Anna Bowman Dodd

“ 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 [Pg 47] 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 62] 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? ”

“ 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 stable governments which can command and maintain a definite policy of national action. ”

“ 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 sexes, 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 18] 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 wizard-like manner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
[Pg 41] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one thing, I think, strikes the foreigners 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. ”

“ 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 woman movement was retarded for hundreds of years, as you know, doubtless, by the slavish 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 64] been the source of all human progress, to which I alluded in my last letter. ”

“ It has followed, of course, that with the jurisdiction of the state over the children of the [Pg 40] 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 real. 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. ”

“ Even the American Republic found it difficult, with its recurrent [Pg 72] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 67] gradually died out among this people. Where 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. ”

“ 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 elements which otherwise might prove dangerous. ”

“ The eye seeks in vain throughout the length and breadth of the city for any thing 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 of those recently excavated from the ruins of some 19th century merchant’s palace. ”