“Now,” said Mr. Midith, “may I ask you how you prevent, or try to prevent premature maternity? Do you prevent it by statute law? Public opinion and the evil consequences attending premature maternity are all the forces that you employ to prevent it. You have no penal laws that punishes premature maternity, and if you had they would be powerless. Our system of sex relation has all the advantage over yours on this point then.

“We teach our children all the sex relation we can, so that they may learn the evil of its abuse. You seem to hide all sexual knowledge from them. We endeavor to make the evil consequences a deterrent; you endeavor to make ignorance the safeguard of their virtue. The knowledge of a burn, and not the ignorance of it, deters a person from putting his hand against a hot stove. We act on the assumption that a clear knowledge of sexual abuse will likewise prevent that also. This is one great point in our favor then. We trust in knowledge; you, in ignorance.

“But allow me to tell you that there are many more bad features in your marriage system, besides those which I have already mentioned, not only between the male and female, but between the parent and child also. From historical knowledge and from the conduct of your present savage, you know that petty tribes are very antagonistic and usually at war with each other; that an individual of such a tribe, who is confined to his limited tribal territory, has little, if any, lofty humanitarian feelings for his fellowmen outside of his own tribe. Your small families have much the same effect on an adult, and even more so on children. The child is thrown in social contact only with a few brothers and sisters, if it has any, and with a few of its very nearest neighbors. This state of things gives a feeble opportunity for the development of broad and deep social feelings, and a lack of these feelings produces these petty antagonisms, strifes, negligence and jealousies, of which there still exists so much on earth. A large family, wide and close association and co-operation, aided by splendid intercommunication, as we have them on Mars, unfold these higher and nobler faculties of man, but especially of the child. Thus the pettiness, engendered by man on earth, is, no doubt, largely due to your jealous marriage system and your small families; these have, in my opinion, also been the cause of your parental narrowness and jealousy; for, as a rule, a parent here, from what I can see, finds as yet little pleasure in helping to nurse and care for your helpless children, unless they happen to be their parents.

“With natural and highly developed parental functions, a father loves a child more as a child; a mother loves it more as my child. Thus a father, under freedom, finds more pleasure in and is best fitted for providing for the general wants of children; while the mother, furnishing the nourishment for the infant, is best fitted to provide the particular wants of her child. Under these conditions all children, in all places, find fathers and mothers; and the pleasurable feelings, resulting from the administration of parental cares, is, in the case of man, the same as in the case of other organisms, ultimately the only incentive which prompts a parent to act toward the offspring.

“Other evils are, many of your girls have to work out for little or nothing, we may say. Their labor is often very toilsome and disagreeable. The days are long. The landlady, and often the landlord too, are abusive, cruel, and sometimes lustful. The social relations with the family is often like a slave. The girl is often not permitted to spend her few leisure minutes in the family parlor. She is, so to speak, a social outcast. She belongs to a different caste. There is a boss who looks upon her as an inferior creature wherever she goes. Under such a cruel, disagreeable, social and industrial system, it is no wonder that many of your ladies marry very young and become mothers prematurely. It is very natural that an inexperienced girl, placed in such deplorable conditions, will accept, in marriage, most any man that comes along and at most any age, too. To be sure, the conditions, in an average, are not better but even worse, when married than when single; but the youth, in his love and under his social and industrial burden, does not see that. One who is burdened and in slavery will try most any scheme but the right one, to throw it off and be free.

“Again, look what a slave your traveling woman is. Perhaps she has a baby or two and other necessaries to carry and care for, but a gentleman is hardly safe to offer his services, because one can not tell but what a jealous husband may come around the corner, who will begin a suit against a person for alienating the affections of his wife, or he may draw a revolver on you for being intimate, as he calls it, with his wife and child. And the jealousy of your women is just the same.

“Any man or woman, with us, may freely assist any woman, whether traveling or not. Any one may carry her babe or parcel, if the lady is satisfied. No particular man owns her, and therefore she is as free to accept services from one man as from another.

“Notice how distant and unsociable your men and women are when traveling, especially in railroad cars. Rarely do they speak to each other. Instead of having a good, sociable time, they generally all sit like mummies. The lady seems to fear the wrath of a jealous husband or beau, and the gentleman of a jealous wife or sweetheart. Your travelers act much like as if the Creator had decreed that sexual sociability were an unpardonable offense and that it is dangerous and impure for a strange lady and gentleman to converse together. They seem to assume that all men are ravishers and all women are grown-up babies; and the actual facts of your marriage system has, no doubt, to a great extent established and confirmed this fear, which becomes very plain, I think, when we remember that your primitive ancestors, perhaps, first instituted your system of marriage by capturing their wife or wives.

“When the Marsites travel or walk or are at strange houses they are just as sociable and talkative to strangers as to acquaintances. A gentleman converses with a strange lady the same as he does with an acquaintance, or as he would with another gentleman. We have no formality outside of the individual. But we always make it a point to act as pleasantly and sociably as if we had been living together for years. Any two or more men or women, who may wish, may sit together in the cars, may converse together, may assist each other, may go to entertainments together, may walk or ride together, or may invite each other. This is all left to suit the taste of the individual. He is the supreme authority.

“Let us look at your married ladies when at a social gathering; we will say at a common dance. The wife is very likely a mother, and has perhaps an infant babe to care for. According to your present social habits, the married man who is in the habit of taking his wife to a dance is not unlikely to indulge in intoxicating liquor. He takes his wife and child in one apartment, while he not infrequently goes to another, where he perhaps indulges in smoking and drinking. It often happens that he becomes more or less intoxicated, and sometimes even gets very drunk. His wife during all this time is perhaps sitting in the same place, on an old bench or chair, taking care of the baby. No man hardly dares to converse with her, or ask her to take the baby a while, so that she may dance if she wishes or otherwise amuse herself by going about; for her husband, whom she has promised to obey, might at any time come with a glass of wine for his wife, to which he sometimes treats her, as he calls it. In this manner he ‘taffies’ her a little. He often seemingly tries to make it appear that he is generous and charitable; for, as a rule, you esteem generosity and charity far greater virtues than you esteem justice. It seems to me that you are trying to raise your women on crumbs of charity, instead of having them grow vigorous on justice. Charity, as a whole, is an evil, for it tends to make a person more dependent; justice makes one more self-reliant. Probably the husband, who brings his wife a glass of wine under the pretense of generosity, spends more than half of her money to buy his tobacco, cigars and whisky with. All the woman wants is freedom and equal opportunity with the man. She should be free and should receive all the ‘money’ she actually earns and handle it herself. That is justice and nothing more. That is what justly belongs to her, and if she does not get it she is unjustly robbed of it.

“Just think, the husband with his glass of wine often feels himself insulted if he finds some man talking to his wife, and if he would find some other man nursing the baby and still another man dancing with his wife he often goes into a rage. He does not keep his wife’s company nor does he want other men to do it. If things do not just suit him, he puts on his jealous pout, which sometimes lasts for a whole week and sometimes even much longer.

“The wife is nearly always just as much of a jealous pout as the husband and often much more so; but the woman is nearly always more of a slave, because she is more confined with little children. Your matrimony very often produces cold husbands, and no other man, even if he would like to assist in caring for her child, is, as a rule, allowed to do so. These are largely the conditions of your man and wife in your marriage system. It is generally slavery all around. Of course, I am well aware that some married men and women enjoy quite a degree of individual freedom, but they are rather the exceptions than the rule.

“Again, let us suppose that two married couple would go on a pleasure trip. They are riding on the cars. The husband and wife have perhaps been together for years; they have told each other all the news they know of. They have nothing new to talk about. But if any friend would sit in the seat with my wife, and I would sit with his wife, we would all have something new to talk about and pass the time pleasantly. But, as a rule, men and women on earth are too jealous for that. Hence it is that we often find a man and a woman sitting together in the same seat in a car or elsewhere, the husband looking one direction and the wife the opposite direction, not speaking to each other for hours at a time. If you are an observer, you can see this in nearly every car in which you may happen to be riding.”

“Does not the population of the human race, under sexual freedom increase more rapidly than it does under our system of marriage?” asked Viola, who seemed to have mentally stored away every word of Mr. Midith’s narrative concerning their sexual relations.

“No; it is just the opposite, as Mr. Herbert Spencer in his biology has so forcibly foreshadowed when he says: ‘The excess of fertility has itself rendered the process of civilization inevitable; and the process of civilization must inevitably diminish fertility and at last destroy its excess.’ As a whole, the higher and the more complex the being, the fewer the offspring. You see this is one point, but there are others besides this one.

“Under your marriage system, in which the man largely runs the sexual affairs, a wife often is the mother of from six to twelve children, and not infrequently a number of them are unwelcome and would not have been born if the mother had been free and independent in all directions.

“Our women, who are all perfectly free and independent in every sense of the word, have now, in an average, between two and three children. A Marsite lady is seldom a mother of more than three children. In this manner a high state of civilization, mental culture and sexual freedom have at last established an almost complete equilibrium between births and deaths. Our population is now nearly stationary. A family or community, in an average, increases or decreases very little, if any, in population. Every child that is born has an abode ready to receive it when born. It receives parental care, and it in turn gives parental care when older, whether it be a parent or not. It, thereby, simply pays during the age of youth and manhood for what it received during its infancy. And every day that it labors it is paying for its abode.

“I have here endeavored to give you a brief and truthful explanation and comparison of our sexual freedom and of your matrimony. I have pointed out, as I see them, a few demerits and disadvantages of your marriage for life, but I can see countless other faults too numerous, in this brief narrative, even to mention. It is already growing late, and I shall make only a few further suggestions without any explanations, which I hope you will give some thought and consideration when you are at leisure on some future occasion.

“Have you ever considered what causes your intense blind jealousy, and how shallow and silly it is? Have you ever considered how many of your husbands and wives poison or otherwise kill each other? Have you ever considered what is the principal cause of your coarse, vulgar language that can be heard most any place? Have you ever attempted to find the cause for having so many ‘bad-tempered’ children that are continually growing up and become your so-called mean men and women? You are all well aware what an immense amount of trashy fiction, lustful love stories are annually read, especially by your ladies; think for a moment, if you can not find the cause for this. Do you not think that sexual constraint, which causes an unsatisfied sexual novelty, gives vent to sensual novel-reading? Have you ever considered how many men and women live together as husband and wife, who scarcely ever speak a kind, friendly word to each other? Have you ever considered what a bad effect this has on the children who are reared under such domestic influences? Have you ever endeavored to discover what causes the diseased condition and feeble constitution of nearly all your children at birth, or even during their pre-natal life? Have you ever considered what causes the unsatisfied sexual novelty in both your men and women? Have you ever considered how little care and attention a married mother, who is crowded with other domestic burdens, can bestow on her infant babe? Have you ever contemplated what a bad social effect the idea of each parent caring for his own offspring only has on society? Have you ever considered how little conditions can be suited for the rearing of children in a society in which each married couple live together in a little house either in a crowded city or in a lonely country? Have you ever thought how much lying, deceit and underhand work is practiced between many a husband and wife because of their marital constraint? Have you ever thought how many men and women are married for life who are entirely unsuited in temperament and in disposition? Did you ever think how much pouting and ill-feeling, how many quarrels and fights there are in married life all over your world. I suppose you have noticed the continual increase of your divorces. Have you noticed that divorces are most numerous in those vocations in which women are most independent financially, such as actresses, etc.? Do you know what that means? Have you ever thought how much ill-feeling your sectarianism and partyism causes between husband and wife? Have you ever thought how repugnant, burdensome, and fatal to life and health it is for a woman to live a sexually intemperate life? Your statistics show that your fallen women live their life of sin, in an average, less than three years, so disagreeable is a life of sexual intemperance to a woman; yet in wedlock, the man largely runs the sexual affairs to suit his own perverted taste. Have you ever thought how often a man or a woman when married have to do something that is disagreeable to the one or to the other? One wants to go to church, the other does not; one wants to go to a neighbor, the other does not; one wants the child baptized, the other does not, etc. Have you ever thought how much room and opportunity there is for aggressiveness when two are indissolubly bound together for life? Have you ever thought that your women have no public places to go to? Your men, who handle the money, build saloons, club-rooms, etc., for themselves, but they rarely ever invest a nickel in a public building for the women and children. The church seems to be the only public place your women can go to, and when they are there they have to be silent, so that they can not exchange ideas with one another there. Have you ever thought why you have so many more ladies in your churches than you have men? Do you think this would be the case if women were free and independent like our ladies are? I presume you have all noticed that your ladies have a great desire for personal ornaments, for unique decorations, for expensive, gaudy costumes, for elaborate hair dressing, face powder, etc., and for a continuous change of fashion. These characteristics are apparently much more strongly developed in your women than in your men. In the lower animals, the male is almost invariable the gaudiest, the most decorative. Why do you think there is an apparent exception in your human race? Remember, not in ours. In our world, the human family is no more an exception to this rule like it once was and like your human being is at present. Your exception to this rule, I think, is easily accounted for. Let us see if we can find the cause.

“According to your courting and marriage custom, your suitor goes to see his sweetheart whenever he wishes and wherever he wishes; but your sweetheart is not permitted to seek her choice by going to see him. She can only attract her suitors principally by her personal appearance, by her attire when she goes to church, to the theater, on the street or when she looks out of the window and is gazed upon by the passer-by, etc. She is not free to go and display her winsome characteristics before the man she may love most, like the man does before the woman he loves most. Hence she is at a great disadvantage in showing her intrinsic worth, so she has to rely mainly on outward appearance, and this outward appearance is often very deceptive, very shallow, so that your men, who dictate to your women, are often caught in their own traps. Your men, either consciously or unconsciously, enslave your women by robbing them of their freedom; and by this act of robbery the man indirectly enslaves himself. If your women, like ours, were free in every sense of the word—free financially, socially, industrially and sexually they would rely on the natural attractiveness of a healthy, handsome face and body, on a graceful form and intrinsic worth; instead of relying, as they now do, on gaudy outward attire, twisted hair, small, uncomfortable shoes, tightly laced corsets, and a long, trailing dress. All this display of unnatural costumes and continuous change of fashion requires an immense amount of labor, which has to be performed by the man as well as by the woman. In this manner, by uncomfortable costumes, by sexual intemperance and by the burdens of labor resulting from them, your men, as well as your women, enslave themselves.

“You must not infer from what I have said that the Marsites do not appreciate fine clothes; on the contrary, we are always richly dressed, but comfort and cleanliness have great precedence over anything else. Under the head of education, I will tell you more about our clothing and our manner of dress.

“I am well aware that many of your people will believe that what I have told you is a dangerous doctrine, that it is not in accord with an orderly society and is detrimental to progress; but this false belief of the masses is nothing new or nothing strange, as I have hinted at before. In the first place, I have given you just what we already have on Mars, an older planet than the earth is; and, in the second place, the masses of mankind have always at first mistrusted and condemned every measure of progress. A few illustrations will make this plain.

“During the last few centuries thousands of political enthusiasts have been murdered, legally and otherwise, for proposing and advocating the principles of a republican government, something like the present one of the United States. The masses of the people a few centuries ago believed that such a government would produce nothing but social and civil chaos; but the masses of your contemporaries believe that it is just the government, and will do all they can to suppress all who are now proposing a better one—one that will furnish more individual freedom and equality, one that will mete out justice instead of charity.

“Your so-called freedom of speech and freedom of the press was severely condemned by every government on earth only a few years ago. But to-day you would fight for its preservation.

“Only a few years ago the masses of the Christian world believed that the so-called separation of church and state would produce irreparable social and spiritual degeneration, but on trial you find it much better and more humane than the old practice of intolerance.

“Less than fifty years ago the vast majority of the people of the United States believed that the United States could not prosper without the institution of chattel slavery; but upon trial you found that it is more prosperous now than it ever was before; that both the master and the slave were benefited by abolishing it. So in all other cases wherever we or you have granted a wider scope of individual freedom and equality, we have at last found what we have been seeking for. So you will, in the near future, find it to be with the sex relation. It is one of the slaveries which must be abolished before social harmony can reign. No non-invasive person can be truly happy without being absolutely free. The individual must be the ultimate judge of his own acts, likes and dislikes, and the testimony of history confirms the fact that the more freedom the individual has been allowed or has asked for, the better has been his conduct. The more he has been constrained, the fiercer he has been. All aggressiveness must be banished from the human mind before there can be complete social, industrial and sexual harmony. Vice perishes under freedom and true virtue can not flourish under slavery.”

“Those are all grand principles,” said Mr. Uwins as Mr. Midith had finished. “They are perfectly clear to me now. I see through them from beginning to end, and I have seen them more or less clearly for years, but I have never been able to propose and outline a remedy for them; but your social and industrial system does completely away with all our present evils that I can see. You enjoy complete financial, social, industrial, and sexual freedom. Of course the masses of our people are not yet ripe for living such high and noble and pure lives. But I think that we have to-day more than ten thousand of our foremost cultivated and thoughtful men and women in the United States, that are able to live nearly such high lives as your Marsites do, and we are all slowly tending that way. Jealousy and aggressiveness gradually grow weaker and weaker, and we gradually learn more and more that we can be truly happy only by living in accord with the phenomena of the universe.”