text:
% The Republic of the Future
% Anna Bowman Dodd
% 1887

---
pagetitle: The Republic of the Future
title:
- type: main
  text: The Republic of the Future
- type: subtitle
  text: or, Socialism a Reality
identifier:
- scheme: URN
  text: uuid:F7B30324-A8E0-4B2A-A83D-9F83E67CC9A6
date: 1887
rights: Public Domain
cover-image: cover.png
cover-credit: |
  [Liza Daly](https://lizadaly.com)
cover-source: |
  [Broadway and 42nd Street](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11029?sortBy=Relevance&when=A.D.+1900-present&what=Paintings&ao=on&ft=%22new+york%22&offset=0&rpp=100&pos=29) by Childe Hassam (1902) courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
epub-file: republic-of-the-future.epub
description: |
  _The Republic of the Future: or, Socialism a Reality_ is a novella by the American writer [Anna Bowman Dodd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Bowman_Dodd), first published in 1887. The book is a dystopia written in response to optimistic stories of the period.
---

> Letters from a Swedish nobleman living in the 21st
> century to a friend in Christiania

# I.
## New York Socialistic City
### December 1st, 2050 A. D.

Dear Hanniveg,

At last, as you see, my journey is safely
accomplished, and I am fairly landed in the
midst of this strange socialistic society. To
say that I was landed, is to make use of so
obsolete an expression that it must entirely fail
to convey to you a true idea of the processes of the journey. Had I written—I was safely
shot into the country—this would much more
graphically describe to you the method of my
arrival.

You may remember, perhaps, that before
starting I found myself in very grave doubt as
to which route to take—whether to come by
balloon or by tunnel. As the latter route would
enable me to enjoy an entirely novel spectacle,
that of viewing sub-marine scenery, I chose,
and wisely I now know, to come by the
Pneumatic Tube Electric Company. The comforts
and luxuries of this sub-marine route are beyond
belief. The perfection of the contrivances for
supplying hot and cold air, for instance, during
the journey, are such that the passengers are
enabled to have almost any temperature at
command. The cars are indeed marked 70 degrees Fahr.,
80 degrees and 100 degrees. One buys one’s seat according
to his taste for climate. Many of the travellers,
I noticed, booked themselves for the bath
department, remaining the entire journey in the
Turkish, Russian, vapor or plunge
departments-as the various baths attached to this
line surpass a Roman voluptuary’s dream of
such luxuries. I, however, never having been
through the great tunnel before, was naturally
more interested in what was passing so swiftly
making the journey of three thousand miles
just ten hours long. In spite of the swiftness
of our transit, we were enabled by the aid of
the instantaneous photographic process, as
applied to opera-glasses and telescopes, to feel
that we lost nothing by the rapidity of our
meteor-like passage. I was totally unprepared
for the beauties and the novelties which met
my eye at every turn. The sightseers’ car is
admirably arranged. Fancy being able to take in
all the wonders of oceanland through large glass
portholes in the concave sides of circular cars.
The tube itself, which is of iron, enormously
thick, has glass sides, also of huge thickness,
running parallel with the windows of the car
so that the view is unobstructed. The
sensations awakened, therefore, both by the novelty
of the situation and by the wonders we passed
in review, combined to make the journey thrillingly exciting. We were swept, for instance,
past armies of fishes, beautiful to behold in
such masses, shimmering in their opalescent
armor as they rose above, or sank out of sight
into the depths below. The sudden depressions
and abrupt elevations of the sea-level made the
scenery full of diversity. There was a great
abundance of color, with the vivid crimson of
the coralline plants and the delicate pinks and
yellows of the many varieties of the sub-marine
flora. It seemed at times as if we were caught
in a liquid cloud of amber, or were to be
enmeshed in a grove of giant sea-weeds.

Beyond all else, however, in point of interest,
was the spectacle of the wholesale cannibalism
going on among the finny tribes, a cannibalism
which still exists, in spite of the persistent and
unwearying exertions of the numerous Societies
for the Prevention of Cruelty among Cetacea
and Crustacea. We passed any number of small
boats darting in and out among the porpoises,
dolphins and smaller fish, delivering supplies
(of proper Christian food) and punishing
offenders. A sub-marine missionary, who chanced
to sit next to me, told me that of all vertebrate
or invertebrate animals, the fish is the least
amenable to reformatory discipline; fishes
appear to have been born, he went on to say
without the most rudimentary form of the moral
instinct, and curiously enough, only flourish in
proportion as they are allowed to act out
their original degenerate nature. He also
confessed privately to me, that after some
twenty-five years active work among them, the
results of his labors were most discouraging.
Since, however, the Buddhistic doctrine of
metempsychosis has come to be so universally
accepted, and as each one of these poor
creatures is in reality a soul in embryo, it behoves
mankind to do all that lies in its power to
elevate all tribes and species.

As you may well imagine, my dear Hannevig,
with such spectacles and speculations to enliven
the journey, I found it all too short. Its
shortness was, in truth, the only drawback to my
complete enjoyment. The wonders of the
journey, I found, were, however, only a fitting
prelude to the surprises that awaited me on my
arrival. I leave an account of both these
surprises and of my first impressions of the great
city until my next letter, as this one, I find, has
already grown to the proportions of an ancient
epistle.

I am, my dear Hannevig.
Your life-long friend and comrade,
WOLFGANG.

# II.

Dear Hanniveg,

The three days’ time which has elapsed since
my last letter to you, has been so crowded with
a confusion of bewildered impressions produced
by this astonishing city and its still more
astonishing inhabitants, that I am in doubt whether
I shall be able to convey to you any clearer
pictures than those which fill the disordered
canvas of my own mind. I will, however, strive
to reproduce my experiences in the order in
which they came to me, and allow you to draw
your own conclusions.

The first amazing thing that happened to me
was the way in which I reached my hotel.
Fancy being blown up on the shore, for the
pneumatic tube being many hundreds of feet
below the shore level, we were literally blown
up on the beach; there we found air-balloon
omnibuses, into which we and our luggage were
transported by means of little electrical cars,
about a thousand feet into the air, affording a
fine view of the city. Great is not a large
city of the Socialists-it has the immensity of
an unending plain, and the flatness of one also.
In former times, I believe, the original city was
an island, on either side of which flowed a
river; but as more and more land became
necessary new channels for these rivers were
dug, and the river-beds filled in, so that now,
far as the eye can reach, there is a limitless
expanse of rooftops.

As seen from an aerial elevation, there was
nothing to attract the eye from the picturesque
standpoint-there were few large buildings of
noticeable size or beauty. The city was chiefly
remarkable because of its immensity. When
landed at my hotel I found these first
impressions confirmed by a nearer view.

First let me tell you, however, that after
entering the vestibule of the hotel, I felt as if
I had stepped into some dwelling of gnomes or
sprites. Not a human being presented himself.
No one appeared to take my luggage, nor was
a clerk or hall boy visible anywhere. The great
hall of the hotel was as deserted and silent as
an empty tomb; at first I could not even
discover a bell. Presently, however, I saw a huge
iron hand pointing to an adjacent table. On the
table lay a big book with a placard on which
was printed, ”Please write name, country,
length of stay and number of rooms desired.”
All of which I did. The book then miraculously
closed itself and disappeared! The next instant
a tray made its appearance where the book had
been, on the tray was a key, and on the key a
tag with a number and the words, “The
elevator at your left to third right.” The elevator
as I stepped into it, stopped as if by magic at
the third story, when another iron hand shot
out of the wall, pointing me to the left. Soon
I found the room assigned me, opened it, and
entered to discover the apartment in complete
order, and the faucets in the bath—chamber
actually turned on!

My dear Hannevig, can you believe me when
I tell you that I have been in this hotel four
mortal days, have eaten three substantial meals
a day, have been fairly comfortable, and yet
have not seen a human creature, from a
landlord to a servant? The whole establishment
apparently is run by machinery. There is a
complicated bell apparatus which you ring for
every conceivable want or need. Meals are
served in one’s own room, by a system of
ingenious sliding shelves, which open and shut,
and disappear into the wall in the most
wizardlike manner. Of course the reason of all these
contrivances is obvious enough. In a society
where labor of a degrading order is forbidden
by law, machinery must be used as its
substitute. It is all well enough, I presume, from the
laborer’s point of view. But for a traveller,
bent on a pleasure trip, machinery as a
substitute for a garrulous landlord, and a score
of servants, however bad, is found to be a poor
and somewhat monotonous companion. I
amuse myself, however, with perpetually
testing all the bells and the electrical apparatus,
calling for a hundred things I don’t want, to see
whether they will come through the ceiling
or up the floor.

Most of my time, however, is spent in the
streets. My earlier impressions of the city I find
remain unchanged. It is as flat as your hand and
as monotonous as a twice-told tale. Never
was there such monotony or such dullness.
Each house is precisely like its neighbor. Each
house has so many rooms, so many windows,
so many square feet of garden, which latter no
one cultivates, as flowers and grass entail a
certain amount of manual labor, which, it
appears, is thought to be degrading by these
socialists. Imagine, therefore, miles upon miles
of a city composed of little two-story houses as
like one unto another as two brown nuts. There
are parks and theatres and museums, and
libraries, the Peoples’ Clubs, and innumerable
state buildings; but these are all
architecturally tasteless, as utility has been the only
feature considered in their construction. Every
thing here, from the laying out of the city to
the last detail concerning the affairs of
commerce or trade is arranged according to the
socialistic principle—by the people for the
People. The city itself was rebuilt a hundred
years ago, in order that the houses and the
public buildings might be in more fitting
harmony with the new order and principles of
Socialism. What the older City of New York
may have been, it is difficult to determine,
although it is supposed to have been ugly
enough. But this modern city is the very
acme of dreariness. It is the monotony I think,
which chiefly depresses me. It is not that the
houses do not seem comfortable, clean and
orderly, for all these virtues they possess.
But fancy seeing miles upon miles of little
two-story houses! The total lack of contrast
which is the result of the plan on which this
socialistic city has been built, comes, of course,
from the principle which has decreed that no
man can have any finer house or better interior,
or finer clothes than his neighbor. The
abolition of poverty, and the raising of all classes
to a common level of comfort and security, has
resulted in the most deadening uniformity.
Take for example, the aspect of the shop
windows. All shops are run by the government on
government capital. There is, consequently,
neither rivalry nor competition. The shop
keepers, who are in reality only clerks and
salesmen under government jurisdiction, take
naturally, no personal or vital interest either
in the amount of goods sold, or in the way in
which these latter are placed before the public.
The shop-windows, therefore, are as uninviting
as are the goods displayed. Only useful,
necessary objects and articles are to be seen. The
eye seeks in vain throughout the length and
breadth of the city for anything really
beautiful, for the lovely, or the rare. Objects of art
and of beauty find, it seems, no market here.
Occasionally the Government makes a
purchase of some foreign work of art, or
seizes on some on some of those
recently excavated from the ruins of some
tgth century merchant’s palace. The picture
or vase is then placed in the museums, where
the people are supposed to enjoy its
possession.

To connect the word enjoyment with the
aspect of these serious socialists is almost
laughable. A more sober collection of people
I never beheld. They are as solemn as the
oldest and wisest of owls. They have the
look of people who have come to the end of
things and who have failed to find it
amusing. The entire population appear to be eternally
in the streets, wandering up and down, with
their hands in their pockets, on the lookout for
something that never happens. What
indeed, is there to happen? Have they
not come to the consummation of
everything. of their dreams and their hopes
and desires? A man can’t have his dream
and dream it too. Realization has been
found before now, to be exceedingly dull
play.

As it is, I am free to confess, that the
dullness and apathy of these ideally-perfect
socialists weighs on me. My views of their condition
may change when I come to know them
better.

It is late and I must close.
Ever yours, W.

# III.

Curiously enough, my dear fellow, the very
next day after dispatching my last, I found
myself involved in a long and most interesting
conversation with the daughter of one of the
city residents. I had brought letters of
introduction to a certain gentleman, and after a
search of some hours through the eternal
labyrinth of these unending streets, found the house
to which I had been directed. The gentleman,
or rather citizen, as all men are called here, was
not at home. I was, however, received by his
daughter, a plain but seemingly agreeable,
intelligent young woman. The women dress so
exactly like the men in this country that it is
somewhat difficult to tell the sexes apart.
Women, however, usually betray themselves as
soon as they speak by their voices.

This young lady had an unusually pleasant
voice and manner, and we were soon deep in
the agreeable intricacies of a lengthy
conversation. I had any number of questions to
ask, and she appeared to be most willing to
answer them.

My first question, I remember, was an
eminently practical one. It was on the subject of
chimneys and cooking. I had noticed almost
immediately on my arrival that, throughout
the entire city, not a chimney was to be seen.
It was this fact more than any other that gave
the city the appearance of a plain, and made the
houses seem curiously deformed. It naturally
followed that, there being no chimneys, there
was also no smoke, which therefore made
this already sufficiently clear atmosphere as
pure as the air on a mountaintop. All very
beautiful, I said to myself, but how do the
people get along without cooking? I, in my
quality of stranger and foreigner, had made the
interesting discovery that my own meals were
prepared to my taste by specially appointed
State cooks—a law only recently passed to
facilitate international relations. The latter,
it appears, had become somewhat strained,
when travelers had found themselves forced to
abide by the rules and regulations governing
the socialists’ diet. But what was this diet?
This was the mystery which had been puzzling
me ever since my arrival. So that when I
found myself face to face with my young lady,
I promptly implored her to solve my dilemma.
“Oh,” she replied, “cooking has gone out
long ago. To do any cooking is considered
dreadfully old-fashioned.” “Has eating also
gone out of fashion in this wonderful country?”
I asked in amazement.

She laughed as she replied, “Eating hasn’t,
but we do it in a more refined way. Instead
of kitchens we now have conduits, culinary
conduits.”

“Culinary conduits?” I asked, still in a daze
of wonderment.

“Oh, I see you don’t understand,“ she
answered, “you haven’t been here long enough
to know how such things are arranged. Let me
explain. The State scientists now regulate all
such matters. Once a month our Officer of
Hygiene comes and examines each member of
the household. He then prescribes the kind of
food he thinks you require for the next few
weeks, whether it shall be more or less
phosphates, or cereals, or carnivorous preparations.
He leaves a paper with you. You then touch
this spring—see?” and here she put her pretty
white finger on a button in the wall. “You
whistle through the aperture to the Culinary
Board, put in the paper, and it is sent to the
main office. You then receive supplies for
the ensuing month.”

”And where is this wonderful board?”

“It is in Chicago, where all the great
granaries are. You know Chicago supplies the food
for the entire United Community.”

“But Chicago is a thousand miles off. Isn’t
all the food stale by the time it reaches you?”

Here she laughed, although I could see she
tried very hard not to do so. But my ignorance
was evidently too amazingly funny. When she
had regained composure she answered: “The
food is sent to us by electricity through the
culinary conduits. Everything is blown to us
in a few minutes’ time, if it be necessary, if the
food is to be eaten hot. If the food be cereals or
condensed meats, it is sent by pneumatic
express, done up in bottles or in pellets. All
such food is carried about in one’s pocket. We
take our food as we drink water, wherever we
may happen to be, when it’s handy and when
we need it. Although,” she added with a
sigh, “I sometimes do wish I had lived in the
good old times, in the nineteenth century, for
instance, when such dear old-fashioned customs
were in vogue as having four-hour dinners, and
the ladies were taken into dinner by the
gentlemen and everyone wore full dress—the dress
of the period, and they used to flirt—wasn’t
that the old word? over their wine and dessert.
How changed everything is now! However,”
she quickly added, “if kitchens and cooking
and long dinners hadn’t been abolished, the
final emancipation of women could never have
been accomplished. The perfecting of the
desire of women to please their husbands by
dressing and cooking to suit them. When the
last pie was made into the first pellet, woman’s
true freedom began. She could then cast off
her subordination both to her husband and to
her servants. Women were only free, indeed,
when the State prohibited the hiring of
servants. Of course, the hiring of servants at all
was as degrading to the oppressed class as it
was a clog to the progress of their mistresses’
freedom. The only way to raise the race
was to put everyone on the same level,
to make even degrees of servitude
impossible.”

“But how, may I be permitted to ask, is the
rest of the housework accomplished, if no
servants exist to take charge of so pretty a house
as this one?” (The house, my dear Hannevig.
was in reality hideous, as bare and as plain as
are all the houses here. Each is furnished by
state law, exactly alike).

“Oh, everything is done by machinery, as at
your hotel. Everything, the sweeping. bed
making, window scrubbing and washing. Each
separate department has its various appliances
and apparatus. The women of every
household are taught the use and management of the
various machines, you know, at the expense
of the state, during their youth; when they
take the management of a house they can run
it singlehanded. Most of the machinery goes
by electricity. A house can be kept in perfect
order by two hours’ work daily. The only hard
work which we still have to do is dusting. No.
invention has yet been effected which dusts
satisfactorily without breakage to ornaments,
which accounts for the fact, also, that the
fashion of having odds and ends about a home
has gone out. It was voted years ago by the
largest womans’ vote ever polled, that since men
could not create self-adjusting, non-destructive
dusters, their homes must suffer. Women were
not to be degraded to hand machines for the
sake of ministering to men’s aesthetic tastes. So
you see we have only the necessary chairs and
tables. If men want to see pictures thy can go
to the museums.”

Perhaps it is this latter fact which accounts
for my never being able to find the good citizen
A—at home. He is gone to the public club,
or to the bath, or to the Communal Theater,
I am told, when I appear again and again.
This wonderful community has done much, of
that I am convinced, in the development of
ideal freedom; but there appears to be a fatal
blight somewhere in its principles, a blight which
seems to have destroyed all delight in domestic
life. In my next I will tell you more and at
length, of the peculiar development which the
race has attained under these now
well-established emancipation doctrines, and of their
results on the two sexes.

I hope you are not wearying of my somewhat
lengthy descriptions, but you yourself are to
blame, as you bound me to such rigid promises
of detail and accuracy.

Farewell, dear companion, would you were
here to use your wiser philosopher’s eyes.
I am yours,
WOLFGANG.

# IV.
DEAR FRIEND: No one thing, I think, strikes
the foreigner’s eye, on his arrival in this
extraordinary land so strongly as does the lack of
variety and of taste displayed in the dress of
either the men or the women. Both sexes
dress, to begin with, as I said in my last,
precisely alike. As it is one of the unwritten
social laws of the people to dress as simply,
economically and sensibly as possible, it results
that there is neither brightness nor color nor
beauty of line in any of the garments worn. In
passing the Government Clothing Distribution
Bureaus, nothing so forcibly suggests the ideal
equality existing between the sexes, as does the
sight of the big and the little trowsers, hanging
side by side, quite unabashed, the straight and
the baggy legs being the only discernible
difference. Baggy trowsers and a somewhat
long, full cloak for the women—straightlegged
trowsers and a shorter coat for the men, this is
the dress of the entire population. Some of the
women are still pretty, in spite of their hideous
clothes. But they all tell me, they wouldn’t be
if they could help it, as they hold that the
beauty of their sex was the chief cause of their
long-continued former slavery. They consider
comeliness now as a brand and mark of which to
be ashamed. From what I have been able
to observe, however, I should say that the
prettiness which has descended to some of the
women fails to awaken any old-time sentiment
or gallantry on the part of the men. There has,
I learn, been a gradual decay of the erotic
sentiment, which doubtless accounts for the
indifference among the men; a decay which is
due to the peculiar relations brought about by
the emancipation of woman.

It is now nearly two hundred years since
women have enjoyed the same freedom and
rights as men. It is interesting and curious to
note the changes, both upon the character and
nature of the two sexus, which has been the
result of this development. One’s first
impression, in coming here, is that women are the sole
inhabitants of the country. One sees them
everywhere—in all the public offices, as heads
of departments, as government clerks, as officials,
as engineers, machinists, aeronauts, tax
collectors, firemen, filling, in fact, every office and
vocation in civil, political and social life. The
few men—by comparison, whom I saw seemed
to me to be allowed to exist as specimen
examples of a fallen race. OI course, this view
is more or less exaggeration. But the women
here do appear to possess by far the most
energy, vigor, vitality and ambition. Their
predominance in office just now is owing to their
over-powering number, the women’s vote polled
being ten to one over that of the men. This
strong sex influence has been fruitful in greatly
changing and modifying the domestic, social
and political laws of the community.

Women, for instance, having satisfactorily
emancipated themselves from the bondage of
domestic drudgery and the dominion of
servants, by means of the improvement in
machinery and the invention of the famous culinary
conduits, found one obstacle still in their path
to complete and coequal man-freedom. There
still remained the children to be taken care of
and brought up. As motherhood came in
course of time to be considered in its true light,
as perhaps the chief cause of the degradation
of women, it was finally abolished by act of
legislature. Women were still to continue to
bear children, or else the socialistic society
itself would cease to be. A law was passed
providing that children almost immediately
after birth, should be brought up, educated
and trained under state direction to be returned
to their parents when fully grown, and ready
for their duties as men and women citizens.
In this way women stand at last on as absolutely
equal a physical plane with men as it is possible
to make them.

It has followed, of course, that with the
jurisdiction of the state over the children of the
community, all family life has died out. Men
and women live together as man and wife, but
the relation between them has become more
nominal than rural. It is significant of the
changes that have been brought about between
the sexes, that the word “home” has entirely
dropped out of the language. A man’s house
has in truth ceased to be his home. There are
no children there to greet him, his wife, who is
his comrade, a man, a citizen like himself, is as
rarely at home as he. Their food can be eaten
anywhere—there is no comm on board; there is
not even a servant to welcome the master with a
smile. The word wife has also lost all its
original significance. It stands for nothing. Husband and wife are in reality two men having
equal rights, with the same range of occupation,
the same duties as citizens to perform, the
same haunts and the same dreary leisure.

Is it therefore, my dear Hannevig, to be
wondered at, that all ideas of love, and that all
strong mutual attraction and affections should
have died out between the sexes? Man loves,
longs for passionately and protects with tender
solicitude only that which is difficult to
conquer. The imagination must at least be
inflamed. But where there is no struggle, no
opposition, no conditions which breed longing, desire,
or the poetry of a little healthy despair, how is
love or any sentiment at all to be awakened or
kindled? Here there is no parental authority
to make a wall between lovers, nor is there
inequality of fortunes, nor any marked
difference between the two sexes, even in their daily.
duties or in their lives. I am more and more
impressed with the conviction, as I look into this
question—this question of what we should
consider the growth of an abnormal indifference
between the sexes—that the latter cause is
perhaps the one which has been chiefly
instrumental in the bringing about so complete a change
over the face of the passions. Woman has
placed herself by the side of man, as his
coequal in labor and vocation, only to make the
real distance between them the greater. She has
gained her independence at the expense of her
strongest appeal to man, her power as mistress,
wife and mother. How can a man get up any
very vivid or profound sentiment or affection
for these menwomen—who are neither mothers
nor housekeepers, who differ in no smallest
degree from themselves in their pursuits and
occupation? Constant and perpetual
companionship, from earliest infancy to manhood and
old age has resulted in blunting all sense of any
real difference between the sexes. Whatever
slight inequalities may still exist between men
and women in the matter of muscular energy
or physical strength is more than
counterbalanced by the enormous disproportion
between them, numerically, as voters’.

Some very curious and important political
changes have been effected by the
preponderance of the woman’s vote.

Wars, for instance, have been within the last
fifty years declared illegal. Woman found that
whereas she was eminently fitted for all men’s
avocations in time of peace, when it came to
war she made a very poor figure of a soldier.
Wars, therefore, were soon voted down; foreign
difficulties were adjusted by arbitration. As
women, as a rule, were sent on these foreign
diplomatic missions, I have heard it wickedly
whispered that the chief cause of the usually
speedy conclusion of any trouble with a foreign
court was because of the babel of tongues which
ensued: a foreign court being willing to
concede anything rather than to continue
negotiations with women diplomatists. But this of
course, is to be put down to pure
maliciousness. Women since time immemorial, have
had the best of man whenever it came to
contests of the tongue, and this appears to be the
one insignia of their former prestige which the
sex insists on claiming.

In my next I shall try to give you some
conception of the position which man occupies, as
a citizen and as worker in this community. I
shall, I think, also be able to give you some
most interesting results of the effects produced
by the communistic, socialistic principles which
have been incorporated into the constitution of
this people.

It is late and I am weary, so farewell for a
few days. Ever and ever, —

# V.

More and more, as I study these
institutions, am I reminded of the resemblance
between these American socialists and the
ancient Spartans. The Spartan was also a
part of the State—had all things on a grand
Communal scale—had public games, public
theaters, baths, museums and festivals, being
brought up by the state and his womenkind
considered as a part of it.
In this modern community, however, there
are two important features which the
simpler Spartans did not have to cope with.

The Greeks stood at the dawn of civilization.
The American finds himself at what he
considers is the completion of it. Break away
from his past as hard as ever he may try,
he has still found himself heir to this past,
and his heredity dominates him in spite
of all his attempts to throw it off. The
Greeks also were a warlike people, and the
American is a peace lover, preferring the
pipe to the sword. Perhaps above all else
in the sum of these differences ought we
to remember, the great factor of machinery as
a substitute for manual labor. The sword
raised man out of the dust. The piston has
levelled him with it. I believe, my dear
Hannevig, that if machinery had never been
invented, socialism would never have been
dreamed of. Machinery was the true cause of
the conflict between capital and labor, and not
the unequal distribution of land, as the great
founder of this Communal Society, Henry
George, asserted in this book, the bible of this
people. Machinery needed capital to run it,
and was more or less indifferent to labor. The
laborer, with machinery as his rival, stood a
far less possible chance of becoming a capitalist
himself than he did when battling against men;
his duties more and more closely resembling in
their monotony and routine, the very
machine that he was called on to feed, in turn
re-acting in his natural aptitude.

However, to go into the depths of this knotty
question involves too much space for a letter.
Let me, instead recall to your mind, as I have
recently done to my own, the chief features of
importance in the history of this people which
have placed them where they now are.

You recollect, of course. the terrible reign of
blood that took place during the awful conflict
between the republican Americans and the
socialists and anarchists in 1900. The war
began, nominally, as an act of resistance on the
part of the Americans against the encroaching
and insistent demands of the socialists,
demands covering the abolishment of private
ownership in land, of the division of property,
both real and personal, and the overthrow,
generally of all the then existing economic and
social institutions. These socialists and
anarchists represented the foreign element in the
country, those who had imported their
revolutionary doctrines with them. (If I remember
rightly the early Americans had given all rights
of citizenship to this foreign contingency, in a
moment of mistaken Republican zeal, a
political mistake they lived to rue bitterly later).
Well, at first in this anarchist war, the
Americans won, did they not? I find my memory
tripping me at times—possibly would have
continued to win had the war been conducted on
strict military tactics. But the anarchists
finding themselves unsuccessful as soldiers and
warriors, resorted to the ingenious means of
destroying their enemies by the use of
explosives. Dynamite accomplished what the
cannon and the bayonet were powerless to effect.
Towns, cities and even the villages and
hamlets, were lighted by the torch of electricity
and seared level with the ground. Dynamite
was reserved for the armies and for individual
offenders. During that reign of destruction, it
seemed as if not a man, woman or child would
survive to carry even the memory of the great
tragedy to their graves with them.

However, since the anarchist’s plan was to
reconstruct the whole face of society on a new
basis, it was to be expected, of course, that the
revolution they undertook as the means of
effecting this would be carried through at
whatever cost.

There is one feature of this war which has
always struck me as possessing a very
humorous side. The anarchists, you remember, were
foreigners, chiefly Germans, Irishmen and a few
Russians. When the war was ended, by the
destruction of very nearly all the Republican
contingency, the anarchists broke out into
dissension among themselves. The German element
would not submit to Irish dictation—the latter
leaders having. Apparently, a great opinion of
their own talent for political leadership—and
the Irish in turn violently resisted the
German dicta. A veritable anarchy ensued a
war so fierce that it looked at one time as if
the whole continent might be left a howling
wilderness, with neither conqueror nor
conquered to enter and take possession of what
however, a few of the Americans had survived.
Among them were some of the descendants of
the ancient New England statesmen. These
men, although under sentence of death, were
liberated, that they might act as
peacemakers between the two factions. Americans,
you see, had had so much experience in
reconciling. conciliating and pacifying the difficulties
between the Irish and German parties during
the American Republican era, that these
survivors were eminently fitted to adjust
affairs at issue between them now. The
American Council decided that the Irishmen
should draw up the laws and regulations
for the new Communal and Socialistic
constitution, while the Germans should see that the
new society was properly organized; a decision
which proves the real genius for statescraft
which these ingenious Americans possessed.
For Irishmen are proverbially affluent of ideas
and incapable of putting them into action,
unless it be violent action, while the Germans
have proved themselves practical organizers
and ideal political policemen. The sagacity of
the old American Republicans was shown in
the manner in which they themselves, in their
era of power, had made use of the
distinguishing qualities of the two races, when such
hordes overflowed. The land during the great
emigration period. The Irishmen were kept in
the large cities, where they were allowed to
misgovern the towns to their hearts’ desire, being
thus given a vent for their turbulent political
spirit; while the Germans, on the contrary,
were sent into the still unconquered wilderness
to turn it into a garden by their industry and
thrift. The American having thus made use of
the Irishmen to run his political machinery for
him, and of the Germans to extend the
territorial lines of order and civilization, secured unto
himself all his own time for money making.
Hence the colossal American fortunes, which,
as we read of them now, seem to us like a tale
of magicians. Such a policy must have seemed
to a nineteenth-century American as a very
shrewd and ingenious way of utilizing clements
which otherwise might prove dangerous. The
policy was, in truth, a fatally shortsighted one,
as was proved later; since it was the enormous
accumulation of fortunes in a few hands and
the supposed tyranny of capital which wrought
to a frenzy the envy and anger of the foreign
poorer classes, then under the sway of the
anarchist revolutionists.

After the American statesmen had made
peace between the conquering but quarrelsome
anarchists, these latter set about organizing
the new society. Anarchy itself, although the
principles for which it had fought and
conquered now .prevailed, it was found, must
subordinate itself to some form or order before it
could hope to enforce order upon others.

The Anarchist’s war-cry had been, as you
remember—Away with private property! away
with all authority! away with the State! away
with all political machinery! But now the
leaders discovered that a belief in the reign of
anarchy was one thing, and its practice was
quite another. For a time, as you know, there
was a terrible period of disorder, during which
the grossest excesses were practiced under the
name of “Perfect Individualism,” “a common
property, common freedom, common
distribution for all.” After a few years of the wildest
indulgence, rapacity, crime, and cruelty—for,
of course, there being no government, there
could be neither restraints imposed nor crimes
punished—the people themselves at last began
to cry aloud for some form of government
which should include at least order and decency.
The Socialists’ doctrines were then decided
upon as being more in conformity with the
demands of the people and with the necessities
of organizing a state than were the formless
theories of the anarchists.

The leaders among the people, as has been
done so many times before in the history of
the world, began again the making of new laws,
for the establishment of an ideal government
and the forming of a new constitution which
was to insure perfect and complete happiness
to the individual and the race.

For over a hundred and fifty years, now, this
ideal socialistic society had existed, and what
are the results? No people ever assuredly had
a more wonderful chance at constructing a
society on an ideal basis than had these
socialists. Think of it! An entire continent at
their disposal, their enemies or opponents all
killed or in exile, and they themselves united
in desire and in political interest. Well, if
some of the ineradicable, indestructible
principles in human nature could be changed as
easily as laws are made and unmade, the
chances for an ideal realization of the happiness
of mankind would be the more easily attained.
But the Socialists committed the grave error of
omitting to count some of these determining
human laws into the sum of their calculations.

Time and paper are, however, finite, and
also, presumably, your patience. I will
postpone until my next the few remaining
conclusions to which a brief study of this people and
their government have led.

Your faithful
WOLFGANG.

# VI.
DEAR FRIEND: The longer I stay here the
more I am impressed with the profound
melancholy which appears to have taken possession
of this people. The men, particularly, seem
sunk in a torpor of dejection and settled
apathy. The women, although by no means so
vivacious and vigorous as our women, are,
however, far more animated, and seem to have a
keener relish for life, than the men. Probably
the comparatively recent emancipation of the
women, their new political and social freedom,
adds a zest to the routine of life here which
men do not feel.

So universal is the dreary aspect of the
people, whether at work or play—and they play, I
observe, far more languidly than they
work that the type of face among them has
undergone a strange and interesting transformation.
You remember in the old prints the typical
“Yankee” face, with its keen, penetrating eye,
its courageous, determined chin, its intelligent
brow, and its extraordinarily shrewd and
intently alert expression. This vivacity and
energy, once the chief charm of the American
face, has entirely disappeared. In its stead,
imagine wooden, almost sodden features, heavy,
dull eyes, receding chins. and a brow on which
dullness that very nearly approaches stupidity is
writ in large letters. On all the faces is a
stereotyped expression, a mingling of discontent
and dejection. There is the same lack of
variety of types among the faces I have noticed, as
there is a want of contrast in the houses and
streets. The entire population appears to have
one face; wherever one turns one sees it
repeated ad infinitum, whether it be that of man
or woman, youth or old age.

I have accounted to myself for this curious
physiological uniformity by finding in it simply
a reflection of the uniformity seen in the life
and occupations of this people. The race
having been leveled to a common plane, there has
been a gradual dying out of individuality. The
inevitable curtailment of individual aims,
individual struggle, individual ambitions, has
naturally resulted in producing a featureless type of
character, common to all. Since, of course, it
is character alone which mulds feature, this
people, being all more or.less alike, have come,
in process of time, to look alike. Nature, after
all, is only clay in the potter’s hand. Man,
with his laws and creeds, fashions in the end

I found it, however, far more difficult to
tion which appears to have settled upon this
people, than to seek the causes of the above
physiological aspect. I asked myself. again
and again, why should this people, of all
people, be full of this discontent and
unhappiness? Haven’t they come to the realization of
all their dreams? Have they not attained to
the very summit and to the full glory of the
possession of their social, civic and political
desires and aspirations? Is there not equality
of sex? Has not leisure instead of labor
become a law? Is not private property abolished—is not the land the property of the
State—the wage system become a thing of the past,
and the possession of capital made a crime
punishable by law? Does not the State also
exist for the people, educating them, training
them for their work in life, distributing among
them any surplus funds that the public treasury
may accumulate, and furnishing for their
amusement and leisure a vast system of
educational clubs, educational theaters, public
games, museums and shows? If a people are
not happy under such conditions, what will
insure content?

Yet come with me. Let us walk through the
principal thoroughfares, and watch the
multitudes of people wandering listlessly up and
down the streets; let us see them as they drift
aimlessly into the theaters, museums, clubs; let
us look in on them as they idly finger the
new books and newspapers, yawning over
them as they read, and you will agree with
me, that the entire population seems to have
but one really serious purpose in life—to
murder time which appears to be slowly killing
them.

After much thought on the reasons of this
strange apathy, this inertia, and sloth of energy.
I have come to two conclusions which have
helped me to solve the problem of this people’s
unhappiness. My first conclusion is that the
people are dying for want of work—of
downright hard work—my second conclusion
is that in trying to establish the law of
equality, the founders of this ideal
community committed the fatal mistake of counting
out those indestructible, ineradicable human
tendencies and aspirations which have hitherto
been the source of all human progress, to which
I alluded in my last letter.

First, let us take the subject of work. As all
work, men and women alike, and as machinery
has been brought here to a wonderful degree of
perfection, the actual labor necessary to
maintain the people is, of necessity, very light. At
first, a hundred or so years ago, in the early
days of the community, the time of labor was
fixed at five hours per day. But every decade,
with the growth of the population, the labor
hours have been diminishing. Recently a law
has been put into effect, forbidding any one’s
working more than two hours a day. This
latter law has been found to be an actual
necessity, from an economic point of view, as a
provision against surplus production. A man,
therefore, has the whole of the rest of his day
on his hands, to spend as best he may.

The original hope and belief of the founders
of Socialism was that if the people could only
be given sufficient leisure, the whole race would
be lifted to an extraordinary plane of
perfection; that, were men given time enough, each
man and woman would devote himself and
herself to the development and improvement of
his or her mental tastes and capacities. At first,
I believe, such was the case. For at least thirty
years there was an extraordinary zeal for
learning and self-improvement. But in time, a reaction came. The founders had forgotten to
make allowances for the mass of sluggards,
idlers, and ne’er-do-wells who are always the
immovable block in the reformer’s path of progress.
Two parties were soon developed; the party
of enlightenment and the conservative party.
ILearning being the sole channel for the exercise
of individual capacity or individual ambition,
the old baneful system of competition soon
developed itself. A superior class, a class
composed of scholars, students, artists and
authors, arose, whose views and whose political
ideas threatened the very life and liberties of
the community. The aristocracy of intellect, it
was found was as dangerous to the State as an
aristocracy founded on pride of descent or on
the possession of ancestral acres. It became
necessary, therefore, to make a law against
learning and the sciences. All scholars, authors,
artists and scientists who were found on
examination to be more gifted than the average,
were exiled.

A strict law was passed, and has since been
rigidly enforced, forbidding mental or artistic
development being carried beyond a certain
fixed standard, a standard attainable by all.
Quite naturally learning and the arts have
gradually died out among this people. Whcre
there are no rewards either of fame or personal
advancement, the spur to mental or artistic
achievement is found wanting. The arts
particularly have languished. Art, as is well
known, can only live by the strength of the
imagination—and the imagination is fed by
contrasts of life and degrees of picturesqueness.
One of the old American sages, Emerson I
think it was, well said of the artist, “If the rich
were not rich, how poor would the poet be!”
Quite naturally, in such a civilization as this,
no conditions exist for either creating or
maintaining artistic ability.

Can you not imagine, my dear Hannevig.
that under such a system and order of life, time
might be found to be a weighty burden? After
the two hours devoted to labor, there are still
fourteen waking hours to be be disposed of. The
people have, it is true, their clubs and their
theaters, the national games, their libraries and
gardens. But just because all these are free
and at their command, is, I presume, reason
enough for their finding the amusements thus
provided tame and uninteresting. Most of the
inhabitants of this city spend their days at the
gymnasium. In the exercises and games there
practiced, one sees the only evidence or show
of excitement and interest indulged in. Both
men and women are muscled like athletes, from
their continual exercises and perpetual bathing.
The athletic party is now trying to pass a law
to permit races and contests on the old Greek
plan. But the conservatives will scarcely pass
it, as they urge that the Olympian games, by
developing the physical powers, was in reality
only a training-school for the Greek army, and
internecine trouble and dissension would surely
follow any such public games, as they did in
the Greek states.

You have, I believe, asked me if the people
here are not allowed to find a scope for their
superfluous energies in politics. But politics,
as a profession, as a separate and independent
function of activity, has ceased to exist. The
state or Government is run on the great
universal principle of reciprocity which governs
the entire community. It exists for the people,
is administered by the people, and acts for the
people. All surplus revenues, derived from a
minimum of equalized taxation are turned over
to the public fund, being applied to public use.
The machinery of the Government is run on the
same principle of light labor which governs
individual exertions. Each citizen, men and
women alike, of course, serves his or her term
as a government official, as in old Prussia men
served in the army. As no one is ever
reelected, no matter what his capacity or ability,
and as each citizen only serves once during his
life-time, there is no such thing known as
political strife, or bribery or corruption. Neither
is there any political life. The government is
as automatic a performance as one of the
silklooms of a factory.

There are certain changes which have lately
taken place in the political and international
affairs of the people which lead one into a
labyrinth of speculation. There has, for
instance, been a noticeable and lamentable dying
out of international commerce and a general
sluggishness of trade which greatly alarms the
community at large. All trade and commerce
are conducted on the socialistic principle,
which forbids the venture of private capital,
did such here exist, or of private enterprise.

It is the State which directs all such ventures.
But the State, for some reason or other, does
not appear to be a success as a merchant or as
commercial financier. For one thing, the State
is tremendously absorbed in its own affairs. As
it takes care of its people, educating, training
and developing them; as it looks after the
material comforts and necessities of its vast
population, its own internal duties really absorb
all its energies. Then, in a government, founded
as this one is, on a principle of equality, which
principle is the sworn enemy of ambition there
must of necessity be a lack of initiative, a
feebleness in aggressive attack, and a want of
determination in the pursuance of any given
policy. It is only ambitious staple governments
which can command and maintain a definite
policy of national action. Even the American
republic found it difficult. with its recurrent
changes in official departments, to carry into
effect great international projects. The
people, here have ended by contenting themselves
with the exercise of only so much executive,
political or commercial activity as is found
actually necessary to maintain their own
existence. Men, whether as individuals or as a
collective body, are indeed only actively
aggressive, ambitious or audacious in proportion as
they meet with opposition. It is struggle, and
not the absence of it, which makes both men
and a nation great.

I have, therefore, ceased to ask myself where
are the old magnificent energies which once
characterized this people. One looks in vain
for the former warfare of intelligence, for the
old time audacity of invention, for the fray
of commercial contest, for the powerful
massing of capital we read of as
characteristic of Americans two hundred years ago.
All this has gone with the old competitive
system.

With the abolishment of competition have
died out, naturally, all the prizes and rewards
in life which came from individual struggle.
As accumulation of personal property, in lands
or in moneys, and the possibility of personal
advancement are forbidden by law, under this
form of government, all incentives to personal
activity have disappeared. The law of
equality, with its logical decrees for the suppression
of superiority, has brought about the other
extreme, sterility. The crippling of individual
activity has finally produced its legitimate
result—it has fatally sapped the energies of
the people.

It is a curious and interesting feature in
one’s study of this people, to find that it is not
the establishment of the law of equality which
has been the cause of decay in this people, but
the enforcement of the opposite law—the law
it was soon found necessary to establish against
inequality. It naturally and logically followed
that if men are to be made equal, such equality
can only be maintained by the suppression of
degrees of inequality. Mentally, for instance,
the standard must be made low enough for all
to attain it; each man, therefore, in time, no
matter what his fitness, capacity or gift, was
forced to subordinate his particular qualities to
the general possibility of attainment. This
level of a common mediocrity was more or less
difficult to enforce and develop. Their own i
historians record many interesting accounts of
the slow death of inequality. In one I read only ß
yesterday,”  So instinctive through long
centuries of oppression and misuse of power was
the impulse among men to aspire to
superiority of attainment, to excel in mental
development, or to exhibit richer creative power, that
for years the state penitentiaries were filled
with men whose crime was their
unconquerable desire selfishly to surpass their less
fortunate brothers. It is only within our own
enlightened twenty-first century that this grave
fault has been remedied. Now, happily, no
one dreams of insuring his own personal
happiness at the expense of others.”

And so, my dear Hannevig, the old drama
of history is enacted anew. Years ago men
were unhappy because the many had to
struggle against the favored few. Here, where all
are equal, men are miserable because they are
so; because all having equal claims to
happiness, find life equally dull and aimless. The
perpetual moan here is, O for a chance to be
something, to do something, to achieve
something!

I shall be able to send you only one more
letter, as I return in a few days—by balloon
this time, I think, instead of by tunnel.

# VII.
## Christmas Day

My good Hanniveg: I have only just time
to send you one more incident and scene. It
being, as you may have observed at the top of
my letter, Christmas Day, I was curious to see
how this festival would be observed here.
Somewhat to my surprise I observed that the
population went about their avocations just as usual.
Then I reflected, in a country, where every day
after eleven in the morning a true holiday sets
in, there being nothing for anyone to do except
to enjoy themselves, it would be difficult fitly to
celebrate any special fete day. In point of fact,
there are none such. The people voted them
out of the calendar, saying they had all they
could do to kill the ordinary enjoyment hours
of each week without having to invent new
games or occupations for a dozen different
feast days. So all holidays are prescribed by law
except Christmas. This day is kept up for two
reasons—because it is thought to be an
excellent time to show off the children brought up
by the State to the people, and also because
on Christmas Day each child is allowed to spend
the day at home.

The exercises of the day began at the great
Ethical Temple. Here ten thousand children
were gathered to listen first to a lecture on
the history of Christmas. There was a play in
which Santa Claus appeared and a number of
other legendary characters, to show the
children in what mythological, absurd beings the
children of the unenlightened nineteenth
century believed in. Then ten thousand toys were
distributed, dolls and whips and tops, and
sleighs and skates. But as all were distributed
indiscriminately by State officers to the
children as they passed out on review, of course all
the boys got the dolls and the girls the whips
and tops. An hour afterward, outside the
great building, I saw groups of the children
doing a tremendous exchange, far more
interested in bartering damaged dolls for shining
skates than in endeavoring to establish the
identity of their own parents, whom, indeed,
having only seen a few times in the course of
their lives, they barely know by sight.

I was slowly walking homeward, speculating
on these and other revelations made by a more
intimate knowledge of the workings of this
great community, when I encountered a familiar
face. It was that of my young lady-friend,
whose conversation I reported to you above.
She joined me and we walked on together.

“I hear you are going back to Sweden; is it
true?” she asked.

“Yes, I return in a few days.”

“But you have enjoyed your
trip-and—us?”

“Immensely. You are a wonderful
country.”

“That, if I remember, is just what foreigners
said to Americans two hundred years ago.”
(I like this young girl particularly. She is
more intelligent than most of the women one
meets here. She is allowed to be, she told me,
because she was so much less good looking
than others, which is true. But in this land of
dead equality one is grateful for a little
intelligence, even if it be served up with
homeliness).

“There is one thing I can not become
accustomed to,” I said not wishing to be called to
closer account for my impressions, ”and that is
that there are no church steeples or spires. The
absence of them gives such a uniform look to
all your cities."

“Churches? Oh, they went out long ago,
you know. Religion, it was found, brought
about discussion. It was voted immoral.”

“Yes, I know. Only I thought a few spires
or churches might possibly have been preserved
in a kind of sentimental pickle, as castles and
ruins are kept in England, to add what an old
writer calls " the necessary element of decay to
the landscape.”

“That was Ruskin, was it not? What a
quaint old writer! His books read as if they
were written in a dead language. As for the
churches, they were all destroyed, you know,
in the war between the radicals and the
orthodox, and not a stone was left standing.
Since then the State has erected these huge
Ethical Temples, where all the religions are
explained and where the philosophy of ethics is
taught the people. The finest of all these
temples is the Temple of the Liberators; have
you seen it yet?" she asked.

“I have not, but I should like to do so. WilI
you be my guide?”

She led me thither.

We soon came to a structure which being
smaller, and of fairly good and symmetrical
proportions, was a little less hideous than the other
temples I had seen. Inside, in the center of
the building was a colossal statue—a portrait it
is said—of the founder, Henry George. Around
the sides of the wall, were niches where portrait
busts of the martyrs stand—the nihilists, early
anarchists, and socialists who endured
persecution and often death in the early days of
socialism. A book I noticed was placed near
the Henry George statue. It was the
socialistic bible "Poverty and Progress” which
with a number of other such books forms the
chief literature of the people. Once a year,
my young friend told me, there is a sacred
reading to the people from this book.

As we turned to pursue our way homeward
she again began to question me—“But you
haven’t told me yet what you think of
us as a country and a people,” she persisted.

“Well, since you will have it I will tell you.
You are a great and surprising people.” I mean
her, as I must you, for my letter is a volume.
In a few days I shall be telling you all I can not
write. Adieu,

Yours,
WOLFGANG.


text:
# The Republic of the Future
## By Anna Bowman Dodd
### Published (1887)

  *The Republic of the Future: or, Socialism a Reality* is a novella by
  the American writer [Anna Bowman
  Dodd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Bowman_Dodd), first published
  in 1887. The book is a dystopia written in response to optimistic
  stories of the period.

Read [The Republic of the
Future](https://lizadaly.github.io/utopia-novels/books/republic-of-the-future/republic-of-the-future.html) in a web browser.

Download an [EPUB ebook version](https://lizadaly.github.io/utopia-novels/books/republic-of-the-future/republic-of-the-future.epub).

## Book cover
<img src="https://lizadaly.github.io/utopia-novels/books/republic-of-the-future/cover.png" height="300" align="right">

Cover design by [Liza Daly](https://lizadaly.com)

[Broadway and 42nd
Street](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11029?sortBy=Relevance&when=A.D.+1900-present&what=Paintings&ao=on&ft=%22new+york%22&offset=0&rpp=100&pos=29)
by Childe Hassam (1902) courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

repo_name: lizadaly/utopia-novels

repo_language: HTML

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