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
"There was a time when the town simply represented cowering peasants,
clustered under the shadow of the baron's castle for protection. It
advanced slowly and reluctantly along the road of civic development,
scourged forward by the whip of necessity. We have but to expand the
powers of government to solve the enigma of the world. Man separated
is man savage; man gregarious is man civilized. A higher development
in society requires that this instrumentality of co-operation shall
be heightened in its powers. There was a time when every man
provided, at great cost, for the carriage of his own letters. Now the
government, for an infinitely small charge, takes the business off
his hands. There was a time when each house had to provide itself
with water. Now the municipality furnishes water to all. The same is
true of light. At one time each family had to educate its own
children; now the state educates them. Once every man went armed to
protect himself. Now the city protects him by its armed police. These
hints must be followed out. The city of the future must furnish
doctors for all; lawyers for all; entertainments for all; business
guidance for all. It will see to it that no man is plundered, and no
man starved, who is willing to work."
"But," said Max, "if you do away with interest on money and thus
scatter coagulated capital into innumerable small enterprises, how
are you going to get along without the keen-brained masters of
business, who labor gigantically for gigantic personal profits; but
who, by their toll and their capital, bring the great body of
producers into relation with the great body of consumers? Are these
men not necessary to society? Do they not create occasion and
opportunity for labor? Are not their active and powerful brains at
the back of all progress? There may be a thousand men idling, and
poorly fed and clothed, in a neighborhood: along comes one of these
shrewd adventurers; he sees an opportunity to utilize the bark of the
trees and the ox-hides of the farmers' cattle, and he starts a
tannery. He may accumulate more money than the thousand men he sets
to work; but has he not done more? Is not his intellect immeasurably
more valuable than all those unthinking muscles?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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