Looking Further Forward / An Answer to Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

by Richard Michaelis

“Let us stop right here”, Mr. Forest interrupted. “I would have purchased all the railroads and all the telegraph lines of the country at a fair price. I would have issued United States bonds to pay for them. I would have used the income of the roads and lines to pay running expenses and the interest on the bonds issued, and the surplus in the United States treasury I would have applied to paying off the bonds”.

“But would not this proposition of yours, if carried into effect, have brought about the same horrors you declare the concentration of power in the hands of the administration has brought down on humanity of the twentieth century?” I asked.

“No. For that the officers would not be numerous enough”, Mr. Forest replied; “and I remember distinctly, that in your days civil service reform had been instituted, to a certain extent, in the appointment of federal officers. I have read conflicting opinions about it. Some writers claimed a frequent change of the officers to be a fundamental principle of republican institutions. Others ridiculed this notion. Every man of common sense would keep a man who knew and performed the duties of his position well. And the nation should simply do the same regardless of the party affiliations of the employee, thus securing a good public service. I remember that letter carriers and other employees of the postoffice department could not be removed without cause. Now, if this principle had been applied to all the clerical and subordinate officers, if all the railroad and telegraph officials, when the nation took charge of these institutions, had been retained at the salaries they were receiving at that time, so long as they did their work well, then there would have been no trouble. Uncle Sam would have paid just as much, if not more, than the former corporations did, and by retaining the whole force he could have united the railroad and telegraph lines with the postal service after the fashion already prevailing, at that time, in Germany”.

“That theory sounds very plausible, certainly”.

“It is very remarkable that such a smart and energetic people, trading as much as our forefathers did, should have allowed the principal means of commerce, the railroad and telegraph lines, to be in the hands of private corporations which, as a matter of course, managed them simply with a view of paying as large dividends as possible to the shareholders,—sometimes for “a wheel within a wheel”, for members of the inner circle. In the historical works of your time I frequently note expressions of astonishment and wrath because knights, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Europe, stopped merchants passing the roads below their castles, and demanded a part of the travellers’ goods as a toll, or the payment of a certain sum of money for which they agreed either to let the merchants travel in peace or to furnish them with protection for the rest of their journey. These knights had to risk their lives when they undertook to collect a toll from the merchants, for the latter not unfrequently showed fight; they knew how to handle a lance or a sword and they had their goods protected by armed men. More than one of the enterprising, toll-levying knights died on the highway, where he had tried to attach a share of the merchant’s earnings. But the gentlemen controlling the highways of traffic at the end of the last century could levy new tolls, whenever they pleased. All they had to do was to sit down in Delmonico’s or some other good restaurant, and over a few bottles of champagne resolve to do so. There was no danger connected with this business of toll levying in your days, Mr. West, except the danger of a headache when the champagne happened to be poor. It was a very remarkable state of affairs, and it is a striking proof of the general fairness and good nature of the railroad magnates of 1887 that they treated the people as well as they did. Still, it was a ridiculous spectacle to see the principal highways of such a business people controlled by private corporations that virtually did precisely what they pleased”.

“The gas works, street railways and waterworks of cities you would have had managed by the city authorities, I suppose?” I said.

“Indeed, that is what I would have done”, Mr. Forest replied. “But I would first have extended the power of the national administration over all the forest and mining lands then in the possession of the United States. If the national government had taken care of the remnants of the immense forests that once covered the larger part of this vast territory, we would not at present suffer from a lack of timber”.

“What would you have done with the bankers and merchants?”

“Nothing”, Mr. Forest answered. “The different mutual productive associations would have needed men to manage such business affairs as were outside the management of the factory, attended to by the former manufacturer. For the workmen would soon have found out that it required more than the manual labor of the toilers to build up and run a large business establishment. And the owners of grocery stores would, if similar establishments had been started by consuming societies, have sold their stock on hand and secured places as managers or clerks of the new stores”.

“I suppose that under the system proposed by you all the old-fashioned stores would have been forced to close out”, I said, “because the different guilds would have purchased goods at wholesale and would have sold them to their members at a low cash price. The storekeepers that were not able to secure positions in the stores of the different guilds would have been forced to look out for some other employment;—a rather hard lot for many of them”.