You cannot fail to have observed, as one of the most promising signs of your destiny, that wherever humanity in the midst of civilization is freest from the cares of sustenance supply, it inclines to devote its leisure to a cultivation of the mind. The crudeness and vulgarity of some, and the refinement of others, are entirely due to difference in opportunities of development, and between these two there must always exist a great repulsion. What good can you therefore expect of mankind as a whole, so long as by your methods a few only are vouchsafed the opportunities for knowledge?
The forces at work within your society have now, we we will say, brought up your population and general conditions to the standard of those which may be found in the older portions of the Earth. Your poverty is more intense and widespread, with its corresponding increase in crime, while your wealth has become more munificent and ostentatious. Impelled by the necessities of life and a brave emulation, all your industries will be found in the highest strain of action. The accumulated products of labor and its multiplied activity have given to you a semblance of prosperity and success. But while in the course of your progress you have created new necessities and wants, you have made no just provision by which they could be, as near as possible, equally shared; and as a consequence the apparent as well as the silent and concealed miseries of human life were never greater.
There is to be observed now a marked increase in the spread and influence of your religion. As the hope of success in life becomes lessened, and as the heartaches and distresses increase by your uneven struggles, the suffering and disappointed masses turn naturally to another existence for what has been denied them in this; and it can be said of all your religious theories, that their contrivances to make you suffer uncomplainingly the outrages of authority are the best that could have been devised. The few among you enjoying the bounties of life, surrounded by that want and privation whose voices they cannot escape, and whose strong arms they cannot fail to observe, turn instinctively to your religious doctrines with a sense of safety and protection. The few favored ones, looking over the vast multitude of their less fortunate brothers, are conscious that the superabundance they enjoy has been doubtfully acquired, and they are quick to embrace that convenient justification, which ascribes the greater ills and burdens of the many to a preconceived and unalterable arrangement of the divine will.
CHAPTER IX.
Before bringing into comparison one of our cities it will be necessary to explain to you some of the processes which have rendered our present civilization possible. You already have a hint, from what I have said, of the very striking difference between the society of Mars and that of the Earth, in their handling of labor interests. While with your careless and indifferent treatment, labor remains degraded, we have raised it to a point of honor. We have arrived at our methods of its treatment by that philosophical induction which has interpreted to us the many reliable and unerring decrees of the divine will. Nature, upon whom we depend for all we know of the supreme wishes, has furnished indubitable signs that physical diligence is a saving and wholesome quality, inseparable from intelligence, in its extended sense as we know it, upon which the very existence of all material things rests. But even the activities of nature are not more indispensable to the firmness of the Earth, than individual mental and physical energy is to the well-being and progress of your society. Since one of these energies is as useful as the other in the economy of the world, we can conceive no reason why you should allow one of them to dominate the other; nor how you can justify yourselves in bestowing upon one all the honors and emoluments, while to the other you pursue a course denying opportunities, and in all ways bringing upon it an inferior social scale.
We met these natural tendencies ages ago, by a determination to equalize, as far as possible, the burdens of life among all classes, and to this end we have chiefly directed our efforts to sustain the interests of those who, by a struggle for the necessities of life, are obliged to toil. Some very remarkable results have followed. We have achieved that degree of justice where the skillful artisan, by virtue of his manual cunning alone, can acquire a certain elevation in our society, and whose occupation is not subordinated by any other on our planet. We have a very numerous class amongst us, known by the best interpretation of your language as officers of industry, who secure truer and more lasting honor than your military heroes. Our admiration of them arises from the fact that they assist to build up and restore the waste of those industrial products which sustain our lives. The official grades among these compare somewhat with your military system. Their insignia of office is permanently worn on their dress, and to achieve distinction in this line is the hope of all, since without having worn the badge of office in some of these grades, social or political distinction is difficult. By methods, long ago in vogue, we have united our intellectual and manual training so that there should be no social separation between them. But while equal distinction awaits the skillful pursuit of either path, the highest honors are achieved by those who excel in both. Consequently our youth, encouraged by their parents and teachers, become emulous of the qualities of physical endurance attached to labor, and serve their terms among the toilers with a will that nothing but a high ambition could create. This greater respect and consideration for physical industry than yours would have been impossible, were it not that we have avoided the various causes which either suppress or degrade it. In the first place, we have decreed that it shall receive a fair share of its earnings. Chiefly in furtherance of this, we have ordained that no individual holder of land shall rob it by taking to himself that appreciation in values which its diligence produces. To this end also we have provided that wealth and capital shall not bear down upon it in the various monopoly exactions common with you. But a measure of justice, scarcely less effectual than these to elevate and sustain labor, is our governmental system of fixing its rates of wages.
From what has been said it will not be hard for you to believe that a working man holds a very different position in society with us than with you. Upon the Earth, driven by the necessities of life, and a cruel and unrestrained competition, he is obliged to forego nearly all those opportunities which refine and elevate the mind. He has little of leisure, without the depression of muscular fatigue. His habiliments are the badges of inferiority in your social scale, and he trudges along on his tiresome, hopeless journey, bearing his condition as one under the prohibition of better things by an inexorable fate. No competency rewards his unremitting toil, though with the skill of his hands he is building the wealth of the world. To the sordid and cunning comes fortune in possessions and estates; while to him comes only the privilege to dwell in another’s house, and to partake of that fare whose chief quality shall be its capacity to restore the wasting energies of his body.
With us the pursuit of manual labor is attended with better conditions. By securing to industry its rightful rewards, it has been adopted by choice instead of compulsion, as the best way to gain independence. Having no road to wealth, except through the sterling qualities of industry and prudence, industry and probity are the indispensable qualities which lead to the upper stratum of our society. Thus, you will perceive, the natural laws of progression and development are encouraged to work out their beneficial results in the life of every individual.