“How do you prevent his carrying advertising?”
“It’s against the law—like any other misdemeanor. Post office won’t take it—he can’t distribute. No, if you want to find out about the latest breakfast food—and there are a score you never heard of—or the last improvement in fountain pens or airships—you find it all, clear, short, and reliable, in the hotel paper of every town. There’s no such bulk of advertising matter now, you see; not so many people struggling to sell the same thing.”
“Is all business socialized?”
“Yes—and no. All the main business is; the big assured steady things that our life depends on. But there is a free margin for individual initiative—and always will be. We are not so foolish as to cut off that supply. We have more inventors and idealists than ever; and plenty of chance for trial. You see the two hours a day which pays board, so to speak, leaves plenty of time to do other work; and if the new thing the man does is sufficiently valuable to enough people, he is free to do that alone. Like the little one-man papers I spoke of. If a man can find five thousand people who will pay a dollar a year to read what he says he’s quite as likely to make his living that way.”
“Have you no competition at all?”
“Plenty of it. All our young folks are racing and chasing to break the record; to do more work, better work, new work.”
“But not under the spur of necessity.”
“Why, yes they are. The most compelling necessity we know. They have to do it; it is in them and must come out.”
“But they are all sure of a living, aren’t they?”
“Yes, of course. Oh, I see! What you meant by necessity was hunger and cold. Bless you, John, poverty was no spur. It was a deadly anaesthetic.”
I looked my disagreement, and he went on: “You remember the hideous poverty and helplessness of the old days—did that ‘spur’ the population to do anything? Don’t you see, John, that if poverty had been the splendid stimulus it used to be thought, there wouldn’t have been any poverty? Some few exceptional persons triumphed in spite of it, but we shall never know the amount of world loss in the many who did not.
“It was funny,” he continued meditatively, “how we went on believing that in some mysterious way poverty ‘strengthened character,’ ‘developed initiative,’ ‘stimulated industry,’ and did all manner of fine things; and never turned our eyes on the millions of people who lived and died in poverty with weakened characters, no initiative, a slow, enforced and hated industry. My word, John, what fools we were!”
I was considering this government press he described. “How did you dispose of the newspapers you had?”
“Just as we disposed of the saloons; drove them out of business by underselling them with better goods. The laws against lying helped too.”
“I don’t see how you can stop people’s lying.”
“We can’t stop their lying in private, except by better social standards; but we can stop public lying, and we have. If a paper published a false statement anyone could bring a complaint; and the district attorney was obliged to prosecute. If a paper pleaded ignorance or misinformation it was let off with a fine and a reprimand the first time, a heavy fine the second time, and confiscation the third time; as being proved by their own admission incompetent to tell the truth! If it was shown to be an intentional falsehood they were put out of business at once.”
“That’s all very pretty,” I said, “and sounds easy as you tell it; but what made people so hot about lying? They didn’t used to mind it. The more you tell me of these things the more puzzled I am as to what altered the minds of the people. They certainly had to alter considerably from the kind I remember, to even want all these changes, much more to enforce them.”
Owen wasn’t much of a psychologist, and said so. He insisted that people had wanted better things, only they did not know it.
“Well—what made them know it?” I insisted. “Now here’s one thing, small in a way, but showing a very long step in alteration; people dress comfortably and beautifully; almost all of them. What made them do it?”
“They have more money,” Owen began, “more leisure and better education.”
But I waved this aside.
“That has nothing to do with it. The people with money and education were precisely the ones who wore the most outrageous clothes. And as to leisure—they spent their leisure in getting up foolish costumes, apparently.”
“Women are more intelligent, you see,” he began again; but I dismissed this also.
“The intelligence of a Lord Chancellor didn’t prevent his wearing a wig! How did people break loose from the force of fashion, I want to know?”
He could not make this clear, and said he wouldn’t try.
“You show me all these material changes,” I went on; “and I can see that there was no real obstacle to them; but the obstacle that lasted so long was in the people’s minds. What moved that? Then you show me this marvellous new education, as resulting in new kinds of people, better people, wiser, freer, stronger, braver; and I can see that at work. But how did you come to accept this new education? You needn’t lay it all to the women, as Nellie does. I knew one or two of the most advanced of them in 1910, and they had no such world-view as this. They wore foolish clothes and had no ideas beyond ‘votes for women’—some of them.
“No sir! I admit that there was potential wealth enough in the earth to support all this ease and beauty; and potential energy in the people to produce the wealth. I admit that it was possible for people to leave off being stupid and become wise—evidently they have done so. But I don’t see what made them.”
“You go and see Dr. Borderson,” said
