Article description: (description ) This attribute controls the content of the description and og:description elements. | LOOKING BACKWARD
From 2000 to 1887
by
Edward Bellamy
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Historical Section Shawmut 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 wellnigh incredible does it seem that
so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place
since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval! The
readiness with which men accustom themselves, as matters of course, to
improvements in their condition, which, when anticipated, seemed to
leave nothing more to be desired, could not be more strikingly
illustrated. What reflection could be better calculated to moderate the
enthusiasm of reformers who count for their reward on the 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. Warned by a teacher's experience
that learning is accounted a weariness 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 he 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 course, may at times find Dr. Leete's
explanations of them rather trite--but it must be remembered that to
Dr. Leete's guest they were not matters of course, 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.
JTABLE 5 28 1
Chapter 1
I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857. "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 26th, one day after
Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, 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, 2000.
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 the 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 the latter part
of the nineteenth century the civilization of to-day, or anything like
it, did not exist, although the elements which were to develop it were
already in ferment. 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 labor of others,
rendering no sort of service in return. My parents and grand-parents
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 said 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 nineteenth 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 at 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, every one 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 ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a
terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this
might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the
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 the 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; commiseration 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 agonized 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 the 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
twentieth 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 grand-parents 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
dehumanized the form than any former device 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 twentieth 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 waited 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 neighboring 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
brick-layers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and other trades
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 laborers pursue their avocation
steadily for more than a few months at a time.
The reader who observes the dates alluded to will of course recognize
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 all so
plain in the retrospect that a child can understand it, but 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 workingman and the employer, between
labor 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 it 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
any one 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
laboring 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
of their dead earnestness.
As to the final outcome of the labor 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 workingmen 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 laboring men were contending with, these maintained, but the
iron-bound 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 less sanguine admitted all this. Of course the workingmen's
aspirations were impossible of fulfillment for natural reasons, but
there were grounds to fear that they would not discover this fact until
they had made a sad mess 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 of the ladder of civilization, 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 civilization 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 men
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 labor troubles, their causes,
course, 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.
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
remember distinctly how exasperated I was at this, and the
objurgations, 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 the desultory conversation which followed, upon the
unprincipled conduct of the labor 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'm 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 Chinamen knew what they were about,"
somebody added, "when they refused to let in our western civilization.
They knew what it would lead to better than we did. They saw it was
nothing but dynamite in disguise."
After this, I remember 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 mourning
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 good-by as usual. There was
no circumstance out of the common to distinguish this parting from
previous occasions when we had bade each other good-by 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 had 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 Sawyer, 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 wind-mill on the top of the house, insured the renewal of air.
It might seem that the 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 the third without sensations of drowsiness, I called in
Dr. Pillsbury.
He 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 mesmerizing process. The process for
awaking 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 Edith 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 mesmerizer'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 Edith. 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 new strikes, he said, had
postponed indefinitely the completion of the contract, as neither
masters nor workmen 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 this letter I am afraid that for a
moment I was capable of wishing the same thing concerning the laboring
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 some
one 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 had better see but one of us at
first."
"Promise me, then, that you will not tell him."
The first voice was a man's, the second a woman's, and both spoke in
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 is
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," was the reply.
"How came I here?"
"We will talk about that when you are stronger. Meanwhile, I beg you
will feel no anxiety. You are among friends and in good hands. How do
you feel?"
"A bit queerly," 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."
"There 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 are a little more yourself. Will you oblige me by taking
a couple of swallows of this mixture? It will do you good. I am a
physician."
I repelled the glass with my hand and sat 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 have been doing
with me," I said.
"My dear sir," responded 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 draught, 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 you how you came here.
You can tell me quite as much on that point as I can tell you. You have
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 Sawyer orders to call me at nine o'clock. What
has become of Sawyer?"
"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
have 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 30th."
"Pardon me, the 30th of what?"
"Why, of this month, of course, unless I have slept into 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 is incredible."
"We shall see," replied my companion; "you say that it was May 30th
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 draught 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 course 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 course. 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 one hundred and thirteen
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 afterward 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. He 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 one hundred and
thirteen 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, 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
lineaments ever gave true evidence, it was certain that this man by my
side, with a face so refined and ingenuous, 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 learned the secret of my underground chamber and taken this
means of impressing me with the peril of mesmeric experiments. There
were great difficulties in the way of this theory; Sawyer 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.
"You have 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 color 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 your
surprise when I told you how long you had been asleep?"
"You said, I believe, that I had 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
trance 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 trance when the external
conditions protect the body from physical injury. This trance 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 trance
hypothesis did not appear to confuse him in the slightest degree.
"Perhaps," I said, "you will go on and favor 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
the truth. You must know that these many years I have been cherishing
the idea of building a laboratory in the large garden beside this
house, for the purpose of chemical experiments for which I have a
taste. Last Thursday the excavation for the cellar was at last begun.
It was completed by that night, and Friday the masons were to 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 a little earth from it, and, finding that it
seemed part of a large mass, determined to investigate it. The workmen
I sent for unearthed an oblong 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 he
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 whom I had summoned with
amazement. That the art of such embalming as this had ever been known
we should not have believed, yet here 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 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 had looked at as I tied my cravat before going
to Edith 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. Indignation mastered my mind as I realized 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 trance, 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 farrago, I am 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 am 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 commiseration, 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 house-top. "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 inclosures, stretched in every
direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with
trees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the 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 harbor stretched before me within its
headlands, not one of its green islets missing.
I knew then that I had been told the truth concerning the prodigious
thing which had befallen me.
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, where he insisted on my drinking a glass or two of good
wine and partaking of a light repast.
"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 course, 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 had told me," I replied, profoundly awed, "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 Leete, Dr. Leete 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 site of your own, I hope you
will find it easy to make yourself at home in it."
After my refreshment Dr. Leete offered me a bath and a change of
clothing, of which I gladly availed myself.
It did not appear that any very startling revolution in men's attire
had been among the great changes my host had spoken of, for, barring a
few details, my new habiliments 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, wellnigh forget his former 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
former life was, as it were, in abeyance.
No sooner did I find myself physically rehabilitated through the kind
offices of my host, than I became eager to return to the house-top; and
presently we were comfortably established there in easy-chairs, with
the city beneath and around us. After Dr. Leete 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 the complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is the 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. Leete. "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 contrary, there is no destination of the
surplus wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which all enjoy
in equal degree."
The sun had been setting as we returned to the house-top, and as we
talked night descended upon the city.
"It is growing dark," said Dr. Leete. "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 assented
with alacrity 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. Leete 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 luxuriance 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 may be 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 ingenuous sincerity and
frankness such as but rarely crown 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 waifs from another century, so
perfect was their tact.
For my own part, never do I remember the operations of my mind to 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.[1]
Edith Leete 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 the chief motive
of her interest, it could but affect me as it would not have done had
she been less beautiful.
Dr. Leete, as well as the ladies, seemed greatly interested in my
account of the circumstances under which I had gone to sleep in the
underground chamber. All had suggestions to offer to account for my
having been forgotten there, and the 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. Let 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 the site had been
again built upon, at least immediately, such an excavation would have
been necessary, but the troublous 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. Leete said,
that for more than half a century at least it had been open ground.
[1] 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 latter 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.
Chapter 5
When, in the course of the evening the ladies retired, leaving Dr.
Leete 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 am 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 faced 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 am 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 have no
anxiety about sleeping; whenever I wanted to go to bed, he would give
me a dose which would insure me a sound night's sleep without fail.
Next morning, no doubt, I would awake with the feeling of an old
citizen.
"Before I acquired that," I replied, "I must know a little more about
the sort of Boston I have come back to. You told me when we were upon
the house-top 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 am very curious to know what some of the
changes have been. To make a beginning somewhere, for the subject is
doubtless a large one, what solution, if any, have you found for the
labor 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 forthcoming. It is 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 labor question is known nowadays," replied Dr.
Leete, "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
fact, 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 recognize
and cooperate 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 recognized."
"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 singular 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
realize, so obvious and unmistakable as we look back seem the
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 prospects of
society in 1887. You must, at least, have realized 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 realize that," I replied. "We felt that society
was dragging anchor and in danger of going adrift. Whither it would
drift nobody could say, but all feared the rocks."
"Nevertheless," said Dr. Leete, "the set of the current was perfectly
perceptible if you had but taken pains to observe it, and it was not
toward the rocks, but toward a deeper channel."
"We had a popular proverb," I replied, "that 'hindsight is better than
foresight,' 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 house-top to-day on a heap of charred and
moss-grown ruins instead of this glorious city."
Dr. Leete had listened to me with close attention and nodded
thoughtfully as I finished speaking. "What you have said," he observed,
"will be regarded as a most valuable vindication of Storiot, whose
account of your era has been generally thought exaggerated in its
picture of the gloom and confusion of men'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 were lighted and drawing well that he resumed. "Since you are in
the humor 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 descent by asking you one to begin with. What should
you name as the most prominent feature of the labor troubles of your
day?"
"Why, the strikes, of course," I replied.
"Exactly; but what made the strikes so formidable?"
"The great labor organizations."
"And what was the motive of these great organizations?"
"The workmen claimed they had to organize to get their rights from the
big corporations," I replied.
"That is just it," said Dr. Leete; "the organization of labor 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 workman 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, workingmen were constantly becoming employers
and there was no hard and fast line between the two classes. Labor
unions were needless then, and general strikes out of the question. But
when the era of small concerns with small capital was succeeded by that
of the great aggregations of capital, all this was changed. The
individual laborer, 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
grade of employer was closed to him. Self-defense 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 it threatened
society with a form of tyranny more abhorrent than it 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 clamor
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 railroads had gone on combining till a
few great syndicates controlled every rail in the land. In
manufactories, every important staple 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 |