"Edward Bellamy. Lookimg Backward From 2000 to 1887" - читать интересную книгу автора

observed, "will be regarded as a most valuable vindication of
Storiot, whose account of your era has been generally thought
exaggerated in its picture of the gloom and confusion of men's
minds. That a period of transition like that should be full of
excitement and agitation was indeed to be looked for; but seeing
how plain was the tendency of the forces in operation, it was
natural to believe that hope rather than fear would have been
the prevailing temper of the popular mind."

"You have not yet told me what was the answer to the riddle
which you found," I said. "I am impatient to know by what
contradiction of natural sequence the peace and prosperity
which you now seem to enjoy could have been the outcome of
an era like my own."

"Excuse me," replied my host, "but do you smoke?" It was
not till our cigars were lighted and drawing well that he
resumed. "Since you are in the humor to talk rather than to
sleep, as I certainly am, perhaps I cannot do better than to try
to give you enough idea of our modern industrial system to
dissipate at least the impression that there is any mystery about
the process of its evolution. The Bostonians of your day had the
reputation of being great askers of questions, and I am going to
show my descent by asking you one to begin with. What should
you name as the most prominent feature of the labor troubles of
your day?"

"Why, the strikes, of course," I replied.

"Exactly; but what made the strikes so formidable?"

"The great labor organizations."

"And what was the motive of these great organizations?"

"The workmen claimed they had to organize to get their
rights from the big corporations," I replied.

"That is just it," said Dr. Leete; "the organization of labor and
the strikes were an effect, merely, of the concentration of capital
in greater masses than had ever been known before. Before this
concentration began, while as yet commerce and industry were
conducted by innumerable petty concerns with small capital,
instead of a small number of great concerns with vast capital, the
individual workman was relatively important and independent in
his relations to the employer. Moreover, when a little capital or a
new idea was enough to start a man in business for himself,
workingmen were constantly becoming employers and there was
no hard and fast line between the two classes. Labor unions were
needless then, and general strikes out of the question. But when