AFTER all, it takes time for a great change in world-thought to strike in. That’s what Owen insisted on calling it. He maintained that the amazing up-rush of these thirty years was really due to the wholesale acceptance and application of the idea of evolution.
“I don’t know which to call more important — the new idea, or the new power to use it,” he said. “When we were young, practically all men of science accepted the evolutionary theory of life; and it was in general popular favor, though little understood. But the governing ideas of all our earlier time were so completely out of touch with life; so impossible of any useful application, that the connection between belief and behavior was rusted out of us. Between our detached religious ideas and our brutal ignorance of brain culture, we had made ourselves preternaturally inefficient.
“Then — you remember the talk there was about Mental Healing — ‘Power in Repose’ — ‘The Human Machine’ — or was that a bit later? Anyway, people had begun to waken up to the fact that they could do things with their brains. At first they used them only to cure diseases, to maintain an artificial ‘peace of mind,’ and tricks like that. Then it suddenly burst upon us — two or three important books came along nearly at once, and hosts of articles — that we could use this wonderful mental power every day, to live with! That all these scientific facts and laws had an application to life — human life.”
I nodded appreciatively. I was getting quite fond of my brother-in-law. We were in a small, comfortable motor boat, gliding swiftly and noiselessly up the beautiful Hudson. Its blue cleanness was a joy. I could see fish — real fish — in the clear water when we were still.
The banks were one long succession of gardens, palaces, cottages and rich woodlands, charming to view.
“It’s the time that puzzles me more than thing,” I said, “even more than the money. How on earth so much could be done in so little time!”
“That’s because you conceive of it as being done in one place after another, instead of in every place at once,” Owen replied. “If one city, in one year, could end the smoke at once,” Owen replied. “If one city, in one year, could end the smoke nuisance, so could all the cities on earth, if they chose to. We chose to, all over the country, practically at once.”
“But you speak of evolution. Evolution is the slowest of slow processes. It took us thousands of dragging years to evolve the civilization of 1910, and you show me a 1940 that seems thousands of years beyond that.”
“Yes; but what you call Evolution’ was that of unaided nature. Social evolution is a distinct process. Below us, you see, all improvements had to be built into the stock — transmitted by heredity. The social organism is open to lateral transmission — what we used to call education. We never understood it. We thought it was to supply certain piles of information, mostly useless; or to develop certain qualities.”
“And what do you think it is now?” I asked.
“We know now that the social process is to constantly improve and develop society. This has a necessary corollary of improvement in individuals; but the thing that matters most is growth in the social spirit — and body.”
“You’re beyond me now, Owen.”
“Yes; don’t you notice that ever since you began to study our advance, what puzzles you most is not the visible details about you, but a changed spirit in people? Thirty years ago, if you showed a man that some one had dumped a ton of soot in his front yard he would have been furious, and had the man arrested and punished. If you showed him that numbers of men were dumping thousands of tons of soot all over his city every year, he would hiave neither felt nor acted. It’s the other way, now.”
“You speak as if man had really learned to ‘love his neighbor as himself,’” I said sarcastically.
“And why not? If you have a horse, on whose strength you absolutely depend to make a necessary journey, you take good care of that horse and grow fond of him. It dawned on us at last that life was not an individual affair; that other people were essential to our happiness — to our very existence. We are not what they used to call ‘altruistic’ in this. We do not think of ‘neighbors,’ ‘brothers,’ ‘others’ any more. It is all ‘ourself.’”
“I don’t follow you — sorry.”
Owen grinned at me amiably. “No matter, old chap, you can see results, and will have to take the reasons on trust. Now here’s this particular river with its natural beauties, and its unnatural defilements. We simply stopped defiling it — and one season’s rain did the rest.”
“Did the rains wash away the rail-roads?”
“Oh, no — they are there still. But the use of electric power has removed the worst evils. There is no smoke, dust, cinders, and a yearly saving of millions in forest fires on the side! Also very little noise. Come and see the way it works now.”
We ran in at Yonkers. I wouldn’t have known the old town. It was as beautiful as — Posilippo.”
“Where are the factories?” I asked.
“There — and there — and there.”
“Why, those are palaces l”
“Well? Why not? Why shouldn’t people work in palaces? It doesn’t cost any more to make a beautiful building than an ugly one. Remember, we are much richer, now — and have plenty of time, and the spirit of beauty is encouraged.”
I looked at the rows of quiet, stately buildings; wide windowed; garden-roofed.
“Electric power there too?” I suggested.
Owen nodded again. “Everywhere,” he said. “We store electricity all the time with wind-mills, water-mills, tide-mills, solar engines — even hand power.”
“What!”
“I mean it,” he said. “There are all kinds of storage batteries now. Huge ones for mills, little ones for houses; and there are ever so many people whose work does not give them bodily exercise, and who do not care much for games. So we have both hand and foot attachments; and a vigorous man, or woman — or child, for that matter, can work away for half an hour, and have the pleasant feeling that the power used will heat the house or run the motor.
“Is that why I don’t smell gasoline in the streets?”
“Yes. We use all those sloppy, smelly things in special places — and apply all the power by electric storage mostly. You saw the little batteries in our boat.”
Then he showed me the railroad. There were six tracks, clean and shiny — thick turf between them.
“The inside four are for the special trains — rapid transit and long distance freight. The outside two are open to anyone.”
We stopped long enough to see some trains go by; the express at an incredible speed, yet only buzzing softly; and the fast freight; cars seemingly of aluminum, like a string of silver beads.
“We use aluminum for almost everything. You know it was only a question of power — the stuff is endless,” Owen explained.
And all the time, on the outside tracks, which had a side track at every station, he told me, ran single coaches or short trains, both passenger and freight, at a comfortable speed.
“All kinds of regular short-distance traffic runs this way. It’s a great convenience. But the regular highroads are the best. Have you noticed?”
I had seen from the air-motor how broad and fine they looked, but told him I had made no special study of them.
“Come on — while we’re about it,” he said; and called a little car. We ran up the hills to Old Broadway, and along its shaded reaches for quite a distance. It was broad, indeed. The center track, smooth, firm, and dustless, was for swift traffic of any sort, and well used. As the freight wagons were beautiful to look at and clean, they were not excluded, and the perfect road was strong enough for any load. There were rows of trees on either side, showing a good growth, though young yet; then a narrower roadway for slower vehicles, on either side a second row of trees, the footpaths, and the outside trees. i
“These are only about twenty-five years old. Don’t you think they are doing well?”
“They are a credit to the National Bureau of Highways and Arboriculture that I see you are going to tell me about.”
“You are getting wise,” Owen answered, with a smile. “Yes — that’s what does it. And it furnishes employment, I can tell you. In the early morning these roads are alive with caretakers. Of course the bulk of the work is done by running machines; but there is a lot of pruning and trimming and fighting with insects. Among our richest victories in that line is the extermination of the gipsy moth — brown tail — elm beetle and the rest.”
“How on earth did you do that?”
“Found the natural devourer — as we did with the scale pest. Also by raising birds instead of killing them; and by swift and thorough work in the proper season. We gave our minds to it, you see, at last.”
The outside path was a delightful one, wide, smooth, soft to the foot, agreeable in color.
“What do you make your sidewalk of?” I asked.
Owen tapped it with his foot. “It’s a kind of semi-flexible concrete — wears well, too. And we color it to suit ourselves, you see. There was no real reason why a path should be ugly to look at.”
Every now and then there were seats; also of concrete, beautifully shaped and too heavy to be easily moved. A narrow crack ran along the lowest curve.
“That keeps ’em dry,” said Owen.
Drinking fountains bubbled invitingly up from graceful standing basins, where birds drank and dipped in the overflow.
“Why, these are fruit trees,” I said suddenly, looking along the outside row.
“Yes, nearly all of them, and the next row are mostly nut trees. You see, the fruit trees are shorter and don’t take the sun off. The middle ones are elms wherever elms grow well. I tell you, John, it is the experience of a lifetime to take a long motor trip over the roads of Ajnerica! You can pick your climate, or run with the season. Nellie and I started once from New Orleans in February — the violets out. We came north with them; I picked her a fresh bunch every dayl”
He showed me the grape vines trained from tree to tree in Tuscan fashion; the lines of berry bushes, and the endless ribbon of perennial flowers that made the final border of the pathway. On its inner side were beds of violets, lilies of the valley, and thick ferns; and around each fountain were groups of lilies and water-loving plants.
I shook my head.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I simply don’t believe it! How could any nation afford to keep up such roads!”
Owen drew me to a seat — we had dismounted to examine a fountain and see the flowers. He produced pencil and paper.
“I’m no expert,” he said. “I can’t give you exact figures. But I want you to remember that the trees pay. Pay! These roads, hundreds of thousands of miles of them, constitute quite a forest, and quite an orchard. Nuts, as Hallie told you, are in growing use as food. We have along these roads, as beautiful clean shade trees, the finest improved kinds of chestnut, walnut, butternut, pecan — whatever grows best in the locality.”
And then he made a number of startling assertions and computations, and showed me the profit per mile of two rows of well-kept nut trees.
“I suppose Hallie has told you about tree farming?” he added.
“She said something about it — but I didn’t rightly know what she meant.”
“Oh, it’s a big thing; it has revolutionized agriculture. As you’re sailing over the country now you don’t see so many bald spots. A healthy, permanent world has to keep its fur on.”
I was impressed by that casual remark, “As you’re sailing over the country.”
“Look here, Owen, I think I have the r glimmer of an idea. Didn’t the common
‘ use of airships help to develop this social consciousness you’re always talking about — this general view of things?”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re dead right, John — it did, and I don’t believe any of us would have thought to mention it.” He lo............