The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Air Trust, by George Allan England

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Title: The Air Trust

Author: George Allan England

Release Date: July 5, 2004 [EBook #12826]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AIR TRUST ***

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[Illustration: "Visions!" She said softly, "Do you behold them too?"]

THE AIR TRUST

By George Allan England

Author of
"Darkness and Dawn," "Beyond the Great Oblivion,"
"The Afterglow," etc., etc.

Illustrations by
John Sloan

1915

TO EUGENE V. DEBS

"Comrade 'Gene,"

Lover of All Mankind and
Apostle of the World's Emancipation,

I dedicate
THIS BOOK

FOREWORD

This book is the result of an attempt to carry the monopolistic
principle to its logical conclusion. For many years I have entertained
the idea that if a monopoly be right in oil, coal, beef, steel or what
not, it would also be right in larger ways involving, for example, the
use of the ocean and the air itself. I believe that, had capitalists
been able to bring the seas and the atmosphere under physical control,
they would long ago have monopolized them. Capitalism has not refrained
from laying its hand on these things through any sense of decency, but
merely because the task has hitherto proved impossible.

Granting, then, the premise that some process might be discovered
whereby the air-supply of the world could be controlled, the Air Trust
logically follows. I have endeavored to show how such a Trust would
inevitably lead to the utter enslavement of the human race, unless
overthrown by the only means then possible, i.e., violence. This book is
not a brief for "direct action." Doubtless the capitalist press (if it
indeed notice the work at all) will denounce it as a plea for
"bomb-throwing" and apply the epithet of "Anarchist" to me; but at this
the judicious and the intelligent will only smile; and as for our
friends the enemy, we esteem their opinion at its precise real value,
zero.

Given the conditions supposed in this book, I repeat--a complete
monopoly of the air, with an absolute suppression of all politic