[In the following review of the 1931 edition of Looking Backward, Forbes disagrees with the ideas expressed in Heywood Broun's introduction to the edition, and states that the importance of Looking Backward should not be found in its accurate predictions, but in the fact that the utopian idealist novel, a form of escapist literature at the time, was part of a large movement resulting from the social and economic problems of the last two decades of the 1800s.]

It is perhaps the inevitable fate of most prophecies that they pass away leaving no trace of their burden of wisdom, lucky indeed if they have caught the ear of even a handful of people at the time they were uttered. Some few, however, have the questionable fortune at a later time to catch the sympathetic eye of an ardent preacher of some gospel, who, out of his conviction that the earlier vision is in the process of being realized, feels himself impelled to rescue the relic of former days from its oblivion—all too frequently justified—and to install it as a part of the sacred canon of the new order.

Something similar to this has after forty-three years befallen Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward at the hands of Heywood Broun. To some people, of whom Mr. Broun was one, the natural thing to do upon approaching such a literary monument would be to point out the various respects in which earlier dreams have come true. The temptation to do this is indeed particularly great in these days when the prominence of Soviet Russia in the daily press has made the western capitalist world familiar, however intelligently, with terms which make the industrial army, the credit cards, and other parts of the machinery of Bellamy's “Nationalism” seem far less fantastic than must have been the case when they were presented to the readers of the late 1880's. When, furthermore, some of our current advanced journals of opinion are inveighing with increasing regularity against the antiquated character of our anti-trust laws, one can understand more fully what Bellamy meant when he summed up the description of his new era by saying that “the Epoch of Trusts had ended in the Great Trust.”

Granting all this, there is still room for exception to making such points as these the basis for a new edition of this famous Utopian romance. As soon as it comes to be regarded as in any sense an historical document, its proper significance is not to be found in the degree of accuracy of its prognostications but in the fact that it was the symptom in literary guise of certain conditions in American life at a particular time. Furthermore, to regard this novel in isolation is to ignore a whole literary movement to which Bellamy was but one of a large group of contributors, although, to be sure, the most conspicuous.

The fact is that in this country during the closing two decades of the last century, Utopias became almost a fad, some fifty of them being now traceable to that period. Those were the years when the new industrialism born of the Civil War established itself as the prime factor in American life, bringing in its train hitherto unsuspected problems of urbanization, population growth, and conflict between capital and labor, while swelling the note of discord came the cries of western agrarianism for relief through the adoption of its chosen panaceas. Such a time of distress and disquiet easily gave birth to attempts at escape from existing conditions. Socialism and Populism, on the one hand, pointed to the avenue of politics. Less practical, but offering a compensating safety, was the chance for flight from reality presented by literature. There had been a time in the United States when it had seemed feasible to put Utopian ideas to actual test, but a half-century or more of national growth had destroyed for ever those former favorable conditions, and Utopia accordingly retired to the greater security of the printed page, confident in its appeal to a rapidly growing novel-reading public.

The idealism thus expressed had certain clearly defined characteristics. It was, in the first place, American in its source, silently avoiding the current terms of foreign origin, “socialism” and “communism,” although conceiving the ills of society and the remedies proposed in economic terms that were in some respects similar to those found in those imported gospels. It was, furthermore, to a considerable extent the voice of men in the upper stratum of society, of those whose training or position could give weight to their opinions and secure a hearing for them. Above all, it was viewed by its authors as a part of the contemporary reform movement, the literary outposts, as it were. At the same time it struck a note frequently out of tune with that heard on the battle-line of real life. Not through the strike, it said, not through any of the other channels of “direct action,” but through the non-violence of politics was the millennium to be achieved. It was really a dual message, urging the extremists of that day to discard their suicidal tactics, and at the same time seeking to convince the great middle class that through its own intelligent efforts an unchallengeable solution of society's problems was attainable, to the lasting benefit of all.

Such an approach to Looking Backward and the literary legion that followed it suggests a different reaction from Mr. Broun's for to-day. Whether or not “another fifty years will confirm Edward Bellamy's position as one of the most authentic prophets of our age” becomes incidental. The matter of greater interest is: where are our Utopians to-day? Is there any likelihood that a second Bellamy might appear in the 1930's, and if so, what would be the chances for a repetition of the phenomenal success of his prototype?

Works Cited

Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward, 2000-1887. 1888. Reprinted with an introduction by Heywood Broun. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931. 337 p.