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

you slept. If I were to give you, in one sentence, a key to what
may seem the mysteries of our civilization as compared with that
of your age, I should say that it is the fact that the solidarity of
the race and the brotherhood of man, which to you were but fine
phrases, are, to our thinking and feeling, ties as real and as vital
as physical fraternity.

"But even setting that consideration aside, I do not see why it
so surprises you that those who cannot work are conceded the
full right to live on the produce of those who can. Even in your
day, the duty of military service for the protection of the nation,
to which our industrial service corresponds, while obligatory on
those able to discharge it, did not operate to deprive of the
privileges of citizenship those who were unable. They stayed at
home, and were protected by those who fought, and nobody
questioned their right to be, or thought less of them. So, now,
the requirement of industrial service from those able to render
it does not operate to deprive of the privileges of citizenship,
which now implies the citizen's maintenance, him who cannot
work. The worker is not a citizen because he works, but works
because he is a citizen. As you recognize the duty of the strong
to fight for the weak, we, now that fighting is gone by, recognize
his duty to work for him.

"A solution which leaves an unaccounted-for residuum is no
solution at all; and our solution of the problem of human society
would have been none at all had it left the lame, the sick, and
the blind outside with the beasts, to fare as they might. Better
far have left the strong and well unprovided for than these
burdened ones, toward whom every heart must yearn, and for
whom ease of mind and body should be provided, if for no
others. Therefore it is, as I told you this morning, that the title
of every man, woman, and child to the means of existence rests
on no basis less plain, broad, and simple than the fact that they
are fellows of one race-members of one human family. The
only coin current is the image of God, and that is good for all
we have.

"I think there is no feature of the civilization of your epoch so
repugnant to modern ideas as the neglect with which you treated
your dependent classes. Even if you had no pity, no feeling of
brotherhood, how was it that you did not see that you were
robbing the incapable class of their plain right in leaving them
unprovided for?"

"I don't quite follow you there," I said. "I admit the claim of
this class to our pity, but how could they who produced nothing
claim a share of the product as a right?"

"How happened it," was Dr. Leete's reply, "that your workers