The Future in America

The Future in America: A Search After Realities

Title page for The Future in America: A Search After Realities (1906)

Author| H. G. Wells
Language| English
Subject| United States
Genre| Travel literature
Publisher| Chapman & Hall

Publication date

| October 1906
Publication place| United Kingdom
Pages| 259

The Future in America: A Search After Realities is a 1906 travel essay by H. G. Wells recounting his impressions from the first of half a dozen visits he would make to the United States. The book consists of fifteen chapters and a concluding "envoy".

Wells describes the United States as "a great and energetic English-speaking population strewn across a continent so vast as to make it seem small and thin ... caught by the upward sweep of that great increase of knowledge that is everywhere enlarging the power and scope of human effort, exhilarated by it, and active and hopeful beyond any population the world has ever seen" engaged in "a universal commercial competition that must, in the end, if it is not modified, divide them into two permanent classes of rich and poor."[1]

Much of the book is devoted to a discussion of American social problems: labor, corruption (through Jane Addams Wells was able to visit Chicago slums and a corrupt alderman's saloon), immigration (Wells called for either "a gigantic and costly machinery organized to educate and civilize" immigrants, or restriction "to numbers assimilable under existing conditions"[2]), "state-blindness" (by which Wells means the typical American's failure to perceive "that his business activities, his private employments, are constituents in a large collective process"[3]), injustice, racial prejudice (he met with Booker T. Washington, rejected the viability of segregation, and praised the "heroic" resolve of black Americans[4]), American universities, Boston's excessive attachment to the past, and the urgent need for democratizing political reform.[a] The last chapter of the book is devoted to impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, whom he visited at the White House and whom Wells sees as representative not only of the United States but also as "a very symbol of the creative will in man," "the creative purpose, the good-will in men."[6] The Future in America concludes with an "envoy" announcing that "in America, by sheer virtue of its size, its free traditions, and the habit of initiative in its people, the leadership of progress must ultimately rest."[7]

## Background

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Wells's voyage to America took place in the midst of his unsuccessful effort to reform the Fabian Society.[8] He boarded the Carmania on 27 March 1906 and returned to Great Britain on the Cambria on 27 May. Parts of the book were serialized in the Tribune in Britain and in Harper's Weekly in the US from July to October. The volume was published in October 1906.[b][9]

## Reception

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The Future in America was well received in the United States, where Wells "always enjoyed a good reputation, and had occasional strong friendships with those on the American left such as Lincoln Steffens, Ella Winter, Upton Sinclair, and others"; in Britain the book was very successful and was praised by Morley Roberts, Winston Churchill, and Beatrice Webb.[10]

## Notes

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1. ^ Specifically, Wells said that "It is necessary to make the Senate and the House of Representatives more interdependent, and to abolish the possibilities of deadlocks between them, to make election to the Senate direct from the people, and to qualify and weaken the power of the two-party system by the introduction of 'second ballots' and the referendum."[5]
2. ^ According to the biographer David C. Smith, the standard source on Wells's visits to the United States is Sylvia Strauss's unpublished PhD thesis H.G. Wells and America (1968).

## References

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### Footnotes

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1. ^ Wells 1906, p. 133.
2. ^ Wells 1906, p. 145.
3. ^ Wells 1906, p. 153.
4. ^ Wells 1906, p. 201.
5. ^ Wells 1906, p. 245.
6. ^ Wells 1906, p. 253 (emphasis in the original).
7. ^ Wells 1906, p. 257.
8. ^ Smith 1986, pp. 102–103.
9. ^ Sherborne 2010, pp. 176–179.
10. ^ Smith 1986, pp. 104, 516n28.

## External links

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* The Future In America public domain audiobook at LibriVox

### Bibliography

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* Sherborne, Michael (2010). H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life. Peter Owen.
* Smith, David C. (1986). H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal; A Biography. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
* Wells, H. G. (1906). The Future in America: A Search After Realities. New York: Harper and Brothers. Retrieved 28 January 2021.

## Further reading

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* Strauss, Sylvia (1968). H.G. Wells and America (PhD thesis). New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University. OCLC 753995684.

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H. G. Wells

Bibliography

Novels|

* The Time Machine (1895)
* The Wonderful Visit (1895)
* The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
* The Wheels of Chance (1896)
* The Invisible Man (1897)
* The War of the Worlds (1898)
* When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)
* Love and Mr Lewisham (1900)
* The First Men in the Moon (1901)
* The Sea Lady (1902)
* The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904)
* Kipps (1905)
* A Modern Utopia (1905)
* In the Days of the Comet (1906)
* The War in the Air (1908)
* Tono-Bungay (1909)
* Ann Veronica (1909)
* The History of Mr Polly (1910)
* The Sleeper Awakes (1910)
* The New Machiavelli (1911)
* Marriage (1912)
* The Passionate Friends (1913)
* The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914)
* The World Set Free (1914)
* Bealby (1915)
* Boon (1915)
* The Research Magnificent (1915)
* Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916)
* The Soul of a Bishop (1917)
* Joan and Peter (1918)
* The Undying Fire (1919)
* The Secret Places of the Heart (1922)
* Men Like Gods (1923)
* The Dream (1924)
* Christina Alberta's Father (1925)
* The World of William Clissold (1926)
* Meanwhile (1927)
* Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928)
* The Autocracy of Mr. Parham (1930)
* The Bulpington of Blup (1932)
* The Shape of Things to Come (1933)
* The Croquet Player (1936)
* Brynhild (1937)
* Star Begotten (1937)
* The Camford Visitation (1937)
* Apropos of Dolores (1938)
* The Brothers (1938)
* The Holy Terror (1939)
* Babes in the Darkling Wood (1940)
* All Aboard for Ararat (1940)
* You Can't Be Too Careful (1941)

Nonfiction|

* Anticipations
* Certain Personal Matters
* Crux Ansata
* The Discovery of the Future
* An Englishman Looks at the World
* Experiment in Autobiography
* The Fate of Man
* First and Last Things
* Floor Games
* The Future in America
* God the Invisible King
* In the Fourth Year
* Little Wars
* Mankind in the Making
* Mind at the End of Its Tether
* Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History"
* The New America
* The New World Order
* New Worlds for Old
* The Open Conspiracy
* The Outline of History
* Russia in the Shadows
* The Science of Life
* A Short History of the World
* The Story of a Great Schoolmaster
* This Misery of Boots
* Travels of a Republican Radical in Search of Hot Water
* War and the Future
* The Way the World Is Going
* The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind
* World Brain
* A Year of Prophesying

Collections|

* The Country of the Blind and Other Stories
* The Plattner Story and Others
* Select Conversations with an Uncle
* The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents
* Tales of Space and Time
* Twelve Stories and a Dream

Short stories|

* "Æpyornis Island"
* "The Argonauts of the Air"
* "The Beautiful Suit"
* "The Chronic Argonauts"
* "The Cone"
* "The Country of the Blind"
* "The Crystal Egg"
* "A Deal in Ostriches"
* "The Diamond Maker"
* "The Door in the Wall"
* "A Dream of Armageddon"
* "The Empire of the Ants"
* "In the Abyss"
* "The Land Ironclads"
* "Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation"
* "The Lord of the Dynamos"
* "The Man Who Could Work Miracles"
* "The New Accelerator"
* "The Pearl of Love"
* "The Plattner Story"
* "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper"
* "The Red Room"
* "The Sea Raiders"
* "The Star"
* "The Stolen Body"
* "A Story of the Days to Come"
* "A Story of the Stone Age"
* "Triumphs of a Taxidermist"
* "The Truth About Pyecraft"
* "A Vision of Judgment"

Screenplays|

* Things to Come (1936)
* The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937)

Related|

* Political views
* G. P. Wells
* Anthony West (son)
* Joseph Wells (father)
* Simon Wells (great-grandson)
* H. G. Wells Society
* Lunar crater
* Time After Time (1979 film)

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