The Time Machine - International World History Project

The Time Machinefor and temptations towards refined habits on the part ofthe rich—will make that exchange between class and class,that promotion by intermarriage which at present retardsthe splitting of our species along lines of socialstratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, aboveground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure andcomfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, theWorkers getting continually adapted to the conditions oftheir labour. Once they were there, they would no doubthave to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation oftheir caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or besuffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constitutedas to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in theend, the balance being permanent, the survivors wouldbecome as well adapted to the conditions of undergroundlife, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world peoplewere to theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beauty andthe etiolated pallor followed naturally enough.‘The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of tooka different shape in my mind. It had been no such triumphof moral education and general co-operation as I hadimagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy, armed with aperfected science and working to a logical conclusion theindustrial system of to-day. Its triumph had not been79 of 148