Useless Hands
Early industrial dystopia in jacket, 1926
Useless Hands (1926) by Claude Farrère, translated by Elisabeth Abbott, is an early industrial dystopia set at the close of the twentieth century, when a single corporation called the Siturgic controls the bread supply of the entire Western Hemisphere. Its Governor, James Fergus MacHead Vohr, rules from an engineered paradise called Artificial Island while his workforce lives in identical concrete blocks across the river. When the workers threaten to strike, MacHead Vohr deploys the machine hands, automated mechanisms capable of replacing human labor entirely. The title refers not only to the workers but to the novel's deeper argument about what becomes disposable when efficiency is the only measure of value. Originally published in French as Les condamnés à mort in 1920, this is the first English edition, in the authorized translation. Upon publication the New York Times called it "pregnant with prophecy," comparing it to Samuel Butler, H. G. Wells, and Karel ?apek. First editions are scarce, especially in the original dust jacket.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1926. #10762.
Fine copy in a bright, very good dust jacket with tears (one neatly repaired internally with tape) and a little bit of loss at base of spine and at folds. Stunning copy.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1926. #10762.
Fine copy in a bright, very good dust jacket with tears (one neatly repaired internally with tape) and a little bit of loss at base of spine and at folds. Stunning copy.
Additional Details
Useless Hands opens on Artificial Island, the engineered private paradise MacHead Vohr has constructed for himself and his daughter Eva from salvaged architectural elements, transplanted forests, and living specimens of nearly extinct species including horses, which he keeps as conspicuous luxuries. The island is a monument to what absolute corporate power can acquire, and Farrère describes it with a satirical precision that anticipates the aesthetic of gilded excess the novel will systematically dismantle. Across the river, visible from the island's highest hill, are the Blocks, the uniform concrete housing where MacHead Vohr's workforce lives and from which it cannot really escape.
The Siturgic is not merely a corporation. It is the food supply for four hundred million people across the Western Hemisphere, organized with military discipline under MacHead Vohr's absolute authority. His Board of Chief Engineers controls every aspect of production, and the workers who operate the machinery are classified and housed by function, their lives as mechanized as the equipment they tend. When the workforce threatens a general strike over conditions, MacHead Vohr's response is to accelerate the deployment of the machine hands, the automated equipment that can replace human labor entirely. The strike, he calculates, solves itself, and the workers become unnecessary before they can exercise their only leverage.
The novel's human dimension comes through Andrea Ferrati, a young engineer of working-class origin who has risen into the managerial class, and Eva MacHead Vohr, the Governor's daughter, whose sheltered existence on Artificial Island has left her with a conscience her father does not share. Their relationship, which develops alongside the escalating crisis, gives the novel a human angle of what it costs individuals to inhabit a system they cannot entirely endorse. Andrea is caught between class loyalty and professional advancement. Eva is caught between love for her father and horror at what she gradually understands him to be.
The title carries multiple meanings. The workers are the useless hands, rendered superfluous by the machines. But the phrase also describes the human element more broadly in MacHead Vohr's calculations, the parts of people that cannot be assigned a production value. Farrère's target is the logic that produces such calculations, the reduction of human beings to their economic function, which he saw as the defining pathology of industrial capitalism at its most concentrated. The novel was published six years before Huxley's Brave New World and four years before ?apek's R.U.R. reached English audiences, and it anticipates both in its concern with mechanization and the disposability of human labor.
The ending does not resolve into simple triumph for either side. MacHead Vohr's deployment of the machines succeeds in breaking the strike, but the cost, including Eva's death in the violence, strips the victory of anything resembling satisfaction. The new Governor inherits a more efficient Siturgic and a more complete monopoly. Farrère's ending to the novel is not optimistic about what resistance can achieve against this scale of power.
The Siturgic is not merely a corporation. It is the food supply for four hundred million people across the Western Hemisphere, organized with military discipline under MacHead Vohr's absolute authority. His Board of Chief Engineers controls every aspect of production, and the workers who operate the machinery are classified and housed by function, their lives as mechanized as the equipment they tend. When the workforce threatens a general strike over conditions, MacHead Vohr's response is to accelerate the deployment of the machine hands, the automated equipment that can replace human labor entirely. The strike, he calculates, solves itself, and the workers become unnecessary before they can exercise their only leverage.
The novel's human dimension comes through Andrea Ferrati, a young engineer of working-class origin who has risen into the managerial class, and Eva MacHead Vohr, the Governor's daughter, whose sheltered existence on Artificial Island has left her with a conscience her father does not share. Their relationship, which develops alongside the escalating crisis, gives the novel a human angle of what it costs individuals to inhabit a system they cannot entirely endorse. Andrea is caught between class loyalty and professional advancement. Eva is caught between love for her father and horror at what she gradually understands him to be.
The title carries multiple meanings. The workers are the useless hands, rendered superfluous by the machines. But the phrase also describes the human element more broadly in MacHead Vohr's calculations, the parts of people that cannot be assigned a production value. Farrère's target is the logic that produces such calculations, the reduction of human beings to their economic function, which he saw as the defining pathology of industrial capitalism at its most concentrated. The novel was published six years before Huxley's Brave New World and four years before ?apek's R.U.R. reached English audiences, and it anticipates both in its concern with mechanization and the disposability of human labor.
The ending does not resolve into simple triumph for either side. MacHead Vohr's deployment of the machines succeeds in breaking the strike, but the cost, including Eva's death in the violence, strips the victory of anything resembling satisfaction. The new Governor inherits a more efficient Siturgic and a more complete monopoly. Farrère's ending to the novel is not optimistic about what resistance can achieve against this scale of power.