“There was a time when the town simply represented cowering peasants, clustered under the shadow of the baron’s castle for protection.  It advanced slowly and reluctantly along the road of civic development, scourged forward by the whip of necessity.  We have but to expand the powers of government to solve the enigma of the world.  Man separated is man savage; man gregarious is man civilized.  A higher development in society requires that this instrumentality of co-operation shall be heightened in its powers.  There was a time when every man provided, at great cost, for the carriage of his own letters.  Now the government, for an infinitely small charge, takes the business off his hands.  There was a time when each house had to provide itself with water.  Now the municipality furnishes water to all.  The same is true of light.  At one time each family had to educate its own children; now the state educates them.  Once every man went armed to protect himself.  Now the city protects him by its armed police.  These hints must be followed out.  The city of the future must furnish doctors for all; lawyers for all; entertainments for all; business guidance for all.  It will see to it that no man is plundered, and no man starved, who is willing to work.”

“But,” said Max, “if you do away with interest on money and thus scatter coagulated capital into innumerable small enterprises, how are you going to get along without the keen-brained masters of business, who labor gigantically for gigantic personal profits; but who, by their toll and their capital, bring the great body of producers into relation with the great body of consumers?  Are these men not necessary to society?  Do they not create occasion and opportunity for labor?  Are not their active and powerful brains at the back of all progress?  There may be a thousand men idling, and poorly fed and clothed, in a neighborhood:  along comes one of these shrewd adventurers; he sees an opportunity to utilize the bark of the trees and the ox-hides of the farmers’ cattle, and he starts a tannery.  He may accumulate more money than the thousand men he sets to work; but has he not done more?  Is not his intellect immeasurably more valuable than all those unthinking muscles?”

“There is much force in your argument,” I replied, “and I do not think that society should discourage such adventurers.  But the muscles of the many are as necessary to the man you describe as his intellect is to the muscles; and as they are all men together there should be some equity in the distribution of the profits.  And remember, we have gotten into a way of thinking as if numbers and wealth were everything.  It is better for a nation to contain thirty million people, prosperous, happy and patriotic, than one hundred millions, ignorant, wretched and longing for an opportunity to overthrow all government.  The over-population of the globe will come soon enough.  We have no interest in hurrying it.  The silly ancestors of the Americans called it ‘national development’ when they imported millions of foreigners to take up the public lands, and left nothing for their own children.