Part 17 (1/2)

We all laughed a little, perceiving the semi-ironical spirit of his talk; but the Altrurian must have taken it in dead earnest: ”But, in that case, the number of people thrown out of work would be very great, wouldn't it?

And what would become of them?”

”Well, they would have whatever their farms brought to make a new start with somewhere else; and, besides, that question of what would become of people thrown out of work by a given improvement is something that capital cannot consider. We used to introduce a bit of machinery in the mill, every now and then, that threw out a dozen or a hundred people; but we couldn't stop for that.”

”And you never knew what became of them?”

”Sometimes. Generally not. We took it for granted that they would light on their feet somehow.”

”And the state--the whole people--the government--did nothing for them?”

”If it became a question of the poor-house, yes.”

”Or the jail,” the lawyer suggested.

”Speaking of the poor-house,” said the professor, ”did our exemplary rural friends tell you how they sell out their paupers to the lowest bidder, and get them boarded sometimes as low as a dollar and a quarter a week?”

”Yes, young Mr. Camp told me of that. He seemed to think it was terrible.”

”Did he? Well, I'm glad to hear that of young Mr. Camp. From all that I've been told before, he seems to reserve his conscience for the use of capitalists. What does he propose to do about it?”

”He seems to think the state ought to find work for them.”

”Oh, paternalism! Well, I guess the state won't.”

”That was his opinion, too.”

”It seems a hard fate,” said the minister, ”that the only provision the law makes for people who are worn out by sickness or a life of work should be something that a.s.sorts them with idiots and lunatics, and brings such shame upon them that it is almost as terrible as death.”

”It is the only way to encourage independence and individuality,” said the professor. ”Of course, it has its dark side. But anything else would be sentimental and unbusinesslike, and, in fact, un-American.”

”I am not so sure that it would be un-Christian,” the minister timidly ventured, in the face of such an authority on political economy.

”Oh, as to that, I must leave the question to the reverend clergy,” said the professor.

A very unpleasant little silence followed. It was broken by the lawyer, who put his feet together, and, after a glance down at them, began to say: ”I was very much interested this afternoon by a conversation I had with some of the young fellows in the hotel. You know most of them are graduates, and they are taking a sort of supernumerary vacation this summer before they plunge into the battle of life in the autumn. They were talking of some other fellows, cla.s.smates of theirs, who were not so lucky, but had been obliged to begin the fight at once. It seems that our fellows here are all going in for some sort of profession: medicine or law or engineering or teaching or the church, and they were commiserating those other fellows not only because they were not having the supernumerary vacation, but because they were going into business. That struck me as rather odd, and I tried to find out what it meant, and, as nearly as I could find out, it meant that most college graduates would not go into business if they could help it. They seemed to feel a sort of incongruity between their education and the business life. They pitied the fellows that had to go in for it, and apparently the fellows that had to go in for it pitied themselves, for the talk seemed to have begun about a letter that one of the chaps here had got from poor Jack or Jim somebody, who had been obliged to go into his father's business, and was groaning over it. The fellows who were going to study professions were hugging themselves at the contrast between their fate and his, and were making remarks about business that were, to say the least, unbusinesslike. A few years ago we should have made a summary disposition of the matter, and I believe some of the newspapers still are in doubt about the value of a college education to men who have got to make their way. What do you think?”

The lawyer addressed his question to the manufacturer, who answered, with a comfortable satisfaction, that he did not think those young men if they went into business would find that they knew too much.

”But they pointed out,” said the lawyer, ”that the great American fortunes had been made by men who had never had their educational advantages, and they seemed to think that what we call the education of a gentleman was a little too good for money-making purposes.”

”Well,” said the other, ”they can console themselves with the reflection that going into business isn't necessarily making money; it isn't necessarily making a living, even.”

”Some of them seem to have caught on to that fact; and they pitied Jack or Jim partly because the chances were so much against him. But they pitied him mostly because in the life before him he would have no use for his academic training, and he had better not gone to college at all. They said he would be none the better for it, and would always be miserable when he looked back to it.”

The manufacturer did not reply, and the professor, after a preliminary hemming, held his peace. It was the banker who took the word: ”Well, so far as business is concerned, they were right. It is no use to pretend that there is any relation between business and the higher education.

There is no business man who will pretend that there is not often an actual incompatibility if he is honest. I know that when we get together at a commercial or financial dinner we talk as if great merchants and great financiers were beneficent geniuses, who evoked the prosperity of mankind by their schemes from the conditions that would otherwise have remained barren. Well, very likely they are, but we must all confess that they do not know it at the time. What they are consciously looking out for then is the main chance. If general prosperity follows, all well and good; they are willing to be given the credit for it. But, as I said, with business as business, the 'education of a gentleman' has nothing to do.

That education is always putting the old Ciceronian question: whether the fellow arriving at a starving city with a cargo of grain is bound to tell the people before he squeezes them that there are half a dozen other fellows with grain just below the horizon. As a gentleman he would have to tell them, because he could not take advantage of their necessities; but, as a business man, he would think it bad business to tell them, or no business at all. The principle goes all through; I say, business is business; and I am not going to pretend that business will ever be anything else. In our business battles we don't take off our hats to the other side and say, 'Gentlemen of the French Guard, have the goodness to fire.' That may be war, but it is not business. We seize all the advantages we can; very few of us would actually deceive; but if a fellow believes a thing, and we know he is wrong, we do not usually take the trouble to set him right, if we are going to lose anything by undeceiving him. That would not be business. I suppose you think that is dreadful?” He turned smilingly to the minister.

”I wish--I wish,” said the minister, gently, ”it could be otherwise.”