 Preface and Chapter 1 to Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Anna Simon. Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 by Edward Bellamy. This is Preface, historical section, Shawn M. College, Boston, December 26, 2000. Living as we do in the closing year of the twentieth century, enjoying the blessings of a social order at once so simple and logical that it seems but the triumph of common sense, it is no doubt difficult for those whose studies have not been largely historical to realize that the present organization of society is, in its completeness, less than a century old. No historical fact is, however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and well-nigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious immoral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval. The readiness with which men accustomed themselves as matters of cause to improvements in their condition, which, when anticipated, seemed to leave nothing more to be desired, could not be most strikingly illustrated. What reflection could be better calculated to moderate the enthusiasm of reformists who count for their reward on a lively gratitude of future ages. The object of this volume is to assist persons who, while desiring to gain a more definite idea of the social contrasts between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are daunted by the formal aspect of the histories which treat the subject. Worn by a teacher's experience that learning is accounted awareness to the flesh, the author has sought to alleviate the instructive quality of the book by casting it in the form of a romantic narrative, which would be glad to fancy not wholly devoid of interest on its own account. The reader, to whom modern social institutions and their underlying principles are matters of cause, may at times find Dr. Leeds' explanations of them rather tried, but it must be remembered that to Dr. Leeds' guest they were not matters of cause, and that this book is written for the express purpose of inducing the reader to forget for the nonce that they are so to him. One word more. The almost universal theme of the writers and orators who have celebrated this bimillennial epoch has been the future rather than the past, not the advance that has been made, but the progress that shall be made, ever onward and upward, till the race shall achieve its ineffable destiny. This is well, wholly well, but it seems to me that nowhere can we find more solid ground for daring anticipations of human development during the next one thousand years than by looking backward upon the progress of the last one hundred. That this volume may be so fortunate as to find readers whose interest in the subject shall incline them to overlook the deficiencies of the treatment is the hope in which the author steps aside and leaves Mr. Julian West to speak for himself. CHAPTER ONE I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-seven. What, you say, eighteen fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He means nineteen fifty-seven, of course. I beg pardon, but there is no mistake. It was about four in the afternoon of December the twenty-sixth, one day after Christmas, in the year eighteen fifty-seven, not nineteen fifty-seven, that I first breathed the east wind of Boston, which, I assure the reader, was at that remote period marked by the same penetrating quality characterizing it in the present year of grace two thousand. These statements seem so absurd on their face, especially when I add that I am a young man apparently of about thirty years of age, that no person can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity. Nevertheless I earnestly assure the reader that no imposition is intended, and will undertake if he shall follow me a few pages to entirely convince him of this. If I may then provisionally assume, with a pledge of justifying the assumption that I know better than the reader when I was born, I will go on with my narrative. As every schoolboy knows in a lesser part of the nineteenth century the civilization of today, or anything like it, did not exist, although the elements which were to develop it were already infirmant. Nothing had, however, occurred to modify the immemorial division of society into the four classes, or nations, as they may be more fitly called, since the differences between them were far greater than those between any nations nowadays, of the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant. I myself was rich and also educated, and possessed, therefore, all the elements of happiness enjoyed by the most fortunate in that age, living in luxury and occupied only with the pursuit of the pleasures and refinements of life. I derived the means of my support from the labour of others, rendering no sort of service in return. My parents and grandparents had lived in the same way, and I expected that my descendants, if I had any, would enjoy a like easy existence. But how could I live without service to the world, you ask? Why should the world have supported in utter idleness one who was able to render service? The answer is that my great-grandfather had accumulated a sum of money on which his descendants had ever since lived. The sum, you will naturally infer, must have been very large not to have been exhausted in supporting three generations in idleness. This, however, was not the fact. The sum had been originally by no means large. It was, in fact, much larger now that three generations had been supported upon it in idleness than it was at first. This mystery of use without consumption, of warmth without combustion, seems like magic, but was merely an ingenious application of the art now happily lost but carried to great perfection by your ancestors of shifting the burden of one's support on the shoulders of others. The man who had accomplished this, and it was the end all sought, was set to live on the income of his investments. To explain at this point how the ancient methods of industry made this possible would delay us too much. I shall only stop now to say that interest on investments was a species of tax in perpetuity upon the product of those engaged in industry which a person possessing or inheriting money was able to levy. It must not be supposed that an arrangement which seems so unnatural and preposterous according to modern notions was never criticized by your ancestors. It had been the effort of lawgivers and prophets from the earliest ages to abolish interest, or at least to limit it to the smallest possible rate. All these efforts had, however, failed as they necessarily must so long as the ancient social organizations prevailed. At the time of which I write the latter part of the 19th century governments had generally given up trying to regulate the subject at all. By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way people lived together in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down even the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure or critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen everyone seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy the seats were very insecure and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which they had before written so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one seat and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon happiness of those who rode. But did they think only of themselves, you ask? Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with a lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh yes, commissuration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At such times the desperate straining of the team, their agonised leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire made a very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience and holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief when that specially bad piece of road was gotten over. This relief was not indeed wholly on account of the team, for there was always some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats. It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers' sense of the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than before. If the passengers could only have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those who dragged the coach. I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of the 20th century an incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts both very curious which partly explain it. In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in which society could get along except the many pulled at the rope and the few rode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement even was possible either in the harness, the coach, the roadway or the distribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it always would be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy. The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singular hallucination which those on the top of the coach generally shared, that they were not exactly like their brothers and sisters who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher order of beings who might justly expect to be drawn. This seems unaccountable, but as I once rode on this very coach and shared that very hallucination I ought to be believed. The strangest thing about the hallucination was that those who had but just climbed up from the ground before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon their hands began to fall under its influence. As for those whose parents and grandparents before them had been so fortunate as to keep their seats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the essential difference between their sort of humanity and the common article was absolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling for the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophical compassion is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I can offer for the indifference which at the period I write of marked my own attitude toward the misery of my brothers. In 1887 I came to my thirtieth year. Although still unmarried, I was engaged to wed Edith Bartlett. She, like myself, rode on the top of the coach. That is to say, not to encumber ourselves further with an illustration which has, I hope, served its purpose of giving the reader some general impression of how we lived then. Her family was wealthy. In that age, when money alone commanded all that was agreeable and refined in life, it was enough for a woman to be rich to have suitors. But Edith Bartlett was beautiful and graceful also. My lady-readers, I am aware, will protest at this. Handsome she might have been, I hear them saying, but graceful never in the costumes which were the fashion at that period, when the head covering was a dizzy structure, a foot tall, and the almost incredible extension of the skirt behind by means of artificial contrivances more thoroughly dehumanised the form than any former devise of dressmakers. Fancy any one graceful in such a costume. The point is certainly well taken, and I can only reply that while the ladies of the 20th century are lovely demonstrations of the effect of appropriate drapery in accenting feminine graces, my recollection of their great-grandmothers enables me to maintain that no deformity of costume can wholly disguise them. Our marriage only awaited on the completion of the house which I was building for our occupancy in one of the most desirable parts of the city, that is to say, a part chiefly inhabited by the rich. For it must be understood that the comparative desirability of different parts of Boston for residence depended then not on natural features, but on the character of the neighbouring population. Each class or nation lived by itself in quarters of its own. A rich man living among the poor, an educated man among the uneducated, was like one living in isolation among a jealous and alien race. When the house had been begun, its completion by the winter of 1886 had been expected. The spring of the following year found it however yet incomplete, and my marriage still a thing of the future. The cause of a delay calculated to be particularly exasperating to an ardent lover was a series of strikes, that is to say, concerted refusals to work on the part of the bricklayers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and other traits concerned in house-building. What the specific causes of these strikes were I do not remember. Strikes had become so common at that period that people had ceased to inquire into their particular grounds. In one department of industry or another they had been nearly incessant ever since the great business crisis of 1873. In fact it had come to be the exceptional thing to see any class of labourers pursue their evocation steadily for more than a few months at a time. The reader who observes their dates alluded to will of course recognise in these disturbances of industry the first and incoherent phase of the great movement which ended in the establishment of the modern industrial system with all its social consequences. This is also plain in the retrospect that a child can understand it, but we not being prophets, we of that day had no clear idea what was happening to us. What we did see was that industrially the country was in a very queer way. The relation between the working man and the employer, between labour and capital, appeared in some unaccountable manner to have become dislocated. The working classes had quite suddenly and very generally become infected with a profound discontent with their condition, and an idea that it could be greatly bettered if they only knew how to go about it. On every side with one accord they preferred demands for higher pay, shorter hours, better dwellings, better educational advantages, and a share in the refinements and luxuries of life, demands which was impossible to see the way to granting unless the world were to become a great deal richer than it then was. Though they knew something of what they wanted, they knew nothing of how to accomplish it, and the eager enthusiasm with which they thronged about anyone who seemed likely to give them any light on the subject lent sudden reputation to many would-be leaders, some of whom had little enough light to give. However chimerical the aspirations of the labour classes might be deemed, the devotion with which they supported one another in the strikes, which were their chief weapon, and the sacrifices which they underwent to carry them out left no doubt with their dead earnestness. As to the final outcome of the labour troubles, which was the phrase by which the movement I have described was most commonly referred to, the opinions of the people of my class differed according to individual temperament. The sanguine argued very forcibly that it was in the very nature of things impossible that the new hopes of the working men could be satisfied, simply because the world had not the wherewithal to satisfy them. It was only because the masses worked very hard and lived on short commons that the race did not starve outright, and no considerable improvement in their condition was possible while the world as a whole remained so poor. It was not the capitalists whom the labouring men were contending with, these maintained, but the ironbound environment of humanity, and it was merely a question of the thickness of their skulls when they would discover the fact and make up their minds to endure what they could not cure. The last sanguine admitted all this. Of course the working men's aspirations were impossible of fulfilment for natural reasons, but their work rounds to fear that they would not discover this fact until they had made a sad mass of society. They had the votes and the power to do so if they pleased, and their leaders meant they should. Some of these desponding observers went so far as to predict an impending social cataclysm. Humanity, they argued, having climbed to the top round with a letter of civilisation, was about to take a header into chaos, after which it would doubtless pick itself up, turn round and begin to climb again. Repeated experiences of this sort in historic and prehistoric times possibly accounted for the puzzling bumps on the human cranium. Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilisation only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos. This, of course, was an extreme opinion, but I remember serious man among my acquaintances, who, in discussing the signs of the times, adopted a very similar tone. It was no doubt the common opinion of thoughtful men that society was approaching a critical period which might result in great changes. The labour troubles, their causes, cause and cure took lead of all other topics in the public prints, and in serious conversation. The nervous tension of the public mind could not have been more strikingly illustrated than it was by the alarm resulting from the talk of a small band of men who called themselves anarchists and proposed to terrify the American people into adopting their ideas by threats of violence, as if a mighty nation which had but just put down a rebellion of half its own numbers in order to maintain its political system were likely to adopt a new social system out of fear. As one of the wealthy, with a large stake in the existing order of things, I naturally shared the apprehensions of my class. The particular grievance I had against the working classes at the time of which I write, on account of the effect of their strikes in postponing my wedded bliss, no doubt lent a special animosity to my feeling toward them. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 and 3 of Looking Backward This Libyrox recording is in a public domain, recording by Anna Simon, Looking Backward 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy, Chapter 2. The thirtieth day of May, 1887, fell on a Monday. It was one of the annual holidays of the nation in the latter third of the nineteenth century, being set apart under the name of Decoration Day, for doing honor to the memory of the soldiers of the North who took part in the war for the preservation of the Union of the States. The survivors of the war, escorted by military and civic processions and bands of music, were wont on this occasion to visit the cemeteries and lay wreaths of flowers upon the graves of their dead comrades, the ceremony being a very solemn and touching one. The eldest brother of Edith Bartlett had fallen in the war, and on Decoration Day the family was in the habit of making a visit to Mount Auburn where he lay. I had asked permission to make one of the party, and on our return to the city at nightfall, remained to dine with the family of my betrothed. In the drawing room after dinner I picked up an evening paper and read of a fresh strike in the building trades, which would probably still further delay the completion of my unlucky house. I remembered distinctly how exasperated I was at this, and the objugations as forcible as the presence of the ladies permitted, which I lavished upon workmen in general, and these strikers in particular. I had abundant sympathy from those about me, and the remarks made in a desultory conversation which followed upon the unprincipled conduct of the labour agitators were calculated to make those gentlemen's ears tingle. It was agreed that affairs were going from bad to worse, very fast, and that there was no telling what we should come to soon. The worst of it, I remember Mrs Bartlett's saying, is that the working classes all over the world seem to be going crazy at once. In Europe it is far worse even than here. I am sure I should not dare to live there at all. I asked Mr Bartlett the other day, where we should emigrate to, if all the terrible things took place which those socialists threaten. He said he did not know any place now where society could be called stable, except Greenland, Patagonia and the Chinese Empire. Those China men knew what they were about, somebody added, when they refused to let in our western civilisation, they knew what it would lead to better than we did. They saw it was nothing but dynamite in disguise. After this I remembered drawing Edith apart and trying to persuade her that it would be better to be married at once without waiting for the completion of the house, spending the time in travel till our home was ready for us. She was remarkably handsome that evening, the morning costume that she wore in recognition of the day, setting off to great advantage the purity of her complexion. I can see her even now, with my mind's eye, just as she looked that night. When I took my leave she followed me into the hall, and I kissed her goodbye as usual. There was no circumstance out of the common to distinguish this potting from previous occasions when we'd made each other goodbye for a night or a day. There was absolutely no premonition in my mind, or I am sure in hers, that this was more than an ordinary separation. Ah well. The hour at which I left my betrothed was a rather early one for a lover, but the fact was no reflection on my devotion. I was a confirmed sufferer from Insomnia, and although otherwise perfectly well, had been completely fagged out that day, from having slept scarcely at all the two previous nights. Edith knew this, and had insisted on sending me home by nine o'clock, with strict orders to go to bed at once. The house in which I lived had been occupied by three generations of the family of which I was the only living representative in the direct line. It was a large, ancient wooden mansion, very elegant in an old fashioned way within, but situated in a quarter that had long since become undesirable for residence, from its invasion by tenement houses and manufactories. It was not a house to which I could think of bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Edith Bartlett. I had advertised it for sale, and meanwhile merely used it for sleeping purposes, dining at my club. One servant, a faithful colored man by the name of Soyer, lived with me, and attended to my few wants. One feature of the house I expected to miss greatly when I should leave it, and this was the sleeping chamber which I had built under the foundations. I could not have slept in the city at all, with its never-ceasing nightly noises if I had been obliged to use an upstairs chamber. But to this subterranean room no murmur from the upper world ever penetrated. When I had entered it and closed the door I was surrounded by the silence of the tomb. In order to prevent the dampness of the subsoil from penetrating the chamber, the walls had been laid in hydraulic cement and were very thick, and the floor was likewise protected. In order that the room might serve also as a vault equally proof against violence and flames, for the storage of valuables, I had roofed it with stone slabs hermetically sealed, and the outer door was of iron with a thick coating of asbestos. A small pipe, communicating with a windmill on the top of the house, ensured the renewal of air. It might seem that a tenant of such a chamber ought to be able to command slumber, but it was rare that I slept well, even there, two nights in succession. So accustomed was I to wakefulness that I minded little the loss of one night's rest. A second night, however, spent in my reading-chair instead of my bed, tired me out, and I never allowed myself to go longer than that without slumber, from fear of nervous disorder. From this statement it will be inferred that I had at my command some artificial means for inducing sleep in the last resort, and so in fact I had. If, after two sleepless nights, I found myself on the approach of a third, without sensations of drowsiness, I called in Dr. Pillsbury. It was a doctor by courtesy only, what was called in those days an irregular or quack doctor. He called himself a professor of animal magnetism. I had come across him in the course of some amateur investigations into the phenomena of animal magnetism. I don't think he knew anything about medicine, but he was certainly a remarkable mesmerist. It was for the purpose of being put to sleep by his manipulations that I used to send for him when I found a third night of sleeplessness impending. Let my nervous excitement or mental preoccupation be however great, Dr. Pillsbury never failed, after a short time, to leave me in a deep slumber, which continued till I was aroused by a reversal of the mesmerising process. The process for awakening the sleeper was much simpler than that for putting him to sleep, and for convenience I had made Dr. Pillsbury teach Sawyer how to do it. My faithful servant alone knew for what purpose Dr. Pillsbury visited me, or that he did so at all. Of course when Eith became my wife I should have to tell her my secrets. I had not hitherto told her this, because there was unquestionably a slight risk in the mesmeric sleep, and I knew she would set her face against my practice. The risk, of course, was that it might become too profound and pass into a trance beyond the mesmeriser's power to break, ending in death. Repeated experiments had fully convinced me that the risk was next to nothing if reasonable precautions were exercised, and of this I hoped, though doubtingly, to convince Eith. I went directly home after leaving her, and at once sent Sawyer to fetch Dr. Pillsbury. Meanwhile I sought my subterranean sleeping-chamber, and, exchanging my costume for a comfortable dressing-gown, sat down to read the letters by the evening-mail which Sawyer had laid on my reading-table. One of them was from the builder of my new house, and confirmed what I had inferred from the newspaper item. The news strikes, he said, had postponed indefinitely the completion of the contract, as neither master nor workman would concede the point at issue without a long struggle. Caligula wished that the Roman people had but one neck that he might cut it off, and as I read his letter I am afraid that for a moment I was capable of wishing the same thing concerning the labouring classes of America. The return of Sawyer with the doctor interrupted my gloomy meditations. It appeared that he had with difficulty been able to secure his services, as he was preparing to leave the city that very night. The doctor explained that since he had seen me last he had learned of a fine professional opening in a distant city, and decided to take prompt advantage of it. On my asking, in some panic, what I was to do for someone to put me to sleep, he gave me the names of several mesmerizers in Boston who, he averred, had quite as great powers as he. Somewhat relieved on this point I instructed Sawyer to rouse me at nine o'clock next morning, and, lying down on the bed in my dressing-gown, assumed a comfortable attitude, and surrendered myself to the manipulations of the mesmerizer. Owing perhaps to my unusually nervous state I was slower than common in losing consciousness, but at length a delicious drowsiness stole over me. Chapter 3 He is going to open his eyes. He'd better see but one of us at first. Premise me, then, that you will not tell him. The first voice was a man's, the second a woman's, and both spoken whispers. I will see how he seems, replied the man. No, no, promise me, persisted the other. Let her have her way, whispered a third voice, also a woman. Well, well, I promise, then, answered the man. Quick, go! He's coming out of it. There was a rustle of garments, and I opened my eyes. A fine-looking man of perhaps sixty was bending over me, an expression of much benevolence mingled with great curiosity upon his features. He was an utter stranger. I raised myself on an elbow, and looked around. The room was empty. I certainly had never been in it before, or one furnished like it. I looked back at my companion. He smiled. How do you feel? he inquired. Where am I? I demanded. You are in my house, Mr. Reply. How came I here? We will talk about that when you're stronger. Meanwhile, I beg you, feel no anxiety. You are among friends, and in good hands. How do you feel? A bit queery, I replied. But I am well, I suppose. Will you tell me how I came to be indebted to your hospitality? What has happened to me? How came I here? It was in my own house that I went to sleep. That will be time enough for explanations later. My unknown host replied, with a reassuring smile. It will be better to avoid agitating talk until you're little more yourself. Will you oblige me by taking a couple of soils of this mixture? It will do you good. I'm a physician. I repelled the glass with my hand and set up on the couch, although with an effort, for my head was strangely light. I insist upon knowing at once where I am and what you've been doing with me, I said. My dear sir, respondent my companion, let me beg that you will not agitate yourself. I would rather you did not insist upon explanations so soon, but if you do, I will try to satisfy you, provided you will first take this draft, which will strengthen you somewhat. I thereupon drank what he offered me. Then he said, It is not so simple a matter as you evidently suppose to tell how you came here. You can tell me quite as much on that point as I can tell you. You've just been roused from a deep sleep, or, more properly, trance. So much I can tell you. You say you were in your own house when you fell into that sleep. May I ask you when that was? When, I replied. When? Why, last evening, of course, at about ten o'clock. I left my man's soya orders to call me at nine o'clock. What has become of soya? I can't precisely tell you that, replied my companion, regarding me with a curious expression, but I am sure that he is excusable for not being here. And now can you tell me a little more explicitly when it was that you fell into that sleep? The date, I mean. Why, last night, of course, I said so didn't I? That is, unless I've overslept an entire day. Great heavens, that cannot be possible. And yet, I have an odd sensation of having slept a long time. It was decoration day that I went to sleep. Decoration day? Yes, Monday the thirtieth. Pardon me, the thirtieth of what? Why, of this month, of course, unless I've slept in June, but that can't be. This month is September. September? You don't mean that I've slept since May? God in heaven, why, it's incredible. We shall see, replied my companion. You say that it was May thirtieth when you went to sleep. Yes. May I ask of what year? I stared blankly at him, incapable of speech, for some moments. Of what year? I feebly echoed at last. Yes, of what year, if you please. After you have told me that, I shall be able to tell you how long you have slept. It was the year, 1887, I said. My companion insisted that I should take another draft from the glass and felt my pulse. My dear sir, he said. Your manner indicates that you are a man of culture, which I am aware was by no means the matter of cause in your day, it now is. No doubt, then, you have yourself made the observation that nothing in this world can be truly said to be more wonderful than anything else. The causes of all phenomena are equally adequate, and the results equally matters of cause. That you should be startled by what I shall tell you is to be expected. But I am confident that you will not permit it to affect your equanimity unduly. Your appearance is that of a young man of barely thirty, and your bodily condition seems not greatly different from that of one just roused from a somewhat too long and profound sleep. And yet, this is the tenth day of September, in the year 2000, and you have slept exactly 113 years, three months, and eleven days. Feeling partially dazed, I drank a cup of some sort of broth at my companion's suggestion, and immediately after it, becoming very drowsy, went off into a deep sleep. When I awoke, it was broad daylight in the room, which had been lighted artificially when I was awake before. My mysterious host was sitting near. It was not looking at me when I opened my eyes, and I had a good opportunity to study him and meditate upon my extraordinary situation before he observed that I was awake. My giddiness was all gone, and my mind perfectly clear. The story that I had been asleep 113 years, which, in my former weak and bewildered condition, I had accepted without question, recurred to me now only to be rejected as a preposterous attempt at an imposture, in the motive of which it was impossible remotely to surmise. Something extraordinary had certainly happened to account for my waking up in this strange house with this unknown companion, but my fancy was utterly impotent to suggest more than the wildest guess as to what that something might have been. Could it be that I was the victim of some sort of conspiracy? It looked so, certainly, and yet, if human linements ever gave true evidence, it was certain that this man by my side, with a face so refined and ingenious, was no party to any scheme of crime or outrage. Then it occurred to me to question if I might not be the butt of some elaborate practical joke on the part of friends, who had somehow lured the secret of my underground chamber and taken this means of impressing me with a peril of mesmeric experiments. There were great difficulties in the way of this theory. So I would never have betrayed me, nor had I any friends at all likely to undertake such an enterprise. Nevertheless, the supposition that I was the victim of a practical joke seemed, on the whole, the only one tenable. Half expecting to catch a glimpse of some familiar face grinning from behind a chair or curtain, I looked carefully about the room. When my eyes next rested on my companion, he was looking at me. If had a fine nap of twelve hours, he said briskly, and I can see that it has done you good. You look much better. Your colour is good, and your eyes are bright. How do you feel? I never felt better, I said, sitting up. You remember your first waking, no doubt, he pursued, and you're surprised when I told you how long you had been asleep. You said, I believe, that I'd slept one hundred and thirteen years. Exactly. You will admit, I said, with an ironical smile, that the story was rather an improbable one. Extraordinary, I admit, he responded, but, given the proper conditions, not improbable nor inconsistent with what we know of the trans state, when complete, as in your case, the vital functions are absolutely suspended, and there is no waste of the tissues. No limit can be set to the possible duration of a trans, when the external conditions protect the body from physical injury. This trans of yours is indeed the longest of which there is any positive record, but there is no known reason wherefore had you not been discovered, and had the chamber in which we found you continued intact. You might not have remained in a state of suspended animation till, at the end of indefinite ages, the gradual refrigeration of the earth had destroyed the bodily tissues and set the spirit free. I had to admit that, if I were indeed the victim of a practical joke, its authors had chosen an admirable agent for carrying out their imposition. The impressive and even eloquent manner of this man would have lent dignity to an argument that the moon was made of cheese. The smile with which I had regarded him as he advanced his trans hypothesis did not appear to confuse him in his slightest degree. Perhaps, I said, you will go on and favour me with some particulars as to the circumstances under which you discovered this chamber of which you speak and its contents. I enjoy good fiction. In this case, was the grave reply. No fiction could be so strange as a truth. You must know that these many years I've been cherishing the idea of building a laboratory in the large garden beside this house for the purpose of chemical experiments for which I ever taste. Last Thursday the excavation for the cellar was at last begun. It was completed by that night, and Friday the masons would have come. Thursday night we had a tremendous deluge of rain, and Friday morning I found my cellar a frog pond and the walls quite washed down. My daughter, who had come out to view the disaster with me, called my attention to a corner of masonry laid bare by the crumbling away of one of the walls. I cleared little earth from it, and finding that it seemed part of a large mass determined to investigate it. The workman I sent for unearthed an up-long vault some eight feet below the surface, and set in the corner of what had evidently been the foundation walls of an ancient house. A layer of ashes and charcoal on the top of the vault showed that the house above had perished by fire. The vault itself was perfectly intact, the cement being as good as when first applied. It had a door, but this we could not force, and found entrance by removing one of the flagstones which formed the roof. The air which came up was stagnant but pure, dry and not cold. Descending with a lantern I found myself in an apartment fitted up as a bedroom in the style of the nineteenth century. On the bed lay a young man. That it was dead, and must have been dead a century, was of course to be taken for granted, but the extraordinary state of preservation of the body struck me and the medical colleagues who might have summoned with amazement, that the art of such unbombing as this had ever been known we should not have believed, yet he has seemed conclusive testimony that our immediate ancestors had possessed it. My medical colleagues, whose curiosity was highly excited, were at once for undertaking experiments to test the nature of the process employed, but I withheld them. My motive in so doing, at least the only motive I now need speak of, was the recollection of something I once had read about the extent to which your contemporaries had cultivated the subject of animal magnetism. It had occurred to me, as just conceivable, that you might be in a trance, and that the secret of your bodily integrity after so long a time was not the craft of an embalmer, but life. So extremely fanciful did this idea seem, even to me, that I did not risk the ridicule of my fellow physicians by mentioning it, but gave some other reason for postponing their experiments. No sooner, however, had they left me than I set on foot a systematic attempt at a resuscitation of which you know the result. Had its theme been yet more incredible, the circumstantiality of this narrative, as well as the impressive manner and personality of the narrator, might have staggered a listener, and I had begun to feel very strangely when, as he closed, I chanced to catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall of the room. I rose and went up to it. The face I saw was the face to a hair and a line, and not a day older than the one I'd looked at as I tied my cravat before going to eat that decoration day, which, as this man would have me believe, was celebrated one hundred and thirteen years before. At this, the colossal character of the fraud which was being attempted on me, came over me afresh. Ignatian masked my mind as I realised the outrageous liberty that had been taken. You are probably surprised, said my companion, to see that, although you are a century older than when you lay down to sleep in that underground chamber, your appearance is unchanged. That should not amaze you. It is by virtue of the total arrest of the vital functions that you have survived this great period of time. If your body could have undergone any change during your chance, it would long ago have suffered dissolution. Sir, I replied, turning to him. What your motive can be in reciting to me with a serious face, this remarkable frago, I'm utterly unable to guess. But you are surely yourself too intelligent to suppose that anybody but an imbecile could be deceived by it. Spare me any more of this elaborate nonsense, and once for all tell me whether you refuse to give me an intelligible account of where I am and how I came here. If so, I shall proceed to ascertain my whereabouts for myself, whoever may hinder. You do not then believe that this is the year 2000? Do you really think it necessary to ask me that? I returned. Very well, replied my extraordinary host. Since I cannot convince you, you shall convince yourself. Are you strong enough to follow me upstairs? I'm as strong as I ever was, I replied angrily, as I may have to prove if this jest is carried much farther. I beg, sir, was my companion's response, that you will not allow yourself to be too fully persuaded that you are the victim of a trick, lest the reaction, when you are convinced of the truth of my statements, should be too great. The tone of concern mingled with commissuration with which he said this, and the entire absence of any sign of resentment at my hot words strangely daunted me, and I followed him from the room with an extraordinary mixture of emotions. He led the way up two flights of stairs and then up a shorter one, which landed us upon a belvedere on the housetop. Be pleased to look around you, he said, as we reached the platform, and tell me if this is the Boston of the nineteenth century. At my feet lay a great city, miles of broad streets, shaded by trees, and lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuous blocks, but set in larger or smaller enclosures, stretched in every direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with trees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in a late afternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an architectural grandeur, unparalleled in my day, raised their stately piles on every side. Surely I had never seen this city nor one comparable to it before. Raising my eyes at last towards the horizon, I looked westward. That blue ribbon winding away to the sunset, was it not the sinuous Charles? I looked east, Boston Harbour stretched before me, within its headlands, not one of its green islands missing. I knew then, that I had been told the truth, concerning the prodigious thing which had befallen me. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 and 5 of Looking Backward This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Anno Simon, Looking Backward 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy. Chapter 4 I did not faint, but the effort to realize my position made me very giddy, and I remember that my companion had to give me a strong arm as he conducted me from the roof to a roomy apartment on the upper floor of the house, and he insisted on my drinking a glass or two of good wine and partaking of a light riposte. I think you are going to be all right now, he said cheerily. I should not have taken so abrupt a means to convince you of your position, if your cause, while perfectly excusable under the circumstances, had not rather obliged me to do so. I confess, he added, laughing. I was a little apprehensive at one time that I should undergo what I believe you used to call a knockdown in the nineteenth century, if I did not act rather promptly. I remembered that the Bostonians of your day were famous pugilists, and thought best to lose no time. I take it you are now ready to acquit me of the charge of hoaxing you. If you have told me, I replied profoundly odd, that a thousand years instead of a hundred had elapsed since I last looked on this city, I should now believe you. Only a century has passed, he answered, but many a millennium in the world's history has seen changes less extraordinary. And now, he added, extending his hand with an air of irresistible cordiality, let me give you a hearty welcome to the Boston of the twentieth century and to this house. My name is Leet, Dr. Leet they call me. My name, I said as I shook his hand, is Julian West. I am most happy in making your acquaintance, Mr. West, he responded, seeing that this house is built on the side of your own, I hope you will find it easy to make yourself at home in it. After my refreshment, Dr. Leet offered me a bath and a change of clothing, of which I gladly availed myself. It did not appear that any very startling revolution immense attire had been among the great changes my host had spoken of, for, barring a few details, my new habitaments did not puzzle me at all. Physically, I was now myself again. But, mentally, how was it with me, the reader will doubtless wonder. What were my intellectual sensations, he may wish to know, on finding myself so suddenly dropped, as it were, into a new world. In reply, let me ask him to suppose himself suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, transported from earth, say, to paradise, or Hades. What does he fancy would be his own experience? Would his thoughts return at once to the earth he had just left, or would he, after the first shock, well now forget his formal life for a while, albeit to be remembered later, in the interest excited by his new surroundings? All I can say is that if his experience were at all like mine in the transition I am describing, the latter hypothesis would prove the correct one. The impressions of amazement and curiosity which my new surroundings produced occupied my mind after the first shock to the exclusion of all other thoughts, for the time the memory of my formal life was, as it were, in abeyance. No sooner did I find myself physically rehabilitated through the kind officers of my host, than I became eager to return to the housetop, and presently we were comfortably established there in easy chairs, with the city beneath and around us. After Dr. Leed had responded to numerous questions on my part, as to the ancient landmarks I missed, and the new ones which had replaced them, he asked me what point of the contrast between the new and the old city struck me most forcibly. To speak of small things before great, I responded. I really think that a complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is a detail that first impressed me. Ah! ejaculated my companion with an air of much interest. I had forgotten the chimneys. It is so long since they went out of use. It is nearly a century since the crude method of combustion on which you depended for heat became obsolete. In general, I said, what impresses me most about the city is the material prosperity on the part of the people which its magnificence implies. I would give a great deal for just one glimpse of the Boston of your day, replied Dr. Leed. No doubt, as you imply, the cities of that period were rather shabby affairs. If you had the taste to make them splendid, which I would not be so rude as to question, the general poverty resulting from your extraordinary industrial system would not have given you the means. Moreover, the excessive individualism which then prevailed was inconsistent with much public spirit. What little wealth you had seems almost wholly to have been lavished in private luxury. Nowadays, on the country, there is no destination of a preserper's wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which all enjoy an equal degree. The sun had been setting as we returned to the housetop, and as we talked, night descended upon the city. It is growing dark, said Dr. Leed. Let us descend into the house. I want to introduce my wife and daughter to you. His words recalled to me the feminine voices which I had heard whispering about me as I was coming back to conscious life, and, most curious to learn what the ladies of the year 2000 were like, I ascended with a lacuity to the proposition. The apartment in which we found the wife and daughter of my host, as well as the entire interior of the house, was filled with a mellow light which I knew must be artificial, although I could not discover the source from which it was diffused. Mrs. Leed was an exceptionally fine-looking and well-preserved woman of about her husband's age, while the daughter, who was in the first blush of womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her face was as bewitching as deep blue eyes, delicately tinted complexion, and perfect features could make it, but even had her countenance lacked special charms, the faultless accurience of her figure would have given her place as a beauty among the women of the nineteenth century. Feminine softness and delicacy were in this lovely creature, deliciously combined with an appearance of health and abounding physical vitality, too often lacking in the maidens with whom alone I could compare her. It was a coincidence, trifling in comparison with the general strangeness of the situation, but still striking, that her name should be Edith. The evening that followed was certainly unique in the history of social intercourse, but to suppose that our conversation was peculiarly strained or difficult would be a great mistake. I believe indeed that it is under what make me called unnatural, in the sense of extraordinary circumstances, that people behave most naturally, for the reason, no doubt, that such circumstances banish artificiality. I know at any rate that my intercourse that evening with these representatives of another age and world was marked by an ingenious sincerity and frankness, such as but rarely crowned long acquaintance. No doubt the exquisite tact of my entertainers had much to do with this. Of course there was nothing we could talk of, but the strange experience by virtue of which I was there, but they talked of it with an interest so naive and direct in its expression as to relieve the subject to a great degree of the element of the weird and the uncanny which might so easily have been overpowering. One would have supposed that they were quite in the habit of entertaining waves from another century, so perfect was their tact. For my own part, never do I remember the operations of my mind that have been more alert and acute than that evening, or my intellectual sensibilities more keen. Of course I do not mean that the consciousness of my amazing situation was for a moment out of mind, but its chief effect thus far was to produce a feverish elation, a sort of mental intoxication. Footnote. In accounting for this state of mind it must be remembered that, except for the topic of our conversations, there was in my surroundings next to nothing to suggest what had befallen me. Within a block of my home in the old Boston I could have found social circles vastly more foreign to me. The speech of the Bostonians of the twentieth century differs even less from that of their cultured ancestors of the nineteenth, than did that of the letter from the language of Washington and Franklin, while the differences between the style of dress and furniture of the two epochs are not more marked than I have known fashion to make in the time of one generation. And footnote. Edith Leed took little part in the conversation, but when several times the magnetism of her beauty drew my glance to her face, I found her eyes fixed on me with an absorbed intensity, almost like fascination. It was evident that I had excited her interest to an extraordinary degree, as was not astonishing, supposing her to be a girl of imagination. Though I supposed curiosity was a chief motive of her interest, it could but affect me, as it would not have done had she been less beautiful. Dr. Leed, as well as the ladies, seemed greatly interested in my account of the circumstances and the which I had gone to sleep in the underground chamber. All had suggestions to offer to account for my having been forgotten there, and a theory which we finally agreed on offers at least a plausible explanation, although whether it be in its details the true one nobody, of course, will ever know. The layer of ashes found above the chamber indicated that the house had been burned down, that it be supposed that the conflagration had taken place the night I fell asleep. It only remains to assume that Sawyer lost his life in the fire or by some accident connected with it, and the rest follows naturally enough. No one but he and Dr. Pillsbury either knew of the existence of the chamber or that I was in it, and Dr. Pillsbury, who had gone that night to New Orleans, had probably never heard of the fire at all. The conclusion of my friends and of the public must have been that I had perished in the flames. An excavation of the ruins, unless thorough, would not have disclosed the recess in the foundation walls connecting with my chamber. To be sure if this site had been again built upon, at least immediately, such an excavation would have been necessary, but the troublesome times and the undesirable character of the locality might well have prevented rebuilding. The size of the trees in the garden now occupying the site indicated, Dr. Leeds said, that for more than half a century at least it had been open ground. Chapter 5 When, in the quarter of the evening, the ladies retired, leaving Dr. Leeds and myself alone, he sounded me as to my disposition for sleep, saying that if I felt like it, my bed was ready for me. But if I was inclined to wakefulness, nothing would please him better than to bear me company. I'm a late bird myself, he said, and without suspicion of flattery I may say that a companion more interesting than yourself could scarcely be imagined. It is decidedly not often that one has a chance to converse with a man of the nineteenth century. Now I had been looking forward all the evening with some dread to the time when I should be alone on retiring for the night. Surrounded by these most friendly strangers, stimulated and supported by their sympathetic interest, I had been able to keep my mental balance. Even then, however, in pauses of the conversation I had had glimpses, vivid as lightning flashes, of the horror of strangeness that was waiting to be phased when I could no longer command diversion. I knew I could not sleep that night, and as for lying awake and thinking, it argues no cowardice, I'm sure, to confess that I was afraid of it. When, in reply to my host's question, I frankly told him this, he replied that it would be strange if I did not feel just so, but that I need to have no anxiety about sleeping. Whenever I wanted to go to bed, he would give me a dose which would ensure me a sound night's sleep without fail. Next morning, no doubt, I would awake with a feeling of an old citizen. Before I acquired that, I replied, I must know a little more about the sort of Boston I've come back to. You told me when we were upon the housetop, that though a century only had elapsed since I fell asleep, it had been marked by greater changes in the conditions of humanity than many a previous millennium. With the city before me, I could well believe that, but I'm very curious to know what some of the changes have been. To make a beginning somewhere, for this object is doubtless a large one. What solution, if any, have you found for the labour question? It was the Sphinx's riddle of the nineteenth century, and when I dropped out, the Sphinx was threatening to devour society, because the answer was not for coming. It's well worth sleeping a hundred years to learn what the right answer was, if indeed you have found it yet. As no such thing as the labour question is known nowadays, replied Dr. Lied, and there is no way in which it could arise, I suppose we may claim to have solved it. Society would indeed have fully deserved being devoured if it had failed to answer a riddle so entirely simple. In effect, to speak by the book, it was not necessary for society to solve the riddle at all. It may be said to have solved itself. The solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution which could not have terminated otherwise. All that society had to do was to recognise and co-operate with that evolution, when its tendency had become unmistakable. I can only say, I answered, that at the time I fell asleep, no such evolution had been recognised. It was in 1887 that you fell into this sleep, I think you said. Yes, May 30th, 1887. My companion regarded me musingly for some moments. Then he observed, and you tell me that even then there was no general recognition of the nature of the crisis which society was nearing. Of course, I fully credit your statement. The single blindness of your contemporaries to the signs of the times is a phenomenon commented on by many of our historians, but few facts of history are more difficult for us to realise, so obvious and unmistakable as we look back seemly indications which must also have come under your eyes of the transformation about to come to pass. I should be interested, Mr West, if you would give me a little more definite idea of the view which you and men of your grade of intellect took of the state and prospect of society in 1887. You must at least have realised that the widespread industrial and social troubles and the underlying dissatisfaction of all classes with the inequalities of society and the general misery of mankind were portents of great changes of some sort. We did indeed fully realise that, I replied. We felt that society was dragging anchor and in danger of going adrift, whether it would drift nobody could say, but all feared the rocks. Nevertheless, said Dr Leed, the set of the current was perfectly perceptible if you had but taken pains to observe it, and it was not towards the rocks, but towards a deeper channel. We had a popular proverb, I replied, that hindsight is better than full-sight, the force of which I shall now, no doubt, appreciate more fully than ever. All I can say is that the prospect was such when I went into that long sleep, that I should not have been surprised had I looked down from your housetop today on a heap of charred and moss-grown ruins instead of this glorious city. Dr Leed had listened to me with close attention, and not thoughtfully as I finished speaking. What you have said, you observed, will be regarded as a most valuable vindication of Storyeux, whose account of your era has been generally thought exaggerated in its picture of the gloom and confusion of man's minds, that a period of transition like that should be full of excitement and agitation was indeed to be looked for. But seeing how plain was the tendency of the forces in operation, it was natural to believe that hope rather than fear would have been the prevailing temper of the popular mind. You have not yet told me what was the answer to the riddle which you found, I said. I am impatient to know by what contradiction of natural sequence the peace and prosperity which you now seem to enjoy could have been the outcome of an era like my own. Excuse me, replied my host, but do you smoke? It was not till our cigars well-lighted and drawing well that he resumed. Since you are in the humour to talk rather than to sleep, as I certainly am, perhaps I cannot do better than to try to give you enough idea of our modern industrial system to dissipate at least the impression that there is any mystery about the process of its evolution. The Bostonians of your day had the reputation of being great askers of questions, and I am going to show my dissent by asking you one to begin with. What should you name as the most prominent feature of the labour troubles of your day? Why, the strikes, of course, I replied. Exactly, but what made the strikes so formidable? The great labour organisations. And what was the motive of these great organisations? The workmen claimed they had to organise to get their rights from the big corporations, I replied. That is just it, said Dr. Liedt. The organisation of labour and the strikes were an effect merely of the concentration of capital in greater masses than had ever been known before. Before this concentration began, while as yet commerce and industry were conducted by innumerable petty concerns with small capital, instead of a small number of great concerns with vast capital, the individual workmen was relatively important and independent in his relations to the employer. Moreover, when a little capital or a new idea was enough to start a man in business for himself, workmen were constantly becoming employers, and there was no hard and fast line between the two classes. Labour unions were needless then, and general strikes out of the question. But when the era of small concerns with small capital was exceeded by that of the great aggregations of capital, all this was changed. The individual labourer, who had been relatively important to the small employer, was reduced to insignificance and powerlessness over against the great corporation, while at the same time the way upward to the great of employer was close to him. Self-defence drove him to union with his fellows. The records of the period show that the outcry against the concentration of capital was furious. Men believed that a threatened society with a form of tyranny more abhorrent than had ever endured. They believed that the great corporations were preparing for them the yoke of a baser servitude than had ever been imposed on the race. Servitude not to men, but to soulless machines, incapable of any motive but insatiable greed. Looking back, we cannot wonder at their desperation. For certainly, humanity was never confronted with a fate more sordid and hideous than would have been the era of corporate tyranny which they anticipated. Meanwhile, without being in the smallest degree checked by the clamour against it, the absorption of business by ever larger monopolies continued. In the United States there was not, after the beginning of the last quarter of the century, any opportunity whatever for individual enterprise in any important field of industry, unless backed by a great capital. During the last decade of the century such small businesses as still remained were fast-failing survivals of a past epoch or mere parasites on the great corporations, or else existed in fields too small to attract the great capitalists. Small businesses, as far as they still remained, were reduced to the condition of rats and mice, living in holes and corners, and counting on evading notice for the enjoyment of existence. The railroad had gone on combining till a few great syndicates controlled every rail in the land. In the factories, every importance table was controlled by a syndicate. These syndicates, pools, trusts, or whatever their name, fixed prices and crushed all competition except when combinations as vast as themselves arose. Then a struggle resulting in a still greater consolidation ensued. The great city bazaar crushed its country rivals with branch stores, and in the city itself absorbed its smaller rivals till the business of a whole quarter was concentrated under one roof, with a hundred former proprietors of shops serving as clerks. Having no business of his own to put his money in, the small capitalist, at the same time that he took service under the corporation, found no other investment for his money, but its stocks and bonds thus becoming doubly dependent upon it. The fact that the desperate popular opposition to the consolidation of business in a few powerful hands had no effect to check it proves that there must have been a strong economical reason for it. The small capitalists, with their innumerable petty concerns, had in fact yielded the field to the great aggregations of capital because they belonged to a day of small things and were totally incompetent to the demands of an age of steam and telegraphs and the gigantic scale of its enterprises. To restore the former order of things, even if possible, would have involved returning to the day of stagecoaches. Oppressive and intolerable as was the regime of the great consolidations of capital, even its victims, while they cursed it, were forced to admit the prodigious increase of efficiency which had been imparted to the national industries, the vast economies affected by concentration of management and unity of organization, and to confess that since the new system had taken the place of the old, the wealth of the world had increased at a rate before undreamed of. To be sure, this vast increase had gone chiefly to make the rich richer, increasing the gap between them and the poor, but the fact remained that as a means merely of producing wealth, capital had been proved efficient in proportion to its consolidation. The restoration of the old system with the subdivision of capital, if it were possible, might indeed bring back a greater equality of conditions with more individual dignity and freedom, but it would be at the price of general poverty and the rest of material progress. Was there, then, no way of commanding the services of the mighty wealth-producing principle of consolidated capital without bowing down to a plutocracy like that of cartage? As soon as men began to ask themselves these questions, they found the answer ready for them. The movement toward the conduct of business by larger and larger aggregations of capital, the tendency toward monopolies which had been so desperately and vainly resisted, was recognized at last in its true significance as a process which only needed to complete its logical evolution to open a golden future to humanity. Early in the last century the evolution was completed by the final consolidation of the entire capital of the nation. The industry and commerce of the country seizing to be conducted by a set of irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their caprice and for their profit, were interested to a single syndicate representing the people, to be conducted in the common interest for the common profit. The nation, that is to say, organized as the one great business corporation in which all other corporations were absorbed. It became the one capitalist in the place of all other capitalists, the sole employer, the final monopoly in which all previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed up, a monopoly in the profits and economies of which all citizens shared. The epoch of trusts had ended in the great trust. In a word the people of the United States concluded to assume the conduct of their own business just as one hundred odd years before they'd assumed the conduct of their own government, organizing now for industrial purposes on precisely the same grounds that they had then organized for political purposes. At last, strangely laid in the world's history, the obvious fact was perceived that no business is so essentially the public business as the industry and commerce on which the people's livelihood depends, and that to entrust it to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly, similar in kind, though vastly greater in magnitude, to that of surrendering the functions of political government to kings and nobles to be conducted for their personal glorification. Such a stupendous change as you describe, said I, did not, of course, take place without great bloodshed and terrible convulsions. On the contrary, replied Dr. Leet, there was absolutely no violence. The change had been long foreseen. Public opinion had become fully ripe for it, and the whole mass of the people was behind it. There was no more possibility of opposing it by force than by argument. On the other hand, the popular sentiment toward the great corporations and those identified with them had ceased to be one of bitterness as they came to realize their necessity as a link, a transition phase, in the evolution of the true industrial system. The most violent foes of the great private monopolies were now forced to recognize how invaluable and indispensable had been their office in educating the people up to the point of assuming control of their own business. Fifty years before, the consolidation of the industries of the country and their national control would have seemed a very daring experiment to their most sanguine. But by a series of object lessons seen and studied by all men, the great corporations had taught the people an entirely new set of ideas on this subject. They had seen for many years syndicates handling revenues greater than those of states, and directing the labors of hundreds of thousands of men with an efficiency and economy unattainable in smaller operations. It had come to be recognized as an axiom that the larger the business, the simpler the principles that can be applied to it, that as the machine is truer than the hand, so the system, which in a great concern does the work of the master's eye in a small business, turns out more accurate results. Thus it came about that thanks to the corporations themselves, when it was proposed that the nation should assume their functions, the suggestion implied nothing which seemed impracticable even to the timid. To be sure it was a step beyond any yet taken, a broader generalization, but the very fact that the nation would be the sole corporation in the field would, it was seen, relieve the undertaking of many difficulties with which the partial monopolies had contended. Dr. Lied seized speaking, and I remained silent, endeavouring to form some general conception of the changes in the arrangements of society implied in the tremendous revolution which he had described. Finally I said, the idea of such an extension of the functions of government is, to say the least, rather overwhelming. Extension, he repeated. Where is the extension? In my day, I replied, it was considered that the proper functions of government, strictly speaking, were limited to keeping the peace and defending the people against the public enemy, that is, to the military and police powers, and in Heaven's name, who are the public enemies, exclaimed Dr. Lied. Are they France, England, Germany, or hunger, cold, and nakedness? In your day governments were accustomed, on the slightest international misunderstanding, to seize upon the bodies of citizens and deliver them over, by hundreds of thousands, to death and mutilation, wasting their treasures the while like water, and all this oftenest for no imaginable profit to the victims. We have no wars now, and our governments no war powers, but in order to protect every citizen against hunger, cold, and nakedness, and provide for all his physical and mental needs, the function is assumed of directing his industry for a term of years. No, Mr. West, I am sure, on reflection, you will perceive that it was in your age, not in ours, that the extension of the functions of governments was extraordinary. Not even for the best ends would men now allow their governments such powers as were then used for the most maleficent. Leaving comparisons aside, I said, the demagoguery and corruption of our public men would have been considered in my day insuperable objections to any assumption by government of the charge of the national industries. We should have thought that no arrangement could be worse than to entrust the politicians with control of the wealth- producing machinery of the country. Its material interests were quite too much the football of parties as it was. No doubt you were right, rejoined Dr. Leet, but all that is changed now. We have no parties or politicians, and as for demagoguery and corruption, they are words having only an historical significance. Human nature itself must have changed very much, I said. Not at all, was Dr. Leet's reply, but conditions of human life have changed, and with them the motives of human action. The organisation of society with you was such that officials were under a constant temptation to misuse their power for the private profit of themselves or others, and as such circumstances it seems almost strange that you dared and trust them with any of your affairs. Nowadays, on the contrary, society is so constituted that there is absolutely no way in which an official, however ill-disposed, could possibly make any profit for himself or anyone else by a misuse of his power. Let him be as bad an official as you please, he cannot be a corrupt one. There is no motive to be. The social system no longer offers a premium on dishonesty, but these are matters which you can only understand as you come with time to know us better. But you have not yet told me how you've settled labour problem. It is the problem of capital which we've been discussing, I said. After the nation had assumed conduct of the mills, machinery, railroads, farms, mines, and capital in general of the country, the labour questions still remained. In assuming the responsibilities of capital, the nation had assumed the difficulties of the capitalist's position. The moment the nation assumed the responsibilities of capital, those difficulties vanished, replied Dr. Lied. The national organisation of labour under one direction was the complete solution of what was, in your day and under your system, justly regarded as the insoluble labour problem. When the nation became the sole employer, all the citizens by virtue of their citizenship became employees to be distributed according to the needs of industry. That is, I suggested. You have simply applied the principle of universal military service, as it was understood in our day, to the labour question. Yes, said Dr. Lied. That was something which followed as a matter of cause as soon as the nation had become the sole capitalist. The people were already accustomed to the idea that the obligation of every citizen, not physically disabled, to contribute his military services to the defence of the nation was equal and absolute. That it was equally the duty of every citizen to contribute his quota of industrial or intellectual services to the maintenance of the nation was equally evident, though it was not until the nation became the employer of labour that citizens were able to render this sort of service with any pretense either of universality or equity. No organisation of labour was possible when the employing power was divided among hundreds or thousands of individuals and corporations, between which concert of any kind was neither desired nor indeed feasible. It constantly happened then that vast numbers who desired to labour could find no opportunity, and on the other hand those who desired to evade a part or all of their debt could easily do so. Service now, I suppose, is compulsory upon all, I suggested. It is rather a matter of cause than of compulsion, replied Dr. Lied. It is regarded as so absolutely natural and reasonable that the idea of its being compulsory has ceased to be thought of. He would be thought to be an incredibly contemptible person who should need compulsion in such a case. Nevertheless, the speak of service being compulsory would be a weak way to state its absolute inevitableness. Our entire social order is so wholly based upon and deduced from it that if it were conceivable that a man could escape it, he would be left with no possible way to provide for his existence. He would have excluded himself from the world, cut himself off from his kind in a word committed suicide. Is the term of service in this industrial army for life? Oh no, it both begins later and ends earlier than the average working period in your day. Your workshops were filled with children and old men, but we halt the period of youth sacred to education and the period of maturity when the physical forces begin to flag equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation. The period of industrial service is 24 years, beginning at the close of the cause of education at 21 and terminating at 45. After 45, while discharged from labor, the citizen still remains liable to special calls in case of emergencies, calling a sudden great increase in the demand for labor till he reaches the age of 55. But such calls are rarely in fact almost never made. The 15th day of October of every year is what we call muster day because those who have reached the age of 21 are then mustered into the industrial service and at the same time those who after 24 years service have reached the age of 45 are honourably mustered out. It is the great day of the year with us once we reckon all other events are Olympiad, save that it is annual. It is after you've mustered your industrial army into service, I said, that I should expect the chief difficulty to arise. For there it's an allergy, with a military army must seize. Soldiers have all the same thing and a very simple thing to do, namely to practice the manual of arms, to march and stand guard. But the industrial army must learn and follow two or three hundred diverse trades and applications. What administrative talent can be equal to determining wisely what trade or business every individual in a great nation shall pursue? The administration has nothing to do with determining that point. Who does determine it then? I asked. Every man for himself, in accordance with his natural aptitude, yet most pains being taken to enable him to find out what his natural aptitude really is. The principle in which our industrial army is organised is that a man's natural endowments, mental and physical, determine what he can work at most profitably to the nation and most satisfactorily to himself. While the obligation of service in some form is not to be evaded, voluntary election, subject only to necessary regulation, is depended on to determine the particular sort of service every man is to render. As an individual's satisfaction during his term of service depends on his having an occupation to his taste, parents and teachers watch from early years for indications of special aptitudes in children. A thorough study of the national industrial system with the history and rudiments of all the great trades is an essential part of our educational system. While manual training is not allowed to encroach on the general intellectual culture to which our schools are devoted, it is carried far enough to give our youth, in addition to their theoretical knowledge of the national industries, mechanical and agricultural, a certain familiarity with their tools and methods. Our schools are constantly visiting our workshops and often are taken on long excursions to inspect particular industrial enterprises. In your day a man was not ashamed to be grossly ignorant of all trades except his own, but such ignorance would not be consistent with our idea of placing everyone in a position to select intelligently the occupation for which he has most taste. Usually, long before he is mustered into service, a young man has found out the pursuit he wants to follow has acquired a great deal of knowledge about it and is waiting impatiently the time when he can enlist in its ranks. Surely, I said, it can hardly be that the number of volunteers for any trade is exactly the number needed in that trade. It must be generally either under or over the demand. The supply of volunteers is always expected to fully equal the demand, replied Dr. Lied. It is the business of the administration to see that this is the case. The rate of volunteering for each trade is closely watched. If there be a noticeably greater excess of volunteers over men needed in any trade, it is inferred that the trade offers greater attractions than others. On the other hand, if the number of volunteers for a trade tends to drop below the demand, it is inferred that it is stored more arduous. It is the business of the administration to seek constantly to equalize the attractions for the trades, so far as the conditions of labour in them are concerned, so that all trades shall be equally attractive to persons having natural tastes for them. This is done by making the hours of labour in different trades to differ according to their arduousness. The lighter trades prosecuted under the most agreeable circumstances have in this way the longest hours, while an arduous trade, such as mining, has very short hours. There is no theory, no a priori rule by which the respective attractiveness of industries is determined. The administration, in taking burdens of one class of workers and adding them to other classes, simply follows the fluctuations of opinion among the workers themselves as indicated by the rate of volunteering. The principle is that no man's work ought to be, on the whole, harder for him than any other man's for him, the workers themselves to be the judges. There are no limits to the application of this rule. If any particular occupation is in itself so arduous and so oppressive that, in order to induce volunteers, the day's work in it had to be reduced to ten minutes it would be done. If even then no man was willing to do it, it would remain undone. That, of course, in point of fact, a moderate reduction in the hours of labour or addition of other privileges suffices to secure all needed volunteers for any occupation necessary to men. If, indeed, the unavoidable difficulties and dangers of such a necessary pursuit was so great that no inducement of compensating advantages would overcome man's repugnance to it, the administration would only need to take it out of the common order of occupations by declaring it extra hazardous and those who pursued it especially worthy of their national gratitude to be overrun with volunteers. Our young men are very greedy of honour and do not let slip such opportunities. Of course, you will see that dependence on the purely voluntary choice of avocations involves the abolition in all of anything like unhygienic conditions or special peril to live and limp. Health and safety are conditions common to all industries. The nation does not maim and slaughter its workmen by thousands, as it the private capitalists and corporations of your day. When there are more who want to enter a particular trade than there is room for, how do you decide between the applicants? I inquired. Preference is given to those who have acquired the most knowledge of the trade they wish to follow. No man, however, who through successive years remains persisted in his desire to show what he can do at any particular trade, is in the end denied an opportunity. Meanwhile, if a man cannot at first win entrance into the business he prefers, he has usually one or more alternative preferences, pursuits for which he has some degree of aptitude, although not the highest. Every one, indeed, is expected to study his aptitudes so as to have not only first choice as the occupation, but a second or third, so that if either at the outset of his career or subsequently, owing to the progress of invention or changes in demand, he is unable to follow his first vacation, he can still find reasonably congenial employment. This principle of secondary choices as the occupation is quite important in our system. I should add, in reference to the counter possibility of some sudden failure of volunteers in a particular trade, or some sudden necessity of an increased force, that the administration, while depending on the voluntary system fulfilling up the trades as a rule, holds always in reserve the power to call for special volunteers, or draft any force needed from any quarter. Generally, however, all needs of this sort can be met by details from the class of unskilled or common labourers. How is this class of common labourers recruited? I asked. Surely nobody voluntarily enters that. It is the grade to which all new recruits belong for the first three years of their service. It is not till after this period during which he is assignable to any work at the discretion of his superiors that the young man is allowed to elect a special evocation. These three years of stringent discipline none are exempt from, and very glad our young man are to pass from this severe school into the comparative liberty of the trades. If a man were so stupid as to have no choice as to occupation, he would simply remain a common labourer. But such cases, as you may suppose, are not common. Having once elected and entered on a trade or occupation, I remarked, I suppose he has to stick to it the rest of his life. Not necessarily, replied Dr. Leet. While frequent and merely capricious changes of occupation are not encouraged or even permitted, every worker is allowed, of course, under certain regulations, and in accordance with the exigencies of the service, to volunteer for another industry which he thinks would suit him better than his first choice. In this case his application is received just as if he were volunteering for the first time and on the same terms. Not only this, but a worker may likewise, under suitable regulations and not too frequently, obtain a transfer to an establishment of the same industry in another part of the country which for any reason he may prefer. Under your system a discontented man could indeed leave his work at will, but he left his means of support at the same time and took his chances as the future livelihood. We find that the number of men who wished to abandon an accustomed occupation for a new one and old friends and associations for strange ones is small. It is only the poor sort of workmen who desire to change even as frequently as our regulations permit. Of course transfers or discharges when health demands them are always given. As an industrial system I should think this might be extremely efficient, I said, but I don't see that it makes any provision for the professional classes, the men who serve the nation with brains instead of hands. Of course you can't get along without the brain-workers. How then are they selected from those who are to serve as farmers and mechanics? That must require a very delicate sort of sifting process, I should say. So it does, replied Dr. Lied. The most delicate possible test is needed here, and so we leave the question whether a man shall be a brain or hand-worker entirely to him to settle. At the end of the term of three years as a common labourer which every man must serve, it is for him to choose in accordance to his natural tastes whether he will fit himself for an art or profession or be a farmer or mechanic. If he feels that he can do better work with his brains than his muscles, he finds every facility provided for testing the reality of a supposed bend, of cultivating it, and if fit of pursuing it as his application. The schools of technology, of medicine, of art, of music, of histionics, and of higher liberal learning are always open to aspirants without condition. Are not the schools fluttered with young men whose only motive is to avoid work? Dr. Lied smiled a little grimly. No one is at all likely to enter the professional schools for the purpose of avoiding work, I assure you, he said. They are intended for those with special aptitude for the branches they teach, and anyone without it would find it easier to do double hours at his trade than try to keep up with the classes. Of course many honestly mistake their vocation, and finding themselves unequal to the requirements of the schools, drop out and return to the industrial service. No discredit attaches to such persons, for the public policy is to encourage all to develop suspected talents which only actual tests can prove the reality of. The professional and scientific schools of your day, dependent on the patronage of their pupils for support, and the practice appears to have been common of giving diplomas to unfit persons who afterwards found their way into the professions. Our schools are national institutions, and to have passed their tests is a proof of special abilities not to be questioned. This opportunity for a professional training, the doctor continued, remains open to every man till the age of thirty is reached, after which students are not received, as they would remain too brief a period before the age of discharge in which to serve their nation in their professions. In your day, young men had to choose their professions very young, and therefore, in a large proportion of instances, holiness took their vocations. It is recognized nowadays that the natural aptitudes of some are later than those of others in developing, and therefore, while the choice of profession may be made as early as twenty full, it remains open for six years longer. A question which had a dozen times before binomial lips now found utterance, a question which touched upon what, in my time, had been regarded the most vital difficulty in the way of any final settlement of the industrial problem. It is an extraordinary thing, I said, that you should not yet have said a word about the method of adjusting wages. Since the nation is a sole employer, the government must fix the rate of wages and determine just how much everybody shall earn, from the doctors to the diggers. All I can say is that this plan would never have worked with us, and I don't see how it can now, unless human nature has changed. In my day, nobody was satisfied with his wages or salary. Even if he felt he received enough, he was sure his neighbour had too much, which was as bad. If the universal discontent on this subject, instead of being dissipated in curses and strikes directed against innumerable employers, could have been concentrated upon one, and that the government, the strongest ever devised, would not have seen two paydays. Dr. Leed laughed heartily. Very true, very true, he said. A general strike would most probably have followed the first payday, and a strike directed against the government is a revolution. How, then, do you avoid a revolution every payday? I demanded. Has some prodigious philosopher devised a new system of calculus, satisfactory to all, for determining the exact and comparative value of all sorts of service, whether by brawn or brain, by hand or voice, by ear or eye, or has a human nature itself changed, so that no man looks upon his own things, but every man on the things of his neighbour. One or the other of these events must be the explanation. Neither one or the other, however, is, was my host laughing response. And now, Mr. West, he continued, you must remember that you are my patient, as well as my guest, and permit me to prescribe sleep for you, before we have any more conversation. It is out of the question It is after three o'clock. The prescription is, no doubt, a wise one, I said. I only hope it can be filled. I will see to that, the doctor replied, and he did, for he gave me a wine glass of something or other, which sent me to sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. End of chapter seven