Part 16 (1/2)

”Well,” she returned, lightly, ”if it's anything like neighborliness as I've seen it in small places, deliver me from it! I like being independent. That's why I like the city. You're let alone.”

”I was down in New York once, and I went through some of the streets and houses where the poor people live,” said young Camp, ”and they seemed to know each other and to be quite neighborly.”

”And would you like to be all messed in with one another that way?”

demanded the lady.

”Well, I thought it was better than living as we do in the country, so far apart that we never see one another, hardly. And it seems to me better than not having any neighbors at all.”

”Well, every one to his taste,” said Mrs. Makely. ”I wish you would tell us how people manage with you socially, Mr. h.o.m.os.”

”Why, you know,” he began, ”we have neither city nor country in your sense, and so we are neither so isolated nor so crowded together. You feel that you lose a great deal in not seeing one another oftener?” he asked Camp.

”Yes. Folks rust out living alone. It's Human nature to want to get together.”

”And I understand Mrs. Makely that it is human nature to want to keep apart?”

”Oh no, but to come together independently,” she answered.

”Well, that is what we have contrived in our life at home. I should have to say, in the first place, that--”

”Excuse me just one moment, Mr. h.o.m.os,” said Mrs. Makely. This perverse woman was as anxious to hear about Altruria as any of us, but she was a woman who would rather hear the sound of her own voice than any other, even if she were dying, as she would call it, to hear the other. The Altrurian stopped politely, and Mrs. Makely went on: ”I have been thinking of what Mr. Camp was saying about the blacklisted men, and their all turning into tramps--”

”But I didn't say that, Mrs. Makely,” the young fellow protested, in astonishment.

”Well, it stands to reason that if the tramps have all been blacklisted men--”

”But I didn't say that, either.”

”No matter! What I am trying to get at is this: if a workman has made himself a nuisance to the employers, haven't they a right to punish him in any way they can?”

”I believe there's no law yet against blacklisting,” said Camp.

”Very well, then, I don't see what they've got to complain of. The employers surely know their own business.”

”They claim to know the men's, too. That's what they're always saying; they will manage their own affairs in their own way. But no man, or company, that does business on a large scale has any affairs that are not partly other folks' affairs, too. All the saying in the world won't make it different.”

”Very well, then,” said Mrs. Makely, with a force of argument which she seemed to think was irresistible, ”I think the workmen had better leave things to the employers, and then they won't get blacklisted. It's as broad as it's long.”

I confess that, although I agreed with Mrs. Makely in regard to what the workmen had better do, her position had been arrived at by such extraordinary reasoning that I blushed for her; at the same time, I wanted to laugh. She continued, triumphantly: ”You see, the employers have ever so much more at stake.”

”Then men have everything at stake--the work of their hands,” said the young fellow.

”Oh, but surely,” said Mrs. Makely, ”you wouldn't set that against capital? You wouldn't compare the two?”

”Yes, I should,” said Camp, and I could see his eye kindle and his jaw stiffen.

”Then I suppose you would say that a man ought to get as much for his work as an employer gets for his capital. If you think one has as much at stake as the other, you must think they ought to be paid alike.”

”That is _just_ what I think,” said Camp, and Mrs. Makely burst into a peal of amiable laughter.