The Menace
by David H. Keller
Chapter IV: The Insane Avalanche
A nameless yacht was steaming on an unknown sound towards an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean. It was the refuge of The Powerful Ones, a place specially prepared as a haven of escape when the world was being combed for them and the police of every nation was hunting them like so many cobras or tigers.
There were now only three left. George, known to European society as Count Sebastian, the man called Marcus, an inventor and scientist of unknown antecedents and Dr. Semon, who had been educated at the best medical schools and universities in Europe. There had been others, but they had died in the disaster resulting from the destruction of the Center Internationale. The one woman in the organization was, for the time being, hiding in San Francisco. There were subordinates in the association, and perhaps thirty in all, were either on the yacht or were waiting on the island for its arrival.
They were all negroes, banded together for the total subjection, and, if necessary, destruction of the Caucasian race. Three carefully arranged and minutely prepared plans had failed. The effort to buy New York and turn the black race white had terminated in the destruction of their building in New York, the death of over a thousand of their most valuable members and a serious economic loss. Their plan to impoverish the United States by flooding its banks with millions of synthetic gold and then forcing the world to change from a gold to a platinum standard had resulted in failure, and every nation in the world had been furnished with a method of detecting their artificial gold. No longer could they create millions in their laboratories over night. Then had come their determination to inflict a crowning and humilating injury on their enemies by turning eight million white New Yorkers black overnight. That also had been a costly and useless effort. They had spent their resources in preparing nearly three thousand pounds of a powerful drug, and had used it in an effort to poison the water supply of the great city, yet, for a week after they had done this, they waited impatiently for the drug to act and nothing had happened. Discouraged, they realized that once more, in some mysterious way, they had been thwarted in their revenge.
They had failed, and for the first time they were pursued. On land, air and ocean the machinery of justice was following them in a determined search which they knew would stop only when they were safely behind the steel bars of some modern bastille. Then it was that they were glad they had an island to go to, prepared years before for just such an emergency, and equally glad they were to be able to get there — and they lost no time.
On the island, discouraged and disheartened, they lived from day to day, without hope and with diminishing pride in their own achievements. The elaborate system of government, which had been relentless and immobile in its rigid rule, began to disintegrate and decay. They, who had once been called The Powerful Ones, slowly approached the level of their humblest subjects. The tropical heat lowered their morale and slowly destroyed their desire to conquer the world. Gradually the equatorial sun was restoring them to equality with their savage ancestors. Women were brought to the island, at first secretly and then openly. When Ebony Kate arrived, the tom-tom was heard once more. A sailor breaking the laws of the island, was beheaded, and his body found other sepulchre than Mother Earth. Those who had hoped to conquer the United States were now being subjected by their own impulses.
Of course they still tried to invent new plans for the continuation of the struggle to which they had consecrated their lives, but it seemed to become harder to concentrate. The minds of Count Sebastian, Marcus and Dr. Semon had once held a large proportion of the knowledge of modern civilization, and no doubt they still knew all they ever did know, but it became harder to use their intelligence and knowledge in productive
effort. Each day nothing happened. Each day they promised each other that tomorrow they would begin intensive work.
Then one day a stranger came to the island. He was a mulatto, well dressed, with several trunks of clothes, books and scientific instruments. It never was determined how he had found out about their refuge, and the exact location, but there was no doubt that he knew considerable about their organization.
There was no hesitation on his part in telling his reason for seeking them over thousands of miles of tropical ocean. His motive was the same as theirs before discouragement had anaesthetized their ambition.
“I am a physician by profession,” he told the three leaders that evening,” but my specialty is psychiatry. I have always been interested in the mind, and preferably in the abnormal, the unusual, the diseased mind. My color made it hard for me. The study of medicine was difficult, and the endeavor to become a psychiatrist almost insurmountable. There is only one place to study insanity and that is in a hospital for the mentally diseased. In Europe it was easy to obtain opportunities for study but hard to finance the years of preparation. In the United States there was practically no opening for one of my race. Again and again I took civil service examinations and was placed at the head of eligible lists, only to be sidetracked when they found I was a negro. I knew as much as any of them. In fact, for two years I wrote a series of papers for one of the great physicians of America, who published them under his own name. Finally I drifted to Harlem and opened a small hospital for mental diseases, and there I heard about you and your ambitions. They are still talking about you, in a whisper, in the secret halls of their lodges. They believe that some day you will come back and strike for them — destroy the Caucasian and establish the supremacy of the Ethiopie race.
“I gathered together the fragments of what I heard and from them I made a fairly good story of your plans and your failures. After the day’s work was done, I used to sit in my office and wonder why you had failed and whether in some way you could not yet succeed. You will pardon me if I tell you that I gained the idea that the cause of your failure was your desire to gain your ends too quickly. You wanted to accomplish all in a year, in five years, instead of being willing to wait.
“One night I had an idea. A man can preach a sermon, write a book or live a life centering around a single new thought. Perhaps dozens of our specialty had entertained this idea for a second and then passed it by before it reached their consciousness. With me it was different. I was so thoroughly conscious of it, that for several nights I could not sleep. Finally I arrived at a decision. I spent a year in study and expended all of my wealth, not much, but all of it, and finally I was sure. Then I came to you. We need money, time and brains, but above all we shall need patience. Some of us may die of old age before we are through, but we will have trained men to follow us in the next generation, and the next.
“Now what I want to do is this ”
Far into the night he talked and long into the dark they listened, and they were tired by morning, but in their hearts was a new determination and a fresh courage. They had failed three times, but this time they were sure they would succeed, for, to the leadership of Count Sebastian, the inventiveness of Marcus, and the scientific ability of Dr. Semon, was added the deeply specialized mind of Dr. Abraham Flandings.
LIFE in the United States was becoming highly standardized. Many of the processes in the industrial life were so successfully studied that production was possible on a larger scale than had ever been dreamed of. A working slave would spend a lifetime carving and decorating a Roman chariot in the days of Nero,, but in the era of Ford, four hundred men in four minutes could assemble an automobile and more than one of them had wealth enough to purchase and use it. Life was standardized as well as work. In the United States millions were becoming used to the same diet, the same amusements and the same vices. The home was disappearing. Babies were born in hospitals, reared in day nurseries, educated in state schools, amused by the cinema, entertained by the automobile and airplane. The companionate marriage provided a maximum of selfish, personal pleasure with a minimum of responsibility and self-sacrifice. In thousands of such families the wife was a wage earner as well as the husband and the pair ate out of tin cans and delicatessen stores. Sickness was financed by industrial insurance and domiciled in hospitals. The diagnosis was made piecemeal by groups of specialists, the disease was treated, thousands of drugs were in laboratories, and each patient had the attention of onetenth of a nurse. No serious case was considered complete without a careful autopsy, the report of which was given to the surviving relatives to be considered as a basis for future reference. The remains, less the sections for microscopic study, were buried from undertakers’ parlors and finally rested in enormous community graves and recorded in the large volumes of cemetery records, many thousand burials to the volume.
Life was easy. As the life of the world became systematized, competition grew less severe and the existence of the individual less complex. He had to think less because so many of the necessary things of life were thought of for him. In school his children had their teeth filled and tonsils and adenoids removed. An adults’ health insurance forced him to eat more or less. When food could be bought in tablets, less skill was required to become a cook. It is not certain that the people were happier but they were certainly far more comfortable.
One of the most remarkable changes was the great increase in the amount of glass used. Like all other industries, the manufacture of glass was controlled by a trust, which for inventiveness and initiative had no equal in the business world of the western hemisphere. Their motto was:
“Use More Glass in More Ways.”
Their advice was:
“Let Us Show You What To Do With Glass.” Their full page slogan in the papers of the United States read:
“You Can Do Anything With Glass and D o It Cheaper.”
It seemed, from their literature, that this was to be a glass age instead of steel. Their inventors made glass that was flexible, malleable and ductile, as strong as steel, pliable as copper, and useful as wood. Roads were made of glass bricks: it was used for roofs instead of slate or asbestos, and finally a complete house was put on the market, a house of glass, 100 per cent glass, six rooms complete, for $100.00.
It was a pretty house. The walls were of green glass, eight inches thick and filled with bubbles. It was, of course, supposed to be an excelent nonconductor of heat. The roof was of brown glass, thin enough to allow a soft light to filter through in the daytime, yet not transparent to the aviator passing above. Inside the furniture, plumbing, fixtures, were all of glass, different in tone and harmonious in design. All that was necessary was to rent or buy a piece of land, order the house and in a few weeks move in. The cellar was a combination basement and garage.
Naturally, when a house could be bought for the price of four supercord tires, the desire came to many companionate brides to own their own homes. Suburban cities of glass sprang up like mushrooms over night. People who had never considered it advisable to buy a home, gasoline being so high and so necessary, now stayed home on four consecutive Sundays, and on the fifth Sunday moved into their own home.
In the cities, the older tenements and apartment houses were falling into decay. The real estate men, architects and builders realized that steel would rust and cement crumble and decay. The Glass Trust, at the psychological moment, proposed apartment houses built of glass, and when the possibility of this type of construction was doubted, they put up a twentystory building in the middle of New York City and asked the experts to find flaws in it. The Trust claimed that such a building could be erected, of standardized parts, in one-third the time and for one-half the cost of a similar building of reinforced concrete.
Within five years all the new construction in the great cities was of glass. The more substantial structures of stone were doubled in size by adding glass super-stories. Finally, as a gift to the city, the Glass Trust built a transborough driveway fifty feet wide on the tops of houses, thus greatly facilitating interurban traffic.
Not only in New York, but in all of the large American cities, this use of glass was progressively increasing. The rural districts, quick to see the many benefits arising from such a cheap, yet durable, material, adopted it even more extensively than did the cities. Accustomed to ordering merchandise by mail, they readily bought the new glass sections, and as quickly put them together. The farmer was now living in a glass house that was easily cleaned, vermin proof and cheaper than any other kind of material or mode of construction. In the South, the glass house was replacing the hut of the plantation hand and of the poor white.
Inside of twenty-five years, ninety per cent of the population of the United States was spending at least half their life under glass. For the last ten of these years, the Glass Trust had ceased to invent new uses for their products and devoted all their energy toward selling large amounts at a low price and a small profit. While not claiming to be philanthropists, they at least felt that their firm had contributed largely to the economic welfare and happiness of the nation. At least they said so very modestly in their advertisements.
The ruling minds of the United States were rather well pleased with the progress the nation was making. They felt that they had each contributed their share toward the prosperity, health and happiness of the great republic. It is true that the wealth of the land was concentrated in the hands of a few large trusts, but these used their power to aid and not to oppress. Education, investigation, and prophylaxis were instruments used by them on a large scale. Every rich man gave millions toward the endowment of a Foundation. Carnegie gave every little' town a library, while Rockefeller freed the country from the dreaded hook-worm. There were two great desires of every bright mind in the States, to become rich, and to use that wealth in a new service to humanity. Yet even the humanitarian work was so systematized as to become painfully impersonal. The individual was beginning to disappear, and to reappear simply as a cog in a great machine.
Then, right in the midst of this happiness, came disaster. -
It came so insidiously, so quietly, so naturally and universally that for many years it was not recognized as a threatening danger and a destructive agent of gloomy horror.
EARLY in the history of the century, asylums had been erected for the care of the insane. At first these were simply boarding houses which gave custodial care to the inmates, clothed, fed and bedded them. In 1900 the ability to diagnose was being developed in these hospitals. Ten years later active treatment was begun for some types. By the time of the World’s War, the specialty of Neuro-psychiatry was growing more rapidly than any other branch of medical science. Institutions for the insane were no longer called Asylums, but State Hospitals for Mental Diseases. The physicians were no longer called Headknockers, but Psychiatrists. The insane were considered wards of the state and each commonwealth vied with the others in properly caring for these unfortunate people.
With the founding of the National Committee of Mental Hygiene, came the statistical study of insanity. At once certain interesting facts were disclosed. For example, it was found that as many people became insane every year in the United States as graduated from the Universities, Colleges and Normal Schools. That fact alone gave some people food for thought. Then from all over the United States came the complaint that the states could not build additional hospitals fast enough to accommodate the increasing demand. The yearly program of the American Psychological Society was occupied with the problem of prevention of new cases of insanity in the years to come and a proper care of those who were already insane. Many investigators spent years in trying to cure these cases but many more were, working in the field of prevention. Bills providing for the sterilization of the unfit were passed in many states. More rigid laws were passed regulating marriage. The increase in insanity became like the weather, there was a lot of talk about it, but not much could be done to correct it.
In 1920 some states were caring for one insane person to every three hundred of its population. By 1930 the ratio all over the country was one in two hundred. At that time the burden seemed too great to be carried indefinitely, but with newer methods of feeding and increasing efficiency, every state was able to go ahead with the great charity. When five more years had passed, the situation ceased to be a problem and became a menace, a threatening disaster, for the ratio was now one in fifty.
Not a family but had at least one member insane. In some cases every individual, not only of a family, but of a community had become insane. Unable to care for themselves, lacking even the elementary instincts of self-preservation, these people had to be segregated and gathered together into large settlements and fed, clothed, bedded, and treated by the State. Yet, in spite of the tremendous burden, the country staggered on, in the hope that the wave of insanity would pass by and that the complete isolation of these mentally afflicted would absolutely prevent the transmission of the disease in future generations.
There was now no effort made to build new institutions for these people. Instead large towns were confiscated, walled around with high wire fences and turned into concentration camps. Normal Schools, Colleges, Churches and High Schools were turned into hospitals for specific types of psychoses. It required the combined effort of the sane people to provide for the insane. Fortunately science had made it possible to care for these in the most efficient manner. Whereas, a ward physician formerly had a maximum of three hundred patients, he was now caring for three thousand.
By the next three years, to be exact, in 1923, the problem had become a national one, because one-half of the population were incapacitated, on account of their mental peculiarities. The United States army, regular and reserves, had been mobilized to its full strength and was used as guards, nurses and attendants. In some parts of the nation, public work and farming was done with various degrees of success by the stronger of the male patients, while the less afflicted females helped with the cooking and washing.
The leaders of the American Psychiatric Society watched the progress of this tidal wave with the greatest interest and intensive study, but finally had to make the soul-sickening report to Congress that they did not understand what was causing the great insanity epidemic, and consequently did not have the slightest idea of how they could prevent it. They stated that the insanity had little effect on the death incident and that if these people were humanely treated, the average length of institution life would be about twenty years. They knew, though it was only admitted behind closed doors and in a whisper, that if the increase continued for another ten years, the entire nation would be mad with no one to care for them. A continent of insanity left without control to follow the tortuous devices of their dementia! Perhaps it would spread and the entire world would go wild!!
The world feared this and enforced a rigid quarantine. The United States, weakened in man power and barely able to finance the crushing burden, was too feeble to protest.
Something had to be done!
THERE arose in Congress a party who demanded the life in a humane manner, of every person who became insane, and who were already insane. They argued, and it must be confessed that they had a great deal of right on their side, that the time would come when these victims of insanity would have to die from hunger. It was still possible to make protein using atmospheric nitrogen, to change cellulose into sugar, to make synthetic fat, but the time might come when the laboratory worker would go crazy in his shop, the skilled mechanic become insane at his bench, the engineer hauling a train of food develop a psychosis at the throttle. Would it not be better to kill them humanely, rather than to wait for the time when, lacking the restraining influences of sanity; they would rend each other like beasts and die in the swamps and mountains of hunger and cold? With the insane burden off their shoulders, the sane population of the United States might yet restore it to its former place as a leader in the world. Now they had nothing to look forward to but the— — end!!!
This party was bitterly opposed by another faction of Congress. They argued that even though the entire nation went insane, even if their civilization perished under the growing curse, still as long as a million, a hundred thousand, a hundred or one person remained sane, it was the duty of that survivor of sanity to continue caring for his unfortunate brothers. It was better for the nation to perish clean than to survive with an ineffaceable blot upon its manhood and honor. It was not their fault that the entire country was sick, but if in their panic they put one of these unfortunates to death, then forever their names would go down in disgrace on the pages of history. From press and pulpit, from Senator to the Mayor of the smallest town came the cry echoing that command given centuries before on Mount Sinai:
THOU SHALL NOT KILL!
Yet what was to be done?
All through 1938 they talked and thought and prayed and in January, 1939, the dreaded news came. The increase during the year had been so great, that now there were two insane persons in the United States for every sane person! Small wonder that the Senators pleaded for the Psychiatric Death Bill.
It would have passed the next session of Congress had not an humble worker in an obscure college of the south, by name Howens of Spineville, made a special trip to Washington at his own expense and asked, with a peculiar diffidence, the privilege of appearing before the Committee on Insanity. They had been bothered with all kinds of cranks but this man was well provided with credentials and they gave him a hearing.
They met in one of the Senate rooms around a long table. Professor Howens asked to be seated near the middle of the table so all could see and hear him. On the table in front of him he placed a small Boston bag. Just as soon as he started to talk, they identified him as a college professor, for every few minutes he would stop and ask them if they understood the matter as far as he had gone. In fact, he began by saying that he was very much embarrassed, but if he could just imagine they were a group of his pupils, he would do very well in his talk.
“I have been working on this for some years,” he said, “and before I go on I want to give due credit to three of my pupils who have been of the greatest help to me for many years. Of course our college, like all others, was turned into a hospital, but the laboratory smelled so that it never could be fixed up as a dormitory and we just kept on using it. I and my three pupils thought we might as well stay there as anywhere else, and we really were fairly comfortable on army cots, eating synthetic food and once in a while one of our turtles. Of course I wanted to stay but I never could make up my mind why the other three decided to spend so many years with me; so, you must understand that each of us contributed a part to the conclusions we reached.
“Hardner Gowers had been raised in the country and had learned to use his eyes in the woods. The woman, Ellen Heller, was really insane, her peculiar idea being that she could make paraffin sections better than anyone in the world, which of course was a delusion, because I taught her all she knew. Still, she was a very fine technician and was of great help to us and as we all thought a great deal of her, especially Gowers, we did not report her to the authorities; we simply let her stay with us. The third student had spent his four college years with the other two and had developed the habit. Therefore, though he tried to leave us, he was so miserable when away, that he came back and offered his services. Miss Heller used to say, ‘Cline does not do a thing to help me but I cannot work unless he is watching me,’ so Cline would sit on a stool and look at her work, and we got along very well. We were not bothered much by the authorities. They tried to investigate us once but could not stand the odor of our work shop.
“Gowers brought in a wasp’s or mud mason’s nest one day and we thought it would be interesting to study it in detail. Perhaps some of you gentlemen have seen them in your boyhood. The female builds it, a cell at a time. She fills each cell with small insects like spiders and flies and even small caterpillars. Then she lays one egg on the tops of these unfortunate vie-
victims of war. Sealing this cell, she builds another cell on top of it. After a period of incubation the egg hatches and the little worm finds itself on top of a pile of nice food, alive and fresh. By the time it eats all of this food it has grown large enough to fill the cell with its body and eventually, after a metamorphosis, breaks through the wall and flies out, a wasp.”
AT this point he opened his bag and placed several . objects on the table.
“I wanted to make all this very clear to you so I brought some real nests and also a large cement model of one. If you study this carefully, you will be able to see just what happens. Is there anything I have said so far that is not plain? Very well, then I will go on.
“When the female wasp prepares to fill a cell with food for her future offspring she flies around till she finds a fly or spider and after pouncing on it, she stings it in the back of the neck, injecting into the nervous system a minute drop of a poison that does not kill but which suspends animation and renders the victim unable to move. Life continues, but so slowly that to the average observer it seems that the insect is dead.
“We had done about all we could do in the way of research, so we decided to study the habits of this wasp, and see if we could identify and isolate the substance used in producing the paralysis of her victims. We did not have any trouble in securing lots of material, but the wasps were so small and the poison sack so tiny that it was almost impossible to secure any of the poison. Then Cline woke up one day over his stool and proposed that we make the wasps larger. That woke us all up. We built several hundred large wire cages, prepared a new card index and started to breed bigger and better wasps. It was all a matter of selection, first with wasps, then by cross breeding with dragon flies and by feeding the later generations with thyroid and irradiating them with radium, we finally produced a species as large as a pigeon, with poison sacks like walnuts. It gave us a thrill when one of these came sailing in one day with a large toad to put in a cell. The eggs were like robin eggs. We had to be careful at first because they were real savage.
“So we had all the poison we needed for our experiments. We had a fair idea of what it would do to a bird or an animal, but it was not till one accidentally stung Cline that we realized the great importance of it all. Cline was sitting on a stool looking at Miss Heller and he didn’t realize that he was stung any more than we did. The rest of us kept on working till dark and then started in to dissolve our synthetic tablets for supper and Cline just sat there looking at where Miss Heller used to be but wasn’t. Gowers was not usually jealous, but he thought this was going too far and he went over and told him so and then we found that he was asleep. He stayed that way for a month, during which time we kept a careful record of his temperature, pulse and respiration. When he awoke, we could not see that he was much worse for the accident.
“That gave us an idea. We tried it on rabbits. I brought one with me that has been asleep a year. We started all over again to see just what there was in the poison that produced such an effect on the nervous system. We finally tried to duplicate it in the test tubes and after hundreds of failures, we succeeded in making a preparation that was absolutely similar in action to the insect’s poison. It was easy then to purify it, put it into smaller bulk, standardize the dose. Now we are able to show you, in this hypodermic syringe, five drops of a liquid drug which, when injected into a human being of 150 pounds, will produce a deep coma lasting approximately one year.
“From our experiments we feel that we are able to say that during the period of this sleep a person so treated will lie motionless. There will be practically a total absence of all bodily activity. He will require neither food nor drink. Extremes of temperature will have no effect on his body. We have frozen rabbits in cold storage, let them thaw, and when they recover consciousness, they seem none the worse for the freezing. Of course they cannot be heated to a very high temperature. There seems to be a slight loss of weight due to evaporation, but we have provided for this by the injection of a small amount of sterile, saline water, about one pint every year. I hope that you have understood all this as far as I have gone. "
“We had done considerable work on the subject before we fully realized just what could be done with the discovery. I believe it was Mr. Gowers who first called my attention to the matter. He had been reading of the conflict in Congress between those who wanted the insane killed and those who were opposed to such a radical procedure. It seemed to him that we had a compromise to offer that might be acceptable to both parties. Our method would not kill the patient, but at the same time it would place him in such a state that his care would be reduced to a minimum. Just as soon as we started to talk about it, Miss Heller had a thousand suggestions to make, and we have most of them incorporated in a thousand page report, but just now I will content myself by saying that we have figured that the large cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, New Orleans, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, have ample room space for all the insane that need segregation and treatment. They do not have to be put on beds and they can be placed side by side in the rooms of the glass houses. These, as we know, are verminand rat-proof. Once a year the medical department of the Army can arrange to give each one a hypodermic of the drug, diluted with a pint of normal saline solution. Just as soon as the fifty, eighty or one hundred million people are thus cared for, the energy of the sane, released from the terrific burden, can be directed toward the rehabilitation of the nation. A Board of Inquiry can serve in every state, and as soon as a case of insanity is found to be hopeless, it can be given a treatment and placed with the others.
“Cline has been working on some statistics and some of his conclusions have been very interesting. There are two facts that we want to call your attention to. In our state there are some people who live in wooden houses. The windows are simply openings closed at night with wooden shutters. None of the people living in such circumstances, as far as we have been able to find out, have become insane. The other fact is that we have made a Simon-Binet examination of over a thousand of our sane citizens and found out that what we suspected was the truth; they were all very superior adults as far as the intelligence tests were concerned and they stayed sane no matter what kind of houses they lived in. As a matter of fact, practically all we examined lived in glass houses. We thought that all this might be more than a coincidence and wanted to advise you to have similar studies made all over the United States. There may be something in glass houses that makes people become insane if they are not superior adults to begin with.
“We want to help all we can. I do not know that we can do much more than we have done, but if you want us to come to Washington and work here, we will do it. You will find Gowers and Miss Heller most valuable and even Cline says something every month or so that is of great importance. Now if any of you have questions to ask, I shall be glad to explain any of the details. This rabbit is one of our experimental animals, and I can put a cow in the same condition if you wish me to.”
NATURALLY this long statement of Professor Howen’s caused the greatest excitement. There followed long interviews with the leading scientists of the country. Experiments were made and remade. Committees were appointed. The three co-workers of the Professor were sent for and their separate stories obtained. While there was some attempt at keeping the details of the new idea a secret, still it was not long before every person of intelligence in the United States was talking about the plan proposed by the Professor. The central committees sent for scientists from every state, and when these men came to Washington and talked to the four experimenters from the South, it did not take long for them to be converted. The calm knowledge of the Professor, the scientific ability of Gowers, the superior attainments of Miss Heller and the profound silence of Cline, who simply sat day after day without even thinking, impressed all the investigators.
After some months, the various committees reported. There was nothing new in the glass that had been used in the United States for the last twenty years. It was just like the glass that had always been used. There was practically no difference except in the quantities that were used. The scientists finally came to the conclusion that there was, in the sun’s rays, some healthful property that was absolutely necessary to the' mental health of the human race. When men started to live most of their lives with glass between them and the sun, these rays were blocked, and absorbed by the glass in such amounts, that men became insane for the want of them. Pediatricians told of the healthful effect of sunlight in rickets, which effect was absolutely absent when the sunlight was filtered through window glass. The Senate called upon the Glass Trust to see if by their help a kind of mental health glass could not be made, but it was discovered that the Glass Trust had gone out of business. This was not surprising as in many of the countries industries had stopped, partly from a lack of labor, partly because there had been no expansion of business.
The conclusions of Professor Howens and his three co-workers were substantiated by examinations all over the country. Where people lived an outdoor life with a total absence of glass, there was practically no insanity. Where they lived under glass, all but the superior adults became insane. The work was carried on as rapidly as possible, but when the final reports were ready for consideration by Congress, there were four insane to every sane person in the country.
They accepted the recommendation of the investigating committees. In fact, there was nothing else to do. The Sleeping' Bill was passed and signed by the President in one week. Within another week Professor Howens was in charge of the chemical resources of the nation. With the help of Gowers and Miss Heller he soon started production of the sleeping drug on a large scale. Even Cline woke up for a few months and organized and initiated a huge card index which was to record every insane person in the country.
Work was rushed in every department of the undertaking. The army and navy and public health service were called in for co-operation. Finally everything was ready for the transportation of the insane to the new centers, the sleeping cities, where they were to enter into their long rest. The day this work was started it was estimated that there were one hundred and ten million insane and one million sane people in the States. Systematically they were brought to the great cities, indexed, tagged, and given their dose of sleepdrug. On their tag was written their final destination and they were taken, sleeping, to their new homes and laid in long rows in the glass houses.
The work continued.
There was no rest, no respite, no vacation.
The order had gone forth that the work would stop when it was completed.
Gradually it was accomplished, and the exhausted workers laid down their pens, card indexes, and hypodermic needles.
One hundred and ten million people were resting quietly free from worry and the need for food. They needed no nursing or care of any kind. Nothing more would have to be done for one year, when each of them would have to be given another dose. The primary dose had been so graduated that every sleeper would need his second dose on January first of the next year. It was believed that sufficient workers could be trained in the interval so the hundred and ten million doses could be given in one day.
The sane nation relaxed, but only for a short time. There was work to be done, far more than even a million superior adults could hope to accomplish. New homes must be provided. The children of the insane, deprived of their parents, must be cared for and reared to healthy adult life. An entirely different system of economics was necessary to promote the healthy industrial growth of the nation.
Meantime the world looked on, waiting to see if the late giant in the league of nations would die or survive. A few nations offered their sympathetic help, but as a rule the world looked on in apathy and indifference.
The million superior adults rose to the emergency and were equal to it. They showed mankind, once and for all, that a superior adult is worth ten ordinary adults, a hundred inferior adults, a thousand morons, a million imbeciles. No longer held down by the necessity of caring for the inferiors of the nation, the million real men and women worked wonders in a few years. Machinery, electricity, the atom were used as never before. Mankind no longer depended on its muscle but on its mind. In the United States a race of SUPERMEN was developing.
Every year, on the first January an army of workers invaded the cities of the peaceful sleepers and gave them their annual dose of somnifacient medicine. Then for the rest of the year they were forgotten, save by the watchmen who made their silent rounds. Free from damp and vermin, undisturbed by any sound, the sleepers slept.
Occasionally new cases of insanity developed even among the superior adults, but the Nation had learned the lesson and such cases were put to sleep at once. The prisons also were closed. It was as easy to give the drug to a criminal as it was to give it to a case of insanity. It is interesting to note at this point that crime rapidly diminished to the vanishing point. The hardened breaker of law, undeterred by the death penalty, was horror stricken at the idea of centuries of suspended animation. The criminal code became more and more simple, until finally it was reduced to a single sentence:
Those who are harmful to the public welfare must sleep.
Five years passed and then ten.
The sleeping treatment of insanity had saved the
nation which was once again becoming great.
Professor Howens, rewarded with the highest honors a nation could bestow, was working intermittently in his Washington home, endeavoring to find some practical use for the cockroach. His three assistants, financially independent for life, were touring the world, fully determined to marry each other if they could only agree on the details. Cline declared that he could not live without looking at Miss Heller a certain number of hours a day, and Gowers emphatically said that under no circumstances would he marry a woman who kept another man alive in such a ridiculous manner. The woman in question told them both that she would never marry any man, unless he could excel her in making a paraffin section. The outcome of this triple argument was that the three of them lived together as happily as most people do.
ON a desert island in the Pacific ocean four men and a woman, all nearing seventy, were engaged in an active discussion. The years had touched them lightly and they looked much younger than they' really were. That is, all except the woman. She was black and looked old.
They were listening with interest to the report made by the youngest of the party, the neuro-psychiatrist, Dr. Flandings.
“It was an interesting trip,” he said. “You cannot understand how close we came to succeeding in our attempt to kill a nation, unless you travel through it as it is today. Approximately a million and a quarter people are living in a country, that a few years ago supported nearly a hundred times that population. They are living comfortably, mainly in little country towns. The degree of education they possess has never been equaled in the history of the world. They have their university education for every young person. Culture and refinement are free. There seems to be a very slight difference between the rich and the poor. In fact, it is hard to tell just who the rich are and who the poor.
“Thanks to my wonderful letters of introduction I was permitted to visit one of their sleeping cities. New York has fifteen million sleepers where formerly ten million go-getters ruled the world. The streets are clean and silent. In the office buildings these people lie in serried rows. Each is tagged and card indexed. Once a year they receive a fresh dose of the quieting drug. Their hearts may beat, they may breathe, the blood may flow through their vascular systems, but these things can only be detected by instruments of the greatest precision. All that can be said of them is that they are not dead.
“When I told you, years ago, that insanity would increase in a country in proportion to the amount of glass used, I was stating a hypothesis that turned out to be axiomatically true. All we did was to invent new processes whereby glass could be made very cheaply and educate the Glass Trust in new methods of advertising. The plan seemed fool proof. All we had to do was to sit and wait for the nation to go insane. It nearly did. In faet, x I believe that every person in the United States who could become insane did so. Even the sane ones would have tottered and fallen under the burden had it not been for the process invented by that Southern Professor. You remember that we considered the possibility of the fact that the sane ones might kill the insane ones to be rid of them, but none of us ever conceived of their solving the problem in the way they did solve it.
“Just what did we accomplish?
“We took a nation which contained every possible form of degeneracy, feeble-mindedness, criminality and potential insanity and we purified it. We were the direct cause of their being able to produce a race of superior adults. Not only that, but we were the indirect cause of their being able to keep it so. Now, every criminal, every psychiatric case, even every person who contracts syphilis is at once put to sleep. They have a country free from crime, social diseases and nervousness. It did not take long for the mentally twisted of the world to learn to stay out of a country like that. The rest of the world is degenerating as fast as it can, but in the United States every force is one of uplift, and righteousness.
“And we did it . We wanted to have our revenge and we did it.
“And because of what we did, it is a better, bigger country today than it ever was.”
“But what really became of our race?” asked George, who had once been called Count Sebastian.
“That was one of the interesting things they did. Every negro was examined. If he proved to be feebleminded or diseased in any way, they put him to sleep. Those who were healthy were each given a thousand dollars and sent over to Liberia. At the pi’esent time there is not one negro in the States except those who are sleeping.”
“I suppose they have them segregated, by themselves?” asked Marcus.
“Yes, I believe so.”
“We are just where we were when we started!” exclaimed Dr. Semon.
The old woman, Ebony Kate, laughed:
“No! We are worse off than when we started. We have tried four times and four times we have failed.”
“Tell me this, Dr. Flandings,” asked George. “Did you find anyone who blamed us, The Powerful Ones, for what happened?”
“As far as I was able to find out,” was the answer, “no one ever connected us with the wave of insanity. I even talked with some of the men who had been at the head of the Glass Trust and they were equally in the dark as to the part we had played.”
Then George smiled, a bitter, crooked smile, as he whispered:
“If they have forgotten us, then we are all ready for the final blow. You three men, Marcus, Semon and Flandings go there, and by the sheer force of your intellect, secure positions in their central laboratories. It will be an easy thing for you to advance to positions of trust. Work on till you have charge of the making of this sleeping drug. Then find a powerful exciting drug to take its place, something that will make a maniac out of a marble statue. Arrange matters so that on the first of January each one of the sleepers will be given a dose of this mania-producing drug instead of the sleep medicine. Imagine the results! What can a million persons, no matter how intelligent, do in conflict with a hundred and ten million wild maniacs? Before they have time to realize what has happened, they will be torn to pieces and the country will be a desolate waste inhabited by millions of hungry, crazed fools and criminals. We will fly over the country in an aeroplane and watch it die! It will be our crowning triumph.”
The three listeners ran over and hugged him in their joy.
“No one but you, George, would have thought of it” exclaimed Marcus.
The old dame removed her pipe:
“Don’t do it, boys!” she advised. “We have been defeated every time and by such a narrow margin that it makes me believe there is a God after all. We are all rich enough to live comfortably for the rest of our lives. They have forgotten us. Let them alone and let us live in peace. No good will come of it.”
The four men looked at her in pity, as Dr. Semon said:
“Poor Ebony Kate is certainly growing senile.”
That worried the colored woman. She had failed to gain an education in her youth and though she had associated with these men all her life, still they had an unpleasant habit of using words she did not understand. What did it mean for a person to grow senile? There was no one to ask on the island; the servants were all illiterate. Anyway she could remember the word.
At the last moment, Count Sebastian decided to make the trip to the United States with the other three men. They left secretly and silently one night and when Ebony Kate awoke they were gone, and she was alone on the island with a dozen servants. That did not worry her as she was so greatly feared, that her life was an easy one. What bothered her was the word senile.
A year passed and then another and yet a third It was the first week of December when a steamer came near the island. The black woman at once recognized it as a strange ship. In the history of the island, this was the first time such a thing had happened. Shrugging her shoulders, she pretended indifference, gave a few rapid orders to the servants and walked down to the beach. Through the quiet waters of the lagoon a row boat was slowly approaching the shore. There were several men dressed in uniform, and one little old man in tropical linens.
The officers remained with the sailors but the little old man started to walk up the beach toward the black woman. They peered at each other. Suddenly the man said:
“I believe you are Ebony Kate?”
“I sure am and are youse Master Taine?”
“Yes. That is my name. Well, Kate, we are some older than we were the last time we met. A good deal of water has gone over the mill dam since then. I never did think I would find you, but here you are. Can you take care of my friends and myself for a day or so? We shall want some fresh water and some fruit.”
They walked back to the boat and Kate was introduced to the officers as Madam Octavia, formerly of Indo-China. Then they all went to the main bungalow. Taine and the officers all kept one hand in a pocket on a gun, but their caution was unnecessary. Taine, however, was uneasy.
“Where are your friends, Madam?”
“They are gone.”
“I trust they are not dead.”
"Ah! No. Not dead, Sir, but just away.”
It was interesting to note that she was now talking in the best of English. Taine looked at her, wondering just what she really meant.
“So they are away? How well I remember the old times. There were Count Sebastian and Marcus and the clever physician, Dr. Semon. We were young then. Madam. I was living in San Francisco and every once in a while your friends made it necessary for me to travel. Life is different now in the United States. You would not recognize it. The changes in the last thirty years have been wonderful.”
“And your wife and children, are they well?”
“They were the last time I saw them. That was a year ago. We have been cruising in the Pacific for my health. I was beginning to grow old, Madam, and my wife insisted that I consult a doctor, and he said that there was nothing wrong with me except that I had lost interest in life. He said that when a man had solved all of his problems and solved all his difficulties, he grew old. Then he said that what I needed was some excitement and advised me to go back on the Secret Service. I talked it over with Mrs. Taine and she suggested that I finish up my work of some thirty years ago and arrest or kill “The Powerful Ones.’’ Her idea was that so long as they were alive, nobody in the United States would be really safe, and just because we had not heard from them for so long, was no sign that they were dead or harmless.
“I thought there was something in what she said, so I went to Washington. Almost everybody that I knew there was dead. As far as New York City was concerned, that was just a place where millions of sleepers were resting. The new city was upon the Hudson. I went there but all of my former friends were gone, a few were insane and the rest dead. So I thought it all over and decided to see the President of the United States. I told him the history of “The Powerful Ones” from the very beginning and ended by accusing them of the wave of insanity that had so nearly destroyed the nation. We had a hard time finding all the old documents but I finally proved every part of my story. Then I asked him for help in locating those men, provided they were still alive, and I suggested that they would be somewhere in the Pacific. He believed me enough to finance the search and I have been scouring the ocean for an unknown island. I heard rumors of such a place ruled over by an old-fashioned Princess and here you are and here I am.”
“And the rest are not here,” said Ebony Kate.
That was all she would say. The next day she was equally non-committal. Taine had an idea that the men he was hunting were hiding on the island, but to find them seemed rather hopeless. Meantime the steamer was supplied with water and fruit and a dozen live pigs.
On the third night, after supper, Taine announced his intention of remaining ashore instead of returning to the ship with the officers. The night was calm. Ebony Kate sat on the gallery fanning herself. Taine sat watching her. Suddenly she stopped rocking and said:
“Mr. Taine, what is senile? If you say that a person is growing senile, what do you mean?”
“It means that you are growing old, the skin wrinkles, the hair becomes white, your teeth fall out, your memory becomes poor. You become a Withered, silly old hag.”
“Would you call me senile?”
“No, indeed! You do not look a day over fifty. In fact, I thought that you were very well preserved. Of course you must be old but I never would call you senile.”
“That is kind of you to say it that way, Mr. Taine.”
“Just telling the truth, Kate.”
“I believe you. I wish I could make up my mind to talk to you.”
The wind was beginning to moan in the palm trees. In spite of the breeze, it seemed to be growing much warmer, almost hot. Taine wondered if it were going to rain.
“Go ahead and talk, if you want to, Kate,” he said.
“I believe I will. You knew me when I was on the Barbary Coast in Frisco. I was keeping George then. He would have starved many a day but for my help.
I often gave Marcus money and as for Dr. Semon, there was a time when he begged me to marry him.
In the early days of the adventure, I was the only one who was on Easy Street. Of course when they started to make the gold, I shared in their good times, but at the same time I was of great help to them. I held the group together and got all the Southern niggers to join us by my voodoo stuff. I was always true to them, and you know there were times when I could have made my pile by giving them away to the Government. They lived an easy life and they were white so long that I guess they forgot they were just black folks like I was. We have been on the island a longtime: they used to make trips and they never did ask me to go. Guess they were ashamed of having a black woman with them.
“They were back of that insanity stuff. Dr. Flandings gave them the idea and they put it through the Glass Trust without arousing any suspicion. They failed — but they came close to succeeding. Perhaps you might have found out about it, but you never had a chance to even get started. When they found out how close they had come to success and yet how much better things were because of their work, they were discouraged. Flandings made a special trip all through the States and when he came back three years ago he said that life was happier and healthier there than it ever was before, and that they had gotten rid of all of our race. It was a white country for white people.
That made them all feel sick, and then my! But the wind is coming up.”
“Don’t mind that— go on with your story,” urged Taine.
“They decided to do something else and I told them not to I thought they had better stop while the stopping was good and Dr. Semon he used to say that he loved me he says to George, ‘Poor old Kate is growing senile.’ That’s what he said, and then they went ahead with their plans and one night they all left, and that was three years ago and I have not seen them since.”
“But what did they plan to do?” demanded Taine.
“I hain’t no call to tell you all, but I’se gwine ter do it.” In her excitement the negress had lapsed into her dialect. “They reckon ter git hold of the place where the sleeping medicine is made and make something that will make all those loony folk go wild. They reckon the loonies will tear everything wide open and kill all the rest er the folk that ain’t crazy. I hain’t no call to tell you — but Semon hadn’t ought to call me that mean name!”
“BY the Seven Sacred Caterpillars!!” swore Taine, fj jumping to his feet. “If they succeed in doing that the country will be sure enough wrecked. They give that medicine on the first of every January. That gives us twenty days. We will broadcast the warning at once from the ship. It is too late for us to get to San Francisco in time. Get some of the servants to row me out to the steamer and ”
He, did not finish his sentence, for just at that last word the storm broke. It was more of a tornado than a storm and more of a typhoon than a tornado. It caught the steamer and carried it to the coast of Australia, a sorry wreck, with over half of the crew lost. It carried away every house on the island and every one of the servants. It rushed in a diabolical fury over the island for half an hour, and then there came a death-like quiet., The full moon shone over the wreckage and saw two people unconscious under the timbers of the largest house — a white man and a black woman.
Ebony Kate and Taine did not die though they were rather sore and miserable for a few days. They could do nothing but make the best of things and they proceeded to do so. They fixed a roof over a part of the ruins, gathered together what food supplies they could find, and then settled down to housekeeping, with Taine as the master and Ebony Kate as cook.
Taine was miserable. Had it not been for his firm belief in predestination, he would have been much more depressed than he was. While not possessed of all the details, he was confident that on the first of January one hundred and fifteen million raving maniacs would be turned loose in his beloved country, all the more desperate and depraved because of their long sleep. He was sure that it was going to happen and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. In the meantime, he salvaged a revolver and some ammunition from the wreckage and practiced target shooting. He told Kate what he intended to do. On her knees, she begged him not to:
“You are a Christian man, Mr. Taine. Please don’t go to your God with blood on yer hands.”
But Taine only laughed at her:
“Just like shooting so many rats, Kate. Those white niggers have been the ruin of my country and the pest of my life. I do not want them to think that they have raised all this Hell and will not be punished for it. I am going to hide when they come, and wait till they start their bragging, and then I am going to walk out and kill them — one, two, three, four, just like I hit those cocoa nuts, and then you and I will wait our chance and go back home.”
Nothing she could say had any effect on him. January came and almost went. In fact, it was on the last day of January that a ship appeared on the horizon, came nearer, unloaded four men and several cases of goods and then sailed away. The four men proved to be George, Marcus and the two Doctors. They looked just about the same as when they left, perhaps a little older, but a thousand times happier. In fact, they were exuberant with joy as they greeted Ebony Kate.
“We got them this time, Kate. We certainly did,” said George.
Wait till supper time and then we will open some of the champagne, and you can tell me all about it.” They were a little worried about the damage done to the island and pitied the black woman on account of her months of loneliness. They promised to take her to Paris in a few months. The ship was going to stop for them on the return trip and from now on they were going to take life easy. She told them to put their things away and get ready for the supper. They knocked the top off one of the crates and filled her apron with canned goods, caviar, lobster and salad dressing.
At five that evening the five of them sat down to the supper. They were all in good spirits and the men, after a few glasses of champagne, all wanted to talk at once. Finally Ebony Kate said:
“Keep quiet. I’s wanting to know what happened and you all talk so’s I can’t understand head or tail of it. George, you tell it, youse got the bestest words.” “It was like this,” said George, “we went to France and then across to the States. Didn’t take long to show them that we knew our stuff and we got government jobs. We worked toward the laboratory end of it and somehow the men above us were always getting sick— that was good stuff you made for us, Kate; it didn’t make them suspicious; just made them want a long vacation — and every time one of them went away one of us was promoted. The beginning of last year we were just about in charge of the manufacturing and distribution end of the game, so we started in earnest and without their knowing a thing about it, we made about one hundred and twenty million doses of something that was just about dynamite. It looked like the sleeping drug, and it had the same chemical reactions, but it was certainly different in its effect. The last week we secretly destroyed all the records and formulae and a lot of the most delicate machinery. Then we rushed over to Vancouver and waited. On the second of January, we got absolutely correct reports from Seattle, one of the sleeping cities. One of the watchmen stood it as long as he could and then beat it to Canada. The radio sent the Canadian papers lots of detail. Every sleeping imbecile was just awake and raising unadulterated Hell of every description. We knew it wasn’t any use to stay and since we were through, we were naturally anxious to get our things from the island and go to Paris for the rest of our lives. We won, Kate! Of course we cannot tell you every detail but it stands to reason that one million sane people couldn’t do much against over one hundred and fifteen million maniacs. It took us over forty years to wreck that nation but we did it — and it is going to stay wrecked.”
“So you all’s gwine ter go ter Paris?”
“Yes, just as soon as we can.”
“Gwine ter take me with yer?”
“Well, now, Kate, you see it’s this way. You have a good home here and we will always take care of you and see that you do not want for anything. But at your age you had better stay here and take things easy.”
“Think I am too old?”
“It’s like this, Kate,” said Dr. Semon. “You have been here so long, that it is just like home here and you would not be happy anywhere else.”
The black woman looked at the four white men at the table with her. She knew that they were really black — in more ways than one — she thought of that white man who was really white waiting to kill them — he had always treated her like a black woman, but then he had always been kind to her So she said:
“Suppose we end the supper with a drink of brandy?” She served it to them, and then Marcus proposed a toast:
“To our friends, the whites of the United States, in Paradise, and may we never meet!”
They drank it standing, and then they all sat down. Taine walked into the room.
They looked at him rather stupidly.
“Stand up and fight,” he commanded. “I am here to kill you all, but I want to give you a chance. Pull out your guns and we will start shooting.”
“Don’t shoot them, Master Taine,” whispered Kate. “Wait a little.”
Taine had them covered with his revolver suspecting treachery of some kind but the four men simply grew quieter and yet more quiet, seated in their rattan chairs.
And finally the white man realized that they were dead.
Ebony Kate was sobbing hysterically.
Taine thought about it for some hours before he understood.
IN the course of some weeks, the steamer came back to the island. Taine made arrangements to have all the natives carried to the nearest populated island. He engaged passage for himself to British Columbia. He kept himself as busy as he could, to keep his mind steady. He felt young and there was no doubt that the Doctor had been right in advising him to go back to work, but at the same time he was more than worried about his family and his nation. He knew that he could not rest easy till he learned what had really happened.
It was not until they had dropped the natives and started in earnest for the long voyage across the Pacific that it was discovered that Ebony Kate was on board.
“I just couldn’t leave you, Master Taine,” she said. “There’s no telling what you will find in the States, and you may need some one to cook for you. Even if your wife and children are all right, it will be handy to have me around to help with the work.”
Taine couldn’t do anything except to tell her that she might come.
Somehow he thought of the little black puppy.
He wanted to get word from the States but the radio on the steamer was out of order, so nothing could be learned until the ship reached Honolulu. Everything seemed as usual there. Taine rushed to the Governor’s mansion, and presented his letters of introduction.
“We thought you were dead, Mr. Taine,” said that gentleman. “Your steamer ended upon the Australian coast, but all their charts were lost, and we had no means of locating you without a persistent search. I have two ships out now looking for you. Tell me all about it? Did you find your men?”
“I’ll tell you after you tell me. I cannot wait a minute longer. Tell me what happened in the States?”
“You mean you haven’t heard?”
“Not a word. Radio out of order. I knew they had a bad time but what really happened?”
“Make yourself comfortable, and I’ll tell you,” said the Governor. “On the first of January they gave the doses of sleeping medicine as usual and I think they gave about one hundred and seventeen million doses. It seems that they had more workers than usual and the entire work was finished by night. On the morning of the second, wireless messages came into Washington from every sleeping city that the sleeper’s were awake. When the central authorities went to the laboratories for advice they found the heads of the departments gone, the records destroyed and the complicated machinery wrecked. It was only then that they began to realize what had happened. Immediately word was sent to every sane community to have the people congregate and prepare to defend themselves. It was not necessary to warn the watchmen to flee for their lives: they were all frightened, as none of them had ever seen an insane person awake.
“For three days there was the most intense preparation in our living cities. Provisions were gathered, barbed wire fences put up and charged with electricity, the men were organized into companies and put on guard duty. By the end of the third day nothing happened, and the Government sent scouting planes over the cities to see what was going on. They reported that the cities seemed quite normal. Then the Government called for volunteers to go to New York City. There had been fifteen million sleepers there and they considered that what had taken place there, had taken place in every one of the sleeping cities. They decided on sending just five men: thought that a few would attract less attention from the insane than a crowd would.
“The account we received from the Government went on to say that these men were taken to the edge of the city in an automobile and started out on their exploration. They had a wireless with them so they could report their observations as they went along.
“Then came the most astonishing thing!
“There was not anything to report!
“There were no insane people!
“But here and there, all over the city, and in the rooms and halls of the houses were little piles of dust, with now and then a gold tooth or a filling. That is what made them understand. See what had happened. The gold filling amid the little piles of dust. Then scientists were sent in, trained observers and chemists. They studied the entire problem from every point and they finally arrived at one conclusion:
“They reported that during all these years, the sleepers had been slowly using up their store of vitality, or energy, or whatever it was that kept them alive. Then, when the drug was changed, they became awake and started in to walk and talk and probably fight. This required a great amount of energy. In a short time they expended all they had. They simply dried up and died. There must have been something else, however, as there was not a trace of clothing or bone left and the scientists felt that there had been a spontaneous combustion of some kind. They could not explain it, but the dried bodies must have burned because around every little pile of white ash there was a trace of carbon, especially noticed on the streets.
“The Government is making an elaborate report on the matter for distribution, but I have not received a copy. What I have told you is just a preliminary statement Washington has sent out by radio to the newspapers.”
“Then nothing happened? The sane people were not harmed?”
“No. Of course they might have been if the awakened insane had lived longer in that excited state, but they died too soon to do any damage.”
“But what will the Government do to the new cases of insanity?”
“That is the interesting thing. They believe that there are going to be no more new cases. For nearly forty years every person that was criminal, alcoholic, syphilitic or with psychosis was put to sleep. They had no children. Only the superior adults, perfectly clean in soul and body, were allowed to marry. The specialists say there will be no more mental diseases in the United States because there will be nothing to produce them. We live in the open, avoid the use of glass, bathe in sunlight and live clean.”
Taine scratched his head in deep thought. Finally he said:
“We shall not have to even take care of the sleepers any more?”
“No. There are no more sleepers and there will be no more!”
Taine laughed at that:
“It seems often that there really is a controlling destiny. Every time these criminals started to harm our country it ended in good. It makes me more of a Presbyterian than ever.”
“Have you been able to find out anything about them?”
“Yes,” Taine replied, seriously. “I know that they will never bother us any more. Still, I am sorry about that, in a way. I always felt so well when I was after them. Seemed somehow that it kept me young. Perhaps, though, I can find something else to keep me busy, even if the United States is one hundred per cent perfect. Can you tell me when the next steamer sails for California? I am anxious to see my children, and grandchildren, and most of all, my wife.”
In the years that followed, Ebony Kate delighted in telling the little Taines how their grandfather and she had fought those white-black-boogers. Whenever they asked him for the truth of the stories, he always said that old Mammy knew as much about it all as he did.