Dick groaned, not quite inaudibly. Rosen, a florid, nearly bald man in his fifties, cocked an eyebrow in his direction as he began. "Slavery is an institution of every civilized society, from the most ancient times to the present. Using the term in the broadest sense, there never has been a time when civilized arts and sciences, to such an extent as they existed, have not been founded on forced labor, that is, on slavery. We may distinguish -- "
"Objection!" said a vigorous-looking, dark-skinned man, pointing his pipe at Rosen. "Do you maintain that the peasant of the Middle Ages was a slave?"
"I do, mister."
"He was not, he was a serf, and there's an important difference. A serf was attached to the soil -- "
(" -- Like a pumpkin," murmured an ironic voice in Dick's ear.)
" -- and could only be sold with the soil, whereas a slave was absolute property and could be sold at any time."
"The chair rules," said Melker, "that Colonel Rosen may call the serf a slave if he wishes. Colonel, please continue."
Dick twisted around; Clay had moved over unobtrusively and was sitting close behind him. "What is all this?" Dick whispered.
"The Philosophers' Club -- shut up and listen, you may learn something."
"We may distinguish," Rosen was saying, "between systems of individual slavery, slavery of classes, and mechanical slavery. The last, an invention of the so-called Industrial Revolution, put an end to the formal practice of individual slavery in Europe and America, but introduced a new form of the slavery of classes, that is, industrial slavery. In more recent times -- "
"Just a minute, Colonel," cried the plain young woman. "Those people were free. They had a democracy, on this part of the continent -- they could move from job to job, just as they wanted."
"But they had to work?" asked the Colonel.
"Well, if you want to put it that way -- under the monetary system they had to work, yes, to get dollars -- but they could choose, don't you see -- "
"They could choose whether to work or starve," said the Colonel positively. "The difference between -- "
"Oh, now really! Colonel, those people were the best paid workers in history -- They had cars, they had television sets -- "
"My slaves have television sets," said Rosen; "they don't need cars. If they did, they'd have 'em. The fact remains, they can't dispose of their own time. That marks the essential difference between your slave and your freeman, whether you call 'em slaves, serfs, cotters, villeins, factory workers -- "
"Or soldiers, Colonel?" asked one of the dowagers, in a penetrating voice.
Rosen stiffened. "Lady, I'm a housed man, serving freely. I can resign my commission at any time -- "
"Mrs. Maxwell is out of order," Melker interposed smoothly. "Miss Flavin, the chair rules that the Colonel may call industrial workers slaves, under his own definition. Colonel, I believe you were building up to a point?"
"I was. Now, mechanical slavery, the slavery of the machine, was hailed as the great emancipator; it was supposed to eliminate the need for human slavery and make everybody a gentleman. The more work performed by machines, the more leisure for humans." (Half a dozen people had their hands raised; the chairman ignored them.) "Well, I give you the Gismo, the last word in mechanical slavery -- "
"In mechanical production," began Miss Flavin, heatedly, but Rosen waved her to silence. "One minute. The Gismo does everything any of the Industrial Age machines were supposed to do, to eliminate human labor -- it generates power, it manufactures everything from jet planes to toothbrushes, it replaces parts, and all this at zero cost for materials, and the absolute minimum of human supervision. But -- " He paused. "The Gismo won't clean a room, make a bed, comb your hair or carry a gun. And the more leisure you've got, the more demand for personal service. So you see the result -- mechanical slavery makes human slavery, and the proof is, we've got the highest proportion of slaves to free men in the history of the world -over fifty to one. Three hundred to one, here in Eagles. You moralists can argue all you like, it couldn't have happened any other way." There was another hooker of spirits at his side; he picked it up, drained it with a little ironic salute of the glass, and set it down.
"Very good," said Melker, rapping for order, "very good, Colonel, now since you've made such a kind invitation to the moralists, as represented by Miss Flavin, let's hear them argue."
"Well, in the first place," said the plain woman, looking indignant, "we're not moralists as Colonel Rosen calls us, we're humanitarians. That's an ethical position, and if the Colonel doesn't know the difference between ethics and morals, I won't take the time to instruct him now.
"Colonel Rosen has just explained to us how inevitable slavery is," she went on, "and of course there's just one little thing wrong with his argument. It took five years of brutal war, and the extermination of hundreds of thousands of people, to impose this so-called inevitable system that we enjoy today -- a system that, as the Colonel admits, was actually obsolete nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. And, of course, the Gismo is the end-all of all scientific progress, why, yes, we've seen to that, because there hasn't been a single, important, scientific development in the last fifty years -- not one! But that's sensible, of course, because we saw what just one little invention, the Gismo, did to the world, and we're afraid one more might upset our inevitable system!"
Dick looked around at Clay, open-mouthed with astonishment. He had never heard such talk, never imagined anything like it. But Clay was leaning calmly back in his chair with his, cigar cocked at an interested angle, for all the world as if he were listening to some moderately novel opinion about the weather.
"Question," called a scholarly-looking man from the opposite side of the room. He was white-haired and wore old-fashioned nose spectacles. "Does Miss Flavin assume that war, itself, is not inevitable?"
She turned to face him. "I most certainly do, Doctor Belasco. Like all apologists for brutality, you no doubt believe that history proves your point -- there have always been wars, therefore wars are inevitable. Adopting your own puerile argument, I could say that there have always been periods of peace, therefore peace is inevitable."
"Intervals between wars," grunted Colonel Rosen. "Man's a fighting animal, woman's a species of talking bird."
"We are a trifle off the point," said Melker, "Miss Flavin, if it's agreeable to you, I think we should all be interested to hear something of the alternative system your group proposes."
"Certainly," said the woman, with a hard look at Rosen. "We humanitarians, as our name suggests, believe that man has an ethical duty to man. We believe that the value of any system is measured by the consideration given to all human beings, not just to a favored class: and by that standard, our present system is a miserable failure."
"Oh, well," said Rosen loudly, "if we're going to use that kind of logic, down with horses -they don't lay eggs." There was some laughter.
"Colonel, we have given you considerable latitude in your definitions," said Melker. "Miss Flavin, if you please."
"Our first objective," she resumed, "is the abolition of slavery and a return to free, democratic institutions. No progress, either moral or material, can be made in a world which is frozen, like ours, into a rigid mold of suppression of liberties. Once this objective is attained, in an orderly way, then our other problems -- and they will be many -- can be dealt with as they arise. We do not believe that the only stable society is one that crams forty-nine fiftieths of itself into a degrading servitude."