Looking Backward

by Edward Bellamy

the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant.

I derived the means of my support from the labor of others,

shifting the burden of one’s support on the shoulders of others.

interest on investments was a species of tax in perpetuity upon the product of those engaged in industry which a person possessing or inheriting money was able to levy.

All these efforts had, however, failed, as they necessarily must so long as the ancient social organizations prevailed.

I cannot do better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road.

Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them?

that no very radical improvement even was possible,