Part 32 (2/2)
As they entered the dining-room Zen's mother, whiter and it seemed even more distinguished by the years, joined them, accompanied by Mrs.
Squiggs, a thin woman much concerned about social status, and the party was complete.
Transley managed the carving more skilfully than his protest might have suggested, and there was a lull in the conversation while the first demands of appet.i.te were being satisfied.
”Tell us about your settlement scheme, Mr. Grant,” Mrs. Transley urged when it seemed necessary to find a topic. ”Mr. Grant has quite a wonderful plan.”
”Yes, wise us up, old man,” said Transley. ”I've heard something of it, but never could see through it.”
”It's all very simple,” Grant explained. ”I am providing the capital to start a few families on farms. Instead of lending the money directly to them I am financing a company in which each farmer must subscribe for stock to the value of the land he is to occupy. His stock he will pay for with a part of the proceeds of each year's crop, until it is paid in full, when he becomes a paid-up shareholder, subject to no further call except a levy which may be made for running expenses.”
”And then your advances are returned to you with interest,” Squiggs suggested. ”A very creditable plan of benefaction; very creditable, indeed.”
”No, that is not the idea. In the first place, I am accepting no interest on my advances, and in the second place the money, when repaid by the shareholders, will not be returned to me, but will be used to establish another colony on the same basis, and so on--the movement will be extended from group to group.”
Mr. Squiggs readjusted his large round tortoise-sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses.
”Do I understand that you are charging no interest?”
”Not a cent.”
”Then where do YOU come in?”
”I had hoped to make it clear that I am not seeking to 'come in.' You see, the money I am doing this with is not really mine at all.”
”Not yours?” cried a chorus of voices.
”No. Mr. Squiggs, you are a lawyer, and therefore a man of perspicuity and accurate definitions. What is money?”
”You flatter me. I should say that money is a medium for the exchange of value.”
”Very well. Therefore, if a man accepts money without giving value for it in exchange he is violating the fundamental principle underlying the use of money. He is, in short, an economic outlaw.”
”I am afraid I don't follow you.”
”Let me ill.u.s.trate by my own experience, and that of my family. My father was possessed of a piece of land which at one time had little or no value. Eventually it became of great value, not through anything he had done, but as a result of the natural law that births exceed deaths.
Yet he, although he had done nothing to create this value, was able, through a faulty economic system, to pocket the proceeds. Then, as a result of the advantages which his wealth gave him, he was able to extract from society throughout all the remainder of his life value out of all proportion to any return he made for it. Finally it came down to me. Holding my peculiar belief, which my right and left bower consider sinful and silly respectively, I found money forced upon me, regardless of the fact that I had given absolutely no value in exchange. Now if money is a medium for the exchange of value and I receive money without giving value for it, it is plain that someone else must have parted with money without receiving value in return. The thing is basically immoral.”
”Your father couldn't take it with him.”
”But why should _I_ have it? I never contributed a finger-weight of service for it. From society the money came and to society it should return.”
”You should worry,” said Transley. ”Society isn't worrying over you.
Some more of the roast beef?”
”No, thank you. But to come down to date. It seems that I cannot get away from this wealth which dogs me at every turn. Before enlisting I had been margining certain steel stocks, purely in the ordinary course of affairs. With the demands made by the war on the steel industry my stocks went up in price and my good friend Murdoch was able to report that it had made a fortune for me while I was overseas.... And we call ourselves an intelligent people!”
”And so we are,” said Mr. Squiggs. ”We stick to a system we know to be sound. It has weathered all the gales of the past, and promises to weather those of the future. I tell you, Grant, communism won't work. You can't get away from the principle of individual reward for individual effort.”
”My dear fellow, that's exactly what I'm pleading for. I have no patience with any claim that all men are equal, or capable of rendering equal service to society, and I want payment to be made according to service rendered, not according to the freaks of a haphazard system such as I have been trying to describe.”
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