The Asbestos Man. How Death and Work and Food Were Abolished.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 13, 23 December 1911, Page 11

The Asbestos Man. How Death and Work and Food Were Abolished.

at -(g)| ,1- Professor Stephen Leaeock's "Nonsense Novels' are deliberate nonsense, jt ami make fine fun of the fashion of inodern novels. Hut (his Canadiau Professor is a seriis ljc,its °«<= of I lie faculty of - 1 University, Montreal, and one is not, id " lere f° ro > surprised to come across things which even in their absurdity do throw some light on the way we think and act. And we get most of this in the chapter on "The Man in Asbestos: An Allegory of the Future." Hero satire shows us that we do many needless things we could do without. I. always had been, I still am,' a le passionate student of social problems. '' ~ i•" tb " (la J'> with' its roaring le 1:110 "teasing toil of itS working classes, its strife, its poverty, its I- if VI, ° r f Ue !£•* , appaU me ;is 1 k ok at f come ° ,!„ tC I lh,n ? of tlle Umo that must mwli \ ! V " , man wiil haTe con " 0 Sf, t atUr °' and tho toil-worn human race enter upon an era of peace. • to see it t0 th ' Uk ° f aml 1 lon = ed r- "So I set about the thing deliberately." b-irdro,? 1 ' 11 f'f fur hvo or three <1 h willed years, and lie did it bv readiu* 1. the comic papers! eating pork'pies and r &"l ' aml - , finall y- ] >y ng the Tmc P $ 6S °1 «*, "London Weekly y ' l en lvokc be found !li,nmuseuni! gr °' r °° m dl Seemed like a e The Asbestos-Clad Man. v h S l' lC i T S!^ a man ' Hig face was . haulers, but neither old nor youn< r He h a-hTs « ° l ookcil Hk « thp ew - is that I ha , (l burned anil kei't 1 lit was looking at mo quietly, O terest D ° parlltular surprise or in--0 ..... T*?^' C sa eager to begin; 'where - th sP rJ '!.? al ' C - vou? What year is I'H U ' tbe ,,™" 3«H). or what is it?' •s ?™ik th of , Um n e d,,1 " t kDOHV lIC kol,t no * a^o'elhnin^^,^ upright' 1 J cried, sitting nm>ri)J 1! ! i'" was " lat you used?' , qucnwl tii© man. V *' rc P ea ted. r !!„(- t Sak1 ' '", cver heard-it-before. _ But I was saving (lint after'-wo had cli- . miua, « »eath and Food, and Change 3 ami——' I ' rilflit ' u "y Bot rid of Events! '"-Y brain reeling. Tell s ?. thl "'" at time.' «t. -t."'S«! clothes made of s ' AMrtstos. answered the man. 'They a hundreds at years. We have one suit each, and there are billions of them - .'..m! 1 ' I ', anybody wants a new one.' inank you,' I answered. 'Now, tell me where I am ?' , 'iou are in a museum. The figures f Ijjjf eas<?s are s P«:iuicns like yourh/ ! ;° ? aW ' " if .« u wa "t ioail> to lind out about what is evidentty -a new epoch to you, get off your platform and come out on Broadway and , sit on a bench. You must excuse my ; ignorance, he continued, 'as to some ot your social customs in tho past. When L took my education I was operated upon for social history, |„,t th» stuff thev used was very inferior.' " ' 1 No Traffic, No Work. 111 the streets lie could not see any ennvc-yances, so ho asked the Man in Asbestos, When? are the street cars and motor?.-' ■ J h done away with long ago,' 110 said. Jlow awiul they must liave been, ie noiso of them! 1 and his asbestos ' n , lEtieil witll n shudder. ' 3 y cl ° 3' OU about?' Vi. •" lll? alls «'ercd. 'Why should ive. Its just the same thing being here as being anywhere else.' lie looked at me with au infinity of dreariness iu his face. He at onco prosaically wondered how tlie-a people got backwards and forwards to work. '"Work!' said the Asbestos Jfan. Ihero isn t any work; it's finished. The last ol it was alt done centuries 'ago'" '^y c ! ! ; k iljcrt out of itself. Machinery ' Killed it. 11 I remember rijyhtly, you had a cerfain amount of niaehinery oven in your tunc. You had done very well with steam, made a good .beginning with electneity, though I think radial energy had hardly as yet been put to use. But you lound it did you no good. . Tlio better yourmachine the harder you worked. o'o things you had tho more voir wanted. T'ho pace of life grew' swifter ' and swifter. You cried out, hut it would not slop. Yon were all cnught in tho cogs ot your own machine. None of you could' see the end.' Conquest of Mature. " Well, then, there came, probably al- , most two hundred years after your time, the era of the great conquest of Nature, , .. .Vm rlckn '!' ot JI M.« and Machinery. 1 I hey dicl conquer it!'' I asked quick- I I>» wiiii a thrill ot the old hope in mv ( 4 3 •■'Conquered it, - he said, 'beat it out! ! fought it to a standstill! Things came Olio' by one, then faster and faster: in a i j hundred years it was all done. In fact, 1 j ju&t a.s f-oon as maidtind tsuned its energy J ; to decreasing its needs instead of inercas- r ln £ }fS-^ 0 V rt,s » u> whole Ihing was easy/ j Cheimcal food tame first. Jlpavons, t ho simplicity o; ill And in vour time i (nc.us:;!uls of millions of people tilled £ and grubbed at the soil Irom morniug A till night, jvr sri»» specimens of theui ! I - taimoi's they ealh-d them. There's one in the museum. After the invention of s Cnemical 1 ood wo pilcil up enough in i the emporiums in a year to la*t: for i; contuncs. Agriculture went overboard. Lding, i:nd all that goes with it, domes- g tic laoour, nousework—all ended. Xowa- c days one takes a concentrated pill everv r >ear or so, that's all. Tho whole diges- v tive e.ppjiratus, as you knew* it, was a c clumsy thing that had been bloated up & : li.io a set of bagpipes through the evolu- o j tion of its ust«! J " They used it after- 1 wards lo store knowledge— by operation, jl- - Asbestos Jfan (hen explained how P they abolished the Fashions,- the '' Weath?r, and oven the Telephone. He f' then related how they abolished Death. >' s Old Age a Germ. J , . vo " found diphtheria and i typhoid, and. if I om right, there were some outstanding, like scarlet fever and smallpox, t.hat you called ultra-micro- •] seopic, and which you were still hunting ]. lor, and others that you didn't even sus- a peel. Well, we hunted them down 0110 ( | by one and destroyed them. Strange, w that it never occurred to any of you j| that old age was a germ! It turned out ti to be quite a simple one; but it was so p distributed in its action that vou never s even thought of it.' " ' ■ f. After they had dispensed with such de- I tails as War and Newspapers, tho 1 tos Man told of their marvellous 'system li of education. f< " 'Edneation in our day is done by v surgery. Strange that in your time, no- P body realised that, education was simplv a a surgical operation the simple system It of opening the side of the skull and en- n grafting into it a xiiece of prepared brain. At first, of course, they bad to use, I a suppose, the brains of dead neople, anil J! that was ghastly'—here t.lie stan in Asbestos shuddered like a leaf—'but very soon they found how to make moulds that is did just as well. After that it was a mere nothing; an operation of a few al minutes would suffice to let in poetry or foreign languages or history, or anything 11 else that one cared to have.'" ' a .' Then the traveller went; on to make moro inquiries, and found to his amaze- v . men) that, in this land men and women were alike, and that there, were no children! But this was enoncrh for him. a! "fiive me back," he cried, "the old life "J of danger and stress, with it* hard toil S and its bitter chances, and its heart- , ■ freak-. I see its value! I know its :V worth!" cl ol al A 22-1 on bell at the Church of the Pac- at red Heart in I'aris is (oiled bv e!eetricitv. I w< A single boy can thus do the'work which ki formerly took five men. ' en