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Anticipations Chapter 3 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter three 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 three B. It will be
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Speaker 1: obvious that the interest of this speculation at any rate,
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Speaker 1: centers upon this great intermediate mess of people who are
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Speaker 1: neither passively wealthy, the sleeping partners of change, nor helplessly
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Speaker 1: thrust out of the process. Indeed, from our point of
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Speaker 1: view an inquiry into coming things, these non effective messes
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Speaker 1: would have but the slightest interest, were it not for
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Speaker 1: their enormous possibilities of reaction upon the really living portion
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Speaker 1: of the social organism. This really living portion seems at
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Speaker 1: first sight to be as deliquescent in its nature, to
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Speaker 1: be drifting down to as chaotic a structure as either
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Speaker 1: the non functional owners that float above or the unemployed
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Speaker 1: who sink below. What will once the definite subdivisions of
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Speaker 1: the middle class modify and lose their boundaries. The retail
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Speaker 1: tradesmen of the towns, for example, one ae fairly homogeneous
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Speaker 1: class throughout Europe, expands here into vast store companies and
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Speaker 1: dwindles there to be an agent or collector seeks employment
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Speaker 1: or topples outright into the abyss. But under a certain scrutiny,
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Speaker 1: one can detect here what we do not detect in
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Speaker 1: our other two elements, and that is that going on
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Speaker 1: side by side with the processes of dissolution, and frequently
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Speaker 1: masked by these. There are other processes by which men,
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Speaker 1: often of the most diverse parentage and anticidant traditions, are
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Speaker 1: being segregated into a multitude of specific new groups, which
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Speaker 1: may presently develop very distinctive characters and ideals. There are,
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Speaker 1: for example, the unorganized myriads that one can cover by
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Speaker 1: the phrase mechanics and engineers if one uses it in
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Speaker 1: its way est possible sense. At present, it would be
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Speaker 1: almost impossible to describe such a thing as a typical engineer,
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Speaker 1: to predicate any universally applicable characteristic of the engineer and mechanic.
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Speaker 1: The black faced oily man one figures emerging from the
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Speaker 1: engine room serves well enough until one recalls the sanitary
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Speaker 1: engineer with his additions of crockery and plumbing, the electrical
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Speaker 1: engineer with his little tests and wires, the mining engineer,
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Speaker 1: the railway maker, the motor builder, and the irrigation expert.
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Speaker 1: Even if we take some specific branch of all this
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Speaker 1: huge mass of new employment the coming of mechanism has
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Speaker 1: brought with it, we still find an undigested miscellany. Consider
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Speaker 1: the rude levy that is engaged in supplying and repairing
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Speaker 1: the world's new need of bicycles, wheelwrights, watchmakers, blacksmiths, music dealers, drapers,
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Speaker 1: sewing machine repairers, smart errand boys, ironmongers. Individuals from all
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Speaker 1: the older aspects of engineering have been caught up by
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Speaker 1: the new development. Are all now with a more or
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Speaker 1: less inadequate knowledge in training, working in the new service.
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Speaker 1: But is it likely that this will remain a rude
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Speaker 1: levee from all these varied people. The world requires certain things,
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Speaker 1: and a failure to obtain them involves, sooner or later
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Speaker 1: in this competitive creation, an individual replacement and a push
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Speaker 1: towards the abyss. The very lowest of them must understand
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Speaker 1: the machine they contribute to make and repair, And not
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Speaker 1: only is it a fairly complex machine in itself, but
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Speaker 1: it is found in several types and patterns, and so
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Speaker 1: far it has altered and promises still to altered steadily
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Speaker 1: by improvements in this part, and that no limited stock
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Speaker 1: in trade of knowledge, such as suffices for a joiner
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Speaker 1: or an ostler, will serve. They must keep on mastering
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Speaker 1: new points, new aspects. They must be intelligent and adaptable.
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Speaker 1: They must get a grasp of that permanent something that
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Speaker 1: lies behind the changing immediate practice. In other words, they
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Speaker 1: will have to be educated, rather than trained after the
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Speaker 1: fashion of the old craftsmen. Just now, this body of
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Speaker 1: irregulars is threatened by the coming of the motors. The
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Speaker 1: motors promise new difficulties, new rewards, and new competition. It
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Speaker 1: is an ill lookout for the cycle mechanic who is
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Speaker 1: not prepared to tackle the new problem that will arise.
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Speaker 1: For all this next century, this particular body of mechanics
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Speaker 1: will be picking up new recruits and eliminating the incompetent
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Speaker 1: and the rule of thumb sage. Can it fail, as
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Speaker 1: the years pass, to develop certain general characteristics, to become
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Speaker 1: so far homogeneous as to be generally conscious of the
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Speaker 1: need of a scientific education at any rate in mechanical
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Speaker 1: and chemical matters, and to possess down to its very
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Speaker 1: lowest ranks and orders, a common fund of intellectual training.
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Speaker 1: But the makers and repairers of cycles, and that larger
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Speaker 1: multitude that will presently be concerned with motors, are, after
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Speaker 1: all only a a small and specialized section of the
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Speaker 1: general body of mechanics and engineers. Every year, with the
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Speaker 1: advance of invention, new branches of activity that change in
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Speaker 1: their nature and methods all too rapidly for the establishment
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Speaker 1: of rote and routine workers of the old type call
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Speaker 1: together fresh levees of amateurish workers and learners, who must
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Speaker 1: surely presently develop into or give place to, bodies of
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Speaker 1: qualified and capable men. And the point I would particularly
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Speaker 1: insist upon here is that, throughout all its ranks and ramifications,
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Speaker 1: from the organizing heads of great undertakings down to the
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Speaker 1: assistant in the local repair shop, this new, great and
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Speaker 1: expanding body of mechanics and engineers will tend to become
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Speaker 1: an educated and adaptable class, in a sense that the
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Speaker 1: craftsmen of former times were not educated and adaptable. Just
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Speaker 1: how high the scientific and practical education may rise in
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Speaker 1: the central levels of this body is a matter for
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Speaker 1: subsequent speculation. Just how much initiative will be found in
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Speaker 1: the lowest ranks depends upon many very complex considerations. But
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Speaker 1: that here we have at least the possibility the primary
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Speaker 1: creative conditions of a new, numerous, intelligent, educated, and capable
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Speaker 1: social element. Is, I think, a proposition with which the
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Speaker 1: reader will agree. What are the chief obstacles in the
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Speaker 1: way of the emergence from out the present chaos of
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Speaker 1: this social element, equipped, organized, educated, conscious of itself, and
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Speaker 1: of distinctive aims in the next hundred years. In the
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Speaker 1: first place, there is the spirit of trade unionism, the
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Speaker 1: conservative contagion of the old craftsmanship. Trade unions arose under
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Speaker 1: the tradition of the old order, when in every business
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Speaker 1: employer and employers stood in marked antagonism. Stood as a
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Speaker 1: special instance of the universal relationship of gentle or intelligent
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Speaker 1: who supplied no labor, and simple who supplied nothing else.
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Speaker 1: The interest of the employer was to get as much
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Speaker 1: labor as possible out of his hirelings. The complimentary object
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Speaker 1: in life of the hireling, whose sole function was drudgery,
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Speaker 1: who had no other prospect until death, was to give
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Speaker 1: as little to his employer as possible. In order to
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Speaker 1: keep the necessary laborer submissive. It was a matter of
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Speaker 1: public policy to keep him uneducated and as near the
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Speaker 1: condition of a beast of burden as possible, and in
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Speaker 1: order to keep his life tolerable against the natural increase
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Speaker 1: which all the moral institutions of a state promoted. The laborer,
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Speaker 1: stimulated of his efforts, slackened by the touch of absolute misery,
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Speaker 1: was forced to devise elaborate rules for restricting the hours
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Speaker 1: of toil, making its performance needlessly complex and shirking with
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Speaker 1: extreme ingenuity and conscientiousness. In the older trades of which
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Speaker 1: the building trade as foremost. These two traditions, reinforced by
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Speaker 1: unimaginative building regulations, have practically arrested any advance whatever footnote.
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Speaker 1: I find it incredible that there will not be a
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Speaker 1: sweeping revolution in the methods of building during the n
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Speaker 1: next century. The erection of a house wall, come to
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Speaker 1: think of it, is an astonishingly tedious and complex business,
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Speaker 1: the final result exceedingly unsatisfactory. It has been my lot
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Speaker 1: recently to follow in detail the process of building a
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Speaker 1: private dwelling house, and the solemn succession of deliberate, respectable,
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Speaker 1: perfectly satisfied men who have contributed each so many days
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Speaker 1: of his life to this accumulation of weak compromises has
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Speaker 1: enormously intensified my constitutional amazement at my fallow creatures. The
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Speaker 1: chief ingredient in this particular housewall is the common brick
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Speaker 1: burnt earth, and but one step from the handfuls of
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Speaker 1: clay of the ancestral mud hut. Small in size and
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Speaker 1: permeable to damp. Slowly, day by day, the walls grew
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Speaker 1: tediously up to a malady of tinkling trowels. These bricks
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Speaker 1: are joined by mortar, which is mixed in small quantities,
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Speaker 1: and must vary very greatly in its quality and properties
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Speaker 1: throughout the house. In order to prevent the obvious evils
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Speaker 1: of a wall of porous and irregular baked clay and
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Speaker 1: lime mud, a damp course of tarred felt, which cannot
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Speaker 1: possibly last more than a few years, was inserted about
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Speaker 1: a foot from the ground. Then, the wall, being quite
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Speaker 1: insufficient to stand the heavy drift of weather to which
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Speaker 1: it is exposed, was dabbled over with two coatings of
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Speaker 1: plaster on the outside, the outermost being given a primitive
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Speaker 1: picturesqueness by means of a sham surface of rough cast
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Speaker 1: pebbles and whitewash, while within, to conceal the rough discomfort
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Speaker 1: of the surface, successive coatings of plaster, and finally paper
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Speaker 1: were added, with a wood skirting at the foot thrice painted.
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Speaker 1: Everything in this was hand work, the laying of the bricks,
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Speaker 1: the dabbing of the plaster, the smoothing of the paper.
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Speaker 1: It is a house built of hands, and some I
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Speaker 1: saw were bleeding hands, just as in the days of
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Speaker 1: the Pyramids, when the only engines were living men. The
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Speaker 1: whole confection is now undergoing incalculable chemical reactions. Betwe I
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Speaker 1: mean its several parts. Lime, mortar and microscopical organisms are
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Speaker 1: producing undesigned chromatic effects in the paper and plaster. The
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Speaker 1: plaster having methods of expansion and contraction of its own,
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Speaker 1: crinkles and cracks. The skirting, having absorbed moisture and now
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Speaker 1: drying again, opens its joints. The rough cast coquettes with
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Speaker 1: the frost, and opens chinks and crannies for the humbler creation.
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Speaker 1: I fail to see the necessity of, and accordingly I
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Speaker 1: resent bitterly all these coral reef methods. Better walls than this,
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Speaker 1: and better and less life wasting ways of making them
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Speaker 1: are surely possible. In the wall and question, concrete would
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Speaker 1: have been cheaper and better than bricks, if only the
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Speaker 1: men had understood it. But I can dream at last
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Speaker 1: of much more revolutionary affairs, of a thing running to
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Speaker 1: and fro along a temporary rail that will squeeze out
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Speaker 1: wall as one squeezes paint from a tube, and form
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Speaker 1: its surface with a pat or two as it sees. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: I do not see at all why the walls of
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Speaker 1: small dwelling houses should be so solid as they are.
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Speaker 1: There still hangs about us the monumental traditions of the pyramids.
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Speaker 1: It ought to be possible to build sound, portable and
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Speaker 1: habitable houses of felted wire, netting and weather proofed paper
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Speaker 1: upon a light framework. This sort of thing is no
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Speaker 1: doubt abominably ugly at present, But that is because architects
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Speaker 1: and designers, being for the most part inordinately cultured and
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Speaker 1: quite uneducated, are unable to cope with its fundamentally novel problems.
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Speaker 1: A few energetic men might at any time set out
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Speaker 1: to alter all this, and with the inevitable revolutions that
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Speaker 1: must come about in domestic fittings, and which I hope
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Speaker 1: to discuss more fully in the next paper. It is
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Speaker 1: open to question where the many ground landlords may not
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Speaker 1: find they have work for the house breakers, rather than
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Speaker 1: wealth unlimited falling into their hands when the building leases,
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Speaker 1: their solicitors so ingeniously draw up do at LEAs last
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Speaker 1: expire end footnote. There can be no doubt that this
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Speaker 1: influence has spread into what are practically new branches of work,
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Speaker 1: even where new conveniences have called for new types of
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Speaker 1: workmen and have opened the way for the elevation of
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Speaker 1: a group of laborers to the higher level of versatile
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Speaker 1: educated men. Footnote. The new aspects of building, for example,
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Speaker 1: that have been brought about by the entrance of water
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Speaker 1: and gas into the house and the application of water
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Speaker 1: to sanitation end footnote. The old traditions have, to a
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Speaker 1: very large extent prevailed. The average sanitary plumber of to
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Speaker 1: day in England insists upon his position as a mere
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Speaker 1: laborer as though it were some precious thing. He guards
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Speaker 1: himself from improvement as a virtuous woman guards her honor.
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Speaker 1: He works for specifically limited hours and by the hour,
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Speaker 1: with specific limitations in the practice of his trade, on
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Speaker 1: the fairly sound assumption that but for that restriction, any
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Speaker 1: fool might do plumbing as well as he. Whatever he
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Speaker 1: learns he learns from some other plumber during his apprenticeship years,
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Speaker 1: after which he devotes himself to doing the minimum of
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Speaker 1: work in the maximum of time, until his brief excursion
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Speaker 1: into this mysterious universe is over. So far from invention
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Speaker 1: spurring him onward. Every improvement and sanitary work in England,
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Speaker 1: at least is limited by the problem whether thy men
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Speaker 1: will understand it. A person and genius enough to exceed
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Speaker 1: this sacred limit might as well hang himself as trouble
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Speaker 1: about the improvement of plumbing. If England stood alone, I
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Speaker 1: do not see why each of the new mechanical and
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Speaker 1: engineering industries, so soon as it develops sufficiently to have
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Speaker 1: gathered together a body of workers capable of supporting a
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Speaker 1: trade union secretary, should not begin to stagnate in the
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Speaker 1: same manner. Only England does not stand alone, and the
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Speaker 1: building trade is so far not typical, inasmuch as it
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Speaker 1: possesses a national monopoly that the most elaborate system of
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Speaker 1: protection cannot secure any other group of trades. Must have
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Speaker 1: one's house built where one has to live. The importation
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Speaker 1: of workmen in small bodies is difficult and dear, and
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Speaker 1: if one cannot have the house one wishes, one must
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Speaker 1: needs have the least offensive substitute, But bicycle and motor
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Speaker 1: iron work and furniture, engines, rails and ships one can import.
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Speaker 1: The community therefore, that does least to educate its mechanics
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Speaker 1: and engineers out of the base and servile tradition of
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Speaker 1: the old idea of industry will, in the coming years
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Speaker 1: of progress, simply get a disproportionate share of the rejected element.
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Speaker 1: The trade will go elsewhere, and the community will be
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Speaker 1: left in possession of an exceptionally large contingent for the abyss.
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Speaker 1: At present, however, I am dealing not with the specific community,
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Speaker 1: but with the generalized civilized community of a d two thousand.
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Speaker 1: We disregard the fate of states and empires for a time,
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Speaker 1: and for that emergent community, wherever it may be. It
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Speaker 1: seems reasonable to anticipate replace racing an enormously larger and
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Speaker 1: more important than the classes of common workmen and mechanics
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Speaker 1: of today, A large, fairly homogeneous body big men and
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Speaker 1: little men, indeed, but with no dividing lines, of more
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Speaker 1: or less expert mechanics and engineers, with a certain common
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Speaker 1: minimum of education and intelligence, and probably a common class consciousness.
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Speaker 1: A new body a new force in the world's history.
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Speaker 1: For this body to exist implies the existence of much
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Speaker 1: more than the primary and initiating nucleus of engineers and
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Speaker 1: skilled mechanics. If it is an educated class, its existence
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Speaker 1: implies a class of educators. And just as far as
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Speaker 1: it does get educated, the school masters will be skilled
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Speaker 1: and educated men. The shabby, genteel middle class schoolmaster of
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Speaker 1: the England of today in or a little Way out
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Speaker 1: of Orders, with his smattering of Greek, his Latin that
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Speaker 1: leads nowhere, his fatuous mathematics, his gross ignorance of pedagogics,
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Speaker 1: and his incomparable snobbishness, certainly does not represent the school
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Speaker 1: master of this coming class. Moreover, the new element will
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Speaker 1: necessarily embody its collective, necessarily distinctive and unprecedented thoughts in
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Speaker 1: a literature of its own. Its development means the development
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Speaker 1: of a new sort of writer and of new elements
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Speaker 1: in the press. And since if it does emerge, a
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Speaker 1: revolution in the common schools of the community will be
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Speaker 1: a necessary part of the process, then its emergence will
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Speaker 1: involve a revolutionary change in the condition of classes that
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Speaker 1: might otherwise remain as they are now. The older craftsmen
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Speaker 1: for example, the process of attraction will not end even there.
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Speaker 1: The development of more and more scientific engineering and of
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Speaker 1: really adaptable operatives will render possible agricultural contrivances that are
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Speaker 1: now only dreams, and the diffusion of this new class
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Speaker 1: over the countryside, assuming the reasoning in my second chapter
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Speaker 1: to be sound, will bring the lever of the improved
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Speaker 1: schools under the agriculture. The practically autonomous farm of the
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Speaker 1: old epoch will probably be replaced by a great variety
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Speaker 1: of types of cultivation, each with its labour saving equipment.
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Speaker 1: In this, as in most things, the future spells variation.
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Speaker 1: The practical abolition of impossible distances over the world will
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Speaker 1: tend to make every district specialize in the production for
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Speaker 1: which it is best fitted, and to develop that production
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Speaker 1: with an elaborate precision and economy. The chief opposing force
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Speaker 1: to this tendency will be found in those countries where
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Speaker 1: the tenure of the landers and small holdings. A population
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Speaker 1: of small agriculturists that has really got itself well established,
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Speaker 1: is probably as hopelessly immovable a thing as the forces
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Speaker 1: of progressive change will have to encounter. The Arcadian healthiness
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Speaker 1: and simplicity of the small holder, and the usefulness of
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Speaker 1: little hands about him naturally results in his keeping the
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Speaker 1: population on his plot up to the limit of bare subsistence.
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Speaker 1: He avoids over a education, and his beasts live with
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Speaker 1: them and his children in a natural, kindly manner. He
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Speaker 1: will have no idlers, and even Grand Mamma goes weeding.
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Speaker 1: His net produce is less than the production of the
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Speaker 1: larger methods, but his gross is greater, and usually it
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Speaker 1: is mortgaged, more or less along the salvage of many
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Speaker 1: of the new roads we have foretold. His hens will
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Speaker 1: peck and his children beg far into the coming decades.
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Speaker 1: This simple, virtuous, open air life is to be found
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Speaker 1: ripening in the north of France and Belgium. It culminated
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Speaker 1: in Ireland and the famine years. It has held its
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Speaker 1: own in China with a use of female and fanticide
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Speaker 1: for immemorial ages, and a number of excellent persons are
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Speaker 1: endeavoring to establish it in England. At the present time,
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Speaker 1: at the Cape of Good Hope, under British rule, kaffirs
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Speaker 1: are being settled upon little inalienable holdings that must inevitably
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Speaker 1: develop in the same direction. And over the Southern States,
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Speaker 1: the niggers, squats, and multiplies. It is fairly certain that
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Speaker 1: these stagnant ponds of population, which will grow until public
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Speaker 1: intelligence rises to the pitch of draining them, will on
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Speaker 1: a greater scale parallel in the twentieth century the soon
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Speaker 1: to be dispersed urban slums of the nineteenth. But I
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Speaker 1: do not see how they can obstruct more than locally
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Speaker 1: the reorganization of agriculture and horticulture upon the ampler and
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Speaker 1: more economical lines. Mechanism permits or prevent the development of
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Speaker 1: a type of agriculturist as adaptable, alert, intelligent, unprejudiced, and
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Speaker 1: modest as the coming engineer. Another great section of the community,
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Speaker 1: the military element, will also fall within the attraction of
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Speaker 1: this possible synthesis, and will inevitably undergo profound modification of
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Speaker 1: the probable development of warfare. A later chapter shall treat,
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Speaker 1: and here it will suffice to point out that at
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Speaker 1: present science stands proffering the soldier vague, vast possibilities of mechanism,
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Speaker 1: and so far he has accepted practically nothing but rifles
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Speaker 1: which he cannot cite, and guns that he does not
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Speaker 1: learn to move about. It is quite possible the sailor
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Speaker 1: would be in the like case, but for the exceptional
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Speaker 1: conditions that begot ironclads. In the American Civil War, science
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Speaker 1: offers the soldier transport that he does not use, maps,
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Speaker 1: he does not use, entrenching devices, road making devices, balloons
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Speaker 1: and flying scouts, portable foods, security from disease, a thousand
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Speaker 1: ways of organizing the horrible uncertainties of war. But the
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Speaker 1: soldier of to day I do not mean the British
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Speaker 1: soldier only still insists on regarding these revolutionary appliances as
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Speaker 1: mere accessories and untrustworthy ones. At that to the time
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Speaker 1: honored practice of his art, he guards as technical innocence
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Speaker 1: like a plumber. Every European army is organized on the
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Speaker 1: lines of the once fundamental distinction of the horse and
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Speaker 1: foot epoch. In deference to the contrast of gentle and simple.
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Speaker 1: There is the officer with all the traditions of old nobility,
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Speaker 1: and the men still, by one hundred implications, mere sources
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Speaker 1: of mechanical force and fundamentally base. The British Army, for example,
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Speaker 1: still cherishes the tradition that its privates are absolutely illiterate
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Speaker 1: and such small instruction as is given them in the
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Speaker 1: art of war is imparted by bawling and enforced by
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Speaker 1: abuse upon public drill grounds. Almost all discussion of military
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Speaker 1: matters still turns upon the now quite stupid assumption that
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Speaker 1: there are to primary military arms, and no more horse
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Speaker 1: and foot cyclists are infantry. The War Office Manual of
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Speaker 1: nineteen hundred gallantly declares, in the face of this changing universe,
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Speaker 1: after fifty years of railways, there still does not exist
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Speaker 1: in a world which is said to be over devoted
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Speaker 1: to military affairs, a skilled and organized body of men
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Speaker 1: specially prepared to seize, repair, reconstruct, work and fight such
21:59
Speaker 1: an importan doubtle element in the new social machinery as
22:02
Speaker 1: a railway system. Such a business in the next European
22:06
Speaker 1: war will be hastily entrusted to some haphazard and capables
22:10
Speaker 1: drafted from one or other of the two prehistoric arms.
22:14
Speaker 1: I do not see how this condition of affairs can
22:16
Speaker 1: be anything but transitory. There may be several wars between
22:20
Speaker 1: European powers prepared and organized to accept the old conventions, bloody, vast,
22:25
Speaker 1: distressful encounters that may still leave the art of war
22:29
Speaker 1: essentially unmodified. But sooner or later it may be in
22:33
Speaker 1: the improvised struggle that follows the collapse of some one
22:36
Speaker 1: of these huge, witless fighting forces. The new sort of
22:39
Speaker 1: soldier will emerge, a sober, considerate engineering man, no more
22:45
Speaker 1: of a gentleman than the man subordinated to him, or
22:47
Speaker 1: any other self respecting person. Certain interesting side questions I
22:53
Speaker 1: may glance at here only for the present at least
22:56
Speaker 1: to set them aside unanswered. The reaction, for example, of
23:00
Speaker 1: this probable development of a great mass of educated and
23:03
Speaker 1: intelligent efficients upon the status and quality of the medical
23:06
Speaker 1: profession and the influence of its novel needs in either
23:09
Speaker 1: modifying the existing legal body, or calling into being a
23:13
Speaker 1: parallel body of more expert and versatile guides and assistants
23:17
Speaker 1: in business operations. But from the mention of this latter
23:22
Speaker 1: section one comes to another possible center of aggregation in
23:25
Speaker 1: the social welter. Opposed in many of their most essential
23:29
Speaker 1: conditions to the capable men who are of primary importance
23:32
Speaker 1: in the social body, is the great and growing variety
23:35
Speaker 1: of non productive but active men who are engaged in
23:38
Speaker 1: more or less necessary operations of organization, promotion, advertisement, and trade.
23:44
Speaker 1: There are the business managers public and private, the political organizers, brokers,
23:50
Speaker 1: commission agents, the varying grades of financier down to the
23:53
Speaker 1: mere greedy camp followers of finance, the gamblers, pure and simple,
23:58
Speaker 1: and the great body of their depend clerks, typewriters and assistants.
24:03
Speaker 1: All this multitude will have this much in common that
24:06
Speaker 1: it will be dealing not with the primary, inexorable logic
24:09
Speaker 1: of natural laws, but with the shifting, uncertain prejudices and
24:13
Speaker 1: emotions of the general mass of people. It will be
24:16
Speaker 1: wary and cunning rather than deliberate and intelligent, smart rather
24:21
Speaker 1: than prompt, considering always the appearance and effect before the
24:25
Speaker 1: reality and possibilities of things. It will probably tend to
24:28
Speaker 1: form a culture about the political and financial operator as
24:32
Speaker 1: its ideal and central type, opposed to and conflicting with
24:36
Speaker 1: the forces of attraction that will tend to group the
24:38
Speaker 1: new social masses about the scientific engineer. Footnote. The future
24:44
Speaker 1: of the servant class and the future of the artists
24:46
Speaker 1: are two interesting questions that will be most conveniently mentioned
24:50
Speaker 1: at a later stage when we come to discuss the
24:53
Speaker 1: domestic life in greater detail than is possible before we
24:56
Speaker 1: have formed any clear notion of the sort of people
24:59
Speaker 1: who will lead that life. End footnote Here, then, in
25:04
Speaker 1: the vision of the present writer, are the main social
25:06
Speaker 1: elements of the coming time. One the element of irresponsible property.
25:12
Speaker 1: Two the helpless, superseded poor, that broad base of mere
25:16
Speaker 1: toilers now no longer essential. Three a great and coat
25:21
Speaker 1: mass of more or less capable people, engaged more or
25:24
Speaker 1: less consciously in applying the growing body of scientific knowledge
25:28
Speaker 1: to the general needs. A great mass that will inevitably
25:31
Speaker 1: tend to organize itself in a system of interdependent educated
25:35
Speaker 1: classes with a common consciousness and aim, but which may
25:39
Speaker 1: or may not succeed in doing so. And four a
25:42
Speaker 1: possibly equally great number of non productive persons living in
25:46
Speaker 1: and by the social confusion, all these elements will be mingled,
25:51
Speaker 1: confusedly together, passing into one another by insensible gradations scattered
25:56
Speaker 1: over the great urban regions and intervening areas are previous
26:00
Speaker 1: anticipations have sketched out. Moreover, they are developing, as it were,
26:04
Speaker 1: unconsciously under the stimulus of mechanical developments, and with the
26:09
Speaker 1: bandages of all tradition hampering their movements. The laws they obey,
26:14
Speaker 1: the governments they live under, are, for the most part,
26:16
Speaker 1: laws made and governments planned before the coming of steam.
26:21
Speaker 1: The areas of administration are still areas marked out by
26:24
Speaker 1: conditions of locomotion as obsolete as the quadrupedal method of
26:28
Speaker 1: the pre arboreal ancestor. In Great Britain, for example, the
26:33
Speaker 1: political constitution, the balance of estates and the balance of
26:37
Speaker 1: parties preserves the compromise of long vanished antagonisms. The House
26:42
Speaker 1: of Lords is a collection of obsolete territorial dignitaries, fitfully
26:46
Speaker 1: reinforced by the bishops, and a miscellany in no sense
26:49
Speaker 1: representative of opulent moderns. The House of Commons is the
26:54
Speaker 1: seat of a party conflict, a faction fight of initiated
26:57
Speaker 1: persons that has long ceased to bear any real relation
27:01
Speaker 1: to current social processes. The members of the Lower Chamber
27:05
Speaker 1: are selected by obscure party machines operating upon constituencies, almost
27:10
Speaker 1: all of which have long since become too vast and
27:13
Speaker 1: heterogeneous to possess any collective intelligence or purpose at all.
27:17
Speaker 1: In theory, the House of Commons guards the interests of
27:20
Speaker 1: classes that are in fact rapidly disintegrating into a number
27:24
Speaker 1: of quite antagonistic and conflicting elements. The new mass of
27:28
Speaker 1: capable men of which the engineers are typical these capable men,
27:32
Speaker 1: who must necessarily be the active principle of the new
27:35
Speaker 1: mechanically equipped social body, finds no representation, save by accident,
27:40
Speaker 1: in either assembly. The man who has concerned himself with
27:44
Speaker 1: the public health, with army organization, with educational improvement, or
27:49
Speaker 1: with the vital matters of transport and communication, if he
27:52
Speaker 1: enter the official councils of the Kingdom at all, must
27:55
Speaker 1: enter ostensibly as the guardian of the interests of the
27:58
Speaker 1: free and independent elect of a specific district that has
28:01
Speaker 1: long ceased to have any sort of specific interests at all. Footnote.
28:07
Speaker 1: Even the physical conditions under which the health of Commons
28:10
Speaker 1: meets and plays at government are ridiculously obsolete. Every disputable
28:14
Speaker 1: point is settled by a division. A bell rings, there
28:17
Speaker 1: is shouting and running. The members come blundering into the
28:20
Speaker 1: chamber and sort themselves with much loutish shuffling and shoving
28:24
Speaker 1: into the division lobbies. They are counted as illiterate farmers,
28:28
Speaker 1: count sheep. Amidst much fuss and confusion, they return to
28:32
Speaker 1: their places, and the tellers vociferate. The result. The waste
28:36
Speaker 1: of time over these antics is enormous, and they are
28:39
Speaker 1: often repeated many times in an evening. For the lack
28:42
Speaker 1: of time, the House of Commons is unable to perform
28:45
Speaker 1: the most urgent and necessary legislative duties. It has this
28:49
Speaker 1: year hung up a cryingly necessary education bill, a delay
28:53
Speaker 1: that will in the end cost Great Britain millions, but
28:56
Speaker 1: not a soul in it has had the necessary common
28:58
Speaker 1: sense to point out that an electrician and an expert
29:02
Speaker 1: locksmith could in a few weeks and for a few
29:04
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, devise and construct a member's desk and key,
29:08
Speaker 1: committee room tapes and voting desks, and a general recording
29:12
Speaker 1: apparatus that would enable every member within the precincts to vote,
29:16
Speaker 1: and that would count, record and report the votes within
29:18
Speaker 1: the space of a couple of minutes. End footnote. And
29:24
Speaker 1: the same obsolescence that is so conspicuous in the general
29:27
Speaker 1: institutions of the official Kingdom of England, and that even
29:30
Speaker 1: English people can remark in the official Empire of China,
29:34
Speaker 1: is to be traced in a greater or lesser degree
29:36
Speaker 1: in the nominal organization and public tradition throughout the whole world.
29:41
Speaker 1: The United States, for example, the social mass, which has
29:44
Speaker 1: perhaps advanced furthest along the new lines struggles in the
29:48
Speaker 1: iron bonds of a constitution that is based primarily on
29:52
Speaker 1: a conception of a number of comparatively small, internally homogeneous
29:56
Speaker 1: agricultural states, a bunch of pre Johannesburg transvalles, communicating little,
30:02
Speaker 1: and each constituting a separate, autonomous democracy of free farmers, slaveholding,
30:07
Speaker 1: or slaveless. Every country in the world, indeed, that is
30:11
Speaker 1: organized at all, has been organized with a view to
30:14
Speaker 1: stability within territorial limits. No country has been organized with
30:18
Speaker 1: any foresight of development and inevitable change, or with the
30:22
Speaker 1: slightest reference to the practical revolution and topography that the
30:25
Speaker 1: new means of transit involve. And since this is so,
30:29
Speaker 1: and since humanity is most assuredly embarked upon a series
30:32
Speaker 1: of changes of which we know as yet only the
30:34
Speaker 1: opening phases, a large part of the history of the
30:37
Speaker 1: coming years will certainly record more or less conscious endeavors
30:41
Speaker 1: to adapt these obsolete and obsolescent contrivances for the management
30:45
Speaker 1: of public affairs to the new and continually expanding and
30:49
Speaker 1: changing requirements of the social body, to correct or overcome
30:53
Speaker 1: the traditions that were once wisdom and which are now obstruction,
30:57
Speaker 1: and to burst the straining boundaries that were sufficient for
31:00
Speaker 1: the ancient states. There are here no signs of a
31:05
Speaker 1: millennium internal reconstruction. While men are still limited, egotistical, passionate, ignorant,
31:11
Speaker 1: and ignorantly led means seditions and revolutions, and the rectification
31:16
Speaker 1: of frontiers means wars. But before we go on to
31:20
Speaker 1: these conflicts and wars, certain general social reactions must be considered.
31:26
Speaker 1: End of Chapter three b recording by John Trevivick,