R.U.R. | Page 8

and you were wanting to establish the League of Humanity! Cloth nowadays is three times cheaper, miss, the prices of everything are three times cheaper and they're still going down and down and down.
Helena: I don't see what you mean.
Busman: Dear lady, what I mean is that the price of labour is getting cheaper! Even with its food, a robot costs no more than three quarters of a cent per hour! It's wonderful; every factory is buying robots as quick as they can to reduce production costs, and those that aren't are going bankrupt.
Helena: Yes, that's right, and throwing their workers out on the streets.
Busman: Haha, well of course they are! And while they are doing that we are putting five hundred thousand tropical robots out on the Argentine pampas to cultivate wheat. Tell me, what does a loaf of bread cost where you come from?
Helena: I've no idea.
Busman: There, you see; in good old Europe, a loaf of bread now costs two cents; but that bread comes from us, do you see? Two cents a loaf; and the League of Humanity has no idea! Haha, Miss Glory, you do not even know if you are paying too much for a crust. Or too much for society or for anything else. But in five years' time, dear me, do sit down!
Helena: What?
Busman: In five years' time, the price will be a tenth of a cent. We'll be drowning in wheat and in everything else you can think of.
Alquist: Yes, and all the workers in the world will be out of a job.
Domin: (standing) Yes, they will be, Alquist. They will be, Miss Glory. But in ten years' time Rossum's Universal Robots will be making so much wheat, so much material, so much of everything that nothing will cost anything. Everyone will be able to just take as much as he needs. Nobody will live in poverty. They won't have jobs, that's true, but that's because there won't be any jobs to do. Everything will be done by living machines. People will do only the things they want to do, they can live their lives just so that they can make themselves perfect.?
Helena: (standing) Do you think that's really going to happen?
Domin: That's really going to happen. It couldn't possibly not happen. There might be some terrible things that happen before that, Miss Glory, that just can't be avoided, but then man will stop being the servant of other men or the slave of material things. Nobody will have to pay for a loaf of bread with his life and with hatred. You're not a labourer any more, you don't have to sit at a typewriter all day, you don't have to go and dig coal or stand minding somebody else's machines. You don't need to lose your soul doing work that you hate.?
Alquist: Domin, Domin! You're making all this sound too much like Paradise. Don't you think there was something good about serving others, something great about humility? Wasn't there some sort of dignity about working and getting tired after a day's labour?
Domin: Maybe there was. But we can't always be thinking about the things we lost by changing the world as Adam knew it. Adam had to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow, he had to suffer hunger and thirst, tiredness and humiliation; now is the time when we can go back to the paradise where Adam was fed by the hand of God, when man was free and supreme; man will once more be free of labour and anguish, and his only task will once again be to make himself perfect, to become the lord of creation. ?
Helena: Now you're confusing me; I'm only a silly girl. But I wish, I really wish I could believe in all that.
Dr. Gall: You're younger than we are, Miss Glory. Just you wait and see.
Hallemeier: It's all quite true. I think Miss Glory might like to have breakfast with us.
Dr. Gall: Well of course she can! Domin, make the invitation, on our behalf.
Domin: Miss Glory, please do us the honour.
Helena: But, how can I, now?
Fabry: On behalf of the League of Humanity.
Busman: In honour of the League of Humanity.
Helena: Ah well, in that case...
Fabry: That's good! Miss Glory, please excuse us for five minutes.
Dr. Gall: Pardon me...
Busman: Dear me, I must send that telegram...
Hallemeier: Hell, I nearly forgot...
(All hurry out, except Domin)
Helena: Why have they all gone?
Domin: To do the cooking.
Helena: What cooking.
Domin: The breakfast, Miss Glory. The robots do the cooking for us, only, er, as they've got no sense of taste it's not always, er... but Hallemeier is excellent with meat. And Gall does a sort of sauce, and Busman knows how to make omelettes...
Helena: This is going to be quite a feast! And what does