In our world the honest man must pay to support the dishonest; the law-abiding must care for the law breaker.  How much longer this will continue no one has prophesied.

The manner of choosing officials in Tor-tu is both new and surprising.  All the officers, from the highest to lowest, are chosen by lot instead of by popular ballot or hereditary claim.  They who are thus elected remain in office during competency and good behavior.

1.  Their record must be stainless during the preceding ten years.

2.  They must have been graduated from the law department of the public schools.

3.  They must be at least thirty-one years old.

For the highest officials the conditions are more rigid.

The teachers in all public schools are selected in the same manner from among the number who apply, and who have been graduated in rank high enough for the school in question.

At first this lot system seemed very foolish to me indeed, bordering upon absurdity, but the more I studied its simplicity and observed its results, the more I became impressed with its good sense and efficiency.  There are no political parties fomenting discord in a country under a spoils system; no upheavals every few years and hilarious campaigns; and no idiotic caricatures of public officials to work unbridled mischief in the hearts of the most dangerous citizens.

CHAPTER IX.

A Problem in Political Economy.

After I had left the world of Tor-tu I still lingered in the heavens around the planet and examined a few of its moons.  While enjoying this pleasing diversion, I learned that not far away, less than one billion miles, there was a world without an atmosphere.  This peculiar condition was not new to me, for I had seen, during my never-to-be-forgotten journey, many worlds without gaseous air.

I would not have gone thither had it not been for an unaccountable desire impelling me.  Obedient to my impulse, I soon found myself on this odd planet which I have named Airess.

I at once observed that the people are formed without nose or lungs.  The nose is substituted by an opening into which liquid air is received and through which it passes to a bodily reservoir of two lobes in the vicinity of the heart.  When I saw how these people were obliged to fill their living vessels with this air-supplying liquid, I at once thought of the manner in which we in our world fill our lamps with oil to furnish light and heat.

Now it is true that nature supplies this liquid air in reasonable abundance, and no doubt all the people would have been happy until now had it not been for the unjust scheming of a few unprincipled men.

The strange story of the air problem on this distant world is so similar to the food problem of ours that I have time to describe it briefly.

There were certain men in Airess, shrewd above their fellows, who secretly combined to secure a controlling interest in all the land producing liquid air.