Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 9.pdf/466

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

THE AMERICAN OUTLOOK

there can be any national revolutionary movement or any complete arrest in the development of an aristocratic phase in American history. The area of the country is too great and the means of communication between the workers in different parts inadequate for a concerted rising or even for effective political action in mass. In the worst event—and it is only in the worst event that a great insurrectionary movement becomes probable—the newspapers, magazines, telephones and telegraphs, all the apparatus of discussion and popular appeal, the railways, arsenals, guns, flying-machines, and all the material of warfare, will be in the hands of the property owners; and the average of betrayal among the leaders of a class not racially homogeneous, embittered, suspicious, united only by their discomforts and not by any constructive intentions, will necessarily be high. So that, though the intensifying trouble between labour and capital may mean immense social disorganisation and lawlessness, though it may even supply the popular support in new attempts at secession, I do not see in it the possibility and force for that new start which the revolutionary Socialists anticipate; I see it merely as one of several forces making on the whole, and particularly in view of the possible mediatory action of the universities, for construction and reconciliation.

§ 10

What changes are likely to occur in the more intimate social life of the people of the United States? Two influences are at work that may modify this pro-

438