Caesar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century, by Ignatius Donnelly

Voyageur

Ambassador
Ambassador
FOTCM Member

Caesar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century​

Ignatius L. Donnelly


Came across a work of fiction by Ignatius Donnelly, who has written various works of the distant past. Started to read into it briefly:

Amazon:
When Gabriel Weltstein visits New York in 1988 (98 years after the publication of this novel) he is mesmerized by the city and its modern technologies including air travel! But little does he know that he is soon going to see the underbelly of the city and those who control everything. Gabriel finds himself outmatched against the Oligarchs who run the entire rapacious and oppressive social and economic order. Can Gabriel escape his worst nightmare? Can he un-see what he has seen and survive to tell the tale? And what is the "Brotherhood of Destruction" and what do they want? Read on!
Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901) was a U.S. Congressman, populist writer, and amateur scientist. In 1882, Donnelly published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, his best known work, detailing theories concerning the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.

Statement from the foreword: I seek to preach into the ears of the able and rich and powerful the great truth that neglect of the sufferings of their fellows, indifference to the great bond of brotherhood which lies at the base of Christianity, and blind, brutal and degrading worship of mere wealth, must—given time and pressure enough—eventuate in the overthrow of society and the destruction of civilization.

Harvard University Press:
First published in 1890, this romance of the future is a protest against what seemed to its author the evils inherent in corporate bigness. By 1988 the United States is to be dehumanized, and only a secret Brotherhood of Destruction can overthrow an American Fascist regime. But the Brotherhood of Destruction proves to be even more tyrannical, so that the narrator has to fly for his life to Africa, where republican virtue persists. Caesar’s Column is a fascinating example of the anti-utopia, a form of narrative lately represented by Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984; its historical interest lies not only in its theme but also in its reflection and interpretation of social and political ideas current at the end of the nineteenth century.

It is on the bottom of my pile, so just throwing it out there (maybe you have read it?)

Here is an extract from the chapter THE BROTHERHOOD:

And it is to the credit of these great masses that they are keen enough to recognize the men of ability that rise up. among them, and even out of their poor, hard-earned resources to relieve them of the necessity for daily toil, that they may devote themselves to the improvement of their minds, and the execution of the great tasks assigned them. There is no doubt that if the ruling classes had been willing to recognize these natural leaders as men of the same race, blood, tongue and capacity as themselves, and had reached down to them a helping and kindly hand, there might have been long since a coming together of the two great divisions of society; and such a readjustment of the values of labor as would, while it insured happiness to those below, have not materially lessened the enjoyments of those above. But the events which preceded the great war against the aristocracy in 1640, in England; the great revolution of 1789, in France; and the greater civil war of 1861, in America, all show how impossible it is, by any process of reasoning, to induce a privileged class to peacefully yield up a single tittle of its advantages. There is no bigotry so blind or intense as that of caste; and long established wrongs are only to be rooted out by fire and sword. And hence the future looks so black to me. The upper classes might reform the world, but they will not; the lower classes would, but they cannot; and for a generation or more these latter have settled down into a sullen and unanimous conviction that the only remedy is world-wide destruction. We can say, as one said at the opening of the Cromwellian struggle, "God help the land where ruin must reform!" But the proletariat are desperate. They are ready, like the blind Samson, to pull down the pillars of the temple, even though they themselves fall, crushed to death amid the ruins; for

"The grave is brighter than their hearths and homes."
 
Donnelly set the stage for this fiction in the opening forward, which I've copied here because it is worth reading:

To the Public It is to you, O thoughtful and considerate public, that I dedicate this book.

May it, under the providence of God, do good to this generation and posterity! I earnestly hope my meaning, in the writing thereof, may not be misapprehended. It must not be thought, because I am constrained to describe the overthrow of civilization, that I desire it. The prophet is not responsible for the event he foretells. He may contemplate it with profoundest sorrow. Christ wept over the doom of Jerusalem. Neither am I an anarchist: for I paint a dreadful picture of the world-wreck which successful anarchism would produce.

I seek to preach into the ears of the able and rich and powerful the great truth that neglect of the sufferings of their fellows, indifference to the great bond of brotherhood which lies at the base of Christianity, and blind, brutal and degrading worship of mere wealth, must--given time and pressure enough--eventuate in the overthrow of society and the destruction of civilization.

I come to the churches with my heart filled with the profoundest respect for the essentials of religion; I seek to show them why they have lost their hold upon the poor,--upon that vast multitude, the best-beloved of God's kingdom,--and I point out to them how they may regain it. I tell them that if Religion is to reassume her ancient station, as crowned mistress of the souls of men, she must stand, in shining armor bright, with the serpent beneath beneath her feet, the champion and defender of mankind against all its oppressors.

The world, to-day, clamors for deeds, not creeds; for bread, not dogma; for charity, not ceremony; for love, not intellect.

Some will say the events herein described are absurdly impossible. Who is it that is satisfied with the present unhappy condition of society? It is conceded that life is a dark and wretched failure for the great mass of mankind. The many are plundered to enrich the few. Vast combinations depress the price of labor and increase the cost of the necessaries of existence. The rich, as a rule, despise the poor; and the poor are coming to hate the rich. The face of labor grows sullen; the old tender Christian love is gone; standing armies are formed on one side, and great communistic communistic organizations on the other; society divides itself into two hostile camps; no white flags pass from the one to the other. They wait only for the drum-beat and the trumpet to summon them to armed conflict.

These conditions have come about in less than a century; most of them in a quarter of a century. Multiply them by the years of another century, and who shall say that the events I depict are impossible? There is an acceleration of movement in human affairs even as there is in the operations of gravity. The dead missile out of space at last blazes, and the very air takes fire. The masses grow more intelligent as they grow more wretched; and more capable of cooperation as they become more desperate. The labor organizations of to-day would have been impossible fifty years ago. And what is to arrest the flow of effect from cause? What is to prevent the coming of the night if the earth continues to revolve on its axis? The fool may cry out: "There shall be no night!" But the feet of the hours march unrelentingly toward the darkness.

Some may think that, even if all this be true, "Cæsar's Column" should not have been published. Will it arrest the moving evil to ignore its presence? What would be thought of the surgeon who, seeing upon his patient's lip the first nodule of the cancer, tells him there is no danger, and laughs him into security while the roots of the monster eat their way toward the great arteries? If my message be true it should be spoken; and the world should hear it. The cancer should be cut out while there is yet time. Any other course "Will but skin and film the ulcerous place, While rank corruption, mining all beneath, infects unseen."

Believing, as I do, that I read the future aright, it would be criminal in me to remain silent. I plead for higher and nobler thoughts in the souls of men; for wider love and ampler charity in their hearts; for a renewal of the bond of brotherhood between the classes; for a reign of justice on earth that shall obliterate the cruel hates and passions which now divide the world.

If God notices anything so insignificant as this poor book, I pray that he may use it as an instrumentality of good for mankind; for he knows I love his human creatures, and would help them if I had the power.

As said above, the book commences as a series of written thoughts from Gabriel Weltstein, who arrives in New York City in the year 1988, September 10th, to his brother in their home mountain village in Africa. Gabriel is in NYC to sell wool from their farm animals, as there have become too many middle men in the trade to make it feasible, and Gabriel has a superior product.

His letter to his brother opens with a description of what he sees of NYC, with its 10 million inhabitants, its incredible technology, including "mirrors" with letters/numbers that you push and messages are sent, news from around the world is read before ones eyes. There is too much to describe, other than the people, in general, are somehow different then Gabriel had thought; maybe OP like. Whatever the case, society thrives on the surface, but below it is somewhat matrix like, a mining operation of poverty to serve the above.

In society, things such as suicide became legal; want to die, come right in and turn on some music. Most everything becomes at first wonder and then at odds to what Gabriel had first expected and thought, and he does not know the societal depths for which he is about to enter. His entrance comes quickly, one minute he is walking and the next he has just horse whipped a driver for running over a beggar, with much left out in description - it accelerates fast from there.

--------------

A couple of things to note. The book was written in1880's (he quotes from 1889), and in the fiction he introduces authors of our reality from the 1880's in passages he Gabriel reads to people or remembers. Donnelly, through Gabriel, obviously misses history; revolutions, WWI, WWII et cetera, but it matters not because the conditions are well described for what was omitted having never lived through them as the author.

Will end this with a few extracts and some 1889 quotes he adds to the fiction:

Letter to Brother:
And so it seems to me that, in the final analysis of reason, the great criminals of the world are not these wild beasts, who break through all laws, whose selfishness takes the form of the bloody knife, the firebrand, or the bludgeon; but those who, equally selfish, corrupt the foundations of government and create laws and conditions by which millions suffer, and out of which these murderers and robbers naturally and unavoidably arise. But I must bring this long letter to a conclusion, and subscribe myself, with love to all, Your affectionate brother, Gabriel

The Century Magazine, of February, 1889; and on page 622 we read:
For my own part, I must confess my fears that, unless some important change is made in the constitution of our voting population, the breaking strain upon our political system will come within half a century. Is it not evident that our present tendencies are in the wrong direction? The rapidly increasing use of money in elections, for the undisguised purchase of votes, and the growing disposition to tamper with the ballot and the tally-sheet, are some of the symptoms. . . . Do you think that you will convince the average election officer that it is a great crime to cheat in the return of votes, when he knows that a good share of those votes have been purchased with money? No; the machinery of the election will not be kept free from fraud while the atmosphere about the polls reeks with bribery. The system will all go down together. In a constituency which can be bribed all the forms of law tend swiftly to decay.

The North American Review. In the number for March, 1889, Gen. L. S. Bryce, a member of Congress, said:

We live in a commercial age--not in a military age; and the shadow that is stealing over the American landscape partakes of a commercial character. In short, the shadow is of an unbridled plutocracy, caused, created and cemented in no slight degree by legislative, aldermanic and congressional action; a plutocracy that is far more wealthy than any aristocracy that has ever crossed the horizon of the world's history, and one that has been produced in a shorter consecutive period; the names of whose members are emblazoned, not on the pages of their nation's glory, but of its peculations; who represent no struggle for their country's liberties, but for its boodle; no contests for Magna Charta,{sic} but railroad charters; and whose octopus-grip is extending over every branch of industry; a plutocracy which controls the price of the bread that we eat, the price of the sugar that sweetens our cup, the price of the oil that lights us on our way, the price of the very coffins in which we are finally buried; a plutocracy which encourages no kindly relation between landlord and tenant, which has so little sense of its political duties as even to abstain from voting, and which, in short, by its effrontery, is already causing the unthinking masses to seek relief in communism, in single-taxism, and in every other ism, which, if ever enforced, would infallibly make their second state worse than the first.

"Bishop Potter, of New York, in the national ceremonies, held April 30, 1889, which marked the centennial anniversary of the first inauguration of George Washington, spoke of the plutocracy, which had already reached alarming proportions, and expressed his doubts whether the Republic would ever celebrate another centennial. Afterwards, in explaining his remarks, he said:

When I speak of this as the era of the plutocrats, nobody can misunderstand me. Everybody has recognized the rise of the money power. Its growth not merely stifles the independence of the people, but the blind believers its liberal use condones every offense. The pulpit does not speak out as it should. These plutocrats are the enemies of religion, as they are of the state. And, not to mince matters, I will say that, while I had the politicians in mind prominently, there "are others." I tell you I have heard the corrupt use of money in elections and the sale of the sacred right of the ballot openly defended by ministers of the gospel. I may find it necessary to put such men of the sacred office in the public pillory.

"And Bishop Spalding, of Peoria, Illinois, about the same time, said:

Mark my words, the saloon in America has become a public nuisance. The liquor trade, by meddling with politics and corrupting politics, has become a menace and a danger. Those who think and those who love America and those who love liberty are going to bring this moral question into politics more and more; also this question of bribery, this question of lobbying, this question of getting measures through state and national legislatures by corrupt means. They are going to be taken hold of. Our press, which has done so much to enlighten our people, which represents so much that is good in our civilization, must also be reformed. It must cease to pander to such an extent to the low and sensual appetites of man. My God, man is animal enough! You don't want to pander to his pruriency! You don't want to pander to the beast that is in him. . . . Our rich men--and they are numerous, and their wealth is great--their number and their wealth will increase--but our rich men must do their duty or perish. I tell you, in America, we will not tolerate vast wealth in the hands of men who do nothing for the people.

Dr. William Barry, in The Forum for April, 1889. He speaks of--

The concrete system of capitalism; which in its present shape is not much more than a century old, and goes back to Arkwright's introduction of the spinning-jenny in 1776--that notable year--as to its hegira or divine epoch of creation.

"And again he says:

This it is that justifies Von Hartmann's description of the nineteenth century as "the most irreligious that has ever been seen;" this and not the assault upon dogma or the decline of the churches. There is a depth below atheism, below anti-religion, and into that the age has fallen. It is the callous indifference to everything which does not make for wealth. . . . What is eloquently described as "the progress of civilization," as "material prosperity," and "unexampled wealth," or, more modestly, as "the rise of the industrial middle class," becomes, when we look into it with eyes purged from economic delusions, the creation of a "lower and lowest" class, without land of their own, without homes, tools or property beyond the strength of their hands; whose lot is more helplessly wretched than any poet of the Inferno has yet imagined. Sunk in the mire of ignorance, want and immorality, they seem to have for their only gospel the emphatic words attributed to Mr. Ruskin: "If there is a next world they will be damned; and if there is none, they are damned already." .--- Have all these things come to pass that the keeper of a whisky-shop in California may grow rich on the spoils of drunken miners, and great financiers dictate peace and war to venerable European monarchies? The most degraded superstition that ever called itself religion has not preached such a dogma as this. It falls below fetichism. The worship of the almighty dollar, incarnate in the self-made capitalist, is a deification at which Vespasian himself, himself, with his "Ut puto, deus fio," would stare and gasp.

"And this remarkable article concludes with these words of prophecy:

The agrarian difficulties of Russia, France, Italy, Ireland, and of wealthy England, show us that ere long the urban and the rural populations will be standing in the same camp. They will be demanding the abolition of that great and scandalous paradox whereby, though production has increased three or four times as much as the mouths it should fill, those mouths are empty. The backs it should clothe are naked; the heads it should shelter, homeless; the brains it should feed, dull or criminal, and the souls it should help to save, brutish. Surely it is time that science, morality and religion should speak out. A great change is coming. It is even now at our doors. Ought not men of good will to consider how they shall receive it, so that its coming may be peaceable?

A paper called The Progress, of Boston, in 1889, gave the following significant and prophetic figures:

The eloquent Patrick Henry said:

"We can only judge the future by the past." Look at the past:
When Egypt went down 2 per cent. of her population owned 97 per cent. of her wealth. The people were starved to death.

When Persia went down 1 per cent. of her population owned the land.

When Rome went down 1,800 men owned all the known world.

There are about 40,000,000 people in England, Ireland and Wales, and 100,000 people own all the land in the United Kingdom.

For the past twenty years the United States has rapidly followed in the steps of these old nations. Here are the figures:

In 1850 capitalists owned 37½ per cent. of the nation's wealth. In 1870 they owned 63 percent. "In 1889, out of 1,500,000 people living in New York City, 1,100,000 dwelt in tenement-houses.

From the fiction:
"But have not the Oligarchy standing armies?" I asked.

"Yes. In Europe, however, they have been constrained, by inability to wring more taxes from the impoverished people, to gradually diminish their numbers. There, you know, the real government is now a coterie of bankers, mostly Israelites; and the kings and queens, and so-called presidents, are mere toys and puppets in their hands. All idea of national glory, all chivalry, all pride, all battles for territory or supremacy have long since ceased. Europe is a banking association conducted exclusively for the benefit of the bankers. Bonds take the place of national aspirations. To squeeze the wretched is the great end of government; to toil and submit, the destiny of the peoples…..

"The standing armies of Europe are now simply armed police; for, as all the nations are owned by one power--the money power--there is no longer any danger of their assaulting each other. But in the greed of the sordid commercial spirit which dominates the continent they have reduced, not only the numbers, but the pay of the soldiers, until it is little better than the compensation earned by the wretched peasantry and the mechanics; while years of peace and plunder have made the rulers careless and secure.

As Manfred says:
"'The spirits I have raised abandon me;

The spells that I had recked of torture me.'"

"No," he replied; "have you not already made the test? The best of them would probably hang you for your pains. Do you think they would be willing to relinquish one-tenth of their pleasures, or their possessions, to relieve the distresses of their fellows? If you do, you have but a slight conception of the callousness of their hearts. You were right in what you said was the vital principle of Christianity--brotherly love, not alone of the rich for the rich, but of the poor and rich for each other. But that spirit has passed away from the breasts of the upper classes. Science has increased their knowledge one hundred per cent. and their vanity one thousand per cent. The more they know of the material world the less they can perceive the spiritual world around and within it. The acquisition of a few facts about nature has closed their eyes to the existence of a God."

"Ah," said I, "that is a dreadful thought! It seems to me that the man who possesses his eyesight must behold a thousand evidences of a Creator denied to a blind man; and in the same way the man who knows most of the material world should see the most conclusive evidences of design and a Designer. The humblest blade of grass preaches an incontrovertible sermon. What force is it that brings it up, green and beautiful, out of the black, dead earth? Who made it succulent and filled it full of the substances that will make flesh and blood and bone for millions of gentle, grazing animals? What a gap would it have been in nature if there had been no such growth, or if, being such, it had been poisonous or inedible? Whose persistent purpose is it--whose everlasting will--that year after year, and age after age, stirs the tender roots to life and growth, for the sustenance of uncounted generations of creatures? Every blade of grass, therefore, points with its tiny finger straight upward to heaven, and proclaims an eternal, a benevolent God. It is to me a dreadful thing that men can penetrate farther and farther into nature with their senses, and leave their reasoning faculties behind them. Instead of mind recognizing mind, dust simply perceives dust. This is the suicide of the soul."

This book touches on Darwinism (Gabriel is staying at the Hotel Darwin), Marxism, financial vehicles (fiat, gold, silvers et cetera), secret societies, and there is a word play on - well what would your "utopia" look like, Gabriel.

The PTB think nothing of a vast slaughter of human beings, and this is a theme.

If you are looking for something uplifting, not a book to read (with the cavate that there is Romance among the ugliness).

Edit: This whole book concerns plutocracy from Donnelly's own era - here is a five part series of that era by the same name, Plutocracy - it is worth a watch.

The question of religion is weaved throughout the story, too. This also includes where religion fell off course, brought about by many means - philosophy for one, and religious ponerization.
 
Last edited:
This is an Edit 2.0 to the above.

It was mentioned that the character, when asked, had provide his utopia best guesses for how society should work. The author was also in politics, so he likely had the character say it, as he had thought about this as a measure to his own times and what he saw, including that of times past. At the end of the story, everything changes, so will provide a glimpse for those who may never read the story (the story represents mirrored facets of our own personal and societal being):

As they flee, society does what it does during revolutions, it eats everything that came before up, it eats each other up; poor, rich or in-between matters not, once society turns into a mob and tries to settle grievances of the caste, mind and belly. This was the sad truth, not only that the human being is eaten up, but the good that came of it; history, literature, art, craftsmanship, education, all shredded and eaten up as society collapses.

In this case, the survivors make it home to the mountains in Africa, back to Gabriel's small community (among many small communities there), and he is now married with children, and that of Maximillian, too.

The major part of the ending is looking at reestablishing governance, as he held the view that some form of governance is necessary. So, he describes over the many years that pass how their whole societal system was reestablished to measure out systems that took into account the failings of societies of the past - in stark terms, he looked at the pathocracy that takes over institutions and how to prevent it. He looked at labour in its different forms, ownership, businesses, families and values, crime, the judiciary, education, medicine, trade, financials (the pitfalls of gold/silver based vehicles - they were kept to a low measure) and the role of how the state would operate down to the municipal level. Moreover, how voting would be structured to prevent any form of corruption, with voting levels (three levels) that would not allow power bases to develop.

Once set up, they did fly off to other parts of the world to check what was going on; France, Russia, Germany et cetera, with the results being that the populations had done what he thought would happen, they ate each other up and very few survived; banded into small groups like the barbaric past without any sort of map to reset their course. Hundreds of years may pass before they might restructure.
 
Back
Top Bottom