I learned that Edith Bartlett, after mourning my loss fourteen years, had married, that Dr. Leete’s wife was Edith Bartlett’s granddaughter, and that his daughter Edith was therefore the great-granddaughter of the young lady who had been my promised bride 113 years before.
The vigor of my manhood of thirty years overcame the shock of these discoveries. I soon felt myself at home in Dr. Leete’s house, the more so, because young Edith soon occupied the place in my heart once filled by Edith Bartlett, and it was not long before Edith Leete, a somewhat romantic, compassionate girl, consented with grace to become the successor of her great-grandmother; to be my bride.
But the turn of my own fate is even less remarkable, than the change that has taken place in the social order of things. Dr. Leete explained to me the new organization of society.
Individual enterprises have ended. The nation creates everything that individuals and corporations were producing at the end of the nineteenth century. Every able bodied man, every healthy woman belongs to the “industrial army”. They enter the force at the age of 21 and are released at 45. Only in rare cases of necessity are men over 45 years of age summoned to work.
Money is abolished, but all inhabitants of the United States receive an equal share of the results of the work of the industrial army in the form of a credit card, a piece of paste board on which dollars and cents are marked. There is one store in each ward where people can select such goods as they may desire. The value of the goods, one purchases, is pricked out of his credit card and his account is charged in the Government books with the amount of goods so purchased.
The meals are furnished by large cooking houses. Washing and repairing are done in large laundries. One may take his meals home or eat them at the cooking house. The bill of fare is very elaborate and one may have even a special dining room. The amount to be paid for the meals differs of course according to the bill of fare ordered and to the place where the meal is taken.
Each family occupies a separate house; the furniture being the property of the tenant. The rent, which depends on the size of the house, is also pricked out of the credit card.
All inhabitants of the United States are obliged to attend school until they have reached the age of 21. Then they become members of the industrial army. During the first three years of their services they are called recruits or apprentices and have to do the common labor under the absolute command of the officers or overseers. A record is kept, in which are entered the ability and behavior of each recruit.
After the first three years of service, each recruit may select a profession or a trade. As far as possible the volunteers are placed in the trades they prefer. Recruits with the best records are given the first choice. Some of them have to take a second or third choice, and some are obliged to accept positions assigned to them by their superiors.
All members of the army are, according to their ability and behavior, divided into three grades, and apprentices with a first-class record may, after their three years service, enter at once the first grades of the different trades selected by them.