(eng) Murray Leinster by The Greks Bring Gifts

Author:The Greks Bring Gifts [Gifts, The Greks Bring]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

It seems to be true that all the intelligent races in the galaxy think more or less in the same manner. That is, everyone will act stupidly if allowed, and hell hath no fury like a population expecting impossibilities, when they aren't produced. The public expected paradise to turn up immediately, when it would have been impossible for months—if it were possible at all. So there was trouble.

The unemployment rate went up to thirty per cent. The number of people on relief more than doubled. There were crowds demonstrating and rioting in the streets. They did not demand employment, because that would soon be unimportant. They rioted for more speed in producing the perfect state of things for which the Greks had prepared the way.

Here there is still some dispute. Some students of the matter consider that the Greks read human psychology with a fine precision, and used their knowledge of us to plan their actions. Other students say that any intelligent race would have been as foolish as we were, under the circumstances. The odds are that the latter view is correct.

Some factories were shut down in order to be retooled for service in a Grek-oriented future society. Then they found it difficult to get men to work on the retooling. Most people decided to draw unemployment pay and wait until the factories were ready to hire them at a week's wages for a day's work, and frienge benefits besides. So most factories did not get retooled.

Some occupations and industries appeared certain to be wiped out. Filling stations were obviously on the way to extinction, with cars due to run on broadcast power. These cars were already present in considerable numbers. The entire oil industry faltered. The coal industry stopped. The building industry suspended operations, because new materials were going to make future building infinitely easier and cheaper. People waited for the new materials. Textiles we'd known how to make didn't compare with the new textiles the Greks had shown us how to produce, so the textile industry collapsed. And absenteeism went up unbelievably. There came a time when sixty per cent of the population was either without work, or else was staying home to wait for the working conditions that ought to be on the way.

Food was still needed, to be sure. But the return for producing and distributing it was not satisfying. Workers in the food industries felt that they should work only one day a week, as other workers were waiting to do, and they should be at least as prosperous now as the rest of the world expected to be later. Food processing and distribution began to suffer from an excessive loss of manpower.

Then people, happily engaged in waiting, demanded home relief to prevent starvation in the meantime. They were so many in number that they got it. The gigantic government-surplus food warehouses began to ship out food in bulk to nonpaying customers. Unemployment insurance funds began to dwindle. There was indignation that the benefits the Greks had brought us were not making their appearance in the life of the average man.

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