Economics
Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy, American social reformer, who sprang into fame in the last decade of the nineteenth century by his book, “Looking Backward,” was born in Massachusetts, on March 25, 1850. Trained for the Bar, he became a journalist, and devoted his pen to the propaganda of socialism. After the unprecedented success of his socialist novel, in which he describes a suppositious twentieth century revolution from the standpoint of a hypnotised sleeper awakened in 2000 a.d., his modest home at Chicopee Falls became a recognised centre of the socialist movement in the United States. “Looking Backward” was published in 1888, and was followed by “Equality,” in which he expounded his political doctrines in dialogue form, the story being treated merely as a sequel to the earlier book, and entirely subordinated to the more serious aim. We have here preferred to classify “Looking Backward” as a work of philosophy, and not as fiction. Bellamy’s championship of the rights of the disinherited, and his enlightened ideas, conveyed in a by no means unimaginative style, gained him many friends and sympathisers. Bellamy died on May 22, 1898.
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 assure 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 accumulated 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 masses were harnessed and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road, with Hunger for driver. The passengers 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 classes 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 passed,” 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!” ejaculated 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 assume the conduct of their own business, just as a hundred odd years earlier they had assumed 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 nobles 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 assume 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 assumed 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 assuming 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 constituted 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 Régime
“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 aptitude, the utmost pains being taken to enable him to find out what his natural aptitude 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 class 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 aptitude would find it easier to do double hours at his trade than try to keep up with the classes. This opportunity for a professional training remains open to every man till the age of thirty.”
IV.—The New Plan
Dr. and Mrs. Leete were startled to learn I had been all over the city alone. “You must have seen a good many new things,” said Mrs. Leete, as we sat down to table.
“I think what surprised me as much as anything was not to find any stores in Washington Street, or any banks of State. What have you done with the merchants and bankers?”
“Their functions are obsolete in the modern world. There is neither selling nor buying, and we have no money. As soon as the nation became the producer of all sorts of commodities, there was no need of exchanges between individuals. Everything was procurable from one source, and that only. A system of direct distribution from the national storehouses took the place of trade, and for this money was unnecessary.”
“How is this distribution managed?”
“A credit, corresponding to his share of the annual product of the nation, is given to every citizen on the public books at the beginning of each year, and a credit-card issued him, with which he procures at the public stores, found in every community, whatever he desires, whenever he desires it.
“You observe,” he pursued, as I was curiously examining the piece of pasteboard he gave me, “that this credit-card is issued for a certain number of dollars. We keep the old term dollars as an algebraical symbol for comparing the values of products with one another. All are priced in dollars and cents, just as in your day. The value of what I procure on this card is checked off by the clerk, who pricks out of these tiers of squares the price of what I order.”
“If you wanted to buy something of your neighbour, could you transfer part of your credit to him?”
“Our neighbours have nothing to sell us; but, in any event, one’s credit would not be transferable, being strictly personal. Before the nation could even think of honouring any such transfer, it would be bound to inquire into its equity. It would have been reason enough, had there been no other, for abolishing money, that its possession was no indication of rightful title to it. In the hands of the man who had stolen it, it was as good as if earned by industry.
“People nowadays interchange gifts, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence and disinterestedness which should prevail between citizens. According to our ideas, the practice of buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilisation.”
“What if you have to spend more than your card allows in any one year?”
“If extraordinary expenses should exhaust it we can obtain a limited advance on next year’s credit at a heavy discount. If a man showed himself a reckless spendthrift he would receive his allowance monthly or weekly instead of yearly, or, if necessary, not be permitted to handle it at all.”
“If you don’t spend your allowance, I suppose it accumulates?”
“That is also permitted to a certain extent when a special outlay is anticipated. But unless notice is given, it is presumed that the citizen who does not fully expend his credit did not have occasion to do so, and the balance is turned into the general surplus.”
“Such a system does not encourage saving habits.”
“It is not intended to. No man has care for the morrow, either for himself or his children, for the nation guarantees the nurture, education, and maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.”
“But what inducement can a man have to put forth his best endeavours when, however much or little he accomplishes, his income remains the same?”
“Does it then really seem to you that human nature is insensible to any motives save fear of want and love of luxury, that you expect security and equality of livelihood to leave men without incentives to effort? Your contemporaries did not really think so. When it was a question of the grandest class of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they depended on quite other motives. Not higher wages, but honour and the hope of men’s gratitude, patriotism, and the inspiration of duty were the motives they set before their soldiers. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer self-service, but service of the nation, patriotism—passion for humanity—impels the worker as in your day it did the soldier.”
During the next few days I investigated many other of the social and domestic arrangements of Bostonians of the twenty-first century, and from what I saw myself and heard from my hosts, I gained some tolerably clear ideas of modern organisation, and the system of distribution. But it seemed to me that the system of production and the direction of the industrial army must be wonderfully complex and difficult.
“I assure you that it is nothing of the kind,” said Dr. Leete. “The entire field of production and constructive industry is divided into ten great departments, each representing a group of allied industries, each industry being in turn represented by a subordinate bureau, which has a complete record of the plant and force under its control, of the present output, and means of increasing it. The estimates of the distributive department, after adoption by the administration, are sent as mandates to the ten great departments, which allot them to the subordinate bureaus representing the particular industries, and these set the men at work. Each bureau is responsible for the task given it. Even if in the hands of the consumer an article turns out unfit, the system enables the fault to be traced back to the original workman. After the necessary contingents of labour have been detailed for the various industries, the amount of labour left for other employment is expended in creating fixed capital, such as buildings, machinery, engineering works, and so forth.”
That evening and the next following I sat up late talking with Dr. Leete of the changes of the last hundred and thirteen years; but on the Sunday, my first in the twenty-first century, I fell into a state of profound depression, accentuated by consideration of the vast moral gap between the century to which I belonged and that in which I found myself. There was no place anywhere for me. I was neither dead nor properly alive. Now I realised the mingled pity, curiosity, and aversion which I, as a representative of an abhorred epoch, must excite in all around me; but that Edith Leete must share their feelings was more than I could bear.
Towards nightfall I entered the subterranean chamber and sat down there, feeling utterly alone. Presently Edith stood in the door.
“Has it never occurred to you,” I said, “that my position is more utterly alone than any human being’s ever was before?”
“Oh, you must not talk in that way. You don’t know how it makes me feel to see you so forlorn,” she exclaimed.
I caught her hands in my own. “Are you so blind as not to see why such kindness as you have all shown me is not enough to make me happy?”
“Are you sure it is not you who are blind?” she said.
That was all; but it was enough, for it told me that this radiant daughter of a golden age had bestowed upon me not alone her pity, but her love. And now I first knew what was perhaps the strangest feature of my strange experience: Edith was the great grand-daughter of no other than my lost love Edith Bartlett.