Penguin Island — 60 Bk8 - Section 2

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The houses were never high enough to satisfy them; they kept on making them still higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys: with offices, shops, banks, societies one above another; they dug cellars and tunnels ever deeper downwards.

Fifteen millions of men laboured in a giant town by the light of beacons which shed forth their glare both day and night.

No light of heaven pierced through the smoke of the factories with which the town was girt, but sometimes the red disk of a rayless sun might be seen riding in the black firmament through which iron bridges ploughed their way, and from which there descended a continual shower of soot and cinders.

It was the most industrial of all the cities in the world and the richest.

Its organisation seemed perfect.

None of the ancient aristocratic or democratic forms remained; everything was subordinated to the interests of the trusts.

This environment gave rise to what anthropologists called the multi-millionaire type.

The men of this type were at once energetic and frail, capable of great activity in forming mental combinations and of prolonged labour in offices, but men whose nervous irritability suffered from hereditary troubles which increased as time went on.

Like all true aristocrats, like the patricians of republican Rome or the squires of old England, these powerful men affected a great severity in their habits and customs.

They were the ascetics of wealth.

At the meetings of the trusts an observer would have noticed their smooth and puffy faces, their lantern cheeks, their sunken eyes and wrinkled brows.

With bodies more withered, complexions yellower, lips drier, and eyes filled with a more burning fanaticism than those of the old Spanish monks, these multimillionaires gave themselves up with inextinguishable ardour to the austerities of banking and industry.

Several, denying themselves all happiness, all pleasure, and all rest, spent their miserable lives in rooms without light or air, furnished only with electrical apparatus, living on eggs and milk, and sleeping on camp beds.

By doing nothing except pressing nickel buttons with their fingers, these mystics heaped up riches of which they never even saw the signs, and acquired the vain possibility of gratifying desires that they never experienced.

The worship of wealth had its martyrs.

One of these multi-millionaires, the famous Samuel Box, preferred to die rather than surrender the smallest atom of his property.

One of his workmen, the victim of an accident while at work, being refused any indemnity by his employer, obtained a verdict in the courts, but repelled by innumerable obstacles of procedure, he fell into the direst poverty.

Being thus reduced to despair, he succeeded by dint of cunning and audacity in confronting his employer with a loaded revolver in his hand, and threatened to blow out his brains if he did not give him some assistance.

Samuel Box gave nothing, and let himself be killed for the sake of principle.

Examples that come from high quarters are followed.

Those who possessed some small capital (and they were necessarily the greater number), affected the ideas and habits of the multi-millionaires, in order that they might be classed among them.

All passions which injured the increase or the preservation of wealth, were regarded as dishonourable; neither indolence, nor idleness, nor the taste for disinterested study, nor love of the arts, nor, above all, extravagance, was ever forgiven; pity was condemned as a dangerous weakness.

Whilst every inclination to licentiousness excited public reprobation, the violent and brutal satisfaction of an appetite was, on the contrary, excused; violence, in truth, was regarded as less injurious to morality, since it manifested a form of social energy.

The State was firmly based on two great public virtues: respect for the rich and contempt for the poor.

Feeble spirits who were still moved by human suffering had no other resource than to take refuge in a hypocrisy which it was impossible to blame, since it contributed to the maintenance of order and the solidity of institutions.

Thus, among the rich, all were devoted to their social order, or seemed to be so; all gave good examples, if all did not follow them.

Some felt the gravity of their position cruelly; but they endured it either from pride or from duty.

Some attempted, in secret and by subterfuge, to escape from it for a moment.

One of these, Edward Martin, the President, of the Steel Trust, sometimes dressed himself as a poor man, went forth to beg his bread, and allowed himself to be jostled by the passers-by.

One day, as he asked alms on a bridge, he engaged in a quarrel with a real beggar, and filled with a fury of envy, he strangled him.

As they devoted their whole intelligence to business, they sought no intellectual pleasures.

The theatre, which had formerly been very flourishing among them, was now reduced to pantomimes and comic dances.

Even the pieces in which women acted were given up; the taste for pretty forms and brilliant toilettes had been lost; the somersaults of clowns and the music of negroes were preferred above them, and what roused enthusiasm was the sight of women upon the stage whose necks were bedizened with diamonds, or processions carrying golden bars in triumph.

Ladies of wealth were as much compelled as the men to lead a respectable life.

According to a tendency common to all civilizations, public feeling set them up as symbols; they were, by their austere magnificence, to represent both the splendour of wealth and its intangibility.

The old habits of gallantry had been reformed, Tut fashionable lovers were now secretly replaced by muscular labourers or stray grooms.

Nevertheless, scandals were rare, a foreign journey concealed nearly all of them, and the Princesses of the Trusts remained objects of universal esteem.

The rich formed only a small minority, but their collaborators, who composed the entire people, had been completely won over or completely subjugated by them.

They formed two classes, the agents of commerce or banking, and workers in the factories.

The former contributed an immense amount of work and received large salaries.

Some of them succeeded in founding establishments of their own; for in the constant increase of the public wealth the more intelligent and audacious could hope for anything.

Doubtless it would have been possible to find a certain number of discontented and rebellious persons among the immense crowd of engineers and accountants, but this powerful society had imprinted its firm discipline even on the minds of its opponents.

The very anarchists were laborious and regular.

As for the workmen who toiled in the factories that surrounded the town, their decadence, both physical and moral, was terrible; they were examples of the type of poverty as it is set forth by anthropology.

Although the development among them of certain muscles, due to the particular nature of their work, might give a false idea of their strength, they presented sure signs of morbid debility.

Of low stature, with small heads and narrow chests, they were further distinguished from the comfortable classes by a multitude of physiological anomalies, and, in particular, by a common want of symmetry between the head and the limbs.

And they were destined to a gradual and continuous degeneration, for the State made soldiers of the more robust among them, and the health of these did not long withstand the brothels and the drink-shops that sprang up around their barracks.

The proletarians became more and more feeble in mind.

The continued weakening of their intellectual faculties was not entirely due to their manner of life; it resulted also from a methodical selection carried out by the employers.

The latter, fearing that workmen of too great ability might be inclined to put forward legitimate demands, took care to eliminate them by every possible means, and preferred to engage ignorant and stupid labourers, who were incapable of defending their rights, but were yet intelligent enough to perform their toil, which highly perfected machines rendered extremely simple.

Thus the proletarians were unable to do anything to improve their lot.

With difficulty did they succeed by means of strikes in maintaining the rate of their wages.

Even this means began to fail them.

The alternations of production inherent in the capitalist system caused such cessations of work that, in several branches of industry, as soon as a strike was declared, the accumulation of products allowed the employers to dispense with the strikers.

In a word, these miserable employees were plunged in a gloomy apathy that nothing enlightened and nothing exasperated.

They were necessary instruments for the social order and well adapted to their purpose.

Upon the whole, this social order seemed the most firmly established that had yet been seen, at least among kind, for that of bees and ants is incomparably more stable.

Nothing could foreshadow the ruin of a system founded on what is strongest in human nature, pride and cupidity.

However, keen observers discovered several grounds for uneasiness.

The most certain, although the least apparent, were of an economic order, and consisted in the continually increasing amount of over-production, which entailed long and cruel interruptions of labour, though these were, it is true, utilized by the manufacturers as a means of breaking the power of the workmen, by facing them with the prospect of a lock-out.

A more obvious peril resulted from the physiological state of almost the entire population.

“The health of the poor is what it must be,” said the experts in hygiene, “but that of the rich leaves much to be desired.” It was not difficult to find the causes of this.

The supply of oxygen necessary for life was insufficient in the city, and men breathed in an artificial air.

The food trusts, by means of the most daring chemical syntheses, produced artificial wines, meat, milk, fruit, and vegetables, and the diet thus imposed gave rise to stomach and brain troubles.

The multi-millionaires were bald at the age of eighteen; some showed from time to time a dangerous weakness of mind.

Over-strung and enfeebled, they gave enormous sums to ignorant charlatans; and it was a common thing for some bath-attendant or other trumpery who turned healer or prophet, to make a rapid fortune by the practice of medicine or theology.

The number of lunatics increased continually; suicides multiplied in the world of wealth, and many of them were accompanied by atrocious and extraordinary circumstances, which bore witness to an unheard of perversion of intelligence and sensibility.

Another fatal symptom created a strong impression upon average minds.

Terrible accidents, henceforth periodical and regular, entered into people’s calculations, and kept mounting higher and higher in statistical tables.

Every day, machines burst into fragments, houses fell down, trains laden with merchandise fell on to the streets, demolishing entire buildings and crushing hundreds of passers-by.

Through the ground, honey-combed with tunnels, two or three storeys of work-shops would often crash, engulfing all those who worked in them.

2 In the southwestern district of the city, on an eminence which had preserved its ancient name of Fort Saint-Michel, there stretched a square where some old trees still spread their exhausted arms above the greensward.

Landscape gardeners had constructed a cascade, grottos, a torrent, a lake, and an island, on its northern slope.

From this side one could see the whole town with its streets, its boulevards, its squares, the multitude of its roofs and domes, its air-passages, and its crowds of men, covered with a veil of silence, and seemingly enchanted by the distance.

This square was the healthiest place in the capital; here no smoke obscured the sky, and children were brought here to play.

In summer some employees from the neighbouring offices and laboratories used to resort to it for a moment after their luncheons, but they did not disturb its solitude and peace.

It was owing to this custom that, one day in June, about mid-day, a telegraph clerk, Caroline Meslier, came and sat down on a bench at the end of a terrace.

In order to refresh her eyes by the sight of a little green, she turned her back to the town.

Dark, with brown eyes, robust and placid, Caroline appeared to be from twenty-five to twenty-eight years of age.

Almost immediately, a clerk in the Electricity Trust, George Clair, took his place beside her.

Fair, thin, and supple, he had features of a feminine delicacy; he was scarcely older than she, and looked still younger.

As they met almost every day in this place, a comradeship had sprung up between them, and they enjoyed chatting together.

But their conversation had never been tender, affectionate, or even intimate.

Caroline, although it had happened to her in the past to repent of her confidence, might perhaps have been less reserved had not George Clair always shown himself extremely restrained in his expressions and behaviour.

He always gave a purely intellectual character to the conversation, keeping it within the realm of general ideas, and, moreover, expressing himself on all subjects with the greatest freedom.

He spoke frequently of the organization of society, and the conditions of labour.

“Wealth,” said he, “is one of the means of living happily; but people have made it the sole end of existence.”

And this state of things seemed monstrous to both of them.

They returned continually to various scientific subjects with which they were both familiar.

On that day they discussed the evolution of chemistry.

“From the moment,” said Clair, “that radium was seen to be transformed into helium, people ceased to affirm the immutability of simple bodies; in this way all those old laws about simple relations and about the indestructibility of matter were abolished.”

“However,” said she, “chemical laws exist.”

For, being a woman, she had need of belief.

He resumed carelessly: “Now that we can procure radium in sufficient quantities, science possesses incomparable means of analysis; even at present we get glimpses, within what are called simple bodies, of extremely diversified complex ones, and we discover energies in matter which seem to increase even by reason of its tenuity.”

As they talked, they threw bits of bread to the birds, and some children played around them.

Passing from one subject to another: “This hill, in the quaternary epoch,” said Clair, “was inhabited by wild horses.

Last year, as they were tunnelling for the water mains, they found a layer of the bones of primeval horses.”

She was anxious to know whether, at that distant epoch, man had yet appeared.

He told her that man used to hunt the primeval horse long before he tried to domesticate him.

“Man,” he added, “was at first a hunter, then he became a shepherd, a cultivator, a manufacturer .

and these diverse civilizations succeeded each other at intervals of time that the mind cannot conceive.”

He took out his watch.

Caroline asked if it was already time to go back to the office.

He said it was not, that it was scarcely half-past twelve.

A little girl was making mud pies at the foot of their bench; a little boy of seven or eight years was playing in front of them.

Whilst his mother was sewing on an adjoining bench, he played all alone at being a run-away horse, and with that power of illusion, of which children are capable, he imagined that he was at the same time the horse, and those who ran after him, and those who fled in terror before him.

He kept struggling with himself and shouting: “Stop him, Hi!

Hi!

This is an awful horse, he has got the bit between his teeth.”

Caroline asked the question: “Do you think that men were happy formerly?”

Her companion answered: “They suffered less when they were younger.

They acted like that little boy: they played; they played at arts, at virtues, at vices, at heroism, at beliefs, at pleasures; they had illusions which entertained them; they made a noise; they amused themselves.

But now.

He interrupted himself, and looked again at his watch.

The child, who was running, struck his foot against the little girl’s pail, and fell his full length on the gravel.

He remained a moment stretched out motionless, then raised himself up on the palms of his hands.

His forehead puckered, his mouth opened, and he burst into tears.

His mother ran up, but Caroline had lifted him from the ground and was wiping his eyes and mouth with her handkerchief.

The child kept on sobbing and Clair took him in his arms.

“Come, don’t cry, my little man!

I am going to tell you a story.

“A fisherman once threw his net into the sea and drew out a little, sealed, copper pot, which he opened with his knife.

Smoke came out of it, and as it mounted up to the clouds the smoke grew thicker and thicker and became a giant who gave such a terrible yawn that the whole world was blown to dust....”

Clair stopped himself, gave a dry laugh, and handed the child back to his mother.

Then he took out his watch again, and kneeling on the bench with his elbows resting on its back he gazed at the town.

As far as the eye could reach, the multitude of houses stood out in their tiny immensity.

Caroline turned her eyes in the same direction.

“What splendid weather it is!” said she.

“The sun’s rays change the smoke on the horizon into gold.

The worst thing about civilization is that it deprives one of the light of day.”

He did not answer; his looks remained fixed on a place in the town.

After some seconds of silence they saw about half a mile away, in the richer district on the other side of the river, a sort of tragic fog rearing itself upwards.

A moment afterwards an explosion was heard even where they were sitting, and an immense tree of smoke mounted towards the pure sky.

Little by little the air was filled with an imperceptible murmur caused by the shouts of thousands of men.

Cries burst forth quite close to the square.

“What has been blown up?”

The bewilderment was great, for although accidents were common, such a violent explosion as this one had never been seen, and everybody perceived that something terribly strange had happened.

Attempts were made to locate the place of the accident; districts, streets, different buildings, clubs, theatres, and shops were mentioned.

Information gradually became more precise and at last the truth was known.

“The Steel Trust has just been blown up.”

Clair put his watch back into his pocket.

Caroline looked at him closely and her eyes filled with astonishment.

At last she whispered in his ear: “Did you know it?

Were you expecting it?

Was it you .

He answered very calmly: “That town ought to be destroyed.”

She replied in a gentle and thoughtful tone: “I think so too.”

And both of them returned quietly to their work.

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