For instance the theatre, which I remember as a two-dollar affair, and mainly vulgar and narrow, was now the daily companion and teacher. The historic instinct with which nearly every child is born was cultivated without check. The little ones played through all their first years of instruction, played the old stone age (most natural to them!), the new stone age, the first stages of industry. Older children learned history that way; and as they reached years of appreciation, special dramas were written for them, in which psychology and sociology were learned without hearing their names.
Those happy, busy, eager young things played gaily through wide ranges of human experience; and when these emotions touched them in later years, they were not strange and awful, but easy to understand.
In every smallest village there was a playhouse, not only in the child-gardens, but for the older people. They each had their dramatic company, as some used to have their bands; had their musical companies too, and better ones.
Out of this universal use of the drama rose freely those of special talent who made it the major business of their lives; and the higher average everywhere gave to these greater ones the atmosphere of real appreciation which a growing art must have.
I asked Nellie how the people managed who lived in the real country—remote and alone.
“We don’t live that way any more,” she said. “Only some stubborn old people, like Uncle Jake and Aunt Dorcas. You see the women decided that they must live in groups to have proper industrial and educational advantages; and they do.”
“Where do the men live?” I asked grimly.
“With the women, of course—where should they? I don’t mean that a person cannot go and live in a hut on a mountain, if he likes; we do that in summer, very largely. It is a rest to be alone part of the time. But living, real human living, requires a larger group than one family. You can see the results.”
I could and I did; though I would not always admit it to Nellie; and this beautiful commonness of good music, good architecture, good sculpture, good painting, good drama, good dancing, good literature, impressed me increasingly. Instead of those perpendicular peaks of isolated genius we used to have, surrounded by the ignorantly indifferent many, and the excessively admiring few, those geniuses now sloped gently down to the average on long graduated lines of decreasing ability. It gave to the commonest people a possible road of upward development, and to the most developed a path of connection with the commonest people. The geniuses seemed to like it too. They were not so conceited, not so disagreeable, not so lonesome.
People seemed to have a very good time, even while at work; indeed very many found their work more fun than anything else. The abundant leisure gave a sort of margin to life which was wholly new, to the majority at least. It was that spare time, and the direct efforts of the government in wholesale educational lines, which had accomplished so much in the first ten years.
Owen reminded me of the educational vitality even of the years I knew; of the university extension movement, the lectures in the public schools, the push of the popular magazines; the summer schools, the hundreds of thousands of club women, whose main effort seemed to be to improve their minds.
“And the press,” I said—“our splendid press.”
“That was one of our worst obstacles, I’m sorry to say,” he answered.
I looked at him. “Oh, go ahead, go ahead! You’ll tell me the public schools were an obstacle next.”
“They would have been—if we hadn’t changed them,” he agreed. “But they were in our hands at least, and we got them rearranged very promptly. That absurd old despotism which kept the grade of teachers down so low, was very promptly changed. We have about five times as many teachers now, fifty times as good and far better paid, not only in cash, but in public appreciation. Our teachers are ‘leading citizens’ now—we have elected one president from the school principalship of a state.”
This was news, and not unpleasant.
“Have you elected any editors?”
“No—but we may soon. They are a new set of men now I can tell you; and women, of course. You remember in our day journalism was frankly treated as a trade; whereas it is visibly one of the most important professions.”
“And did you so reform those editors, so that they became as self-sacrificing as country doctors?”
“Oh, no. But we changed the business conditions. It was the advertising that corrupted the papers—mostly; and the advertisers were only screaming for bread and butter—especially butter. When socialism reorganized business there was no need to scream.
“But I find plenty of advertising in the papers and magazines.”
“Certainly—it is a great convenience. Have you studied it?”
I had to own that I had not particularly—I never did like advertising.
“You’ll find it worth reading. In the first place it’s all true.”
“How do you secure that?”
“We have made lying to the public a crime—don’t you remember? Each community has its Board of Standards; there is a constant effort to improve standards you see, in all products; and expert judgment may always be had, for nothing. If any salesman advertises falsely he loses his job, if he’s an official; and is posted, if he’s selling as a private individual. When the public is told officially that Mr. Jones is a liar it hurts his trade.”
“You have a government press?”
“Exactly. The press is preeminently a public function—it is not and never was a private business—not legitimately.”
“But you do have private papers and magazines?”
“Yes indeed, lots of them. Ever so many personal ‘organs,’ large and small. But they don’t carry advertising. If enough people will buy a man’s paper to pay him, he’s quite
