EURASIA
C >>
Chris. Evans >> EURASIA
Every corporation, before shutting down its works, had to serve ten
days' notice on its employees and also file a copy of it with the
District Court, stating its reasons for so doing, and if the labor union
protested, the Court heard the case and if there was unsufficient cause
shown by the corporation it had to continue work until such time as it
showed good and sufficient reasons to stop work. The Government strictly
enforced the eight-hour law, and no working woman was permitted to work
overtime. Children were not allowed to work for wages under any
circumstances for they were the wards of the State, but men could work
overtime if the union permitted them, with double pay for it. The
Government granted a pension of half the wages yearly received by every
working man and woman that was over sixty years of age and a full
pension wage to every working man or woman over seventy years of age, no
matter what their financial condition was at that time.
Every person before casting a ballot at the polls was required to show
a receipt from the Department of Health that two dollars had been paid
into the Old Age Pension fund for the previous year, which was a
salutary measure in preserving the purity of elections by eliminating
the shiftless and improvident from participation in the election.
The Government obeyed the Fourth Commandment, "Honor thy Father and thy
Mother that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God
giveth thee."
CHAPTER XVII.
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH.
I learned that the Department of Health had greater responsibilities
than any other department of the Government, for the physical, mental
and moral welfare of the people was in its keeping. One of its duties
was to prevent the introduction of any diseases into Eurasia, and to
make it effective every person coming into the country had to undergo a
physical examination by three Government physicians, and all persons
that were idiotic or insane or had any of the following diseases, viz.:
syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer, leprosy, yellow fever, smallpox, or any
other contagious disease or fever, or was shown on examination to be
addicted to vicious habits, were denied admission. Another of the duties
of the Department of Health was to examine every person that applied to
practice medicine and surgery or to engage in any professional calling.
The law required a medical examination to be made of the person, who was
granted a license every year, so as to keep the professions up to a high
standard.
Before granting license to any man, three male physicians in Government
employ examined him, and if a female three female physicians examined
her. The first examination was physical, and if found to be in good
physical health they were passed up for a mental examination, and if
they qualified for their profession they were examined morally, when
they were asked the following questions: "Do you believe in the
Brotherhood of Man? Will you do unto others always as you would desire
that others should do to you? Do you promise that you will not render
obedience directly or indirectly to any person or persons outside of
Eurasia and that you will render willing obedience to the laws and do
all that lies in your power to maintain the honor of the country?" If
they did not agree to those rules of conduct they were denied a license.
If any person attempted to practice any profession without a license he
was punished by six months' imprisonment at hard labor.
Any person practicing fortune-telling or any other fraudulent calling
was tried for obtaining money under false pretenses, and on conviction
thereof was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at hard labor at the
rock crusher. The result of this wise law showed in the total absence of
bands of gypsies, dancing dervishes, holy rollers and strolling
vagabonds of every description in Eurasia. If a man or woman was found
anywhere in Eurasia without visible means of support the Department of
Health found work for them until such time as they could better their
condition. They were required to work eight hours a day if they were
able to do manual labor and if not able to work they were sent to a
Government Sanatorium.
The Department of Health had charge of the sewerage system in every
district, city as well as country. In the cities it supervised the
erection of every new building, and any old buildings that it pronounced
unsanitary had to be torn down. It saw also to the removal of all
garbage and refuse material. The Department of Health had charge of all
births, marriages and deaths, and could order the cremation of any dead
body when it believed that it would be to the benefit of the health of
the community to do so. The Department of Health was also required by
law to make a physical examination of children when they were born and
to take care of them if the mother was unable to do so and to send all
illegitimate children to the Government Orphan College. It superintended
the sale of all medicine and drugs, having a Government physician at
every Government warehouse where they were sold. It had also charge of
all idiots and insane persons as well as dangerous criminals.
The Superintendent and two Assistant Superintendents of the lunatic
asylums (of which there were only two, one for males and one for
females) were required by law to castrate male lunatics and emasculate
females who had become insane through masturbation or other vicious
habits and to chloroform dangerous lunatics who had homicidal
tendencies. Those three physicians in committee examined every dangerous
lunatic and two of them could order the person chloroformed if in their
judgment it was necessary. Lady physicians had charge of the female
lunatic asylum with the same authority as the men. The two asylums were
located in the center of a fine tract of farming land in the Southern
part of Eurasia, consisting of ninety-two thousand one hundred and sixty
acres in a high state of cultivation with flourishing orchards and
vineyards, and at the time I visited it had a population of sixty
thousand male inmates and thirty-five thousand female inmates-besides
the officers and guards.
The mildest and most tractable of the inmates were in communities
organized in military style in different parts of the grounds and were
busily employed in doing everything that was required to make the
institution self-stustaining. The physicians of the State prisons were
required by law after one year's imprisonment (one year after sentence
was passed was allowed to prove innocence) to castrate all males
convicted of rape, incest, or any other infamous crime against nature,
and to castrate every male prisoner who committed sodomy or other
infamous crime while in prison; but only after trial and conviction for
the crime before the District Court, and they could by a majority vote
chloroform any dangerous criminal that showed homicidal tendencies.
I saw no red-light sign of houses of prostitution, and on making
inquiries I was informed that there were no houses of prostitution in
Eurasia, for as soon as information was given to any Magistrate the law
required him or her to issue an order for the arrest of the female
practicing prostitution, and on conviction she was committed to the
female reformatory for five years, subject to parole after one year, and
for a second offense of the same crime she was deprived of the power to
propagate the race. Gentle reader, don't think that this law is cruel or
unjust, for the amount of evil that a depraved woman can commit in
spreading, that loathsome disease, syphilis, is incalculable, and Christ
when he told the woman that had committed adultery that he did not
condemn her also added: "Go and sin no more." A committee of six
physicians, three males and three females, in the service of the
Government in every district were required by law to examine every
person desiring marriage and if the person examined was affected with
tuberculosis, cancer, scrofula, leprosy, syphilis, or any other
loathsome or contagious disease, then that person was denied a license
to marry; and also if they were mentally unsound.
Under the law no person was allowed to marry until twenty-one years of
age, male and female, and any person violating this law was punished by
one year's imprisonment at hard labor in the district in which this law
had been violated. In no case was a Government physician permitted to
receive any compensation for services rendered as physician, for they
were the servants of the people, elected by the people in every district
and paid by the Government a salary fixed by law, and no bonds were
required of them or of any public official, for the people elected every
public official with the exception of officers in the Army and Navy, who
were elected by the soldiers up to the grade of Colonel, and the
Brigadiers and Major-Generals were appointed by the Minister of War, was
was Commander-in-Chief and directed all the operations of the Army and
Navy in war, and also the agents of the Department of Information, who
were appointed by the Minister of that department on the recommendation
of his assistant chiefs, of whom there was one in every district who was
elected by the people after having passed a successful examination
showing their ability to do the work required of them.
Every person appointed to office, as well as those elected by the
people, had to be examined physically, mentally and morally in the same
manner as those applying for a license to practice a profession or
desiring to marry. All were placed on the same footing. The law for
divorce was enforced by the Department of Health, as doctors were, from
their knowledge of human frailty, the best judges to decide whether a
man and woman should live together in the married state or be separated,
and while the law provided for a compulsory decree of divorce for
adultery, which was a felony, it also allowed divorce for
incompatibility of temperament. A court of six Government physicians,
three males and three females, heard all divorce cases in every
district.
The Minister of Health gave me the reasons why the marriage law was
passed fixing twenty-one years of age as the time when young men and
women could marry. He said it was done to allow the youths of both sexes
to become well acquainted with one another before being united in
marriage, and also to be well trained in useful callings, so that both
parties to the marriage contract would be able to assist each other, for
many an innocent young girl had ruined her life by marrying a man at an
age when she was ignorant of the duties of wifehood and motherhood, "but
by keeping our boys and girls in training schools until they are
eighteen and then teaching them trades in the Army until they are
twenty-one years of age we fit them for the duties of life."
CHAPTER XVIII.
A VISIT TO THE MINISTER OF STATE.
Before returning to the United States of America I called on the
Minister of State, who is also the presiding officer of the Parliament,
and told him that I would regard it as a great favor if he would tell me
how such changes had taken place in the Government of his country ,
"for," said I, "from what I read about your Government when I was a boy
it was an absolute monarchy, and one man's will was the law of the
land."
"You have the key to the problem in that statement," he replied, "for I
am free to confess that it would have taken centuries to have brought
about our present system of government under so-called democracy. Near
the middle of the last century an absolute ruler in our country by a
stroke of his pen freed twenty-three millions of slaves, while in your
country it required four years of bloody war at a cost of ten thousand
millions of dollars and the lives of one million of brave men, and
through the widespread demoralization that ensued through your bravest
and best being killed or giving to the corrupt element in your country
(for a dishonest man is always a coward) the opportunity to inaugurate
a reign of monopoly where graft and bribery flourishes and the slave
element that you freed are a menace (and will be as long as they remain
in the country) to society.
"The last absolute ruler we had was one of those great men that God in
His infinite wisdom brings into the world at stated intervals to
exercise a dominating influence in human affairs and to give a fresh
impetus to human progress. Of the great men that we class with him are
the following: Confucius, Buddha , Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell,
Abraham Lincoln. The first thing he did when he became Emperor was to
summon sixty of the most liberal minded men and women in the empire to
the palace to draw up under his supervision a political, civil and penal
code, which with slight modification is in force at the present time,
and he called all the newspaper editors into conference and asked them
to assist him in promoting the welfare of the people and then he issued
a decree granting liberty of speech and of the press throughout Eurasia,
which he announced as the name of the Empire in future, and the reason
that he gave for it was that his people were composed of a great many
nationalities and by dividing the empire into districts and numbering
them in arithmetical order he abolished the old political divisions and
he also decreed that the present language we speak should be the
official language of the empire for the ancient language of the ruling
class had created a bitter feeling amongst great numbers of the people
and besides the present had become the commercial language of the world.
"He reorganized the Cabinet into fourteen departments and held the
Minister at the head of each department responsible. He converted the
Army and Navy (who were eating up the hard-earned wages of the working
men and women of our land in idleness and dissipation), into a great
industrial army and assigned them to work under the different
departments as they were required, weeding out the worthless and
reducing to the ranks all officers that conducted themselves in a manner
unbecoming a gentleman and by election of officers giving every soldier
equal opportunity to rise to the highest rank. This great measure
eliminated the aristocracy in the Army and made the Emperor the idol of
the soldiers, so that from that time forward every effort of the
aristocracy to oppose the Emperor in giving to the country a Government
by the people was futile for the Army supported him with a force that
was irresistible. He ordered the districts laid out according to
latitude and longitude, making due allowance for population, the
smallest district being one degree of latitude in breadth and two
degrees of longitude in length, and the largest (which were situated in
the frozen regions of the Arctic or in the great desert) five degrees of
latitude in breadth and ten degrees of longitude in length, and when
they were surveyed he ordered that the land should be assessed without
improvements at its full value, and the owner had to swear that he would
sell to the Government the land at its assessed valuation.
"The aristocracy almost to a man swore to a low valuation, so when five
years had passed the Emperor issued a decree appropriating to Government
use all land over and above six hundred and forty acres held by private
owners and paying for it one-fifth of the total assessment for the
previous five years with twenty per cent. added for improvements, the
aristocracy had to accept it and their power was broken forever, for the
Emperor leased the land to the cultivators of the soil at the rate of
four per cent. per annum of the price that the Government paid for the
land, dividing the land into small farms and giving the renter the right
of purchase at any time.
"The aristocracy and the Church have been in every country the enemies
of liberty and human progress. The Emperor saw the evil effects of the
liquor traffic and to abate the evil he abolished the manufacture and
sale of liquors by individuals and placed their manufacture and sale in
the care of the Department of Manufactures and year by year he added
tobacco, drugs and chemicals, sugar, salt, tea, coffee, coal oil, stone
coal, charcoal and all the metals, and placed the coinage and currency
of the Empire under the control of the Department of Finance known
throughout the world as the Bank of Eurasia. He established our present
system of education and forbade the teaching of religious dogmas in the
public schools, and when every district in the Empire was surveyed and
the people thereof enjoyed a District Government by electing their
Governors, Judges and other public officials and the Government owned
and operated all public utilities, he decided that the time had arrived
for a Government of the people, for the people and by the people and
called a general election to elect members of Parliament and to submit
to the people the political, civil and penal code of the Empire. The
people by an overwhelming vote ratified the code and endorsed the
Government. Four years afterward the Emperor called a general election
to choose his successor and retired to private life, beloved by his
people.
"Your people had a President who gained worldwide fame not only by the
vigorous way that he wielded the Big Stick, but also through his
undaunted courage and inflexible honesty. Place him again in the
Presidential chair and he will open the way for a government of the
people, for the people and by the people."