[1] The book details Gillette's theory that replacing competitive corporations with a single giant publicly owned trust ("the United Company") would cure virtually all social ills.

The first large electrical generating facilities at Niagara Falls, utilizing the new alternating current system of Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, were being constructed at the time Gillette wrote.

[3] Gillette gives a highly specific picture of his metropolis: it is shaped in a perfect rectangle, 135 miles on the long side and 45 on the short.

(Though the details of his plan were highly specific, Gillette was not rigidly committed to them; in a future revised version he would switch to a circular shape for his city, and raise the apartment buildings to 50 stories.)

The text of The Human Drift was accompanied with abundant illustrations and plans, a graph of the "Educational and Industrial Pyramid," and other features of Gillette's scheme.