Forest looked very severe as he answered: “You are of course under the impression, that we are acting with the same liberty you were enjoying 113 years ago. But everything in political life has changed since those days. With the exception of a limited number of government officials and a few contractors, your citizens were perfectly independent of the administration; to-day the administration rules everything, and everybody is more or less dependent upon the good will of our rulers. Whoever dares to openly oppose the ruling spirits may be sure that all the wrath and all the unpleasantness at the command of the administration, will be piled upon him and his relatives and friends. Therefore the number of men who are daring enough to challenge the ire of the government is very small, although a great many are discontented with the present state of affairs.” “But why don’t people elect men to congress, who would pass laws, that would change a state of things, so unsatisfactory to the masses?” I asked, satisfied, that Forest in his fault-finding mood, was using his dark paint altogether to freely. “Congress has very little influence nowadays”, Forest answered. “The power rests almost entirely with the president and the chiefs of the ten great departments. They have well nigh absolute power and resemble somewhat the council of ten in Venice, when that aristocratic Republic was at the height of its power. As it lies within their discretion to assign each and every person to a good or a poor position for twenty-four years and even to order a draft from the ranks of the men over forty-five years of age, thus being able to get disliked men back under the direct discipline of the industrial army, they have a power over all the people that no tyrant of your times ever dreamed of establishing”. “You know of course”, Mr. Forest continued, “that all recruits belong for the first three years of their service to the class of unskilled or common laborers. It is not until after this period, during which he is _assignable_ to _any work_ at the _discretion of his superiors_, that the young man is allowed to select a special avocation”.[8] You can readily see that the young man is during these three years at the absolute mercy of his superiors. They may assign him to easy and clean work, or they may send him to do a dirty and unhealthy job. He has to obey orders. For “a man able to do duty and persistently refusing, is sentenced to solitary imprisonment on bread and water until he consents”.[9] [8] Page 70. [9] Page 128.