Social Forces in England and AmericaWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Social Forces in England and America
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
England -- Social conditions -- 20th century; Social problems; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
“The philosophy of self-interest as the social solution was a good
living and working synthesis in the days when civilisation was
advancing its frontiers twenty miles a day across the American
continent, and every man for himself was the best social
mobilisation possible.
“But to-day it is a belated ghost that has overstayed the cock-crow.
These were frontier morals. But this same, everyone for himself,
becomes most immoral when the frontier is abolished and the pioneer
becomes the fellow-citizen, and these frontier morals are most
uneconomic when labour can be divided and the product multiplied.
Most uneconomic, for they make closure the rule of industry, leading
not to wealth, but to that awful waste of wealth which is made
visible to every eye in our unemployed—not hands alone, but land,
machinery, and, most of all, hearts. Those who still practise these
frontier morals are like criminals, who, according to the new
science of penology, are simply reappearances of old types. Their
acquisitiveness, once divine like Mercury’s, is now out of place
except in jail. Because out of place, they are a danger. A sorry day
it is likely to be for those who are found in the way when the new
people rise to rush into each other’s arms, to get together, to stay
together and to live together. The labour movement halts because so
many of its rank and file—and all its leaders—do not see clearly the
golden thread of love on which have been strung together all the
past glories of human association, and which is to serve for the
link of the new Association of Friends who Labour, whose motto is
‘All for all.’”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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