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• Introduction By Thomas Mackay
• Pictures of the Socialistic Future.
• Chapter I: Celebration Day.
• Chapter II: The New Laws.
• Chapter III: Discontented People.
• Chapter IV: The Choice of Trades.
• Chapter V: A Parliamentary Sitting.
• Chapter VI: Assignment of Work.
• Chapter VII: News From the Provinces.
• Chapter VIII: The Last Day Together.
• Chapter IX: The Great Migration.
• Chapter X: The New Currency.
• Chapter XI: The New Dwellings.
• Chapter XII: The New State Cookshops.
• Chapter XIII: A Vexing Incident.
• Chapter XIV: A Ministerial Crisis.
• Chapter XV: Emigration.
• Chapter XVI: Retirement of the Chancellor.
• Chapter XVII: In and About the Workshops.
• Chapter XVIII: Family Matters.
• Chapter XIX: Recreations of the People.
• Chapter XX: Disagreeable Experiences.
• Chapter XXI: Flight.
• Chapter XXII: Another New Chancellor.
• Chapter XXIII: Foreign Complications.
• Chapter XXIV: The Election Stir.
• Chapter XXV: Sad News.
• Chapter XXVI: The Result of the Elections.
• Chapter XXVII: A Large Deficit.
• Chapter XXVIII: Domestic Affairs.
• Chapter XXIX: A Stormy Parliamentary Sitting.
• Chapter XXX: Threatened Strike.
• Chapter XXXI: Menacing Diplomatic Notes.
• Chapter XXXII: Great Strike and Simultaneous Outbreak of War.
• Chapter XXXIII: The Counter-revolution Begins.
• Chapter XXXIV: Disheartening News.
• Chapter XXXV: The Last Chapter.
• Postscript. By Henry Wright

POSTSCRIPT. by Henry Wright

"IF it be true that 'good wine needs no bush,' it is true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the better for the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in behalf of a good play."

Amongst the various writers who of recent years have painted, for the world's benefit, pictures of the state of society which they conceive would result from a widely extended Socialism, Bellamy and Morris take prominent rank. Perhaps by the time, in the twentieth century, that Socialism is realised, human nature will have undergone such an extraordinary and phenomenal transformation that the views of above-named sanguine gentlemen will prove to have been justified. Let us hope such will be the case.

Meanwhile the talented and clear-sighted Member of Parliament for Hagen, Eugene Richter, pictures to himself a somewhat different state of things as the result of the establishment of Socialism. And his little book may be read, perhaps not quite without advantage, as a slight contribution to the literature of this subject, as presenting the consummation in a different light, and as an expression of what some will doubtless regard as eccentric and extreme views.

In treating a prosy subject of this kind, the mind has a natural craving to get away now and then from the dry detail of statistics and political economy, and to escape, if only for occasional moments, into an atmosphere of lightness and laughter. So far as English readers are concerned, it is to be regretted that Richter did not see fit to arrange his matter in a less dry and ponderous way, and to introduce an element of fun and ridicule into his treatment of the subject. The English are firmly persuaded that the Germans quite lack all sense of humour. It need hence occasion no surprise that this nation, with that stolidity conventionally ascribed to it by the English, have, nevertheless, read this little book with avidity in editions of hundreds of thousands.

THE TRANSLATOR.