Part 18 (2/2)
”Distinctly so,” said the professor. ”Now that the text-books are furnished by the state, we have only to go a step further and provide a good, hot lunch for the children every day, as they do in Paris.”
”Well,” the banker returned, ”I don't know that I should have much to say against that. It seems as reasonable as anything in the system of education which we force upon the working cla.s.ses. _They_ know perfectly well, whether we do or not, that the three R's will not make their children better mechanics or laborers, and that, if the fight for a mere living is to go on from generation to generation, they will have no leisure to apply the little learning they get in the public schools for their personal culture. In the mean time we deprive the parents of their children's labor, in order that they may be better citizens for their schooling, as we imagine; I don't know whether they are or not. We offer them no sort of compensation for their time, and I think we ought to feel obliged to them for not wanting wages for their children while we are teaching them to be better citizens.”
”You know,” said the professor, ”that has been suggested by some of their leaders.”
”No, really? Well, that is too good!” The banker threw back his head and roared, and we all laughed with him. When we had sobered down again, he said: ”I suppose that when a working-man makes all the use he can of his lower education he becomes a business man, and then he doesn't need the higher. Professor, you seem to be left out in the cold by our system, whichever way you take it.”
”Oh,” said the professor, ”the law of supply and demand works both ways: it creates the demand, if the supply comes first; and if we keep on giving the sons of business men the education of a gentleman, we may yet make them feel the need of it. We shall evolve a new sort of business man.”
”The sort that can't make money, or wouldn't exactly like to, on some terms?” asked the banker. ”Well, perhaps we shall work out our democratic salvation in that way. When you have educated your new business man to the point where he can't consent to get rich at the obvious cost of others, you've got him on the way back to work with his hands. He will sink into the ranks of labor, and give the fellow with the lower education a chance.
I've no doubt he'll take it. I don't know but you're right, professor.”
The lawyer had not spoken as yet. Now he said: ”Then it is education, after all, that is to bridge the chasm between the cla.s.ses and the ma.s.ses, though it seems destined to go a long way around about it. There was a time, I believe, when we expected religion to do that.”
”Well, it may still be doing it, for all I know,” said the banker. ”What do you say?” he asked, turning to the minister. ”You ought to be able to give us some statistics on the subject with that large congregation of yours. You preach to more people than any other pulpit in your city.”
The banker named one of the princ.i.p.al cities in the East, and the minister answered, with, modest pride: ”I am not sure of that; but our society is certainly a very large one.”
”Well, and how many of the lower cla.s.ses are there in it--people who work for their living with their hands?”
The minister stirred uneasily in his chair, and at last he said, with evident unhappiness: ”They--I suppose--they have their own churches. I have never thought that such a separation of the cla.s.ses was right; and I have had some of the very best people--socially and financially--with me in the wish that there might be more brotherliness between the rich and poor among us. But as yet--”
He stopped; the banker pursued: ”Do you mean there are _no_ working-people in your congregation?”
”I cannot think of any,” returned the minister, so miserably that the banker forbore to press the point.
The lawyer broke the awkward pause which followed: ”I have heard it a.s.serted that there is no country in the world where the separation of the cla.s.ses is so absolute as in ours. In fact, I once heard a Russian revolutionist, who had lived in exile all over Europe, say that he had never seen anywhere such a want of kindness or sympathy between rich and poor as he had observed in America. I doubted whether he was right. But he believed that, if it ever came to the industrial revolution with us, the fight would be more uncompromising than any such fight that the world had ever seen. There was no respect from low to high, he said, and no consideration from high to low, as there were in countries with traditions and old a.s.sociations.”
”Well,” said the banker, ”there may be something in that. Certainly, so far as the two forces have come into conflict here, there has been no disposition, on either side, to 'make war with the water of roses.' It's astonis.h.i.+ng, in fact, to see how ruthless the fellows who have just got up are toward the fellows who are still down. And the best of us have been up only a generation or two--and the fellows who are still down know it.”
”And what do you think would be the outcome of such a conflict?” I asked, with my soul divided between fear of it and the perception of its excellence as material. My fancy vividly sketched the outline of a story which should forecast the struggle and its event, somewhat on the plan of the Battle of Dorking.
”We should beat,” said the banker, breaking his cigar-ash off with his little finger; and I instantly cast him, with his ironic calm, for the part of a great patrician leader in my ”Fall of the Republic.” Of course, I disguised him somewhat, and travestied his worldly bonhomie with the bluff sang-froid of the soldier; these things are easily done.
”What makes you think we should beat?” asked the manufacturer, with a certain curiosity.
”Well, all the good jingo reasons: we have got the materials for beating.
Those fellows throw away their strength whenever they begin to fight, and they've been so badly generalled, up to the present time, that they have wanted to fight at the outset of every quarrel. They have been beaten in every quarrel, but still they always want to begin by fighting. That is all right. When they have learned enough to begin by _voting_, then we shall have to look out. But if they keep on fighting, and always putting themselves in the wrong and getting the worst of it, perhaps we can fix the voting so we needn't be any more afraid of that than we are of the fighting. It's astonis.h.i.+ng how short-sighted they are. They, have no conception of any cure for their grievances except more wages and fewer hours.”
”But,” I asked, ”do you really think they have any just grievances?”
”Of course not, as a business man,” said the banker. ”If I were a working-man, I should probably think differently. But we will suppose, for the sake of argument, that their day is too long and their pay is too short. How do they go about to better themselves? They strike. Well, a strike is a fight, and in a fight, nowadays, it is always skill and money that win. The working-men can't stop till they have put themselves outside of the public sympathy which the newspapers say is so potent in their behalf; I never saw that it did them the least good. They begin by boycotting, and breaking the heads of the men who want to work. They destroy property, and they interfere with business--the two absolutely sacred things in the American religion. Then we call out the militia and shoot a few of them, and their leaders declare the strike off. It is perfectly simple.”
”But will it be quite as simple,” I asked, reluctant in behalf of my projected romance, to have the matter so soon disposed of--”will it be quite so simple if their leaders ever persuade the working-men to leave the militia, as they threaten to do, from time to time?”
”No, not quite so simple,” the banker admitted. ”Still, the fight would be comparatively simple. In the first place, I doubt--though I won't be certain about it--whether there are a great many working-men in the militia now. I rather fancy it is made up, for the most part, of clerks and small tradesmen and book-keepers, and such employes of business as have time and money for it. I may be mistaken.”
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