Were all one big family, they told us, were all in this together. But you dont all stand working an acetylene torch ten hours a day together, and you dont all get a bellyache together. Whats whose ability and which of whose needs comes first? When its all one pot, you cant let any man decide what his own needs are, can you?
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But that wasnt all. There was something else that we discovered at the same meeting. The factorys production had fallen by forty percent, in that first half year, so it was decided that somebody hadnt delivered according to his ability. Who? How would you tell it? The family voted on that, too. We voted which men were the best, and these men were sentenced to work overtime each night for the next six months. Overtime without pay because you werent paid by time and you werent paid by work, only by need.
Do I have to tell you what happened after that and into what sort of creatures we all started turning, we who had once been humans? We began to hide whatever ability we had, to slow down and watch like hawks that we never worked any faster or better than the next fellow. What else could we do, when we knew that if we did our best for the family, its not thanks or rewards that wed get, but punishment? We knew that for every stinker whod ruin a batch of motors and cost the company money either through his sloppiness, because he didnt have to care, or through plain incompetence its we whod have to pay with our nights and our Sundays. So we did our best to be no good.
There was one young boy who started out, full of fire for the noble ideal, a bright kid without any schooling, but with a wonderful head on his shoulders. The first year, he figured out a work process that saved us thousands of man-hours. He gave it to the family, didnt ask anything for it, either, couldnt ask, but that was all right with him. It was for the ideal, he said. But when he found himself voted as one of our ablest and sentenced to night work, because we hadnt gotten enough from him, he shut his mouth and his brain. You can bet he didnt come up with any ideas, the second year.
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Then there was an old guy, a widower with no family, who had one hobby: phonograph records. I guess that was all he ever got out of life. In the old days, he used to skip lunch just to buy himself some new recording of classical music. Well, they didnt give him any allowance for records personal luxury they called it. But at the same meeting, Millie Bush, somebodys daughter, a mean, ugly little eight year old, was voted a pair of gold braces for her buck teeth this was medical need because the staff psychologist had said that the poor girl would get an inferiority complex if her teeth werent straightened out. The old guy who loved music, turned to drink, instead. He got so you never saw him fully conscious any more. But it seems like there was one thing he couldnt forget. One night, he came staggering down the street, saw Millie Bush, swung his fist and knocked all her teeth out. Every one of them.
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God help us, maam! Do you see what we saw? We saw that wed been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it for observing it. The more you tried to live up to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated it, the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at the mercy of the next mans dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the dishonest collected. The honest lost, the dishonest won. How long could men stay good under this sort of a law of goodness?
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In the old days, we used to celebrate if somebody had a baby, we used to chip in and help him out with the hospital bills, if he happened to be hard-pressed for the moment. Now, if a baby was born, we didnt speak to the parents for weeks. Babies, to us, had become what locusts were to farmers. In the old days, we used to help a man out if he had a bad illness in the family. Now well, Ill tell you about just one case. It was the mother of a man who had been with us for fifteen years. She was a kindly old lady, cheerful and wise, she knew us all by our first names and we all liked her we used to like her. One day, she slipped on the cellar stairs and fell and broke her hip. We knew what that meant at her age. The staff doctor said that shed have to be sent to a hospital in town, for expensive treatments that would take a long time. The old lady died the night before she was to leave for town. They never established the cause of death. No, I dont know whether she was murdered. Nobody said that. Nobody would talk about it at all. All I know is that I and thats what I cant forget! I, too, had caught myself wishing that she would die. This may God forgive us! was the brotherhood, the security, the abundance that the plan was supposed to achieve for us!
