"Again, the great exclusive tendency of richer people--due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement if their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor--is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulf--which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations toward refined habits on the part of the rich--will make that exchange between class and class, the promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Some of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and their etoilated pallor followed naturally enough."
Unlike his When the Sleeper Wakes, the upper classes seem to be more sympathetic to Wells in this wicked little (80 pages!) cautionary tale of science-fiction, as the Morlocks are treating the Eloi like stupid cows and are eating them!
This is what happens when there is no middle class!
That Wells, ahead of his time, as usual...
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