cause, the result in quantity of crop as well as in the general
well-being of the laborers was very satisfactory. The careless
cultivation of Australia with which I was most familiar, of course was
nowhere as compared to this, but even the best which I had seen in
England and East Lothian halted far behind, especially in the variety of
produce. Was this indeed the English agricultural laborer, with his slow
bovine glance exchanged for a look of keen intelligence, who directed the
reaping machine or disposed of the sheaves? Was this old man of seventy
still able to tend cattle and feed the horses, his joints now unracked by
rheumatism, hale and upright, with the winter apple complexion on his
cheeks, and either his own teeth or those supplied by art, fair and even
in his head? When I sat down by the side of Mr. George Oliphant at the
mid-day meal with one half of his laborers I felt the social revolution
more strongly than ever. They were in their working clothes, with thick
boots, and a trifle dusty from the harvest-field, but a finer lot of men
and women I never saw, and their manners, though not quite as good as
those of the Owen Home, were courteous yet independent. I sat beside on
the other hand the oldest inhabitant, who would have been a toothless,
bed-ridden, old crone, but who now with a snow-white cap on her head, and
a complete set of teeth inside of it, talked to me as a stranger from
Australia rather condescendingly, on account of her great age, putting me
just a little in mind of my own mother.

These laborers had no longer cold, damp hovels to live in, and
insufficient food, and clothing not fitted to protect them from the
changes of weather. The food was as good as at the Owen Home. Not only
was there a substantial advance in diet from the agricultu