Looking Backward | Page 3

the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association / Benedictine University" within the 60 days following each date you prepare
(or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, OCR
software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of
contribution you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association /
Benedictine University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software donated by Caere
Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. Contact Mike Lough

LOOKING BACKWARD From 2000 to 1887
by Edward Bellamy

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Historical Section Shawmut College, Boston, December 26, 2000
Living as we do in the closing year of the twentieth century, enjoying the blessings of a
social order at once so simple and logical that it seems but the triumph of common sense,
it is no doubt difficult for those whose studies have not been largely historical to realize
that the present organization of society is, in its completeness, less than a century old. No
historical fact is, however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth
century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking
social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of
time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and
material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so
brief an interval! The readiness with which men accustom themselves, as matters of

course, to improvements in their condition, which, when anticipated, seemed to leave
nothing more to be desired, could not be more strikingly illustrated. What reflection
could be better calculated to moderate the enthusiasm of reformers who count for their
reward on the lively gratitude of future ages!
The object of this volume is to assist persons who, while desiring to gain a more definite
idea of the social contrasts between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are daunted by
the formal aspect of the histories which treat the subject. Warned by a teacher's
experience that learning is accounted a weariness to the flesh, the author has sought to
alleviate the instructive quality of the book by casting it in the form of a romantic
narrative, which he would be glad to fancy not wholly devoid of interest on its own
account.
The reader, to whom modern social institutions and their underlying principles are
matters of course, may at times find Dr. Leete's explanations of them rather trite--but it
must be remembered that to Dr. Leete's guest they were not matters of course, and that
this book is written for the express purpose of inducing the reader to forget for the nonce
that they are so to him. One word more. The almost universal theme of the writers and
orators who have celebrated this bimillennial epoch has been the future rather than the
past, not the advance that has been made, but the progress that shall be made, ever
onward and upward, till the race shall achieve its ineffable destiny. This is well, wholly
well, but it seems to me that nowhere can we find more solid ground for daring
anticipations of human development during the next one thousand years, than by
"Looking Backward" upon the progress of the last one hundred.
That this volume may be so fortunate as to find readers whose interest in the subject shall
incline them to overlook the deficiencies of the treatment is the hope in which the author
steps aside and leaves Mr. Julian West to speak for himself.
Chapter 1
I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857. "What!" you say, "eighteen
fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He means nineteen fifty-seven, of course." I beg pardon,
but there is no mistake. It was about four in the afternoon of December the 26th, one day
after Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I first breathed the east wind of Boston,
which, I assure the reader, was at that remote period marked by the same penetrating
quality characterizing it in the present year of grace, 2000.
These statements seem so absurd on their face, especially when I add that I am a young
man apparently of about thirty years of age, that no person can be blamed for refusing to
read another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity.
Nevertheless I earnestly assure the reader that no imposition is