"By the time we had universal suffrage the women were more than ready for it, full of working plans to carry out, and rich by the experience of the first trials. "By the time Socialism was generally adopted we had case after case of proven good in Socialistic methods; and also the instructive background of some failures." "But the big men who ran the country to suit themselves in my time, they didn't give up without a struggle surely? You must have had _some_ fighting," I said. He smiled in cheerful reminiscence. "We had a good deal of noise, if that's what you mean. But there's no fighting to be done, with soldiers, if the soldiers won't fight. Our workingmen declined to shoot or to be shot any longer, and left the big capitalists to see what they could do alone." "But they had the capital?" "Not all of it. The revenues of the cities and of the United States Government are pretty considerable, especially when you save the seventy per cent, we used to spend on wars past and possible; and the ten or twenty more that went in waste and graft. With a Socialist State private Capital has no grip!" "Did you confiscate it?" "Did not have to. The people who were worth anything, swung into line and went to work like other people. Those that weren't were just let alone. Nobody has any respect for them now." "You achieved Socialism without bloodshed?" "We did. It did not happen all at once, you see; just spread and spread and proved its usefulness." CHAPTER XII More and more I cut loose from the explanatory guiding strings of my sister and the family, even from the requested information of specialists, and wandered by myself in search of the widening daily acquaintance which alone could make life seem real again. It was an easy world to wander in. The standard of general courtesy and intelligence of the officials, and of the average passer-by, was as much above what I remembered as the standard in Boston used to be above that of New York. As most of the business was public business one could study and inquire freely. As much work as could be advantageously localized was so arranged, this saving in transportation. The clothing industry, for instance, instead of being carried on in swarming centers, and then distributed all over the country, formed part of the pleasant everyday work in each community and was mostly in the hands of women. As a man I could appreciate little of the improved quality of fabrics, save as I noticed their beauty, and that my own clothes wore longer, and both looked and felt more agreeable. But women told me how satisfying it was to know that silk was silk, and wool, wool. This improvement in textile values, with the outgrowing of that long obsession called fashion, reduced the labor of clothes-making materially.