"Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy, 1888

 2.18.21 - Richardson referenced this in today's lecture ... read a lengthy quote ... starting on p.11 Gutenberg Project, 

Published 1888 - Edward Bellamy

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way people lived

together in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and poor to one another,

perhaps I cannot do better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach

which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very

hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace

was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard

a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest

ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust,

their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of

the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for

them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for

himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave

his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it

might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very

insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and

falling to the ground, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and

help to drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally

regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this might

happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who

rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury rendered

intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness,

and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for

fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was

frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially

when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a

particularly steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized

leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the

rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which often called

forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the

passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to

patience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the

hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled

and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull,

and there was a sense of general relief when the specially bad piece of road was gotten

over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always

some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats.

It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the misery of the

toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers' sense of the value of their seats upon

the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than before. If the

passengers could only have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall

from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and

bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those who dragged

the coach.

I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of the twentieth century an

incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts, both very curious, which partly explain it.

In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in

which Society could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the few rode, and

not only this, but that no very radical improvement even was possible, either in the

harness, the coach, the roadway, or the distribution of the toil. It had always been as it

was, and it always would be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy

forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.

The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singular hallucination which those on

the top of the coach generally shared, that they were not exactly like their brothers and

sisters who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher order

of beings who might justly expect to be drawn. This seems unaccountable, but, as I once

rode on this very coach and shared that very hallucination, I ought to be believed. The

strangest thing about the hallucination was that those who had but just climbed up from

the ground, before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon their hands, began to

fall under its influence. As for those whose parents and grandparents before them had

been so fortunate as to keep their seats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the

essential difference between their sort of humanity and the common article was absolute.

The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling for the sufferings of the mass

of men into a distant and philosophical compassion is obvious. To it I refer as the only

extenuation I can offer for the indifference which, at the period I write of, marked my

own attitude toward the misery of my brothers.