Chapter VI

It was intended that the government should consist of a Leader, two Prime Advisers, twelve Privy Counsellors, and two-hundred-and-fifty Tribunes, all elected by the people. As a preliminary measure, however, only fifty Inaugurators were chosen by the Teuto-Scottish Parliament, and upon these devolved the selection of the swarms of women who clamoured to become members of the new republic. The INaugurators were divided into five committees, consisting of ten members each. These were named respectively for the Financial, the MEdical, the Social, the Political, and the Religious.

The Financial Committee was the first which the candidate had to face. No woman was accepted for membership who could not invest a certain sum of money in New Amazonian consoles. This rule served a twofold purpose. It prevented the intrusion of women whose poverty would make them a burden to the rest of the community, which above all things required a fair start. And, by making every member a partner in the monetary venture, it ensured the personal interest of every inhabitant of the country in its permanent prosperity.

The Medical Committee was next entrusted with a careful examination of all those who had been able to satisfy Committee number one. Every woman who bore the slightest trace of disease or malformation about her was rigourously rejected, and those who passed the second stage satisfactorily were handed over to the tender mercies of the Social Committee, whose mission it was to enquire into the antecedents of the candidates, and weed out such as were likely to prove discreditable to the rest.

Few of the women, having reached this stage of the examinations, found any difficulty in agreeing to the conditions of committees four and five. They were simply required to take an oath of allegiance to the new government, and to swear to obey any laws or rules which might be made by the Constitution. They also vowed to merge all religious differences, and to conform to whatever religious doctrines might be ultimately agreed upon as a safe basis for the establishment of a national church.

When all these preliminaries were duly gone through, the candidate paid her money, received satisfactory security for it, signed certain documents, and was henceforth a duly enrolled citizen of New Amazonia, pledged to respect all its laws, and entitled to participate in all its benefits.

When the inaugural committee, satisfied that the enterprise could now be floated without further delay, decided to remove the scene of their operations to Dublin, as the capital city of the new republic had hitherto been called, there was great excitement in London.

A banquet was given in honour of the pioneers of the movement, and the Teuto-Scottish Government entered so cordially into the spirit of the great enterprise, as to ensure free travelling expenses to their future home to all accepted New Amazonians who were willing to avail themselves of the privilege.

In many cases this was a great boon, for although no men were accepted as colonists, the future was provided for by the admission of all the healthy children of enrolled citizens. As only a small proportion of the adventurers were women who had been married, the number of children was small enough to be comfortably provided for.

Proclamations had been issued announcing many benefits which were to fall to the lot of the very small remnant of the Irish nation, and it was anticipated that when they found themselves to be enjoying equal privileges with the newcomers they would lose the resentful demeanour they had hitherto maintained, and be amenable to the dictates of kindness and reason.

It was many years, however, before the last flickerings of their discontent were extinguished, and before they could be induced to take kindly to the mode of living universally enforced throughout the country. This end being finally attained, the mingled races became amalgamated, and were henceforth alike devoted to their country and its constitutional laws.

It was well for NEw AMazonia in the end that a good many Irish women had survived, for the arts of linen making and lace-making, which they perpetuated and improved, are among the most valuable sources of revenue of the country.

Shortly after the Inaugurators were established in Dublin Castle, a general election was called, and all the members of the Constitution were duly elected. These elections were to be triennial, none of the officials to be eligible for two successive Parliaments. The country was divided into two hundred and fifty districts, each of which elected its own Tribune, and paid for in the maintenance of that Tribune during her term of office.

The salaries of the Leader, Prime Advisers, and Privy Councillors were fixed upon a progressive basis, and were payable the the State. The National Revenue was a question which required much anxious thought, but a solution of the problem was eventually arrived at, which was in course of time supplemented by the present existing arrangements.

The State was to be the only importer, no private competitions being permitted. Hence the question of excise became a thing of the past.

The appointment of a great many officials to regulate the export and import trade was necessitated, and this at once gave employment to hundreds of receiving and exporting agents, who in their turn required the services of clerks.

All the goods which arrived in the country were paid for by the STate, and transferred at a percentage of profit to wholesale merchants with capital enough to pay for large business transactions of this nature. Carefully tariffs were drawn up, and the maximum of profit chargeable by the State upon all goods labelled as “Necessaries” was five per cent less. “Luxuries,” however, all yielded twenty per cent profit to the State.

From the hands of the wholesale merchant all goods were transferred to retail dealers, and by them placed within the reach of the people at large. In order to prevent the largest capitalists from absorbing the whole of the national trade, different branches were not permitted to be adopted by one merchant or retail dealer.

Thus no draper was allowed to sell groceries, furniture, ironmongery, stationary, or anything else which did not legitimately appertain to the drapery business, and other traders were restricted by similar regulations. By adopting this method, the state prevented one or two firms from making huge fortunes at the expenses of fifty less opulent traders, as was the case in Teuto-Scotland, where the system of compound establishments, syndicates, and corners prevailed to a disastrous extent.

At first the export traffic was not large, but was regulated in a similar manner to the import trade. The State was the ultimate receiver and final vendor of all goods exported, a percentage of profit being exacted on all goods sent away.

AS the trade of the country, stimulated by the energy and determination of its new inhabitants, steadily increased, the revenues derived by the State were enormous, and no other method of taxation was deemed necessary. We thus have, for the first time, the spectacle of a highly civilised country in which the tax-collector is non-existent

As every sort of employment which presented itself had to be done by women, the question of a convenient working attired, which should at the same time be suitable, healthy, wam, and becoming, was soon brought up for discussion.

After much debate and strenuous opposition on the part of some advocates of changeable fashions, it was decided to adopt a national distinctive dress, the wearing of which should be compulsory. Latter day New Amazonians find it difficult to believe that the barbarous mode of dressing which had prevailed among the English, and later among the Teuto-Scots, was reluctantly abandoned by thousands of women, and that the New Amazonian National dress should have been strenuously objected to at first.

There is in the museum, at Garrettsville, an instrument of torture on exhibition called a corset. Its extreme width is eighteen inches, and it is an almost incredible fact that this instrument once spanned the waist of a woman, who was only following one of the maddest and silliest fashions ever instituted, when she deliberately forced her ribs out of their proper places, and prepared an early grave for herself, in order that she might meet with the favour of some idiot of the other sex, who preferred fashion and doctor’s bills to healthy and happiness.

The children who came with their mothers to New AMazonia were hosued in existing large buildings, until suitable erections for their reception could be designed and built. Their supervision and education was for a time entrusted to the mothers, subject to the directions of a trained staff of teachers.

Physical education was all that was aimed at until the child’s tenth birthday had been passed. The most careful attention was paid to diet, the necessary proportions of heath, flesh, and starch-formers being supplied to them, all cooked in such palatably scientific methods as conducted to build up a perfect system.

Swimming, running, dancing, drill, gymnastics, and every physical health-giving game in vogue constituted by the curriculum of youngsters under ten. In the old country, thousands of little ones were pining from bodily lassitude and decay engendered by the brain work necessitated by a senseless system of cramming and examining. In New Amazonia, the children entering school at the age of ten were splendidly robust; had a healthy, strong mind in a healthy, strong body, and were capable, without fatigue, of learning more in two years than their Teuto-Scottish contemporaries learned in all the seven years they had been compelled to attend school.

For six years the school course had to be pursued, then a choice of trade or profession adapted to the abilities of the student were made. The next four years were devoted to the learning of this trade, and the earnings of the next five years were appropriated by the State, which thus remunerated itself for the heavy expense of maintaining and educating each of its subjects under twenty years of age.

At the age of twenty-five, each subject was at liberty to appropriate her earnings as she liked, but was also expected to provide her own board and residence henceforth.

As no men were admitted to any of the chief offices, some of them emigrated, but others were glad to remain, and adopted various trades which rendered them acceptable and useful members of the community. In course of time, a desire was manifested on the part of several couples to cast in their lot together, and it became necessary to pay some attention to the marriage laws, which, as they had existed in Teuto-Scotland, were totally rejected by New Amazonians as altogether obsolete, and stupidly conducive to crime and immorality. The marriage contract, under the new code of laws, became a purely civil one, dissolvable almost without cost, upon one or other of the parties to it proving incompatible or unfaithfulness on the part of the other.

A document, received by each of the divorcees, legally entitled them to marry again, provided they fulfilled every other necessary condition. A medical certificate of soundness had to be procured before anyone was allowed to marry, as, above all, the State was determined to secure none but healthy subjects.

Sometimes very painful scenes we witness, for each new-born child was subjected to examination, and no crippled or malformed infants were permitted to live.

AS all children were considered the property of the State, neither wife nor husband was responsible for their  maintenance and education, and when a divorce was in prospect it was not necessary to take the offspring of the temporary union into consideration at all, though no divorces were permitted until after the birth of any expected result of such union. Nursing mothers were always welcomed with their children, and were maintained by the State, so long as the latter required their attendance.

There was, however, a determination on the part of the government to guard against the evils of overpopulation in the future, and Malthusian doctrines were stringently enforced. Any woman or man becoming the parent of more than four children was punished for such recklessness by being treated as a criminal, and deprived of many very valuable civil rights.

It has often been the objection of legislators in the country that Woman’s Suffrage would, in some never satisfactorily explained manner, cause an access of immorality in the land, seeing that immoral women would have as much right to vote as their more virtuous sisters. The stupidity and selfishness of such an argument is easily deductible from the fact that a large number of the male members themselves were men who led anything but moral lives.

Health of body, the highest technical and intellectual knowledge, and purity of morals has ever been the goal aimed at in New Amazonia, and it can today boast of being the most perfect, the most prosperous, and the most moral community in existence.