Looking Backward | Page 7

the world had not the wherewithal to
satisfy them. It was only because the masses worked very hard and lived on short
commons that the race did not starve outright, and no considerable improvement in their
condition was possible while the world, as a whole, remained so poor. It was not the
capitalists whom the laboring men were contending with, these maintained, but the
iron-bound environment of humanity, and it was merely a question of the thickness of
their skulls when they would discover the fact and make up their minds to endure what
they could not cure.
The less sanguine admitted all this. Of course the workingmen's aspirations were
impossible of fulfillment for natural reasons, but there were grounds to fear that they
would not discover this fact until they had made a sad mess of society. They had the
votes and the power to do so if they pleased, and their leaders meant they should. Some
of these desponding observers went so far as to predict an impending social cataclysm.
Humanity, they argued, having climbed to the top round of the ladder of civilization, was
about to take a header into chaos, after which it would doubtless pick itself up, turn round,
and begin to climb again. Repeated experiences of this sort in historic and prehistoric
times possibly accounted for the puzzling bumps on the human cranium. Human history,
like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of
indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in
nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of
humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained

the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the
regions of chaos.
This, of course, was an extreme opinion, but I remember serious men among my
acquaintances who, in discussing the signs of the times, adopted a very similar tone. It
was no doubt the common opinion of thoughtful men that society was approaching a
critical period which might result in great changes. The labor troubles, their causes,
course, and cure, took lead of all other topics in the public prints, and in serious
conversation.
The nervous tension of the public mind could not have been more strikingly illustrated
than it was by the alarm resulting from the talk of a small band of men who called
themselves anarchists, and proposed to terrify the American people into adopting their
ideas by threats of violence, as if a mighty nation which had but just put down a rebellion
of half its own numbers, in order to maintain its political system, were likely to adopt a
new social system out of fear.
As one of the wealthy, with a large stake in the existing order of things, I naturally shared
the apprehensions of my class. The particular grievance I had against the working classes
at the time of which I write, on account of the effect of their strikes in postponing my
wedded bliss, no doubt lent a special animosity to my feeling toward them.
Chapter 2
The thirtieth day of May, 1887, fell on a Monday. It was one of the annual holidays of the
nation in the latter third of the nineteenth century, being set apart under the name of
Decoration Day, for doing honor to the memory of the soldiers of the North who took
part in the war for the preservation of the union of the States. The survivors of the war,
escorted by military and civic processions and bands of music, were wont on this
occasion to visit the cemeteries and lay wreaths of flowers upon the graves of their dead
comrades, the ceremony being a very solemn and touching one. The eldest brother of
Edith Bartlett had fallen in the war, and on Decoration Day the family was in the habit of
making a visit to Mount Auburn, where he lay.
I had asked permission to make one of the party, and, on our return to the city at nightfall,
remained to dine with the family of my betrothed. In the drawing-room, after dinner, I
picked up an evening paper and read of a fresh strike in the building trades, which would
probably still further delay the completion of my unlucky house. I remember distinctly
how exasperated I was at this, and the objurgations, as forcible as the presence of the
ladies permitted, which I lavished upon workmen in general, and these strikers in
particular. I had abundant sympathy from those about me, and the remarks made in the
desultory conversation which followed, upon the unprincipled conduct of the labor
agitators, were calculated to make those gentlemen's ears