"The next of the great wastes was that from competition. The field of industry was a battlefield as wide as the world, in which the workers wasted, in assailing one another, energies which, if expended in concerted effort, as to-day, would have enriched all. As for mercy or quarter in this warfare, there was absolutely no suggestion of it. To deliberately enter a field of business and destroy the enterprises of those who had occupied it previously, in order to plant one's own enterprise on their ruins, was an achievement which never failed to command popular admiration. Nor is there any stretch of fancy in comparing this sort of struggle with actual warfare, so far as concerns the mental agony and physical suffering which attended the struggle, and the misery which overwhelmed the defeated and those dependent on them. Now nothing about your age is, at first sight, more astounding to a man of modern times than the fact that men engaged in the same industry, instead of fraternizing as comrades and co-laborers to a common end, should have regarded each other as rivals and enemies to be throttled and overthrown. This certainly seems like sheer madness, a scene from bedlam."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Science fiction authors from the United StatesPolitical activistsJournalists from MassachusettsNovelists from MassachusettsChristian socialists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 22.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Bellamy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Edward Bellamy
2000 – 1887
Edward Bellamy (March 26, 1850 – May 22, 1898) was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, a tale set in the distant future of the year 2000. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of at least 165 "Nationalist Clubs" dedicated to the propagation of Bellamy's political ideas and working to make them a practical reality.
98 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Edward Bellamy →
Related Quotes
"The exercise of irresponsible power, by whatever means, is tyranny, and should not be tolerated. The power which men …"
"Forgiving sins, I should have known, is not blotting them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red instead of bla…"
"A sense of utter loneliness—loneliness inevitable, crushing, eternal, the loneliness of existence, encompassed by the…"
"No girl, however coolly her blood may flow, can be pressed to a man's breast, wildly throbbing with love for her, and…"
"The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiv…"
"And, in heaven's name, who are the public enemies?...In your day governments were accustomed, on the slightest intern…"
"We have no wars now, and our governments no war powers, but in order to protect every citizen against hunger, cold, a…"
"But one thing it opened her eyes to, and made certain from the first instant of her new consciousness, namely, that s…"
"Why, when the world gets to understand about it I expect that two men or two women, or a man and a woman, will come i…"
"Our economic system puts us in a position where we can follow Christ's maxim, so impossible for you, to 'take no thou…"