Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.
Looking BackwardBellamy, Edward
Edward Bellamy
(One of the classics of the Socialist movement, this book sold over four hundred thousand copies in the first years of its publication. Its author was an American school-teacher, 1850–1898. A story of the experience of a man who goes to sleep and wakes up a hundred years later.)“H
Dr. Leete did not reply till after several moments of meditative silence. “I know, of course,” he finally said, “enough of the old order of things to understand just what you mean by that question; and yet the present order is so utterly different at this point that I am a little at a loss how to answer you best. You ask me how we regulate wages: I can only reply that there is no idea in the modern social economy which at all corresponds with what was meant by wages in your day.”
“I suppose you mean that you have no money to pay wages in,” said I. “But the credit given the worker at the Government storehouse answers to his wages with us. How is the amount of credit given respectively to the workers in different lines determined? By what title does the individual claim his particular share? What is the basis of allotment?”
“His title,” replied Dr. Leete, “is his humanity. The basis of his claim is the fact that he is a man.”
“The fact that he is a man!” I repeated, incredulously. “Do you possibly mean that all have the same share?”
“Most assuredly.”…
“But what inducement,” I asked, “can a man have to put forth his best endeavors when, however much or little he accomplishes, his income remains the same? High characters may be moved by devotion to the common welfare under such a system, but does not the average man tend to rest back on his oar, reasoning that it is of no use to make a special effort, since the effort will not increase his income, nor its withholding diminish it?”
“Does it then really seem to you,” answered my companion, “that human nature is insensible to any motives save fear of want and love of luxury, that you should expect security and equality of livelihood to leave them without possible incentives to effort? Your contemporaries did not really think so, though they might fancy they did. When it was a question of the grandest class of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they depended on quite other incentives. Not higher wages, but honor and hope of men’s gratitude, patriotism and the inspiration of duty, were the motives which they set before their soldiers when it was a question of dying for the nation; and never was there an age of the world when these motives did not call out what is best and noblest in men. And not only this, but when you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury were two of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position and reputation for ability and success. So you see that though we have abolished poverty and the fear of it, and inordinate luxury with the hope of it, we have not touched the greater part of the motives which underlay the love of money in former times, or any of those which prompted the supremer sorts of effort. The coarser motives, which no longer move us, have been replaced by high motives wholly unknown to the mere wage earners of your age. Now that industry of any sort is no longer self-service, but service of the nation, patriotism, passion for humanity, impel the workers as in your day they did the soldier. The army of industry is an army, not alone by virtue of its perfect organization, but by reason also of the ardor of self-devotion which animates its members.
“But as you used to supplement the motives of patriotism with the love of glory, in order to stimulate the value of your soldiers, so do we. Based as our industrial system is on the principle of requiring the same unit of effort from every man, that is the best he can do, you will see that the means by which we spur the workers to do their best must be a very essential part of our scheme. With us, diligence in the national service is, the sole and certain way to public repute, social distinction, and official power. The value of a man’s services in society fixes his rank in it. Compared with the effect of our social arrangements in impelling men to be zealous in business, we deem the object-lessons of biting poverty and wanton luxury on which you depended a device as weak and uncertain as it was barbaric.”