“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed by brothers and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that which the Old World secures only through a system little better than slavery. “In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of future beholders in all time to come. “Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with establishments [106] as much better than those of the nobles of England as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be the future of American society.” “To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’