CHAPTER X
Nonproducers
After a veryfriendly parting with all our friends, we embarked on the Martian airship and were on our way to earth. We at once made a visit to our own plane which we found in perfect condition.
We were speedily getting nearer to earth and of course, during these two days we continually had very important conferences with Sun-Rank Banard.
He prepared a friendly message of greeting from the Martians, to be delivered to our President.
Forty-eight hours after a last friendly parting with the Martians we embarked in our own plane and were cut loose from their ship. A few of our veterans were experienced air pilots, who operated it.
Since some of them had to return to their hospitals on the west coast for medical attention, Sun-Rank Banard agreed to let our plane out over the stratosphere so that we could land on the west coast of the United States.
It took us a little time to land at Hamilton Air Field. In the meantime the Congressman wired our President of our safe arrival, and requested an appointment so as to report to him all what happened to us, as well as to deliver to him the Martian message.
The President then called for a full secret cabinet meeting, and invited certain congressional leaders, as well as a few of themost prominent scientists. He wired us to report and also to bring along with us all of those who came back from the Martian trip.
We landed on our own planet and after our veterans were given their medical treatments at the hospital, we all again re-embarked on a flight to Washington for the President's engagement.
Finally the great day arrived. Foreign diplomats, United Nations delegates, Supreme Court judges, party leaders, many others and senators, congressmen, labor union presidents, industrialists—all were cooling their heels in the lobby of the President's office, impatiently waiting to see him. The appointments with some had been delayed for more than three hours, and with others postponed, an unheard-of occurrence.
It was a most important conference the President was having with a few scientists, congressmen, and those of us who had returned from Mars. Even the Washington columnists couldn't fathom what was going on. Except to those who were attending the meeting it has been kept a complete secret.
Here is what was taking place. After the Congressman delivered to the President the Martian message and gave him a general report, one of the companions, who recently served in the American army in Korea, began giving the President his own account of the adventures and experiences on the planet Mars, picturing the life of the Martians. He made an appeal to the President as follows:
"Starting in the seventeenth century, the ancestors of the great many living here, for numerous reasons left their home countries to establish themselves in new lands. Then they had good opportunities to emigrate to a newly discovered continent. Now, our earth has been entirely explored and there are no more new lands to emigrate to, except to the planet Mars, from which we just returned. We asked the Martians to grant us the privilege of permanently remaining on their planet, but they refused; first, they want us to clean our own house, and second, they are chary of introducing other new problems to their population.
"We would like to have you, if our plan meets with your approval,to ask congress to pass a law allocating to us four adjoining islands in the temperate zone of the Pacific where we fought our battles, or in some other territory, where we can colonize and experiment in living under a different economic system, similar to the one on Mars.
"We are seeking a solution, a possible change of conditions, without conflicts.
"At first, we would like to be helped by lend-lease from our government through the veterans bureau as per the allotments of our bill of rights. Then we would ask that the islands or territory be put under the protection but not under the rule of our government. Our new system of life may not prove to be 100% successful in a world where existence is interdependent, but we believe that a start in this direction should, within a reasonable length of time, show good results. We may even have to operate for awhile by bartering our products to obtain others from other parts of the earth. And of course the intercommunication, and shipments from and to our islands, of post offices, of telephone, telegraph, and even radio may have to be done with foreign exchange, but it would be handled solely by our post offices until gradually discontinued.
"These islands would be peopled by selected intelligent young families of our four different races. Each race would live separately and exclusively on its own island, but all would be federated under our same constitution and laws. The pioneers would have to be in good standing and of good mental and physical condition who are to start a new way of life. We propose to carefully investigate and select each applicant and try him out; if he proves to be willing, ambitious and cooperative, he will become one of our citizens. If not, he will be shipped back.
"These pioneers must include many of our disabled and crippled war veterans of proven integrity, to occupy positions of government administratives, and if capable, of faculty members in our new universities and schools; so that the strong ones can work at construction. No other people will be allowed to immigrate there, and visitors will be limited to a certain number and for a definite length of time.
"Upon landing on these islands, we would first need shelterfor both ourselves and the domestic animals. We intend also to bring with us prefabricated metal houses which may be easily and quickly erected. These homes will be used by our first contingent and their domestic animals. After that we propose to build them ourselves of stone and concrete.
"It will be our irrevocable aim and principle to have absolutely fire-proof living quarters for man and beast.
"It is our intention to leave our families here until we have developed suitable shelters and conveniences for them. We propose to land in groups, to start reclamation, to clear the land, to dry up marshes, to survey and divide the islands into farming homestead tracts. We shall plan homes for a population of sixty thousand on each island within a few years.
"For those who prefer to live in communities or small towns, we have preliminary plans for a Model City to accommodate a population of about thirty thousand, to be located if possible across a river not wider than 150 feet. Each family will get free, one of our constructed furnished, air-conditioned and fireproofed homes. The houses will be built so that additional bedrooms may easily be attached and furnished with the latest mechanical and electrical fixtures and appliances.
"The house will be on a seventy-five foot (front) by one hundred fifty-foot-plot, the front facing a twenty-foot deep lawn alongside a six-foot concrete walk. Beyond the walk will be a forty-foot landscaped parkway between rows of nicely pruned trees, with flower beds and a children's playground. Opposite will be another concrete walk, lawn and house, so that the houses will be ninety-two feet apart, with lawns and flower beds also on the side of buildings. Block lengths will be fifteen hundred feet, with a width of four hundred and forty-two feet. There will be twenty houses on each side of a parkway in a block.
"In the rear of these houses there will be enough space for a small garden patch, a small helicopter, airplane landing area, a small fireproofed chicken coop, and a garage for a jeep station wagon. These spaces will face a fifty-foot back street fenced on both sides and sunken ten feet below the surface. The sunken back streets will be used only for mobile traffic, with underpasses andtunnels every two blocks or three thousand feet apart for turning and reaching parallel streets.
"All sewer lines, gas lines, hot and cold water lines, telephone, electric, and steam conduits will be located in these back or alley streets, supplying utilities from the rear into the homes. All automobile, bicycle, bus, truck, and horse traffic will not be allowed on the surface. All pedestrians will be able to walk and cross everywhere on the surface streets or parkways within the city limits, with their eyes closed, in perfect safety.
"All deliveries will be made from the rear. Our motto will be utmost safety. No one will obtain a driver's or a pilot's license before he has been proven trustworthy; his training will be severe and his skill thorough, before he is licensed. No leniency will be permitted in our safety rulings. Speed travel will be strictly controlled.
"The city will be formed like a large square, with residential homes on all four comers and sides. It will contain four zones, and each zone will be divided into three districts. Each zone will have its own hospital, churches, community houses, and schools. Within the exact center along both sides of the river, we expect to locate our public parks, artificial lakes and waterfalls; artistic bridges will span the river at every street. There will be parks, where we will congregate for rest and to hear our symphony orchestra, and facilities for all city activities. All large buildings will have roof landing fields for helicopters, with auto parking garages under their surface.
"Manufacturing, mechanical shops, plants for electrical and other utilities, and all other craft shops will be located outside the city limits.
"In our survey for a small city of thirty thousand, we find that for the good care and health of our inhabitants we will make provisions for at least one permanent hospital bed for fifty of our people, or six hundred hospital beds for the city. At least six hundred medical doctors, an equal number of nurses, one hundred fifty dentists, fifty chiropodists, and fifty optometrists will be required in the city, and additional ones will be needed by our rural population.
"In a western city of the same size, there are now only aboutforty-seven physicians, twenty-two dentists, four chiropodists, ten optometrists, and but two hospitals with a total of two hundred beds in both of them.
"We do not approve of the wantonly extravagant and wasteful methods now used by owners of industrial and commercial enterprises, their innumerable competitive undertakings in the same lines.
"We propose to considerably save on them by concentrating our industries and not multiplying them in competition with each other. We believe in the economy of large size establishments, saving us valuable time, and abundance of material, and considerable labor.
"We propose to have four large markets, each to be located in the center nearest its zone, and every one of us in our district will be allowed only two specified days per week to do our shopping.
"There are to be two very large department stores. Two large pharmacies will take care of prescriptions, and medicines. Two bakeries, five cleaning and dyeing establishments, five laundries, two lumber yards—all large establishments—and only five accountants and five attorneys will be allowed. Milk and dairy products will be delivered to homes. Theatres will have sufficient seating capacity so that everyone can see two shows per week. We shall receive all necessary supplies free but we will be restricted through our ration books.
"In contrast, consider in the Western city above mentioned of thirty thousand population. There are one hundred and forty-one attorneys, twenty-four accountants, twenty cleaning and dyeing establishments, fifteen laundries, ten lumber yards, nineteen druggists, seven department stores, eight bakeries, nine men's clothing stores, fifteen dress shops, twelve shoe shops, and twelve furniture stores. We no doubt will save a great deal in labor, handling, delivery, and materials by concentrating our stores to the minimum, at the same time provide a better service.
"At first we will do away entirely with the non-productive professions, and occupations as well as considerably reduce the semi-productive ones. We will create and increase necessary and productive callings so that every one, including idlers and aged(excepting the infirm) shall always be employed. Let me explain what I mean by non-productive or non-essential jobs.
"One of the fundamental causes of our troubles is that nearly fifty percent of our young and vigorous active workers are doing non-essential work; not only in unnecessary jobs but in the many branches of necessary ones. We propose to do away with the unnecessary jobs and concentrate on the needful ones, thus furthering our well being and adding to the advantages of the requisite productive ones. I will list herewith, in consecutive order, some of the non-productive, non-essential, and dispensible jobs and service to which I have reference.
"No. I—Non-productive services: We will have no use for a fire department, fire escapes, fire alarm systems, fire insurance and fire underwriters of all kinds; thus avoiding the services of firemen, labor and materials of fire houses, fire trucks, and all supplies and labor of fire insurance companies, while having complete safety in our waking and sleeping hours.
"No. II—Since we are not going to own property directly or use money, we will entirely dispense with innumerable non-productive services connected with money. In these alone you can conjecture about how many of those directly and indirectly employed can be shifted to productive employments to great numbers of professions, crafts and trades running into the hundreds.
"No. III—We are going to have one language on our islands. There is a great waste of time, labor, energy, and materials in having so many different languages on our earth.
"A universal language would doubtless save us more than the cost of all our earth wars, and maybe it would help to keep them away.
"We will not need or use the economic waste to advertise or push any product. All of us realize the enormous amount of time and energy spent in advertising. It is not always the quality but most often the publicity which sells a product. Much labor and materials are being used and wasted in this boundless non-productive service.
"No. IV—We will have no gambling of any kind, or alcohol, dispensing with gambling houses and devices, no breweries, distilleries, bars, saloons, night clubs and their equipment and supplies.In fact, we will do away with all unethical, unprincipled, and immoral business and their workers.
"I can give you a list three times as large, but I do not wish to take up your valuable time.
"Can you roughly estimate the great percentage of our inhabitants that are employed in all the above dispensible and non-productive wasteful services? It must certainly be very large. The amount of materials used and wasted is enormous. If all of them could be shifted into productive labor and services and these materials used for the benefit of mankind, what a beautiful world we would have."
The president asked, "What will you do with the excess workers that you expect to save from all these side-line and unproductive employments?"
"Why there are hundreds of professions, crafts, and trades that need them. We need a great many more doctors, dentists, nurses, architects, engineers of all kinds, draftsmen, teachers, chemists, and all kinds of laboratory research men, many reclamation and highway workers, and workers in crafts and trades. We need a great many farmers, farm laborers, farming implement makers, construction workers, concrete and cement workers for homes, buildings, bridges, machine tool workers, tinsmiths, iron and steel workers, electricians, telephone mechanics, steamfitters, plumbers, airplane and parachute makers and mechanics, railroad and transportation workers, roofers, radio, refrigeration and air conditioning mechanics, fireproofing and insulation workers, shoemakers, tailors, dressmakers, milliners, hat makers, and hundreds of other workers that we can keep busy provided that we always try to construct, improve, and expand, to produce and build, and to better the conditions, convenience, and comfort of us all."
"Do I understand that you will obtain all this without paying for it and that all of you will live on the same standard, regardless of the better workmanship and ability of others of you?" The President questioned, "And how will you compensate those of you who excel in their endeavors, and others of you who may invent an important mechanical improvement, discover the cure for a disease, or contrive some chemical development which will savelabor and materials. In other words, what incentive will any of you have to excel?"
"I was expecting that question. First, as I have mentioned before, every one of us will get our house, our food, and all of life's necessities absolutely free; second, we will copy the system of the Martians. We will have ten lower degrees and ten higher ones. The higher ones we will call rank degrees. There will be ten points between one degree and another and we will be gradually and honorably promoted or demoted by points the same as we were in the army. Those who have made a discovery, an invention or a needful improvement and those who have done meritorious service will receive for life a better, larger, and more comfortable home in the suburbs outside the city, with certain luxuries such as a better and larger plane and luxurious pleasure automobiles. They will have the services of attendants in their homes; first production and best quality of all our necessities, and many other compensations and honors that our authorities will decree. On the other hand, we will demote and punish any one who, through malicious intent, will not obey our laws and regulations or will not comport himself honorably according to our rules.
"We and many others of our returned soldiers and sailors who have just served and fought in the bloodiest of world battles, and we, with our buddies, who sacrificed themselves on the battlefields, were the instruments in this most atrocious war. The victims of inhuman hellish, cruel warfare, we experienced and endured the ordeals of the greatest sufferings that human flesh and fortitude can stand in battles.
"We fought on the blood-soaked decks and gun-turreted floors of battleships, in the fuselage, cockpit, bellies, and wings of flying fortresses, inside hot, cramped, fire-and-cannon belching tanks, in the putrified trenches and shell and fox holes of battle scarred beaches, on the sides of most inaccessible steep mountain precipices, and on deserts and in jungles where we lay day and night in putrid mud, water, and scum. We faced blinding, blazing sun, terrific heat, torrential rains, and body-freezing snow blizzards. We suffered from frost bites, lack of sleep, hunger, and thirst, surrounded by dirt and bitten by insects, vermin, and reptiles during the agonies of our painful wounds. We constantly heard theanguishing, pleading and moaning of men lying wounded on No Man's Land. Before our very eyes, our buddies and brothers and best friends were shot and torn asunder. Others had their eyes gouged out and hanging over their cheeks. Many of our paratroopers were used as clay pigeons and by mistake shot down by our own soldiers. At any moment we were expecting to meet their fate. Many of our buddies were destroyed like a puff of smoke, whose only remains and memories are the star medals worn by their mothers.
"We were like a pack of maddened wolves with the strength, daring, and fearlessness of lunatics. With diabolical fury, we darted and bounded wildly and fearlessly into No Man's Land in the face of the greatest danger.
"Timid ones became heroes without knowing it. The weakest ones killed with their bare hands. It was indescribable! All of us became filthy, cruel, inhuman beasts, with fierce irrational emotions and the sole urge to kill, kill, and kill our enemy. We fought to the death with no quarter asked or given. Most of us were mumbling our prayers or the names of our beloved. It is really a miracle that those of us who came out alive from this vertex of blood and slaughter are again normal and human.
"Closing his eyes, kneeling, passionately weeping, and vehemently imploring, he exclaims—In my mind's eye I see passing in front of me, the lost souls, images of dead soldiers, some of the countless billions of them who died on the battlefields of our earth.
"Their spirits are joining and inspiring me in this solemn entreaty for you to help us, so that their sacrifices shall not have been in vain. Standing up, he continued:
"What of the great many of us who survived, but who are maimed, crippled, invalidated, disfigured and shell shocked for life? The terrible pictures of our battle sufferings recur to us very often in our dreams. Through our torments, tortures, and ordeals, we have learned in the hardest way the contributive whys and causes of wars and inhumanity.
"Labor and capital struggles, strikes, unemployment, racial hatred, and misery are becoming burdensome and unbearable to the majority of us in this world. In our military life, in the army, in our company, and on the battlefields, we lived unselfishly asbrothers and buddies. We loved each other, judged each other on our merits, and forgave each other our frailties and weaknesses.
"Now that we have re-entered civilian life, it is irksome to us to adjust ourselves and face an existence of selfishness, where the main object in life is personal interest, regardless of those others. Nature has endowed us with intelligence; on account of it we are humane, helpful, unselfish, and self-sacrificing for the welfare of our kind. Our ancestors have planted on us a money system, a most heartless, dangerous, tempting, criminally corrupting, degrading, and depraving medium without which we cannot obtain our necessities.
"In the last war we who endured agonies were used as tools for gaining victory in war for apartof humanity.Now, we are anxious to be used as implements for gaining universal salvation forallhumanity. By our test and peaceful experiment which we ask you to allow, we hope to exemplify the new order which will achieve universal and lasting peace by destroying the real causes and incentives for crime and for all cruel wars with its wanton disregard of human life, and thereby save humanity.
"On our planet, in three successive progressive changes, with each consecutive variation, we increased and intensified our armed war conflict cruelties against each other.
"First, the stone age, then the iron age and now we have with us, appalling atomic, gas and bacterial warfare. Help us to once and for all make an end to them. 'Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis'—The times are changed, and we are changed with them. You as the head of a leading world nation by such an act, example, and pattern to humanity, you will the sooner bring about the brotherhood of all men, and world security. A showdown is getting nearer, help us to forestall it.
"Please! Please! Mr. President, grant us these four islands for world experimental stations and laboratories, now so indispensable. Let them and us be the testing grounds and mediums in a new and better plan and ways of human conduct, relationship, intercourse, culture, and an economic system for the unlimited benefit of all mankind."
The President said, "I would suggest that you have our Congressmen here with the one that visited Mars who has observedtheir mode of life, present a Bill to Congress so that it be passed. I will sign it, and good luck to you!"
"We all hope that Congress will pass this Bill, and if our experiment of improved new economic ideas prove satisfactory, adjoining islands and peoples may join us, extending our influence. Then the United States will gain world leadership, and other nations will imitate us. Therefore you and Congress will gain eternal honor, and fame in history and posterity, as the saviors of humanity, and the time may come, I hope, when there will be a gradual peaceable absorption of all earth's inhabitants to our way without undue pressure or strife that one world government will come into being, and a new life and the emancipation of all will bring happiness in 'Our Coming World.'"
About two weeks after our return, a mysterious package attached to a small parachute of a strange design and fabric was seen floating down from the skies at La Guardia airfield. In it were found letters written on strange paper, enclosed in unstamped matching envelopes. One of them was addressed to me from Lieutenant Balmore; eleven other letters were addressed to his and his crew members' parents.
There was also a portfolio crammed with money, jewelry, and papers. Included were the last wills and testaments and transfer of properties of the crew, appointing me as executor and providing directions for turning over as soon as possible moneys and valuables and all their earthly possessions to their respective families. In his letter Lieutenant Balmore described his happy marriage with his beloved Xora, as well as the marriages of his crew members with beautiful Martian maidens of their choice, performed in one grand ceremony.
As another expression of his gratitude he writes: "Our opportune acquaintance, with our trips to Mars, was a very auspicious event, not only for us but with our efforts and your book a momentous opportunity to promote the deliverance of my former fellow Earthmen. My crew members join me in not only being very thankful, but also greatly obligated for the sincere faith youhad in me, and it is due to your wholehearted support, that we are now the happiest men in the universe."
He enclosed a copy of announcements of large front page headlines which were in all Martian newspapers as follows:
"A Red Letter Day on Mars""Today took place the unprecedented, extraordinary occurrence marking the beginning of a new and momentous era. Eleven Earth youths were married to eleven of our maidens. These couples were joined in a grand nuptial ceremony at one wedding attended by all the high dignitaries of our planet."
"A Red Letter Day on Mars"
"Today took place the unprecedented, extraordinary occurrence marking the beginning of a new and momentous era. Eleven Earth youths were married to eleven of our maidens. These couples were joined in a grand nuptial ceremony at one wedding attended by all the high dignitaries of our planet."