IN A BLACK UTOPIA THE BLOND BROOD BREEDS AND SWARMS
~1~
It was with a strange mixture of eagerness and fear that I received the
head physician's decision that I would henceforth recover my faculties
more rapidly in the familiar environment of my own home.
A wooden-faced male nurse accompanied me in a closed vehicle that ran
noiselessly through the vaulted interior streets of the completely
roofed-in city. Once our vehicle entered an elevator and was let down a
brief distance. We finally alighted in a street very like the one on
which the hospital was located, and filed down a narrow passage-way. My
companion asked for my keys, which I found in my clothing. I stood by
with a palpitating heart as he turned the lock and opened the door.
The place we entered was a comfortably furnished bachelor's apartment.
Books and papers were littered about giving evidence of no disturbance
since the sudden leaving of the occupant. Immensely relieved I sat down
in an upholstered chair while the nurse scurried about and put the
place in order.
"You feel quite at home?" he asked as he finished his task.
"Quite," I replied, "things are coming back to me now."
"You should have been sent home sooner," he said. "I wished to tell the
chief as much, but I am only a second year interne and it is forbidden
me to express an original opinion to him."
"I am sure I will be all right now," I replied.
He turned to go and then paused. "I think," he said, "that you should
have some notice on you that when you do go out, if you become confused
and make mistakes, the guards will understand. I will speak to Lieut.
Forrester, the Third Assistant, and ask that such a card be sent you."
With that he took his departure.
When he had gone I breathed joyfully and freely. The rigid face and
staring eye that I had cultivated relaxed into a natural smile and then
I broke into a laugh. Here I was in the heart of Berlin, unsuspected of
being other than a loyal German and free, for the time at least, from
problems of personal relations.
I now made an elaborate inspection of my surroundings. I found a
wardrobe full of men's clothing, all of a single shade of mauve like the
suit I wore. Some suits I guessed to be work clothes from their cheaper
texture and some, much finer, were evidently dress apparel.
Having reassured myself that Armstadt had been the only occupant of the
apartment, I turned to a pile of papers that the hospital attendant had
picked up from the floor where they had dropped from a mail chute. Most
of these proved to be the accumulated copies of a daily chemical news
bulletin. Others were technical chemical journals. Among the letters I
found an invitation to a meeting of a chemical society, and a note from
my tailor asking me to call; the third letter was written on a
typewriter, an instrument the like of which I had already discovered in
my study. This sheet bore a neatly engraved head reading "Katrina,
Permit 843 LX, Apartment 57, K Street, Level of the Free Women." The
letter ran:
"Dear Karl: For three weeks now you have failed to keep
your appointments and sent no explanation. You surely know
that I will not tolerate such rude neglect. I have reported
to the Supervisor that you are dropped from my list."
So this was Katrina! Here at last was the end of the fears that had
haunted me.
~2~
As I was scanning the chemical journal I heard a bell ring and turning
about I saw that a metal box had slid forth upon a side board from an
opening in the wall. In this box I found my dinner which I proceeded to
enjoy in solitude. The food was more varied than in the hospital. Some
was liquid and some gelatinous, and some firm like bread or biscuit. But
of natural food products there was nothing save a dish of mushrooms and
a single sprig of green no longer than my finger, and which, like a
feather in a boy's cap, was inserted conspicuously in the top of a
synthetic pudding. There was one food that puzzled me, for it was
sausage-like in form and sausage-like in flavour, and I was sure
contained some real substance of animal origin. Presuming, as I did at
that moment, that no animal life existed in Berlin, I ate this sausage
with doubts and misgivings.
The dinner finished, I looked for a way to dispose of the dishes.
Packing them back in the container I fumbled about and found a switch
which set something going in the wall, and my dishes departed to the
public dishwasher.
Having cleared the desk I next turned to Armstadt's book shelves. My
attention was caught by a ponderous volume. It proved to be an atlas and
directory of Berlin. In the front of this was a most revealing diagram
which showed Berlin to be a city of sixty levels. The five lowest levels
were underground and all were labelled "Mineral Industries." Above these
were eight levels of Food, Clothing and Miscellaneous industries. Then
came the seven workmen's residence levels, divided by trade groups.
Above this were the four "Intellectual Levels," on one of which I, as a
chemist had my abode. Directly above these was the "Level of Free
Women," and above that the residence level for military officers. The
next was the "Royal Level," double in height of the other levels of the
city. Then came the "Administrative Level," followed by eight maternity
levels, then four levels of female schools and nine levels of male
schools. Then, for six levels, and reaching to within five levels of the
roof of the city, were soldiers' barracks. Three of the remaining floors
were labelled "Swine Levels" and one "Green Gardens." Just beneath the
roof was the defence level and above that the open roof itself.
It was a city of some three hundred metres in height with mineral
industries at the bottom and the swine levels--I recalled the
sausage--at the top. Midway between, remote from possible attack through
mines or from the roof, Royalty was sheltered, while the other
privileged groups of society were stratified above and below it.
Following the diagram of levels was a most informing chart arranged like
a huge multiplication table. It gave after each level the words
"permitted," "forbidden," and "permitted as announced," arranged in
columns for each of the other levels. From this I traced out that as a
chemist I was permitted on all the industrial, workmen's and
intellectual levels, and on the Level of Free Women. I was permitted, as
announced, on the Administrative and Royal Levels; but forbidden on the
levels of military officers and soldiers' barracks, maternity and male
and female schools.
I found that as a chemist I was particularly fortunate for many other
groups were given even less liberty. As for common workmen and soldiers,
they were permitted on no levels except their own.
The most perplexing thing about this system was the apparent segregation
of such large groups of men from women. Family life in Germany was
evidently wonderfully altered and seemingly greatly restricted, a
condition inconsistent with the belief that I had always held--that the
German race was rapidly increasing.
Turning to my atlas index I looked up the population statistics of the
city, and found that by the last census it was near three hundred
million. And except for the few millions in the mines this huge mass of
humanity was quartered beneath a single roof. I was greatly surprised,
for this population figure was more than double the usual estimates
current in the outside world. Coming from a world in which the ancient
tendency to congest in cities had long since been overcome, I was
staggered by the fact that nearly as many people were living in this one
city as existed in the whole of North America.
Yet, when I figured the floor area of the city, which was roughly oval
in shape, being eight kilometres in breadth and eleven in length, I
found that the population on a given floor area was no greater than it
had been in the Island of Manhattan before the reform land laws were put
into effect in the latter part of the Twentieth Century. There was,
therefore, nothing incredible in these figures of total population, but
what I next discovered was a severe strain on credence. It was the
German population by sexes; the figures showed that there were nearly
two and a half males for every female! According to the usual estimate
of war losses the figure should have been at a ratio of six women living
to about five men, and here I found them recorded as only two women to
five men. Inspection of the birth rate showed an even higher proportion
of males. I consulted further tables that gave births by sexes and
groups. These varied somewhat but there was this great preponderance of
males in every class but one. Only among the seventeen thousand members
of Royalty did the proportion of the sexes approach the normal.
Apparently I had found an explanation of the careful segregation of
German women--there were not enough to go around!
Turning the further pages of my atlas I came upon an elaborately
illustrated directory of the uniforms and insignia of the various
military and civil ranks and classes. As I had already anticipated, I
found that any citizen in Berlin could immediately be placed in his
proper group and rank by his clothing, which was prescribed with
military exactness.
Various fabrics and shades indicated the occupational grouping while
trimmings and insignia distinguished the ranks within the groups. In all
there were many hundreds of distinct uniforms. Two groups alone proved
exceptions to this iron clad rule; Royalty and free women were permitted
to dress as they chose and were restricted only in that they were
forbidden to imitate the particular uniforms of other groups.
I next investigated the contents of Armstadt's desk. My most interesting
find was a checkbook, with receipts and expenditures carefully recorded
on the stubs. From this I learned that, as Armstadt, I was in receipt of
an income of five thousand marks, paid by the Government. I did not know
how much purchasing value that would amount to, but from the account
book I saw that the expenses had not equalled a third of it, which
explained why there was a bank balance of some twenty thousand marks.
Clearly I would need to master the signature of Karl Armstadt so I
searched among the papers until I found a bundle of returned decks. Many
of the larger checks had been made out to "Katrina," others to the
"Master of Games,"--evidently to cover gambling losses. The smaller
checks, I found by reference to the stubs, were for ornaments or
entertainment that might please a woman. The lack of the more ordinary
items of expenditure was presently made clear by the discovery of a
number of punch marked cards. For intermittent though necessary
expenses, such as tonsorial service, clothing and books. For the more
constant necessities of life, such as rent, food, laundry and
transportation, there was no record whatever; and I correctly assumed
that these were supplied without compensation and were therefore not a
matter of personal choice or permissible variation. Of money in its
ancient form of metal coins and paper, I found no evidence.
~3~
In my mail the next morning I found a card signed by Lieut. Forrester of
the hospital staff. It read:
"The bearer, Karl Armstadt, has recently suffered from gas poisoning
while defending the mines beneath enemy territory. This has affected his
memory. If he is therefore found disobeying any ruling or straying
beyond his permitted bounds, return him to his apartment and call the
Hospital for Complex Gas Cases."
It was evidently a very kindly effort to protect a man whose loss of
memory might lead him into infractions of the numerous rulings of German
life. With this help I became ambitious to try the streets of Berlin
alone. The notice from the tailor afforded an excuse.
Consulting my atlas to get my bearings I now ventured forth. The streets
were tunnel-like passage-ways closed over with a beamed ceiling of
whitish grey concrete studded with glowing light globes. In the
residence districts the smooth side walls were broken only by high
ventilating gratings and the narrow passage halls from which led the
doors of the apartments.
The uncanny quiet of the streets of this city with its three hundred
million inhabitants awed and oppressed me. Hurriedly I walked along
occasionally passing men dressed like myself. They were pale men, with
blanched or sallow faces. But nowhere were there faces of ruddy tan as
one sees in a world of sun. The men in the hospital had been pale, but
that had seemed less striking for one is used to pale faces in a
hospital. It came to me with a sense of something lost that my own
countenance blanched in the mine and hospital would so remain colourless
like the faces of the men who now stole by me in their felted footwear
with a cat-like tread.
At a cross street I turned and came upon a small group of shops with
monotonous panelled display windows inserted in the concrete walls. Here
I found my tailor and going in I promptly laid down his notice and my
clothing card. He glanced casually at the papers, punched the card and
then looking up he remarked that my new suit had been waiting some time.
I began explaining the incident in the mine and the stay in the
hospital; but the tailor was either disinterested or did not comprehend.
"Will you try on your new suit now?" he interrupted, holding forth the
garments. The suit proved a trifle tight about the hips, but I hastened
to assure the tailor that the fit was perfect. I removed it and watched
him do it up in a parcel, open a wall closet, call my house number, and
send my suit on its way through one of the numerous carriers that
interlaced the city.
As I walked more leisurely back to my apartment by a less direct way, I
found my analytical brain puzzling over the refreshing quality of the
breezes that blew through those tunnel-like streets. With bits of paper
I traced the air flow from the latticed faces of the elevator shafts to
the ventilating gratings of the enclosed apartments, and concluded that
there must be other shafts to the rear of the apartments for its exit.
It occurred to me that it must take an enormous system of ventilating
fans to keep this air in motion, and then I remembered the liquid air
engine I had seen in the mine, and a realization of the economy and
efficiency of the whole scheme dawned upon me. The Germans had solved
the power problem by using the heat of the deeper strata of the earth to
generate power through the agency of liquid air and the exhaust from
their engines had automatically solved their ventilating problem. I
recalled with a smile that I had seen no evidence of heating apparatus
anywhere except that which the miners had used to warm their food. In
this city cooling rather than heating facilities would evidently be
needed, even in the dead of winter, since the heat generated by the
inhabitants and the industrial processes would exceed the radiation from
the exterior walls and roof of the city. Sunshine and "fresh air" they
had not, but our own scientists had taught us for generations that heat
and humidity and not lack of oxygen or sunshine was the cause of the
depression experienced in indoor quarters. The air of Berlin was cool
and the excess of vapor had been frozen out of it. Yes, the "climate" of
Berlin should be more salubrious to the body, if not to the mind, than
the fickle environment of capricious nature. From my reasoning about
these ponderous problems of existence I was diverted to a trivial
matter. The men I observed on the streets all wore their hair clipped
short, while mine, with six weeks' growth, was getting rather long. I
had seen several barber's signs but I decided to walk on for quite a
distance beyond my apartment. I did not want to confront a barber who
had known Karl Armstadt, for barbers deal critically in the matter of
heads and faces. At last I picked out a shop. I entered and asked for
a haircut.
"But you are not on my list," said the barber, staring at me in a
puzzled way, "why do you not go to your own barber?"
Grasping the situation I replied that I did not like my barber.
"Then why do you not apply at the Tonsorial Administrative Office of the
level for permission to change?"
Returning to my apartment I looked up the office in my directory, went
thither and asked the clerk if I could exchange barbers. He asked for my
card and after a deal of clerical activities wrote thereon the name of a
new barber. With this official sanction I finally got my hair cut and my
card punched, thinking meanwhile that the soundness of my teeth would
obviate any amateur detective work on the part of a dentist.
Nothing, it seemed, was left for the individual to decide for himself.
His every want was supplied by orderly arrangement and for everything he
must have an authoritative permit. Had I not been classed as a research
chemist, and therefore a man of some importance, this simple business of
getting a hair-cut might have proved my undoing. Indeed, as I afterwards
learned, the exclusive privacy of my living quarters was a mark of
distinction. Had I been one of lower ranking I should have shared my
apartment with another man who would have slept in my bed while I was at
work, for in the sunless city was neither night nor day and the whole
population worked and slept in prescribed shifts--the vast machinery of
industry, like a blind giant in some Plutonic treadmill, toiled
ceaselessly.
The next morning I decided to extend my travels to the medical level,
which was located just above my own. There were stairs beside the
elevator shafts but these were evidently for emergency as they were
closed with locked gratings.
The elevator stopped at my ring. Not sure of the proper manner of
calling my floor I was carried past the medical level. As we shot up
through the three-hundred-metre shaft, the names of levels as I had read
them in my atlas flashed by on the blind doors. On the topmost defence
level we took on an officer of the roof guard--strangely swarthy of
skin--and now the car shot down while the rising air rushed by us with a
whistling roar.
On the return trip I called my floor as I had heard others do and was
let off at the medical level. It was even more monotonously quiet than
the chemical level, save for the hurrying passage of occasional
ambulances on their way between the elevators and the various hospitals.
The living quarters of the physicians were identical with those on the
chemists' level. So, too, were the quiet shops from which the physicians
supplied their personal needs.
Standing before one of these I saw in a window a new book entitled
"Diseases of Nutrition." I went in and asked to see a copy. The book
seller staring at my chemical uniform in amazement reached quickly under
the counter and pressed a button. I became alarmed and turned to go out
but found the door had been automatically closed and locked. Trying to
appear unconcerned I stood idly glancing over the book shelves, while
the book seller watched me from the corner of his eye.
In a few minutes the door opened from without and a man in the uniform
of the street guard appeared. The book seller motioned toward me.
"Your identification folder," said the guard.
Mechanically I withdrew it and handed it to him. He opened it and
discovered the card from the hospital. Smiling on me with an air of
condescension, he took me by the arm and led me forth and conducted me
to my own apartment on the chemical level. Arriving there he pushed me
gently into a chair and stepped toward the switch of the telephone.
"Just a minute," I said, "I remember now. I was not on my level--that
was not my book store."
"The card orders me to call up the hospital," said the guard.
"It is unnecessary," I said. "Do not call them."
The guard gazed first at me and then at the card. "It is signed by a
Lieutenant and you are a Captain--" his brows knitted as he wrestled
with the problem--"I do not know what to do. Does a Captain with an
affected memory outrank a Lieutenant?"
"He does," I solemnly assured him.
Still a little puzzled, he returned the card, saluted and was gone. It
had been a narrow escape. I got out my atlas and read again the rules
that set forth my right to be at large in the city. Clearly I had a
right to be found in the medical level--but in trying to buy a book
there I had evidently erred most seriously. So I carefully memorized the
list of shops set down in my identification folder and on my cards.
For the next few days I lived alone in my apartment unmolested except by
an occasional visit from Holknecht, the laboratory assistant, who knew
nothing but chemistry, talked nothing but chemistry, and seemed dead to
all human emotions and human curiosity. Applying myself diligently to
the study of Armstadt's books and notes, I was delighted to find that
the Germans, despite their great chemical progress, were ignorant of
many things I knew. I saw that my knowledge discreetly used, might
enable me to become a great man among them and so learn secrets that
would be of immense value to the outer world, should I later contrive to
escape from Berlin.
By my discoveries of the German workings in the potash mines I had
indeed opened a new road to Berlin. It was up to me by further
discoveries to open a road out again, not only for my own escape, but
perhaps also to find a way by which the World Armies might enter Berlin
as the Greeks entered Troy. Vague ambitious dreams were these that
filled and thrilled me, for I was young in years, and the romantic
spirit of heroic adventure surged in my blood.
These days of study were quite uneventful, except for a single
illuminating incident; a further example of the super-efficiency of the
Germans. I found the meals served me at my apartment rather less in
quantity than my appetite craved. While there was a reasonable variety,
the nutritive value was always the same to a point of scientific
exactness, and I had seen no shops where extra food was available. After
I had been in my apartment about a week, some one rang at the door. I
opened it and a man called out the single word, "Weigher." Just behind
him stood a platform scale on small wheels and with handles like a
go-cart. The weigher stood, notebook in hand, waiting for me to act. I
took the hint and stepped upon the scales. He read the weight and as he
recorded it, remarked:
"Three kilograms over."
Without further explanation he pushed the scales toward the next door.
The following day I noticed that the portions of food served me were a
trifle smaller than they had been previously. The original Karl Armstadt
had evidently been of such build that he carried slightly less weight
than I, which fact now condemned me to this light diet.
However, I reasoned that a light diet is conducive to good brain work,
and as I later learned, the object of this systematic weight control was
not alone to save food but to increase mental efficiency, for a fat man
is phlegmatic and a lean one too excitable for the best mental output.
It would also help my disguise by keeping me the exact weight and build
of the original Karl Armstadt.
After a fortnight of study, I felt that I was now ready to take up my
work in the laboratory, but I feared my lack of general knowledge of the
city and its ways might still betray me. Hence I began further
journeyings about the streets and shops of those levels where a man of
my class was permitted to go.
~4~
After exhausting the rather barren sport of walking about the monotonous
streets of the four professional levels I took a more exciting trip down
into the lower levels of the city where the vast mechanical industries
held sway. I did not know how much freedom might be allowed me, but I
reasoned that I would be out of my supposed normal environment and hence
my ignorance would be more excusable and in less danger of betraying me.
Alighting from the elevator, I hurried along past endless rows of heavy
columns. I peered into the workrooms, which had no enclosing walls, and
discovered with some misgiving that I seemed to have come upon a race of
giants. The men at the machines were great hulking fellows with thick,
heavy muscles such as one would expect to see in a professional wrestler
or weight-lifter. I paused and tried to gauge the size of these men: I
decided that they were not giants for I had seen taller men in the outer
world. Two officials of some sort, distinguishable by finer garb,
walking among them, appeared to be men of average size, and the tops of
their heads came about to the workers' chins. That there should be such
men among the Germans was not unbelievable, but the strange thing was
that there should be so many of them, and that they should be so
uniformly large, for there was not a workman in the whole vast factory
floor that did not over-top the officials by at least half a head.
"Of course," I reasoned, "this is part of German efficiency";--for the
men were feeding large plates through stamping mills--"they have
selected all the large men for this heavy work." Then as I continued to
gaze it occurred to me that this bright metal these Samsons were
handling was aluminum!
I went on and came to a different work hall where men were tending wire
winding machinery, making the coils for some light electrical
instruments. It was work that girls could easily have done, yet these
men were nearly, if not quite, as hulking as their mates in the stamping
mill. To select such men for light-fingered work was not efficiency but
stupidity,--and then it came to me that I had also thought the soldiers
I had seen in the hospital to be men picked for size, and that in a
normal population there could not be such an abundance of men of
abnormal size. The meaning of it all began to clear in my mind--the
pedigree in my own identification folder with the numerous fraternity,
the system of social castes which my atlas had revealed, the
inexplicable and unnatural proportion of the sexes. These gigantic men
were not the mere pick from individual variation in the species, but a
distinct breed within a race wherein the laws of nature, that had kept
men of equal stature for countless centuries, even as wild animals were
equal, had been replaced by the laws of scientific breeding. These heavy
and ponderous labourers were the Percherons and Clydesdales of a
domesticated and scientifically bred human species. The soldiers,
somewhat less bulky and more active, were, no doubt, another distinct
breed. The professional classes which had seemed quite normal in
physical appearance--were they bred for mental rather than physical
qualities? Otherwise why the pedigree, why the rigid castes, the
isolation of women? I shuddered as the whole logical, inevitable
explanation unfolded. It was uncanny, unearthly, yet perfectly
scientific; a thing the world had speculated about for centuries, a
thing that every school boy knew could be done, and yet which I, facing
the fact that it had been done, could only believe by a strained effort
at scientific coolness.
I walked on and on, absorbed, overwhelmed by these assaulting,
unbelievable conclusions, yet on either side as I walked was the ever
present evidence of the reality of these seemingly wild fancies. There
were miles upon miles of these endless workrooms and everywhere the same
gross breed of great blond beasts.
The endless shops of Berlin's industrial level were very like those
elsewhere in the world, except that they were more vast, more
concentrated, and the work more speeded up by super-machines and
excessive specialization. Millions upon millions of huge, drab-clad,
stolid-faced workmen stood at their posts of duty, performing over and
over again their routine movements as the material of their labors
shuttled by in endless streams.
Occasionally among the workmen I saw the uniforms of the petty officers
who acted as foremen, and still more rarely the administrative offices,
where, enclosed in glass panelled rooms, higher officials in more
bespangled uniforms poured over charts and plans.
In all this colossal business there was everywhere the atmosphere of
perfect order, perfect system, perfect discipline. Go as I might among
the electrical works, among the vast factories of chemicals and goods,
the lighter labor of the textile mills, or the heavier, noisier business
of the mineral works and machine shops the same system of colossal
coordinate mechanism of production throbbed ceaselessly. Materials
flowed in endless streams, feeding electric furnaces, mills, machines;
passing out to packing tables and thence to vast store rooms. Industry
here seemed endless and perfect. The bovine humanity fitted to the
machinery as the ox to the treadmill. Everywhere was the ceaseless
throbbing of the machine. Of the human variation and the free action of
man in labour, there was no evidence, and no opportunity for its
existence.
Turning from the mere monotonous endlessness of the workshops I made my
way to the levels above where the workers lived in those hours when they
ceased to be a part of the industrial mechanism of production; and
everywhere were drab-coloured men for these shifts of labour were
arranged so that no space at any time was wholly idle. I now passed by
miles of sleeping dormitories, and other miles of gymnasiums, picture
theatres and gaming tables, and, strikingly incongruous with the
atmosphere of the place, huge assembly rooms which were labelled "Free
Speech Halls." I started to enter one of these, where some kind of a
meeting was in progress, but I was thrust back by a great fellow who
grinned foolishly and said: "Pardon, Herr Captain, it is forbidden you."
Through half-darkened streets, I again passed by the bunk-shelved
sleeping chambers with their cavernous aisles walled with orderly rows
of lockers. Again I came to other barracks where the men were not yet
asleep but were straggling in and sitting about on the lowest bunks of
these sterile makeshift homes.
I then came into a district of mess halls where a meal was being served.
Here again was absolute economy and perfect system. The men dined at
endless tables and their food like the material for their labours, was
served to the workers by the highly efficient device of an endless
moving belt that rolled up out of a slot in the floor at the end of the
table after the manner of the chained steps of an escalator.
From the moving belts the men took their portions, and, as they finished
eating, they cleared away by setting the empty dishes back upon the
moving belt. The sight fascinated me, because of the adaptation of this
mechanical principle to so strange a use, for the principle is old and,
as every engineer knows, was instrumental in founding the house of
Detroit Vehicle Kings that once dominated the industrial world. The
founder of that illustrious line gave the poorest citizen a motor car
and disrupted the wage system of his day by paying his men double the
standard wage, yet he failed to realize the full possibilities of
efficiency for he permitted his men to eat at round tables and be served
by women! Truly we of the free world very narrowly escaped the fetish of
efficiency which finally completely enslaved the Germans.
Each of the long tables of this Berlin dining hall, the ends of which
faced me, was fenced off from its neighbours. At the entrance gates were
signs which read "2600 Calories," "2800 Calories," "3000 Calories"--I
followed down the line to the sign which read "Maximum Diet, 4000
Calories." The next one read, "Minimum Diet 2000 Calories," and thence
the series was repeated. Farther on I saw that men were assembling
before such gates in lines, for the meal there had not begun. Moving to
the other side of the street I walked by the lines which curved out and
swung down the street. Those before the sign of "Minimum Diet" were not
quite so tall as the average, although obviously of the same breed. But
they were all gaunt, many of them drooped and old, relatively the
inferior specimens and their faces bore a cowering look of fear and
shame, of men sullen and dull, beaten in life's battle. Following down
the line and noting the improvement in physique as I passed on, I came
to the farthest group just as they had begun to pass into the hall.
These men, entering the gate labelled "Maximum Diet, 4000 Calories,"
were obviously the pick of the breed, middle-aged, powerful,
Herculean,--and yet not exactly Herculean either, for many of them were
overfull of waistline, men better fed than is absolutely essential to
physical fitness. Evidently a different principle was at work here than
the strict economy of food that required the periodic weighing of the
professional classes.
Turning back I now encountered men coming out of the dining hall in
which I had first witnessed the meal in progress. I wanted to ask
questions and yet was a little afraid. But these big fellows were
seemingly quite respectful; except when I started to enter the Free
Speech Hall, they had humbly made way for me. Emboldened by their
deference I now approached a man whom I had seen come out of a "3800
Calories" gate, and who had crossed the street and stood there picking
his teeth with his finger nail.
He ceased this operation as I approached and was about to step aside.
But I paused and smiled at him, much, I fear, as one smiles at a dog of
unknown disposition, for I could hardly feel that this ungainly creature
was exactly human. He smiled back and stood waiting.
"Perhaps, I stammered," you will tell me about your system of eating; it
seems very interesting."
"I eat thirty-eight," he grinned, "pretty good, yes? I am twenty-five
years old and not so tall either."
I eyed him up--my eyes came just to the top button of his jacket.
"I began thirty," continued the workman, "I came up one almost every
year, one year I came up two at once. Pretty good, yes? One more
to come."
"What then?" I asked.
The big fellow smiled with a childish pride, and doubling up his arm, as
huge as an average man's thigh, he patted his biceps. "I get it all
right. I pass examination, no flaws in me, never been to hospital, not
one day. Yes, I get it."
"Get what?"
"Paternity," said the man in a lower voice, as he glanced about to see
if any of his fellows was listening. "Paternity, you know? Women!"
I thought of many questions but feared to ask them. The worker waited
for some men to pass, then he bent over me, grinning sardonically. "Did
you see them? You have seen women, yes?"
"Yes," I ventured, "I have seen women."
"Pretty good, beautiful, yes?"
"Yes," I stammered, "they are very beautiful." But I was getting nervous
and moved away. The workman, hesitating a little, then followed at
my side.
"But tell me," I said, "about these calories. What did you do to get the
big meals? Why do some get more to eat than others?"
"Better man," he replied without hesitation.
"But what makes a better man?"
"You don't know; of course, you are an intellectual and don't work. But
we work hard. The harder we work the more we eat. I load aluminum pigs
on the elevator. One pig is two calories, nineteen hundred pigs a day,
pretty good, yes? All kind of work has its calories, so many for each
thing to do.
"More work, more food it takes to do it. They say all is alike, that no
one can get fat. But all work calories are not alike because some men
get fatter than others. I don't get fat; my work is hard. I ought to get
two and a half calories for each pig I load. Still I do not get thin,
but I do not play hard in gymnasium, see? Those lathe men, they got it
too easy and they play hard in gymnasium. I don't care if you do report.
I got it mad at them; they got it too easy. One got paternity last year
already, and he is not as good a man as I am. I could throw him over my
shoulder in wrestling. Do you not think they get it too easy?"
"Do the men like this system," I asked; "the measuring of food by the
amount of work one does? Do any of them talk about it and demand that
all be fed alike?"
"The skinny minimum eaters do," said the workman with a sneer, "when we
let them talk, which isn't often, but when they get a chance they talk
Bellamism. But what if they do talk, it does them no good. We have a red
flag, we have Imperial Socialism; we have the House of Hohenzollern.
Well, then, I say, let them talk if they want to, every man must eat
according to his work; that is socialism. We can't have Bellamism when
we have socialism."
This speech, so much more informative and evidencing a knowledge I had
not anticipated, quite disturbed me. "You talk about these things," I
ventured, "in your Free Speech Halls?"
The hitherto pleasant face of the workingman altered to an ugly frown.
"No you don't," he growled, "you don't think because I talk to you, that
you can go asking me what is not your right to know, even if you are
an officer?"
I remained discreetly silent, but continued to walk at the side of the
striding giant. Presently I asked:
"What do you do now, are you going to work?"
"No," he said, looking at me doubtfully, "that was dinner, not
breakfast. I am going now to the picture hall."
"And then," I asked, "do you go to bed?"
"No," he said, "we then go to the gymnasium or the gaming tables. Six
hours' work, six hours' sleep, and four hours for amusement."
"And what do you do," I asked, "the remainder of the day?"
He turned and stared at me. "That is all we get here, sixteen hours.
This is the metal workers' level. Some levels get twenty hours. It
depends on the work."
"But," I said, "a real day has twenty-four hours."
"I've heard," he said, "that it does on the upper levels."
"But," I protested, "I mean a real day--a day of the sun. Do you
understand that?"
"Oh yes," he said, "we see the pictures of the Place in the Sun. That's
a fine show."
"Oh," I said, "then you have pictures of the sun?"
"Of course," he replied, "the sun that shines upon the throne. We all
see that."
At the time I could not comprehend this reference, but I made bold to
ask if it were forbidden me to go to his picture hall.
"I can't make out," he said, "why you want to see, but I never heard of
any order forbidding it.
"I go here," he remarked, as we came to a picture theatre.
I let my Herculean companion enter alone, but followed him shortly and
found a seat in a secluded corner. No one disputed my presence.
The music that filled the hall from some hidden horn was loud and, in a
rough way, joyous. The pictures--evidently carefully prepared for such
an audience--were limited to the life that these men knew. The themes
were chiefly of athletic contests, of boxing, wrestling and feats of
strength. There were also pictures of working contests, always ending by
the awarding of honours by some much bespangled official. But of love
and romance, of intrigue and adventure, of pathos and mirth, these
pictures were strangely devoid,--there was, in fact, no woman's likeness
cast upon the screen and no pictures depicting emotion or sentiment.
As I watched the sterile flittings of the picture screen I decided,
despite the glimmering of intelligence that my talking Hercules had
shown in reference to socialism and Bellamism and the secrets of the
Free Speech Halls, that these men were merely great stupid beasts
of burden.
They worked, they fed, they drank, they played exuberantly in their
gymnasiums and swimming pools, they played long and eagerly at games of
chance. Beyond this their lives were essentially blank. Ambition and
curiosity they had none beyond the narrow circle of their round of
living. But for all that they were docile, contented and, within their
limitations, not unhappy. To me they seemed more and more to be like
well cared for domestic animals, and I found myself wondering, as I left
the hall, why we of the outer world had not thought to produce pictures
in similar vein to entertain our dogs and horses.
~5~
As I returned to my own quarters, I tried to recall the description I
had read of the "Children of the Abyss," the dwellers in ancient city
slums. There was a certain kinship, no doubt, between those former
submerged workers in the democratic world and this labour breed of
Berlin. Yet the enslaved and sweated workers of the old regime were
always depicted as suffering from poverty, as undersized, ill-nourished
and afflicted with disease. The reformers of that day were always
talking of sanitary housing, scientific diet and physical efficiency.
But here was a race of labourers whose physical welfare was as well
taken care of as if they had been prize swine or oxen. There was a
paleness of countenance among these labourers of Berlin that to me
seemed suggestive of ill health, but I knew that was merely due to lack
of sun and did not signify a lack of physical vitality. Mere
sun-darkened skin does not mean physiological efficiency, else the negro
were the most efficient of races. Men can live without sun, without
rain, without contact with the soil, without nature's greenery and the
brotherhood of fellow species in wild haunts. The whole climb of
civilization had been away from these primitive things. It had merely
been an artificial perfecting of the process of giving the living
creature that which is needed for sustenance and propagation in the most
concentrated and most economical form, the elimination of Nature's
superfluities and wastes.
As I thought of these things it came over me that this unholy
imprisonment of a race was but the logical culmination of mechanical and
material civilization. This development among the Germans had been
hastened by the necessities of war and siege, yet it was what the whole
world had been driving toward since man first used a tool and built a
hut. Our own freer civilization of the outer world had been achieved
only by compromises, by a stubborn resistance against the forces to
which we ascribed our progress. We were merely not so completely
civilized, because we had never been wholly domesticated.
As I now record these thoughts on the true significance of the perfected
civilization of the Germans I realize that I was even more right than I
then knew, for the sunless city of Berlin is of a truth a civilization
gone to seed, its people are a domesticated species, they are the
logical outcome of science applied to human affairs, with them the
prodigality and waste of Nature have been eliminated, they have stamped
out contagious diseases of every kind, they have substituted for the
laws of Nature the laws that man may pick by scientific theory and
experiment from the multitude of possibilities. Yes, the Germans were
civilized. And as I pondered these things I recalled those fairy tales
that naturalists tell of the stagnant and fixed society of ants in their
subterranean catacombs. These insect species credited for industry and
intelligence, have in their lesser world reached a similar perfection of
civilization. Ants have a royal house, they have a highly specialized
and fixed system of caste, a completely socialized state--yes, a
Utopia--even as Berlin was a Utopia, with the light of the sun and the
light of the soul, the soul of the wild free man, forever shut out. Yes,
I was walking in Utopia, a nightmare at the end of man's long
dream--Utopia--Black Utopia--City of Endless Night--diabolically
compounded of the three elements of civilization in which the Germans
had always been supreme--imperialism, science and socialism.