Goliah - Jack London

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1:00Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at McDonald's. Goliath by Jack London. In 1924, to be precise, on the morning of January 3rd, the city of San Francisco awoke to read in one of its daily papers a curious letter, which had been received by Walter Bassett, and which had evidently been written by some crank. Walter Bassett was the greatest captain of industry west of the Rockies, and was one of the small group that controlled the nation in everything but name. As such, he was the recipient of Lucubrations from countless cranks, but this particular Lucubration was so different from the average rock of similar letters that instead of putting it into the waste basket, he had turned it over to a reporter. It was signed Goliath, and the superscription

2:03gave his address as Paul Grave Island. The letter was as follows. Mr. Walter Bassett, dear sir, I am inviting you with nine of your fellow captains of industry to visit me here on my island for the purpose of considering clans for the reconstruction of society upon a more rational basis. Up to the present, social evolution has been a blind aimless blundering thing. The time has come for a change. Man has risen from the vitalized slime of the prime evil sea to the mastery of matter, but he has not yet mastered society. Man is today, as much the slave to his collective stupidity, as a hundred thousand generations ago, he was a slave to matter. There are two theoretical methods where my man may become the master of society, and make of society an intelligent and efficacious device for the pursuit and capture of happiness and laughter. The first theory advances the proposition that no government can be wiser or better than the people that compose

3:04that government, that reform and development must spring from the individual, that in so far as the individuals become wiser and better, by that much will their government become wiser and better, in short, that the majority of the individuals must become wiser and better before their government becomes wiser and better. The mob, the political convention, the abysmal brutality and stupid ignorance of all concourses of people give the lie to this theory. In a mob, the collective intelligence and mercy is that of the least intelligent and most brutal members that compose the mob. On the other hand, a thousand passengers will surrender themselves to the wisdom and discretion of the captain when their ship is in a storm on a sea. In such matter, he is the wisest and most experienced among them. The second theory advances the proposition that the majority of the people are not pioneers, that they are weighted down by the inertia of the established, that the government that is representative of them

4:07represents only their feebleness and futility and brutishness, that this blind thing called government is not the surf of their wills, but that they are the serfs of it. In short, speaking always of the great mass, that they do not make government, but that government makes them, and that government is and has been a stupid and awful monster, misbegotten of the glimmerings of intelligence that come from the inertia crushed mass. Personally, I inclined to the second theory. Also, I am impatient. For a hundred thousand generations from the first social groups of our savage forebears, government has remained a monster. Today, the inertia crushed mass has less laughter in it than ever before. In spite of man's mastery of matter, humans suffering in misery and degradation mar the fair world. Wherefore I have decided to step in and become captain of this world ship for a while. I have the intelligence and the wide vision of the skilled expert.

5:10Also, I have the power. I shall be obeyed. The men of all the world shall perform my bidding and make governments so that they shall become laughter producers. These modelled governments I have in mind shall not make the people happy, wise, and noble by decree, but they shall give opportunity for the people to become happy, wise, and noble. I have spoken. I have invited you and nine of your fellow captains to confer with me. On March 3rd, the yacht-enner-John will sail from San Francisco. You are requested to be on board the night before. This is serious. The affairs of the world must be handled for a time by a strong hand. Mine is that strong hand. If you fail to obey my summons, you will die. Candidly, I do not expect that you will obey, but your death for failure to obey will cause obedience on the part of those I subsequently summon. You will have served a purpose.

6:11And please remember that I have no unscientific sentimentality about the value of human life. I carry always in the background of my consciousness the innumerable billions of lives that are to laugh and be happy in future eons on the earth. Yours for the reconstruction of society. Goliath. The publication of this letter did not cause even local amusement. Men might have smiled to themselves as they read it, but it was so palpably the handiwork of a crank that it did not merit discussion. Interest did not arouse till next morning. An associated press dispatched to the Eastern States, followed by interviews by eager-nosed reporters, had brought out the names of the other nine captains of industry who had received similar letters, but who had not thought the matter of sufficient importance to be made public. But the interest aroused was mild, and it would have died out quickly, had not Gabberton cartooned a chronic presidential aspirant as Goliath. Then came the song that was sung hilariously from C to C

7:14with the refrain, Goliath will catch you if you don't watch out. The weeks passed and the incident was forgotten. Walter Bassett had forgotten it likewise, but on the evening of February 22nd he was called to the telephone by the collector of the port. I just want to tell you, said the latter, that the yacht Energon has arrived and gone to anchor in the stream of Pier 7. What happened that night, Walter Bassett has never divulged, but it is known that he rode down in his auto to the waterfront, chartered one of Crowley's launches, and was put aboard the strange yacht. It is further known that when he returned to the shore three hours later, he immediately dispatched a sheath of telegrams to his nine fellow captains of industry, who had received letters from Goliath. These telegrams were similarly worded and read, The yacht Energon has arrived. There is something in this I advise you to come. Bassett was laughed at for his pains. It was a huge laugh that went up for his telegrams had been made public,

8:17and the popular song on Goliath revived and became more popular than ever. Goliath and Bassett were cartooned and lampooned unmercifully. The former, as the old man of the sea, riding on the latter's neck. The laugh tittered and rippled through clubs and social circles, was restrained merrily in the editorial columns, and broke out in loud gaffaws in the comic weeklies. There was a serious side as well, and Bassett's sanity was gravely questioned by many, and especially by his business associates. Bassett had never been a short tempered man, and after he sent the second sheath of telegrams to his brother captains and had been laughed at again, he remained silent. In this second sheath he had said, Come, I implore you, as you value your life, come. He arranged all his business affairs for an absence, and on the night of March 2nd went on board the Energon. The latter, properly cleared, sailed next morning, and next morning the newsboys in every city and town were crying extra.

9:21In the sling of the day, Goliath had delivered the goods. The non-captains of industry who had failed to accept his invitation were dead. A sort of violent disintegration of the tissues was the report of the various autopsies held on the bodies of the slain millionaires. Yet the surgeons and physicians, the most highly skilled in the land had participated, would not venture the opinion that the men had been slaying. Much less would they venture the conclusion at the hands of parties unknown. It was all too mysterious, they were stunned. Their scientific credulity broke down. They had no warrant in the whole domain of science for believing that an anonymous person on Paul Grave Island had murdered the poor gentleman. One thing was quickly learned, however, namely that Paul Grave Island was no myth. It was charted and well known to all navigators, lying on the line of 160 West Longitude, right at its intersection by the 10th parallel north latitude,

10:21and only a few miles away from Diana's show. Like Midway and Fanning, Paul Grave Island was isolated, volcanic, and coral, information. Furthermore, it was uninhabited. A survey ship in 1887 had visited the place and reported the existence of several springs and of a good harbor that was very dangerous of approach, and that was all that was known of the tiny speck of land that was soon to have focused on it, the odd attention of the world. Goliath remained silent until March 24th. On the morning of that day, the newspapers published his second letter, copies of which had been received by the ten chief politicians of the United States, ten leading men in the political world who were conventionally known as statesmen. The letter, with the same superscription as before, was as follows. Dear Sir, I have spoken in no uncertain tone. I must be obeyed. You may consider this an invitation or a summons, but if you still wish to tread this earth and laugh,

11:22you will be aboard the odd energon in San Francisco Harbor, not later than the evening of April 5th. It is my wish and my will that you confer with me here on Paul Grave Island in the matter of reconstructing society upon some rational basis. Do not misunderstand me when I tell you that I am one with a theory. I want to see that theory work, and therefore I call upon your cooperation. In this theory of mine, lives are but pawns. I deal with quantities of lives. I am after laughter, and those that stand in the way of laughter must perish. The game is big. There are 1500 million human lives today on the planet. What is your single life against them? It is as not in my theory. And remember that mine is the power. Remember that I am a scientist, and that one life, or one million lives, mean nothing to me as a raid against the countless billions of billions of lives of degenerations to come. It is for their laughter that I seek to reconstruct society now.

12:25And against them, your own meager little life is a poultry thing indeed. Who so has the power can command his fellows? By virtue of that military device known as the phalanx, Alexander conquered his bit of the world. By virtue of that chemical device, gunpowder, cortes, with his several hundred cutthroats conquered the empire of the Montezumas. Now I am in possession of a device that is all my own. In the course of a century, not more than half a dozen fundamental discoveries or inventions are made. I have made such an invention. The possession of it gives me the mastery of the world. I shall use this invention not for commercial exploitation, but for the good of humanity. For that purpose I want help, willing agents, obedient hands, and I am strong enough to compel the service. I am taking the shortest way, though I am in no hurry. I shall not clutter my speed with haste.

13:25The incentive of material gain developed man. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergized. It is one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at my dogs. And from the savage to the semi-barbarian he is today. This incentive has been a useful device for the development of the human, but it has now fulfilled its function and is ready to be cast aside into the scrap heap of rudimentary vestiges, such as gills in the throat, and belief in the divine right of kings. Of course you do not think so, but I do not see that that will prevent you from aiding me to fling the anachronism into the scrap heap. For I tell you now that the time has come when mere food and shelter and similar soared things shall be automatic. As free and easy and involuntary of access as the air, I shall make them automatic. What of my discovery and the power that discovery gives me?

14:28And with food and shelter automatic, the incentive of material gain passes away from the world forever. With food and shelter automatic, the higher incentives will universally obtain the spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual incentives that will tend to develop and make beautiful and noble body, mind, and spirit. Then all the world will be dominated by happiness and laughter. It will be the reign of universal laughter. Yours for that day. Goliath. Still the world would not believe. The Ten Politicians were at Washington, so that they did not have the opportunity of being convinced that Bassett had had, and not one of them took the trouble to journey to San Francisco to make the opportunity. As for Goliath, he was hailed by the newspapers as another Tom Lawson with a panacea, and there were specialists in mental diseases who by analysis of Goliath's letters proved conclusively that he was a lunatic.

15:28The yacht, Energon, arrived in the harbor of San Francisco on the afternoon of April 5th, and Bassett came ashore. But the Energon did not sail the next day, for not one of the Ten Summoned Politicians had elected to make the journey to Paul Gray Island. The newsboys, however, called Extra, that day in all the cities. The Ten Politicians were dead. The yacht, lying peacefully at anchor in the harbor, became the center of excited interest. She was surrounded by a flotilla of launches and robots, and many tugs and steamboats ran excursions to her. While the rabble was firmly kept off, the proper authorities and even reporters were permitted to board her. The mayor of San Francisco and the chief of police reported that nothing suspicious was to be seen upon her, and the port authorities announced that her papers were correct and in order in every detail. Many photographs and columns of descriptive matter were run in the newspapers. The crew was reported to be composed principally of Scandinavians, fair-haired blue-eyed Swedes, norwegians afflicted with the temperamental milling-colleys of their race,

16:34solid Russian fins, and a slight sprinkling of Americans in English. It was noted that there was nothing mercurial and flyaway about them. They seemed waiting men, oppressed by a sad and solid bovine sort of integrity, a sober seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them. They appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming power, or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand. The captain, a sad, eyed strong-featured American, was cartooned in the papers as gloomy Gus, the pessimistic hero of the comic supplement. Some sea captain recognized the energon as the yacht, Scud, once owned by Mary Vale of the New York Yacht Club. With this clue, it was soon ascertained that the Scud had disappeared several years before. The agent who sold her reported the purchaser to be merely another agent, a man he had seen neither before, nor since. The yacht had been reconstructed at Duffy's shipyard in New Jersey. The change in her name and registry occurred at that time, and had been legally executed.

17:41Then the energon had disappeared in the shroud of mystery. In the meantime, Bassett was going crazy. At least his friends and business associates said so. He kept away from his vast business enterprises and said that he must hold his hands until the other masters of the world could join him in the reconstruction of society. Proof indubitable that Goliath's bee had entered his bonnet. Two reporters he had little to say. He was not at liberty, he said, to relate what he had seen on Paul Grave Island, but he could assure them that the matter was serious. The most serious thing that had ever happened. His final word was that the world was on the verge of a turnover. For good or ill, he did not know. But one way or the other, he was absolutely convinced that the turnover was coming. As for business, business could go hang. He had seen things he had, and that was all there was to it. There was a great telegraphing during this period between the local federal officials and the state and ward departments at Washington.

18:43A secret attempt was made late one afternoon to board the energon and place the captain under arrest. The attorney general having given the opinion that the captain could be held for the murder of the ten statesmen. The government launch was seen to leave Meg's wharf and steer for the energon, and that was the last ever seen of the launch and the men on board of it. The government tried to keep the affair hushed up, but the cat was slipped out of the bag by the families of the missing men, and the papers were filled with monstrous versions of the affair. The government now proceeded to extreme measures. The battleship Alaska was ordered to capture the strange yacht, or failing that to sink her. These were secret instructions, but thousands of eyes from the waterfront and from the shipping and the harbor witnessed what happened that afternoon. The battleship got underway and steam slowly toward the energon. At half a mile distant, the battleship blew up, simply blew up. That was all. Her shattered frames sinking to the bottom of the bay, a riff-raff of wreckage and a few survivors strewing the surface.

19:46Among the survivors was a young lieutenant who had had charge of the wireless on board the Alaska. The reporters got a hold of him first, and he talked. No sooner had the Alaska got underway, he said, than a message was received from the energon. It was in the international code, and it was a warning to the Alaska to come no mirror than half a mile. He had sent the message through the speaking tube immediately to the captain. He did not know anything more, except that the energon twice repeated the message, and that five minutes afterward the explosion occurred. The captain of the Alaska had perished with his ship, and nothing more was to be learned. The energon, however promptly hoisted anchor and cleared out to sea. A great clamor was raised by the papers. The government was charged with cowardice and vacillation in its dealings with a mere pleasure yacht and a lunatic who called himself Goliah, and immediate and decisive action was demanded. Also, a great cry went up about the loss of life, especially the wanton killing of the ten statesmen.

20:46Goliah promptly replied. In fact, so prompt was his reply that the experts in wireless telegraphy announced that since it was impossible to send wireless messages so great a distance. Goliah was in their very midst and not on Paul Gray Island. Goliah's letter was delivered to the associated press by a messenger boy who had been engaged on the street. The letter was his follows. What are a few poultry lives? In your insane wars you destroy millions of lives and think nothing of it. In your fratricidal commercial struggle you kill countless babies, women, and men, and you triumphantly call the shambles individualism. I call it anarchy. I am going to put a stop to your wholesale destruction of human beings. I want laughter, not slaughter. Those of you who stand in the way of laughter will get slaughter. Your government is trying to delude you into believing that the destruction of the Alaska was an accident. No here and now that it was by my orders that the Alaska was destroyed. In a few short months all battleships on all seas will be destroyed or flung to the scrap heap and all nations shall disarm.

21:52Fortresses shall be dismantled, armies disbanded, and warfare shall cease from the earth. Mine is the power. I am the will of God. The whole world shall be in vasalage to me, but it shall be a vasalage of peace. I am Goliath. Below, Palgrave Island, out of the water, was the headline retort of the newspapers. The government was of the same frame of mind and the assemblage of fleets began. Walter Bassett broke out in ineffectual protest but was swiftly silenced by the threat of a lunacy commission. Goliath remained silent. Against Palgrave Island, five great fleets were hurled. The Asiatic Squadron, the South Pacific Squadron, the North Pacific Squadron, the Caribbean Squadron, and half of the North Atlantic Squadron. The two latter, coming through the Panama Canal. I have the honor to report that we cited Palgrave Island on the evening of April 29th. Around the report of Captain Johnson of the battleship North Dakota to the Secretary of the Navy.

22:53The Asiatic Squadron was delayed and did not arrive until the morning of April 30th. A council of the admirals was held and it was decided to attack early next morning. The destroyer Swift, Seven, crept in, unmolested, and reported no war-like preparations on the island. It noted several small merchant steamers in the harbor and the existence of a small village in a hopelessly exposed position that could be swept by our fire. It had been decided that all the vessels should rush in, scattered, upon the island, opening fire at three miles and continuing to the edge of the reef, there to retain loose formation and engage. Palgrave Island repeatedly warned us by wireless in the international code to keep outside the 10-mile limit, but no heed was paid to the warnings. The North Dakota did not take part in the movement of the morning of May 1st. This was due to a slight accident of the preceding night that temporarily disabled her steering gear. The morning of May 1st broke clear and calm. There was a slight breeze from the southwest that quickly died away. The North Dakota lay 12 miles off the island.

23:58At the signal the squadrons charged in upon the island from all sides at full speed. Our wireless receiver continued to tick off warnings from the island. The 10-mile limit was passed and nothing happened. I watched through my glasses. At five miles nothing happened. At four miles nothing happened. At three miles the New York in the lead on our side of the island opened fire. She fired only one shot, then she blew up. The rest of the vessels never fired a shot. They began to blow up everywhere before our eyes. Several swerved about and started back, but they failed to escape. The destroyer, Dark Thirty, nearly made the 10-mile limit when she blew up. She was the last survivor. No harm came to the North Dakota, and that night the steering gear being repaired. I gave waters to sail for San Francisco. To say that the United States was stunned is but to expose the inadequacy of language. The whole world was stunned. It confronted that blight of the human brain, the unprecedented.

25:00Human endeavor was a jest, a monstrous futility, when a lunatic on a lonely island who owned a yacht and an exposed village could destroy five of the proudest fleets of Christendom. And how had he done it? Nobody knew. The scientists lay down in the dust of the common road and wailed and gibbered. They did not know. Military experts committed suicide by scores. The mighty fabric of warfare they had fashioned was a gossamer veiled rent a sunder by a miserable lunatic. It was too much for their sanity. Mirror human reason could not withstand the shock. As the savages crushed by the sleight of hand of the witch-doctor, so was the world crushed by the magic of Goliath. How did he do it? It was the awful face of the unknown upon which the world gazed and by which it was frightened out of the memory of its proudest achievements. But all the world was not stunned. There was the invariable exception, the island empire of Japan. Drunken with the wine of success, deep-coffed without superstition and without faith in ought but its own ascendant star, laughing at the wreckage of science and mad with the pride of race, it went forth upon the way of war.

26:09America's fleets had been destroyed. From the battlements of heaven the multitudinous ancestral shades of Japan leaned down. The opportunity, God-given, had come. The Makato was in truth, a brother to the gods. The war monsters of Japan were loosed in mighty fleets. The Philippines were gathered in as a child gathers a nose-gay. It took longer for the battleships to travel to Hawaii, to Panama, and to the Pacific coast. The United States was panicked stricken and there arose the powerful party of dishonorable peace. In the midst of the clamor, the energon arrived in San Francisco Bay and Goliath spoke once more. There was a little brush as the energon came in and a few explosions of magazines occurred along the war-tunneled hills as the coast defenses went to smash. Also the blowing up of the submarine mines in the Golden Gate made a remarkably fine display. Goliath's message to the people of San Francisco, dated as usual from Paul Grave Island, was published in the papers. It ran.

27:12Rad, peace? Peace be with you. You shall have peace. I have spoken to this purpose before, and give you me peace. Leave my yacht energon alone. Commit one overt act against her, and not one stone in San Francisco shall stand upon another. Tomorrow, let all good citizens go out upon the hills that slope down to the sea. Go with music and laughter in garlands. Make festival for the new age that is dawning. Be like children upon your hills and witness the passing of war. Do not miss the opportunity. It is your last chance to behold what henceforth you will be compelled to seek in museums of antiquity. I promise you a merry day. Goliath. The madness of magic was in the air. With the people it was as if all their gods had crashed and the heavens still stood. Order and law had passed away from the universe, but the sun still shone. The wind still blew, the flowers still bloomed. That was the amazing thing about it. That wooder should continue to run downhill was a miracle. All the stability of the human mind and human achievement were crumbling. The one stable thing that remained was Goliath.

28:23A madman on an island. And so it was that the whole population of San Francisco went forth the next day and colossal frolic upon the hills that overlooked the sea. The hands and banners went forth. Brury wagons and Sunday school picnics. All the strange heterogeneous groupings of swarming metropolitan life. On the sea rim rose the smoke from the funnels of a hundred hostile vessels of war, all converging upon the helpless, undefended golden gate. And not all undefended. For out through the golden gate moved the energon. A tiny toy of white, rolling like a straw in the stiff sea on the bar where a strong ebbed tide ran in the teeth of the summer. The Japanese were cautious. Their thirty and forty thousand tonn battleships slowed down half a dozen miles offshore and maneuvered into ponderous evolutions while tiny scoutboats, leoned six funneled destroyers ran in, cutting blackly the flashing sea like so many sharks.

29:23But compared with the energon, they were Leviathins. Compared with them, the energon was as the sword of the archangel Michael, and they, the forerunners of the hosts of hell. But the flashing of the sword, the good people of San Francisco gathered on her hills, never saw. Mysterious, invisible, it cleaved to the air and smote the mightiest blows of combat the world had ever witnessed. The good people of San Francisco saw little and understood less. They saw only a million and a half tons of brine-cleaving thunder flinging fabrics hurled skyward and smashed back in ruin to sink into the sea. It was all over in five minutes, remained upon the wide expansive sea, only the energon, rolling white and toy like on the bar. Goliath spoke to the macado and the elder statesman. It was only an ordinary cable message dispatched from San Francisco by the captain of the energon, but it was of sufficient moment to cause the immediate withdrawal of Japan from the Philippines and of her surviving fleets from the sea.

30:24Japan, the skeptical, was converted. She had felt the weight of Goliath's arm, and meekly she obeyed when Goliath commanded her to dismantle her war vessels and to turn the metal into useful appliances for the arts of peace. In all the ports, Navy Yards, machine shops and foundries of Japan, tens of thousands of brown-skinned artisans converted the war monsters into myriads of useful things such as plowshares, goliath insisted on plowshares, gasoline engines, bridge trusses, telephone and telegraph wires, steel rails, locomotives, and rolling stock for railways. It was a world penance for a world to see, and poultry indeed it made appear that earlier penance barefooted in the sea. The snow of an emperor to a pope for daring to squabble over temporal power. Goliath's next summons was to the ten leading scientists of the United States. This time there was no hesitancy in obeying. The savants were ludicrously prompt, some of them waiting in San Francisco for weeks so as not to miss the scheduled sailing date. They departed on the energon on June 15, and while they were on the sea, on the way to Paul Grave Island, Goliath performed another spectacular feat.

31:37Germany and France were preparing to fly at each other's throats. Goliath commanded peace. They ignored the command, tacitly agreeing to fight it out on land where it seemed safer for the belligerently inclined. Goliath set the date of June 19 for the cessation of hostile preparations. Both countries mobilized their armies on June 18 and hurled them at the common frontier. And on June 19, Goliath struck. All generals, war secretaries, and jingo leaders in the two countries died on that day, and that day two vast armies, undirected, like strait sheep, walked over each other's frontiers and fraternized. But the great German warlord had escaped. It was learned afterward by hiding in a huge safe where we're stored the secret archives of his empire. And when he emerged, he was a very penteant warlord, and like the Maccato of Japan, he was set to work beating his sword blades into plowshares and pruning hooks.

32:37But in the escape of the German emperor was discovered a great significance. The scientists of the world plucked up courage, got back their nerve. One thing was conclusively evident. Goliath's power was not magic. Law still rained in the universe. Goliath's power had limitations. Else had the German emperor not escaped by secretly hiding in a steel safe. Many learned articles on the subject appeared in the magazines. The ten top scientists arrived back from Paul Grave Island on July 6. Heavy platoons of police protected them from the reporters. No, they had not seen Goliath, they said, in the one official interview that was vouchsafed. But they had talked with him, and they had seen things. They were not permitted to state definitely all that they had seen and heard, but they could say that the world was about to be revolutionized. Goliath was in the possession of a tremendous discovery that placed all the world at his mercy, and it was a good thing for the world that Goliath was merciful. The ten scientists proceeded directly to Washington on a special train, where for days they were closeted with the heads of government, while the nation hung breathless on the outcome.

33:46But the outcome was a long time in arriving. From Washington the President issued commands to the masters in leading figures of the nation. Everything was secret. Day by day deputations of bankers, railway lords, captains of industry and Supreme Court justices arrived, and when they arrived they remained. The week stragged on, and then on. August 25 began the famous issuance of proclamations. Congress and the Senate cooperated with the President in this, while the Supreme Court justices gave their sanction and the money lords and captains of industry agreed. War was declared upon the capitalist masters of the nation. Marshall Law was declared over the whole United States, and the Supreme Power was vested in the President. In one day, child labor in the whole country was abolished. It was done by decree, and the United States was prepared with its army to enforce its decree. In the same day, all women factory workers were dismissed to their homes, and all the sweatshops were closed. But we cannot make profits well the petty capitalists. Fools was the retort of Goliath, as if the meaning of life were profits. Give up your businesses and your profit mongering.

34:56But there is nobody to buy our business they wailed. Buy and sell. Is that all the meaning life has for you replied Goliath? You have nothing to sell. Turn over your little cutthroating anarchistic businesses to the government so that they may be rationally organized and operated. And the next day, by decree, the government began taking possession of all factories, shops, mines, chips, railroads, and producing lands. The nationalization of the means of production and distribution went on a pace. Here and there were skeptical capitalists of the moment. They were made prisoners in hall to Paul Gray-Violend, and when they returned, they always acquiesced in what the government was doing. A little later, the journey to Paul Gray-Violend became unnecessary. When objection was made, the reply of the officials was, Goliath, as spoken, which was another way of saying, he must be obeyed. The captains of industry became heads of departments. It was found that civil engineers, for instance, worked just as well in government employ as before they had worked in private employ.

35:59It was found that men of high executive ability could not violate their nature. They could not escape exercising their executive ability any more than a crab could escape crawling or a bird could escape flying. And so it was that all the splendid force of the men who had previously worked for themselves was now put to work for the good of society. The half-dozen Great Railway Chiefs cooperated in the organizing of a national system of railways that was amazingly efficacious. Never again was there such a thing as a car shortage. These chiefs were not the Wall Street railway magnets, but they were the men who formerly had done the real work while in the employ of the Wall Street magnets. Wall Street was dead. There was no more buying and selling and speculating. Nobody had anything to buy or sell. There was nothing in which to speculate. But the stock gamblers to work, said Goliath, give those that are young and that so desire a chance to learn useful trades. Put the drummers and salesmen in advertising agents and real estate agents to work, said Goliath, and by the hundreds of thousands the erstwhile useless middlemen in parasites went into useful occupations.

37:09The 400,000 idol gentlemen of the country who had lived upon incomes were likewise put to work. Then there were a lot of helpless men in high places who were cleared out. The remarkable thing about this being that they were cleared out by their own fellows. Of this class were the professional politicians whose wisdom and power consisted of manipulating machine politics and of grafting. There was no longer any graft since there were no private interests to purchase special privileges. No bribes were offered to legislators, and legislators for the first time legislated for the people. The result was that men who were efficient, not in corruption, but in direction, found their way into the legislatures. With this rational organization of society, amazing results were brought about. The national day's work was eight hours, and yet production increased. In spite of the great permanent improvements and of the immense amount of energy consumed in systematizing the competitive chaos of society, production doubled and tripled upon itself.

38:10The standard of living increased and still consumption could not keep up with production. The maximum working age was decreased to fifty years, to forty-nine years, and to forty-eight years. The minimum working age went up from sixteen years to eighteen years. The eight-hour day became a seven-hour day, and in a few months the national working day was reduced to five hours. In the meantime, glimmerings were being caught, not of the identity of Goliath, but of how he had worked and prepared for his assuming control of the world. Little things leaked out, clues were followed up, apparently unrelated things were pieced together. Strange stories of blacks stolen from Africa were remembered, of Chinese and Japanese contract coolies who had mysteriously disappeared, of lonely South Sea islands, raided and their inhabitants carried away. Stories of yachts and merchant steamers mysteriously purchased that had disappeared and their descriptions of which remotely tallied with the crafts that had carried the orientals and Africans and islanders away.

39:10Where had Goliath got the sinews of war was the question, and the surmised answer was by exploiting these stolen labourers. It was they that lived in the exposed village on Paul Gray Island. It was the product of their toil that had purchased the yachts and merchant steamers and enabled Goliath's agents to permeate society and carry out his will. And what was the product of their toil that had given Goliath the wealth necessary to realise his plans? Commercial radium, the newspapers proclaimed, and radiate, and radio soul, and argadium, and argite, and the mysterious golight that had proved so valuable in metallurgy. These were the new compounds discovered in the first decade of the 20th century, the commercial and scientific use of which had become so enormous in the second decade. The line of fruit boats that ran from Hawaii to San Francisco was declared to be the property of Goliath. This was surmised for no other owners could be discovered and the agents who had handled the shipments of the fruit boats were only agents.

40:10Since no one else owned the fruit boats, then Goliath must own them. The point of which is that it leaked out that the major portion of the world's supply in these precious compounds was brought to San Francisco by those very fruit boats. That the whole chain of surmised was correct was proved in later years when Goliath's slaves were liberated and honourably pensioned by the international government of the world. It was at that time that the seal of secrecy was lifted from the lips of his agents and higher emissaries and those that chose revealed much of the mystery of Goliath's organization and methods. His destroying angels, however, remained forever dumb. Who the men were who went forth to the high places and killed at his bidding will be unknown to the end of time, for kill they did, by means of that very subtle and then mysterious force that Goliath had discovered and named... Energon. But at that time, Energon, the little giant that was destined to do the work of the world, was unknown and undrempt of. Only Goliath knew and he kept his secret well.

41:11Even his agents who were armed with it and who, in the case of the odd Energon, destroyed a mighty fleet of warships by exploding their magazines knew not what the subtle and potent force was nor how it was manufactured. They knew only one of its many uses and in that one use they had been instructed by Goliath. It is now well known that radium and radiate in radio-sol and all the other compounds were byproducts of the manufacturer of Energon by Goliath from the sunlight. But at that time nobody knew what Energon was and Goliath continued to awe and rule the world. One of the uses of Energon was in wireless telegraphy. It was by its means that Goliath was able to communicate with his agents all over the world. At that time the apparatus required by an agent was so clumsy that it could not be packed in anything less than a fair-sized steamer trunk. Today, thanks to the improvements of Hensol, the perfected apparatus can be carried in a coat pocket. It was in December 1924 that Goliath sent out his famous Christmas letter, part of the text of which is given him.

42:14So far, while I have kept the rest of the nations from each other's throats, I have devoted myself particularly to the United States. Now I have not given to the people of the United States a rational social organization. What I have done has been to compel them to make that organization for themselves. There is more laughter in the United States these days and there is more sense. Food and shelter are no longer obtained by the anarchistic methods of so-called individualism, but are now well-nigh automatic. And the beauty of it is that the people of the United States have achieved all this for themselves. I did not achieve it for them. I repeat, they achieved it for themselves. All that I did was to put the fear of death in the hearts of the few that sat in the high places and obstructed the coming of rationality and laughter. The fear of death made those in the high places get out of the way. That was all, and gave the intelligence of man a chance to realize itself socially. In the year that is to come, I shall devote myself to the rest of the world. I shall put the fear of death in the hearts of all that sit in the high places in all the nations, and they will do as they have done in the United States. Get down out of the high places and give the intelligence of man a chance for social rationality. All the nations shall tread the path. The United States is now on.

43:36And when all the nations are well along that path, I shall have something else for them, but first they must travel that path for themselves. They must demonstrate that the intelligence of mankind today, with the mechanical energy now at its disposal, is capable of organizing society so that food and shelter be made automatic. Labor be reduced to a three-hour day and joy and laughter be made universal. And when that is accomplished, not by me, but by the intelligence of mankind, then I shall make a present to the world of a new mechanical energy. This is my discovery. This energon is nothing more or less than the cosmic energy that resides in the solar rays. When it is hardest by mankind, it will do the work of the world. There will be no more multitudes of miners slaving out their lives in the bowels of the earth. No more sooty firemen and greasy engineers. All may dress in white if they so will. The work of life will have become play, and young and old will be the children of joy, and the business of living will become joy, and they will compete with one another in achieving ethical concepts and spiritual heights in fashioning pictures and songs and stories in space.

44:49The state craft and beauty craft, in the sweat and the endeavor of the wrestler and the runner and the player of games, all will compete, not for soared coin and base material reward, but for the joy that shall be theirs in the development and vigor of flesh, and in the development and keenness of spirit. All will be joy-smiths, and their tasks shall be to beat out laughter from the ringing anvil of life. One word for the immediate future. On New Year's Day, all nations shall disarm, all fortresses and warships shall be dismantled, and all armies shall be disbanded. Goliath. On New Year's Day, all the world disarmed. The millions of soldiers and sailors and workmen in the standing armies and the natives, and in the countless arsenals, machine shops and factories for the manufacturer of war machinery, were dismissed to their homes. These many millions of men, as well as their costly war machinery, had hitherto been supported on the back of labor. They now went into useful occupations, and the released labor giant heaved a mighty sigh of relief.

45:58The policing of the world was left to the peace officers, and was purely social, whereas war had been distinctly anti-social. 90% of the crimes against society had been crimes against private property. With the passing of private property, at least in the means of production, and with the organization of industry that gave every man a chance, the crimes against private property practically ceased. The police forces everywhere were reduced repeatedly, and again and again, nearly all occasional and habitual criminals ceased voluntarily from their depredations. There was no longer any need for them to commit crime. They merely changed with changing conditions. A smaller number of criminals was put into hospitals and cured, and the remnant of the hopelessly criminal and degenerate was segregated. And the courts in all countries were likewise decreased in number again and again. 95% of all civil cases had been squabbles over property. Conflicts of property rights, lawsuits, contests of wills, breaches of contract, bankruptcy, etc. With the passing of private property, this 95% of the cases that cluttered the courts also passed.

47:08The courts became shadows, attenuated ghosts, rudimentary vestiges of the anarchistic times that had preceded the coming of Goliath. The year 1925 was a lively year in the world's history. Goliath ruled the world with a strong hand. Kings and emperors journeyed to Pahlgrave Island saw the wonders of energon and went away with the fear of death in their hearts to abdicate thrones and crowns and hereditary licenses. When Goliath spoke to politicians, so-called statesmen, they obeyed or died. He dictated universal reforms dissolved refractory parliaments and to the great conspiracy that was formed of municious money-lords and captains of industry, he sent his destroying angels. The time is passed for fooling, he told them, you are anachronisms, you stand in the way of humanity, to the scrap heap with you. To those that protested, and they were many, he said, this is no time for logameki, you can argue for centuries, it is what you have done in the past.

48:10I have no time for argument, get out of the way. With the exception of putting a stop to war and of indicating the broad general plan, Goliath did nothing. By putting the fear of death into the hearts of those that sat in the high places and obstructed progress, Goliath made the opportunity for the unshackled intelligence of the best social thinkers of the world to exert itself. Goliath left all the multitudinous details of reconstruction to these social thinkers. He wanted them to prove that they were able to do it, and they proved it. It was due to their initiative that the white plague was stamped out from the world. It was due to them and in spite of a deal of protesting from the sentimentalists that all the extreme hereditary inefficence were segregated and denied marriage. Goliath had nothing whatever to do with the instituting of the colleges of invention. This idea originated practically simultaneously in the minds of thousands of social thinkers. The time was ripe for the realization of the idea, and everywhere arose the splendid institutions of invention.

49:11For the first time, the ingenuity of man was loosed upon the problem of simplifying life instead of upon the making of money-earning devices. The affairs of life, such as house cleaning, dish in window washing, dust removing and scrubbing and clothes washing, and all the endless soared and necessary details, were simplified by invention until they became automatic. We of today cannot realize the barbarously filthy and slavish lives of those that lived prior to 1925. The international government of the world was another idea that sprang simultaneously into the minds of thousands. The successful realization of this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it was nothing that received by the mildly Protestant sociologists and biologists when irrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of mouthheus. With weasier enjoy in the world, with an immensely higher standard of living, and with the enormous spaciousness of opportunity for recreation, development, and pursuit of beauty and nobility and all the higher attributes, the birth rate fell, and fell astoundingly.

50:16People ceased breeding like cattle, and better than that it was immediately noticeable that a higher average of children was being born. The doctrine of mouthheus was knocked into a cocked hat, or flung to the scrap heap as Goliath would have put it. All that Goliath had predicted that the intelligence of mankind could accomplish with the mechanical energy at its disposal came to pass. Human dissatisfaction practically disappeared. The elderly people were the great grumblers, but when they were honorably pensioned by society as they passed the age of limit for work, the great majority ceased grumbling. They found themselves better off in their idle old days under the new regime, enjoying vastly more pleasure and comforts than they had in their busy and toil some youth under the old regime. The younger generation had easily adapted itself to the changed order, and the very young had never known anything else. The sum of human happiness had increased enormously. The world had become gay and sane. Even the old fogies of professors of sociology who had opposed with might and main the coming of the new regime made no complaint.

51:23They were a score of times better remunerated than in old days, and they were not worked nearly so hard. Besides, they were busy revising sociology and writing new textbooks on the subject. Here and there it is true there were atavisms, men who yearned for the fleshpots and cannibal feasts of the old alleged individualism, creatures long of teeth and savage of claw who wanted to prey upon their fellow men. But they were looked upon as diseased and were treated in hospitals. A small remnant however proved incurable and was confined in a silence and denied marriage, thus there was no progeny to inherit their atavistic tendencies. As the years went by, Goliath dropped out of running the world. There was nothing for him to run. The world was running itself and doing it smoothly and beautifully. In 1937, Goliath made his long promised present of energon to the world. He himself had devised a thousand ways in which the little giant could do the work of the world, all of which he made public at the same time. But instantly the colleges of invention seized upon energon and utilized it in a hundred thousand additional ways. In fact, as Goliath confessed in his letter of March 1938, the colleges of invention cleared up several puzzling features of energon that had baffled him during the preceding years.

52:42With the introduction of the use of energon, the two-hour workday was cut down almost to nothing. As Goliath had predicted, work indeed became play. And so tremendous was man's productive capacity due to energon and the rational social utilization of it, that the humblest citizen enjoyed leisure and time and opportunity for an immensely greater abundance of living than had the most favored under the old anarchistic system. Nobody had ever seen Goliath and all the peoples began to clamor for their savior to appear. While the world did not minimize his discovery of energon, it was decided that greater than that was his wide social vision. He was a superman, a scientific superman, and the curiosity of the world to see him had become well-ni-unbearable. It was 1941, after much hesitancy on his part, that he finally emerged from Paul Grave Island. He arrived on June 6th in San Francisco, and for the first time since his retirement to Paul Grave Island, the world looked upon his face, and the world was disappointed.

53:46It's imagination had been touched. A heroic figure had been made out of Goliath. He was the man or the demigod, rather who had turned the planet over. The deeds of Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan and Napoleon were as the play of babies alongside his colossal achievements. And a shore in San Francisco and through its streets stepped and rode a little old man, 65 years of age, well preserved with a pink and white complexion and a bald spot on his head the size of an apple. He was short-sighted and wore spectacles, but when the spectacles were removed his were quizzical blue eyes like a child filled with mild wonder at the world. Also, his eyes had a way of twinkling accompanied by a screwing up of the face as if he laughed at the huge joke he had played upon the world, trapping it in spite of itself into happiness and laughter. For a scientific superman and a world tyrant he had remarkable weaknesses, he loved sweets, and he was inordinately fond of salted almonds and salted pecans, especially the latter. He always carried a paper bag of them in his pocket.

54:51And he had a way of saying frequently that the chemism of his nature demanded such fair. Perhaps his most astonishing failing was cats. He had an ineratical version to that domestic animal. It will be remembered that he fainted dead away with sudden fright while speaking in brotherhood palace when the janitors cat walked out upon the stage and brushed against his legs. But no sooner had he revealed himself to the world than he was identified. Old-time friends had no difficulty in recognizing him as Percival Stoltz, the German-American who in 1898 had worked in the Union Ironworks, and who for two years at that time had been secretary of branched 369 of the international brotherhood of machinists. It was in 1901, then 25 years of age, that he had taken special scientific courses at the University of California. At the same time, supporting himself by soliciting what was then known as life insurance. His records as a student are preserved in the University Museum, and they are unenviable. He is remembered by the professors he sat under chiefly for his absent-mindedness.

55:57Undoubtedly, even then he was catching glimpses of the wide visions that later were to be his. His naming himself Goliah and shrouding himself in mystery was his little joke as he later explained. As Goliah, or any other thing like that, he said, he was able to touch the imagination of the world and turn it over. But as Percival Stoltz wearing side whiskers and spectacles and weighing 118 pounds, he would have been unable to turn over a pecan. Not even assaulted pecan. But the world quickly got over its disappointment in his personal appearance and antecedents. It knew him and revered him as the mastermind of the ages, and it loved him for himself, for his quizzical short-sighted eyes and the inimitable way in which he screwed up his face when he laughed. It loved him for his simplicity and comradeship and warm humanness, and for his fondness for salted pecans and the aversion to cats, and today, in the wonder city of Asgard, rises in awful beauty that monument to him that dwarfs the pyramids and all the monstrous blood-stained monuments of antiquity.

57:02And on that monument, as all know, is inscribed in imperishable bronze, the prophecy, and the fulfillment. All will be joy-smiths, and their task shall be to beat out laughter from the ringing anvil of life. Editorial note. This remarkable production is the work of Harry Beckwith, a student in the Lowell High School of San Francisco, and it is here reproduced chiefly because of the youth of its author. Far be it from our policy to burden our readers with ancient history, and when it is known that Harry Beckwith was only 15 when the foregoing was written, our motives will be understood. Goliath won the premiere for high school composition in 2254, and last year Harry Beckwith took advantage of the privilege earned by electing to spend six months in Asgard. The wealth of historical detail, the atmosphere of the times, and the mature style of the composition are especially noteworthy in one so young.

58:02End of Goliath by Jack London.