Looking Backward

by Edward Bellamy

At last, strangely late in the world's history, the obvious fact was perceived that no business is so essentially the public business as the industry and commerce on which the people's livelihood depends, and that to entrust it to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly similar in kind, though vastly greater in magnitude, to that of surrendering the functions of political government to kings and nobles to be conducted for their personal glorification."

'Your necessity is my opportunity.'

The reward of any service depended not upon its difficulty, danger, or hardship, for throughout the world it seems that the most perilous, severe, and repulsive labor was done by the worst paid classes; but solely upon the strait of those who needed the service."

you were able to live together at all,

If I were asked to name the most distinguishing felicity of this age, as compared to that in which I first saw the light, I should say that to me it seems to consist in the dignity you have given to labor by refusing to set a price upon it

of the world to-day represents a greater volume of

the right of every man to the completest education the nation can give him on his own account,

I assure you that the wonder with us is, not that the world did not get rich under such a system, but that it did not perish outright from want.