had been dreaming; nor would they ever believe
anything else. In my day, I know that the total annual product of the
nation, although it might have been divided with absolute equality,
would not have come to more than three or four hundred dollars per
head, not very much more than enough to supply the necessities of life
with few or any of its comforts. How is it that you have so much
more?"

"That is a very pertinent question, Mr. West," replied Dr. Leete, "and
I should not blame your friends, in the case you supposed, if they
declared your story all moonshine, failing a satisfactory reply to it.
It is a question which I cannot answer exhaustively at any one
sitting, and as for the exact statistics to bear out my general
statements, I shall have to refer you for them to books in my library,
but it would certainly be a pity to leave you to be put to confusion
by your old acquaintances, in case of the contingency you speak of,
for lack of a few suggestions.

"Let us begin with a number of small items wherein we economize wealth
as compared with you. We have no national, state, county, or
municipal debts, or payments on their account. We have no sort of
military or naval expenditures for men or materials, no army, navy, or
militia. We have no revenue service, no swarm of tax assessors and
collectors. As regards our judiciary, police, sheriffs, and jailers,
the force which Massachusetts alone kept on foot in your day far more
than suffices for the nation now. We have no criminal class preying
upon the wealth of society as you had. The number of persons, more or
less absolutely lost to the working force through physical disability,
of the lame, sick, and debilitated, which constituted such a burden on
the able-bodied in your day, now that all live under conditions of
health and comfort, has shrunk to scarcely perceptible proportions,
and with every generation is becoming more completely eliminated.

"Another item wherein we save is the disuse of money and the thousand
occupations connected with financial operations of all sorts, whereby
an army of men was formerly taken away from useful employments. Also
consider that the waste of the very rich in your day on inordinate
personal luxury has ceased, though, indeed, this item might easily be
over-estimated. Again, consider that there are no idlers now, rich or
poor,--no drones.

"A very important cause of former poverty was the vast waste of labor
and materials which resu