"Go on," said I, "give me more detail; explain more fully. For this
subject interests me intensely."

"Yes, I will," said he; "but in order to do so I must weary you by
talking a little about the past. Contrast is necessary for this
explanation. Do you mind?"

"No, no," said I.

Said he, settling himself in his chair again for a long talk: "It is
clear from all that we hear and read, that in the last age of
civilisation men had got into a vicious circle in the matter of
production of wares. They had reached a wonderful facility of
production, and in order to make the most of that facility they had
gradually created (or allowed to grow, rather) a most elaborate
system of buying and selling, which has been called the World-Market;
and that World-Market, once set a-going, forced them to go on making
more and more of these wares, whether they needed them or not. So
that while (of course) they could not free themselves from the toil
of making real necessaries, they created in a never-ending series
sham or artificial necessaries, which became, under the iron rule of
the aforesaid World-Market, of equal importance to them with the real
necessaries which supported life. By all this they burdened
themselves with a prodigious mass of work merely for the sake of
keeping their wretched system going."

"Yes--and then?" said I.

"Why, then, since they had forced themselves to stagger along under
this horrible burden of unnecessary production, it became impossible