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THE ELECTRIC LIGHTS

BY MAXIM GORKI

A TRAVELER just back from Siberia has told me the following story:

I was seated on the platform of a station some hundred versts from Omsk, when I saw a bulky peasant with a pipe in his mouth coming towards me. He sat down by my side.

'Are you going far?' I asked.

'I am going to Omsk,' he answered gravely, 'to get some electric lights. They have installed electricity in our village, you know, the thing with wires.'

'Have you had it some time?'
'No, not for very long.'

I begged him then to tell me how the village folk came to introduce the new invention. And here, almost word for word, is the peasant's story:

'Since it was known that since September a new power, the power of the Soviets, had reigned at Omsk and that they were about to try Socialism, we of the village came together and decided to find out what was going on, and what these "Soviets," were that had been given to the people. We chose old Léon, a crafty old fellow, as our messenger, and said to him, "Take these thirty rubles, go to Omsk, and try to find out something about the Soviets and these Bolsheviki; be certain, moreover, to ask what "Socialism" is.

'At the end of two weeks Léon came back, and with him was a soldier. We met together, stood Léon on a table and said to him, "Speak out." And Léon began to tell his story. "Well," says he, "all's fine up there-as for the rest, the soldier can tell you about it better

than I can." So we said to the soldier, "Just what art thou?" "I," he answered, "why I'm a Bolshevik, a communist, and I'll stay with you if you'll make me your commissioner." After having well thought the matter over, we said to him, "Stay." "I thank you deeply, comrades," said he. "Now let me look about, and get my bearings."

'At the end of a week we had organized a Soviet. And now old Léon, who certainly had well learned all that had been taught him, says, "Now that we have turned the corner and can call ourselves Bolsheviki, we must destroy and we must build." But what were we to destroy? We have nothing to destroy. So the soldier said, "Since we are communists, we ought to make requisitions. Where is your bourgeoisie?"

'We stand silent. You know we don't have any such thing among us. 'Again the soldier asks, "Where is your bourgeoisie?"

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""Your pardon; excuse answer him, "we have n't got any."

""Eh! You don't know yourselves. I'll find bourgeoisie for you. Let me talk to the people."

'So we gathered together sixty people for him, and the whole party went off to a place about forty versts from here. A day later they came back bringing with them a dozen nabobs and ten thousand rubles of the Tsar's paper. The soldier said, "There's your bourgeoisie!" We said to them, "Are you bourgeoisie?" "Yes, we are." "Well, put yourselves at ease; we are not going to ask you for ten thousand rubles apiece." "How much are you going to

demand?" they asked. We drew apart from them and conferred. "Three thousand rubles," we answer. The bourgeoisie begin to yell. "That's too much; take two thousand." "What's that?" we say. "We are not looking for ten thousand; you ought to stop such bargaining!" So the bourgeoisie consent. "True enough," they say, "the devils might have asked ten thousand."

'They left a hostage with us and went away to get the money. At the end of twenty-four hours they sent us 42,000 rubles, making a total of 52,000. 'We assembled the Soviet with Léon as president.

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'Well," said he, "We have made requisitions. Now what are we going to do?"

'One said, "We must build a school"; another said, "Let's buy an automobile and take turns riding in it." We rejected all these propositions. Then the soldier came to our assistance.

"In the towns," said he, "they have 'electricity,' and thanks to it, there are less fires. It is not difficult to have. You simply put a wheel in the water in such a way that it will turn. You join the wheel to a dynamo. You attach a wire, and then fix a lamp at the wire's end. The lamp begins to burn and there you are. Understand?" "How very simple," we answer.

'We send the soldier to Omsk to get the machine. Léon goes with him, carrying the money. You see the soldier after all was only a stranger, while Léon was a fellow villager. We waited a long time for their return. Finally they came back, carrying I know not what, and accompanied by four strangers. "Who are these people?" "These are mechanics who have come to install the machine."

"They lift the machine out of its case. We look at it. It is a funny kind of thing and quite impossible to understand. Nevertheless, we see that it is

in good condition and worth its cost. The job goes ahead. The mechanics direct all the work. They build a great wheel and set it up in our river (for we have a rapid river in our part of the country), then they attach it by a belt of leather to the electric machine. And now the machine turns. It turns and snaps out sparks. It scares one. It is decided first of all to put the electricity in the priest's house. Léon had heard somewhere that the church was now divided from the State. We called the priest forth. "Get out of your house," cried Léon to the priest, and all of us echoed him. The chief mechanic stands by holding the wire in his hand. Then we put the priest out of his house, enter the dwelling, and the mechanic introduces the wire. Everyone makes a little speech, saying just what happens to come into his head.

"The mechanic then says, "Darken the windows." We do so. It becomes dark enough to make one shiver. No one says a word. All is quiet. All of a sudden comes a blinding light, the lamp at the end of the wire begins to burn!

'We say to him, "Could n't we all of us have a little lamp like that in our izba?" The mechanic answers, "It can be done." So they put lamps in all our houses. By and by the peasants of the neighboring villages come to us and ask if they, too, may not have a share.

"The soldier has warned us not to give light to those who are not communists. And so we say to all, "If you want light, declare yourself communists."

'Naturally, they all declared themselves Bolsheviki. It's as simple as can be. The priest has been chased away, and his house has been made into a reading room. And now the chief mechanic says, "We shall need a stronger wire, and for that we must have money." Our neighbors go look

ing for bourgeoisie and requisition 60,000 rubles. We build a school for children and ignorant adults and hire a good schoolmaster. Four lamps have been put in the school. One of us is charged with looking after them. He comes to school as if he came to learn something, and watches the lights to see if they are burning steadily. It's a good thing, and we are doing well with it. Everybody in the region round us is dreaming of the "cold light." It's handy, it's bright, and there is no danger of fire. There is only one thing

The Novoia Jizn

about it that's bad and that is that you can't light your pipe at one of the lights!'

And there's the story. The Siberians declare that electric power was brought into the villages by coöperative societies long before the Bolsheviki were ever heard of. Whatever the truth may be, it is a fact that they now have electricity in the country and that we are going to be spared those terrific losses caused by the fires which every year destroy hundreds of our villages.

THE SIGN

Over the apple-trees with their red load
In world's-end orchards, over dark yew woods,
O'er fires of sunset glassed in wizard streams,
O'er mill and meadow of those farthest lands,
Over the reapers, over the sere sails

Of homing ships and every breaking wave,
Over the haven and the entranced town,

O'er hearths aflame with fir-trunks and fir-cones,

Over the children playing in the streets,
Over the harpers harping on the bridge,

O'er lovers in their dream and their desire,
There falls from the high heaven a subtle sense
Of presage and a deep expectant hush,
And the wise watchers know the time draws on
And that amid the snows of that same year
The earth will bear her longed-for perfect fruit.
By R. L. G.

The Nation

ECONOMICS, TRADE, AND FINANCE

THE INDICTMENT OF THE RICH

We shall speak here of 'profits' in the widest sense of the word. We mean by it all incomes arising from economic activity which are not of the nature either of wages or salaries; and of such incomes we specially mean those which greatly exceed the average, and which place their recipients in the class commonly called 'the rich.' Ever since civilization began men have been numerous - some of them inspired by genuine philanthropic sympathy, some of them embittered by a personal sense of failure who have denounced the rich, as though riches were necessarily a crime; and the substance of their accusations, however variously expressed, has always been substantially this, that every rich man must be a plunderer. Despite the fact that in the sacred books of the Jews wealth is often depicted as the special reward of righteousness, and Job is congratulated on getting his fortune back again, the cry, 'Woe to the rich,' was very familiar to the lips of the Hebrew prophets; and by many medieval writers, though not by the greater schoolmen, the rich were constantly threatened, merely because they were rich, not so much with dispossession here, as with divine vengeance hereafter.

But it is in the modern world more especially that this indictment of the rich has assumed its most explicit and its most vindictive forms, and translated itself from the language of rhetoric into what claims to be that of social and economic science. This modern indictment of the rich is based on an interpretation of history and of eco

nomic production, which may be said to have originated with Marx. According to the Marxian doctrine private riches have at different epochs been acquired by means which proximately or superficially differ. In the ancient world they were acquired by the possession of slaves. In the mediaval world they were acquired by the possession of statutory rights which enabled the noble classes to extort for their own benefit a tribute of so much labor from their various feudal inferiors. In the modern world they are acquired by the possession of the means of production, or, in other words, of capital, which enable the possessors to take a part of the product from the actual producers by whom the means of production are used. But beneath the disguise of all superficial changes, the process by which riches are acquired remains essentially the same. All private riches, in short, are so many abstractions from an aggregate of goods or commodities which the abstracting parties have played no part in producing, and which would always be produced somehow, whether these parties had any existence or no.

This view of the matter has come to be so widely prevalent that many persons half-consciously adopted it who would shrink from its logical consequences. They indulge in contrasts between 'the masses who make things, and the predatory rich whose one occupation is to seize them.' Such language occurs everywhere in the literature of social reform; but the clearest expression of its meaning is perhaps to be found, not in any words or phrases, but in the frontispiece of an English book drawn by a well-known artist, Mr.

Walter Crane, who has proclaimed himself an ardent believer in the full Socialist gospel. The picture in question represents a man like a decadent John the Baptist dressed up in workman's clothes, who is sleeping under a tree the sleep of complete exhaustion; and meanwhile a dragon or harpy, armed with horrible claws, has torn his waistcoat to pieces and is dragging the vitals out of him. The victim is labeled 'Labor,' the devouring harpy 'Capital.'

But whatever exception we may take to so naïve a presentation of the origin of private riches, it symbolizes a process which has in many cases actually taken place in the past, even though it may not be a true expression of what typically takes place to-day. The incomes of the typical rich in ancient Rome, for example, were largely abstractions from the products of forced slave labor. They were also, to a very large degree, when private fortunes in ancient Rome were at their maximum, abstractions from the wealth produced by the citizens of conquered provinces. Of Spain, after her conquests in South America, the same thing may be said. The incomes, such as they were, of the robber barons of Germany were abstractions from merchants and other wayfarers which admitted of no disguise. Most of the new great fortunes made in France under Louis XIV and his successor were made by farmers of the taxes, and were abstractions likewise from the products of other people. All such incomes as those to which we have just alluded are abstractions in the very practical sense that they were taken by one set of persons from wealth which was, and would anyhow have been, produced by another set, the latter being impoverished in proportion as the former was enriched, but the total output being absolutely unaffected.

But let us consider the new great

fortunes which are typical of the present day. Nearly the whole of the large incomes which in countries such as our own and America as have come into being since the beginning of the nineteenth century have been made by men who have initiated new methods of manufacture and transport; and the difference between such large incomes and those to which we have just now alluded is at once indicated by the fact that the former are not increasing abstractions from a total which is relatively constant, but are abstractions (if we like to call them so) from a total which, relatively to the population, is itself increasing likewise. Thus in our own country at the beginning of the nineteenth century the profits derived from the thousand largest businesses did not exceed £6,000,000. A hundred years later the profits of the thousand largest businesses amounted to something like £180,000,000. Now, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the average income per head of the entire population of this country was barely as much as £20, the average income per head of those who were not rich being considerably less. Hence, if the profits of the modern rich were really in the nature of abstractions from a relatively constant total, the average income per head of those who were not rich would by this time be smaller still. It would have dwindled to something like £16. As a matter of fact, although, since the earlier of the dates in question, large incomes have been multiplied, and their average amount increased, the average income of the not-rich has meanwhile nearly trebled itself, having risen from something like £16 to something approaching £50.

It is obvious, therefore, that the incomes of the typically modern rich, distinctly traceable as they are, with few exceptions, to business enterprise of some sort, are not individual abstrac

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