We have, like you, wealth with its self-rewarding luxuries, but its character is very different. Its chosen pleasures and inclinations are unlike yours. Acquisitiveness has no such controlling motives as with you. The hope of social elevation, the anxiety to place the sufferings of poverty beyond reach, and the love of power, are not elements in our desire for gain. As an inducement to the accumulation of wealth, all these motives are supplanted by the one overweening passion for distinguishment which its possession affords, by contributing to the well-being and happiness of others. The even opportunities of life, and the entire absence of poverty as you have it, with its miseries, do away with the most fertile stimulus to individual greed among you; and the strong passion to hoard, which you call avarice, becomes with us, from the singleness of its motives, one of the noblest of our religious aspirations. Whatever luxuries wealth provides for itself are shared by all; and since the nature and form of our society precludes the necessity[Pg 266] of alms-giving, charity, as you understand it, is unknown. The general dissemination of self-pride and independence, as much the result of our religious beliefs as of our political and educational methods, secures us against those evils of indiscriminate charity which are found to paralyze industry everywhere upon the Earth, in its present stage of development.
In our political system we have provided so well for the even and sufficient reward of toil, that our animal requirements, so easily supplied, are never wanting in individual cases to the extent of suffering. In the extremity of invalidism or other misfortune, assistance comes, not in the form of charity as you know it, but as the anxious and sympathetic support of a family to one of its members in distress. The field of benevolence in wealth is, therefore, entirely within the province of education and art; which in accordance with our religious aspirations and beliefs, takes the same form in their furtherance of the purposes of the Deity as your devotional enterprises of promulgating your religious faiths.
Our rich contribute largely from their substance to the purposes of education, with a philanthropy that is greatly intensified by the religious enthusiasm gratified by the[Pg 267] act; but they do not build nor contribute to our temples of worship as yours do, since the attendance upon these is unsolicited and voluntary, and a mere pleasurable gratification of our spiritual hopes and aspirations. Unattended by saving forms and conditions, as with you, the worship within our temples is not considered of consequence to our spiritual welfare. These religious centers, unlike yours, assume no power to condone or compromise with evil. No burdened, unclean conscience comes to them with the hope of absolution, to return again laden with its misdeeds for another purging. No wholesale peculator brings a portion of his evil gains as an atonement for the inflicted miseries of his avaricious career. There is nothing whatever within our temples or surrounding them, but the peace and self conscious satisfaction of the divine co-operation in our efforts to cultivate ourselves, and the praise and glory of our own success forms the spirit of our worship.
Our society being without exclusiveness, and the ostentation of riches a thing unknown, there is no ambition to get beyond the general fare in dwellings. The whole city block, surmounted by its one continuous roof, may be either a single or a number of dwellings, to accord[Pg 268] with the incomes of its occupants. Under our land system the cost of rent is such a small item in the living expenses, that all are enabled to share alike in their housings, and to equally enjoy the benefit of our wholesome sanitary provisions. No one amongst us dwells in a hovel. We labor that the surroundings of all shall be uniformly pleasant and comfortable. With us the suspicion of unseen misery is enough to disturb the pleasures of life. Besides the unpleasant suggestions of discomfit which a rough and incommodious dwelling would arouse, it would be considered by us a painful violation of taste, and a sacrifice of the opportunities of art.
Consequently within the limits of our cities you will not find any external distinction among our dwelling places, to denote the financial standing of their occupants. But as a whole block becomes occasionally occupied by a single family, whose large fortune enables them to enjoy its magnificent proportions, there is not wanting within those luxuries of wealth urged by the prevailing tastes. The establishment becomes the pride and pleasure of its locality. In conformity with all other of the city’s blocks, it has three lofty stories. The lower one on each of its facades consists of a series of Corinthian columns[Pg 269] with highly wrought capitals, resting upon which, and forming the second story elevation, are a line of arches, supporting the flush outer walls of the story above. This story, which is abundantly lighted by its transparent roof, has its exterior surface decorated in bas relief with architraves and cornices designed in our elaborate styles. Every block has an arched and vestibuled main entrance at each of its four corners, over which there rises a tower containing a powerful electric light, illuminating at night the interior as well as the surrounding streets. As our thoroughfares which radiate from the city’s center are straight, and better adapted for business and the industries, they are devoted to these purposes. Consequently, on the circular or concentric streets are located most of our dwellings; the choicest of which, as to location, are those fronting the parks, which, as I have already given you to understand, circumscribe at intervals every neighborhood of the city. It is, then, in these convex or concave fronts, standing on opposite lines of the park belt, that the abodes of wealth are mostly to be found.
You would discover the whole of one of these buildings, except its middle story, devoted to the use of the public, and containing on its first floor a number of class rooms[Pg 270] assigned to a system of teaching to which your kindergartens bear some similarity, and a few others in which the scholars have advanced to a higher grade. The character of the instruction would be indicated by the appliances and implements of industry everywhere to be seen, the busy use of them at intervals by the classes, and the pride and emulation of the scholars, in their struggling efforts toward skill in their handling. In another room you would find a smaller class, the special proteges of the owner, composed of a few, who, by the early manifestations of an unusual promise, were being assisted in their pursuance of some branch of science or art.
Outside of this department of instruction you would find an extensive library, with its reading room attachments ingeniously arranged for convenience, and a large apartment, usually in the center of the building, well lighted from the roof, in which was collected the art treasures, and upon which was lavished by its owner that fondness for the beautiful which becomes him as a member of our society.
The upper story is a public assembly chamber for occasions of rejoicing and pleasure, and is adorned with statuary, fountains, and blooming plants. This grand apartment[Pg 271] is so tempered in warmth by the cheap appliances of our municipality, that it becomes a winter garden during our long, inclement seasons, when the parks are sere and icy.
One of these establishments would suggest to your view an exaggerated estimate of its founder’s wealth. In most cases his income extends but little beyond the support of this enterprise. In his dream of wealth he has achieved the hope of his ambition, and he stops there.
Your passion of hoarding beyond a competency, without purpose except the lust for hoarding, is the offshoot of that instinct in the carnivorous brute, which impels him to refuse to his hungry fellows any portion of his captured carcass, one-tenth of which he cannot consume. This low and brute-born heritage of greed only fails of a better suppression in your society, because you have neglected to entirely remedy, by your political methods, the generally precarious way in which your animal and intellectual wants are supplied. Suffering now follows just as close to a miss in your struggles for sustenance, as it did when your skin-clad hunters failed of their game.
Your passion to get and hold is intensified and brutalized[Pg 272] in its lack of regard for the consequences to others, by the large number of artificial necessities only attainable in your society by a considerable accumulation of money, the want of which implies degradation, and a sacrifice of many things that have grown to be dear to life. Every addition to the savings removes to a greater distance that dreaded condition of your civilization, known as poverty. The insatiable character of the hoarding is not unlike the motive of overcaution in a wanderer, who, terrorized by the appearance of a dreaded animal in his path, increases his distance by flight far beyond all possible approach of the dangerous presence.
Your breathless pursuit of wealth, beyond all reasonable limit of obtaining the objects of desire, is induced also by the remarkable opportunities its possession affords to appropriate the earnings of industry. The capacity of your wealth to absorb and control the fruits of toil exists in a geometrical ratio of increase with the greater wealth employed, and the taste of power once felt is seldom appeased, but increases with every money addition. Under your favorable laws, it may extend to the privilege of a single individual exacting the whole surplus earnings of an army of busy workers.
[Pg 273]Through centuries of legislation and usuage you have established various processes, by which wealth is enabled to extract an undue portion of the earnings of industry. Among these processes may be named rate............