Technology and Progress Theme Analysis

Ilium, New York, is divided into three parts.

In the northwest are the managers and engineers and civil servants and a few professional people; in the northeast are the machines; and in the south, across the Iroquois River, is the area known locally as Homestead, where almost all of the people live.

If the bridge across the Iroquois were dynamited, few daily routines would be disturbed. Not many people on either side have reasons other than curiosity for crossing.

During the war in hundreds of Iliums over America, managers and engineers learned to get along without their men and women, who went to fight. It was the miracle that won the war—production with almost no manpower. In the patois of the north side of the river, it was the know-how that won the war. Democracy owed its life to know-how.

Where men had once howled and hacked at one another, and fought nip-and-tuck with nature as well, the machines hummed and whirred and clicked, and made parts for baby carriages and bottle caps, motorcycles and refrigerators, television sets and tricycles—the fruits of peace.

Paul sometimes wondered if he wouldn’t have been more content in another period of history, but the rightness of Bud’s being alive now was beyond question. Bud’s mentality was one that had been remarked upon as being peculiarly American since the nation had been born—the restless, erratic insight and imagination of a gadgeteer. This was the climax, or close to it, of generations of Bud Calhouns, with almost all of American industry integrated into one stupendous Rube Goldberg machine.

“It seemed very fresh to me—I mean that part where you say how the First Industrial Revolution devalued muscle work, then the second one devalued routine mental work. I was fascinated.”

[…]

“Actually, it is kind of incredible that things were ever any other way, isn’t it? It was so ridiculous to have people stuck in one place all day, just using their senses, then a reflex, using their senses, then a reflex, and not really thinking at all.”

“[…] Hangovers, family squabbles, resentments against the boss, debts, the war—every kind of human trouble was likely to show up in a product one way or another.” He smiled. “And happiness, too. I can remember when we had to allow for holidays, especially around Christmas. There wasn’t anything to do but take it. The reject rate would start climbing around the fifth of December, and up and up it’d go until Christmas. Then the holiday, then a horrible reject rate; then New Year’s, then a ghastly reject level. Then things would taper down to normal—which was plenty bad enough—by January fifteenth or so. We used to have to figure in things like that in pricing a product.”

“[…] we’ve raised the standard of living of the average man immensely.”

Khashdrahr stopped translating and frowned perplexedly. “Please, this average man, there is no equivalent in our language, I’m afraid.”

“You know,” said Halyard, “the ordinary man, like, well, anybody—those men working back on the bridge, the man in that old car we passed. The little man, not brilliant but a good-hearted, plain, ordinary, everyday kind of person.”

Khashdrahr translated.

“Aha,” said the Shah, nodding, “Takaru.”

“What did he say?”

“Takaru,” said Khashdrahr. “Slave.”

“No Takaru,” said Halyard, speaking directly to the Shah. “Ci-ti-zen.”

“Ahhhhh,” said the Shah. “Ci-ti-zen.” He grinned happily. “Takaru—citizen. Citizen—Takaru.”

“No Takaru!” said Halyard.

Khashdrahr shrugged. “In the Shah’s land are only the Elite and the Takaru.”

“[…] The Atomic Age, that was the big thing to look forward to. Remember, Baer? And meanwhile, the tubes increased like rabbits.”

“And dope addiction, alcoholism, and suicide went up proportionately,” said Finnerty.

[…]

“That was the war,” said Kroner soberly. “It happens after every war.”

“And organized vice and divorce and juvenile delinquency, all parallel the growth of the use of vacuum tubes,” said Finnerty.

“Oh, come on, Ed,” said Paul, “you can’t prove a logical connection between those factors.”

“If there's the slightest connection, it’s worth thinking about,” said Finnerty.

When Paul thought about his effortless rise in the hierarchy, he sometimes, as now, felt sheepish, like a charlatan. He could handle his assignments all right, but he didn’t have what his father had, what Kroner had, what Shepherd had, what so many had: the sense of spiritual importance in what they were doing; the ability to be moved emotionally, almost like a lover, by the great omnipresent and omniscient spook, the corporate personality. In short, Paul missed what made his father aggressive and great: the capacity to really give a damn.

“Ah haven’t got a job any more,” said Bud. “Canned.”

Paul was amazed. “Really? What on earth for? Moral turpitude? What about the gadget you invented for—"

“Thet’s it,” said Bud with an eerie mixture of pride and remorse. “Works. Does a fine job.” He smiled sheepishly. “Does it a whole lot better than Ah did it.”

“It runs the whole operation?”

“Yup. Some gadget.”

“And so you’re out of a job.”

“Seventy-two of us are out of jobs,” said Bud.

“It’s the loneliness,” he said, as though picking up the thread of a conversation that had been interrupted. “It’s the loneliness, the not belonging anywhere. I just about went crazy with loneliness here in the old days, and I figured things would be better in Washington, that I’d find a lot of people I admired and be- longed with. Washington is worse, Paul—Ilium to the tenth power. Stupid, arrogant, self-congratulatory, unimaginative, humorless men. [...]”

“[…] When I had a congregation before the war, I used to tell them that the life of their spirit in relation to God was the biggest thing in their lives, and that their part in the economy was nothing by comparison. Now, you people have engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market place, and they’re finding out—most of them—that what’s left is just about zero. A good bit short of enough, anyway. […]”

Kroner looked at him with surprise. “Look, you know darn good and well history’s answered the question a thousand times.”

“It has? Has it? You know; I wouldn’t. Answered it a thousand times, has it? That’s good, good. All I know is, you’ve got to act like it has, or you might as well throw in the towel. Don’t know, my boy. Guess I should, but I don’t. Just do my job. Maybe that’s wrong.”

“What am I going to do? Farm, maybe. I’ve got a nice little farm.”

“Farm, eh?” Harrison clucked his tongue reflectively. “Farm. Sounds wonderful. I’ve thought of that: up in the morning with the sun; working out there with your hands in the earth, just you and nature. If I had the money, sometimes I think maybe I’d throw this—”

“You want a piece of advice from a tired old man?”

“Depends on which tired old man. You?”

“Me. Don’t put one foot in your job and the other in your dreams, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It’s just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you’ve made up your mind which way to go.”

“What have you got against machines?” said Buck.

“They’re slaves.”

“Well, what the heck,” said Buck. “I mean, they aren’t people. They don’t suffer. They don’t mind working.”

“No. But they compete with people.”

“That’s a pretty good thing, isn’t it—considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?”

“Anything that competes with slaves becomes a slave,” said Harrison thickly, and he left.

“Men, by their nature, seemingly, cannot be happy unless engaged in enterprises that make them feel useful. They must, therefore, be returned to participation in such enterprises.

“I hold, and the members of the Ghost Shirt Society hold:

“That there must be virtue in imperfection, for Man is imperfect, and Man is a creation of God.

“That there must be virtue in frailty, for Man is frail, and Man is a creation of God.

“That there must be virtue in inefficiency, for Man is inefficient, and Man is a creation of God.

“That there must be virtue in brilliance followed by stupidity, for Man is alternately brilliant and stupid, and Man is a creation of God. […]”

“What distinguishes man from the rest of the animals is his ability to do artificial things,” said Paul. “To his greater glory, I say. And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”

“You know,” said Paul at last, “things wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d stayed the way they were when we first got here. Those were passable days, weren’t they?” […]

“Things don’t stay the way they are,” said Finnerty. “It’s too entertaining to try to change them.”