The Greatest Works of Edward Bellamy: 20 Dystopian Novels, Sci-Fi Series & Short Stories. Edward BellamyЧитать онлайн книгу.
With us, diligence in the national service is the sole and certain way to public repute, social distinction, and official power. The value of a man’s services to society fixes his rank in it. Compared with the effect of our social arrangements in impelling men to be zealous in business, we deem the object-lessons of biting poverty and wanton luxury on which you depended a device as weak and uncertain as it was barbaric. The lust of honor even in your sordid day notoriously impelled men to more desperate effort than the love of money could.”
“I should be extremely interested,” I said, “to learn something of what these social arrangements are.”
“The scheme in its details,” replied the doctor, “is of course very elaborate, for it underlies the entire organization of our industrial army; but a few words will give you a general idea of it.”
At this moment our talk was charmingly interrupted by the emergence upon the aerial platform where we sat of Edith Leete. She was dressed for the street, and had come to speak to her father about some commission she was to do for him.
“By the way, Edith,” he exclaimed, as she was about to leave us to ourselves, “I wonder if Mr. West would not be interested in visiting the store with you? I have been telling him something about our system of distribution, and perhaps he might like to see it in practical operation.”
“My daughter,” he added, turning to me, “is an indefatigable shopper, and can tell you more about the stores than I can.”
The proposition was naturally very agreeable to me, and Edith being good enough to say that she should be glad to have my company, we left the house together.
Chapter 10
“If I am going to explain our way of shopping to you,” said my companion, as we walked along the street, “you must explain your way to me. I have never been able to understand it from all I have read on the subject. For example, when you had such a vast number of shops, each with its different assortment, how could a lady ever settle upon any purchase till she had visited all the shops? for, until she had, she could not know what there was to choose from.”
“It was as you suppose; that was the only way she could know,” I replied.
“Father calls me an indefatigable shopper, but I should soon be a very fatigued one if I had to do as they did,” was Edith’s laughing comment.
“The loss of time in going from shop to shop was indeed a waste which the busy bitterly complained of,” I said; “but as for the ladies of the idle class, though they complained also, I think the system was really a godsend by furnishing a device to kill time.”
“But say there were a thousand shops in a city, hundreds, perhaps, of the same sort, how could even the idlest find time to make their rounds?”
“They really could not visit all, of course,” I replied. “Those who did a great deal of buying, learned in time where they might expect to find what they wanted. This class had made a science of the specialties of the shops, and bought at advantage, always getting the most and best for the least money. It required, however, long experience to acquire this knowledge. Those who were too busy, or bought too little to gain it, took their chances and were generally unfortunate, getting the least and worst for the most money. It was the merest chance if persons not experienced in shopping received the value of their money.”
“But why did you put up with such a shockingly inconvenient arrangement when you saw its faults so plainly?” Edith asked me.
“It was like all our social arrangements,” I replied. “You can see their faults scarcely more plainly than we did, but we saw no remedy for them.”
“Here we are at the store of our ward,” said Edith, as we turned in at the great portal of one of the magnificent public buildings I had observed in my morning walk. There was nothing in the exterior aspect of the edifice to suggest a store to a representative of the nineteenth century. There was no display of goods in the great windows, or any device to advertise wares, or attract custom. Nor was there any sort of sign or legend on the front of the building to indicate the character of the business carried on there; but instead, above the portal, standing out from the front of the building, a majestic life-size group of statuary, the central figure of which was a female ideal of Plenty, with her cornucopia. Judging from the composition of the throng passing in and out, about the same proportion of the sexes among shoppers obtained as in the nineteenth century. As we entered, Edith said that there was one of these great distributing establishments in each ward of the city, so that no residence was more than five or ten minutes’ walk from one of them. It was the first interior of a twentieth-century public building that I had ever beheld, and the spectacle naturally impressed me deeply. I was in a vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above. Beneath it, in the centre of the hall, a magnificent fountain played, cooling the atmosphere to a delicious freshness with its spray. The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior. Around the fountain was a space occupied with chairs and sofas, on which many persons were seated conversing. Legends on the walls all about the hall indicated to what classes of commodities the counters below were devoted. Edith directed her steps towards one of these, where samples of muslin of a bewildering variety were displayed, and proceeded to inspect them.
“Where is the clerk?” I asked, for there was no one behind the counter, and no one seemed coming to attend to the customer.
“I have no need of the clerk yet,” said Edith; “I have not made my selection.”
“It was the principal business of clerks to help people to make their selections in my day,” I replied.
“What! To tell people what they wanted?”
“Yes; and oftener to induce them to buy what they didn’t want.”
“But did not ladies find that very impertinent?” Edith asked, wonderingly. “What concern could it possibly be to the clerks whether people bought or not?”
“It was their sole concern,” I answered. “They were hired for the purpose of getting rid of the goods, and were expected to do their utmost, short of the use of force, to compass that end.”
“Ah, yes! How stupid I am to forget!” said Edith. “The storekeeper and his clerks depended for their livelihood on selling the goods in your day. Of course that is all different now. The goods are the nation’s. They are here for those who want them, and it is the business of the clerks to wait on people and take their orders; but it is not the interest of the clerk or the nation to dispose of a yard or a pound of anything to anybody who does not want it.” She smiled as she added, “How exceedingly odd it must have seemed to have clerks trying to induce one to take what one did not want, or was doubtful about!”
“But even a twentieth century clerk might make himself useful in giving you information about the goods, though he did not tease you to buy them,” I suggested.
“No,” said Edith, “that is not the business of the clerk. These printed cards, for which the government authorities are responsible, give us all the information we can possibly need.”
I saw then that there was fastened to each sample a card containing in succinct form a complete statement of the make and materials of the goods and all its qualities, as well as price, leaving absolutely no point to hang a question on.
“The clerk has, then, nothing to say about the goods he sells?” I said.
“Nothing at all. It is not necessary that he should know or profess to know anything about them. Courtesy and accuracy in taking orders are all that are required of him.”
“What a prodigious amount of lying that simple arrangement saves!” I ejaculated.
“Do you mean that