Part 6 (1/2)
We laughed with him, all but the minister, whose mind seemed to have caught upon some other point, and who sat absently by.
”And is it your opinion, from what you know of the working-man generally, that they all have this twist in their heads?” the professor asked.
”They have, until they begin to rise. Then they get rid of it mighty soon.
Let a man save something--enough to get a house of his own, and take a boarder or two, and perhaps have a little money at interest--and he sees the matter in another light.”
”Do you think he sees it more clearly?” asked the minister.
”He sees it differently.”
”What do you think?” the minister pursued, turning to the lawyer. ”You are used to dealing with questions of justice--”
”Rather more with questions of law, I'm afraid,” the other returned, pleasantly, putting his feet together before him and looking down at them in a way he had. ”But, still, I have a great interest in questions of justice, and I confess that I find a certain wild equity in this principle, which I see n.o.body could do business on. It strikes me as idyllic--it's a touch of real poetry in the rough-and-tumble prose of our economic life.”
He referred this to me as something I might appreciate in my quality of literary man, and I responded in my quality of practical man: ”There's certainly more rhyme than reason in it.”
He turned again to the minister:
”I suppose the ideal of the Christian state is the family?”
”I hope so,” said the minister, with the grat.i.tude that I have seen people of his cloth show when men of the world conceded premises which the world usually contests; it has seemed to me pathetic.
”And if that is the case, why, the logic of the postulate is that the prosperity of the weakest is the sacred charge and highest happiness of all the stronger. But the law has not recognized any such principle, in economics at least, and if the labor unions are based upon it they are outlaw, so far as any hope of enforcing it is concerned; and it is bad for men to feel themselves outlaw. How is it,” the lawyer continued, turning to the Altrurian, ”in your country? We can see no issue here, if the first principle of organized labor antagonizes the first principle of business.”
”But I don't understand precisely yet what the first principle of business is,” returned my guest.
”Ah, that raises another interesting question,” said the lawyer. ”Of course, every business man solves the problem practically according to his temperament and education, and I suppose that on first thoughts every business man would answer you accordingly. But perhaps the personal equation is something you wish to eliminate from the definition.”
”Yes, of course.”
”Still, I would rather not venture upon it first,” said the lawyer.
”Professor, what should you say was the first principle of business?”
”Buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest,” the professor promptly answered.
”We will pa.s.s the parson and the doctor and the novelist as witnesses of no value. They can't possibly have any cognizance of the first principle of business; their affair is to look after the souls and bodies and fancies of other people. But what should you say it was?” he asked the banker.
”I should say it was an enlightened conception of one's own interests.”
”And you?”
The manufacturer had no hesitation in answering: ”The good of Number One, first, last, and all the time. There may be a difference of opinion about the best way to get at it; the long way may be the better, or the short way; the direct way or the oblique way, or the purely selfish way, or the partly selfish way; but if you ever lose sight of that end you might as well shut up shop. That seems to be the first law of nature, as well as the first law of business.”
”Ah, we mustn't go to nature for our morality,” the minister protested.
”We were not talking of morality,” said the manufacturer; ”we were talking of business.”
This brought the laugh on the minister, but the lawyer cut it short: ”Well, then, I don't really see why the trades-unions are not as business-like as the syndicates in their dealings with all those outside of themselves. Within themselves they practise an altruism of the highest order, but it is a tribal altruism; it is like that which prompts a Sioux to share his last mouthful with a starving Sioux, and to take the scalp of a starving Apache. How is it with your trades-unions in Altruria?” he asked my friend.
”We have no trades-unions in Altruria,” he began.