"Try this glass of artificial milk," he said to Alice, handing her a glass of rather unappetizing-looking liquid of a slightly pale green color, not too clean looking and somewhat thick. Alice tasted it, however, and found that it tasted exactly like a good rich cow's milk. The manager asked Alice to close her eyes and take a good drink. She did so, and exclaimed in surprise that it tasted exactly like rich, creamy milk.
The manager then explained that synthetic milk was free from the bacteria which give milk its white color. Moreover, the fat content was much higher than cow's milk, and, there being a greater percentage of sugar present, the milk tasted sweeter. Certain added salts gave it a distinguishing taste.
From this milk, he further explained, any sort of fat could be extracted, and the usual array of milk products, such as butter, all sorts of cheeses, etc., could be made much better than from cow's milk, which never ran uniform.
After inspecting the laboratory, Alice and Ralph sampled a number of products, all of which tasted excellent—better, if anything, than the natural products. The manager added "You will find our synthetic products are far easier to digest, and are more wholesome than the natural product. The reason is that we have eliminated all of the disease-carrying microbes and bacteria, retaining only the beneficial ones, which we can control very easily in our plants, more than the cow or goat can do."
THE END OF MONEY
A few days later, Alice, while rolling along one of the elevated streets of the city with Ralph, inquired how the present monetary system had been evolved: "You know," she confided, "I know very little of economics."
"Well," said Ralph, "all monetary systems of the past or present are based on one principle—the exchange of one thing for another. At first it was simply a bartering or swapping of such things as a goat for a pig, or a string of beads for a piece of cloth. Only much later did money evolve. Before we had coins, certain rare shells were used as tokens. Still later, precious metal was exchanged for goods, using the weight of the metal as a basis. Later on, coins were developed, and still later on, paper money replaced part of the coins. Where the shells, the precious metals, and, later the metal coins, had intrinsic value, the paper money had no such value. The public accepted with faith and confidence a piece of paper across which was printed the guarantee that the bearer of it would receive so many metal dollars in exchange for the piece of paper. The paper money was built upon confidence that the people had in the government issuing the paper money.