did. Still, it was a ridiculous spectacle to see the principal highways

of such a business people controlled by private corporations that virtually did precisely what they pleased”.

“The gas works, street railways and waterworks of cities you would have had managed by the city authorities, I suppose?” I said.

“Indeed, that is what I would have done”, Mr. Forest replied. “But I would first have extended the power of the national administration over all the forest and mining lands then in the possession of the United States. If the national government had taken care of the remnants of the immense forests that once covered the larger part of this vast territory, we would not at present suffer from a lack of timber”.

“What would you have done with the bankers and merchants?”

“Nothing”, Mr. Forest answered. “The different mutual productive associations would have needed men to manage such business affairs as were outside the management of the factory, attended to by the former manufacturer. For the workmen would soon have found out that it required more than the manual labor of the toilers to build up and run a large business establishment. And the owners of grocery stores would, if similar establishments had been started by consuming societies, have sold their stock on hand and secured places as managers or clerks of the new stores”.

“I suppose that under the system proposed by you all the old-fashioned stores would have been forced to close out”, I said, “because the different guilds would have purchased goods at wholesale and would have sold them to their members at a low cash price. The storekeepers that were not able to secure positions in the stores of the different guilds would have been forced to look out for some other employment;--a rather hard lot for many of them”.

“The change in the mode of production would not have been sudden”, Mr. Forest explained, “but would have been brought about gradually, thus giving the business people, perhaps thirty years time to let their children join guilds instead of becoming storekeepers and traders. And there is no reason why enterprising merchants who had a fine taste in selecting goods, should not have retained a large number of customers. It is not cheapness alone that attracts buyers, and in the country, where there were no factories, etc., close at hand, stores would have to be kept”.

“You said you would have passed laws preventing farmers owning more than forty acres of land”, I said, “Would you have also limited the amount of city property to be owned by any one man?”

“The possession of one house ought to have satisfied every fair-minded man”, Mr. Forest continued. “Nobody can deny that the accumulation of fortunes amounting to many millions in the hands of a few people, while hundreds of thousands could earn hardly more than a living, was a state of affairs which made this damnable communism possible”.

“But how would you have been able to prevent this?” I queried with some curiosity.

“By making the taxation of inherited property the principal assessment for the maintenance of the national, state and local governments as well as of the schools. I would have proposed a tax of one percent on all property inherited by a single person, amounting upward to $10,000. An inheritance amounting to $20,000 I would have taxed two percent, $30,000 three percent, $100,000 ten percent, $200,000 twenty percent, $500,000 fifty percent. If anybody left a fortune yielding a larger sum than $250,000 to each heir, the surplus should have been considered as an income to humanity, the national, state and local governments sharing therein in a just proportion”.

“Would not such a law have acted as a check upon the ambition and the enterprise of the people?” I asked.

“If it had prevented people amassing immense fortunes it would have served a good purpose. It would not have lessened but protected competition”, Mr. Forest answered. “Men possessing twenty or fifty millions of dollars and using them without regard for the rights of other people, were very dangerous. They were in a position to annihilate their competitors, and they frequently used their power unmercifully. Thus by increasing their millions and by killing competition they were paving the way for communism. And was it not unfair that a man who had amassed by all manner of means such an enormous fortune could leave it to a son who would continue the work of killing competitors with smaller means? What could the most able man accomplish in an avocation, if he had against him a man who possessed, perhaps, very little ability, but who was unscrupulously using his millions to attain his ends? Parents might leave their children enough to place their dear ones beyond the reach of want but they should not enable them to prevent the children of poorer parents having a fair show to get ahead in life”.

“You would have met with considerable resistance to such a proposition in my days”, I remarked.

“I fancy the millionaires would have objected”, Mr. Forest assented. “Still, I think that such a law would have served the best interest of both the children of rich parents and humanity in general. Nothing but a law of this kind could have stemmed the tide of communism and anarchy. A child inheriting $250,000 ought to be satisfied with his lot and ought to let the surplus go to the defraying of the expenses of the government. By sacrificing a part of their enormous fortunes, the heirs would have saved the rest, and would have weakened the communistic tendency of your days. And it appears more than doubtful to me whether the possession of such enormous properties made these wealthy people good, or even happy and contented”.

“If such a law had been passed in 1887 most of the millionaires would have converted their property into cash and emigrated to Europe”, I objected.

“I suppose they would have done so”, Mr. Forest admitted. “But I am, nevertheless, convinced that a law of this kind would not only have been just but that it would have done a great deal to save humanity from communism. Civilized countries would have been obliged to pass a similar law at the same time”.

“The temptation to avoid the consequences of the statute would have been very great”, I remarked. “Many people would have tried to evade the tax by declaring to the authorities a smaller amount of property than they really owned, or by presenting during their life time, a part of their fortune to their children”.

“Any attempt at fraud should have been punished by a confiscation of all the property”, said Mr. Forest. “And as for gifts they could have been taxed at the same rate as inheritances from one percent up to fifty.--But such a law would have been necessary only during the first fifty or sixty years of a new order of things. As soon as mutual producing associations were in general operation, selling their goods directly from the factories to the consumers, and buying all the necessities of life and commodities, as far as possible, at wholesale, and selling them a little above cost price, there would have been little occasion for men to amass millions of dollars. The number of middlemen and traders would have largely decreased. Everybody would have been compelled to do work of some kind and would have received a compensation according to both the quantity and quality of his performances”.

“But would not cliques like the one you are charging with having control of your government have taken possession of a mutual producing association, thus depriving the clever workers of a part of their earnings and paying the poorer men more for their work than they deserved?” I queried.

“In such a case the good men could have left an association, where they were cheated and joined another partnership. Good laborers are always appreciated wherever competition rules. But the association, thus driving away their ablest members, would soon have been unable to compete with others. Difficulties, therefore, could have been regulated without much trouble”.

“You must advocate, as a matter of course mutual insurance companies among the guilds for the protection of the members against accidents, sickness, infirmity and old age, and these mutual insurance companies would, perhaps, have also written life and fire policies?” I suggested.

“That would, indeed, have been a consequence of the whole system that would unite the few advantages of communism with the benefits of competition”, Mr. Forest answered.

“Would you have encouraged immigration?” I asked. “At the end of the nineteenth century, many honest, liberal and fair-minded people, whom nobody could fairly class as know-nothings, were of the opinion that the United States had all the foreign elements the country could assimilate, and that the rest of the public lands should be preserved for the children of the people living in the Union, in the year of our Lord 1887. The objection against further immigration was largely due to the actions of the German and Irish dynamiters”.

“I can imagine”, Mr. Forest answered, “that some of the customs and notions of the numerous immigrants of your time were objectionable to the native Americans, and that the crimes of the anarchists, their crazy revolt against the laws of a country that had offered them hospitality, must naturally have created a deep emotion among the Anglo-Americans. But I think they had, nevertheless, many reasons for encouraging immigration, especially under your form of production. A strict execution of the laws of the country”, he continued, after a pause, “against _all_ transgressors, native as well as transplanted, would have done the country good and have made all attempts to restrict immigration entirely unnecessary, all the more so, as the really objectionable foreigners could reach the United States via Canada or Mexico if they desired strongly to become inhabitants of the United States.”

“These arguments were frequently used in my time,” I remarked.

“The comparatively small harm done by immigrants was largely over-balanced by the many advantages the citizens of the United States obtained through the large influx of people from Europe”, said Mr. Forest. “The very fact that hundreds of thousands of able-bodied people, whose rearing and education had cost the European countries millions of dollars, landed on American shores was a great gain to the United States. The very presence of these men and women increased the value of the lands or city lots where they settled, _thus enriching the property owners_. Many of the immigrants were well trained laborers and mechanics, others artists and scholars. All these men and women were not familiar with the ways and means of their new country, many of them were unable to speak the English language, and they all had, therefore, to start in the very lowest places of American business life--_thus naturally elevating all the inhabitants of the United States in a more or less degree, to higher positions in life_. Many of these people, coming from all parts of Europe, were ably and well trained, and they became successful competitors of those, who were here before their arrival. But the constant stream of people from Europe to the United States _was, nevertheless, steadily enriching and elevating the American people_, and all the blows aimed at immigration were, therefore, unwise, and the legislators who proposed such blows remind me of the man who intended to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs”.

“It is, of course, impossible to advance social theories to which everybody will agree”, Mr. Forest said in conclusion. “I maintain, however, that all such theories should be based on two fundamental principles. They should have as an aim the establishment of a state of society, where everybody should be protected against an undeserved poverty, where the brain-cancer, fear of an undeserved poverty, should be cured; and they should preserve competition, the power that is permanently spurring everybody to use his best efforts to elevate himself and humanity”.