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[Illustration: FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK]




  THE
  FUTURE IN AMERICA

  A SEARCH AFTER REALITIES

  BY
  H.G. WELLS

  AUTHOR OF
  "ANTICIPATIONS" "THE WAR OF THE WORLDS"
  "THIRTY STRANGE STORIES" ETC.

  ILLUSTRATED

  [Illustration]

  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  1906




  Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers.

  _All rights reserved._

  Published November, 1906.




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                       PAGE

     I. The Prophetic Habit of Mind                              1

    II. Material Progress                                       21

   III. New York                                                35

    IV. Growth Invincible                                       49

     V. The Economic Process                                    68

    VI. Some Aspects of American Wealth                         88

   VII. Certain Workers                                        104

  VIII. Corruption                                             116

    IX. The Immigrant                                          133

     X. State-Blindness                                        152

    XI. Two Studies in Disappointment                          167

   XII. The Tragedy of Color                                   185

  XIII. The Mind of a Modern State                             203

   XIV. Culture                                                223

    XV. At Washington                                          236

        The Envoy                                              254




ILLUSTRATIONS


  FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK                                 _Frontispiece_

  ENTRANCE TO BROOKLYN BRIDGE                            _Facing p._ 38

  STATE STREET, CHICAGO                                     "        62

  WESTERN FARMERS STILL OWN THEIR FARMS                     "        82

  PLUMP AND PRETTY PUPILS OF EXTRAVAGANCE                   "        90

  NEW YORK'S CROWDED, LITTERED EAST SIDE                    "       106

  BREAKER BOYS AT A PENNSYLVANIA COLLIERY                   "       112

  INTERIOR OF A NEW YORK OFFICE BUILDING                    "       124

  WHERE IMMIGRANT CHILDREN ARE AMERICANIZED                 "       148

  HARVARD HALL AND THE JOHNSON GATE, CAMBRIDGE              "       214

  A BIT OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY                             "       216

  IN THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY                              "       238




THE FUTURE IN AMERICA




THE FUTURE IN AMERICA




CHAPTER I

THE PROPHETIC HABIT OF MIND

(_At a writing-desk in Sandgate_)


I

The Question

"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 or so?

I do not know if the reader has ever happened upon any books or
writings of mine before, but if, what is highly probable, he has not,
he may be curious to know how it is that any human being should be
running about in so colossally an interrogative state of mind. (For
even the present inquiry is by no means my maximum limit). And the
explanation is to be found a little in a mental idiosyncrasy perhaps,
but much more in the development of a special way of thinking, of a
habit of mind.

That habit of mind may be indicated by a proposition that, with a fine
air of discovery, I threw out some years ago, in a happy ignorance that
I had been anticipated by no less a person than Heraclitus. "There is
no Being but Becoming," that was what appeared to my unscholarly mind
to be almost triumphantly new. I have since then informed myself more
fully about Heraclitus, there are moments now when I more than half
suspect that all the thinking I shall ever do will simply serve to
illuminate my understanding of him, but at any rate that apothegm of
his does exactly convey