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Anticipations Chapter 5 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter five A 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 five A The Life History
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Speaker 1: of Democracy. In the preceding four chapters, there has been developed,
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Speaker 1: in a clumsy, laborious way, a smudgy, imperfect picture of
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Speaker 1: the generalized civilized state of the coming century, in terms
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Speaker 1: vague enough at times, but never absolutely indefinite. The general
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Speaker 1: distribution of the population in this state has been discussed,
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Speaker 1: and its natural development into four great but in practice
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Speaker 1: intimately interfused classes. It has been shown, I know not
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Speaker 1: how convincingly, that as the result of forces that are
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Speaker 1: practically irresistible, a world wide process of social and moral
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Speaker 1: deliquescence is in progress, and that a really functional social
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Speaker 1: body of engineering, managing men scientifically trained and having common
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Speaker 1: ideals and interests, is likely to segregate and disentangle itself
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Speaker 1: from our present confusion of aimless and ill directed lives.
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Speaker 1: It has been pointed out that life is presenting an
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Speaker 1: unprecedented and increasing variety of morals, manages, occupations, and types
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Speaker 1: at present so mingled as to give a general effect
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Speaker 1: of grayness, but containing the promise of local concentration that
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Speaker 1: may presently change that grayness into kaleidoscopic effects. That image
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Speaker 1: of concentrating contrasted colours will be greatly repeated in this
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Speaker 1: present chapter. In the course of these inquiries, we have
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Speaker 1: permitted ourselves to take a few concrete glimpses of households, costumes, conveyances,
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Speaker 1: and conveniences of the coming time, but only as incidental
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Speaker 1: realizations of points in this general thesis. And now, assuming
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Speaker 1: as we must necessarily do, the soudness of these earlier speculations,
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Speaker 1: we have arrived at a stage when we may consider
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Speaker 1: how the existing arrangements for the ostensible government of the
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Speaker 1: state are likely to develop through their own inherent forces,
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Speaker 1: and how they are likely to be affected by the
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Speaker 1: processes we have forecast. So far, this has been a
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Speaker 1: speculation upon the probable development of a civilized society in vacuo.
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Speaker 1: Attention has been almost exclusively given to the forces of development,
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Speaker 1: and not to the forces of conflict and restraint. We
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Speaker 1: have ignored the boundaries of language that are flung athwart
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Speaker 1: the great lines of modern communication. We have disregarded the
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Speaker 1: friction of tariffs, the peculiar groups of prejudices and irrational
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Speaker 1: instincts that inspire one miscellany of shareholders, workers, financiers, and
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Speaker 1: superfluous poor, such as the English, to hate, exasperate, lie
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Speaker 1: about and injure another such miscellany as the French or
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Speaker 1: the Germans. Moreover, we have taken very little account of
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Speaker 1: the fact that, quite apart from nationality, each individual case
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Speaker 1: of the new social order is developing within the form
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Speaker 1: of a legal government based on conceptions of a society
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Speaker 1: that has been superseded by the advent of mechanism. It
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Speaker 1: is this last matter that we are about to take
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Speaker 1: into consideration. Now. This age is being constantly described as
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Speaker 1: a democratic age. Democracy is alleged to have affected art, literature, trade,
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Speaker 1: and religion alike in the most remarkable ways. It is
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Speaker 1: not only tacitly present in the great bulk of contemporary
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Speaker 1: thought that this democracy is now dominant, but that it
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Speaker 1: is becoming more and more overwhelmingly predominant as the years pass.
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Speaker 1: Allusions to democracy are so abundant, deductions from its influence,
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Speaker 1: so confident and universal, that it is worth while to
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Speaker 1: point out what a very hollow thing. The world in
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Speaker 1: most cases really is a large empty object in thought
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Speaker 1: of the most vague and faded associations and the most
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Speaker 1: attenuated content. And to inquire just exactly what the original
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Speaker 1: implications and present realities of democracy may be, the inquiry
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Speaker 1: will leave us with a very different conception of the
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Speaker 1: nature and future of this sort of political arrangement from
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Speaker 1: that generally assumed. We have already seen in the discussion
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Speaker 1: of the growth of great cities that an analytical process
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Speaker 1: may absolutely invert the expectation based on the gross results
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Speaker 1: up to date, and I believe it will be equally
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Speaker 1: possible to show cause for believing that the development of
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Speaker 1: democracy also is, after all, not the opening phase of
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Speaker 1: a world wide movement going on unbendingly in its present direction,
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Speaker 1: but the first impulse of forces that will finally sweep
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Speaker 1: round into a quite different path. Flying off at a tangent.
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Speaker 1: Is probably one of the gravest dangers, and certainly the
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Speaker 1: one most constantly present is in this enterprise of prophecy.
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Speaker 1: One may, I suppose, take the rights of man as
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Speaker 1: they are embodied in the French Declaration, as the ostentations
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Speaker 1: of democracy. Our present democratic state may be regarded as
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Speaker 1: a practical realization of these claims as far as the
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Speaker 1: individual goes. The realization takes the form of an untrammeled
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Speaker 1: liberty in matters that have heretofore been considered a part
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Speaker 1: of social procedure, in the lifting of positive, religious, and
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Speaker 1: moral compulsions, in the recognition of absolute property, and in
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Speaker 1: the abolition of special privileges and special restrictions. Politically, modern
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Speaker 1: democracy takes the form of denying that any specific person
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Speaker 1: or persons shall act, as a matter of intrinsic right
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Speaker 1: or capacity, on behalf of the community as a whole.
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Speaker 1: Its root idea is representation. Government is based primarily on election,
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Speaker 1: and every ruler is, in theory at least a delegate
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Speaker 1: and servant of the popular will. It is implicit in
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Speaker 1: the democratic theory that there is such a thing as
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Speaker 1: a popular will, and this is supposed to be the
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Speaker 1: net sum of the wills of all the citizens in
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Speaker 1: the state, so far as public affairs are concerned. In
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Speaker 1: its less perfect and more usual state, the democratic theory
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Speaker 1: is advanced either as an ethical theory which postulates an
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Speaker 1: absence of formal acquiescence on the part of the governed,
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Speaker 1: as injustice or else as a convenient political compromise, the
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Speaker 1: least objectionable of all possible methods of public control, because
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Speaker 1: it will permit only the minimum of general unhappiness. I
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Speaker 1: know of no case for the elective democratic government of
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Speaker 1: modern states that cannot be knocked at pieces in five minutes.
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Speaker 1: It is manifest that upon countless important public issues there
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Speaker 1: is no collective will, and nothing in the mind of
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Speaker 1: the average man except blank indifference. That an electional system
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Speaker 1: simply places power in the hands of the most skillful electionairs,
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Speaker 1: That neither men all their rights are identically equal, but
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Speaker 1: vary with each individual. And above all, that the minimum
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Speaker 1: or maximum of general happiness is related only so indirectly
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Speaker 1: to the public control, that people will suffer great miseries
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Speaker 1: from their governments unresistingly, and on the other hand, changed
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Speaker 1: their rulers on account of the most trivial irritations. The
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Speaker 1: case against all the prolusions of ostensible democracy is indeed
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Speaker 1: so strong that it is impossible to consider the present
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Speaker 1: wide establishment of democratic institutions as being the outcome of
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Speaker 1: any process of intellectual conviction. It arouses suspicion even whether
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Speaker 1: ostensible democracy may not be a mere rhetorical garment for
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Speaker 1: essentially different facts, and upon that suspicion, we will now
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Speaker 1: inquire democracy of the modern type. Manhood, suffrage, and so
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Speaker 1: forth became a conspicuous phenomenon in the world only in
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Speaker 1: the closing decades of the eighteenth century. Its genesis is
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Speaker 1: so intimately connected with the first expansion of the productive
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Speaker 1: element in the state through mechanism and a co operative
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Speaker 1: organization as to point at once to a causative connection.
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Speaker 1: The more closely one looks into the social and political
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Speaker 1: life of the eighteenth century, the more plausible becomes this view.
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Speaker 1: New and potentially influential social factors had begun to appear,
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Speaker 1: the organizing manufacturer, the intelligent worker, the skilled tenant, and
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Speaker 1: the urban abyss. And the traditions of the old land owning,
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Speaker 1: non progressive aristocratic monarchy that prevailed in Christendom rendered it
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Speaker 1: incapable without some destructive shock or convulsion of any reorganization
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Speaker 1: to incorporate or control these new factors. In the case
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Speaker 1: of the British Empire, an additional stress was created by
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Speaker 1: the incapacity of the formal government to assimilate the developing
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Speaker 1: civilization of the American colonies. Everywhere. There were new elements,
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Speaker 1: not as yet clearly analyzed or defined, arising as mechanism
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Speaker 1: arose everywhere. The old traditional government and social system, defined
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Speaker 1: and analyzed all too well, appeared increasingly obstructive, irrational, and
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Speaker 1: feeble in its attempts to include and direct these new powers.
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Speaker 1: But now comes a point to which I am inclined
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Speaker 1: to attach very great importance. The new powers were as
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Speaker 1: yet shapeless. It was not the conflict of a new
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Speaker 1: organization with the old. It was the preliminary dwarfing and
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Speaker 1: deliquescence of the mature old beside the embryonic mass of
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Speaker 1: the new. It was impossible then, it is, I believe,
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Speaker 1: only beginning to be possible now to estimate the proportions, possibilities,
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Speaker 1: and interrelations of the new social orders out of which
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Speaker 1: a social organization has still to be built in the
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Speaker 1: coming years. No formula of definite reconstruction had been evolved,
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Speaker 1: or has even been evolved yet after a hundred years,
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Speaker 1: and these swelling in coat new powers, whose very birth
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Speaker 1: condition was the crippling, modification or destruct action of the
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Speaker 1: old order, were almost forced to formulate their proceedings for
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Speaker 1: a time. Therefore, in general affirmative propositions that were really,
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Speaker 1: in effect not affirmative propositions at all, but propositions of
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Speaker 1: repudiation and denial. These kings and nobles and people privileged
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Speaker 1: in relation to obsolescent functions cannot manage our affairs. That
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Speaker 1: was evident enough. That was the really essential question at
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Speaker 1: that time, And since no other effectual substitute appeared ready made,
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Speaker 1: the working doctrine of the infallible judgment of humanity in
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Speaker 1: the gross, as distinguished from the quite indisputable incapacity of
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Speaker 1: sample individuals, became, in spite of its inherent absurdity, a
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Speaker 1: convenient and acceptable working hypothesis. Modern democracy thus came into being,
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Speaker 1: not as eloquent persons have pretended, by the sovereign people
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Speaker 1: consciously and definitely assuming power. I imagine the sovereign people
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Speaker 1: in France during the First Revolution, for example, quite a
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Speaker 1: maze eased and muddle headed with it all, but by
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Speaker 1: the decline of old ruling classes in the face of
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Speaker 1: the quasi natural growth of mechanism and industrialism, and by
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Speaker 1: the unpreparedness and want of organization in the new intelligent
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Speaker 1: elements in the state. I have compared the human beings
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Speaker 1: in society to a great and increasing variety of colours,
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Speaker 1: tumultuously smashed up together, and giving at present a general
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Speaker 1: and quite illusory effect of gray. And I have attempted
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Speaker 1: to show that there is a process in progress that
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Speaker 1: will amount at last to the segregation of these mingled
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Speaker 1: tints into recognizable distinct masses. Again, it is not a monotony,
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Speaker 1: but an utterly disorderly and confusing variety that makes this gray.
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Speaker 1: But democracy, for practical purposes does really assume such a monotony.
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Speaker 1: Like infinity, the democratic formula is a concrete looking and
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Speaker 1: negotiable symbol for a negation. It is the aspect in
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Speaker 1: political disputes and contrivances of that soul, social and moral deliquescence,
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Speaker 1: the nature and possibilities of which have been discussed in
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Speaker 1: the preceding chapters of this volume. Modern democracy first asserted
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Speaker 1: itself in the ancient kingdoms of France and Great Britain,
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Speaker 1: counting the former British colonies in America as part of
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Speaker 1: the latter, And it is in the French and English
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Speaker 1: speaking communities that democracy has developed itself most completely. Upon
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Speaker 1: the supposition we have made. Democracy broke out first in
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Speaker 1: these states because they were leading the way in material
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Speaker 1: progress because they were the first states to develop industrialism,
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Speaker 1: wholesale mechanisms, and great masses of insubordinate activity outside the
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Speaker 1: recognized political scheme. And the nature and time and violence
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Speaker 1: of the outbreak was determined by the nature of the
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Speaker 1: superseded government and the amount of stress between it and
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Speaker 1: the new elements. But the detachment of a great section
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Speaker 1: of the new middle class from the aristocratic order of
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Speaker 1: England to form the United States of America, and the
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Speaker 1: sudden rejuvenescence of Trance by the swift and thorough slowing
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Speaker 1: of its outworn aristocratic monarchy. The consequent Wars and the
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Speaker 1: Napoleonic Adventure checked and modified the parallel development that might
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Speaker 1: otherwise have happened in country after country all over Europe
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Speaker 1: west of the Carpathians. The monarchies that would probably have
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Speaker 1: collapsed through internal forces and given place to modern democratic
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Speaker 1: states were smashed from the outside, and a process of
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Speaker 1: political reconstruction that has probably missed out the complete formal
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Speaker 1: democratic phase altogether, and which has been enormously complicated through religious, national,
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Speaker 1: and dynastic traditions set in throughout America. In England and
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Speaker 1: after extraordinary experiments in France. Political democracy has in effect
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Speaker 1: legally established itself most completely in the United States, and
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Speaker 1: the reflection and influence of its methods upon the methods
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Speaker 1: of all the other countries in intellectual contact with it
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Speaker 1: have been so considerable as practically to make their monarchies
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Speaker 1: as new in their kind, almost as democratic republics. In Germany,
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Speaker 1: Austria and Italy, for example, there is a press nearly
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Speaker 1: as audible as in the more frankly democratic countries, and
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Speaker 1: measurably akin in influence. There are constitutionally established legislative assemblies,
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Speaker 1: and there is the same unofficial development of powerful financial
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Speaker 1: and industrial powers with which the ostensible government must make terms.
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Speaker 1: In a vast amount of the public discussion of these states,
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Speaker 1: the postulates of democracy are clearly implicit, quite as much
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Speaker 1: in reality as the democratic republics of America are. They
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Speaker 1: based not on classes, but upon a confusion. They are,
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Speaker 1: in their various degrees and with their various individual differences,
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Speaker 1: just as truly governments of the gray. It has been
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Speaker 1: argued that the gray is illusory and must sooner or
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Speaker 1: later pass, and that the color that will emerge to
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Speaker 1: predominance will take its shape as a scientifically trained middle
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Speaker 1: class of an unprecedented sort, not arising out of the
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Speaker 1: older middle classes, but replacing them. This class will become,
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Speaker 1: i believe, at last, consciously the state controlling and restricting
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Speaker 1: very greatly the three non functional masses with which it
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Speaker 1: is as yet almost indistinguishably mingled. The general nature of
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Speaker 1: its formation within the existing confusion, and its emergence may
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Speaker 1: I think, with a certain degree of confidence, be already forecast,
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Speaker 1: albeit at present its beginnings are singularly unpromising and faint.
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Speaker 1: At present, the class of specially trained and capable people, doctors, engineers,
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Speaker 1: scientific men of all sorts, is quite disproportionately absent from
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Speaker 1: political life. It does not exist as a factor in
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Speaker 1: that life. It is growing up outside that life, and
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Speaker 1: has still to develop much more to display a collective
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Speaker 1: intention to come specifically in. But the forces are an
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Speaker 1: active operation to drag it into the center of the stage.
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Speaker 1: For all that, the modern democracy or democratic quasi monarchy
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Speaker 1: conducts its affairs as though there was no such thing
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Speaker 1: as special knowledge or practical education. The utmost recognition it
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Speaker 1: affords to the man who has taken the pains to
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Speaker 1: know and specifically to do is occasionally to consult him
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Speaker 1: upon specific points and to override his counsels in its
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Speaker 1: ampler wisdom, or to entrust to him some otherwise impossible
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Speaker 1: duty under circumstances of extreme limitation. The man of special
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Speaker 1: equipment is treated always as if he were some sort
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Speaker 1: of curious performing animal. The gunnery specialist, for example, may
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Speaker 1: move and let off guns, but he may not say
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Speaker 1: where they are to be let off. Some one a
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Speaker 1: little ignorant of range and trajectory does that. The engineer
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Speaker 1: may move the ship and fire the battery, but only
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Speaker 1: with some man who does not perfectly understand shouting instructions
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Speaker 1: down a cube at him. If the cycle is to
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Speaker 1: be adapted to military requirements, the thing is entrusted to
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Speaker 1: Lieutenant Colonel belfour. If horses are to be bought for
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Speaker 1: the British Army in India, no specialist goes, but Lord
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Speaker 1: Edward Cecil. These people of the governing class do not
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Speaker 1: understand there is such a thing as special knowledge or
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Speaker 1: an inexorable fact in the world. They have been educated
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Speaker 1: at schools conducted by amateur schoolmasters, whose real aim in life.
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Speaker 1: If such people can be described as having a real
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Speaker 1: aim in life is the episcopal bench, and they have
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Speaker 1: learned little or nothing but the extraordinary power of appearances.
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Speaker 1: In these democratic times, to look right and to be
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Speaker 1: of good report is to succeed. What else is there?
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Speaker 1: The primarily functional men are ignored in the ostensible political scheme.
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Speaker 1: It operates as though they did not exist, as though
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Speaker 1: nothing in fact existed but the irresponsible wealthy and the
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Speaker 1: manipulators of irresponsible wealth on the one hand, and a
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Speaker 1: great gray, politically indifferent community on the other. Having regarded
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Speaker 1: only to the present condition of political life, it would
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Speaker 1: seem as though this state of affairs must continue indefinitely
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Speaker 1: and develop only in accordance with the laws of interaction
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Speaker 1: between our charlatan governing class on the one hand, and
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Speaker 1: the gray mass of governed on the other. There is
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Speaker 1: no way apparent in the existing political and social order
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Speaker 1: whereby the class of really educated persons that the continually
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Speaker 1: more complicated mechanical fabric of social life as developing may
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Speaker 1: be expected to come in. And in a very great
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Speaker 1: amount of current political speculation, the development and final emergence
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Speaker 1: of this class is ignored, and attention is concentrated entirely
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Speaker 1: upon the inherent process of development of the political machine,
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Speaker 1: and even in that it is very easy to exaggerate
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Speaker 1: the preponderance of one or other of what are really
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Speaker 1: very evenly balanced forces in the machine of democratic government.
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Speaker 1: There are two chief sets of parts in the machine
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Speaker 1: that have a certain antagonistic relation that play against each other,
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Speaker 1: and one's conception of coming developments is necessarily determined by
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Speaker 1: the relative value one gives to these opposing elements. One
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Speaker 1: may compare these two groups to the power and the work, respectively,
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Speaker 1: at the two ends of a lever footnote, the fulkrim,
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Speaker 1: which is generally treated as being absolutely immovable, being the
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Speaker 1: general belief in the theory of democracy end footnote. On
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Speaker 1: the one hand, there is that which pays for the machine,
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Speaker 1: which distributes salaries and rewards, subsidizes newspapers, and so forth,
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Speaker 1: the central influence footnote. In the United States, a vast
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Speaker 1: rapidly developing country with relatively much kinetic wealth, this central
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Speaker 1: influence is the financial support of the boss, consisting for
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Speaker 1: the most part of active, minded, capable business organizers. In England,
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Speaker 1: the land where irresponsible realize wealth is at a maximum,
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Speaker 1: a public spirited section of the irresponsible, inspired by the
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Speaker 1: tradition of an aristocratic functional past, qualifies the financial influence
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Speaker 1: with an amateurish, indolent, and publicly unprofitable integrity. In Germany,
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Speaker 1: an aggressively functional court occupies the place and plays the
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Speaker 1: part of a permanently dominant party machine end footnote. On
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Speaker 1: the other hand, there is the collectively gray voting mass,
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Speaker 1: with certain prejudices and traditions, and certain laws and limitations
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Speaker 1: of thought upon which the newspapers work and which, within
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Speaker 1: the confines of its inherent laws, they direct. If one
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Speaker 1: dwell chiefly on the possibilities of the former element, one
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Speaker 1: may conjure up a practical end to democracy in the
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Speaker 1: vision of a state run entirely by a group of
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Speaker 1: highly forcible and intellectual persons. Usually the dream takes the
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Speaker 1: shape of financiers and their associates, their perfected mechanism of
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Speaker 1: party control, working the elections boldly and capably, and their
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Speaker 1: public policy being directed towards financial ends. One of the
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Speaker 1: common prophecies of the future of the United States is
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Speaker 1: such a domination by a group of trust organizers and
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Speaker 1: political bosses. But a man or a group of men
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Speaker 1: so strong and intelligent as would be needed to hold
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Speaker 1: an entire party machine within the confines of his or
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Speaker 1: their collective mind and will, could at the most be
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Speaker 1: but a very transitory and incidental phenomenon in the history
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Speaker 1: of the world. Either such an exploitation of the central
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Speaker 1: control will have to be covert and subtle, beyond any
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Speaker 1: precedent and human disingenuousness, or else its domination will have
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Speaker 1: to be very amply modified, indeed by the requirements of
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Speaker 1: the second factor, and its proceedings made very largely the
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Speaker 1: resultant of that second factor's forces. Moreover, very subtle men
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Speaker 1: do not aim at things of the sort or aiming fail,
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Speaker 1: because subtlety of intelligence involves subtlety of character, a certain fastidiousness,
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Speaker 1: and a certain weakness. Now that the garrulous period when
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Speaker 1: a flow of language and a certain effectiveness of manner
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Speaker 1: was a necessary condition to political pre eminence is passing away,
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Speaker 1: political control falls more and more entirely into the hands
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Speaker 1: of a barristerish, intriguing sort of person with a tough, wearing,
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Speaker 1: leathery practical mind. The sort of people who will work
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Speaker 1: the machine are people with faith, as the popular preachers say,
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Speaker 1: meaning in fact, people who do not analyze. People who
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Speaker 1: will take the machine as it is, unquestioningly shape their
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Speaker 1: ambitions to it, and saving their vanity work it as
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Speaker 1: it wants to go. The man who will be boss
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Speaker 1: will be the man who wants to be boss, who
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Speaker 1: finds in being boss a complete and final satisfaction, and
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Speaker 1: not the man who complicates things by wanting to be
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Speaker 1: boss in order to be or do something else. The
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Speaker 1: machines are governed today, and there is every reason to
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Speaker 1: believe that they will continue to be governed by masterful
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Speaker 1: looking resultants, masters of nothing but compromise, And that little
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Speaker 1: fancy of an inner conspiracy of control within the machine
23:02
Speaker 1: and behind ostensible politics is really on all fours with
23:05
Speaker 1: the wonderful rodin of the jufferrant, and as probable as
23:09
Speaker 1: anything else in the romances of Eugene Sue. If, on
23:14
Speaker 1: the other hand, we direct attention to the antagonistic element
23:17
Speaker 1: in the machine to public opinion, to the alleged collective
23:21
Speaker 1: mind of the gray mass, and consider how it is
23:24
Speaker 1: brought to believe in itself and its possession of certain opinions,
23:27
Speaker 1: by the concrete evidence of daily newspapers and eloquent persons
23:31
Speaker 1: saying as much, we may also very readily conjure up
23:35
Speaker 1: a contrasted vision of extraordinary demagogues or newspaper syndicates working
23:39
Speaker 1: the political machine from that direction. So far as the
23:43
Speaker 1: demagogue goes. The increase of population, the multiplication of amusements
23:48
Speaker 1: and interests, the differentiation of social habits, the diffusion of
23:52
Speaker 1: great towns, all militate against that sufficient gathering of masses
23:56
Speaker 1: of voters and meeting houses which gave him his power
23:59
Speaker 1: in the recent It is improbable that ever again will
24:03
Speaker 1: any flushed, undignified man with a vast voice, a muscular face,
24:08
Speaker 1: and incessant operation, collar crumpled, hair disordered and arms in
24:13
Speaker 1: wild activity, talking talking, talking, talking copiously out of the
24:18
Speaker 1: windows of railway carriages, talking on railway platforms, talking from
24:22
Speaker 1: hotel balconies, talking on tubs, barrels, scaffoldings, Pulpits tireless and
24:28
Speaker 1: undamnable rise to be the most powerful thing in any
24:32
Speaker 1: democratic state in the world. Continually, the individual vocal demagogue dwindles,
24:38
Speaker 1: and the element of bands and buttons, the organization of
24:42
Speaker 1: the press and procession, the share of the machine grows.
24:48
Speaker 1: Mister Harmsworth of the London Daily Mail, in a very
24:51
Speaker 1: interesting article, has glanced at certain possibilities of power that
24:55
Speaker 1: may vest in the owners of a great system of worldwide,
24:59
Speaker 1: simultaneous newspapers. But he does not analyze the nature of
25:03
Speaker 1: the influence exercised by newspapers during the successive phases of
25:07
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, nor the probable modifications of that influence
25:11
Speaker 1: in the years to come. And I think on the
25:14
Speaker 1: whole he inclines very naturally to overestimate the amount of
25:17
Speaker 1: intentional direction that may be given by the owner of
25:20
Speaker 1: a paper to the minds and acts of his readers,
25:23
Speaker 1: and to exceed the very definite limits within which that
25:27
Speaker 1: influence is confined. In the earlier Victorian period, the more limited,
25:32
Speaker 1: partly educated and still very homogeneous enfranchised class had a
25:37
Speaker 1: certain habit of thinking. Its tranquil assurance upon most theological
25:41
Speaker 1: and all moral and esthetic points left political questions as
25:45
Speaker 1: the chief field of exercise for such thinking as it did,
25:48
Speaker 1: and as a consequence, the dignified newspapers of that time
25:52
Speaker 1: were able to discuss, and indeed were required to discuss,
25:56
Speaker 1: not only specific situations, but general principles. That indeed was
26:01
Speaker 1: their principal function. And it fell rather to the eloquent
26:04
Speaker 1: men to misapply these principles. According to the necessity of
26:07
Speaker 1: the occasion. The papers did then very much more than
26:10
Speaker 1: they do now to mold opinion. Though they did not
26:13
Speaker 1: direct affairs to anything like the extent of their modern successes.
26:18
Speaker 1: They made roads upon which events presently traveled in unexpected fashions.
26:23
Speaker 1: But the often cheaper and always more vivid newspapers that
26:26
Speaker 1: have come with the New democracy do nothing to mold opinion. Indeed,
26:30
Speaker 1: there is no longer upon most public questions, and as
26:33
Speaker 1: I have tried to make clear in my previous paper,
26:36
Speaker 1: there is not likely to be any longer a collective
26:38
Speaker 1: opinion to be molded. Protectionists, for example, are a mere band.
26:44
Speaker 1: Free traders are a mere band. On all these details,
26:47
Speaker 1: we are in chaos. And these modern newspapers simply endeavor
26:52
Speaker 1: to sustain a large circulation and so merit advertisements by
26:56
Speaker 1: being as miscellaneously and vividly interesting as possible, by firing
27:00
Speaker 1: where the crowd seems thickest, by seeking perpetually and without
27:04
Speaker 1: any attempt at consistency, the greatest excitement of the greatest number.
27:09
Speaker 1: It is upon the cultivation and rapid succession of inflammatory
27:13
Speaker 1: topics that the modern newspaper expends its capital and trusts
27:17
Speaker 1: to recover its reward. Its general news sinks steadily to
27:21
Speaker 1: a subordinate position. Criticism, discussion, and high responsibility pass out
27:27
Speaker 1: of journalism, and the power of the press comes more
27:30
Speaker 1: and more to be a dramatic and emotional power, the
27:32
Speaker 1: power to cry fire in the theater, the power to
27:36
Speaker 1: give enormous value for a limited time to some personality,
27:39
Speaker 1: some event, some aspect true or false, without any power
27:43
Speaker 1: of giving a specific direction to the forces this distortion
27:46
Speaker 1: may set going. Directly, the press of to day passes
27:50
Speaker 1: from that sort of thing to some specific proposal, some
27:53
Speaker 1: implication of principles and beliefs. Directly, it chooses and selects.
27:57
Speaker 1: Then it passes from the miscellaneous to the sea, and
28:01
Speaker 1: out of touch with the gray indefiniteness of the general mind.
28:05
Speaker 1: It gives offense. Here it perplexes and bores there. No
28:09
Speaker 1: more than the boss politician can the paper of great
28:12
Speaker 1: circulation afford to work consistently for any ulterior aim. This
28:18
Speaker 1: is the limit of the power of the modern newspaper
28:20
Speaker 1: of large circulation, the newspaper that appeals to the gray element,
28:24
Speaker 1: to the average democratic man, the newspaper of the deliquescence.
28:29
Speaker 1: And if our previous conclusion that human society has ceased
28:33
Speaker 1: to be homogeneous, and will presently display new masses segregating
28:36
Speaker 1: from a great confusion, holds good that will be the
28:40
Speaker 1: limit of its power. In the future. It may undergo
28:43
Speaker 1: many remarkable developments and modifications, but none of these tend
28:48
Speaker 1: to give it any greater political importance than it has
28:50
Speaker 1: now footnote. The nature of these modifications is an interesting
28:55
Speaker 1: side issue. There is every possibility of papers becoming at
28:59
Speaker 1: last papers of world wide circulation, so far as the
29:02
Speaker 1: language in which they are printed permits with additions that
29:05
Speaker 1: will follow the sun and change into tomorrow's issue as
29:09
Speaker 1: they go, picking up literary criticism here, financial intelligence, there,
29:13
Speaker 1: here tomorrow's story, and there tomorrow's scandal, and like some
29:17
Speaker 1: vast intellectual garden roller, rolling out local provincialism at every revolution.
29:23
Speaker 1: This for papers in English at any rate, is merely
29:26
Speaker 1: a question of how long it will be before the
29:28
Speaker 1: price of the best writing for journalistic purposes rises actually
29:32
Speaker 1: or relatively above the falling cost of long distance electrical type. Setting.
29:37
Speaker 1: Each of the local editions of these world traveling papers,
29:40
Speaker 1: in addition to the identical matter that will appear almost
29:43
Speaker 1: simultaneously everywhere, will no doubt have its special matter and
29:47
Speaker 1: its special advertisements. Illustrations will be telegraphed just as well
29:51
Speaker 1: as matter, and probably a much greater use will be
29:54
Speaker 1: made of sketch and diagram than at present. If the
29:57
Speaker 1: theory advanced in this book that democracy as a transitory
30:00
Speaker 1: confusion be sound, there will not be one world paper
30:04
Speaker 1: of this sort, only like Moses Serpent after its miraculous struggle,
30:08
Speaker 1: but several. And as the non provincial segregation of society
30:13
Speaker 1: goes on, these various great papers will take on more
30:17
Speaker 1: and more decided specific characteristics and lose more and more
30:21
Speaker 1: their local references. They will come to have not only
30:24
Speaker 1: a distinctive type of matter, a distinctive method of thought
30:28
Speaker 1: and manner of expression, but distinctive fundamental implications and a
30:32
Speaker 1: distinctive class of writer. This difference in character and tone
30:37
Speaker 1: renders the advent of any Napoleonic master of the newspaper
30:40
Speaker 1: world vastly more improbable than it would otherwise be. The
30:44
Speaker 1: specializing newspapers will, as they find their class, throw out
30:48
Speaker 1: many features that do not belong to that class. It
30:51
Speaker 1: is highly probable that many will restrict the space devoted
30:55
Speaker 1: to news and sham news that forged and inflated stuff
30:58
Speaker 1: made in officers that bulks out the foreign intelligence of
31:01
Speaker 1: so many English papers. For example, at present every paper
31:06
Speaker 1: contains a little of everything, inadequate sporting stuff, inadequate financial stuff,
31:11
Speaker 1: vague literary matters, voluminous reports of political vaporings. Because no
31:17
Speaker 1: newspaper is quite sure of the sort of readers it has,
31:20
Speaker 1: probably no daily newspaper has yet a distinctive sort of reader.
31:26
Speaker 1: Many people, with their minds inspired by the number of
31:29
Speaker 1: editions which evening papers pretend to publish, and do not
31:32
Speaker 1: inclined to believe that daily papers may presently give place
31:36
Speaker 1: to hourly papers, each with the last news of the
31:39
Speaker 1: last sixty minutes photographically displayed. As a matter of fact,
31:43
Speaker 1: no human being wants that, and very few are so
31:46
Speaker 1: foolish as to think they do. The only kind of
31:49
Speaker 1: news that any sort of people clamors for hot and
31:52
Speaker 1: hot is financial and betting fluctuations, lottery lists and examination results,
31:58
Speaker 1: and the elaborated and cheapened telegram, graphic and telephonic system
32:01
Speaker 1: of the coming days, with tapes or phonograph to replace them.
32:05
Speaker 1: In every post office and nearly every private health, so
32:08
Speaker 1: far from expanding this department will probably sweep it out
32:12
Speaker 1: of the papers altogether. One will subscribe to a news agency,
32:16
Speaker 1: which will wire all the stuff one cares to have
32:18
Speaker 1: so violently fresh into a phonographic recorder, perhaps in some
32:23
Speaker 1: convenient corner. There the thing will be in every house
32:26
Speaker 1: beside the barometer to hear or ignore. With the separation
32:30
Speaker 1: of that function, what is left of the newspaper will
32:32
Speaker 1: revert to one daily edition, daily, I think, because of
32:37
Speaker 1: the power of habit to make the newspaper the specific
32:40
Speaker 1: business of some definite moments in the day, the breakfast hour,
32:43
Speaker 1: I suppose, or the up to town journey with most Englishmen. Now,
32:48
Speaker 1: quite possibly someone will discover some day that there is
32:51
Speaker 1: now a machinery for folding and fastening a paper into
32:54
Speaker 1: a form that will not inevitably get into the butter
32:57
Speaker 1: or lead to bitterness in a railway carriage. This which
33:00
Speaker 1: of development reached, I incline to anticipate daily papers much
33:04
Speaker 1: more like the spectator in form than these present main
33:07
Speaker 1: sales of our public life. They will probably not contain
33:11
Speaker 1: fiction at all, and poetry only rarely, because no one
33:15
Speaker 1: but a partial imbecile wants these things in punctual daily doses,
33:18
Speaker 1: and we are anticipating an escape from a period of
33:21
Speaker 1: partial imbecility. My own culture and turn of mind, which
33:25
Speaker 1: is probably akin to that of a respectable mechanic of
33:28
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, inclines me towards a daily paper
33:32
Speaker 1: that will have, in addition to its concentrated and absolutely
33:35
Speaker 1: trustworthy daily news, full and luminous accounts of new inventions,
33:39
Speaker 1: new theories, and new departures of all sorts, usually illustrated,
33:44
Speaker 1: witty and penetrating comments upon public affairs, criticisms of all
33:48
Speaker 1: sorts of things, representations of newly produced works of art,
33:53
Speaker 1: and an ample amount of ably written controversy upon everything
33:56
Speaker 1: under the sun. The correspondence columns, instead of being an
34:00
Speaker 1: exercising place for bores and conspicuous people who are not mercenary,
34:04
Speaker 1: will be the most ample, the most carefully collected, and
34:08
Speaker 1: the most highly paid of all departments in this paper.
34:11
Speaker 1: Personal paragraphs will be relegated to some obscure and costly
34:15
Speaker 1: corner next to the birth's, deaths and marriages. This paper
34:19
Speaker 1: will have, of course, many pages of business advertisements, and
34:22
Speaker 1: these will usually be well worth looking through for the
34:25
Speaker 1: more intelligent editors of the days to come. Will edit
34:28
Speaker 1: this department just like any other, and classify their advertisements
34:32
Speaker 1: in a descending scale of freshness and interest that will
34:35
Speaker 1: also be an ascending scale of price. The advertiser who
34:39
Speaker 1: wants to be an indecent bore and vociferate for the
34:42
Speaker 1: ten millionth time some flatulent falsehood about a pill, for instance,
34:46
Speaker 1: will pay at nuisance rates. Probably many papers will refuse
34:50
Speaker 1: to print nasty and distressful advertisements about people's insides at all.
34:55
Speaker 1: The entire paper will be as free from either grayness
34:58
Speaker 1: or offensive stupidity in its own advertisement columns as the
35:01
Speaker 1: shop windows in Bond Street today, and for much the
35:04
Speaker 1: same reason, because the people who go that way do
35:07
Speaker 1: not want that sort of thing. It has been supposed that,
35:11
Speaker 1: since the real income of the newspaper is derived from advertisements,
35:15
Speaker 1: large advertisers will combine in the future to own papers
35:19
Speaker 1: confined to the advertisements of their specific wares. Some such
35:23
Speaker 1: monopoly is already attempted. Several publishing firms own or partially
35:28
Speaker 1: own a number of provincial papers, which they adorn with
35:31
Speaker 1: strange book chat columns conspicuously deficient in their information, and
35:36
Speaker 1: a well known cycled tire firm supplies cycling columns that
35:41
Speaker 1: are mere pedestals for the head of King Charles make
35:43
Speaker 1: of tire. Many quack firms publish and give away annual
35:48
Speaker 1: almanacs replete with economical illustrations, offensive details, and bad jokes.
35:54
Speaker 1: But I venture to think, in spite of such phenomena,
35:57
Speaker 1: that these suggestions and attempts are made with a certain
36:00
Speaker 1: disregard of the essential conditions of sound advertisement. Sound advertisement
36:05
Speaker 1: consists in perpetual alertness and newness, in appearance in new
36:10
Speaker 1: places and in new aspects, in the constant access to
36:13
Speaker 1: fresh minds. The devotion of a newspaper to the interest
36:17
Speaker 1: of one particular make of a commodity or group of
36:20
Speaker 1: commodities will inevitably rob its advertisement department of most of
36:24
Speaker 1: its interest for the habitual readers of the paper. That
36:27
Speaker 1: is to say, the newspaper will fail in what is
36:30
Speaker 1: one of the chief attractions of a good newspaper. Moreover,
36:34
Speaker 1: such a devotion will react upon all the other matter
36:36
Speaker 1: in the paper, Because the editor will need to be
36:39
Speaker 1: constantly alert to exclude seditious reflections upon the health extract
36:44
Speaker 1: of horseflesh or saved by boiling jam. His sense of
36:48
Speaker 1: this relation will taint his self respect, and make him
36:51
Speaker 1: a less capable editor than a man whose sole affair
36:54
Speaker 1: is to keep his paper interesting to these more interesting
36:58
Speaker 1: rival papers, the excluded competitor will be driven, and the
37:01
Speaker 1: reader will follow in his wake. There is little more
37:04
Speaker 1: wisdom in the proprietor of an article in popular demand
37:07
Speaker 1: buying or creating a newspaper to contain all his advertisements
37:11
Speaker 1: than in his buying a coal pit for the same purpose.
37:15
Speaker 1: Such a privacy of advertisement will never work, I think
37:18
Speaker 1: on a large scale. It is probably at or near
37:21
Speaker 1: its maximum development now. And this anticipation of the advertiser
37:25
Speaker 1: owned paper, like that of hourly papers and that wonderfully
37:29
Speaker 1: powerful cosmic newspaper syndicate, is simply another instance of prophesying
37:34
Speaker 1: based only on a present trend, an extension of the obvious,
37:38
Speaker 1: instead of an analysis of determining forces. End footnote. And so,
37:43
Speaker 1: after all, our considerations of the probable developments of the
37:47
Speaker 1: party machine give us only negative results. So long as
37:50
Speaker 1: the gray social confusion continues. Subject to that continuance, the
37:55
Speaker 1: party machine will probably continue as it is at present.
37:59
Speaker 1: And democratics are states, and governments follow the lines upon
38:02
Speaker 1: which they run at the present time. Now how will
38:07
Speaker 1: the emergent class of capable men presently begin to modify
38:10
Speaker 1: the existing form of government in the ostensibly democratic countries
38:14
Speaker 1: and democratic monarchies. There will be very many variations and
38:19
Speaker 1: modifications of the methods of this arrival, an infinite complication
38:24
Speaker 1: of detailed incidents, but a general proposition will be found
38:28
Speaker 1: to hold good. The suppression of the party machine in
38:31
Speaker 1: the purely democratic countries and of the official choice of
38:35
Speaker 1: the rich and privileged rulers in the more monarchical ones
38:38
Speaker 1: by capable, operative and administrative men inspired by the belief
38:42
Speaker 1: in a common theory of social order, will come about
38:46
Speaker 1: peacefully and gradually as a process of change, or violently
38:49
Speaker 1: as a revolution, but inevitably as the outcome, either of
38:53
Speaker 1: the imminence or else of the disasters of war. That
38:59
Speaker 1: all these governs moments of confusion will drift towards war
39:03
Speaker 1: with a spacious impulse and a final vehemence, quite out
39:06
Speaker 1: of comparison greater than the warlike impulses of former times,
39:10
Speaker 1: is a remarkable but by no means inexplicable thing. A
39:14
Speaker 1: tone of public expression, jealous and patriotic to the danger point,
39:19
Speaker 1: is an unavoidable condition under which democratic governments exist to
39:24
Speaker 1: be patriotically Quarrelsome is imperative upon the party machines that
39:28
Speaker 1: will come to dominate the democratic countries. They will not
39:31
Speaker 1: possess detailed and definite policies and creeds, because there are
39:35
Speaker 1: no longer any detailed and definite public opinions. But they will,
39:40
Speaker 1: for all that require some ostensible purpose to explain their cohesion,
39:44
Speaker 1: some hold upon the common man that will insure his
39:47
Speaker 1: appearance in numbers at the polling place sufficient to save
39:51
Speaker 1: the government from the raids of small but determined sects.
39:55
Speaker 1: That hold can be only of one sort, without moral
39:59
Speaker 1: or religious uniformity, with material interests as involved and confused
40:04
Speaker 1: as a heap of spellikans. There remains only one generality
40:08
Speaker 1: for the politician's purpose, the ampler aspect of a man's egotism,
40:12
Speaker 1: his pride in what he imagines to be his particular kind,
40:16
Speaker 1: his patriotism. In every country amenable to democratic influences, their
40:22
Speaker 1: emergers or will emerge a party machine, vividly and simply
40:26
Speaker 1: patriotic and indefinite upon the score of any other possible
40:30
Speaker 1: consideration between man and man. This will hold true not
40:34
Speaker 1: only of the ostensibly democratic states, but also of such
40:38
Speaker 1: reconstituted modern monarchies as Italy and Germany, for they too,
40:43
Speaker 1: for all their legal difference, rest also on the gray.
40:47
Speaker 1: The party conflicts of the future will turn very largely
40:50
Speaker 1: on the discovery of the true patriot, on the suspicion
40:54
Speaker 1: that the crown or the machine and possession is in
40:57
Speaker 1: some more or less occultway traitorous, And almost all other
41:01
Speaker 1: matters of contention will be shelved and allowed to stagnate,
41:05
Speaker 1: for fear of breaking the unity of the national mechanism.
41:10
Speaker 1: End of chapter five. A recording by John Trevithick