tors to carry their point.

All this happened many centuries ago, so that when I was there I saw the
full program of one of these spectral auctions and was chilled with
horror at the proceedings.

Every year this peculiar auction is held at each soil center. The
wealthy are able to redeem their sepulchers, but the poor, having no
soil, cannot satisfy the law; so the dust of their ancestors must be
sold. Laborers are sent out to open the one-hundred-year-old sepulchers
along the diamond ridges and carry the coffins to one place. Here they
are publicly opened and the bones and dust gathered into one
receptacle after which the weird auction begins. No one can compete with
the corporations and no one tries.

[Illustration: The Most Horrible Auction in Our Universe.]

The legal form of the auction is soon over and the half ton or ton of
dust is legally bought by the corporations whose officers order it to be
sprinkled over the gardens. It serves the same purpose as phosphate in
our fields. This awful process is repeated each year. The sepulchers,
emptied thus, are open for new burials. So you can see that with all the
gruesomeness of this whole business, there is an economic side to it,
and the people have come to view it all in a philosophical manner.

When this wretched custom was first inaugurated a bitter wail ascended
from the ranks of the laboring classes, for they well knew whose graves
would be opened. Never was there such a stir among the working classes
of people. They held mass meetings and grew loudly indignant until the
Trust became alarmed at the uprising.

Then did some of these rich sharpsters, who were best gifted in speech,
go out to meet their servants, addressing them thus:

"Let your hearts be at peace, my fellow creatures. This new law that we
have just passed is a boon to every toiler, for we seek to lighten your
burdens by utilizing the idle dust from the tombs. Hereafter we propose
to give, free of charge, a sepulcher to every toiler in which he may
take his rest for one hundred years. These graves shall be for you and
your children forever. Is it not a precious thought that one hundred
years after you are dead, your bodies shall again mingle with the soil
and, without voluntary effort or pain, help to support your kindred yet
unborn?

"If our present silly customs should prevail, the time will come when
half our soil will have been carried to the sepulchers, and therefore
your tasks would b