A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other Stories

by Bill Nye

  THE DUBIOUS FUTURE

  XV

  Without wishing to alarm the American people, or create a panic, Idesire briefly and seriously to discuss the great question, "Whither arewe drifting, and what is to be the condition of the coming man?" We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that mankind is passing through a greatera of change; even womankind is not built as she was a few brief yearsago. And is it not time, fellow citizens, that we pause to consider whatis to be the future of the American?

  Food itself has been the subject of change both in the matter ofmaterial and preparation. This must affect the consumer in such a way asto some day bring about great differences. Take, for instance, theoyster, one of our comparatively modern food and game fishes, and watchthe effects of science upon him. At one time the oyster browsed aroundand ate what he could find in Neptune's back-yard,and we had to eat him as we found him. Now we take a herd of oysters offthe trail, all run down, and feed them artificially till they swell upto a fancy size, and bring a fancy price. Where will this all lead atlast, I ask as a careful scientist? Instead of eating apples, as Adamdid, we work the fruit up into apple-jack and pie, while even the simpleoyster is perverted, and instead of being allowed to fatten up in thefall on acorns and ancient mariners, spurious flesh is put on his bonesby the artificial osmose and dialysis of our advanced civilization. Howcan you make an oyster stout or train him down by making him jerk ahealth lift so many hours every day, or cultivate his body at theexpense of his mind, without ultimately not only impairing the futureusefulness of the oyster himself, but at the same time affecting thefuture of the human race who feed upon him?

  I only use the oyster as an illustration, and I do not wish to causealarm, but I say that if we stimulate the oyster artificially and swellhim up by scientific means, we not only do so at the expense of hisbetter nature and keep him away from his family, but we are making ourmark on the future race of men. Oyster-fattening is now, of course, inits infancy. Only a few years ago an effort was made at St. Louis tofatten cove oysters while in the can, but the system was not wellunderstood, and those who had it in charge only succeeded in making thecan itself more plump. But now oysters are kept on ground feed and givennothing to do for a few weeks, and even the older and overworkedsway-backed and rickety oysters of the dim and murky past are made tofill out, and many of them have to put a gore in the waistband of theirshells. I only speak of the oyster incidentally, as one of the objectstoward which science has turned its attention, and I assert with theutmost confidence that the time will come, unless science should get aset-back, when the present hunting-case oyster will give place to theopen-face oyster, grafted on the octopus and big enough to feed ahotel. Further than that, the oyster of the future will carry in ahip-pocket a flask of vinegar, half a dozen lemons and two littleJapanese bottles, one of which will contain salt and the other pepper,and there will be some way provided by which you can tell which iswhich. But are we improving the oyster now? That is a question we maywell ask ourselves. Is this a healthy fat which we are putting on him,or is it bloat? And what will be the result in the home-life of theoyster? We take him from all domestic influences whatever in order tomake a swell of him by our modern methods, but do we improve hiscondition morally, and what is to be the great final result on man?

  The reader will see by the questions I ask that I am a true scientist.Give me an overcoat pocket full of lower-case interrogation marks anda medical report to run to, and I can speak on the matter of science andadvancement till Reason totters on her throne.

  But food and oysters do not alone affect the great, pregnant future. Ourrace is being tampered with not only by means of adulterations,political combinations and climatic changes, but even our methods ofrelaxation are productive of peculiar physical conditions, malformationsand some more things of the same kind.

  Cigarette smoking produces a flabby and endogenous condition of theoptic nerve, and constant listening at a telephone, always with the sameear, decreases the power of the other ear till it finally just standsaround drawing its salary, but actually refusing to hear anything.Carrying an eight-pound cane makes a man lopsided, and the muscular andnervous strain that is necessary to retain a single eyeglass in placeand keep it out of the soup, year after year, draws the mental stimulusthat should go to the thinker itself, until at last the mind wandersaway and forgets to come back, or becomes atrophied, and the greatmental strain incident to the work of pounding sand or coming in when itrains is more than it is equal to.

  Playing billiards, accompanied by the vicious habit of pounding on thefloor with the butt of the cue ever and anon, produces at last opticalillusions, phantasmagoria and visions of pink spiders with navy-blueabdomens. Base-ball is not alone highly injurious to the umpire, but italso induces crooked fingers, bone spavin and hives among habitualplayers. Jumping the rope induces heart disease. Poker is undulysedentary in its nature. Bicycling is highly injurious, especially toskittish horses. Boating induces malaria. Lawn tennis can not be playedin the house. Archery is apt to be injurious to those who stand aroundand watch the game, and pugilism is a relaxation that jars heavily onsome natures.

  _Playing billiards, accompanied by the vicious habit ofpounding on the floor with the butt of the cue ever and anon, producesat last optical illusions_ (Page 149)]

  Foot-ball produces what may be called the endogenous or ingrowingtoenail, stringhalt and mania. Copenhagen induces a melancholy, and thegame of bean bag is unduly exciting. Horse racing is too brief andtransitory as an outdoor game, requiring weeks and months forpreparation and lasting only long enough for a quick person to ejaculate"Scat!" The pitcher's arm is a new disease, the outgrowth of base-ball;the lawn-tennis elbow is another result of a popular open-airamusement, and it begins to look as though the coming American wouldhear with one overgrown telephonic ear, while the other will berudimentary only. He will have an abnormal base-ball arm with alawn-tennis elbow, a powerful foot-ball-kicking leg with the superiortoe driven back into the palm of his foot. He will have a highly trainedbiceps muscle over his eye to retain his glass, and that eye will betrained to shoot a curved glance over a high hat and witness anything onthe stage.

  Other features grow abnormal, or shrink up from the lack of use, as aresult of our customs. For instance, the man whose business it is to getalong a crowded street with the utmost speed will have, finally, a hard,sharp horn growing on each elbow, and a pair of spurs growing out ofeach ankle. These will enable him to climb over a crowd and get thereearly. Constant exposure to these weapons on the part of the pedestrianwill harden the walls of the thorax and abdomen until the coming manwill be an impervious man. The citizen who avails himself of all modernmethods of conveyance will ride from his door on the horse car to theelevated station, where an elevator will elevate him to the train and arevolving platform will swing him on board, or possibly the street carwill be lifted from the surface track to the elevated track, and thepassenger will retain his seat all the time. Then a man will simply hangout a red card, like an express card, at his door, and a combination carwill call for him, take him to the nearest elevated station, elevatehim, car and all, to the track, take him where he wants to go, and callfor him at any hour of the night to bring him home. He will do hisexercising at home, chiefly taking artificial sea baths, jerking arowing machine or playing on a health lift till his eyes hang out on hischeeks, and he need not do any walking whatever. In that way the comingman will be over-developed above the legs, and his lower limbs will looklike the desolate stems of a frozen geranium. Eccentricities of limbwill be handed over like baldness from father to son among the dwellersin the cities, where every advantage in the way of rapid transit is tobe had, until a metropolitan will be instantly picked out by his abledigestion and rudimentary legs, just as we now detect the gentleman fromthe interior by his wild endeavors to overtake an elevated train.

  In fact, Mr. Edison has now perfected, or announced that he is on theroad to the perfection of, a machine which I may be pardoned for callinga storage think-ta
nk. This will enable a brainy man to sit at home, and,with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into atin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a newstyle of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal,so that when any one says to him, "A penny for your thoughts," he can goto his valise and give him a piece of his mind. Thus the man who hassuch wild and beautiful thoughts in the night and never can hold on tothem long enough to turn on the gas and get his writing materials, canset this thing by the head of his bed, and, when the poetic thoughtcomes to him in the stilly night, he can think into a hopper, and thegenius of Franklin and Edison together will enable him to fire it backat his friends in the morning while they eat their pancakes and glucosesyrup from Vermont, or he can mail the sheet of tinfoil to absentfriends, who may put it into their phonographs and utilize it. In thisway the world may harness the gray matter of its best men, and it willbe no uncommon thing to see a dozen brainy men tied up in a row in theback office of an intellectual syndicate, dropping pregnant thoughtsinto little electric coffee mills for a couple of hours a day, afterwhich they can put on their coats, draw their pay, and go home.

  All this will reduce the quantity of exercise, both mental and physical.Two men with good brains could do the thinking for 60,000,000 of peopleand feel perfectly fresh and rested the next day. Take four men, we willsay, two to do the day thinking and two more to go on deck at night, andsee how much time the rest of the world would have to go fishing. Seehow politics would become simplified. Conventions, primaries, bargainsand sales, campaign bitterness and vituperation--all might be wiped out.A pair of political thinkers could furnish 100,000,000 of people withlogical conclusions enough to last them through the campaign and put anunbiased opinion into a man's house each day for less than he now paysfor gas. Just before election you could go into your private office,throw in a large dose of campaign whisky, light a campaign cigar, fastenyour buttonhole to the wall by an elastic band, so that there would be agentle pull on it, and turn the electricity on your mechanical thoughtsupply. It would save time and money, and the result would be the sameas it is now. This would only be the beginning, of course, and after awhile every qualified voter who did not feel like exerting himself somuch, need only give his name and proxy to the salaried thinker employedby the National Think Retort and Supply Works. We talk a great dealabout the union of church and state, but that is not so dangerous, afterall, as the mixture of politics and independent thought. Will the comingvoter be an automatic, legless, hairless mollusk with an abnormal earconstantly glued to the tube of a big tank full of symmetrical ideasfurnished by a national bureau of brains in the employ of the party inpower?