In the evening when we retired, it was still raining, but the next morning greeted us with a bright, pleasant sunshine. All nature seemed to be clothed in her best garment. The faces at Uwins’ appeared to be as pleasing to the sight after a refreshing night’s rest as the verdant foliage, refreshed by the warm rain and delightful sunshine.

After dinner, when we were all seated in the parlor, Mr. Uwins asked Mr. Midith about the family-home as it existed on Mars.

“We have no home and no family as you know a home and a family,” replied Mr. Midith. “We have no home and no family in which one man and one woman live together with their children as you do here. Our ancient history tells us that long, long ago, we had homes and families just like you have them here now.

“It may, at first sight and in your mundane age, seem strange to you to have no family-home like yours; but it is nevertheless a fact. You see society on Mars, as I have told you elsewhere, has had longer time to evolve than it has had on earth. We must expect to find a more advanced state of society and industry there, or we are no believers in evolution, in progress.”

“If you have no home and no family like ours on Mars, in what manner do you live there then?” asked Mrs. Uwins, full of interest.

“I will tell you, ladies and gentlemen,” began Mr. Midith. “Our smallest dwellings accommodate about a thousand men, women and children. These dwellings or Marsian homes are grand, magnificent structures about eight stories high, the main building 150 × 600 feet, with three wings on each side 60 × 300 feet. (See diagram p. 52.) There is an electric engine in every dwelling, which heats every apartment; it lights them with soft brilliant electric lights; it does all the culinary work—cooking, baking, etc.; it pumps the water to all parts of the building; it does all the laundry work—washing, drying and ironing, warms the water for the bath-rooms and for all other apartments; it runs the elevators, heats the conservatories and green-houses; it runs the sewing-machines, dish-washers and all other machinery in the building which I can not mention at present. In the summer it cools departments by creating currents of air.

“See how vastly we economize both in wealth and in labor, by co-operating just in this one direction. One thousand, more or less, of us live together in one magnificent building, instead of one husband and one wife and their children, living in a frail, ill-constructed, inconvenient cottage. We have one electric engine do the heating for a thousand or more, instead of having one or more stoves in each little cottage. Instead of every home like here, having one or more lamps to fill and clean, our engine lights every apartment as light as day with an electric light. Instead of each small family having a cook-stove and washing machine, we run all our work with one engine. We need no heating-stoves, no hand washing-machine; the bath-rooms are comfortable and convenient. We do all this and much more with one engine for the accommodation of a thousand or more members of our large Marsian family.

“The interior of the building is elegantly finished and richly furnished; each individual, young and old, has a private apartment. (See page 55.) Then we have public apartments—grand public parlors of all sizes; a public dining-room; a public hall for games, exercises and amusements of all kinds; a large, fine library; nurseries with plenty of toys for children of all ages; public and private baths, an elegant barber shop, a large, well-filled store, a grand restaurant, a large, clean, well-ventilated kitchen with plenty of good, handsome, tidy cooks and helpers—both men and women; public reading and writing rooms, a scientific department for philosophical apparatus and a well-filled laboratory including drugs, a tailor and milliner shop, a vehicle department, etc. The dwellings, notwithstanding their size, are so well ventilated and cooled in summer, and so uniformly warmed in winter that an inmate can scarcely tell whether it is winter or summer.

“Let us now leave the interior of the ‘Big-House’ for a few moments and give a brief description of the surroundings. I shall hereafter call the Marsian dwelling a ‘big-house’ so as to distinguish it from your family home here. Let me say right here that there are a few general facts of which I would like to inform you, before I attempt a more detailed description of the exterior surroundings of our ‘big-house.’

“You want to bear in mind that we have a family; but that the family consists of a thousand or more men, women and children, instead of consisting like your family of from one to six or more. That we have no cities and towns, and no country; that our day’s manual labor consists in an average of less than two hours; this you will readily see as soon as you clearly understand how vastly we economize both wealth and labor in all directions by voluntary co-operative individualism. Years ago we had cities and towns, and a country similar to yours of the present time; but experience gradually taught us that it is not healthful to live in a crowded, smoky city and town, and also that we have no particular use for cities and towns, that they are detrimental to an orderly, well-regulated society. We also found that a family of husband and wife and their children, living alone in a country home, are largely wasting their lives socially and economically.”

“You said, Mr. Midith, that you have no cities and towns and no country either. I should like to know where you live then?” asked Rev. Dudley. “All the houses here on earth are either in cities and towns, or they are in the country. I can see no other place for them. You do not live on rafts and boats, do you? You seem to have so many strange notions on Mars that a person can not tell what you might do until you have told us.”

Mr. Midith laughed as he continued: “Our ‘big houses’ are built about a half a mile apart all around rectangular fields twenty-four miles long and six miles wide, containing according to your measurement four geographical townships, or 92,160 acres each.” (See pp. 57 and 58.)

“There are double-tracked, electric-motor lines running all around these large divisions of land, so that every ‘big-house’ is situated on a motor-line. These large divisions of land, together with the houses and people that live on them, we call communities. A community, then, has an area of four townships, more or less, and a perimeter of sixty miles, on which a big-house, containing about a thousand inmates is situated at intervals of about half a mile. (See p. 58.) This gives a community a population of about 120,000 persons. These motor-lines connect with railroads at intervals of about a hundred miles or more, as the case may be. Our railroads are nearly all straight and almost level, with heavy steel composition rails, laid on a solid roadbed, and the time of many trains exceeds a speed of a hundred miles an hour.”

On page 60, figure 5, I have given a diagram, as described by Mr. Midith, of a cross section of the land along the motor-lines, extending from the motor-line to the main field or body of land in the community. “A represents a hundred-foot wide motor-line. B represents a strip of park land one-fourth mile wide, on which the ‘big-houses’ are located. D represents a hundred-foot wide boulevard. C C represents walks on each side of the main boulevard. E represents a conservatory and green-house five hundred feet wide. F represents a walk between the conservatory and the garden G, which is one thousand feet wide. I is an orchard one thousand feet wide. H is a walk between the garden and orchard. J represents the edge of the field, etc., which extends clear across the community.

“These parks, boulevards, walks, conservatories, etc., run parallel with the entire length of all the motor-lines wherever the lay of the land will permit it.”

“O, how beautifully you have all this arranged!” exclaimed Viola. “I suppose you have a great many fine, fast horses on your broad boulevards. I am sure you have plenty of time to train them if you work less than two hours a day.”

“We have no oxen and horses, no draught animals of any kind, except a few the same as you keep elk,” said Mr. Midith. “As I have said, it seems very cruel to me to use animals the way you do. To beat them; to hitch them up so unnaturally, and to work and run them so cruelly.”

“How, then, do you farm, Mr. Midith?” asked Roland. “Do you spade the land like our ancestors used to do?”

“The farming is all done with electric power. A locomotive, which builds and takes up its own track, does all the plowing, sowing, harvesting, etc. Instead of fencing each little patch of land, and turning our weak, tired teams before all those fences, destroying, in the act of turning, the very crops you endeavor to raise, like you do here, we hitch up a powerful land locomotive to a set of gang plows and plow a furrow which is from three to twenty-four miles long, as the case may be. Our fifty-foot header, propelled by an electric engine, cuts the heads from the grain and elevates them into a large wagon rack. This wagon, when full, is taken with an engine to the warehouses, represented on p. 58, community No. 2; here the cut ears are dumped into a large hopper. Each header has enough wagons for hauling grain to keep it cutting all the time. From the hoppers at the warehouses, elevators take the cut grain, or ears, to drying rooms. In these drying rooms currents of hot air pass through the grain, and in a few days it is perfectly dry. Here it is elevated into the thresher, and from the thresher it passes into drying bins, where it is dried for keeping or for grinding. Thus you see that in sowing, reaping, threshing and grinding, not a human hand has touched a straw nor a grain. With our method of artificial curing, not a grain is damaged by moisture, not a grain is lost on the land or road. By the aid of electricity we can, if need be, cut day and night, rain and shine.

“From the foregoing, you see that our system of agriculture, especially harvesting, has many points of advantage over yours; a few of which I shall name. You first cut the grain with a little reaper or self-binder which throws the grain on the ground; here a portion of the grain is lost by being scattered on the ground; then you shock it, by which another portion is lost; then you dry it in the sun; by this process a large portion is lost, and a still larger portion is more or less damaged by wind and rain in the field. After this you stack it; here in the stack some more is lost; a portion is lost and damaged by heating and some by rain. Your little, ill-adjusted thresher, hauled around over the fields, run a portion of it into the straw-pile; part of it is trampled into the ground and another part is damaged by rain during the process of threshing. Next, in your crowded, ill-ventilated bins, a portion of it is totally spoiled, and a large portion of it is more or less damaged. Another portion is lost and damaged on the road when the farmer brings it to market. Then your little country mills only half grind it. Again, during a rainy season, you can cut only during the daytime when the grain is dry.

“After all these and countless other losses and damages, you need not be surprised that so many of your poor people are starving for bread, or are only too glad to get the bread made of damaged grain. By our method all our grain is saved and none of it is damaged. We do not depend for our curing on the immediate sunshine, as you have seen.

“To be sure we, the same as you, must adapt our farming to suit the land and climate, which are as diversified and varied on Mars as they are on earth; but the foregoing system is adopted where the land and other conditions are suited for it. Thus we see that as long as the changeableness and uncertainty of climatic conditions are not under scientific control, that system of harvesting, which depends for its drying and curing on the immediate sunshine of the harvest-time must, in an average, always be attended with a large portion of loss and damage.

“You notice that there is nothing new in our system of harvesting. By extensive, voluntary co-operation you can do the same. You have headers, engines, elevators, electricity, currents of hot air for drying, and you can build large warehouses for drying and storing grain as well as we can. Your main trouble is that you work too single handed. I may say right here that I am acquainted with an inventor who resides near Grand Junction, Iowa. This man has a tract-building locomotive that can pull a heavy load over softer ground than a team is able to walk on. Of course, this is only a rude beginning, but it shows the way you are tending.

“On Mars transportation is rapid, cheap and convenient. Manufacturing is principally done in those localities where it requires the least amount of labor. Crops best adapted to the locality are raised there and then transported where consumed. Our freight trains carry 3,000 tons from 40 to 100 miles an hour.

“Here are a few facts that will enable you to understand how vastly we economize both wealth and labor by our extensive co-operative individualism, and how easily we can produce with abundance the necessaries and luxuries of life, so that we are obliged to work but a few hours daily. Each community is, so to speak, a large family, in which each member has a personal interest in the community’s wealth. For this reason every member of the community is keenly interested in the productive industries of the community. Mars has, therefore, no wage-workers. Experience convinced us that a wage-worker, having no direct interest in his productions, is, as a rule, not highly interested in the quantity and quality of his labor; such uninterested labor is also toilsome and fatiguing. I have given you this brief outline of our social and industrial system now, so that you may mentally assimilate the fundamental plan of it; and on some future occasion, I will give you a more detailed description of each part of it. Too much at one time will cause a mental confusion.

“You see there is only one difficult point in the solution of the social and industrial problem, and that point I shall now endeavor to make you understand, if you do not already understand it, so that hereafter you may always bear that point in mind in connection with social and industrial progress. The difficult point is this: To devise or outline a social and industrial system in which a large number of individuals co-operate harmoniously, and yet have every individual free to do what he believes to be right, provided he infringes not upon the equal rights of any other person. No man here on earth thus far has been able to outline such a system.”

“Do you not have many quarrels in your large families?” asked Rev. Dudley. “I am quite certain that if our family were increased to a thousand, we would have many quarrels and fights and even murders.’”

“We have neither quarrels, fights nor murders,” replied Mr. Midith. “You see we have nothing to quarrel about. Whenever the individual has arrived at such a stage of intellectual culture that he concedes the right to all of his companions to do as they individually believe to be right, or conduce most to their happiness, provided they invade no rights of any other person, there can be no quarrels, fights and murders. This is the only point we need learn to bring about perfect social harmony. Quarrels, fights and murders are the results of ignorance and an ill-adjusted society. When I first got acquainted with your small family, huddled together in one or a few little rooms, I was not surprised to find that people here, as a rule, are so cruel and quarrelsome. The old, the middle-aged, and the young are all crowded in one little apartment. Their natural inclination, on account of age, temperament, etc., is very unlike. Yet they are compelled to be together. With us every man, woman and child has a splendid private apartment, to which they can retire at any moment. No one intrudes on them there. Any one can leave any or all his social companions whenever he pleases.

“With you it is vastly different. How many matured children, when living in the same house and in the same apartment, make your homes a dungeon—a battle-field on which the better sentiments of both parents and children are slain? How many old parents are supported by their sons and daughters when each other’s presence is no more agreeable? How many husbands and wives are compelled, by your social and industrial system, to live together after they do not love each other? How many circumstances are there not that compel your so-called masters and servants to remain together after they dislike each other? These and many other unnatural, disagreeable, social conditions produce your quarrels, fights and murders.

“Formerly we believed, like you now believe, that a family could not exist successfully without a ‘boss.’ But experience proved to us that we were mistaken. We now know that a family ‘boss’ is nothing but a curse and a creature of discord only. Just in proportion as we eliminate the vicious social conditions, the ‘boss,’ quarreling, fighting and murdering disappear.

“I think we have a good proof of that right here in this home. As far as I can ascertain there is no ‘boss’ in Mr. Uwins’ family. All the members of the family, as far as I can see, are free to do what each believes to be right. The kind training, the equal privileges, and the unrestricted freedom have stamped a pleasant, prepossessing appearance upon the countenance of parent and child. When the conditions are right, a thousand can live just as peaceably together under one roof as two can, and even more so, for the very act of living in small families like you do, is a sign that the conditions are not right; and as long as the social and industrial conditions are wrong, there can be no right society.

“That a certain advanced social state seems unattainable or even dangerous may not be a sign that it is so. It may be only a sign that those who think it injurious are not ripe for it at present—that their intellectual culture is not in tune with such a life. But it may just suit some who are more advanced than those are who claim that it is unattainable; or they, in time, may grow ripe for it themselves.

“Perhaps our primitive ancestors both here and on Mars were cannibals, and they no doubt believed that the desire for eating human flesh would never be eliminated, and if it were eliminated the world would then not be worth living in. But we have no desire to eat human flesh. It would be very repugnant to us. The contemporaries of your ‘Holy Inquisition’ no doubt believed that society would crumble without the so-called protection of that ‘Holy Institution.’ But we know from a retrospective view that it was a very cruel enemy of society. Again, your civil courts that convicted, imprisoned, tortured and burned thousand upon thousand of innocent people as witches during the witch mania, undoubtedly thought that a person’s life and property were not safe without the protection or intervention of these civil tribunals; but we now know that the more witches you killed the more rapidly they increased, and that when you ceased killing them they all soon die of their own accord. We know that there never was a witch; that this belief was only a mental illusion, like thousands of your present beliefs are; and we also know that the human family, with the advance of intelligence, will gradually adjust itself in the line of the completest life and greatest happiness.”