lted from domestic washing and cooking, and
the performing separately of innumerable other tasks to which we apply
the cooperative plan.

"A larger economy than any of these--yes, of all together--is effected
by the organization of our distributing system, by which the work done
once by the merchants, traders, storekeepers, with their various
grades of jobbers, wholesalers, retailers, agents, commercial
travelers, and middlemen of all sorts, with an excessive waste of
energy in needless transportation and interminable handlings, is
performed by one-tenth the number of hands and an unnecessary turn of
not one wheel. Something of what our distributing system is like you
know. Our statisticians calculate that one eightieth part of our
workers suffices for all the processes of distribution which in your
day required one eighth of the population, so much being withdrawn
from the force engaged in productive labor."

"I begin to see," I said, "where you get your greater wealth."

"I beg your pardon," replied Dr. Leete, "but you scarcely do as yet.
The economies I have mentioned thus far, in the aggregate, considering
the labor they would save directly and indirectly through saving of
material, might possibly be equivalent to the addition to your annual
production of wealth of one-half its former total. These items are,
however, scarcely worth mentioning in comparison with other prodigious
wastes, now saved, which resulted inevitably from leaving the
industries of the nation to private enterprise. However great the
economies your contemporaries might have devised in the consumption
of products, and however marvelous the progress of mechanical
invention, they could never have raised themselves out of the slough
of poverty so long as they held to that system.

"No mode more wasteful for utilizing human energy could be devised,
and for the credit of the human intellect it should be remembered that
the system never was devised, but was merely a survival from the rude
ages when the lack of social organization made any sort of cooperation
impossible."

"I will readily admit," I said, "that our industrial system was
ethically very bad, but as a mere wealth-making machine, apart from
moral aspects, it seemed to us admirable."

"As I said," responded the doctor, "the subject is too large to
discuss at length now, but if you are really interested to know the
main criticisms which we moderns make on your industrial system as
compa