Francis Bellamy, who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, was the subject of my August 30 blog post. In that article, I mentioned that Bellamy was a democratic socialist—but he was not so to the extent of Edward Bellamy, his cousin who authored a powerful novel about a socialist utopia.
Edward Bellamy’s Bio, Briefly
The fathers of Edward Bellamy (1850~1898) and Francis
Bellamy (1855~1931) were brothers. Edward’s father was a Baptist minister, but
Edward did not follow his father’s footsteps and did not become a minister as
his cousin Francis did.
Edward, rather, became a journalist and then after
developing tuberculosis at the age of 25 he became a novelist and wrote three
unremarkable novels that were published between 1880 and 1885.
The life of Edward Bellamy changed drastically, though, after his utopian science fiction book Looking Backward, 2000-1887, was published early in 1888. Within a year it sold some 200,000 copies.
By the end of the century, Looking Backward had sold
more copies than any other novel published in America except for Uncle Tom’s
Cabin and Ben-Hur. It “especially appealed to a generation of
intellectuals alienated from the alleged dark side of the Gilded Age” (see here).
(Curiously, while I have known of the latter books for most
of my life, I don’t remember ever hearing of Bellamy’s book until August of
this year.)
Bellamy published Equality, a sequel to Looking
Backward, in 1897, but it was a disappointment. The following year, less
than two months after his 48th birthday, Bellamy died in his home
state of Massachusetts.
Edward Bellamy’s Book, Briefly
Even though, as indicated, I had not heard of Bellamy’s highly
successful book before this past summer, I bought a Kindle copy (for 99 cents!)
in early September and read it with great interest, in spite of some of it
being rather pedantic.
The novel narrates the story of a young Bostonian named
Julian West, who falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep in 1887 and wakes up
113 years later in a radically changed Boston.
West is discovered in his underground sleeping chamber by a
Dr. Leete, who along with his lovely daughter Edith explain and introduce West
to the city, and the American society, of the year 2000. To his great
amazement, the country, indeed, has become a socialist utopia.
Spark Notes (here) provides a detailed
summary and analysis of the book—and even the full text of the novel—so I will
make only the following brief comment about its content.
From Dr. Leete’s explanation, it becomes clear that Boston
and the entire U.S. has become a utopia by the choices made through the years by
the general public and not at all because of government control and/or
coercion. It was, truly, the result of democratic socialism.
So, What About It?
I found Bellamy’s novel so intriguing because it was written
at the very time that unchecked capitalism and “robber barons” such as Andrew
Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were causing such suffering by exploitation of
the working people of the country.
The year Looking Backward was published was also the
very time Walter Rauschenbusch was beginning to develop the Social Gospel—and
his biographers say that the young pastor of the church in Hell’s Kitchen read
Bellamy’s book.
A 2019 article titled “When
Christian Evangelicals Loved Socialism” states, “Rauschenbusch never became
an overt political activist allied with any socialist group. But he was
sympathetic to the goals of socialists, if not always their methods.”
At the present time, the progressives in the Democratic
Party are often vilified as being socialists, but perhaps they are merely
seeking what Edward Bellamy and Walter Rauschenbusch envisioned; that is, a
society in which the needs of all people are adequately met.
Why don’t we all want, and work for, such a society?
