need services-all kinds of services-and get them. Factories came into being, and
schools-elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities. Stores of all kinds,
from shoppes to supermarkets. Restaurants and theaters. Cars and trucks. Air-cars.
Radio, teevee, and tri-di. Boats and bowling lanes. Golf, even-on the planets there was
room for golf! And so on. The works.
At first, all this flood of adult population came from Earth; drawn, not by any urge to
pioneer, but by that mainspring of free enterprise, profit. Profit either in the form of high
wages or of opportunity to enlarge and to advance, each entrepreneur in his own field.
And not one in a hundred of those emigrants from Earth, having lived on an outplanet for
a year, ever moved back. “Tellus is a nice place to visit, but live there? If the Tellurians
like that kind of living-if they call it living-they can have it.”
But the lessening of Earth’s population was of very short duration. Assured of cheap and
abundant food, and of more and more good, secure jobs, more and more women had
more and more children and cities began to encroach upon what had once been
farmland.
One of the most important effects of this migration, although it was scarcely noticed at
the time, was the difference between the people of the planets and those of Earth. The
planetsmen were, to give a thumbnail description, the venturesome, the independent, the
ambitious, the chance-taking. Tellurians were, and became steadily more so, the stodgy,
the unimaginative, the security-conscious.
Decade after decade this difference became more and more marked, until finally there
developed a definite traffic pattern that operated continuously to intensify it. Young
Tellurians of both sexes who did not like regimentation-and urged on by the
blandishments of planetary advertising campaigns-left Earth for good. Conversely, a thin
stream of colonials who preferred security to competition flowed to Earth. This condition
had existed for over two hundred years. (And, by the way, it still exists.)
For competition was and is the way of life on the planets. The labor unions of Earth tried,
of course; but the Tellurian brand of unionism never did “take”, because of the profoundly
basic difference in attitude of the men involved. Some Tellus-Type unions were formed in
the early years and a few strikes occurred; only one of which, the last and the most
violent and which neither side won, will be mentioned here.
The Stockmen’s Strike, on Lactia, was the worst strike in all history. Some three
thousand men and over five million head of stock lost their lives; about eight billion dollars
of invested capital went down the drain. Neither side would give an inch. Warfare and
destruction went on until, driven by the force of public opinion-affected no little by the
virtual absence of meat and milk from civilizations every table-the massed armed forces
of all the other planets attacked Lactia and took it by storm. Martial law was declared.
Capital was seized. Labor either worked or faced a firing squad. This condition would
continue, both Capital and Labor were told, until they got together and worked out a
formula that would work.
Experts from both sides, in collaboration with a board of the most outstanding
economists of the time, went to work on the problem. They worked for almost a year.
Capital must make enough profit to attract investors, and wants to make as much more
than that minimum as it can. Labor must make a living, and wants as much more than the
minimum as it can get. Between those two minima lies the line of dispute, which is the
locus of all points of reasonable and practicable settlement. Somewhere on that line lies
a point, which can be computed from the Law of Diminishing Returns as base, at which
Capital’s net profit, Labor’s net annual income, and the public’s benefit, will all three
combine to produce the maximum summated good.
Thus was enunciated the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest. It worked. Wherever and
whenever it has been given a chance to work, it has worked ever since.
The planet-wide adoption of this Principle (it never did gain much favor on Earth) ended
hourly wages and full annual salaries. Every employee, from top to bottom, received an
annual basic salary plus a bonus. This bonus varied with the net profit of the firm and with
each employee’s actual ability. And the Planetsmen, as the production and service
personnel of the planets came to he called, liked it that way. They were independent.
They were individualists. Very few of them wanted to be held down in pay or in
opportunity to any dead level of mediocrity just to help some stupid jerks of incompetents
hang onto their jobs.
The Planetsmen liked automation, and not only because of the perennial shortage of
personnel on the outplanets. And, week after week, union organizers from Earth tried
fruitlessly to crack the Planetsmen’s united front. One such attempt, representative of
hundreds on record, is quoted in part as follows:
Organizer: “But listen! You Associated Wavesmen are organized already; organized to
the Queen’s taste. All you have to do is use your brains and join up with us and it
wouldn’t take hardly any strike at all to . . .”
Planetsman: “Strike? You crazy in the head? What in hell would we strike for?”
Org: “For more money, of course. You ain’t dumb, are you? You could be getting a lot
more money than you are now.”
Plan: “I could like hell. I’d be getting less, come the end of the quarter.”
Org: “Less? How do you figure that?”
Plan: “I don’t. I don’t have to. We’ve got expert computermen figuring for us all the time,
and they keep Top Brass right on the peak of the curve, too, believe me. You never
heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns, I guess.”
Org: “I did so; but what has that got to do with. . . ?” Plan: “Everything. It works like this,
see? My basic is six thousand-and say, how much to Tellurian poleclimbers get?”
Org: “Well, of course we would…”
Plan: “Not with our help you won’t. You’ll dig your own spuds, brother. Anyway, say we
strike-and that’s saying a hell of a lot-ever hear of Lactia? But say we do, and say they
raise our basic to-and that’s saying a hell of a lot, too, believe me-but say they do,
to-hell, to anything you please. Okay. So costs go up, so Top Brass has to raise prices. .
. .”
Org: “Uh-uh. Let ’em take it out of their profits.”
Plan: “They ain’t makin’ that much. Anyway, it’d stack up the same, come to the end of
the quarter. The point would slide off of the peak and my bonus would get a bad case of
the dropsy and I’d wind up the year making less than I will the way things are now.”
Or-: “Well, skipping that for just a minute, how about this automation that’s putting so
many of you men out of jobs?”
Plan: “It ain’t, that are worth a damn. If a man can’t keep on top of the machines, to hell
with him. Let him take a lower-basic job or go to Tellus and live on security. The more
automation we can make work the more production per man-hour and the bigger my
bonus gets. And pretty quick I can jump a level and raise my basic, too. It’s just that
simple. See?”
Org: “I see that it don’t make sense. What you don’t see is that Capital has been
suckering you all along. They’ve been giving you the business. Feeding you the old
boloney and giving you the shaft clear to the hilt and you’re dumb enough to take it.”
Plan: “Not by seven thousand tanks of juice, chum, and needling won’t make us let you
lean on us a nickel’s worth, either. We get the straight dope and our officers don’t dip
into the kitty, either, the way yours do. So what you’d better do, meathead, is roll your
hoop back to Tellus, where maybe you can make somebody believe part of that crap.”
Aboard the Explorer, the Adamses and the Destons were discussing the course of
civilization. Adams had prepared tables of figures, charts, and graphs. He had
determined trends and had extrapolated them into future time. His conclusions were far
from cheerful.
“This unstable condition has lasted far longer than was to have been expected two
centuries ago,” Adams said, definitely. “The only reason why it has lasted so long is
because of the stabilizing effect of the planets siphoning off so many of Earth’s
combative and aggressive people. The situation is now, however, deteriorating; and,
considering the ability, the quality, and the state of advancement of the Planetsmen, it will
continue to deteriorate at an ever-increasing rate to the point of catastrophe.”
“Huh?” Deston asked. “Grind that up a little finer, will you, professor?”
“It’s inevitable. The original aim of Communism was to master all Earth. It failed. It also