Alice in Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream

THE BLUNDERLAND GAS PLANT

To tell the truth Alice had not cared particularly to visit the Gas Works, because she had once been driven through what was known at home as the Gas-House district on her way to the ferry, and her recollections of it were not altogether pleasant. As she recalled it it was in a rather squalid neighbourhood, and the odours emanating from it were not pleasing to what she called her "oil-factories." But here in Blunderland all was different. Instead of the huge ugly retorts rising up out of the ground, surrounded by a quality of air that one could not breathe with comfort, was as beautiful a garden as anyone could wish to wander through, and at its centre there stood a retort, but not one that looked like a great iron skull cap painted red. On the contrary the Municipally Owned retort had architecturally all the classic beauty of a Carnegie Library.

"We call it the Retort Courteous," said the Hatter pridefully as he gazed at the structure, and smiled happily as he noted Alice's very evident admiration for it. "You see, in urban affairs, as a mere matter of fitness, we believe in cultivating urbanity, my child, and in consequence everything we do is conceived in a spirit of courtesy. The gas-houses under private ownership have not been what you would call polite. They were almost invariably heavy, rude, staring structures that reared themselves offensively in the public eye, and our first effort was to subliminate – "

"Ee-liminate," whispered the March Hare.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hare," retorted the Hatter. "I did not mean ee-liminate, which means to suppress, but subliminate, which means to sublimify or make sublime. I guess I know my own language."

"Excuse me," said the March Hare meekly. "I haven't studied the M. O. Dictionary beyond the letter Q, Mr. Mayor, and I was not aware that the Common Council had as yet passed favourably upon subliminate, either," he added with some feeling.

"That is because it was not until yesterday that the Copperation Council decided that subliminate was a constitutional word," said the Hatter sharply. "In view of his report to me, which I wrote myself and therefore know the provisions of, he states that subliminate is a perfectly just and proper word involving no infringement upon the rights of others, and in no wise impairing the value of innocent vested interests, and is therefore legal. Therefore, I shall use it whether the Common Council approves it or not. If they resolve that it is not a good word, I shall veto the resolution. If you don't like it I'll send you your resignation."

"That being the case," said the March Hare, "I withdraw my objections."

"Which," observed the Hatter triumphantly, turning to Alice, "shows you, my dear young lady, the very great value of the Municipal Ownership idea as applied to the Board of Aldermen. As the White Knight put it in one of his poetical reports printed in Volume 347, of the Copperation Council's Opinions for October, 1906, page 926,

"A City may not own its Gas,Its Barber Shops, or CarsIt may not raise Asparagrass,Or run Official Bars;It may not own a big HotelOr keep a Public Hen,But it will always find it wellTo own its Aldermen.

"When Aldermen were owned by private interests the public interests suffered, but in this town where the City Fathers belong to the City they have to do what the City tells them to, or get out."

"It sounds good," was all that Alice could think of to say.

"What I was trying to tell you when the Alderman interpolated – " the Hatter went on.

"There he goes again!" growled the March Hare.

"Was that the first thing we did when we took over the Gas Plant was to sublimify the externals of the works along lines of Architectural and Olfactoreal beauty both to the eye and to the nose, two organs of the human structure that private interests seldom pay much attention to. I asked myself two questions. First, is it necessary for a gas works to be ugly? Second, is it necessary for gas works to be so odourwhifferous that the smell of the Automobile is a dream of fragrant beauty alongside of it? To both these questions the answer was plain. Of course it ain't. Beauty can be applied to the lines of a gas-tank just as readily as to the lines of a hippopotamus, and as for the odours, they are due to the fact that gas as it is now made does not smell pleasantly, but there is no reason why it should not be so manufactured that people would be willing to use it on their handkerchiefs. I learned that Professor Burbank of California had developed a cactus plant that could be used for a sofa cushion – why, I asked myself, could he not develop a gas-plant that will put forth flowers the perfume of which should make that of the violet, and the rose, sink into inoculated desoupitude?"

"It hardly seems possible, does it?" said Alice.

"To a private mind it presents insuperable difficulties," said the Hatter, "but to a public mind like my own nothing is impossible. If a man can do a seemingly impossible thing with one plant there is no reason why he shouldn't do a seemingly impossible thing with another plant, so I immediately wrote to Professor Burbank offering him a hundred thousand dollars in Blunderland Deferred Debenture Gas Improvement Bonds a year to come here and see what he could do to transmogrify our gas-plant."

"Oh, I am so glad," cried Alice delightedly. "I should so love to meet Mr. Burbank and thank him for inventing the coreless apple – "

"You don't means the Corliss Engine, do you?" asked the White Knight.

"Well, I'm sorry," said the Hatter, "but Mr. Burbank wouldn't come unless we'd pay him real money, which, although we don't publish the fact broadcast, is not in strict accord with the highest principles of Municipal Ownership. We contend that when people work for the common weal they ought to be satisfied to receive their pay in the common wealth, and under the M. O. system the most common kind of wealth is represented by Bonds. Consequently we wrote again to Mr. Burbank, and expressed our regret that a man of his genius should care more for his own selfish interests than for the public weal, and as a sort of sarcasm on his meanness I enclosed five of our 2963 Guaranteed Extension four per cents to pay for the two-cent stamp he had put upon his letter."

"What are the 2963 Guaranteed Extension four per cents?" asked Alice.

"They are sinking fund bonds payable in 2963, only we guarantee to extend the date of payment to 3963 in case the sinking fund has sunk so low we don't feel like paying them in 2963," explained the Hatter. "It's an ingenious financial idea that I got from studying the economic theories of Dr. Wack, Professor of Repudiation and Other Political Economies at the Wack Business College at Squantumville, Florida. It is the only economic theory I know of that absolutely prevents debt from becoming a burden. But that aside, when Mr. Burbank showed that he preferred fooling with such futile things as pineapples and hollyhocks, to the really uplifting work of providing the people with gas that was redolent of the spices of Araby, I resolved to do the thing myself."

"He is a man of real inventive genius," said the March Hare, anxious, apparently, to square himself with the Hatter again.

"Thank you, Alderman," said the Hatter. "It is a real pleasure to find myself strictly in accord with your views once more. But to resume, Miss Alice – as I say I resolved to tackle the problem myself."

"Fine," said Alice. "So you went in and studied how to make gas the old way and then – "

"Not at all," interrupted the Hatter. "Not at all. That would have been fatal. I found that everybody who knew how to make gas the old way said the thing was impossible. Hence, I reasoned, the man who will find it possible must be somebody who never knew anything about the old way of making gas, and nobody in the whole world knew less about it than I. Manifestly then I became the chosen instrument to work the reform, so I plunged in and you really can't imagine how easy it all turned out. I had no old prejudices in gas-making to overcome, no set, finicky ideas to serve as obstacles to progress, and inside of a week I had it. I filled the gas tanks half full of cologne, and then pumped hot air through them until they were chock full. I figured it out that cologne was nothing more than alcohol flavoured with axiomatic oils – "

"Aromatic," interrupted the March Hare, forgetting himself for the moment.

The Hatter frowned heavily upon the Alderman, and there is no telling what would have happened had not the White Knight interfered to protect the offender.

"It's still an open question, Mr. Mayor," he observed, "if axiomatic applied to a scent is constitutional. If an odour should become axiomatic we could never get rid of it you see, and I think the Alderman has distinguished authority for his correction, which – "

"O very well," said the Hatter. "Let it go. I prefer axiomatic, but the private predilections of an official should not be permitted to influence his official actions. I intend always to operate within the limits of the law, so if the law says aromatic, aromatic be it. I figured that cologne was nothing more than alcohol flavoured with aromatic oils, and that inasmuch as both alcohol and oil burn readily, there was no reason why hot air passed through them should not burn also, and carry oil some of the aroma as well."

"It certainly was a very pretty idea," said Alice.

"All the M. O. ideas are pretty," said the March Hare. "It is only the question of reducing beauty to the basis of practical utility that confronts us."

"And how did it work?" asked Alice, very much interested.

"Beautifully," said the Hatter. "Only it wouldn't burn – just why I haven't been able to find out. But in the matter of perfume it was fine. People who turned on their jets the first night soon found their houses smelling like bowers of roses, and a great many of them liked it so much that they turned on every jet in the house, and left them turned on all day, so that in the mere matter of consumption twice as much of my aromatic illuminating air was used in a week as the companies had charged for under the old system, and we used the same metres, too. In addition to this, as a mere life-saving device, my invention proved to have a wonderful value. In the first place nobody could blow it out and be found gas-fixturated the next morning – "

"Good word that – so much more expressive than the old privately owned dictionary word asphyxiated," said the March Hare.

The Hatter nodded his appreciation of the March Hare's compliment, and admitted him once more to his good graces.

"And nobody could commit suicide with it the way they used to do with the old kind of gas, because, you see, it was, after all, only hot air, which is good for the lungs whichever way it's going, in or out. We use hot air all the time in our Administration and it is wonderful what results you can get from it," he went on. "But it wouldn't light. In fact when anybody tried to light it, such was the pressure, it blew out the match, which I regard, as an additional point in its favour. If we have gas that blows out matches the minute the match is applied to it, does not that reduce the chance of fire from the careless habit some people have of throwing lighted matches into the waste-basket?"

"It most certainly does," said the White Knight gravely, and in such tones of finality that Alice did not venture to dispute his assertion.

"We're all agreed upon that point," said the Hatter. "But there were complaints of course. Some people, mostly capitalists who were rich enough to have libraries of their own, complained that they couldn't read nights because the gas wouldn't light. I replied that if they wanted to read they could go to the Public Library, where there were oil lamps, and electric lights. Besides reading at night is bad for the eyes. Others objected that they couldn't see to go to bed. The answer to that was simple enough. People don't need to see to go to bed. They may need to see when they are dressing in the morning, but when they go to bed all they have to do is to take their clothes off and go, and I added that people who didn't know enough to do that had better have nurses. Finally some of the chief kickers got up a mass-meeting and protested that the new gas wasn't gas at all, and in view of that fact refused to pay their gas tax."

"Oho!" said Alice. "That was pretty serious I should think."

"It seemed so at first," said the Hatter, "but just then the beauty of the Municipal Ownership scheme stepped in. I called a special meeting of the Common Council and they settled the question once for all."

"Good!" cried Alice "How did they do it?"

"They passed a resolution," said the Hatter, "unanimously declaring the aromatic hot-air to be gas of the most excellent quality, and made it a misdemeanor for anybody to say that it wasn't. I signed the ordinance and from that minute on our gas was gas by law."

"Still," said Alice, "those people had already said it wasn't. Did they back down?"

"Most of 'em did," laughed the Hatter. "And the rest were fined $500 apiece and sent to jail for six months. You see we made the law sufficiently retroactive to grab the whole bunch. Since then there have been no complaints."

Whereupon the Hatter invited Alice to stroll through the gas-plant with him, which the little girl did, and declared it later to have been sweeter than a walk through a rose-garden, which causes me to believe that the Mayor's scheme was a pretty wonderful one after all, and quite worthy of a Hatter thrust by the vagaries of politics into the difficult business of gas making.

CHAPTER IV

THE CITY-OWNED POLICE

After Alice and her companions had enjoyed the aromatic delights of the Blunderland Gas Plant the Hatter and his Cabinet went into executive session for a few hours to decide where they should go next. The interests of Blunderland were so varied that this was a somewhat difficult matter to settle, especially as Mr. Alderman March Hare, who was a great stickler for the rights of the honourable body to which he belonged, wished to have the question referred to a special meeting of the Common Council. The White Knight as Corporation Counsel, however, advised the Hatter that there was no warrant in law compelling him to accede to the March Hare's demand.

"The Municipal Ownership of Rubbernecks act has not yet been passed," he observed. "Consequently visitors to our City can be shown about in any way in which the party in charge chooses to choose."

"All right if you say so," said March Hare coldly. "Only I'd like to have that opinion in writing. Public officials nowadays are too prune to deny – "

"Prone, I guess you mean," laughed the Hatter gleefully.

"I prefer prune," said the March Hare, with dignity. "Public officials are too prune nowadays to deny what they say in private conversation to encourage me to take any chances."

"Certainly," returned the White Knight. "I'll write it out for you with pleasure." Whereupon, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, he wrote with it on the side of a convenient gas tank the following opinion:

IN RE WHAT TO DO NEXTOpinion 7,543,467,223. Liber 29. Gas Tank No. 6You can go to the People's Shoe Shop,Or down to the new Town Pump.You can visit the Civic Glue Shop,Or call on the Public Chump.You can visit the Social Rooster,Or sample Municipal Cheese —In short you can do what you choose ter,And go where you dee dash please.(Signed) John Doe White Knight,Copperation Counsel.

Meanwhile Alice had been turned over to the Chief of Police to be cared for, and was charmed to discover that that individual was none other than her old friend the Dormouse whom she had met in her trip through Wonderland at the Hatter's tea-party.

"How did you ever come to be Chief of Police?" she cried delightedly, as she recognised him.

"I'm the soundest sleeper in town," he replied with a yawn, "so they made me head of the force. You see, young lady, the great trouble with the average policeman is that he's too wide-awake, and that leads to graft. When the Hatter's Municipal Police Commission looked into the question they found that the Cop who spent most of his time asleep spent less of his time clubbing people who wouldn't whack up with him on the profits of their business. Every ossifer who has been convicted of petty larceny in the past, the records show, has been a fellow who stayed awake most of the time, and no ossifer has ever yet been known to go in for graft or get a record for clubbing innocent highwaymen over the head while he was asleep either on a Park Bench, or in an alleyway. Consequently, says they, Mr. Dormouse who wakes up only on every fifth Thursday in February will make the best Police ossifer in the bunch, and being the best had ought to be chose chief. Hence accordingly, it became thus. Moreover I am a champion Tea Drinker."

"What's that got to do with it?" demanded Alice.

"Everything," said the Dormouse, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "Every blessed thing. Tea Drinking is one of our hardest duties under the new system providing for the Municipal Ownership of Everything in Sight Including the Cop on the Corner. You see when the City grabbed up the Bakeries, and the Trolleys, and the Grand Opera House, and the Condensed Milk Factory, and the Saw Mills, and the Breakfast Food Jungles, all envy, hatred and malice disappeared. Everybody loved his neighbour better than he did himself or his wife's family, and consequently hence there was therefore no crime, which left the Policeman out of a job. The only Burglars left in town were the regularly appointed official safecrackers representing the Municipal Ownership of Petty and Grand Larceny. The only gambling houses left were under the direct supervision of the Mayor acting ex-officio and the Chairman of the Aldermanic Committee on Faro and Roulette. The Game of Bunco became a duly authorised official diversion under control of the Tax Assessors, and the Town Toper, being elected by popular vote, could get as leery as he pleased by public consent. Life Insurance Agents became likewise Public Servants under the General Ordinance of 1905 starting the Civic Tontine Parlours where people were compelled to buy Life Insurance from the City itself at so much a yard."

"A yard?" cried Alice.

"Yep," yawned the Dormouse. "Policies were issued anywhere from three inches to a yard long, each inch representing a year. If you bought a mile of Life Insurance you were insured for as many years as there are inches in a mile. I never could stay awake long enough to figure out how much that is, but it's several years."

"But what did the Agents have to do?" asked Alice. "If people had to take it – "

"They went out and grabbed delinquents," said the Dormouse.

"I shouldn't think people would need life insurance for the benefit of their families if everybody has everything he wants in Blunderland," put in Alice.

"They don't," said the Dormouse, rapping his head with his club to keep from dropping off to sleep. "It ain't for the benefit of their families – it's for the benefit of the City. A City like this can use benefits to great advantages most all the time. But you see the results of Municipalising all sorts of crime from straight burglary up to life insurance resulted in the Police having nothing to do. There wasn't anybody to arrest, or to quell, or to club, and so they turned us into a social organisation and that's where Tea Drinking comes in strong. Every afternoon at five o clock, tea is served on every corner in Blunderland by the Policeman on beat. They have become quite a public function, but they're a trifle hard on the police who don't care for tea, because we have to be very polite and take it with everybody who comes up, and be nice and chatty into the bargain. In addition to this we are required to go to dances and take care of the wall-flowers and make ourselves generally agreeable. It is one of the laws of Blunderland that all girls are born free and equal in the pursuit of life, liberty and german favours, and when any of the Terpsichorean Force finds a girl with red hair and snub nose with freckles on it decorating the wall and being neglected at a cotillion, it is his duty to plunge in and either dance with her himself, or put some Willieboy under arrest until he calls her out and gives her the time of her life. You can't imagine what wonderful results this Municipal Control of that social situation has done in the line of popularising plain girls."

"It sounds very interesting," Alice ventured. "I should think the girls would like it."

"They do," said the Dormouse. "The only objection to it comes from the Willieboys, but nobody cares much what they think because there aren't many of them that can think."

"And is that all you do?" asked Alice.

"Oh, no indeed," said the Dormouse. "We keep reserves for Bridge Parties at the Station all the time, so that if any taxpayer ever needs a fourth hand to make up a game all he has to do is to ring up headquarters and get an ossifer to come up and play. In addition to this we look after old ladies who want to go shopping and aren't strong enough to break through the rush line at the bargain counters. And then once in a while somebody's baby will wake up at three o'clock in the morning and demand the moon, and we go up and attend to it."

"What?" cried Alice in amazement. "You don't mean to say you give it the moon?"

"Not exactly," said the Dormouse. "We just promise to give it. That's one of the strong points about Municipal Ownership. It's the easiest system to make promises under you ever knew. You can promise anything, and later on if you don't make good you can promise something better, and so on. It works very well in a great many places."

"But that isn't really what we go up to the house for. We go up to relieve the poor tired parents who have been working hard all day and are too weary to walk up and down the floor with the baby. We respond immediately to the call, grab up the baby and walk the floor with him until he is quiet again. Once last winter a chap with three pairs of twins six months, a year and a half, and three years old respectively, had to send for the patrol wagon. All six of 'em waked up and began to squall at once and we sent seven ossifers and a sergeant up to look after them. They had to parade around that house from 2 a. m. until seven-thirty before those babies quit yelling."

Just at this moment the Dormouse was interrupted in his story by a raggedly dressed old man on a pair of crutches who begged an alms of him.

"Only a dollar, sir," he asked piteously. "Only a dollar to relieve a terrible case of distress."

"Certainly, Simpkins," said the Dormouse kindly. "I – well I'll be jiggered – " he added, feeling through his pockets. "I must have left my money at home. Maybe this young lady can help you out. Miss Alice, permit me to introduce you to Simpkins. He's the most successful beggar in nineteen counties."

"Glad to meet you," said Alice, shaking hands with Simpkins.

"You couldn't spare a dollar, could you, Miss?" whined the Beggar. "It will relieve a terrible case of distress Ma'am.

"Why – yes," said Alice, suddenly remembering that she had a silver dollar in her pocket. "Here it is."

And she handed it to Simpkins who thanked her profusely.

"How's business?" asked the Dormouse.

"Fine," said Simpkins, executing a jig. "I've collected $800 since eleven o'clock this morning."

Whereupon, forgetting his crutches, he made off up the street with the agility of an antelope. Alice gazed after him in wonder.

"I – I didn't suppose you had any beggars in Blunderland," said she.

"He's the only one," replied the Dormouse. "He's the official Beggar of the Town. He gets $25,000 in Tenth Deferred Reorganisation Certificates a year – which, if the Certificates pay ten cents on the dollar, as we hope, will turn out to be a good salary in the end."

"But why does he beg? Who gets the money?" asked Alice.

"The City," said the Dormouse. "Once in a while when the Printing Plant gets clogged up with large orders of Bonds for our various enterprises, the City has to get hold of a few dollars of real money, so they send Simpkins out for it. I believe he's out to-day trying to raise the interest on the Sixteenth Mortgage Extension Bonds on the Municipal Cigarette Plant purchased year before last. It's ten months overdue and the former owners have asked the Government to smoke up."