The Future in America [Paperback]

H. G. Wells (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 1987

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1906. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX THE IMMIGRANT My picture of America assumes now a The Flood certain definite form. I have tried to convey the effect of a great and energetic English-speaking population strewn across a continent so vast as to make it seem small and thin; I have tried to show this population caught by the upward sweep of that great increase in knowledge that is everywhere enlarging the power and scope of human effort, exhilarated by it, and active and hopeful beyond any population the world has ever seen, and I have tried to show how the members of this population struggle and differentiate among themselves in a universal commercial competition that must, in the end, if it is not modified, divide them into two permanent classes of rich and poor. I have ventured to hint at a certain emptiness in the resulting wealthy, .and to note some of the uglinesses and miseries inseparable from this competition. I have tried to give my impressions of the vague, yet widely diffused, will in the nation to resist this differentia tion, and of a dim, large movement of thought towards a change of national method. I have glanced at the debasement of politics that bars any immediate hope of such reconstruction. And now it is time to introduce a new element of obstruction and difficulty into this complicating problem--the immigrants. Into the lower levels of the American community there pours perpetually a vast torrent of strangers, speaking alien tongues, inspired by alien traditions, for the most part illiterate peasants and workingpeople. They come in at the bottom: that must be insisted upon. An enormous and ever-increasing proportion of the laboring classes, of all the lower class in America, is of recent European origin, is either of foreign birth or foreign parentage. The older Ame...

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 194 pages
• Publisher: Granville Publishing Co (April 2, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0948214090
• ISBN-13: 978-0948214097
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insight and foresight meat reality, July 10, 2009

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bernie "xyzzy" (Arlington, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Future in America (Paperback)

This is a series of subjects mostly political or psychological that based on the past and present are projected into the near future.

H. G. takes a subject such as individualism and shows how we moved from societies of the collective to America whose creed for some time has been individual self-sufficiency starting from the pioneer days. Now he argues that it is time to review the benefits o the collective, as we are no longer pioneers. What once was practical may now be considered criminal.

However, he lived in a time quite different from our own and it is nigh impossible to predict that we would abolish monopolies and child labor.

One of the points made is that we remember people that contributed to society or humanity but we do not remember people that just lived there life got rich and died.

Predictions aside, it is interesting to get into HG's mind, which helps us to understand his other works.