"looking Backward."

To the Editor of The Register : Sib: - Last week y ou printed f rom me, a paper on "The Disease of Cvilization." May I now ask of you the favor, that .you will cali the attention of your readers to the work of one who has seen the evil more vividly than I, and the way to remedy it more clearly ; who has clothed his message to the world more attractively than I could. A book has come to my hand, since the communioation of last week was printed, which I would like to review for your readers. "Looking Baekward." By Edward Bellamy. There is a revolution in that book ; but it would be the revolution of earth passing from its present state to that of Paradise. We ehould like to see that revolution; we should like to live in the world after it ; and it is quite within the limité of possibility. God speed it ! The story opens on the evening of Decoration day, May 30, 1887. Mr. West, a citizen of Boston, Mass., is a young man of wealth and culture. He is to be married to one of Boston's equally wealthy and cultured daughters, as soon as their new residence can be completed; but has repeatedly been delayed by strikes; and again another poetponement from the same cause leads him to propose that the marriage be delayed no longer. But he is troubled with sleepleesness, and has had an underground chamber prepared beneath the house where his family have lived for generations past, where he can be removed from the noises of the city. In th il chamber he retires, and natural sleep refusing to come to his relief, he resorts to mesmerism. Awakened from his mesmeric sleep, he finds himself among strangers in a strange place and knows it is October of the year 2000. The chamber in which he had slept had been discovered in an excavation ; a layer of ashes over it indicates that the house had been burned over him, and apple trees are now growing on its site. Mr. W. resents the story, but is taken to the house top and find3 himself ir. a glorious city, seen by the bay and its islands and the river, to be on the site of the Boston he had known, but 80 magniöcent that the Boston of the nineteenth century was a equalid horror compred with it. It would be pleasant to follow Mr. West as he becomes aoquainted with the new world in which he finds himself. It is very lifelike and real, but in the pages of the book itself, only, may one do that. There are, however, now no poor in all the land. The industries of the nation are managed on military principies. The working force is organized and known as the industrial army, and it comprises the entire population betweea the ages of 21 and 45. Every want of the people is estimated from the demand of the previous year, and by means of this industrial army, in govemmant work-shops, it is supplied, a liberal margin being produced in excess for safety. The utmost economy and the utmost efficiency are obtained in every line of work. The distribution of the mation's wealth is effected by dividing this sum total of its annual product by the number of the population, and is9uing to each person a credit card for the amount of the quotiënt ; for all alike. Competition is for honors, not for livelihood. The process through which this system has been reached is by the continüation to its logical ultímate, of the tendency to concentration, whicb seems to so many in our day, so great an evil, but to which economy of production and the necessities of trade re driving us of late, with a force too strong to be resisted. But, when the concentration of work has been made perfect, there is no possibility of distributing its product by private purchase. The method described by our author alone retnains possible, and, being resorted to, lo I all are rich as heart can desire ! Now there is no further need of money and it is no longer used, though its language is retained as a sort of algebraic symbol of value. The distribution of goods is now so systematized that no more than oneeightieth of the nation's working force is expended in effecting it, whereas, with us, the distribution of goods adds one-half or more to the cost of nearly every thing we consume. There are now no stores in the city except one sample store in each ward where people make their selections and give their orders, and the general warehouse from which the goods are distributed. There are no more merchants and traders among the people, nor any banks nor law offices in the city. There is no more temptation nor motive for any kind of fraud or crime, and where any criminal tendency is manifested it is considered as the cropping out of hereditary impulses, and treated in the hospitals as atavism. There is no more war in the world, and no motive to lead to it, and what might seem the strangest, there is no longer any occcasion for lying, and that vice is despised as it should be, until even tho8e who are disposed to crime will plead guilty rather than teil a lie. The public bchool system has been extended until its varied curriculum inctudes a full collegiate couree, and covers the whole period from the age of eix to 21 years, whtle every child is required to gradúate through the whole couise. The human race has been transfi ured since it left "the devil's schoei" in which, up to the end of the 19th century, it had existed. Again our author bas an awakening, and finds himself in the Boston he had firt known. The morning paper lies by [CONTINU ON SKCOND PAGE.] [CONTINUID FEOM FIBST PAGE.] his breakfast plate dated May 31, 1887. He glances at its table of content?: "Impending war in Europe.- Great suffering among the unemployed in London.- They demand work.- Great strikes in Belg ium- Government preparing to suppress outbreaks.- Shocking f&cts in regard to the employment of girls in coal mines.- Wholesale evictions in Ireland. " Home Affaire. Epidemie of fraud unchecked. Embezzlement of half a million in New York.- Misappropriation of trust funds by executors : orphaiiB left peuniless.- Clever system of thefts by a bank teller.- The coal barons decide to advance coal and reduce production. - Great wheat corner at Chicago.- The trials of the boodle aldermen go on in New York.- Large failures of business houses.- Largc grist of burglaries and larcenies.- Woman murdered for her money at New Haven. - Householder shot by a burglar in this city.- A man shoots bimself in Worcester because he cannot get work, large family left destitute.- Pitiable destitution among women wage workers in the great cities.- Startling growth of illiteracy in Massachusetts.- Decoration day addresses. Professor Brown's oration on The Sloral Grandeur of the nineteenth century. "It was, indeed, the 19th century to which I had awakened. lts complete microcosm this summary of the day's news had presented, even to that last tou ;h of atuous self complacency. It was a bit of cynicism worthy of Mephistopheles, yet of all whose eyes it had met this morning I was perhaps the only e who peroeived the cynicism. With a sense of irreparable loss, I roused from my revery and left the house. A dozen times between my door and Washington-st, I had to stop and pull roystlf together. The squalor and malodorousness of the town 8truck me as facts I had never before observed. But yesterday it had eeemed quite a matter of course that some of my fellow-citizens should wear silks and others raga, that some should look well fed and others hungry. Now these glaring discrepancies shocked me at every step, and yet more the entire indifference which the proeperous ehowed to the plight of the unfortuoate. "Another feature of the real Boston which issumed the effect of strangeness ww the effect of advertiginp;. There had been no advertising in the Boston of the twentieth century because there was no need of any, but here the walls, the windows, the very pavements, everything in sight, save the sky, were covered with the appeals of individuals who sought to attract the contributions of others to their support. However the words might vary, the tenor of all these appeals were the game : Help John JoneB, never mind the rest, they are frauds. I, John Jones, am the right one, Buy of me, Employ me, Visit me, Hear me, John Jones. Look at me, Make no mistake, Let the rest starve, but for God's sake remember John Jones ! Whether the pathos or the moral repulsiveness of the epectacle most impressed me, so guddenly become a stranger in my own city, 1 know not. Wretched men, I vu moved to cry, who, because they will not learn to be helpers of one another, are doomed to be beggars of one another from the least to the greatesi I ' We should like to give the author's new view of the present city throughout, but space forbids. Filled with sadness for the woes of the world, now seem to be needlees, he goes to the house of his betrothed on the back bay where he finds a brilliant company assembled. They rally him for his glumness, then he pours out his heart in a plea for the poor of the world, and the father of his betrothed giving the word, the angry and indignant cempany thrust him out Again he awakens, this time in the glories of the 20th century, indeed. But this last awakening ia the weakes', and least artistic feature of the book. It simply expresses the author's longing to flee from his age, for the horror of it. The book is one of absorbing interest, and it is the best study of the great problem of our times that ve know of. If the author bas not found the true solution of the problem, his work will surely lead toward it, and the way must open as the world moves forward. It is a book that will tend to make itself true. We wish that every citizen of the United States might read it. It containi 470 pages and its price in cloth is $1.50, but the pulishers, Ticknor & Co., of Boston, have issued a cheap edition in paper covers, printed on the same plates, which is sold for 50 cents.