_Oceana_, “a Midsummer Night’s Dream of politics,” is the title of a romance which was written by James Harrington (1611–1677). His social order rests on economic factors, chiefly landed estates. However, the author advocates the election of rulers by ballot every three years and the choosing of the rulers from the intellectually élite. In this chapter it is impossible to note all the “utopias” that have been written. The utopian and communistic systems of socialists, such as Fourier, Saint Simon, and Owen will be referred to in Chapter XIV. There are other important utopian contributions, such as those by William Morris and Edward Bellamy. In _News from Nowhere_, William Morris (1834–1896), an English artist and socialist, describes his native England as a perfected society under a régime of socialism. Because of its American setting, Bellamy’s _Looking Backward_ will be presented in some detail in the following paragraphs. In recent decades the utopian postulates of Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), in _Looking Backward_ and _Equality_ have had a wide reading. The author was the first American to command attention in the field of utopian thought. Bellamy presents a plan of industrial organization on a national scale with individuals sharing equally in the products of labor, or in public income, in the same way that “men share equally in the free gifts of nature.” Bellamy protests against an economic order whose chief evil is summed up in the following question: How can men be free who must ask the right to labor and to live from their fellows, and seek their bread from the hand of others? Society is likened to a gigantic coach to which the masses of humanity are harnessed, toiling along a very hilly and sandy road. The best seats are on top of the coach. The occupants of the elegant seats are constantly in fear of falling from their cushions of ease, splendor, and power,--and hence their interest in the toilers. In _Looking Backward_ the entire social process is made an expression of service. Service is a matter of course, not of compulsion. No business is so fundamentally the public’s business as the industry and trade on which the livelihood of the public depends.[X-29] Therefore, to intrust industry and commerce to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly “similar to that of surrendering the functions of political government to kings and nobles for their personal glorification.”