ndering of that
conception. The bulk of the people will be organized out of sight in a
state of industrious and productive congestion, and a wealthy,
leisurely, and refined minority will live in spacious homes, with
excellent museums, libraries, and all the equipments of culture; will
go to town, concentrate in Paris, London, and Rome, and travel about
the world. It is to these large, luxurious, powerful lives that the
idealist naturally turns. Their motor-cars, their aeroplanes, their
steam yachts will awaken terror and respect in every corner of the
globe. Their handsome doings will fill the papers. They will patronize
the arts and literature, while at the same time mellowing them by
eliminating that too urgent insistence upon contemporary fact which
makes so much of what is done to-day harsh and displeasing. The
middle-class tradition will be continued by a class of stewards,
tenants, managers, and foremen, secretaries and the like, respected
and respectful. The writer, the artist, will lead lives of comfortable
dependence, a link between class and class, the lowest of the rich
man's guests, the highest of his servants. As for the masses, they
will be fed with a sort of careless vigour and considerable economy
from the Chicago stockyards, and by agricultural produce trusts, big
breweries, fresh-water companies, and the like; they will be organized
industrially and carefully controlled. Their spiritual needs will be
provided for by churches endowed by the wealthy, their physical
distresses alleviated by the hope of getting charitable aid, their
lives made bright and adventurous by the crumbs of sport that fall
from the rich man's table. They will crowd to see the motor-car races,
the aeroplane competitions. It will be a world rich in contrasts and
not without its gleam of pure adventure. Every bright young fellow of
capacity will have the hope of catching the eye of some powerful
personage, of being advanced to some high position of trust, of even
ending his days as a partner, a subordinate assistant plutocrat. Or he
may win a quite agreeable position by literary or artistic merit. A
pretty girl, a clever woman of the middle class would have before her
even more brilliant and romantic possibilities.

There can be no denying the promises of colour and eventfulness a
Plutocracy holds out, and though they do not attract me, I can quite
understand their appeal to the more ductile and appreciative mind of
Mr. Mallock. But