"Do you mean that man kills oxen?"
"Not now, of course; he's worked his way up. He probably represents the Guild in the Assembly."
"Do all the trades have guilds, and are they all represented in the Assembly?"
"Why, of course! How else could you be certain that the trade was treated fairly? If all the citizens voted as citizens, there'd simply be no fair representation at all. Look; there's a goldsmith—he has probably been to the King; that's a journeyman with him."
An open car sped past them. Two men were seated in it; both in clothes of some really beautiful metallic colour; but the cap of one was plain, while the cap of the other blazed with some device.
"And the women? I can't see any system among them."
"Ah! but there is, though it's harder to detect. They have much more liberty than the men; but, as a rule, each woman has a predominating colour, the colour of the head of her family, and all, of course, wear badges. There are sumptuary laws, I needn't say."
"I shouldn't have guessed it!"
"Well, not as regards price or material, certainly—only size. There are certain absolute limits on both sides; and fashions have to manage between the two. You see it's the same thing as in trades and professions, as I told you yesterday. We encourage the individual to be as individualistic as possible, and draw the limits very widely, beyond which he mustn't go. But those limits are imperative. We try to develop both extremes at once—liberty and law. We had enough of the via media—the mediocrity of the average—under Socialism."
"But do you mean to say that people submit to all this?"