The industrial republic: a study of the America of ten years hence

by Upton Sinclair

“H’m,” you say, “that’s so. But then, if he doesn’t like it, can’t he change his occupation?”

My answer is, I do not believe that George the Third would have had any objection to one of our ancestors going to France to become a subject of King Louis. But I understand that freedom began in America when the men of Lexington and Bunker Hill resolved to stay at home and be free.

“This is all very well in theory,” you say, “but how can it ever be realised?” As I said before, I expect to see it realised in the United States of America within the next ten years. I expect to see it, exactly as I should have expected to see the French Revolution, had I known what I know now; understood that institutions and systems have their day, and perceived the signs of a breakdown as they existed in France in 1780, and as they exist in America in 1907.

What was the cause of the French Revolution? The French monarchy was organised upon a basis of force, represented by taxes; and those who ran the machine had no idea but that a machine so organised could go on forever. But in the long process of time, there developed a tendency on the part of those to whom the taxes came, to grow richer and richer, while those by whom the taxes were paid grew poorer and poorer. Little by little, all the property and all the land of France came into the hands of the nobility; until at last they had everything, and the populace had nothing. Then suddenly the machinery of a society organised upon a basis of force and taxes began to refuse to work; the French peasantry had stood everything, but they could not stand being required to pay taxes when they had nothing to pay with. So the States-General had to be sent for, and the Revolution came.

And note this—that the trouble was not at all that the country was poor. Everyone is familiar with the picture of the horrible condition of the peasantry of that time, how they were little better than wild animals, hiding in holes, naked, and with blackened skins. Yet all the while France was full of wealth—all the trouble was that it was stagnant in the hands of a single class; the fields of France were ready to produce, but the people were too poor to till them. And notice the curious fact, that no sooner was the Revolution accomplished than the difficulty vanished in a flash. The machinery started up again—the peasant had land and tilled it, and the artisans of the cities found work. It seems strange to read that under the “Terror,” when the heads of the “aristocrats” were falling by the dozens every day and all the world was convulsed with horror, the people of France were more prosperous and happy than ever they had been before in history. And when war broke out, the nation that had been on the verge of bankruptcy for a generation, withstood the armies of the combined kingdoms of Europe for more than twenty years!

Here in America, we all started even. Wages were high, and there was work for every man; there was no need to strike—a workingman had only to leave and go elsewhere if he were not pleased. We found employment for the stream of immigrants as fast as they came—we had an enormous country to build up, and an inexhaustible supply of new lands for the settler. We manufactured only for our own use, and we could not manufacture half of what we needed.

But time passed on. Some who were frugal and diligent—and others who were cunning and unscrupulous—grew rich; and then machinery came in, and the pace grew faster. The rich were on top, and they stayed there. As the country expanded, railroads were built, and fortunes made; the war came, with its enormous expenditures, and still more fortunes were made. Capital grew; but it could not grow fast enough—in the seventies the rate of interest was ten per cent., and the promoters made fortunes besides. It was in those days that the battles of the giants were fought, the railroad wars in which the Gould and Vanderbilt millions were accumulated. Still there was plenty to do; the people had money, and there were some of them to buy everything we could make, and what came from abroad besides. The cities grew and spread, and the immigrants flowed in; railroads and factories were built, and the mighty structure of our modern industrial machine began to take shape. It must be understood that all the while inventions and improvements were being made, that enabled one man to do the work of ten, of fifty, of a hundred; and each such improvement set free so many thousands more men, to turn their attention to another part of the structure and to rush it on to completion.

Completion! Has it never dawned upon you that this machine might possibly some day reach completion?

The purpose of it is a very definite and obvious one—it is to supply the needs of men; and when it is adequate to that purpose, it is complete. But how will you know when that is? Why, by the simplest of methods in the world—by that insufficiency of profits which I described before. You are in business for profits, you understand; and when you are making something that men need, you make profits; and when you are making something that men do not need, you stop making profits. It would be too bad if men went on making railroads where no one wanted to ride, and building houses for no one to occupy; how fortunate that Nature has arranged it so that we all know when our work is done!

We were trembling on the very verge—in fact, we were half-way over the verge—three years ago, when the Russo-Japanese War came along and saved us. Everybody had begun to realise the peril. The investor, who had been making ten per cent. in the seventies, came down to three. The workingman who had a job that did not suit him, stuck to it all the same, because he saw a million men in the country who had no job at all. And the capitalist, the captain of industry—he mounted into his watch-tower, and proceeded to scan the landscape. A market! A market! My kingdom for a market!