ree or four hundred dollars per
head, not very much more than enough to supply the necessities of life
with few or any of its comforts. How is it that you have so much more?"

"That is a very pertinent question, Mr. West," replied Dr. Leete, "and
I should not blame your friends, in the case you supposed, if they
declared your story all moonshine, failing a satisfactory reply to it.
It is a question which I cannot answer exhaustively at any one sitting,
and as for the exact statistics to bear out my general statements, I
shall have to refer you for them to books in my library, but it would
certainly be a pity to leave you to be put to confusion by your old
acquaintances, in case of the contingency you speak of, for lack of a
few suggestions.

"Let us begin with a number of small items wherein we economize wealth
as compared with you. We have no national, state, county, or municipal
debts, or payments on their account. We have no sort of military or
naval expenditures for men or materials, no army, navy, or militia. We
have no revenue service, no swarm of tax assessors and collectors. As
regards our judiciary, police, sheriffs, and jailers, the force which
Massachusetts alone kept on foot in your day far more than suffices for
the nation now. We have no criminal class preying upon the wealth of
society as you had. The number of persons, more or less absolutely lost
to the working force through physical disability, of the lame, sick,
and debilitated, which constituted such a burden on the able-bodied in
your day, now that all live under conditions of health and comfort, has
shrunk to scarcely perceptible proportions, and with every generation
is becoming more completely eliminated.

"Another item wherein we save is the disuse of money and the thousand
occupations connected with financial operations of all sorts, whereby
an army of men was formerly taken away from useful employments. Also
consider that the waste of the very rich in your day on inordinate
personal luxury has ceased, though, indeed, this item might easily be
over-estimated. Again, consider that there are no idlers now, rich or
poor--no drones.

"A very important cause of former poverty was the vast waste of labor
and materials which resulted from domestic washing and cooking, and the
performing separately of innumerable other tasks to which we apply the
cooperative plan.

"A larger economy than any of these--yes, of all together--is effected
by the orga