In every town of any magnitude or importance, are free museums of science and art, visits to which are as common as to the beautiful parks laid out as breathing places in the larger cities.
Color-masters vie with each other in great kaleidoscopic exhibitions, which out-rival in beauty of rapid combinations and successions of color, the most brilliant pyrotechnic displays of the generations past.
The art of perfumery has been carried to a point never even dreamed of by those of the preceding century. The law steps in and prevents any one from using, or permitting the use of, any odor (like musk) which is prejudicial to health or general comfort. The gamut of odor has been discovered, and harmonies of perfumes are made just like those of colors, or of musical tones. Concerts are given at which, the great perfume-masters of the day produce chords and pleasing successions of odors, which draw great crowds of the most refined, fully appreciative of the delights there offered.
Flower-culture is a national pastime. Where there are no large gardens, small patches are devoted to floriculture; and in the most crowded city, window-boxes hold the latest new hybrid plants and make the most frequented thoroughfares a garden of beauty. Dwarfing and aggrandizing plants, by electric currents passed around their roots, has been practiced for twenty years upon a large scale; so that in the great conservatories, one may find tiny plants grown from the cones of the Yosemite great trees, and may also see what have sprung from tiny fungi but are now as large as the old-fashioned cabbages of the days of President Harrison. The dyeing of plants and of their flowers by substances introduced in solution at their roots, is a fine art most successful and pleasing in its application.
Banking is much more simple and much more safe, both for the banker and for the dealer, than in the old risky days. Panics are impossible. The wise action of the Bank of England, in connection with other monetary institutions, in averting a financial crash in November, 1890, by coming to the rescue of Baring Brothers with $55,000,000, began most auspiciously an eminently successful era of mutual help. Every bank is guaranteed by Government, and the notes of any bank in any one Government are good in any country on the globe; the various Governments having treaties to the effect that each shall guarantee to the common banking fund a certain percentage of its revenues, and the amount of money issued in each country being in proportion to the net revenue of the year preceding.
All currency is decimal, and uniform over the whole civilized globe, greatly facilitating travel and commerce.
By an ingenious system the great clearing-houses of each country are united in a National Clearing-house which serves weekly for all those in each city the same purpose as the local establishments do daily for the banks which are members thereof. Similarly, there is in London an International Clearing-house through which the National Clearing-houses all over the world effect monthly clearances. Each city bank takes an equal quantity of certificates in its local clearing-house, so that when aid is extended, no unfavorable inference is drawn; and the same arrangement exists up to the International establishment in London.
The new noble metals Columbium, Africum, Asium and Australium furnish coins ten times as light as those of fifty years previous, while very far exceeding them in wearing power. The paper money extant being of equal value with coin, is in universal circulation, while its cleanliness and general good condition are insured by frequent renewals; every bank of issue and deposit being compelled by law since 1910 to accept torn and soiled notes at par and replace them with others, new, clean and whole.
In most mercantile and manufacturing establishments, profit-sharing is the rule rather than the exception.
Naturally a country so blessed in material and moral wealth, would be the objective point of the oppressed and unhappy from all over the world; but there is in the immigration laws a strict clause, carried out most rigidly, rendering the possession of a certain degree of intelligence and education absolutely a sine qua non for all who wish to set foot upon our shores. The old law by which contracting for labor abroad was a punishable offense has been so far changed that no one is permitted to land unless possessed of means enough to support him for three months without work, or having from a responsible party a contract for his labor for half a year ahead. Thus no paupers are thrown upon the community, to be supported by either the working or the leisure class.