Riders of the Purple Wage Read online

  The President saw Kierson, the Detroit automobile magnate, frown at the carts. The auto industry had shifted entirely from internal combustion motors to electrical and nuclear power ten years ago, and now Kierson saw the doom of these. The President made a mental note to pacify and reassure him on this point later.

  Spieler: “…Variety Within Unity, folks. You’ve heard a lot about that on FBC, and these houses are an example. In reply to the lady’s anxiety about the houses all looking alike, every home owner can paint the outside of his house to express his individuality. Anything goes. From reproductions of Rembrandt to psychedelic dreams to dirty words, if you got the guts. Everything’s free, including speech…”

  Heckler: “They’ll look like a bunch of Easter eggs!”

  Spieler: “Lady, Uncle Sam is The Big Easter Bunny!”

  The spieler took the group into the house, and the cameramen went into the atrium, kitchen, and the ten rooms to show the viewers just what the citizens-to-be were getting for nothing.

  “For nothing!” Senator Kingbrook growled. “The taxpayers are paying through the nose, through every orifice, with their sweat and blood for this!”

  The President said, mildly, “They won’t have to in the future, as I’ll explain.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to any of us,” Kingbrook said. “We all know all about the economy of abundance versus the economy of scarcity. And about your plans for the transitional stage, which you call ORE, obverse-reverse economy, but which I call schizophrenic horrors in tremens!”

  The President smiled and said, “You’ll have your say, Senator.”

  The men and women in the room were silent for a while as they watched the spieler extol the splendors and virtues of the house with its soundproof walls, the atrium with its pool, the workshop with machinery for crafts, the storeroom, the bedroom-studios, TV in every room, retractable and inflatable furniture, air-conditioning, microfilm library, and so on.

  Government shill: “This is fabulous! A hell of a lot better than any noisy rat-ridden dump on the ground!”

  Spieler (quoting an FBC slogan): “Happy and free as the birds in the air! That’s why everybody calls this Bird City and why the citizens are known as freebirds! Everything first class! Everything free!”

  Heckler: “Except freedom to live where you want to in the type of house you want!”

  Spieler: “Lady, unless you’re a millionaire, you won’t be able to get a house on the ground that isn’t just like every other house. And then you’d have to worry about it being burned down. Lady, you’d gripe if you was hung with a new rope!”

  The group went outside where the spieler pointed out that, though they were three hectometers above ground, they had trees and grass in small parks. If they wanted to fish or boat, they could use the lake in the municipal-building area.

  Shill: “Man, this is living!”

  Spieler: “The dome above the city looks just like the sky outside. The sun is an electronic reproduction; its progress exactly coincides with that of the real sun. Only, you don’t have to worry about it getting too cold or too hot in here or about it raining. We even got birds in here.”

  Heckler; “What about the robins? Come springtime, how’re they going to get inside without a pass?”

  Spieler. “Lady, you got a big mouth! Whyn’t you…”

  The President rose from his chair. Kingbrook’s face was wrinkled, fissured, and folded with old age. The red of his anger made his features look like hot lava on a volcano slope just after an eruption. His rich rumble pushed against the eardrums of those in the room as if they were in a pressure chamber.

  “A brave new concentration camp, gentlemen! Fifty billion dollars worth to house 50,000 people! The great bankruptopolis of the future! I estimate it’ll cost one trillion dollars just to enclose this state’s population in these glorified chicken runs!”

  “Not if ORE is put into effect,” the President said. He held up his hand to indicate silence and said, “I’d like to hear Guildman, gentlemen. Then we can have our conferences.”

  Senator Beaucamp of Mississippi muttered, “One trillion dollars! That would house, feed, and educate the entire population of my state for twenty years!”

  The President signalled to cut off all screens except the FBC channel. The private network commentators were also speaking, but the federal commentator was the important one. His pitch was being imitated—if reluctantly—by the private networks. Enough pressure and threats had been applied to make them wary of going all-out against the President. Although the mass media had been restrained, the speech of private persons had not been repressed. For one thing, the public needed a safety valve. Occasionally, a private speaker was given a chance to express himself on TV and radio. And so, a cavalry charge of invectives had been and was being hurled at the President. He had been denounced as an ultra-reactionary, a degenerate liberal, a Communist, a Fascist, a vulture, a pig, a Puritan, a pervert, a Hitler, etc., and had been hung in absentia so many times that an enterprising manufacturer of effigies had made a small fortune—though taxes made it even smaller.

  From cavalry to Calvary, he thought. All charges admitted. All charges dented. I am human, and that takes in everything. Even the accusation of fanaticism. I know that what I’m doing is right, or, at least, the only known way. When the Four Horsemen ride, the countercharge cannot be led by a self-doubter.

  The voice of the Great Guildman, as he was pleased to be called, throbbed through the room. Chief FBC commentator, bureau executive, Ph.D. in Mass Communications, G-90 rating, one who spoke with authority, whose personal voltage was turned full-on, who could, some said, have talked God into keeping Adam and Eve in the garden.

  “…cries out! The people, the suffering earth itself, cry out! The air is poisoned! The water is poisoned! The soil is poisoned! Mankind is poisoned with the excess of his genius for survival! The wide walls of the Earth have become narrowed! Man, swelling like a tumor with uncontrolled growth, kills the body that gave him birth! He is squeezing himself into an insane mold which crushes his life out, crushes all hope for an abundant life, security, peace, quiet, fulfillment, dignity…”

  The audience, tuning in on forty channels, was well aware of this; he was painting a picture the oils of which had been squeezed from their own pain. And so Guildman did not tarry overlong at these points. He spoke briefly of the dying economy of scarcity, obsolete in the middle 1900’s but seeming vigorous, like a sick man with a fatal disease who keeps going on larger and larger shots of drugs and on placebos. Then he splashed bright colors over the canvas of the future.

  Guildman went on about the population expansion, automation, the ever-growing permanently depressed class and its riots and insurrections, the ever-decreasing and ever-overburdened taxpayers with their strikes and riots, the Beverly Hills Massacre, the misery, crime, anger, etc.

  The President repressed an impulse to squirm. There would be plenty of blacks and grays in The Golden World (the President’s own catch-phrase). Utopia could never exist. The structure of human society, in every respect, had a built-in instability, which meant that there would always be a certain amount of suffering and maladjustment. There were always victims of change.

  But that could not be helped. And it was a good thing that change was the unchanging characteristic of society. Otherwise, stagnation, rigidity, and loss of hope for improvement would result.

  Beaucamp leaned close to the President and said softly, “Plenty of people have pointed out that the economy of abundance eventually means the death of capitalism. You’ve never commented on this, but you can’t keep silent much longer.”

  “When I do speak,” the President said, “I’ll point out that EOA also means the death of socialism and communism. Besides, there’s nothing sacred in an economic system, except to those who confuse money with religion. Systems are made for man, not vice versa.”

  Kingbrook rose from his sofa, his bones cracking, and walked stiffly towards the Preside
nt.

  “You’ve rammed through this project despite the opposition of the majority of taxpayers! You used methods that were not only unconstitutional, sir! I know for a fact that criminal tactics were used, blackmail and intimidation, sir! But you will go no more on your Caesar’s road! This project has beggared our once wealthy nation, and we are not going to build any more of your follies! Your grandiose—and wicked—Golden World will be as tarnished as brass, as green as fool’s gold, by the time that I am through with you! Don’t underestimate me and my colleagues, sir!”

  “I know of your plans to impeach me,” the President said with a slight smile. “Now, Senators Beaucamp and Kingbrook, and you, Governor Corrigan, would you step into the mayor’s apartment? I’d like to have a few words—I hope they’re few—with you.”

  Kingbrook. breathing heavily, said, “My mind is made up, Mr. President. I know what’s wrong and what’s right for our country. If you have any veiled threats or insidious proposals, make them in public, sir! In this room, before these gentlemen!”

  The President looked at the embarrassed faces, the stony, the hostile, the gleeful, and then glanced at his wristwatch. He said, “I only ask five minutes.”

  He continued, “I’m not slighting any of you. I intend to talk to all of you in groups selected because of relevant subjects. Three to five minutes apiece will let us complete our business before the post-dedication speeches. Gentlemen!” And he turned and strode through the door.

  A few seconds passed, and then the three, stiff-faced, stiff-backed, walked in.

  “Sit down or stand as you please,” the President said.

  There was a silence Kingbrook lit a cigar and took a chair. Corrigan hesitated and then sat near Kingbrook. Beaucamp remained standing. The President stood before them.

  He said, “You’ve seen the people who toured this city. They’re the prospective citizens. What is their outstanding common characteristic?”

  Kingbrook snorted and said something under his breath. Beaucamp glared at him and said, “I didn’t hear your words, but I know what you said! Mr. President, I intend to speak loudly and clearly about this arrogant discrimination! I had one of my men run the list of accepted citizens through a computer, and he reports that the citizens will be 100 percent Negro! And 7/8ths are welfares!”

  “The other eighth are doctors, technicians, teachers, and other professionals,” the President said. “All volunteers. There, by the way, goes the argument that no one will work if he doesn’t have to. These people will be living in this city and getting no money for their labor. We had to turn down many volunteers because there was no need for them.”

  “Especially since the government has been using public funds to brainwash us with the Great-Love-and-Service-for-Humanity campaign for twenty years,” Kingbrook said.

  “I never heard you making any speeches knocking love or service,” the President said. “However, there is another motive which caused so many to offer their services. Money may die out, but the desire for prestige won’t. The wish for prestige is at least as old as mankind itself and maybe older.”

  “I can’t believe that no whites asked to live here,” Beaucamp said.

  “The rule was, first apply, first accepted,” the President said. “The whole procedure was computer-run, and the application blanks contained no reference to race.”

  Corrigan said. “You know that computers have been gimmicked or their operators bribed.”

  The President said, “I am sure that an investigation would uncover nothing crooked.”

  “The gyps,” Corrigan said, then stopped at Beaucamp’s glare. “I mean, the guaranteed income people, or welfares as we called them when I was a kid, well, the GIP whites will be screaming discrimination.”

  “The whites could have volunteered,” the President said.

  Beaucamp’s lip was curled. “Somebody spread the word. Of course, that would have nothing to do with lack of Caucasian applications.”

  Kingbrook rumbled like a volcano preparing to erupt. He said, “What’re we arguing about this for? This…Bird City…was built over an all-colored section. So why shouldn’t its citizens be colored? Let’s stick to the point. You want to build more cities just like this, Mr. President, extend them outwards from this until you have one solid megalopolis on stilts extending from Santa Barbara to Long Beach. But you can’t build here or in other states without absolutely bankrupting the country. So you want to get us to back your legislative proposals for your so-called ORE. That is, split the economy of the nation in half. One half will continue operating just as before; that half will be made up of private-enterprise industries and of the taxpayers who own or work for these industries. This half will continue to buy and sell and use money as it has always done.

  “But the other half will be composed of GIP’s, living in cities like this, and the government will take care of their every need. The government will do this by automating the mines, farms, and industries it now owns or plans on obtaining. It will not use money anywhere in its operations, and the entire process of input-output will be a closed circuit. Everybody in ORE will be GIP personnel, even the federal and state government service, except, of course, that the federal, legislative, and executive branches will maintain their proper jurisdiction.”

  “That sounds great,” Corrigan said. “The ultimate result, or so you’ve said, Mr. President, is to relieve the taxpayer of his crushing burden and to give the GIP a position in society in which he will no longer be considered by others as a parasite. It sounds appealing. But there are many of us who aren’t fooled by your fine talk.”

  “I’m not trying to fool anybody,” the President said.

  Corrigan said, angrily, “It’s obvious what the end result will be! When the taxpayer sees the GIP living like a king without turning a hand while he has to work his tail off, he’s going to want the same deal. And those who refuse to give up won’t have enough money to back their stand because the GIP won’t be spending any money. The small businessmen who live off their sales to the GIP will go under. And the larger businesses will, too. Eventually, the businessman and his employees will fold their fiscal and pecuniary tents and go to live in your everything-free cornucopias!

  “So, if we’re seduced by your beautiful scheme for a half-and-half economy, we’ll take the first step into the quicksand. After that, it’ll be too late to back out. Down we go!”

  “I’d say, Up we go,” the President said; “So! It’s All-or-None, as far as you’re concerned? And you vote for None! Well, gentlemen, over one-half of the nation is saying All because that’s the only way to go and they’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you kill the switchover legislation in Congress, I’ll see that the issues are submitted to the people for their yea or nay. But that would take too much time, and time is vital. Time is what I’m buying. Or I should say, trading.”

  Beaucamp said, “Mister President, you didn’t point out the racial composition of the city just to pass the time.”

  The President began pacing back and forth before them. He said, “The civil rights revolution was born about the same time that you and I, Mr. Beaucamp, were born. Yet, it’s still far from achieving its goals. In some aspects, it’s regressed. It was tragic that the Negroes began to get the education and political power they needed for advancement just as automation began to bloom. The Negro found that there were only jobs for the professionals and the skilled. The unskilled were shut out. This happened to the untrained white, too, and competition for work between the unskilled white and black became bitter. Bloodily bitter, as the past few years have shown us.”

  “We know what’s been going on, Mr. President,” Beaucamp said.

  “Yes. Well, it’s true isn’t it, that the black as a rule, doesn’t particularly care to associate or live with the whites? He just wants the same things whites have. But at the present rate of progress, it’ll take a hundred years or more before he gets them. In fact, he may never do so if the present economy c
ontinues.”

  Kingbrook rumbled, “The point, Mr. President!”

  The President stopped pacing. He looked hard at them and said, “But in an economy of abundance, in this type of city, he—the Negro—will have everything the whites have. He will have a high standard of living, a true democracy, color-free justice. He’ll have his own judges, police, legislators. If he doesn’t care to, he doesn’t ever have to have any personal contact with whites.”

  Kingbrook’s cigar sagged. Beaucamp sucked in his breath. Corrigan jumped up from his chair.

  Beaucamp said, “That’s ghettoism!”

  “Not in the original sense,” the President said. “The truth now, Mr. Beaucamp. Don’t your people prefer to live with their own kind? Where they’ll be free of that shadow, that wall, always between white and colored in this country?”

  Beaucamp said, “Not to have to put up with honkeys! Excuse the expression, sir. It slipped out. You know we would! But…”

  “No one will be forbidden to live in any community he chooses. There won’t be any discrimination on the federal level. Those in the government, military, or Nature rehabilitation service will have equal opportunity. But, given the choice…”

  The President turned to Kingbrook and Corrigan. “Publicly, you two have always stood for integration. You would have committed political suicide, otherwise. But I know your private opinions. You have also been strong states-righters. No secret about that. So, when the economy of abundance is in full swing, the states will become self-sufficient. They won’t depend on federal funds.”

  “Because there’ll be no dependence on money?” Corrigan said. “Because there’ll be no money? Because money will be as extinct as the dodo?”