department, and reeled off without pause millions of kilometres of everything that can be cut with scissors. It took possession of the iron works, the rolling mills, the foundries, the factories for agricultural machinery, the sawmills, timber works, rubber works, sugar-mills, chemical works, fertilizer works, nitrogen and naphtha plants, printing works, paper-mills, dye works, glass works, potteries, boot and shoe factories, ribbon works, forges, mines, breweries, distilleries, creameries, flour-mills, mints, motor works, and grinding plants. It wove, spun, knitted, forged, cast, erected, sewed, planed, cut, dug, burned, printed, bleached, refined, cooked, filtered, and pressed for twenty-four to twenty-six hours a day. Harnessed to agricultural machines in the place of tractors, it ploughed, sowed, harrowed, weeded, cut, harvested and threshed. In every department it augmented the raw material and multiplied the output hundreds of times. It was inexhaustible. It simply squandered its activity. It had found a quantitative expression for its own infinitude: over-production.
The miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes in the desert was repeated on a colossal scale in the miraculous multiplication of tacks, boards, nitrates, pneumatic tyres, rolls of paper, and manufactured articles of every kind.
Thus there ruled in the world a state of boundless plenty of all that men could need. But men need everything, everything but boundless plenty.
XV
DISASTER
Of course, in our own orderly and (one might well say) blessed times of general scarcity, we simply cannot imagine the social evil that boundless plenty could be. To us it seems that to find ourselves all of a sudden amid unlimited supplies of everything we wanted would be nothing short of the Earthly Paradise. It would be all to the good, we think; there would be enough of everything for everybody—and Lord! how prices would come down!
Well, then, the economic catastrophe which befell the whole world at the period we are describing, as a result of the interference of the Absolute in industry, arose from the fact that people could get everything they wanted, not merely at a low price, but simply for nothing. You might help yourself, free of charge, to a handful of tacks, to go into your boot-soles or into the floor; you could just as easily help yourself to a whole cartload of tacks gratis—only I ask you, what would you do with them? Would you haul them a hundred kilometres off and then give them away? You wouldn’t do that; for when you stood before that avalanche of tacks, what you saw was not tacks—relatively useful objects—but something perfectly valueless and senseless in its profusion, something as purposeless as are the stars in the sky. Of course, such a mound of new and shining tacks was often an uplifting sight, and even inspired poetical reflections as do the stars in the sky. They seemed created to be gazed upon in silent wonder. It was a fine sight in its way, as a piece of landscape, just as the sea is from that point of view. But then again, you don’t take the sea away in carts into the interior of the country where there is no sea. There is no economic distribution for sea-water—and now there was none for tacks.
And while in one place there spread this sparkling ocean of tacks, in another only a few kilometres farther off there was not a tack to be had. Having become economically worthless, they had disappeared from the shops. If anyone wished to knock one into his shoe or put one into his neighbour’s mattress, he sought for it in vain. There weren’t any, just as there is no sea at Slaný or Caslav. Where were you then, you business men of days gone by, who used to buy the necessities of life so cheap in one place and sell them so dear in another? Alas, you had vanished, for heavenly grace had descended upon you. You had grown ashamed of your gains; you had shut up your shops to reflect upon the brotherhood of man; you had given away your possessions, and never again would you desire to enrich yourselves by the distribution of those things which are needed by all your brethren in God.
No value means no market. No market means no distribution. No distribution means no goods. And no goods means greater demand, higher prices, bigger profits and larger businesses. And you had turned your backs upon gain, and conceived an uncontrollable antipathy to all figures whatsoever. You had ceased to look upon the material world with the eyes of consumption, market, and sale. You stood with clasped hands staring at the beauty and the profusion of the world. And in the meanwhile the supply of tacks ran out. At last none remained. Only somewhere, far away, they were piled up as by an inexhaustible avalanche.
Even you, ye master bakers, went out in front of your shops, and cried, “Come then, children of God, in the name of Christ, our Master, come and take these loaves and flour and biscuits and rolls. Have pity on us and take them for nothing.”
And you, ye drapers, brought your bales of cloth and rolls of linen out into the street, and wept with joy as you cut off five or ten metre lengths for everyone who went by, and begged them for the love of God to accept your little gift; and only when your shop was completely empty of its wares did you fall on your knees and thank God that He had given you the opportunity to clothe your neighbours as He clothes the lilies in the field.
And you, ye butchers and dealers in cooked meats, you took baskets of meat and sausages and polonies on your heads, and went from door to door, and knocked or rang, and begged everybody just to help themselves to whatever they fancied.
And all you who sell boots, furniture, tobacco, bags, spectacles, jewels, carpets, whips, ropes, tinware, china, books, false teeth, vegetables, medicines, or whatever else one can think of—all of you, touched by the breath of God, poured out into the street, a prey to the generous panic born of grace divine, and gave away all you possessed; after which, either coming together or standing on the threshold of your emptied shops and warehouses, you declared to one another with glowing eyes, “Now, brother, I have eased my conscience.”
In a few days it became evident that there was nothing left to give away. But there was also nothing left to buy. The Absolute had pillaged and completely cleaned out every place of business.
Meanwhile, far away from the cities, there poured from the machines millions of metres of wool and linen, Niagaras of lump sugar, all the teeming, magnificent and inexhaustible profusion of the divine over-production of every kind of goods. Some feeble efforts to divide and distribute this flood of commodities were quelled at the outset. It simply could not be mastered.
For that matter, it is possible that this economic catastrophe had also another cause: currency inflation. You see, the Absolute had likewise taken possession of the Government mints and printing establishments, and every day it flung out upon the world hundreds of millions of banknotes, coins, and securities. Utter devaluation was the result: before long a packet of five thousand mark notes meant nothing more than so much waste-paper. Whether you offered a halfpenny or half a million for a child’s lollypop, it was all the same from the business point of view: you wouldn’t get the lollypop, anyhow, for they had all disappeared. Figures had lost all significance. This collapse of the numerical system is, in any case, the natural consequence of the infinitude and omnipotence of God.
At the same time, food shortage and even famine had already made themselves felt in the cities. The organization for the maintenance of supplies had broken down completely for the reasons just mentioned.
Of course there were Ministries of Supply, Commerce, Social Welfare, and Railways, and by our ideas it should have been possible to get control of the gigantic stream of factory production in time, prevent the goods from spoiling, and transport them carefully to the places which the liberality of the Absolute had despoiled. Unhappily this plan was not followed. The personnel of each of the Ministries were the victims of grace in unusual power, and spent their office hours in joyful prayer. In the Ministry of Supply a lady clerk named Sarova controlled the situation, preaching on the subject of the Seven Degrees; in the Ministry of Commerce the head of a department, Mr. Winkler, proclaimed a severe asceticism which resembled the teachings of the Hindu Yoga. True, this excessive zeal lasted only a fortnight, being succeeded (doubtless through special inspiration
