John Firth was an industrialist; yet far more than that, too—politician, scientist, financier, even an artist of sorts. There was nothing he couldn't do; and few things he didn't do superbly well. That accounts for his philosophy. He never understood his own superiority. He honestly believed that all men could achieve what he had, if they set their minds to it.
"Lazy, incompetent fools!" he would say. "The world's full of them. And they've elected a government of fools, taxing me to support the others."
As billionaires go, John Firth was very young. Six months after World Government became an established reality, Earth ships began to explore the skies; and in less than a year Mars, Venus and the Earth had formed a planetary confederacy.
A new feeling came to men when the burden of war-fear was lifted from their minds. Men were free—free for the first time in centuries. Their full energies were channeled into invention, exploration, experiment. The Earth was like a frontier town: booming, uproarious, lusty, dynamic—but with a social conscience: poverty and deprivation for none and unlimited opportunity for all. For Man—that abstract symbol of mass humanity—it was the best of all possible worlds. Yet there were misfits; John Firth was one of them.
"We're coddling people," he said. "We're teaching them to live on charity, on government hand-outs—and I'm expected to pay for it all. Cut them loose; let them sink or swim for themselves. If some of them don't survive—well, they won't; that's all. We'd be a stronger people if we could rid ourselves of the leeches."
He was a man of the new age,—stubbornly holding to ideas from the old.
And then the Stranger came to see him. We don't know who the Stranger was or where he came from. A force of evil, perhaps—the symbol of Satan refurbished and streamlined to fit the concepts of the modern world.
"I've been reading your political pamphlets, Mr. Firth," the Stranger said. "You hold rather—rather fascinating views."
"Now that I'm suitably flattered," Firth answered, "may I ask what particular form of hand-out you want?"
"None. I've something for sale." The Stranger took a pamphlet out of his pocket. "But tell me this, first: do you honestly believe what you've written here?"