[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] A note of appreciation from the rich

[Richard Menec]

Thanks Bill.  This reminded me of a quote from Edward Bellamy's "Looking 
Backward", the novel about a man who falls asleep and wakes a few hundred 
years later, to a totally new and just society:

http://booksinternationale.pbwiki.com/Edward+Bellamy

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way 
people lived in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and 
poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do better than compare society as it 
then was to a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed 
to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was 
hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. 
Despite the difficulty of drawing a coach at all along so hard a road, the 
top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest 
ascents. The seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of 
the dust the occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or 
critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places 
were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, everyone seeking 
as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to 
leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave 
his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents 
by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so 
easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach 
persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground, where they were 
instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on 
which they had ridden before so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a 
terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this might 
happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of 
those who rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury 
rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers 
and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to 
their toil! Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only 
distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was frequently expressed by those 
who rode for those that had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle 
came to a bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a 
particularly steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, 
their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, 
the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very 
distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays 
of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the passengers would call 
down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience, 
and holding out hopes of possible compensation in an other world for the 
hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments 
for the crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that 
the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief 
when the specially bad piece of road was gotten over. This relief was not, 
indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always some danger at 
these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats.

It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the 
misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers' sense of 
the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to 
them more desperately than before. If the passengers could only have left 
assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall from the top, it 
is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and 
bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those 
who dragged the coach."

cheers,
Richard Menec
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Totten" <shimogamo at attglobal.net>
To: "Richard Menec" <menecraj at shaw.ca>
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2008 3:17 AM
Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] A note of appreciation from the rich


>
> by Author Unknown
>
> www.informationclearinghouse (September 21 2008)
>
> Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.
>
> On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at
> some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all
> likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it  -  you're a
> member of the working caste. Sorry!

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