nization of our distributing system, by which the work done
once by the merchants, traders, storekeepers, with their various grades
of jobbers, wholesalers, retailers, agents, commercial travelers, and
middlemen of all sorts, with an excessive waste of energy in needless
transportation and interminable handlings, is performed by one tenth
the number of hands and an unnecessary turn of not one wheel. Something
of what our distributing system is like you know. Our statisticians
calculate that one eightieth part of our workers suffices for all the
processes of distribution which in your day required one eighth of the
population, so much being withdrawn from the force engaged in
productive labor."

"I begin to see," I said, "where you get your greater wealth."

"I beg your pardon," replied Dr. Leete, "but you scarcely do as yet.
The economies I have mentioned thus far, in the aggregate, considering
the labor they would save directly and indirectly through saving of
material, might possibly be equivalent to the addition to your annual
production of wealth of one half its former total. These items are,
however, scarcely worth mentioning in comparison with other prodigious
wastes, now saved, which resulted inevitably from leaving the
industries of the nation to private enterprise. However great the
economies your contemporaries might have devised in the consumption of
products, and however marvelous the progress of mechanical invention,
they could never have raised themselves out of the slough of poverty so
long as they held to that system.

"No mode more wasteful for utilizing human energy could be devised, and
for the credit of the human intellect it should be remembered that the
system never was devised, but was merely a survival from the rude ages
when the lack of social organization made any sort of cooperation
impossible."

"I will readily admit," I said, "that our industrial system was
ethically very bad, but as a mere wealth-making machine, apart from
moral aspects, it seemed to us admirable."

"As I said," responded the doctor, "the subject is too large to discuss
at length now, but if you are really interested to know the main
criticisms which we moderns make on your industrial system as compared
with our own, I can touch briefly on some of them.

"The wastes which resulted from leaving the conduct of industry to
irresponsible individuals, wholly without mutual understanding or
concert, were mainly four: first