Produced by Norm Wolcott
[Redactor's note: In this one of his last books Donnelly presages
later futurist works such as "Brave New World" and "1984". The
original scans and OCR were provided by Mr. J.B. Hare; for further
information about Donnelly and this book see
http://www.sacred-texts.com/utopia/cc/index.htm. There is only one
footnote marked {fn1.} ]
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CÆSAR'S COLUMN
A Story of the Twentieth Century.
BY IGNATIUS DONNELLY.
writing as
EDMUND BOISGILBERT, M.D.
Chicago, F.J. Shulte & Co.
[1890]
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
To the Public
I THE GREAT CITY
II. MY ADVENTURE
III. THE BEGGAR'S HOME
IV. THE UNDER-WORLD
V. ESTELLA WASHINGTON
VI. THE INTERVIEW
VII. THE HIDING-PLACE
VIII. THE BROTHERHOOD
IX. THE POISONED KNIFE
X. PREPARATIONS FOR TO-NIGHT
XI. HOW THE WORLD CAME TO BE RUINED
XII. GABRIEL'S UTOPIA
XIII. THE COUNCIL OF THE OLIGARCHY
XIV. THE SPY'S STORY
XV. THE MASTER OF "THE DEMONS"
XVI. GABRIEL'S FOLLY
XVII. THE FLIGHT AND PURSUIT
XVIII. THE EXECUTION
XIX. THE MAMELUKES OF THE AIR
XX. THE WORKINGMEN'S MEETING
XXI. A SERMON OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
XXII. ESTELLA AND I
XXIII. MAX'S STORY-THE SONGSTRESS
XXIV. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE JOURNEYMAN PRINTER
XXV. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE DARK SHADOW
XXVI. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE WIDOW AND HER SON
XXVII. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE BLACKSMITH SHOP
XXVIII. MAX'S STORY CONCLUDED--THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
XXIX. ELYSIUM
XXX. UPON THE HOUSE-TOP
XXXI. "SHEOL"
XXXII. THE RAT-TRAP
XXXIII. "THE OCEAN OVERPEERS ITS LIST"
XXXIV. THE PRINCE GIVES HIS LAST BRIBE
XXXV. THE LIBERATED PRISONER
XXXVI. CÆSAR ERECTS HIS MONUMENT
XXXVII. THE SECOND DAY
XXXVIII. THE FLIGHT
XXXIX. EUROPE
XL. THE GARDEN IN THE MOUNTAINS
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_"The true poet is only a masked father-confessor, whose special
function it is to exhibit what is dangerous in sentiment and
pernicious in action, by a vivid picture of the
consequences."--Goethe._
To the Public
It is to you, O thoughtful and considerate public, that I dedicate
this book. May it, under the providence of God, do good to this
generation and posterity!
I earnestly hope my meaning, in the writing thereof, may not be
misapprehended.
It must not be thought, because I am constrained to describe the
overthrow of civilization, that I desire it. The prophet is not
responsible for the event he foretells. He may contemplate it with
profoundest sorrow. Christ wept over the doom of Jerusalem.
Neither am I an anarchist: for I paint a dreadful picture of the
world-wreck which successful anarchism would produce.
I seek to preach into the ears of the able and rich and powerful the
great truth that neglect of the sufferings of their fellows,
indifference to the great bond of brotherhood which lies at the base
of Christianity, and blind, brutal and degrading worship of mere
wealth, must--given time and pressure enough--eventuate in the
overthrow of society and the destruction of civilization.
I come to the churches with my heart filled with the profoundest
respect for the essentials of religion; I seek to show them why they
have lost their hold upon the poor,--upon that vast multitude, the
best-beloved of God's kingdom,--and I point out to them how they may
regain it. I tell them that if Religion is to reassume her ancient
station, as crowned mistress of the souls of men, she must stand, in
shining armor bright, with the serpent beneath her feet, the champion
and defender of mankind against all its oppressors.
The world, to-day, clamors for deeds, not creeds; for bread, not
dogma; for charity, not ceremony; for love, not intellect.
Some will say the events herein described are absurdly impossible.
Who is it that is satisfied with the present unhappy condition of
society? It is conceded that life is a dark and wretched failure for
the great mass of mankind. The many are plundered to enrich the few.
Vast combinations depress the price of labor and increase the cost of
the necessaries of existence. The rich, as a rule, despise the poor;
and the poor are coming to hate the rich. The face of labor grows
sullen; the old tender Christian love is gone; standing armies are
formed on one side, and great communistic organizations on the other;
society divides itself into two hostile camps; no white flags pass
from the one to the other. They wait only for the drum-beat and the
trumpet to summon them to armed conflict.
These conditions have come about in less than a century; most of them
in a quarter of a century. Multiply them by the years of another
century, and who shall say that the events I depict are impossible?
There is an acceleration of movement in human affairs even as there
is in the operations of gravity. The dead missile out of space at
last blazes, and the very air takes fire. The masses grow more
intelligent as they grow more wretched; and more capable of
cooperation as they become more desperate. The labor organizations of
to-day would have been impossible fifty years ago. And what is to
arrest the flow of effect from cause? What is to prevent the coming
of the night if the earth continues to revolve on its axis? The fool
may cry out: "There shall be no night!" But the feet of the hours
march unrelentingly toward the darkness.
Some may think that, even if all this be true, "Cæsar's Column"
should not have been published. Will it arrest the moving evil to
ignore its presence? What would be thought of the surgeon who, seeing
upon his patient's lip the first nodule of the cancer, tells him
there is no danger, and laughs him into security while the roots of
the monster eat their way toward the great arteries? If my message be
true it should be spoken; and the world should hear it. The cancer
should be cut out while there is yet time. Any other course
"Will but skin and film the ulcerous place, While rank corruption,
mining all beneath, infects unseen."
Believing, as I do, that I read the future aright, it would be
criminal in me to remain silent. I plead for higher and nobler
thoughts in the souls of men; for wider love and ampler charity in
their hearts; for a renewal of the bond of brotherhood between the
classes; for a reign of justice on earth that shall obliterate the
cruel hates and passions which now divide the world.
If God notices anything so insignificant as this poor book, I pray
that he may use it as an instrumentality of good for mankind; for he
knows I love his human creatures, and would help them if I had the
power.
CHAPTER I
THE GREAT CITY
[This book is a series of letters, from Gabriel Weltstein, in New
York, to his brother, Heinrich Weltstein, in the State of Uganda,
Africa.]
NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 1988
My Dear Brother:
Here I am, at last, in the great city. My eyes are weary with gazing,
and my mouth speechless with admiration; but in my brain rings
perpetually the thought: Wonderful!--wonderful!--most wonderful!
What an infinite thing is man, as revealed in the tremendous
civilization he has built up! These swarming, laborious, all-capable
ants seem great enough to attack heaven itself, if they could but
find a resting-place for their ladders. Who can fix a limit to the
intelligence or the achievements of our species?
But our admiration may be here, and our hearts elsewhere. And so from
all this glory and splendor I turn back to the old homestead, amid
the high mountain valleys of Africa; to the primitive, simple
shepherd-life; to my beloved mother, to you and to all our dear ones.
This gorgeous, gilded room fades away, and I see the leaning hills,
the trickling streams, the deep gorges where our woolly thousands
graze; and I hear once more the echoing Swiss horns of our herdsmen
reverberating from the snow-tipped mountains. But my dream is gone.
The roar of the mighty city rises around me like the bellow of many
cataracts.
New York contains now ten million inhabitants; it is the largest city
that is, or ever has been, in the world. It is difficult to say where
it begins or ends: for the villas extend, in almost unbroken
succession, clear to Philadelphia; while east, west and north noble
habitations spread out mile after mile, far beyond the municipal
limits.
But the wonderful city! Let me tell you of it.
As we approached it in our air-ship, coming from the east, we could
see, a hundred miles before we reached the continent, the radiance of
its millions of magnetic lights, reflected on the sky, like the glare
of a great conflagration. These lights are not fed, as in the old
time, from electric dynamos, but the magnetism of the planet itself
is harnessed for the use of man. That marvelous earth-force which the
Indians called "the dance of the spirits," and civilized man
designated "the aurora borealis," is now used to illuminate this
great metropolis, with a clear, soft, white light, like that of the
full moon, but many times brighter. And the force is so cunningly
conserved that it is returned to the earth, without any loss of
magnetic power to the planet. Man has simply made a temporary loan
from nature for which he pays no interest.
Night and day are all one, for the magnetic light increases
automatically as the day-light wanes; and the business parts of the
city swarm as much at midnight as at high noon. In the old times, I
am told, part of the streets was reserved for foot-paths for men and
women, while the middle was given up to horses and wheeled vehicles;
and one could not pass from side to side without danger of being
trampled to death by the horses. But as the city grew it was found
that the pavements would not hold the mighty, surging multitudes;
they were crowded into the streets, and many accidents occurred. The
authorities were at length compelled to exclude all horses from the
streets, in the business parts of the city, and raise the central
parts to a level with the sidewalks, and give them up to the
exclusive use of the pedestrians, erecting stone pillars here and
there to divide the multitude moving in one direction from those
flowing in another. These streets are covered with roofs of glass,
which exclude the rain and snow, but not the air. And then the wonder
and glory of the shops! They surpass all description. Below all the
business streets are subterranean streets, where vast trains are
drawn, by smokeless and noiseless electric motors, some carrying
passengers, others freight. At every street corner there are electric
elevators, by which passengers can ascend or descend to the trains.
And high above the house-tops, built on steel pillars, there are
other railroads, not like the unsightly elevated trains we saw
pictures of in our school books, but crossing diagonally over the
city, at a great height, so as to best economize time and distance.
The whole territory between Broadway and the Bowery and Broome Street
and Houston Street is occupied by the depot grounds of the great
inter-continental air-lines; and it is an astonishing sight to see
the ships ascending and descending, like monstrous birds, black with
swarming masses of passengers, to or from England, Europe, South
America, the Pacific Coast, Australia, China, India and Japan.
These air-lines are of two kinds: the anchored and the independent.
The former are hung, by revolving wheels, upon great wires suspended
in the air; the wires held in place by metallic balloons,
fish-shaped, made of aluminium, and constructed to turn with the wind
so as to present always the least surface to the air-currents. These
balloons, where the lines cross the oceans, are secured to huge
floating islands of timber, which are in turn anchored to the bottom
of the sea by four immense metallic cables, extending north, south,
east and west, and powerful enough to resist any storms. These
artificial islands contain dwellings, in which men reside, who keep
up the supply of gas necessary for the balloons. The independent
air-lines are huge cigar-shaped balloons, unattached to the earth,
moving by electric power, with such tremendous speed and force as to
be as little affected by the winds as a cannon ball. In fact, unless
the wind is directly ahead the sails of the craft are so set as to
take advantage of it like the sails of a ship; and the balloon rises
or falls, as the birds do, by the angle at which it is placed to the
wind, the stream of air forcing it up, or pressing it down, as the
case may be. And just as the old-fashioned steam-ships were provided
with boats, in which the passengers were expected to take refuge, if
the ship was about to sink, so the upper decks of these air-vessels
are supplied with parachutes, from which are suspended boats; and in
case of accident two sailors and ten passengers are assigned to each
parachute; and long practice has taught the bold craftsmen to descend
gently and alight in the sea, even in stormy weather, with as much
adroitness as a sea-gull. In fact, a whole population of air-sailors
has grown up to manage these ships, never dreamed of by our
ancestors. The speed of these aerial vessels is, as you know, very
great--thirty-six hours suffices to pass from New York to London, in
ordinary weather. The loss of life has been less than on the
old-fashioned steamships; for, as those which go east move at a
greater elevation than those going west, there is no danger of
collisions; and they usually fly above the fogs which add so much to
the dangers of sea-travel. In case of hurricanes they rise at once to
the higher levels, above the storm; and, with our increased
scientific knowledge, the coming of a cyclone is known for many days
in advance; and even the stratum of air in which it will move can be
foretold.
I could spend hours, my dear brother, telling you of the splendor of
this hotel, called _The Darwin_, in honor of the great English
philosopher of the last century. It occupies an entire block from
Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, and from Forty-sixth Street to
Forty-seventh. The whole structure consists of an infinite series of
cunning adjustments, for the delight and gratification of the human
creature. One object seems to be to relieve the guests from all
necessity for muscular exertion. The ancient elevator, or "lift," as
they called it in England, has expanded until now whole rooms, filled
with ladies and gentlemen, are bodily carried up from the first story
to the roof; a professional musician playing the while on the
piano--not the old-fashioned thing our grandmothers used, but a huge
instrument capable of giving forth all sounds of harmony from the
trill of a nightingale to the thunders of an orchestra. And when you
reach the roof of the hotel you find yourself in a glass-covered
tropical forest, filled with the perfume of many flowers, and bright
with the scintillating plumage of darting birds; all sounds of
sweetness fill the air, and many glorious, star-eyed maidens, guests
of the hotel, wander half seen amid the foliage, like the houris in
the Mohammedan's heaven.
But as I found myself growing hungry I descended to the dining-room.
It is three hundred feet long: a vast multitude were there eating in
perfect silence. It is considered bad form to interrupt digestion
with speech, as such a practice tends to draw the vital powers, it is
said, away from the stomach to the head. Our forefathers were
expected to shine in conversation, and be wise and witty while
gulping their food between brilliant passages. I sat down at a table
to which I was marshaled by a grave and reverend seignior in an
imposing uniform. As I took my seat my weight set some machinery in
motion. A few feet in front of me suddenly rose out of the table a
large upright mirror, or such I took it to be; but instantly there
appeared on its surface a grand bill of fare, each article being
numbered. The whole world had been ransacked to produce the viands
named in it; neither the frozen recesses of the north nor the
sweltering regions of the south had been spared: every form of food,
animal and vegetable, bird, beast, reptile, fish; the foot of an
elephant, the hump of a buffalo, the edible bird-nests of China;
snails, spiders, shell-fish, the strange and luscious creatures
lately found in the extreme depths of the ocean and fished for with
dynamite; in fact, every form of food pleasant to the palate of man
was there. For, as you know, there are men who make fortunes now by
preserving and breeding the game animals, like the deer, the moose,
the elk, the buffalo, the antelope, the mountain sheep and goat, and
many others, which but for their care would long since have become
extinct. They select barren regions in mild climates, not fit for
agriculture, and enclosing large tracts with wire fences, they raise
great quantities of these valuable game animals, which they sell to
the wealthy gourmands of the great cities, at very high prices.
I was perplexed, and, turning to the great man who stood near me, I
began to name a few of the articles I wanted. He smiled complacently
at my country ignorance, and called my attention to the fact that the
table immediately before me contained hundreds of little knobs or
buttons, each one numbered; and he told me that these were connected
by electric wires with the kitchen of the hotel, and if I would
observe the numbers attached to any articles in the bill of fare
which I desired, and would touch the corresponding numbers of the
knobs before me, my dinner would be ordered on a similar mirror in
the kitchen, and speedily served. I did as he directed. In a little
while an electric bell near me rang; the bill of fare disappeared
from the mirror; there was a slight clicking sound; the table parted
in front of me, the electric knobs moving aside; and up through the
opening rose my dinner carefully arranged, as upon a table, which
exactly filled the gap caused by the recession of that part of the
original table which contained the electric buttons. I need not say I
was astonished. I commenced to eat, and immediately the same bell,
which had announced the disappearance of the bill of fare, rang
again. I looked up, and the mirror now contained the name of every
state in the Republic, from Hudson's Bay to the Isthmus of Darien;
and the names of all the nations of the world; each name being
numbered. My attendant, perceiving my perplexity, called my attention
to the fact that the sides of the table which had brought up my
dinner contained another set of electric buttons, corresponding with
the numbers on the mirror; and he explained to me that if I would
select any state or country and touch the corresponding button the
news of the day, from that state or country, would appear in the
mirror. He called my attention to, the fact that every guest in the
room had in front of him a similar mirror, and many of them were
reading the news of the day as they ate. I touched the knob
corresponding with the name of the new state of Uganda, in Africa,
and immediately there appeared in the mirror all the doings of the
people of that state--its crimes, its accidents, its business, the
output of its mines, the markets, the sayings and doings of its
prominent men; in fact, the whole life of the community was unrolled
before me like a panorama. I then touched the button for another
African state, Nyanza; and at once I began to read of new lines of
railroad; new steam-ship fleets upon the great lake; of large
colonies of white men, settling new States, upon the higher lands of
the interior; of their colleges, books, newspapers; and particularly
of a dissertation upon the genius of Chaucer, written by a Zulu
professor, which had created considerable interest among the learned
societies of the Transvaal. I touched the button for China and read
the important news that the Republican Congress of that great and
highly civilized nation had decreed that English, the universal
language of the rest of the globe, should be hereafter used in the
courts of justice and taught in all the schools. Then came the news
that a Manchurian professor, an iconoclast, had written a learned
work, in English, to prove that George Washington's genius and moral
greatness had been much over-rated by the partiality of his
countrymen. He was answered by a learned doctor of Japan who argued
that the greatness of all great men consisted simply in opportunity,
and that for every illustrious name that shone in the pages of
history, associated with important events, a hundred abler men had
lived and died unknown. The battle was raging hotly, and all China
and Japan were dividing into contending factions upon this great
issue.
Our poor ignorant ancestors of a hundred years ago drank alcohol in
various forms, in quantities which the system could not consume or
assimilate, and it destroyed their organs and shortened their lives.
Great agitations arose until the manufacture and sale of alcoholic
beverages was prohibited over nearly all the world. At length the
scientists observed that the craving was based on a natural want of
the system; that alcohol was found in small quantities in nearly
every article of food; and that the true course was to so increase
the amount of alcohol in the food, without gratifying the palate, as
to meet the real necessities of the system, and prevent a decrease of
the vital powers.
It is laughable to read of those days when men were drugged with
pills, boluses and powders. Now our physic is in our food; and the
doctor prescribes a series of articles to be eaten or avoided, as the
case may be. One can see at once by consulting his "vital-watch,"
which shows every change in the magnetic and electric forces of the
body, just how his physical strength wanes or increases; and he can
modify his diet accordingly; he can select, for instance, a dish
highly charged with quinine or iron, and yet perfectly palatable;
hence, among the wealthier classes, a man of one hundred is as common
now-a-days as a man of seventy was a century ago; and many go far
beyond that point, in full possession of all their faculties.
I glanced around the great dining-room and inspected my neighbors.
They all carried the appearance of wealth; they were quiet, decorous
and courteous. But I could not help noticing that the women, young
and old, were much alike in some particulars, as if some general
causes had molded them into the same form. Their brows were all
fine--broad, square, and deep from the ear forward; and their jaws
also were firmly developed, square like a soldier's; while the
profiles were classic in their regularity, and marked by great
firmness. The most peculiar feature was their eyes. They had none of
that soft, gentle, benevolent look which so adorns the expression of
my dear mother and other good women whom we know. On the contrary,
their looks were bold, penetrating, immodest, if I may so express it,
almost to fierceness: they challenged you; they invited you; they
held intercourse with your soul.
The chief features in the expression of the men were incredulity,
unbelief, cunning, observation, heartlessness. I did not see a good
face in the whole room: powerful faces there were, I grant you; high
noses, resolute mouths, fine brows; all the marks of shrewdness and
energy; a forcible and capable race; but that was all. I did not see
one, my dear brother of whom I could say, "That man would sacrifice
himself for another; that man loves his fellow man."
I could not but think how universal and irresistible must have been
the influences of the age that could mold all these Men and women
into the same soulless likeness. I pitied them. I pitied mankind,
caught in the grip of such wide-spreading tendencies. I said to
myself: "Where is it all to end? What are we to expect of a race
without heart or honor? What may we look for when the powers of the
highest civilization supplement the instincts of tigers and wolves?
Can the brain of man flourish when the heart is dead?"
I rose and left the room.
I had observed that the air of the hotel was sweeter, purer and
cooler than that of the streets outside. I asked one of the
attendants for an explanation. He took me out to where we could
command a view of the whole building, and showed me that a great
canvas pipe rose high above the hotel, and, tracing it upwards, far
as the eye could reach, he pointed out a balloon, anchored by cables,
so high up as to be dwarfed to a mere speck against the face of the
blue sky. He told me that the great pipe was double; that through one
division rose the hot, exhausted air of the hotel, and that the
powerful draft so created operated machinery which pumped down the
pure, sweet air from a higher region, several miles above the earth;
and, the current once established, the weight of the colder
atmosphere kept up the movement, and the air was then distributed by
pipes to every part of the hotel. He told me also that the hospitals
of the city were supplied in the same manner; and the result had
been, be said, to diminish the mortality of the sick one-half; for
the air so brought to them was perfectly free from bacteria and full
of all life-giving properties. A company had been organized to supply
the houses of the rich with his cold, pure air for so much a thousand
feet, as long ago illuminating gas was furnished.
I could not help but think that there was need that some man should
open connection with the upper regions of God's charity, and bring
down the pure beneficent spirit of brotherly love to this afflicted
earth, that it might spread through all the tainted hospitals of
corruption for the healing of the hearts and souls of the people.
This attendant, a sort of upper-servant, I suppose, was quite
courteous and polite, and, seeing that I was a stranger, he proceeded
to tell me that the whole city was warmed with hot water, drawn from
the profound depths of the earth, and distributed as drinking water
was distributed a century ago, in pipes, to all the houses, for a
fixed and very reasonable charge. This heat-supply is so uniform and
so cheap that it has quite driven out all the old forms of
fuel--wood, coal, natural gas, etc.
And then he told me something which shocked me greatly. You know that
according to our old-fashioned ideas it is unjustifiable for any
person to take his own life, and thus rush into the presence of his
Maker before he is called. We are of the opinion of Hamlet that God
has "fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter." Would you believe it,
my dear brother, in this city they actually facilitate suicide! A
race of philosophers has arisen in the last fifty years who argue
that, as man was not consulted about his coming into the world, he
has a perfect right to leave it whenever it becomes uncomfortable.
These strange arguments were supplemented by the economists, always a
powerful body in this utilitarian land, and they urged that, as men
could not be prevented from destroying themselves, if they had made
up their minds to do so, they might just as well shuffle off the
mortal coil in the way that would give least trouble to their
surviving fellow-citizens. That, as it was, they polluted the rivers,
and even the reservoirs of drinking-water, with their dead bodies,
and put the city to great expense and trouble to recover and identify
them. Then came the humanitarians, who said that many persons, intent
on suicide, but knowing nothing of the best means of effecting their
object, tore themselves to pieces with cruel pistol shots or knife
wounds, or took corrosive poisons, which subjected them to agonizing
tortures for hours before death came to their relief; and they argued
that if a man had determined to leave the world it was a matter of
humanity to help him out of it by the pleasantest means possible.
These views at length prevailed, and now in all the public squares or
parks they have erected hand some houses, beautifully furnished, with
baths and bedrooms. If a man has decided to die, he goes there. He is
first photographed; then his name, if he sees fit to give it, is
recorded, with his residence; and his directions are taken as to the
disposition of his body. There are tables at which he can write his
farewell letters to his friends. A doctor explains to him the nature
and effect of the different poisons, and he selects the kind he
prefers. He is expected to bring with him the clothes in which he
intends to be cremated. He swallows a little pill, lies down upon a
bed, or, if he prefers it, in his coffin; pleasant music is played
for him; he goes to sleep, and wakes up on the other side of the
great line. Every day hundreds of people, men and women, perish in
this way; and they are borne off to the great furnaces for the dead,
and consumed. The authorities assert that it is a marked improvement
over the old-fashioned methods; but to my mind it is a shocking
combination of impiety and mock-philanthropy. The truth is, that, in
this vast, over-crowded city, man is a drug,--a superfluity,--and I
think many men and women end their lives out of an overwhelming sense
of their own insignificance;--in other words, from a mere weariness
of feeling that they are nothing, they become nothing.
I must bring this letter to an end, but before retiring I shall make
a visit to the grand parlors of the hotel. You suppose I will walk
there. Not at all, my dear brother. I shall sit down in a chair;
there is an electric magazine in the seat of it. I touch a spring,
and away it goes. I guide it with my feet. I drive into one of the
great elevators. I descend to the drawing-room floor. I touch the
spring again, and in a few moments I am moving around the grand
salon, steering myself clear of hundreds of similar chairs, occupied
by fine-looking men or the beautiful, keen-eyed, unsympathetic women
I have described. The race has grown in power and loveliness--I fear
it has lost in lovableness.
Good-by. With love to all, I remain your affectionate brotherly
Gabriel Weltstein.