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Anticipations Chapter 1 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter one B of anticipations. This is a LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Anticipations
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Chapter one B. Countless modifying influences
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Speaker 1: will of course come into operation. For example, it has
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Speaker 1: been assumed, perhaps rashly, that the railway influence will certainly
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Speaker 1: remain jealous and hostile to these growths, that what may
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Speaker 1: be called the bicycle ticket policy will be pursued throughout. Assuredly,
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Speaker 1: there will be fights of a very complicated sort at first.
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Speaker 1: But once one of these specialized lines is in operation,
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Speaker 1: it may be that some at least of the railway
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Speaker 1: companies will hasten to replace their flang's rolling stock by
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Speaker 1: carriages with rubber tires, remove their rails, broaden their cuttings
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Speaker 1: and embankments, raise their bridges and take to the new
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Speaker 1: ways of traffic. Or they may find an answer to
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Speaker 1: cut fares wide when their gages, reduce their gradients, modify
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Speaker 1: their points and curves, and woo the passenger back with
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Speaker 1: carriages beautifully hung and sumptuously furnished, and all the convenience
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Speaker 1: and luxury of a club. Few people would mind being
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Speaker 1: an hour or so longer going to Paris from London.
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Speaker 1: If the railway traveling was neither rackety, cramped, nor tedious.
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Speaker 1: One could be patient enough if one was neither being jarred, deafened,
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Speaker 1: cut into slices by drafts, and continually more densely caked
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Speaker 1: in a filthy dust of coal. If one could write
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Speaker 1: smoothly and easily at a steady table, read papers, have
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Speaker 1: one's hair cut, and dine in comfort, none of which
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Speaker 1: things are possible at present, and none of which require
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Speaker 1: any new inventions, any revolutionary contrivances, or indeed anything but
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Speaker 1: an intelligent application of existing resources and known principles. Footnote.
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Speaker 1: A correspondent, mister Rudolph Surian, writes to correct me here,
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Speaker 1: and I cannot do better, I think, than thank him
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Speaker 1: and quote what he says. Quote. It is hardly right
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Speaker 1: to state that fifty miles an hour is the limit
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Speaker 1: of our speed for land travel, so far as existing
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Speaker 1: conditions go. As far as English traffic is concerned, a
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Speaker 1: statement is approximately correct. In the United States. However, there
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Speaker 1: are several trains running now which average over considerable distances
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Speaker 1: more than sixty miles an hour stoppages included, nor is
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Speaker 1: there much reason why this should not be considerably increased.
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Speaker 1: What especially hampers the development of railways in England as
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Speaker 1: compared with other countries is the fact that the rolling
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Speaker 1: stock template is too small. Hence carriages in England have
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Speaker 1: to be narrower and lower than carriages in the United States,
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Speaker 1: although both run on the same standard gage four feet
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Speaker 1: eight and a half inches. The result is that several
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Speaker 1: things which you describe as not possible at present, such
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Speaker 1: as to write smoothly and easily at a steady table,
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Speaker 1: read papers, have one's hair cut, and dine in comfort,
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Speaker 1: are not only feasible, but actually attained on some of
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Speaker 1: the good American trains, for instance, on the present Empire
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Speaker 1: State Express running between New York and Buffalo, or on
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Speaker 1: the present Pennsylvania Limited running between New York and Chicago,
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Speaker 1: and on others. With the Pennsylvania Limited travel stenographers and
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Speaker 1: typewriters whose services are placed at the disposal of passengers
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Speaker 1: free of charge. But the train on which there is
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Speaker 1: the least vibration of any is probably the new Empire
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Speaker 1: State Express, and on this it is certainly possible to
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Speaker 1: write smoothly and easily at a steady table. End quote
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Speaker 1: end footnote. Our rage for fast trains, so far as
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Speaker 1: long distance travel is concerned, is largely a passion to
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Speaker 1: end the extreme discomfort involved. It is in the daily
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Speaker 1: journey on the suburban train, that daily tax of time,
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Speaker 1: that speed is in itself so eminently desirable, and it
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Speaker 1: is just here that the conditions of railway travel most
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Speaker 1: hopelessly fail. It must always be remembered that the railway train,
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Speaker 1: as against the motor, has the advantage that its wholesale
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Speaker 1: track reduces the prime cost by demanding only one engine
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Speaker 1: for a great number of coaches. This will not serve
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Speaker 1: the first class long distance passenger, but it may the third.
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Speaker 1: Against that economy, one must balance the necessary delay of
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Speaker 1: a relatively infrequent service, which latter item becomes relatively greater
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Speaker 1: and greater in proportion to the former the brief of
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Speaker 1: the journey to be made. And it may be that
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Speaker 1: many railways which are neither capable of modification into suburban
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Speaker 1: motor tracks, nor of development into luxurious through routes, will find,
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Speaker 1: in spite of the loss of many elements of their
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Speaker 1: old activity, that there is still a profit to be
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Speaker 1: made from a certain section of the heavy goods traffic
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Speaker 1: and from cheap excursions. These are forms of work for
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Speaker 1: which railways seem to be particularly adapted, and which the
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Speaker 1: diversion of a great portion of their passenger traffic would
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Speaker 1: enable them to conduct even more efficiently. It is difficult
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Speaker 1: to imagine, for example, how any sort of road car
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Speaker 1: organization could beat the railways at the business of the
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Speaker 1: day distributing coal and timber and similar goods which are
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Speaker 1: taken in bulk directly from the pit or wharf to
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Speaker 1: local centers of distribution. It must always be remembered that
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Speaker 1: at the worst, the defeat of such a great organization
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Speaker 1: as the railway system does not involve its disappearance until
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Speaker 1: a long period has elapsed. It means at first no
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Speaker 1: more than a period of modification and differentiation before extinction
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Speaker 1: can happen. A certain amount of wealth and railway property
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Speaker 1: must absolutely disappear, though under the stress of successful competition,
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Speaker 1: the capital value of the railways may conceivably fall and
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Speaker 1: continue to fall towards the marine store prices, fares and
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Speaker 1: freights pursue, the sweated working expense to the vanishing point,
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Speaker 1: and the land occupied sink to the level of not
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Speaker 1: very eligible building sites. Yet the railways will nevertheless continue
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Speaker 1: in operation until these downward limits are positively attained. An
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Speaker 1: imagination prone to the picturesque, consists at this stage upon
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Speaker 1: a vision of the latter days of one of the
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Speaker 1: less happily situated lines along a weedy embankment. There pants
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Speaker 1: and clangs a patched and tarnished engine, its paint blistered,
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Speaker 1: its parts leprously dull. It is driven by an aged
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Speaker 1: and sweated driver, and the burning garbage of its furnace
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Speaker 1: distills a choking reek into the air. A huge train
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Speaker 1: of urban dust trucks bangs and clatters behind it en
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Speaker 1: route to that sequestered dumping ground where rubbish is burnt
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Speaker 1: to some industrial end. But that is a lapse into
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Speaker 1: the merely just possible, and at most a local tragedy.
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Speaker 1: Almost certainly, the existing lines of railway will develop and differentiate,
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Speaker 1: some in one direction and some in another, according to
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Speaker 1: the nature of the pressure upon them. Almost all will
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Speaker 1: probably be still in existence and in diverse ways busy,
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Speaker 1: despite of the swarming new highways I have ventured to
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Speaker 1: foreshadow a hundred years from now, In fact, we have
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Speaker 1: to contemplate not so much a supersession of the railways
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Speaker 1: as a modification and specialization of them in various directions,
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Speaker 1: and the enormous development beside them of competing and supplementary methods.
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Speaker 1: And step by step with these developments will come a
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Speaker 1: very considerable acceleration of the ferry traffic of the narrow
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Speaker 1: seas through such improvements as the introduction of turbine engines,
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Speaker 1: so far as the high road and the longer journeys go.
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Speaker 1: This is the extent of our prophecy. Footnote. Since this
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Speaker 1: appeared in the Fortnightly Review, I have had the pleasure
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Speaker 1: of reading twentieth century inventions by mister George Sutherland, and
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Speaker 1: I find very much else of interest bearing on these questions.
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Speaker 1: The happy suggestion for their theory transit, at any rate,
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Speaker 1: of a rail along the sea bottom, which would serve
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Speaker 1: as a guide to swift submarine vessels, out of reach
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Speaker 1: of all that superficial motion that is so distressing and
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Speaker 1: of all possibilities of collision. End footnote. But in the
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Speaker 1: discussion of all questions of land locomotion, one must come
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Speaker 1: at last to the knots of the network, to the
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Speaker 1: central portions of the towns, the dense, vast towns of
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Speaker 1: our time, with their high ground values and their narrow,
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Speaker 1: already almost impassable streets. I hope at a later stage
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Speaker 1: to give some reasons for anticipating that the centripetal pressure
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Speaker 1: of the congested towns of our epoch may ultimately be
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Speaker 1: very greatly relieved. But for the next few decades at least,
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Speaker 1: the usage of existing conditions will prevail. And in every
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Speaker 1: town there is a certain nucleus of offices, hotels, and
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Speaker 1: shops upon which the centrifugal forces I anticipate will certainly
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Speaker 1: not operate. At present. The streets of many larger towns,
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Speaker 1: and especially of such old established towns as London, whose
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Speaker 1: central portions have the narrowest arteries, present a quite unprecedented
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Speaker 1: state of congestion. When the green of some future history
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Speaker 1: of the English people comes to review our times, he will,
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Speaker 1: from his standpoint of comfort and convenience, find the present
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Speaker 1: streets of London quite or even more incredibly unpleasant than
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Speaker 1: are the filthy kennels, the mud holes and darkness of
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Speaker 1: the streets of the seventeenth century. To our enlightened minds,
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Speaker 1: he will echo our question, why did people stand it,
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Speaker 1: he will be struck first of all by the omnipresence
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Speaker 1: of mud, filthy mud churned up by hoofs and wheels
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Speaker 1: under the inclement skies, and perpetually defiled and added to
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Speaker 1: by innumerable horses. Imagine his description of a young lady
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Speaker 1: crossing the road at the Marble Arch in London on
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Speaker 1: a wet November afternoon, breathless, foul footed, splashed by a
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Speaker 1: passing hansom from head to foot, happy that she has
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Speaker 1: reached the further pavement alive, at the mere cost of
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Speaker 1: her ruined clothes. Just where the bicycle might have served
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Speaker 1: its most useful purpose, he will write in affording a
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Speaker 1: healthy daily ride to the innumerable clerks and suchlike sedentary
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Speaker 1: toilers of the Central region, it was rendered impossible by
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Speaker 1: the danger of side slip in this vast, ferocious traffic.
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Speaker 1: And indeed, to my mind at least this last is
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Speaker 1: the crowning absurdity of the present state of affairs that
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Speaker 1: the clerk and the shop hand classes of people positively
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Speaker 1: starved of exercise should be obliged to spend yearly the
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Speaker 1: price of a bicycle upon a season ticket because of
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Speaker 1: the quite unendurable inconvenience and danger of urban cycling. Now
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Speaker 1: in what direction will matters move? The first and most
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Speaker 1: obvious thing to do, the thing that, in many cases
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Speaker 1: is being attempted and in a futile, insufficient way getting
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Speaker 1: itself done. The thing that I do not for one
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Speaker 1: moment regard as the final remedy, is the remedy of
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Speaker 1: the architect and builder profitable enough to them anyhow to
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Speaker 1: widen the streets and to cut new arteries. Now, every
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Speaker 1: new artery means a series of new whirlpools of traffic,
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Speaker 1: such as the pens of Londoner may study for himself
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Speaker 1: at the inter section of Shaftesbury Avenue with Oxford Street.
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Speaker 1: And unless colossal or inconveniently steep crossing bridges are made,
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Speaker 1: the wider the affluent arteries, the more terrible the battle
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Speaker 1: of the traffic. Imagine Regent's Circus on the scale of
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Speaker 1: the Place de la Concord. And there is the value
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Speaker 1: of the ground to consider. With every increment of width,
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Speaker 1: the value of the dwindling remainder in the meshes of
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Speaker 1: the network of roads will rise, until to pave the
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Speaker 1: widened streets with gold will be a mere trifling addition
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Speaker 1: to the cost of their improvement. There is, however, quite
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Speaker 1: another direction in which the congestion may find relief, and
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Speaker 1: that is in the regulation of the traffic. This has
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Speaker 1: already begun in London in an attack on the crawling cab,
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Speaker 1: and in the new by laws of the London County Council,
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Speaker 1: whereby certain specified forms of heavy traffic are prohibited the
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Speaker 1: use of the streets between ten and seven. These things
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Speaker 1: may be the first beginning of a process of restriction
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Speaker 1: that may go far. Many people living at the present time,
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Speaker 1: who have grown up amidst the exceptional and possibly very
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Speaker 1: transient characteristics of this time, will be disposed to regard
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Speaker 1: the traffic and the streets of our great cities as
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Speaker 1: a part of the natural order of things, and as
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Speaker 1: unavoidable as the throng upon the pavement. But indeed, the
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Speaker 1: presence of all the chief constituents of this vehicular torrent,
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Speaker 1: the cabs and hansoms, the vans, the omnibuses, everything, indeed
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Speaker 1: except the few private carriages, are as novel as distinctly
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Speaker 1: things of the nineteenth century as the railway train and
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Speaker 1: the needle telegraph. The streets of the great towns of antiquity.
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Speaker 1: The streets of the great towns of the East, the
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Speaker 1: streets of all the medieval towns, were not intended for
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Speaker 1: any sort of wheeled traffic at all, were designed primarily
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Speaker 1: and chiefly for pedestrians. So it would be, I suppose
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Speaker 1: in any one's ideal city, surely, town, in theory, at least,
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Speaker 1: is a place one walks about, as one walks of
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Speaker 1: about a house and garden, dressed with a certain ceremonious elaboration,
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Speaker 1: safe from mud and the hardship and defilement of foul weather, buying, meeting, dining, studying, carousing,
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Speaker 1: seeing the play. It is the growth in size of
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Speaker 1: the city that has necessitated the growth of this coarser
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Speaker 1: traffic that has made town at last so utterly detestable.
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Speaker 1: But if one reflects, it becomes clear that, save for
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Speaker 1: the vans of goods, this moving tide of wheeled masses
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Speaker 1: is still essentially a stream of urban pedestrians, pedestrians who,
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Speaker 1: by reason of the distances they have to go, have
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Speaker 1: had to jump on buses and take cabs in a word,
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Speaker 1: to bring in the high road to their aid. And
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Speaker 1: the vehicular traffic of the street is essentially the high
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Speaker 1: road traffic very roughly adapted to the new needs. The
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Speaker 1: cab is a simple development of the carriage, the omnibus
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Speaker 1: of the coach, and the supplementary traffic of the underground
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Speaker 1: and electric railways is a by no means ridiantly imagined
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Speaker 1: adaptation of the long route railway. These are all still
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Speaker 1: new things, experimental to the highest degree, changing and bound
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Speaker 1: to change some more in the period of specialization that
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Speaker 1: is now beginning. Now. The first most probable development is
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Speaker 1: a change in the omnibus and the omnibus railway. A
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Speaker 1: point quite as important with these means of transit as
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Speaker 1: actual speed of movement is frequency. Time is wasted abundantly
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Speaker 1: and most vexatiously at present in waiting and in accommodating
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Speaker 1: one's arrangements to infrequent times of call and departure. The
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Speaker 1: more frequent a local service, the more it comes to
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Speaker 1: be relied upon. Another point, and one in which the
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Speaker 1: omnibus has a great advantage over the railway, is that
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Speaker 1: it should be possible to get on and off at
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Speaker 1: any point, or at as many points on the route
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Speaker 1: as possible. But this means a high proportion of stoppages,
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Speaker 1: and this is destructive to speed. There is, however, one
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Speaker 1: conceivable means of transit that is not simply frequent, but continuous,
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Speaker 1: that may be joined or left at any point without
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Speaker 1: a stoppage, that could be adapted to many existing streets
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Speaker 1: at the level, or quite easily sunken in tunnels or
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Speaker 1: elevated above the street level footnote to the level of
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Speaker 1: such upper story pavements, as Sir F. Bramwell has proposed
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Speaker 1: for the new Holborn to Strand Street for example, end footnote.
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Speaker 1: And that means of transit is the moving platform, whose
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Speaker 1: possibilities have been exhibited to all the world in a
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Speaker 1: sort of mean caricature at the Paris exhibition. Let us
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Speaker 1: imagine the inner circle of the District Railway adapted to
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Speaker 1: this conception. I will presume that the Parisian rolling platform
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Speaker 1: is familiar to the reader. The District railway tunnel is
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Speaker 1: I imagine about twenty four feet wide. If we suppose
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Speaker 1: the space given to six platforms of three feet wide
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Speaker 1: and one the most rapid of six feet, and if
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Speaker 1: we suppose each platform to be going four miles an
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Speaker 1: hour faster than its slower fallow a veloci, the Paris
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Speaker 1: experiment has shown to be perfectly comfortable and safe. We
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Speaker 1: should have the upper platform running round the circle at
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Speaker 1: a pace of twenty eight miles an hour. If further
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Speaker 1: we adopt an ingenious suggestion of Professor Perry's, and imagine
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Speaker 1: the descent to the line made down a very slowly
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Speaker 1: rotating staircase at the center of a big rotating wheel
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Speaker 1: shaped platform, against a portion of whose rim the slowest
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Speaker 1: platform runs in a curve, one could very easily add
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Speaker 1: a speed of six or eight miles an hour more,
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Speaker 1: And to that the man in a hurry would be
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Speaker 1: able to add his own four miles an hour by
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Speaker 1: walking in the direction of motion. If the reader is
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Speaker 1: a traveler, and if you will imagine that black and
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Speaker 1: sulfurous tunnel, swept and garnished, lit and sweet, with a
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Speaker 1: train much faster than the existing underground trains, perpetually ready
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Speaker 1: to go off with him, and never crowded. If he
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Speaker 1: will further imagine this train a platform set with comfortable
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Speaker 1: seats and neat book stalls, and so forth, he will
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Speaker 1: get an inkling in just one detail of what he
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Speaker 1: perhaps misses by living now instead of thirty or forty
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Speaker 1: years ahead. I have supposed the replacement to occur in
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Speaker 1: the case of the London Inner Circle railway, because there
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Speaker 1: the necessary tunnel already exists to help the imagination of
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Speaker 1: the English reader, but that the specific replacement will occur
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Speaker 1: as rendered and probable by the fact that the Circle is,
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Speaker 1: for much of its circumference entangled with other lines of communication,
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Speaker 1: the Northwestern Railway, for example. As a matter of fact,
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Speaker 1: as the American reader at least will promptly see, the
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Speaker 1: much more practicable thing is that upper footpath with these
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Speaker 1: moving platforms beside it, running out over the street after
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Speaker 1: the manner of the viaduct of an elevated railroad. But
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Speaker 1: in some cases at any rate, the demonstrated cheapness and
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Speaker 1: practicability of tunnels at a considerable depth will come into play.
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Speaker 1: Will this diversion of the vast omnibus traffic of to
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Speaker 1: day into the air and underground, together with the segregation
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Speaker 1: of van traffic to specific routes and times, be the
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Speaker 1: only change in the streets of the new century. It
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Speaker 1: may be a shock perhaps to some minds, but I
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Speaker 1: must confess I do not see what is to prevent
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Speaker 1: the process of elimination that is beginning now with the
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Speaker 1: heavy vans spreading until it covers all horse traffic, and
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Speaker 1: with the disappearance of horse hoofs and the necessary filth
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Speaker 1: of horses, the road service may be made a very
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Speaker 1: different thing from what it is at present, better drained
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Speaker 1: and admirably adapted for the soft tired hackney vehicles and
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Speaker 1: the torrent of cyclists. Moreover, there will be little to
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Speaker 1: prevent a widening of the existing side walks and the
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Speaker 1: protection of the passengers from rain and hot sun by
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Speaker 1: awnings or such arcades as distinguished to rin or Sir F.
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Speaker 1: Bramwell's upper footpaths on the model of the chest A rose. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: there is no reason but the existing filth, why the
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Speaker 1: roadways should not have translucent valaria to pull over in
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Speaker 1: bright sunshine and wet weather. It would probably need less
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Speaker 1: labor to manipulate such contrivances than is required at present
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Speaker 1: for the constant conflict with slush and dust. Now, of course,
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Speaker 1: we tolerate the rain because it facilitates a sort of
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Speaker 1: cleaning process. Enough of this present speculation. I have indicated
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Speaker 1: now the general lines of the roads and streets and
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Speaker 1: ways and underways of the twentieth century, but at present
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Speaker 1: they stand vacant in our prophecy, not only awaiting the
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Speaker 1: human interests, the characters and occupations, and clothing of the
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Speaker 1: throng of our children and our children's children that flows
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Speaker 1: along them, but also the decorations. Our children's children's taste
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Speaker 1: will dictate the advertisements, their eyes will tolerate the shops
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Speaker 1: in which they will buy to all that we shall
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Speaker 1: finally come. And even in the next chapter, I hope
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Speaker 1: it will be made more evident, how conveniently these latter
19:46
Speaker 1: and more intimate matters follow instead of preceding these present
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Speaker 1: mechanical considerations, and of the beliefs and hopes, the thought
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Speaker 1: and language, the further prospects of this multitude as yet unborn.
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Speaker 1: Of these things also we shall make at last certain
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Speaker 1: hazardous guesses. But at first I would submit to those
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Speaker 1: who may find the machinery in motion excessive. In this
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Speaker 1: chapter we must have the background and fittings the scene
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Speaker 1: before the play. Footnote. I have said nothing in this
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Speaker 1: chapter devoted to locomotion of the coming invention of flying.
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Speaker 1: This is from no disbelief in its final practicability, nor
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Speaker 1: from any disregard of the new influences it will bring
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Speaker 1: to bear. Upon mankind. But I do not think it
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Speaker 1: at all probable that aeronautics will ever come into play
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Speaker 1: as a serious modification of transport and communication. The main
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Speaker 1: question here under consideration man is not, for example, an albatross,
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Speaker 1: but a land biped with a considerable disposition towards being
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Speaker 1: made sick and giddy by unusual motions. And however he saws,
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Speaker 1: he must come to Earth to live. We must build
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Speaker 1: our picture of the future from the ground upwards, of
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Speaker 1: flying in its place. End footnote, end of Chapter one
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Speaker 1: B recording by John Trivide