The next day the doctor and I took the first opportunity to tell Thorwald that we were anxious to have him proceed with his narrative.
“Yes,” he said, “I shall be glad to do so, for I had not reached the important part when our sitting broke up yesterday.
“I was describing to you a remarkable era in our career, and one of you mentioned the fact that the present condition of your race corresponded in some particulars with that age on Mars. If you shall discover further points of likeness as I continue, it will add a peculiar interest to my story.
“There is a difference of opinion among our historians in regard to those times. Some believe that the whole world was corrupt, that it was an age of material development only, and that, if there were any good impulses at all, they were so smothered with selfishness as to be of no account. But these writers lived long ago, and were themselves more or less under the shadow of that epoch. I strongly hold to the views of the great majority of our scholars, who tell us that, while there was too much evil of all kinds, there was also much good, and many believers in a final happy issue out of all the troubles of the time.
“In a society so entirely given up to the pursuit of wealth and worldly
advantage of every sort, those who were trying to hold up the standard
of righteousness and to alleviate the lot of their fellow beings should
be remembered with gratitude. Among the multitude of inventions were
many that were calculated to relieve the laborer of his severest tasks,
to mitigate suffering, to ward off disease, and to lighten the load of
mankind in various ways. Large sums of money were given for hospitals,
charitable institutions, and colleges, and for other kinds of
philanthropic work, while private benevolences were not uncommon. There
was prosperity, too, of a certain kind, and some people were happy, or
thought themselves so. In the records of that as of every period of our
history, it is possible to find rays of light if we search for them, and
I tell you these things in order that you may get a fair understanding
of the situation, for in what follows you will see something of the
other side.
“I think I shall not err if I say that the gigantic evil of the times,
that from which others sprang, was the inordinate love of money. Even
political power, by which the opportunity was obtained of doing public
service, was too often sought merely for the better chance one had of
making money, as the saying was. In the revolt against aristocratic
government, the tendency in our race of going from one extreme to the
other was again shown, and universal suffrage was adopted. This would
have been wise if intelligence and honesty had also been universal. But
the result proved it to be an exceedingly bad policy, for it created
a large class of voters who held the high privilege of citizenship so
meanly, and were themselves so venal, that they would even sell their
votes to the highest bidder. This, supplemented by the immorality of
some of the intelligent citizens, made politics corrupt and the name of
politician too often a by-word.
“In doing business, by which was meant buying and selling and manufacturing, also financial dealings and commerce, the passion for money-getting was particularly prominent. An astonishingly small percentage of those that went into business, as they said, made a success, if we except the large manufacturers, but in spite of that it was a popular way of earning a livelihood. One thing that made it popular was the fact that there was always more or less speculation in it. The haste to get rich made men too careless of the rights of others.”
“Do you mean that all business was conducted dishonestly?” I asked.
“No,” answered Thorwald, “not as men looked at it then. There was a great deal of downright knavery in business, but there was another class who satisfied their consciences by being as honest as they could. The thoughtful ones knew the system was wrong but felt themselves utterly unable to replace it by a better one, and feeling no responsibility for it, they were satisfied to smother their sensibilities and drift along. They had their living to make, and, though they were not making it in an ideal way, they did not know that any other kind of work would be more satisfactory to their uneasy consciences.”
“Excuse me, Thorwald,” I said; “I am dull. What was there wrong in their manner of doing business?”
“Can you see nothing wrong,” he answered, “in a system where one man’s fortune was built on the ruins of another’s, or perhaps a score of others, or where a business was started and increased solely by drawing from another one already established?”