Part 72 (1/2)

”Remember what happened when somebody promised to marry me,” he said.

”Remember that, as a principle of rect.i.tude, I have recognised my son and accepted your very 'accident of descent' as chief reason for according him all a first-born's rights. That was your instinct towards right--his rights of property.”

”It was righteousness, not rights of property that made you decide,” she a.s.sured him. ”Abel has no rights of property. The law ignores his rights to be alive at all, I believe. The law calls him 'the son of none,' and if you have no parents, you can't really exist. But the rights of labour are above human law and founded in humanity. They are Abel's, yours, everybody's. The man who works, by that fact commands the rights of labour. Besides, circ.u.mstances alter cases.”

”Yes, and may again,” he replied. ”We can't deny the difficulties in this personal experience of mine. But I'm beginning to think the boy's not normal. I very much fear there's a screw loose.”

”Don't think that. He's a very clever boy.”

”And yet Sabina tells me frankly that his bitterness against me keeps pace with his growing intelligence. Instead of his wits defeating his bad temper, as they do sooner or later with most sane people, the older he gets, the more his dislike increases and the less trouble he takes to control it.”

”If that were so, of course circ.u.mstances might alter the case again,”

she admitted. ”But I don't believe there's a weak spot like that.

There's something r.e.t.a.r.ded--some confusion of thought, some kind of knot in his mind that isn't smoothed out yet. You've been infinitely patient and we'll go on being infinitely patient--together.”

This difficult matter she dropped for the present; but finding him some days later in a recipient mood, followed up her cherished argument, that labour must be counted a commodity no more.

”Listen to me, Ray,” she said. ”Very soon you'll be too busy to listen to me at all--these are the last chances for me before your meetings begin. But really what I'm saying will be splendidly useful in speeches.”

”All very well if getting in was all that mattered,” he told her. ”I can't echo all your ideas, Chicky, and speeches have a way of rising up against one at awkward moments afterwards.”

”At any rate, you grant the main point,” she said, ”and so you must grant what follows from it; and if you grant that, and put it in your manifesto, you'll lose a few votes, but you'll gain hundreds. If labour's not a commodity, but to be regulated by body and soul, then wages must be regulated by body and soul too. Or, if you want to put it in a way for a crowd to understand, you can say that we give even a steam-engine the oil it must have before it begins to work, so how can we deny a man the oil he wants before he begins to work?”

”That means a minimum of wages.”

”Yes, a minimum consistent with human needs, below which wages cannot and must not fail. That minimum should be just as much taken for granted as the air a man breathes, or the water he drinks, or the free education he gets as a boy. It isn't wages really; it's recognition of a man's right to live and share the privileges of life, and be self-respecting, just because he is a man. Everybody who is born, Ray, ought to have the unquestioned right to live, and the amplest opportunity to become a good and useful citizen. After that is granted, then wages should begin, and each man, or woman, should have full freedom and opportunity to earn what he, or she, was worth. That does away with the absurd idea of equality, which can only be created artificially and would breed disaster if we did create it.”

”There's no such thing as equality in human nature, any more than in any other nature, Estelle. Seeds from the same pod are different--some weak, some strong. But I grant the main pet.i.tion. The idea's first rate--a firm basis of right to reasonable life, and security for every human being as our low-water mark; while, on that foundation, each may lift an edifice according to their power. So that none who has the power to rise above the minimum would be prevented from doing so, and no Trades Union tyranny should interfere to prevent the strong man working eight hours a day if he desires to do so, because the weaker one can only work seven.”

”I think the Trades Unions only want to prevent men being handicapped out of the race at the start,” she answered. ”They know as well as we do, that men are not born equal in mind or body; but rightly and reasonably, they want them all to start equal as far as conditions go.

The race is to the strong and the prize is to the strong; but all, at least, should have power to train for the race and start with equal opportunities to win. There's such a lot to be done.”

”There is,” he admitted. ”The handicap you talk of is created for thousands and thousands before they are born at all.”

”Think of being handicapped out of the race before you are born!” she cried. ”What could be more unjust and cruel and wicked than that?”

”Very few will put the unborn before the living, or think of a potential child rather than the desires of the parents--selfish though they may be. It's a free country, and we don't know enough to start stopping people from having a hand in the next generation if they decide to do so.”

But her enthusiasm was not quenched by difficulties.

”We want science and politics and good will to work together,” she said.

He returned to the smaller argument.

”It's a far cry to what you want, yet I for one don't shrink from it.

The better a man is, the larger share he should have of the profits of any enterprise he helps to advance. Then wages would take the shape of his share in the profits, and you might easily find a head workman of genius drawing more out of a business than--say, a junior partner, who is a fool and not nearly so vital to the enterprise as he. But, you see, if we say that, we argue in a circle, for the junior partner, a.s.s though he is, represents oil and fuel, which are just as important as the clever workman's brains--in fact, his brains can't work without them.

Capital and labour are two halves of a whole and depend upon each other, as much as men depend on women and women on men. Capital does a great deal more than pay labour wages, remember. It educates his children, builds his houses and doctors his ailments. Soon--so they tell me--capital will be appropriated to look after labour's old age also, and cheer his manhood with the knowledge that his age is safe.”

”You don't grudge any of these things, Ray?”