CHAPTER V.
WEALTH.
“A few remarks concerning wealth will be of great value in helping you to understand what you requested me to tell you some future time,” said Mr. Midith; “and if you wish, I will give you in brief the Marsian idea of wealth, before we proceed to our afternoon work.”
Parents, visitors and children all eagerly desired Mr. Midith to proceed, which he did thus:
“The Marsites believe that genuine wealth consists: 1. Of organized-self—a sound body and a healthy, vigorous mind. 2. Of material wealth—food, clothing, shelter, luxuries and the instruments of their production and distribution—tools, machinery, factories, railroads, etc. And 3. Of mental wealth—thought, love, kindness, the so-called morality and freedom.
“We claim that all wealth comes, either directly or indirectly, from the earth, or out of it by the application of labor, and that only which is produced by labor is wealth, and belongs exclusively to the producer. To illustrate, the material composing our body was once inorganic matter. The plant organized it. We eat, digest and assimilate the plant out of which our tissues are built. The crude material out of which our clothes are made is produced by the earth. The cotton plant that grows on the earth produced the cotton. The sheep, on whose back the wool grows, lives on the grass, etc., which is produced by the earth. Our books, houses, shoes, hats, and our physical organs, which perform their wonderfully complex functions, all come, either directly or indirectly, out of the earth, air and ocean in a crude form. Then they are shaped by the hand of labor into the proper form and become wealth.
“By labor we manufacture clothes, write books, raise, gather and lay up food, build houses, construct railroads, improve land, acquire and maintain a sound body and a healthy, cultivated mind. The storehouse of thought, kindness, love and freedom is also filled by labor and exertion. All these mental acquisitions are therefore constituent parts of genuine wealth—wealth of the most precious kind, for material wealth is easily acquired when we are rich in faultless organized-self and in mental wealth.
“The air we breathe is not wealth, because it is not produced by labor. The wild apple and plum on the tree are not wealth, because no human labor has been expended in the production of them. But the picked apple of the same tree, in the hand of the consumer, or in his cellar is wealth; he picked or stored it away for future use, which required labor. Sunshine and rain, native grass and water in its native bed or channel, are not wealth. Land in its natural state is not wealth, because it was not produced by labor. There was land before there was human labor. But all improvement made on land by labor is wealth and belongs exclusively to the person who made the improvement.
“All wealth, then, organized-self, material and mental, comes ultimately out of the inorganic earth (air and water), and requires labor and effort to produce them, and is wealth only so far as they required labor in their production.”
“Have the inhabitants of Mars always been as wealthy as they now are?” asked Mrs. Uwins.
“Oh, no; we have steadily been growing richer in all the component parts of genuine wealth. Ages ago our world was poor in sound bodies, because in many cases we had ill-health on account of overwork; in other cases we were burdened with ill-health for lack of proper and sufficient exercise; in still other cases we did not enjoy good health on account of poor and insufficient subsistence. Uncleanliness, irregularity, licentiousness, jealousy, etc., were other causes of ill-health; and lastly, perhaps, all had inherited a more or less feeble and diseased constitution, consequent from the constant violations of the so-called natural laws by our numerous successive ancestors.
“Under our former monopolistic, social and industrial system, our world was poor in material wealth—food, clothing, shelter and luxuries. Thousands upon thousands of industrious people in every county were forced idlers, and consequently poor or paupers. They were hungry, ragged, cold and unclean. Want and the fear of want forced them to work so hard and so long daily that cleanliness and intellectual culture had become a burden to them. They were merely industrial slaves, earning the material wealth for the rich who spent their lives largely in wasteful idleness.
“At that early period, then, in the history of evolution, when our social and industrial system was as defective as your present one, when but a single couple lived together in a small house, and when individual efforts, instead of voluntary co-operation, were the recognized methods of acquiring wealth, we were poor in mental wealth. There was then little thought, love, kindness and freedom. We met with ignorance, cruelty, wrong, superstition and slavery of some kind in all directions. Our ancestors blindly trampled in the mire the best portions of bodily and mental wealth, while they were only in pursuit of gold.
“Under the old social and industrial system there was a continual fear in all directions; timid thinking, avaricious accumulation of gold, industrial, religious and domestic slavery, antagonistic strife, jealous feelings, disease, ignorance, crime and poverty.
“There can be very little true love, kindness and prosperity as long as one family, sect, party, organization and nation endeavors to build itself up by tearing down others. Antagonism involves an expenditure of energy. As a rule your banker’s child is forbidden to play and associate with the hod-carrier’s. The Catholic disapproves of, and often despises the Protestant, and the Protestant the Catholic. The Christian, the Pagan and vice versa. The Republican and Democrat condemn each other. Instead of love, kindness and harmony, there is almost universal hatred and antagonism.
“Gradually and slowly we learned that, under such conditions, we were poor indeed! During the lapse of ages, we learned by sad experience that all good acts contain in themselves a reward of happiness, and all bad acts contain in themselves a punishment of misery. By a continual and positive reward of the right, and by a continual and positive punishment of the wrong did we at last learn to grope our way from the old antagonistic system to our present system of voluntary, co-operative individualism.
“From my foregoing remarks you will easily see that your idea of wealth and that of the Marsites do not correspond.
“You class many things not produced by labor as wealth; for instance, land and money as such. We call nothing wealth which is not produced by labor. With us our communities’ average productive labor is the basis of wealth. Our wealth is a compound, composed of three elements, namely, organized-self, material wealth, and mental wealth. Wealth as considered by your masses is an element composed of material wealth only—dollars, houses, books, land, railroads, bonds, etc.
“You call a person rich when he has many dollars, no matter what his other attainments and surroundings may be. Your so-called rich men may be the dupes of ignorance, cruelty, slavery and superstition; they may work themselves and their families to premature graves; they may scheme the bread out of the mouths of the still more ignorant and poverty-stricken ones; they may be surrounded by hovels and extreme ignorance and poverty; they may, every night, be in danger of being robbed and murdered by their cold, hungry neighbors who may be forced idlers, and still you call them rich, only because they claim to own a few dollars. We believe that all men are poor who are not the owners of a healthy body, a sound mind, and an abundance of material subsistence, which can be obtained only in a world where all are comparatively rich in this kind of wealth.
“According to your idea of wealth, avarice is a sin, because the rich accumulate their millions by robbing the poor. No man can earn a million dollars. According to our idea of wealth, the most avaricious person is the best, for he equally works to the highest interest and good of himself and his fellow-man. No man, in our opinion, can be rich in a poor, ignorant world.”