The only industries or professions open to our Icarians were those recognized and sanctioned by the State; and every year a list is published telling the number of workers needed in each profession. The number of workers, in turn, is determined by a committee on industry, which plans the amount of goods that must be produced during the coming year. Our Icarian begins work at eighteen, his sister at seventeen; and he is exempt from work at sixty-five, while she would be exempt at fifty. The republic, I may note parenthetically, asks from each commune the sort of industrial and agricultural production which goes best with its natural resources; delivering its surplus production to other communes and giving it, in turn, what it may lack. Cabet describes all these institutions in the minutest fashion, down to the noiseless window with which each Icarian’s house is equipt; but the broad outlines of the industrial and social system are contained in this picture. What we see is a National State, abundantly organized for war, and remaining on that footing in the midst of its peace-time activities. What is not of national importance, in this scheme of things, is of no importance; and the people who decide what is or is not of national importance are the officeholders--I find it difficult to discover a utopian equivalent for this word or to fancy any great improvement in utopia--in the capital. The political activities that regulate these Icarian institutions do not greatly reassure us. From each of the thousand communes two deputies are chosen to hold office for two years: this constitutes the national representation. The basis of this system is the communal assembly; and from this communal assembly the provincial representatives are drawn. The national executive consists of sixteen members, each with a special department; and it is plain that here is the seat of power; for exactly what business remains in the hands of the two thousand legislators when the food committee has determined the amount and variety of food, the industrial committee the quantity and kind of manufactured products, and the educational committee the methods, subjects, and aims of education, it is a little hard to determine. There are no newspapers and no means of organized criticism, except the right of submitting propositions to the popular assemblies. The only thing resembling public opinion is the collective opinion of these assemblies. The newspapers are published by the government, one for the nation, one for the province, and one for the commune; and they are devoted solely to the presentation of news, divorced from opinion. For this kind of political system, and for all the power that it might presume to wield, there is a word in philosophy which has no substitute--epiphenomenon. The popular system of representation in Icaria is but a shadow of that dictatorial power which was first wielded by Icar and was in turn transmitted to the committees and bureaux.