THE FUTURE IN AMERICA (Illustrated). H. G. Wells

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       H. G. Wells

      THE FUTURE IN AMERICA

      (Illustrated)

      A Search After Realities

      Published by

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      2017 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-272-3177-5

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

       Chapter I. The Prophetic Habit Of Mind

       

       Chapter II. Material Progress

       

       Chapter III. New York

       

       Chapter IV. Growth Invincible

       

       Chapter V. The Economic Process

       

       Chapter VI. Some Aspects Of American Wealth

       

       Chapter VII. Certain Workers

       

       Chapter VIII. Corruption

       

       Chapter IX. The Immigrant

       

       Chapter X. State-Blindness

       

       Chapter XI. Two Studies In Disappointment

       

       Chapter XII. The Tragedy Of Color

       

       Chapter XIII. The Mind Of A Modern State

       

       Chapter XIV. Culture

       

       Chapter XV. At Washington

       

        The Envoy

      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

       Illustration 1. Frontispiece. Fifth Avenue, New York

       

       Illustration 2. Entrance to Brooklyn Bridge

       

       Illustration 3. State Street, Chicago

       

       Illustration 4. Western Farmers Still Own Their Farms

       

       Illustration 5. Plump and Pretty Pupils of Extravagance

       

       Illustration 6. New York’s Crowded, Littered East Side

       

       Illustration 7. Breaker Boys at a Pennsylvania Colliery

       

       Illustration 8. Interior of a New York Office Building

       

       Illustration 9. Where Immigrant Children Are Americanized

       

       Illustration 10. Harvard Hall and the Johnson Gate, Cambridge

       

       Illustration 11. A Bit of Princeton University

       

       Illustration 12. In the Congressional Library

      First published in Harper’s Weekly, July 14-October 6, 1906 First book edition: Harper & Brothers, New York & London, 1906

      I. — THE PROPHETIC HABIT OF MIND

      (At a writing-desk in Sandgate)

       Table of Contents

      § I

      “Are you a Polygamist?”

      “Are you an Anarchist?”

      The questions seem impertinent. They are part of a long paper of interrogations I must answer satisfactorily if I am to be regarded as a desirable alien to enter the United States of America. I want very much to pass that great statue of Liberty illuminating the World (from a central position in New York Harbor), in order to see things in its light, to talk to certain people, to appreciate certain atmospheres, and so I resist the provocation to answer impertinently. I do not even volunteer that I do not smoke and am a total abstainer; on which points it would seem the States as a whole still keep an open mind. I am full of curiosity about America, I am possessed by a problem I feel I cannot adequately discuss even with myself except over there, and I must go even at the price of coming to a decision upon the theoretically open questions these two inquiries raise.

      My problem I know will seem ridiculous and monstrous when I give it in all its stark disproportions—attacked by me with my equipment it will call up an image of an elephant assailed by an ant who has not even mastered Jiu-jitsu—but at any rate I’ve come to it in a natural sort of way and it is one I must, for my own peace of mind, make some kind of attempt upon, even if at last it means no more than the ant crawling in an exploratory way hither and thither over that vast unconscious carcass and finally getting down and going away. That may be rather good for the ant, and the experience may be of interest to other ants, however infinitesimal from the point of view of the elephant, the final value of his investigation may be. And this tremendous problem in my case and now in this—simply; What is going to happen to the United States of America in the next thirty years