 CHAPTER 7 OF A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Matthew D. Robinson. A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA by William Dean Howells. CHAPTER 7 The Altruarian looked at Mrs. Makley with an amazement visibly heightened by the air of complacency she put on after delivering this poser. Do you really think Christ meant that you ought always to have the poor with you? He asked. Why, of course! She answered triumphantly. How else are the sympathies of the rich to be cultivated? The poverty of some and the wealth of others. Isn't that what forms the great tie of human brotherhood? If we were all comfortable or all shared alike, there could not be anything like charity. And Paul said the greatest of these is charity. I believe it's love in the new version, but it comes to the same thing. The Altruarian gave a kind of gasp and then lapsed into a silence that lasted until we came in sight of the camp farmhouse. It stood on the crest of a roadside upland and looked down the beautiful valley, bathed in Sabbath sunlight, and away to the ranges of hills so far that it was hard to say whether it was sun or shadow that dimmed their distance. Decidedly the place was what the country people call sightly. The old house, once painted a brandon red, crouched low to the ground, with its lean-to in the rear and its flat arched woodsheds and wagon houses stretching away at the side of the barn, and covering the approach to it with an unbroken roof. There were flowers in the beds along the underpinning of the house, which stood close to the street, and on one side of the door was a clump of Spanish willow, an old-fashioned dune rose climbed over it from the other. An aged dog got stiffly to his feet from the threshold stone and whimpered as our buck-board drew up. The poultry picking about the path and among the chips lazily made way for us, and as our wheels ceased to crunch upon the gravel we heard hasty steps, and Ruben Camp came round the corner of the house in time to give Mrs. Makley his hand and help her spring to the ground, which she did very lightly. Her remarkable mind had kept her body in a sort of sympathetic activity, at thirty-five she had the grassal ease and self-command of a girl. Ah, Ruben! she sighed, permitting herself to call him by his first name, with the emotion which expressed itself more definitely in the words that followed. How I envy you all this dear old home-like place! I never come here without thinking of my grandfather's farm in Massachusetts, where I used to go every summer when I was a little girl. If I had a place like this I should never leave it. Well, Mrs. Makley, said young Camp, you can have this place cheap if you really want it, or almost any other place in the neighborhood. Don't say such a thing, she returned. It makes one feel as if the foundations of the great deep were giving way. I don't know what that means exactly, but I suppose it's equivalent to Miss Laying George's hatchet and going back on the declaration generally, and I don't like to hear you talk so. Camp seemed to have lost his bitter mood, and he answered pleasantly, The declaration is all right as far as it goes, but it don't help us to compete with the western farm operations. Why, you believe everyone was born free and equal, don't you? Mrs. Makley asked. Oh, yes, I believe that, but... Then why do you object to free and equal competition? The young fellow laughed and said as he opened the door for us, Walk right into the parlour, please. Mother will be ready for you in a minute. He added, I guess she's putting on a best cap for you, Mr. Homoes. It's a great event for her, you're coming here. It is for all of us. We're glad to have you. And I'm glad to be here, said the altruarian as simply as the other. He looked about the best room of a farmhouse that had never adapted itself to the tastes or needs of the city border, and was as stiffly repellent in its upholstery and as severe in its decoration as haircloth chairs and dark brown wallpaper of a trellis pattern with drab roses could make it. The windows were shut tight, and our host did not offer to open them. A flyer, too, crossed the doorway into the hall, but made no attempt to penetrate the interior, where we sat in an obscurity that left the high-hung family photographs on the walls vague and uncertain. I made a mental note of it as a place where it would be very characteristic to have a rustic funeral take place, and I was pleased to have Mrs. Makley drop into a sort of mortuary murmur, as she said. I hope your mother is as well as usual this morning. I perceived that this murmur was produced by the subcultural influence of the room. Oh, yes, said Camp, and at that moment a door opened from the room across the hall, and his sister seemed to bring in some of the light from it to us where we sat. She shook hands with Mrs. Makley, who introduced me to her, and then presented the altruion. She bowed very civilly to me, but with a touch of severity, such as country people find necessary for the assertion of their self-respect with strangers. I thought it very pretty, and instantly saw that I could work it into some picture of character, and I was not at all sorry that she made a difference in favor of the altruion. Mother will be so glad to see you, she said to him, and won't you come right in? She added to us all. We followed her and found ourselves in a large, low, sunny room on the southeast corner of the house, which had no doubt once been the living room, but which was now given up to the bed-ridden invalid. A door opened into the kitchen behind, where the table was already laid for the midday meal, with the plates turned down in the country fashion, and some netting drawn over the dishes to keep the flies away. Mrs. Makley bustled up to the bedside with her energetic, patronizing cheerfulness. Ah, Mrs. Camp, I am glad to see you looking so well this morning. I've been meaning to run over for several days past, but I couldn't find a moment till this morning, and I knew you didn't object to Sunday visits. She took the invalid's hand in hers, and with the air of showing how little she felt any inequality between them, she leaned over and kissed her, where Mrs. Camp sat propped against her pillows. She had a large, nobly-molded face of rather masculine contour, and at the same time the most motherly look in the world. Mrs. Makley bubbled and babbled on, and everyone waited patiently till she had done, and turned and said toward the altruarian, I have ventured to bring my friend Mr. Homos with me. He is from Altruria. Then she turned to me and said, Mr. Twelfth Mal, you know already through his delightful books. But although she paid me this perfunctory compliment, it was perfectly apparent to me that in the esteem of this disingenuous woman, the distinguished stranger was a far more important person than the distinguished author. Whether Mrs. Camp read my perception of this fact in my face or not, I cannot say, but she was evidently determined that I should not feel a difference in her. She held out her hand to me first, and said that I never could know how many heavy hours I had helped to lighten for her, and then she turned to the altruarian and took his hand. Oh! she said with a long, deep-drawn sigh as if that were the supreme moment of her life. And are you really from Altruria? It seems too good to be true. Her devout look and her earnest tone gave the commonplace words a quality that did not adhere in them, and Mrs. Makley took them on their surface. Yes, doesn't it? She made haste to interpose before the altruarian could say anything. That is just the way we all feel about it, Mrs. Camp. I assure you, if it were not for the accounts in the papers and the talk about it everywhere, I couldn't believe there was any such place as Altruria. And if it were not for Mr. Twelve-Mowl here, who has to keep all his inventions for his novels as a mere matter of business routine, I might really suspect him and Mr. Homoes of, well, working us as my husband calls it. The altruarian smiled politely but vaguely, as if he had not quite caught her meaning, and I made answer for both. I am sure, Mrs. Makley, if you could understand my peculiar state of mind about Mr. Homoes, you would never believe that I was in collusion with him. I find him quite as incredible as you do. There are moments when he seems so entirely subjective with me that I feel as if he were no more definite or tangible than a bad conscience. Exactly, said Mrs. Makley, and she laughed out her delight in my illustration. The altruarian must have perceived that we were joking, though the camps all remained soberly silent. I hope it isn't so bad as that, he said. Though I have noticed that I seem to affect you all with a kind of misgiving. I don't know just what it is, but if I could remove it I should be very glad to do so. Mrs. Makley very promptly seized her chance. Well then, in the first place my husband and I were talking it over last night after we left you, and that was one of the things that kept us awake. It turned into money afterward. It isn't so much that a whole continent as big as Australia remained undiscovered to within such a very few years as it is the condition of things among you. This sort of all living for one another and not each one for himself. My husband says that is simply moonshine. Such a thing never was and never can be. It is opposed to human nature and would take away incentive and all motive for exertion and advancement and enterprise. I don't know what he didn't say against it, but one thing he says it's perfectly un-American. The altruarian remained silent, gravely smiling, and Mrs. Makley added with her most engaging little manner. I hope you won't feel hurt personally or patriotically by what I've repeated to you. I know my husband is awfully Philistine, though he is such a good fellow, and I don't by any means agree with him on all those points, but I would like to know what you think of them. The trouble is, Mrs. Camp, she said, turning to the invalid, that Mr. Homo is so dreadfully reticent about his own country, and I am so curious to hear of it at first hands that I consider it justifiable to use any means to make him open up about it. There is no offence. The altruarian answered for himself. In what Mr. Makley says, though from the altruarian point of view there is a good deal of error, does it seem so strange to you, he asked addressing himself to Mrs. Camp, that people should found a civilization on the idea of living for one another instead of each for himself? No indeed, she answered. Poor people have always had to live that way, or they could not have lived at all. That was what I understood your porter to say last night, said the altruarian to me. He added to the company generally. I suppose that even in America there are more poor people than there are rich people? Well, I don't know about that, I said. I suppose there are more people independently rich than there are people independently poor. We will let that formulation of it stand. If it is true, I do not see why the altruarian system should be considered so very un-American. Even as to whether there is or ever was really a practical altruism, a civic expression of it, I think it cannot be denied that among the first Christians, those who immediately followed Christ and might be supposed to be directly influenced by his life, there was an altruism practiced as radical as that which we have organized into a national polity of working economy and altruria. Ah, but you know, said Mrs. Makley, with the air of advancing a point not to be put aside. They had to drop that. It was a dead failure. They found that they couldn't make it go at all among cultivated people, and that if Christianity was to advance they would have to give up all that crankish kind of idolatry of the mere letter. At any rate, she went on, with the satisfaction we all feel in getting an opponent into close quarters. You must confess that there is a much greater play of individuality here. Before the altruarian could reply, young camps said, If you want to see American individuality, the real Simon Pure article, you ought to go down to one of our big factory towns and look at the mill hands coming home in droves after a day's work. Young girls and old women, boys and men all fluffed over with cotton and so dead tired that they can hardly walk. They come shambling along with all the individuality of a flock of sheep. Some, said Mrs. Makley heroically as if she were one of these, must be sacrificed. Of course, some are not so individual as others. A great deal depends upon temperament. A great deal more depends upon capital, said Camp with an offensive laugh. If you have capital in America, you can have individuality. If you haven't, you can't. His sister, who had not taken part in the talk before, said demurely, It seems to me you've got a good deal of individuality, Rube, and you haven't got a great deal of capital, either. And the two young people laughed together. Mrs. Makley was one of those fatuous women whose eagerness to make a point is the consideration even of their own advantage. I'm sure, she said as if speaking for the upper classes, We haven't got any individuality at all. We are as like as so many peas or pins. In fact, you have to be so in society. If you keep asserting your own individuality too much, people avoid you. It's very vulgar and the greatest bore. Then you don't find individuality so desirable after all, said the Altruarian. I perfectly detest it, cried the lady, and evidently she had not the least notion where she was in the argument. For my part I'm never happy except when I've forgotten myself and the whole individual bother. Her declarations seemed somehow to close the incident, and we were all silent a moment, which I employed in looking about the room, and taking in with my literary sense the simplicity and even bareness of its furnishing. There was the bed where the invalid lay, and near the head a table with a pile of books and a kerosene lamp on it, and I decided that she was a good deal wakeful and that she read by that lamp when she could not sleep at night. Then there were the hard chairs we sat on, and some homemade hooked rugs and rounds and ovals scattered about the clean floor. There was a small melodian pushed against the wall. The windows had paper shades, and I recalled that I had not seen any blinds on the outside of the house. Over the head of the bed hung a cavalryman's sword with its belt, the sword that Mrs. Makley had spoken of. It struck me as a room where a great many things might have happened, and I said, You can't think, Mrs. Camp, how glad I am to see the inside of your house. It seems to me so typical. A pleased intelligence showed itself in her face, and she answered, Yes, it is a real old-fashioned farmhouse. We have never taken borders, and so we have kept it as it was built pretty much, and only made such changes in it as we needed or wanted for ourselves. It's a pity, I went on, following up what I thought a fortunate lead, that we city people see so little of the farming life when we come into the country. I have been here now for several seasons, and this is the first time I have been inside a farmer's house. Is it possible? cried the altruarian with an air of utter astonishment, and when I found the fact appeared so singular to him, I began to be rather proud of its singularity. Yes, I suppose that most city people come and go year after year in the country, and never make any sort of acquaintance with the people who live there the year round. We keep to ourselves in the hotels, or if we go out at all, it is to make a call upon some city cottage, and so we do not get out of the vicious circle of our own over intimacy with ourselves and our ignorance of others. And you regard that as a great misfortune? asked the altruarian. Why, it's inevitable. There is nothing to bring us together unless it's some happy accident like the present. But we don't have a traveler from Altruia to exploit every day, and so we have no business to come into people's houses. You would have been welcome an hours long ago, Mr. Twelve-Mow, said Mrs. Camp. But excuse me, said the altruarian. What you say really seems dreadful to me. Why, it is as if you were not the same race or kind of men. Yes, I answered. It has sometimes seemed to me as if our big hotel there were a ship anchored off some strange coast. The inhabitants come out with supplies and carry on their barter with the ship's steward, and we sometimes see them over the side, but we never speak to them or have anything to do with them. We sail away at the close of the season, and that is the end of it till next summer. The altruarian turned to Mrs. Camp. And how do you look at it? How does it seem to you? I don't believe we have thought about it very much, but now that Mr. Twelve-Mow has spoken of it, I can see that it does look that way. And it seems very strange, doesn't it? For we are all the same people and have the same language and religion and country. The country that my husband fought for and I suppose I may say died for. He was never the same man after the war. It does appear as if we had some interests in common and might find it out if we ever came together. It's a great advantage the city people going into the country so much as they do now, said Mrs. Makley. They bring five million dollars into the state of New Hampshire alone every summer. She looked round for the general approval which this fact merited, and young Camp said, And it shows how worthless the natives are that they can't make both ends meet with all that money, but have to give up their farms and go west after all. I suppose you think it comes from wanting buggies and snows. Well, it certainly comes from something, said Mrs. Makley with the courage of her convictions. She was evidently not going to be put down by that sour young fellow, and I was glad of it. Though I must say I thought the thing she left to rankle in his mind from our former meeting had not been said in very good taste. I thought, too, that she would not fare best in any encounter of wits with him, and I rather trembled for the result. I said to relieve the strained situation, I wish there was some way of our knowing each other better. I'm sure there's a great deal of goodwill on both sides. No there isn't, said Camp, or at least I can answer for our side that there isn't. You come into the country to get as much for your money as you can, and we mean to let you have as little as we can. That's the whole story, and if Mr. Homos believes anything different he's very much mistaken. I hadn't formed any conclusion in regard to the matter, which is quite new to me, said the Altruarian mildly. But why is there no basis of mutual kindness between you? Because it's like everything else with us. It's a question of supply and demand, and there is no room for any mutual kindness and a question of that kind. Even if there were, there is another thing that would kill it. The sum of folks, as we call them, look down on the natives as they call us, and we know it. Now, Mr. Camp, I am sure that you cannot say I look down on the natives, said Mrs. Makley with an air of argument. The young fellow laughed. Oh, yes you do. He said, not unamiably, and he added, And you've got the right to. We're not fit to associate with you, and you know it, and we know it. You've got more money, and you've got nicer clothes, and you've got prettier manners. You talk about things that most natives never heard of, and you care for things they never saw. I know it's the custom to pretend differently, but I'm not going to pretend differently. I recalled what my friend the banker said about throwing away can't, and I asked myself if I were in the presence of some such free spirit again. I did not see how young Camp could afford it, but then I reflected that he had really nothing to lose by it, for he did not expect to make anything out of us. Mrs. Makley would probably not give up his sister as seamstress if the girl continued to work so well and so cheaply as she said. Suppose, he went on, that some old native took you at your word, and came to call upon you at the hotel with his wife, just as one of the city cottagers would do if he wanted to make your acquaintance. I should be perfectly delighted, said Mrs. Makley, and I should receive them with the greatest possible cordiality. The same kind of cordiality that you would show to the cottagers? I suppose that I should feel that I had more in common with the cottagers. We should be interested in the same things, and we should probably know the same people and have more to talk about. You would both belong to the same class, and that tells the whole story. If you were out west and the owner of one of those big twenty thousand acre farms called on you with his wife, would you act toward them as you would toward our natives? You wouldn't. You would all be rich people together, and you would understand one another because you had money. Now that is not so, Mrs. Makley interrupted. There are plenty of rich people one wouldn't wish to know at all, and who really can't get into society, who are ignorant and vulgar. And then when you come to money, I don't see but what country people are as glad to get it as anybody. Oh, Gladda! said the young man. Well? demanded Mrs. Makley as if this were a final stroke of logic. The young man did not reply, and Mrs. Makley continued, Now I will appeal to your sister to say whether she has ever seen any difference in my manner toward her from what I show to all the young ladies at the hotel. The young girl flushed and seemed reluctant to answer. Why, Lizzy! cried Mrs. Makley, and her tone showed that she was really hurt. The scene appeared to me rather cruel, and I glanced at Mrs. Camp with an expectation that she would say something to relieve it. But she did not. Her large, benevolent face expressed only a quiet interest in the discussion. You know very well, Mrs. Makley, said the girl. You don't regard me as you do the young ladies in the hotel. There was no resentment in her voice or look, but only a sort of regret, as if but for this grievance she could have loved the woman from whom she had probably had much kindness. The tears came into Mrs. Makley's eyes and she turned toward Mrs. Camp. And is this the way you all feel toward us? She asked. Why shouldn't we? asked the invalid in her turn. But no, it isn't the way all country people feel. Many of them feel as you would like to have them feel, but that is because they do not think. When they think they feel as we do. But I don't blame you. You can't help yourselves any more than we can. We're all bound up together in that, at least. At this apparent relenting, Mrs. Makley tricked her beams a little and said plaintively, as if offering herself for further condolence. Yes, that is what that woman at the little shanty back there said. Some have to be rich and some have to be poor. It takes all kinds to make a world. How would you like to be one of those that have to be poor? Asked young Camp with an evil grin. I don't know, said Mrs. Makley with unexpected spirit. But I am sure that I should respect the feelings of all, rich or poor. I am sorry if we have hurt yours, Mrs. Makley, said Mrs. Camp with dignity. You asked us certain questions and we thought you wished us to reply truthfully. We could not answer you with smooth things. But sometimes you do, said Mrs. Makley, and the tears stood in her eyes again. And you know how fond I am of you all. Mrs. Camp wore a bewildered look. Perhaps we have said more than we ought. But I couldn't help it and I don't see how the children could when you asked them here before Mr. Hobbles. I glanced at the altruarian setting attentive and silent and a sudden misgiving crossed my mind concerning him. Was he really a man, a human entity, a personality like ourselves? Or was he merely a sort of spiritual solvent sent for the moment to precipitate whatever sincerity there was in us and show us what the truth was concerning our relations to one another? It was a fantastic conception but I thought it was one that I might employ in some sort of purely romantic design and I was professionally grateful for it. I said with a humorous gaiety, Yes, we all seem to have been compelled to be much more honest than we like and if Mr. Homos is going to write an account of his travels when he gets home he can't accuse us of hypocrisy at any rate and I always used to think it was one of our virtues. What with Mr. Camp here and my friend the banker at the hotel I don't think he'll have much reason to complain even of our reticence. Well, whatever he says of us sighed Mrs. Makley with a pious glance at the sword over the bed he will have to say that in spite of our divisions and classes we are all Americans and if we haven't the same opinions and ideas on minor matters we all have the same country I don't know about that came from Ruben Camp with shocking promptness I don't believe we all have the same country America is one thing for you and it's quite another thing for us America means ease and comfort and amusement for you year in and year out and if it means work it's work that you wish to do for us America means work that we have to do and hard work all the time if we're going to make both ends meet it means liberty for you but what liberty is a man god who doesn't know where his next meal is coming from once I was in a strike when I was working on the railroad and I've seen men come and give up the liberty for a chance to earn the family's living they knew they were right and that they ought to have stood up for their rights but they had to lie down and lick the hand that fed them yes we are all Americans but I guess we haven't all got the same country Mrs. Makley what sort of a country has a blacklisted man got a blacklisted man she repeated I don't know what you mean well a kind of man I've seen in the mill towns that the bosses have all got on their books as a man that isn't to be given work on any account that's to be punished with hunger and cold and turned into the street for having offended them and that's to be made to suffer through his helpless family for having offended them excuse me Mr. Camp I interposed but isn't a blacklisted man usually a man who has made himself prominent in some labor trouble yes the young fellow answered without seeming sensible of the point I had made ah I returned then you can hardly blame the employers for taking it out of him in any way they can that's human nature good heavens the altruarian cried out is it possible that in America it is human nature to take away the bread of a man's family because he has gone counter to your interest or pleasure on some economical question well Mr. 12 Mal seems to think so sneer the young man but whether it's human nature or not it's a fact that they do it and you can guess how much a blacklisted man must love the country with such a thing can happen to him what should you call such a thing as blacklisting in Altruria oh yes Mrs. Makley pleaded do let us get him to talking about Altruria on any terms I think all this about the labor question is so tiresome don't you Mrs. Camp Mrs. Camp did not answer but the altruarian said in reply to her son we should have no name for such a thing for with us such a thing would be impossible there is no crime so heinous with us that the punishment would take away the criminal's chance of earning his living oh if he was a criminal said young camp he would be all right here the state would give him a chance to earn his living then but if he had no other chance of earning his living and had committed no offence against the laws then the state would let him take to the road like that fellow he pulled aside the shade of the window where he sat and we saw a pausing before the house and glancing doubtfully at the doorstep where the dog lay a vile and loathsome looking tramp a blot upon the sweet and wholesome landscape a scandal to the sacred day his rags burlesque the form which they did not wholly hide his broken shoes were covered with dust his coarse hair came in a plume through his tattered hat his red sodden face at once fierce and timid was rusty with a fortnight's beard he offended the eye like a visible stench and the wretched carrion seemed to shrink away from our gaze as if he were aware of his loathsomeness really? said Mrs. Makley I thought those fellows were arrested now it is too bad to leave them at large they are dangerous young camp left the room and we saw him going out toward the tramp ah that's quite right said the lady I hope Ruben is going to send him about his business why surely he's not going to feed the horrid creature she added as camp after a moment's parley with the tramp turned with him and disappeared round a corner of the house now Mrs. Camp I think that is really a very bad example it's encouraging them very likely he'll go to sleep in your barn and set it on fire with his pipe what do you do with Trampson Altruria, Mr. Homoes? the Altrurian seemed not to have heard her he said to Mrs. Camp then I understand from something your son let fall that he has not always been at home with you here does he reconcile himself easily to the country after the excitement of town life? I have read that the cities in America are draining the country of the young people I don't think he was sorry to come home said the mother with a touch of fond pride but there was no choice for him after his father died he was always a good boy and he has not made us feel that we were keeping him away from anything better when his father was alive we let him go because then we were not so dependent and I wished him to try his fortune in the world as all boys long to do but he is rather peculiar and he seems to have got quite enough of the world to be sure I don't suppose he's seen the brightest side of it he first went to work in the mills down at Pankwaset but he was made off there when the hard times came and there was so much over production and he took a job of railroading and was breaking on a freight train when his father left us Mrs. Makley said smiling no I don't think that was the brightest outlook in the world I wonder he has brought back such gloomy impressions I am sure that if he could have seen life under brighter auspices he would not have the ideas he has very likely said the mother dryly our experiences have a great deal to do with forming our opinions but I am not dissatisfied with my son's ideas I suppose Ruben got a good many of his ideas from his father he's his father all over again my husband thought slavery was wrong and he went into the war to fight against it he used to say when the war was over that the Negroes were emancipated but slavery was not abolished yet what in the world did he mean by that? demanded Mrs. Makley something you wouldn't understand as we do I tried to carry on the farm after he first went and before Ruben was large enough to help me much and ought to be in school and I suppose I overdid at any rate that was when I had my first shock of paralysis I never was very strong and I presume my health was weakened by my teaching school so much and studying before I was married but that doesn't matter now and hasn't for many a year the place was clear of debt then but I had to get a mortgage put on it the savings banked down in the village took it and we've been paying the interest ever since my husband died paying it and my son will pay it all my life and then I suppose the bank will foreclose the treasurer was an old playmate of my husband's and he said that as long as either of us lived the mortgage could lie how splendid of him said Mrs. Makley I should think you had been very fortunate I said that you would not see it as we do said the invalid patiently the altruarian asked are there mortgages on many of the farms in the neighborhood nearly all said Mrs. Camp we seem to own them but in fact they own us Mrs. Makley hastened to say my husband thinks it's the best way to have your property if you mortgage it close up you have all your capital free and you can keep turning it over that's what you want to do Mrs. Camp but what was the slavery that Captain Camp said was not abolished yet the invalid looked at her a moment without replying and just then the door of the kitchen opened and young camp came in and began to gather some food from the table on a plate why don't you bring him to the table room his sister called to him oh he says he'd rather not come in as long as we have company he says he isn't dressed for dinner left a spike tail in the city the young man laughed and his sister with him End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of A Traveller from Alturia This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by phone A Traveller from Alturia by William Dean Howells Chapter 8 Young Camp carried out to play the fiddles to the tramp and Mrs. Makley said to his mother I suppose you would make the tramp do some sort of work to earn his breakfast on weekdays Not always Mrs. Camp replied Do the boarders at the hotel always work to earn their breakfast? No certainly not said Mrs. Makley with the sharpness of offence but they always pay for it I don't think that paying for a thing is earning it perhaps someone else earned the money that pays for it but I believe there is too much work in the world if I were to live my life over again I should not work off so hard my husband and I took this place when we were young married people and began working to pay for it we wanted to feel that it was ours that we owned it and that our children should own it afterward we both worked all day long like slaves and many a moonlight night we were up till morning almost gathering the stones from our fields and burying them in deep graves that we had dug for them but we buried our youth and strength and health in those graves too and what for? I don't own the farm that we worked so hard to pay for and my children won't that is what it has all come to we were rightly punished for our greed I suppose perhaps no one has a right to own any portion of the earth sometimes I think so but my husband and I earned this farm and now the savings bank owns it that seems strange doesn't it? I suppose you'll say that the bank paid for it well perhaps so but the bank didn't earn it when I think of that I don't always think that a person who pays for his breakfast has the best right to a breakfast I could see the sophistry of all this but I had not the heart to point it out I felt the pathos of it too Mrs. Makley seemed not to see the one nor to feel the other very distinctly yes but surely she said if you give a tramp his breakfast without making him work for it you must see that it is encouraging idleness and idleness is very corrupting the sight of it you mean to the country people? well they have to stand a good deal of that the summer folks that spent four or five months of the year here don't seem to do anything from morning till night but you must recollect that they are resting you have no idea how hard they'll work in town during the winter Mrs. Makley urged with an air of argument perhaps the tramps are resting too at any rate I don't think the sight of idleness in rags and begging at back doors is very corrupting to the country people I never heard of a single tramp who had started from the country they all come from the cities it's the other kind of idleness that tempts our young people the only tramps that my son says he ever envies are the well-dressed strong young fellows from town that go tramping through the mountains for exercise every summer the ladies both paused they seem to have got to the end of their tether at least Mrs. Makley had apparently nothing else to advance and I said lightly but that is just a kind of tramps that Mr. Homos would most disapprove of he says that in Alturia they would consider exercise for exercise sake a wicked waste of force and little short of lunacy I thought my exaggeration might provoke him to denial but he seemed not to have found it unjust why, you know, he said to Mrs. Camp in Alturia everyone works with his hands so that the hard work shall not all fall to any one class and this manual labour of each is sufficient to keep the body in health as well as to earn a living after the three hours work which constitutes a day's work with us is done the young people have all sorts of games and sports they carry them as late into life as the temperament of each demands but what I was saying to Mr. Twelfmo perhaps I did not make myself clear was that we should regard the sterile putting forward of strength in exercise if others were each day worn out with hard manual labour as insane or immoral but I can account for it differently with you because I understand that in your conditions a person of leisure could not do any manual labour without taking away the work of someone who needed it to live by and could not even relieve an overworked labourer and give him the money for the work without teaching him habits of idleness in Alturia we can all keep ourselves well by doing each his share of hard work and we can help those who are exhausted when such a thing happens without injuring them materially or morally young camp entered at this moment and the Alturian hesitated oh do go on Mrs. Makley entreated she added to camp we've got him to talking about Alturia at last and we wouldn't have him stopped for worlds the Alturian looked around at all our faces and no doubt read our eager curiosity in them he smiled and said I shall be very glad I'm sure but I do not think he will find anything so remarkable in our civilisation if you will conceive of it as the outgrowth of the neighbourly instinct in fact neighbourliness is the essence of Alturianism if you will imagine having the same feeling toward all he explained to Mrs. Makley as you have toward your next door neighbour my next door neighbour she cried but I don't know the people next door we live in a large apartment house some 40 families and I assure you I do not know a soul among them he looked at her with a puzzled air and she continued sometimes it does seem rather hard one day the people on the same landing with us lost one of their children and I should never have been a witted wiser if my cook hadn't happened to mention it the servants all know each other they meet in the back elevator and get acquainted I don't encourage it you can't tell what kind of families they belong to but surely the Alturian persisted you have friends in the city whom you think of as your neighbours no I can't say that I have said Mrs. Makley I have my visiting list but I shouldn't think of anybody on that as a neighbour the Alturian looked so blank and baffled that I could hardly help laughing then I should not know how to explain Alturia to you I'm afraid well she returned lightly if it's anything like neighbourliness 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 such young camp and they seemed to know each other and to be quite neighbourly 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 neighbours at all well everyone to his taste said Mrs. Makley I wish you would tell us how people manage with you socially Mr. Homos 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. Makley 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. Homos said Mrs. Makley this perverse woman was as anxious to hear about Alturia 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 Alturian stopped politely and Mrs. Makley went on I have been thinking of what Mr. Camp was saying about the blacklisted men and they're all turning into tramps but I didn't say that Mrs. Makley 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 are 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. Makley with the 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 says broad as it's long I confess that although I agreed with Mrs. Makley 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 the men have everything at stake the work of their hands said the young fellow oh but surely said Mrs. Makley you wouldn't set that against capital you wouldn't compare it to 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. Makley burst into appeal of amiable laughter now that is too preposterous why is it preposterous he demanded with a quivering nostril why simply because it is said the lady but she did not say why and although I thought so too I was glad she did not attempt to do it for her conclusions seemed to me much better than her reasons the old wooden clock in the kitchen began to strike and she rose briskly to her feet and went and laid the book she had been holding in her lap on the table beside Mrs. Camp's bed we must really be going she said as she leaned over and kissed the invalid it is your dinner time and we shall barely get back for lunch if we go by the loop road and I want very much to have Mr. Homos see the witches falls on the way I have got two or three of the books here that Mr. Makley brought me last night I shan't have time to read them at once and I'm smuggling in one of Mr. Twelve Moes that he's too modest to present for himself she turned a gay glance upon me and Mrs. Camp thanked me and a number of civilities followed from all sides in the process of their exchange Mrs. Makley's spirits perceptibly rose and she came away in high good humour with the whole Camp family well now I am sure she said to the alturian as we began the long ascent of the loop road you must allow that you have seen some very original characters but how warped people get living alone so much that is the great drawback of the country Mrs. Camp thinks the savings bank did her a real injury taking a mortgage in her place and Ruben seems to have seen just enough of the outside world to get it all wrong but they are the best-hearted creatures in the world and I know you won't misunderstand them that unsparing country bluntness don't you think it's perfectly delightful I do like to stir poor Ruben up and get him talking he is a good boy if he is so wrong-headed and he is the most devoted son and brother in the world very few young fellows would waste their lives on an old farm like that I suppose when his mother dies he will marry and strike out for himself in some growing place he did not seem to think the world held out any very bright inducements for him to leave home the alturian suggested oh let him get one of these lively pushing Yankee girls for a wife and he will think very differently, said Mrs. Makley the alturian disappeared that afternoon and I saw little or nothing of him till the next day at supper then he said he had been spending the time with young Camp who had shown him something of the farm work and introduced him to several of the neighbors he was very much interested in it all because at home he was at present engaged in farm work himself and he was curious to contrast the American and alturian methods we began to talk of the farming interest again later in the day when the members of our little group came together and I told them what the alturian had been doing the doctor had been suddenly called back to town but the minister was there and the lawyer and the professor and the banker and the manufacturer it was the banker who began to comment on what I said and he seemed to be in the frank humor of the Saturday night before yes he said it's a hard life and they have to look sharp if they expect to make both ends meet I would not like to undertake it myself with their resources the professor smiled in asking the alturian did your agricultural friends tell you anything of the little rural traffic in votes that they carry on about election time that is one of the side means they have of making both ends meet I don't understand said the alturian why you know you can buy votes among our virtuous yemen from two dollars up at the ordinary elections when party feeling runs high and there are vital questions at stake the votes cost more the alturian looked round at us all aghast do you mean that Americans buy votes the professor smiled again oh no I only mean that they sell them well I don't wonder that they rather prefer to blink the fact but it is a fact nevertheless and pretty notorious good heavens and what defence have they for such treason I don't mean those who sell from what I have seen of the bareness and hardship of their lives I could well imagine that there might sometimes come a pinch when they would be glad at a few dollars that they could get in that way but what have those who buy to say well said the professor it isn't a transaction that's apt to be talked about much on either side I think the banker interposed that there is some exaggeration about that business but it certainly exists and I suppose it is a growing evil in the country I fancy it arises somewhat from a want of clear thinking on the subject then there is no doubt that it comes sometimes from poverty a man sells his vote as a woman sells her person for money when neither can turn virtue into cash they feel that they must live and neither of them would be satisfied if Dr Johnson told them he didn't see the necessity in fact I shouldn't myself if I were in their places you can't have the good of a civilization like ours without having the bad but I am not going to deny that the bad is bad some people like to do that but I don't find my account in it in either case I confess that I think the buyer is worse than the seller incomparably worse I suppose you are not troubled with either case in Arturia oh no said the Arturian with an utter horror which no repetition of his words can give the sense of it would be unimaginable still the banker suggested you have cakes and ale and at times the ginger is hot in the mouth I don't pretend that we have immunity from error but upon such terms as you have described we have none it would be impossible the Arturian's voice expressed no contempt but only a sad patience a melancholy surprise such as a celestial angel might feel in being suddenly confronted with some secret shame and horror of the pit well said the banker with us the only way is to take the business view and try to strike an average somewhere talking of business said the professor turning to the manufacturer who had been quietly smoking why don't some of you capitalists take the hold of farming here in the east and make a business of it as they do in the west thank you said the other if you mean me I would rather not invest he was silent a moment and then he went on as if the notion were beginning to win upon him it may come to something like that though if it does the natural course I should think would be through the railroads it would be a very easy matter for them to buy up all the good farms along their lines and put tenants on them and run them in their own interest really it isn't a bad scheme the waste in the present method is enormous and there is no reason why the road should not own the farms as they are beginning to own the mines they could manage them better than the small farmers do in every way I wonder the thing hasn't occurred to some smart railroad man we all laughed a little perceiving the semi-ironical spirit of his talk but the alturian 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 but 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 to professor did our exemplary rural friends tell you how they sell out their paupers to the lowest bidder and kept 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 older than 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 assorts 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 un-business-like and in fact un-American I'm 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 reverent 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 super-numerary vacation this summer before they plunge into the battle of life in the autumn they were talking of some other fellows classmates 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 super-numerary 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 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 contrasts between Derfait and his and were making remarks about business that were to say the least un-business-like 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 the 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 who were going 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 seemed to have called on to that fact and they pitted Jack or Jim partly because the chances were so much against him but they pitted 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 on it the manufacturer did not reply and the professor, after a preliminary humming 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 higher education there is no business man we 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 they must all confess that they do not know it at a 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 where the fellow arriving at a starving city with the 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'm 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're going to lose anything by un-deceiving 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 well I wish so too returned to banker but it isn't am I right or am I wrong he demanded of the manufacturer who laughed I am not conducting this discussion I will not deprive you of the floor what you say I ventured to put in reminds me of the experience of a friend of mine a brother novelist he wrote a story the failure of a businessman turned on a point just like that you have instanced the man could have retrieved himself if he had let some people believe that what was so was not so but his conscience stepped in and obliged him to own the truth there was a good deal of talk about the case I suppose because it was not in real life and my friend heard diverse criticisms he heard of a group of ministers who claimed him for exalting a case of common honesty as if it were something extraordinary and he heard of some businessman who talked it over and said he had worked the case up splendidly but he was all wrong in the outcome the fellow would never have told the other fellows they said it would not have been business we all laughed except the minister and the alturian the manufacturer said twenty five years since the fellow who is going into business may pity the fellows who are pitying him for his heart fade now very possibly but not necessarily said the banker of course the businessman is on top as far as money goes he is the fellow who makes the big fortunes the millionaire lawyers and doctors and ministers are exceptional but his risks are tremendous ninety five times out of a hundred he fails to be sure he picks up and goes on but he seldom gets there after all then in your system said the alturian the great majority of those who go into what you call the battle of life are defeated the killed wounded and missing sum up a frightful total the banker admitted but whatever the end is there is a great deal of prosperity on the way the statistics are correct but they do not tell the whole truth it is not so bad as it seems still simply looking at the material chances I don't blame those young fellows for not wanting to go into business and when you come to other considerations we used to cut the knot of the difficulty pretty sharply we said a college education was wrong or the hot and hot American spread eaglers did business is the national ideal and the successful businessman is the American type it's a businessman's country then if I understand you said the alturian and I am very anxious to have a clear understanding of the matter the effect of the university with you is to unfit a youth for business life oh no it may give them great advantages in it and that is the theory and expectation of most fathers who send their sons to the university but undoubtedly the effect is to render business life distasteful the university nurtures all sorts of lofty ideals which business has no use for then the effect is undemocratic no it is simply un-business like the boy is a better democrat when he leaves college then he will be later if he goes into business the university has taught him and equipped him to use his own gifts and powers for his advancement but the first lesson of business and the last is to use other men's gifts and powers if he looks about him at all he sees that no man gets rich simply by his own labor no matter how mighty a genius he is and that if you want to get rich you must make other men work for you and pay you for the privilege of doing so isn't that true the banker turned to the manufacturer with this question and the other said the theory is that we give people work and they both laughed the minister said I believe that in Alturia no man works for the profit of another no, each works for the profit of all replied the Alturian well, said the banker he seemed to have made it go nobody can deny that but we couldn't make it go here why? I am very curious to know why our system seems so impossible to you well, it is contrary to the American spirit it is alien to our love of individuality but we prize individuality too and we think we secure it under our system under yours it seems to me that while the individuality of the man who makes other men work for him is safe except from itself the individuality of the workers well, that is their look out we have found that upon the whole it is best to let every man look out for himself I know that in a certain light the result has an ugly aspect but nevertheless in spite of all the country is enormously prosperous the pursuit of happiness which is one of the inalienable rights secured to us by the declaration is and always has been a dream but the pursuit of the dollar yields tangible proceeds and we get a good deal of excitement out of it as it goes on you can't deny that we are the richest nation in the world do you call Alturia a rich country? I could not quite make out whether the banker was serious or not in all his talk sometimes I suspected him of a fine mockery that the Alturian took him upon the surface of his words I hardly know whether it is or not the question of wealth does not enter into our scheme I can say that we all have enough and that no one is even in the fear of want yes, that is very well but we should think it was paying too much for it if we had to give up the hope of ever having more than we wanted and at this point the banker uttered his jolly laugh and I perceived that he had been trying to draw the Alturian out and practice upon his patriotism it was a great relief to find that he had been joking in so much that seemed a dead giveaway of our economical position in Alturia he asked who is your ideal great man? I don't mean personally but abstractly the Alturian thought a moment with us there is so little ambition for distinction as you understand it that your question is hard to answer but I should say, speaking largely that it was some man who had been able for the time being to give the greatest happiness to the greatest number some artist or poet or inventor or physician I was somewhat surprised to have the banker take this preposterous statement seriously respectfully well that is quite conceivable with your system what should you say he demanded of the rest of us generally was our ideal of greatness no one replied at once or at all till the manufacturer said we will let you continue to run it well it is a very curious inquiry and I have thought it over a good deal I should say that within a generation our ideal has changed twice before the war and during all the time from the revolution onward it was undoubtedly the great politician the publicist, the statesman he grew older and began to have an intellectual life of our own I think the literary fellows had a pretty good share of the honors that were going that is, such a man as Longfellow was popularly considered a type of greatness when the war came it brought the soldier to the front and there was a period of 10 or 15 years when he dominated the national imagination that period passed a great era of material prosperity set in the big fortunes began to tower up and heroes of another sort began to appeal to our admiration I don't think there is any doubt but a millionaire is now the American ideal it isn't very pleasant to think so even for people who have got on but it can't very hopefully be denied it is the man with the most money who now takes the prize in our national cakewalk the alturian turned curiously toward me and I did my best to tell him what a cakewalk was when I was finished the banker resumed only to say, as he rose from his chair to bid us good night in any average assembly of Americans the greatest millionaire would take the eyes of all from the greatest statesman the greatest poet or the greatest soldier we ever had that, he added to the alturian will account to you for many things as you travel through our country End of chapter 8 Recording by phone Chapter 9 of A Traveller from Alturia This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by T. A. Niles A Traveller from Alturia by William Dean Howells Chapter 9 The next time the members of our little group came together the manufacturer began at once upon the banker I should think that our friend the professor here would hardly like that notion of yours that business as business has nothing to do with the education of a gentleman if this is a businessman's country and if the professor has nothing in stock but the sort of education that business has no use for I should suppose that he would want to go into some other line the banker mutely referred the matter to the professor who said with that cold grin of his which I hate it perhaps we shall wait for business to purge and live cleanly then it will have some use for the education of a gentleman I see, said the banker that I have touched the quick in both of you when I hadn't the least notion of doing so I didn't really like to prophecy which will adapt itself to the other education or business let us hope there will be mutual concessions there are some pessimists who say that business methods especially on the large scale of the trusts and combinations have grown worse instead of better but this may be merely what is called a transition state Hamlet must be cruel to be kind the darkest hour comes before the dawn and so on perhaps when business gets the whole affair of life into its hands and runs the republic as its enemies now accuse it of doing the process of purging and living cleanly will begin I have known lots of fellows who started a life rather scampishly but when they felt secure of themselves and believed that they could afford to be honest they became so there's no reason why the same thing shouldn't happen on a large scale we must never forget that we are still a very novel experiment though we have matured so rapidly in some respects that we have come to regard ourselves as an accomplished fact we are really less so than we were forty years ago with all the tremendous changes since the war before that we could take certain matters for granted if a man got out of work he turned his hand to something else if a man failed in business he started again from some other direction as a last resort in both cases he went west preempted a quarter section of public land and grew up with the country now the country has grown up the public land is gone business is full on all sides and the hand that turned itself to something else has lost its cunning the struggle for life has changed from a free fight to an encounter of disciplined forces and the free fighters that are left get ground to pieces between organized labour and organized capital decidedly we are in a transition state and if the higher education tried to adapt itself to business needs there are chances that it might sacrifice itself without helping business after all how much education does business need were our great fortunes made by educated men or men of university training I don't know but those young fellows are right about that yes that may all be I put in but it seems to me that you give Mr. Homoes somehow a wrong impression of our economic life by your generalizations you are a Harvard man yourself yes and I am not a rich man a million or two more or less but what is that you have suffered at the start and all along from the question as to what a man with the education of a gentleman ought to do in such and such a juncture the fellows who have not that sort of education have not that sort of question and they go in and win so you admit then said the professor higher education elevates a businessman's standard of moral undoubtedly that is one of its chief drawbacks said the banker with a laugh well I said with the deference due even to a man who had only a million or two more or less we must allow you to say such things but if the case is so bad with the businessman who have made the great fortunes the businessman who have never had the disadvantage of a university education I wish you would explain to Mr. Homoes why in every public exigency we instinctively appeal to the business sense of the community as if it were the fountain of wisdom probity and equity suppose there were some question of vital interest I won't say financial but political or moral or social on which it was necessary to rouse public opinion what would be the first thing to do to call a meeting over the signatures of the leading businessman because no other names appeal with such force to the public you might get up a call signed by all the novelists artists ministers lawyers and doctors in the state and it would not have a tithe of the effect with the people at large the call signed by a few leading merchants bank presidents railroad men and trust officers would have what is the reason it seems strange that I should be asking you to defend yourself against yourself not at all my dear fellow not at all the banker replied with his caressing bonhomie though I will confess to begin with that I do not expect to answer your question to your entire satisfaction I can only do my best on the installment plan he turned to the altruarian and then went on as I said the other night this is a businessman's country we are a purely commercial people money is absolutely to the fore and business which is the means of getting the most money is the American ideal if you like you may call it the American fetish I don't mind calling it so myself the fact that business is our ideal our fetish will account for the popular faith in businessmen who form its priesthood its hierarchy I don't know myself any other reason for regarding businessmen as soldier the novelists or artists or ministers not to mention lawyers and doctors they are supposed to have long heads but it appears that 95 times out of 100 they haven't they are supposed to be very reliable but it is almost invariably a businessman of some sort who gets out to Canada while the state examiner is balancing his books and it is usually the longest headed businessman who get plundered by him no it is simply because business is our national ideal that the businessman is honored above all other men among us in the aristocratic countries they forward a public object under the patronage of the nobility and gentry in a plutocratic country they get the businessman to endorse it I suppose that the average American citizen feels that they wouldn't endorse a thing unless it was safe and the average American citizen likes to be safe he is cautious as a matter of fact businessman are always taking risks and business is a game of chance in a certain degree have I made myself intelligible entirely so said the altruarian and he seemed so thoroughly well satisfied that he forebore asking any further question no one else spoke the banker lighted a cigar and resumed at the point where he left off when I ventured to enter upon the defense of his class with him I must say that he had not convinced me at all at that moment I would rather have trusted him in any serious matter of practical concern than all the novelists I ever heard of but I thought I would leave the word to him without further attempt to reinstate him in his self-esteem in fact he seemed to be getting along very well without it or else he was feeling that mysterious control in the altruarian which I had already suspected him of using voluntarily or involuntarily the banker proceeded with his contribution to the altruarian's stock of knowledge concerning our civilization I don't believe however that the higher education is any more of a failure as a provision for a business career than the lower education is for the life of labor I suppose that the hyper-critical observer might say that in a holy commercial civilization like ours the businessman really needed nothing beyond the three hours and the working man needed no hour at all as a practical affair there is a good deal to be said in favor of that view the higher education is part of the social ideal which we have derived from the past from Europe it is part of the provision for the life of leisure the life of the aristocrat which nobody of our generation leads except women our women really have some use for the education of a gentleman but our men have none how will that do for a generalization? the banker asked of me I admitted with a laugh it is a good deal like one of my own I have always been struck with that phase of our civilization well then the banker resumed take the lower education that is part of the civic ideal which I suppose I may say we evolved from the depths of our inner consciousness of what an American citizen ought to be it includes instruction in all the ours and in several other letters of the alphabet it is given free by the state and no one can deny that it is thoroughly socialistic in conception and application distinctly so said the professor now that the textbooks 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 classes they know perfectly well whether we do or not that the three ours 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 meantime 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 hahaha 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 businessman and then he doesn't need the hire 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 demand if the business supply comes first and if we keep on giving the sons of businessmen the education of a gentleman we may yet make them feel the need of it we shall evolve a new sort of businessman the sort that can't make money or wouldn't exactly like to on some terms well perhaps we shall work out our democratic salvation in that way when you have educated your new businessman 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 labour and give the fellow with the lower education a chance I've no doubt he'll take it I don't know but you are 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 classes and the masses 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 preached to more people than any other pulpit in your city the banker named one of the principal 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 classes are there in it people who work for 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 classes 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 forebore to press the point the lawyer broke the awkward pause which followed I have heard it asserted that there is no country in the world where the separation of the classes is so absolute as an hours 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 countries with traditions and old associations 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 astonishing 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 sans foie 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 generaled 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 in 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 astonishing 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 businessman 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 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 as made up for the most part of clerks and small tradesmen and bookkeepers and such employees and business as have time and money for it I may be mistaken no one seemed able to say whether he was mistaken or not and after waiting a moment he proceeded I feel pretty sure that it is so in the city companies and regiments at any rate and that if every working man left them it would not seriously impair their effectiveness but when the working men have left the militia what have they done they have eliminated the only thing that disqualifies it for prompt and unsparing use against strikers as long as they are in it we might have our misgivings but if they were once out of it we should have none and what would they gain they would not be allowed to arm and organize as an inimical force that was settled once and for all in Chicago in the case of the international groups a few squads of policemen would break them up why? the banker exclaimed with his good-humoured laugh how preposterous they are when you come to look at it they are in the majority the immense majority if you count the farmers and they prefer to behave as if they were the hopeless minority they say they want an eight-hour law and every now and then they strike and try to fight it why don't they vote it? they could make it the law in six months by such overwhelming numbers that no one would dare to evade or defy it they can make any law they want but they prefer to break such laws as we have that alienates public sympathy, the newspapers say but the spectacle of their stupidity and helpless willfulness is so lamentable that I could almost pity them if they chose it would take only a few years to transform our government into the likeness of anything they wanted but they would rather not have what they want, apparently if they can only keep themselves from getting it and they have to work hard to do that I suppose, I said that they are misled by the un-American principles and methods of the socialists among them why now? returned the banker I shouldn't say that as far as I understand it the socialists are the only fellows among them who propose to vote their ideas into laws and nothing can be more American than that I don't believe the socialists stir up the strikes at least among our working men though the newspapers convict them of it generally without trying them the socialists seem to accept the strikes as the inevitable outcome of the situation and they make use of them as proofs of the industrial discontent but luckily for the status our labor leaders are not socialists for your socialist whatever you may say against him has generally thought himself into a socialist he knows that until the working men stop fighting and get down to voting until they consent to be the majority there is no hope for them I am not talking of anarchists, mind you but of socialists whose philosophy is more law, not less and who look forward to an order so just that it can't be disturbed and what? the minister faintly said do you think will be the outcome of it all? we had that question the other night, didn't we? our legal friend here seemed to feel that we might rub along indefinitely as we are doing or work out an altruary of our own or go back to the patriarchal stage and own our working men he seemed not to have much faith in the logic of event as I have I doubt if it is altogether a woman's logic parole, femine, fatimaski and the logic of events isn't altogether words it's full of hard knocks too but I'm no prophet I can't forecast the future I prefer to take it as it comes there's a little tract of William Morris's though I forget just what he calls it that is full of curious and interesting speculation on this point he thinks that if we keep the road we are now going the last state of labor will be like its first and it will be owned oh I don't believe that will ever happen in America I protested why not? asked the banker practically it is owned already in a vastly greater measure than we recognize and where would the great harm be? the new slavery would not be like the old there needn't be irresponsible whipping and separation of families and private buying and selling the proletariat would probably be owned by the state as it was at one time in Greece or by large corporations which would be much more in keeping with the genius of our free institutions and an enlightened public opinion would cast safeguards about it in the form of law to guard it from abuse but it would be strictly policed, localized and controlled there would probably be less suffering than there is now when a man may be cowed into submission to any terms through the suffering of his family when he may be starved out and turned out if he is unruly you may be sure that nothing of that kind would happen in the new slavery we have not had 1900 years of Christianity for nothing the banker paused and as the silence continued he broke it with a laugh which was a prodigious relief to my feelings and I suppose to the feelings of all I perceived that he had been joking and I was confirmed in this when he turned to the altruarian and laid his hand upon his shoulder you see, he said, I'm a kind of altruarian myself what is the reason why we should not found a new altruarian here on the lines of drawn have you never had philosophers? well, call them philanthropists, I don't mind of my way of thinking among you oh yes, said the altruarian at one time just before we emerged from the competitive conditions there was much serious question whether capital should not own labour instead of labour owning capital that was many hundred years ago I'm proud to find myself such an advanced thinker said the banker and how came you to decide that labour should own capital we voted it answered the altruarian well, said the banker our fellows are still fighting it and getting beaten I found him later in the evening talking with Mrs. Makley my dear sir, I said I liked your frankness with my altruarian friend immensely and it may be well to put the worst foot foremost but what is the advantage of not leaving us a leg to stand upon he was not in the least offended by my boldness as I had feared he might be but he said, with that jolly laugh of his ha ha, capital well, perhaps I have worked my candour a little too hard I suppose there is such a thing but don't you see that it leaves me in the best possible position to carry the war into altruria when we get him to open up about his native land ah, if you can get him to do it well, we were just talking about that Mrs. Makley has a plan yes, said the lady turning an empty cheer near her own toward me sit down and listen End of Chapter 9