Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887

  Produced by Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines.

  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, enjoyingthe blessings of a social order at once so simple and logical that itseems but the triumph of common sense, it is no doubt difficult forthose whose studies have not been largely historical to realize thatthe present organization of society is, in its completeness, less thana century old. No historical fact is, however, better established thanthat till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the generalbelief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking socialconsequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, tothe end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem thatso prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken placesince then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval! Thereadiness with which men accustom themselves, as matters of course, toimprovements in their condition, which, when anticipated, seemed toleave nothing more to be desired, could not be more strikinglyillustrated. What reflection could be better calculated to moderate theenthusiasm of reformers who count for their reward on the livelygratitude of future ages!

  The object of this volume is to assist persons who, while desiring togain a more definite idea of the social contrasts between thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, are daunted by the formal aspect ofthe histories which treat the subject. Warned by a teacher's experiencethat learning is accounted a weariness to the flesh, the author hassought to alleviate the instructive quality of the book by casting itin the form of a romantic narrative, which he would be glad to fancynot wholly devoid of interest on its own account.

  The reader, to whom modern social institutions and their underlyingprinciples are matters of course, may at times find Dr. Leete'sexplanations of them rather trite--but it must be remembered that toDr. Leete's guest they were not matters of course, and that this bookis written for the express purpose of inducing the reader to forget forthe nonce that they are so to him. One word more. The almost universaltheme of the writers and orators who have celebrated this bimillennialepoch has been the future rather than the past, not the advance thathas been made, but the progress that shall be made, ever onward andupward, till the race shall achieve its ineffable destiny. This iswell, wholly well, but it seems to me that nowhere can we find moresolid ground for daring anticipations of human development during thenext one thousand years, than by "Looking Backward" upon the progressof the last one hundred.

  That this volume may be so fortunate as to find readers whose interestin the subject shall incline them to overlook the deficiencies of thetreatment 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 nineteenfifty-seven, of course." I beg pardon, but there is no mistake. It wasabout four in the afternoon of December the 26th, one day afterChristmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I first breathed the eastwind of Boston, which, I assure the reader, was at that remote periodmarked by the same penetrating quality characterizing it in the presentyear of grace, 2000.

  These statements seem so absurd on their face, especially when I addthat I am a young man apparently of about thirty years of age, that noperson can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what promisesto be a mere imposition upon his credulity. Nevertheless I earnestlyassure the reader that no imposition is intended, and will undertake,if he shall follow me a few pages, to entirely convince him of this. IfI may, then, provisionally assume, with the pledge of justifying theassumption, that I know better than the reader when I was born, I willgo on with my narrative. As every schoolboy knows, in the latter partof the nineteenth century the civilization of to-day, or anything likeit, did not exist, although the elements which were to develop it werealready in ferment. Nothing had, however, occurred to modify theimmemorial division of society into the four classes, or nations, asthey may be more fitly called, since the differences between them werefar greater than those between any nations nowadays, of the rich andthe poor, the educated and the ignorant. I myself was rich and alsoeducated, and possessed, therefore, all the elements of happinessenjoyed by the most fortunate in that age. Living in luxury, andoccupied only with the pursuit of the pleasures and refinements oflife, I derived the means of my support from the labor of others,rendering no sort of service in return. My parents and grand-parentshad lived in the same way, and I expected that my descendants, if I hadany, would enjoy a like easy existence.

  But how could I live without service to the world? you ask. Why shouldthe world have supported in utter idleness one who was able to renderservice? The answer is that my great-grandfather had accumulated a sumof money on which his descendants had ever since lived. The sum, youwill naturally infer, must have been very large not to have beenexhausted in supporting three generations in idleness. This, however,was not the fact. The sum had been originally by no means large. Itwas, in fact, much larger now that three generations had been supportedupon it in idleness, than it was at first. This mystery of use withoutconsumption, of warmth without combustion, seems like magic, but wasmerely an ingenious application of the art now happily lost but carriedto great perfection by your ancestors, of shifting the burden of one'ssupport 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 hisinvestments. To explain at this point how the ancient methods ofindustry made this possible would delay us too much. I shall only stopnow to say that interest on investments was a species of tax inperpetuity upon the product of those engaged in industry which a personpossessing or inheriting money was able to levy. It must not besupposed that an arrangement which seems so unnatural and preposterousaccording to modern notions was never criticized by your ancestors. Ithad been the effort of lawgivers and prophets from the earliest ages toabolish interest, or at least to limit it to the smallest possiblerate. All these efforts had, however, failed, as they necessarily mustso long as the ancient social organizations prevailed. At the time ofwhich I write, the latter part of the nineteenth century, governmentshad generally given up trying to regulate the subject at all.

  By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of theway people lived together in those days, and especially of therelations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot dobetter than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coachwhich the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomelyalong a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permittedno lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite thedifficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the topwas covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepestascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well upout of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at theirleisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team.Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for themwas keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seaton the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By therule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but onthe other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any timebe wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were veryinsecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slippingout of them and falling to the ground, where they were instantlycompelled to take
hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on whichthey had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as aterrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that thismight happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon thehappiness of those who rode.

  But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their veryluxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of theirbrothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their ownweight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for fellow beingsfrom whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration wasfrequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull thecoach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, asit was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At suchtimes, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping andplunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted atthe rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressingspectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays offeeling on the top of the coach. At such times the passengers wouldcall down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them topatience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation in anotherworld for the hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buysalves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was agreed thatit was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and therewas a sense of general relief when the specially bad piece of road wasgotten over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of theteam, for there was always some danger at these bad places of a generaloverturn in which all would lose their seats.

  It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle ofthe 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 tohold on to them more desperately than before. If the passengers couldonly have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would everfall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to thefunds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselvesextremely little about those who dragged the coach.

  I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of thetwentieth century an incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts,both very curious, which partly explain it. In the first place, it wasfirmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in whichSociety could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the fewrode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement even waspossible, either in the harness, the coach, the roadway, or thedistribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it alwayswould be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophyforbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.

  The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singularhallucination which those on the top of the coach generally shared,that they were not exactly like their brothers and sisters who pulledat the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher orderof beings who might justly expect to be drawn. This seemsunaccountable, but, as I once rode on this very coach and shared thatvery hallucination, I ought to be believed. The strangest thing aboutthe hallucination was that those who had but just climbed up from theground, before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon theirhands, began to fall under its influence. As for those whose parentsand grand-parents before them had been so fortunate as to keep theirseats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the essentialdifference between their sort of humanity and the common article wasabsolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feelingfor the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophicalcompassion is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I canoffer for the indifference which, at the period I write of, marked myown attitude toward the misery of my brothers.

  In 1887 I came to my thirtieth year. Although still unmarried, I wasengaged to wed Edith Bartlett. She, like myself, rode on the top of thecoach. That is to say, not to encumber ourselves further with anillustration which has, I hope, served its purpose of giving the readersome general impression of how we lived then, her family was wealthy.In that age, when money alone commanded all that was agreeable andrefined 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 mighthave been," I hear them saying, "but graceful never, in the costumeswhich were the fashion at that period, when the head covering was adizzy structure a foot tall, and the almost incredible extension of theskirt behind by means of artificial contrivances more thoroughlydehumanized the form than any former device of dressmakers. Fancy anyone graceful in such a costume!" The point is certainly well taken, andI can only reply that while the ladies of the twentieth century arelovely demonstrations of the effect of appropriate drapery in accentingfeminine graces, my recollection of their great-grandmothers enables meto maintain that no deformity of costume can wholly disguise them.

  Our marriage only waited on the completion of the house which I wasbuilding for our occupancy in one of the most desirable parts of thecity, that is to say, a part chiefly inhabited by the rich. For it mustbe understood that the comparative desirability of different parts ofBoston for residence depended then, not on natural features, but on thecharacter of the neighboring population. Each class or nation lived byitself, in quarters of its own. A rich man living among the poor, aneducated man among the uneducated, was like one living in isolationamong a jealous and alien race. When the house had been begun, itscompletion by the winter of 1886 had been expected. The spring of thefollowing year found it, however, yet incomplete, and my marriage stilla thing of the future. The cause of a delay calculated to beparticularly exasperating to an ardent lover was a series of strikes,that is to say, concerted refusals to work on the part of thebrick-layers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and other tradesconcerned in house building. What the specific causes of these strikeswere I do not remember. Strikes had become so common at that periodthat people had ceased to inquire into their particular grounds. In onedepartment of industry or another, they had been nearly incessant eversince the great business crisis of 1873. In fact it had come to be theexceptional thing to see any class of laborers pursue their avocationsteadily for more than a few months at a time.

  The reader who observes the dates alluded to will of course recognizein these disturbances of industry the first and incoherent phase of thegreat movement which ended in the establishment of the modernindustrial system with all its social consequences. This is all soplain in the retrospect that a child can understand it, but not beingprophets, 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 queerway. The relation between the workingman and the employer, betweenlabor and capital, appeared in some unaccountable manner to have becomedislocated. The working classes had quite suddenly and very generallybecome infected with a profound discontent with their condition, and anidea that it could be greatly bettered if they only knew how to goabout it. On every side, with one accord, they preferred demands forhigher pay, shorter hours, better dwellings, better educationaladvantages, and a share in the refinements and luxuries of life,demands which it was impossible to see the way to granting unless theworld were to become a great deal richer than it then was. Though theyknew something of what they wanted, they knew nothing of how toaccomplish it, and the eager enthusiasm with which they thronged aboutany one who seemed likely to give them any light on the subject lentsudden reputation to many would-be leaders, some of whom had littleenough light to give. However chimerical the aspirations of thelaboring classes might be deemed, the devotion with which theysupported one another in the strikes, which were their chief weapon,and the sacrifices which they underwent to carry them out left no doubtof their dead earnestness.

  As to the final outcome of the labor troubles, which was the phrase bywhich the movement I have described was most commonly referred to, theopinions of the people of my class differed according to individu
altemperament. The sanguine argued very forcibly that it was in the verynature of things impossible that the new hopes of the workingmen couldbe satisfied, simply because the world had not the wherewithal tosatisfy them. It was only because the masses worked very hard and livedon short commons that the race did not starve outright, and noconsiderable improvement in their condition was possible while theworld, as a whole, remained so poor. It was not the capitalists whomthe laboring men were contending with, these maintained, but theiron-bound environment of humanity, and it was merely a question of thethickness of their skulls when they would discover the fact and make uptheir minds to endure what they could not cure.

  The less sanguine admitted all this. Of course the workingmen'saspirations were impossible of fulfillment for natural reasons, butthere were grounds to fear that they would not discover this fact untilthey had made a sad mess of society. They had the votes and the powerto do so if they pleased, and their leaders meant they should. Some ofthese desponding observers went so far as to predict an impendingsocial cataclysm. Humanity, they argued, having climbed to the topround of the ladder of civilization, was about to take a header intochaos, after which it would doubtless pick itself up, turn round, andbegin to climb again. Repeated experiences of this sort in historic andprehistoric times possibly accounted for the puzzling bumps on thehuman cranium. Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical,and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progressin a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue innature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustrationof the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelionof barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only toplunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.

  This, of course, was an extreme opinion, but I remember serious menamong my acquaintances who, in discussing the signs of the times,adopted a very similar tone. It was no doubt the common opinion ofthoughtful men that society was approaching a critical period whichmight 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 morestrikingly illustrated than it was by the alarm resulting from the talkof a small band of men who called themselves anarchists, and proposedto terrify the American people into adopting their ideas by threats ofviolence, as if a mighty nation which had but just put down a rebellionof 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 ofthings, I naturally shared the apprehensions of my class. Theparticular grievance I had against the working classes at the time ofwhich I write, on account of the effect of their strikes in postponingmy wedded bliss, no doubt lent a special animosity to my feeling towardthem.