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

were able to produce more than so many savages would have
done? Was it not wholly on account of the heritage of the past
knowledge and achievements of the race, the machinery of
society, thousands of years in contriving, found by you ready-
made to your hand? How did you come to be possessors of this
knowledge and this machinery, which represent nine parts to
one contributed by yourself in the value of your product? You
inherited it, did you not? And were not these others, these
unfortunate and crippled brothers whom you cast out, joint
inheritors, co-heirs with you? What did you do with their share?
Did you not rob them when you put them off with crusts, who
were entitled to sit with the heirs, and did you not add insult to
robbery when you called the crusts charity?

"Ah, Mr. West," Dr. Leete continued, as I did not respond,
"what I do not understand is, setting aside all considerations
either of justice or brotherly feeling toward the crippled and
defective, how the workers of your day could have had any heart
for their work, knowing that their children, or grand-children, if
unfortunate, would be deprived of the comforts and even
necessities of life. It is a mystery how men with children could
favor a system under which they were rewarded beyond those
less endowed with bodily strength or mental power. For, by the
same discrimination by which the father profited, the son, for
whom he would give his life, being perchance weaker than
others, might be reduced to crusts and beggary. How men dared
leave children behind them, I have never been able to understand."

Note.--Although in his talk on the previous evening Dr. Leete
had emphasized the pains taken to enable every man to ascertain
and follow his natural bent in choosing an occupation, it was not
till I learned that the worker's income is the same in all occupations
that I realized how absolutely he may be counted on to do so, and
thus, by selecting the harness which sets most lightly on himself,
find that in which he can pull best. The failure of my age in any
systematic or effective way to develop and utilize the natural
aptitudes of men for the industries and intellectual avocations was
one of the great wastes, as well as one of the most common causes
of unhappiness in that time. The vast majority of my contemporaries,
though nominally free to do so, never really chose their
occupations at all, but were forced by circumstances into work for
which they were relatively inefficient, because not naturally fitted
for it. The rich, in this respect, had little advantage over the poor.
The latter, indeed, being generally deprived of education, had no
opportunity even to ascertain the natural aptitudes they might
have, and on account of their poverty were unable to develop them
by cultivation even when ascertained. The liberal and technical
professions, except by favorable accident, were shut to them, to
their own great loss and that of the nation. On the other hand, the
well-to-do, although they could command education and opportunity,