Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth CenturyDonnelly, Ignatius
Science
Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century
Donnelly, Ignatius
Dystopias -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Science fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; Twentieth century -- Fiction
"Let me give you another illustration: Ten thousand men are working
at a trade. One of them conceives the scheme of an invention, whereby
their productive power is increased tenfold. Each of them, we will
say, had been producing, by his toil, property worth four dollars and
a half per day, and his wages were, we will say, one dollar and a
half per day. Now, he is able with the new invention to produce
property worth forty-five dollars per day. Are his wages increased in
due proportion, to fifteen dollars per day, or even to five dollars
per day? Not at all. _Cunning_ has stepped in and examined the poor
workman's invention; it has bought it from him for a pittance; it
secures a patent--a monopoly under the shelter of unwise laws. The
workmen still get their $1.50 per day, and _Cunning_ pockets the
remainder. But this is not all: If one man can now do the work of
ten, then there are nine men thrown out of employment. But the nine
men must live; they want the one man's place; they are hungry; they
will work for less; and down go wages, until they reach the lowest
limit at which the workmen can possibly live. Society has produced
one millionaire and thousands of paupers. The millionaire cannot eat
any more or wear any more than one prosperous yeoman, and therefore
is of no more value to trade and commerce; but the thousands of
paupers have to be supported by the tax-payers, and they have no
money to spend, and they cannot buy the goods of the merchants, or
the manufacturers, and all business languishes. In short, the most
utterly useless, destructive and damnable crop a country can grow
is--millionaires. If a community were to send. to India and import a
lot of man-eating tigers, and turn them loose on the streets, to prey
on men, women and children, they would not inflict a tithe of the
misery that is caused by a like number of millionaires. And there
would be this further disadvantage: the inhabitants of the city could
turn out and kill the tigers, but the human destroyers are protected
by the benevolent laws of the very people they are immolating on the
altars of wretchedness and vice."
"But what is your remedy?" asked Max.
"Government," I replied; "government--national, state and
municipal--is the key to the future of the human race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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