ic nurseries between the first and tenth
years are twenty-nine in twelve dozen admissions in the stronger sex,
and only about ten in the weaker. Read these facts as we may, they
ensure employment to the young men when their education is
completed--the two last years of severe study adding somewhat to the
mortality among them.

"A large number find employment in superintending the property of
others. To give them a practical interest in its preservation and
improvement, they are generally, after a shorter or longer probation,
adopted by their employers as heirs to their estate; our experience of
Communism having taught us that immediate and obvious self-interest is
the only motive that certainly and seriously affects human action. The
distance at which they are kept, and the absolute seclusion of our
family life, enables us easily to secure ourselves against any
over-anxiety on their part to anticipate their inheritance. The
minority who do not thus find a regular place in society are employed
in factories, as artisans, or on the lands belonging to the State. To
ensure their zeal, the last receive a fixed proportion of the produce,
or are permitted to rent land at fixed rates, and at the end of ten
years receive a part thereof in full property. By these means we are
free from all the dangers and difficulties of that state of society
which preceded the Communistic cataclysm. We have poor men, and men
who can live only by daily labour; but these have dissipated their
wealth, or are looking forward at no very distant period to a
sufficient competence. The entire population of our planet does not
exceed two hundred millions, and is not much increased from generation
to generation. The area of cultivable land is about ten millions of
square miles, and half a square mile in these equatorial continents,
which alone are at all generally inhabited, will, if well cultivated
and cared for, furnish the largest household with every luxury that
man's heart can desire. Eight hours' labour in the day for ten years
of life will secure to the least fortunate a reasonable competence;
and an ambitious man, with quick intelligence and reasonable industry,
may always hope to become rich, if he thinks wealth worth the labour
of invention or of exceptionally troublesome work."

"Mars ought, then," I said, "to be a material paradise. You have
attained nearly all that our most advanced political economists regard
as the perfection of economical