The leaders of this final industrial empire would infallibly see that the public good would benefit by their handing it over to democratic control. Which brings us back to Utopia. In this new, 20th-century world, every man and woman is an equal partner in the general business partnership that succeeded The Great Trust. Everyone between the ages of 21 and 45 works in the industrial army, a vast organization along military lines. If there are too many applicants for a job, only the best qualified get them, but less-attractive jobs are made more attractive by shorter hours.
Women have their own industrial army.
At the age of 45, men and women are discharged from service to be honored retirees. He is elected by fellow retirees of 45 or above, who themselves are honorary members of guilds of their former professions. The book sold only 10,000 copies in its first year - then sales leaped into the hundreds of thousands. Bellamy was ready for that crusade. You might call Edward Bellamy the father of big-government liberalism, and he would have been proud of it.