Crier (in the comedy). O all ye citizens, hasten, in order that chance may point to you where you shall dine, for the tables are filled up and furnished with all good things. The slices of salt fish are boiling; they are spitting the hare's flesh; cakes are baking; chaplets are plaiting, sweetmeats are toasting and the pea soup is boiling, and he who carries the barley cake is standing. Come open your mouths.

First Citizen. I will go. Why do I keep standing here when these things have been decreed by the state? Second Cit. Have you paid in your property? First Cit. Well, I will deliver it in.

And with it delivered in, he goes; and just so, with theirs delivered in, do Edith and Dr. Leete take themselves and guest to a similar dining room.

Even to the style of waiter for the tables does Bellamy copy the old Greek. In the comedy, Smoius, who is doing the menial work of washing cups, has on the uniform of a knight. In "Looking Backward" this does West say of a similar servant: "The waiter, a fine looking young man wearing a slightly distinctive uniform, now made his appearance. I knew he must be highly educated, and the equal, socially, of those he served." A knight, like Smoius, truly!

And here are the reasons as given in the comedy and in "Looking Backward" for the establishment of this new order of things:

Prax. (in the comedy) I am vexed and annoyed at all the transactions of state. For I see it always em

ploying bad leaders, and if any be good for one day he is bad for ten.

Leete (in "Looking Backward"). In a word, the people of the United States concluded to assume management of their own affairs. Society was founded on self-interest and selfishness and appealed solely to the anti-social and brutal side of human nature. It was

a struggle in which men became beasts. We felt that society was dragging anchor and in danger of going adrift.

But the comedy as a whole is unfit for reading or publication on account of its nastiness. "Looking Backward," however, steers clear of its model in this respect, except in one particular, where, in spite of discretion, on page 268 reference is made by Dr. Leete to the "race perfection which has been brought about by the effect of untrammeled sexual selection. Our women have risen to the full height of their responsibility as the wardens of the world to come. Their feeling of duty in this respect amounts to a sense of religious consecration." All of which and much more like it running through many pages means when stripped of useless or redundant verbiage that the women of that era were simply making breeding a specialty. It can be read or understood in no other way but that they were consecrated to the duty of producing thoroughbred stock. This "religious consecration" of womanhood to the untrammeled duty of "intelligent breeding," is thus declared by Bellamy to have become, at that time, "one of the great ethical

ideas of the race." What a hope for woman, surely! The ethical output "intelligent breeding" unfettered by "sexual selection," whatever that may be! For allusions and references no nearer nastiness than this particular chapter in "Looking Backward" in regard to marriage for breeding purposes the "Kreutzer Sonata" of Tolstoi was by Postmaster General Wannamaker driven from the United States mails.

In the comedy of Aristophanes governmental interference was further invoked to protect poor women from destructive competition in the marriage market with the rich. The ugly, the old and decrepit were by the law that was satirized in the comedy guaranteed a fair chance at, and share of, the favors of the fickle goddess, thus upsetting all sound theories based upon the desire to produce the "race perfection" that Dr. Leete in "Looking Backward" holds up as a great ethical idea. Evidently the women who managed the new government in the comedy had more consistency in their statutory regulations than the men who make the laws in "Looking Backward," for it would be evidently unfair to found a government on the principle of an even divide in everything else, and yet in it deny to the sick women and the homely ones the opportunity of enjoying the marriage relation. Not even a trust of most perfect and beautiful women, even though "consecrated to the full height of their responsibility as wardens of the world to come," could defend such a monopoly of the marriage market in any court of equity.

Still nearer us in literary history, as a forerunner of this new evangel, now comes the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More, published in 1518. The title of the book was suggestive of its absurd speculations. In "Utopia" he pictured an ideal realm, precisely such a state as is portrayed in "Looking Backward," where there was no corrupt leaders, no use for money; nothing but justice, virtue, charity, happiness everywhere, misery nowhere, plenty to eat and just enough mouths to eat it. Production regulated by law, and population adjusted to production. An invisible city located in the land of nowhere, and filled with perfection's attributes. Every citizen working at the beck of a magistrate, and every magistrate capable of adjusting every work collar to the citizen, so as not to gall a single shoulder! Everything held in common, and toil regarded as an absolute pleasure! How, if not in word for word, how in idea for idea "Looking Backward" copies the famed original.

I

Again: One hundred years ago, or just about as many years looking backward as the author of "Looking Backward" looks forward, Francois Fourier, another furnisher of ideas for this new evangel, was born. say furnisher of ideas for this reason: because there are in this book "Looking Backward" so many ideas bearing upon social regeneration and reform taken bodily and without credit from the French author. He (Fourier) taught in his writings that individual effort and competition was immoral, resulting in poverty and crime, and he proposed to substitute for the present

system, in which every man is for himself, another called coöperation.

Harmonious development was to be given in this new scheme to human nature. United and combined industries were to be the open sesame spell for the door of human happiness.

Society under Fourier's plan was divided precisely as in "Looking Backward," into regiments, phalanxes, or battalions of industry, that a beneficent government, which to do this is supposed to have reached a beatific state of perfection, organizes and controls in the interest of all.

The members of the various regiments or phalanxes were to live together and eat at a common table. The cost of living was to be charged up to each individual, and if any one required or demanded extras in food or raiment, the cost of such extras was to be deducted from such credits as had been given such person on the national books for labor performed in the common

cause.

A civil service reform committee stood at the head of the phalanstery to decide which of the members were most fit to be entrusted with such leaderships as were necessary, and society was expected to be so pure and deserving under this rule that no one would question the fairness and wisdom of the committee in making its appointments.

Communism as Fourier taught it Mr. Julian West finds in Boston when he arrives there in the year 2000, with just one exception, to wit: Marriage. In Fourier's