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 ray. less 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 multi-millionaires 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 the social order, or seemed to be so; all gave good examples, if all did not follow them. some felt the severity 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 downs 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, but 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 toils, 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 mankind, 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 interruption 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 trumpery bath-attendant or other 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 fragrants, 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.
