In the Days of the Comet
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Герберт Уэллс. In the Days of the Comet
PROLOGUE. THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER
BOOK THE FIRST. THE COMET
CHAPTER THE FIRST. DUST IN THE SHADOWS
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
CHAPTER THE SECOND. NETTIE
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
Section 7
CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE REVOLVER
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
Section 7
CHAPTER THE FOURTH. WAR
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
CHAPTER THE FIFTH. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
BOOK THE SECOND. THE GREEN VAPORS
CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE CHANGE
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
CHAPTER THE SECOND. THE AWAKENING
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
Section 7
Section 8
CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE CABINET COUNCIL
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
BOOK THE THIRD. THE NEW WORLD
CHAPTER THE FIRST. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
CHAPTER THE SECOND. MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
CHAPTER THE THIRD. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
THE EPILOGUE. THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER
Отрывок из книги
I HAVE set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely connected with me, primarily to please myself.
My memory takes me back across the interval of fifty years to a little ill-lit room with a sash window open to a starry sky, and instantly there returns to me the characteristic smell of that room, the penetrating odor of an ill-trimmed lamp, burning cheap paraffin. Lighting by electricity had then been perfected for fifteen years, but still the larger portion of the world used these lamps. All this first scene will go, in my mind at least, to that olfactory accompaniment. That was the evening smell of the room. By day it had a more subtle aroma, a closeness, a peculiar sort of faint pungency that I associate – I know not why – with dust.
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Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock-out!
That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide economic disorganization. Through their want of intelligent direction the great "Trust" of American ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded furnace owners, had smelted far more iron than the whole world had any demand for. (In those days there existed no means of estimating any need of that sort beforehand.) They had done this without even consulting the ironmasters of any other country. During their period of activity they had drawn into their employment a great number of workers, and had erected a huge productive plant. It is manifestly just that people who do headlong stupid things of this sort should suffer, but in the old days it was quite possible, it was customary for the real blunderers in such disasters, to shift nearly all the consequences of their incapacity. No one thought it wrong for a light-witted "captain of industry" who had led his workpeople into overproduction, into the disproportionate manufacture, that is to say, of some particular article, to abandon and dismiss them, nor was there anything to prevent the sudden frantic underselling of some trade rival in order to surprise and destroy his trade, secure his customers for one's own destined needs, and shift a portion of one's punishment upon him. This operation of spasmodic underselling was known as "dumping." The American ironmasters were now dumping on the British market. The British employers were, of course, taking their loss out of their workpeople as much as possible, but in addition they were agitating for some legislation that would prevent – not stupid relative excess in production, but "dumping" – not the disease, but the consequences of the disease. The necessary knowledge to prevent either dumping or its causes, the uncorrelated production of commodities, did not exist, but this hardly weighed with them at all, and in answer to their demands there had arisen a curious party of retaliatory-protectionists who combined vague proposals for spasmodic responses to these convulsive attacks from foreign manufacturers, with the very evident intention of achieving financial adventures. The dishonest and reckless elements were indeed so evident in this movement as to add very greatly to the general atmosphere of distrust and insecurity, and in the recoil from the prospect of fiscal power in the hands of the class of men known as the "New Financiers," one heard frightened old-fashioned statesmen asserting with passion that "dumping" didn't occur, or that it was a very charming sort of thing to happen. Nobody would face and handle the rather intricate truth of the business. The whole effect upon the mind of a cool observer was of a covey of unsubstantial jabbering minds drifting over a series of irrational economic cataclysms, prices and employment tumbled about like towers in an earthquake, and amidst the shifting masses were the common work-people going on with their lives as well as they could, suffering, perplexed, unorganized, and for anything but violent, fruitless protests, impotent. You cannot hope now to understand the infinite want of adjustment in the old order of things. At one time there were people dying of actual starvation in India, while men were burning unsalable wheat in America. It sounds like the account of a particularly mad dream, does it not? It was a dream, a dream from which no one on earth expected an awakening.
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