The World's Greatest Books - Volume 14 Part 16

_I.--The Great Change_

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 26, one day after Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I, Julian West, first breathed the east wind of Boston, which, I a.s.sure the reader, was at that remote period marked by the same penetrating quality characterising it in the present year of grace, 2000.

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. Why, you ask, should the world have supported in utter idleness one who was able to render service? The answer is, that my great-grandfather had acc.u.mulated a sum of money, on the yield of which his descendants had ever since lived. "Interest on investments" was a species of tax on industry which a person possessing or inheriting money was then able to levy, in spite of all the efforts to put down usury.

I cannot do better than compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach to which the ma.s.ses were harnessed and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road, with Hunger for driver. The pa.s.sengers comfortably seated on the top would call down encouragingly to the toilers at the rope, exhorting them to patience; but always expected to be drawn and not to pull, because, as they thought, they were not like their brothers who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher order of beings.

In 1887, I was engaged to wed Edith Bartlett. She, like myself, rode on the top of the coach. Our marriage only awaited the completion of a house, which, however, was delayed by a series of strikes. I remember Mr. Bartlett saying: "The working cla.s.ses all over the world seem to be going crazy at once. In Europe it is far worse even than here."

The family mansion, in which I lived alone with a faithful coloured servant by the name of Sawyer, was not a house to which I could think of bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Edith Bartlett. Being a sufferer from insomnia, I had caused a secret sleeping chamber to be built of stone beneath the foundation, and when even the silence of this retreat failed to bring slumber, I sometimes called in a professional mesmeriser to put me into a hypnotic sleep, from which Sawyer knew how to arouse me at a given time.

On the night of May 30, 1887, I was put to sleep as usual. That night the house was wholly destroyed by fire; and it was not until a hundred and thirteen years later, in September 2000 A.D., that the subterranean chamber was discovered, and myself, the sleeper, aroused by Dr. Leete, a physician of Boston on the retired list. My companion, Dr. Leete, led the way to a belvedere on the house-top. "Be pleased to look around you," he said, "and tell me whether 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 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 before seen this city, nor one comparable to it. 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 with its headlands, not one of its green islets missing.

"If you had told me," I said, 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 pa.s.sed," he answered; "but many a millennium in the world's history has seen changes less extraordinary."

_II.--How the Great Change Came About_

After Dr. Leete had responded to numerous questions on my part, he asked in what point the contrast between the new and the old city struck me most forcibly.

"To speak of small things before great," I replied, "I really think that the complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is the detail that first impressed me."

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed my companion. "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 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 was inconsistent with much public spirit. Nowadays, there is no destination of the surplus wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which all enjoy in equal degree.

It is growing dark," he added. "Let us descend into the house; I want to introduce my wife and daughter to you."

The apartment in which we found the ladies, 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, while her daughter, in the first blush of womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. In this lovely creature feminine softness and delicacy were deliciously combined with an appearance of health and abounding physical vitality too often lacking in the maidens with whom alone I could compare her. The evening which followed was certainly unique in the history of social intercourse.

When the ladies retired, Dr. Leete sounded me as to my disposition for sleep, but gladly bore me company when I confessed I was afraid of it. I was curious, too, as to the changes.

"To make a beginning somewhere," said I, "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 forthcoming."

"The riddle may be said to have solved itself," replied Dr. Leete. "The solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution which could not have terminated otherwise. The movement toward the conduct of business by larger and larger aggregations of capital--the tendency toward monopolies, which had been desperately and vainly resisted--was recognised at last as a process to a golden future.

"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, ceasing to be conducted by a set of irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their caprice and for their profit, were entrusted to a single syndicate representing the people, to be conducted for the common profit. That is to say, the nation organised itself as one great business corporation in which all other corporations were absorbed. It became the one capitalist, the sole employer, the final monopoly, in the profits and economies of which all citizens shared. The epoch of trusts ended in the Great Trust. In a word, the people of the United States concluded to a.s.sume the conduct of their own business, just as a hundred odd years earlier they had a.s.sumed the conduct of their own government. Strangely late 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 n.o.bles to be conducted for their personal glorification."

"So stupendous a change," said I, "did not, of course, take place without bloodshed and terrible convulsions?"

"On the contrary, there was absolutely no violence. The great corporations had taught an entirely new set of ideas. The people had seen syndicates handling revenues; greater than those of states, and directing the labours of hundreds of thousands of men with an efficiency unattainable in smaller operations. It had come to be recognised 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, thanks to the corporations themselves, when it was proposed that the nation should a.s.sume their functions, the suggestion implied nothing that seemed impracticable."

"In my day," said I, "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."

"And, in heaven's name, who are the public enemies?" exclaimed Dr.

Leete. "Are they France, England, Germany? or Hunger, Cold, 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 a.s.sumed of directing his industry for a term of years. 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 government a.s.suming charge of the national industries."

"No doubt you were right," rejoined Dr. Leete; "but all that is changed.

We have no parties or politicians."

"Human nature itself must have changed very much."

"Not at all; but the 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. Now society is so const.i.tuted that there is absolutely no way in which an official could possibly make any profit for himself or anyone else by a misuse of his power."

_III.--Labour's New Regime_

"But you have not yet told me how you have settled the labour problem."

"When the nation became the sole employer," said Dr. Leete, "all the citizens became employees, to be distributed according to the needs of industry."

"That is, you have simply applied the principle of universal military service, as understood in our day, to the labour question."

"Yes. Nevertheless, to speak of service being compulsory would be a weak way to state its absolute inevitableness. If it were conceivable that a man could escape it, he would be left with no possible way to provide for his existence. The period of industrial service is twenty-four years, beginning at the close of the course of education at twenty-one, and terminating at forty-five. After forty-five, the citizen is liable to special calls for labour emergencies till fifty-five."

"But 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. Every man determines it for himself in accordance with his natural apt.i.tude, the utmost pains being taken to enable him to find out what his natural apt.i.tude really is. 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 awaiting impatiently the time when he can enlist in its ranks."

"Surely, it can hardly be that the number of volunteers for any trade is exactly the number needed?"

"The supply is always expected to equal fully the demand. The rate of volunteering is closely watched. It is the business of the administration to equalise the attractions of the trades, so that the lightest trades have the longest hours, while an arduous trade, such as mining, has very short hours."

"How is the cla.s.s of common labourers recruited?"

"It is the grade to which all new recruits belong for the first three years. If a man were so stupid as to have no choice as to occupation, he would simply remain a common labourer."

"Having once elected and entered on a trade or occupation, I suppose he has to stick to it the rest of his life?"

"Not necessarily," replied Dr. Leete; "while frequent and merely capricious changes of occupation are net permitted, every worker is allowed, of course under 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. It is only the poorer sort of workmen who desire to change. Of course, transfers or discharges are always given when health demands them."

"How are the brain-workers selected? That must require a very delicate sort of sifting process?"

"So it does, the most delicate possible test; so we leave the question whether a man shall be a brain or handworker entirely to him to settle.

At the end of the three years of common labour, if a man feels he can do better work with his brain than his muscles, the schools of technology, medicine, art, music, histrionics, and higher liberal learning are open to him without condition. But anyone without the special apt.i.tude would find it easier to do double hours at his trade than try to keep up with the cla.s.ses. This opportunity for a professional training remains open to every man till the age of thirty."