THE FUTURE IN AMERICA (Illustrated). H. G. Wells
Читать онлайн книгу.
tion>
H. G. Wells
THE FUTURE IN AMERICA
(Illustrated)
A Search After Realities
Published by
Books
- Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -
2017 OK Publishing
ISBN 978-80-272-3177-5
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I. The Prophetic Habit Of Mind
Chapter II. Material Progress
Chapter III. New York
Chapter IV. Growth Invincible
Chapter V. The Economic Process
Chapter VI. Some Aspects Of American Wealth
Chapter VII. Certain Workers
Chapter VIII. Corruption
Chapter IX. The Immigrant
Chapter X. State-Blindness
Chapter XI. Two Studies In Disappointment
Chapter XII. The Tragedy Of Color
Chapter XIII. The Mind Of A Modern State
Chapter XIV. Culture
Chapter XV. At Washington
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Illustration 1. Frontispiece. Fifth Avenue, New York
Illustration 2. Entrance to Brooklyn Bridge
Illustration 3. State Street, Chicago
Illustration 4. Western Farmers Still Own Their Farms
Illustration 5. Plump and Pretty Pupils of Extravagance
Illustration 6. New York’s Crowded, Littered East Side
Illustration 7. Breaker Boys at a Pennsylvania Colliery
Illustration 8. Interior of a New York Office Building
Illustration 9. Where Immigrant Children Are Americanized
Illustration 10. Harvard Hall and the Johnson Gate, Cambridge
Illustration 11. A Bit of Princeton University
Illustration 12. In the Congressional Library
First published in Harper’s Weekly, July 14-October 6, 1906 First book edition: Harper & Brothers, New York & London, 1906
I. — THE PROPHETIC HABIT OF MIND
(At a writing-desk in Sandgate)
§ I
“Are you a Polygamist?”
“Are you an Anarchist?”
The questions seem impertinent. They are part of a long paper of interrogations I must answer satisfactorily if I am to be regarded as a desirable alien to enter the United States of America. I want very much to pass that great statue of Liberty illuminating the World (from a central position in New York Harbor), in order to see things in its light, to talk to certain people, to appreciate certain atmospheres, and so I resist the provocation to answer impertinently. I do not even volunteer that I do not smoke and am a total abstainer; on which points it would seem the States as a whole still keep an open mind. I am full of curiosity about America, I am possessed by a problem I feel I cannot adequately discuss even with myself except over there, and I must go even at the price of coming to a decision upon the theoretically open questions these two inquiries raise.
My problem I know will seem ridiculous and monstrous when I give it in all its stark disproportions—attacked by me with my equipment it will call up an image of an elephant assailed by an ant who has not even mastered Jiu-jitsu—but at any rate I’ve come to it in a natural sort of way and it is one I must, for my own peace of mind, make some kind of attempt upon, even if at last it means no more than the ant crawling in an exploratory way hither and thither over that vast unconscious carcass and finally getting down and going away. That may be rather good for the ant, and the experience may be of interest to other ants, however infinitesimal from the point of view of the elephant, the final value of his investigation may be. And this tremendous problem in my case and now in this—simply; What is going to happen to the United States of America in the next thirty years