Read Ebook: The Compleat Bachelor by Onions Oliver

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Ebook has 273 lines and 16108 words, and 6 pages

"Yes, yes--I know--I am not speaking now as a sectarian."

"But, at least, as a Jew," I said, laughing.

"Yes, perhaps. I hardly know. I know about Hannan the High Priest. He tried to stand in with Pilate. He thought he was doing his duty when he was only fighting for his caste. But what an Iliad of woes he brought on his people--through the ages. But now they know, they profess, and yet stone the prophets. Your church, founded to fight riches and selfishness and formalism, is the greatest exploiter of all that the world knows. Two generations sanctify the wealth gotten by the foulest means. The robber, the murderer, the destroyer of homes are all accepted, and if one protests he is stoned to-day as if he were a blasphemer of the law. If the Master to whom your churches are erected should come to-day and preach the doctrines he preached in Judea nineteen hundred years ago, he would be cast out here precisely as he was cast out there." He spoke almost fiercely.

"Yet his teachings," he added, "are nearer those of the people I represent than of those who assail them. Why should we not act on it? Possibly, some others might see our good works, and in any event we shall have done our part. John Marvel does."

"I know he does, but he is a better Christian than I am, and so are you."

"I am not a Christian at all. I am only a Jew."

"Will you say that His teachings have had no part in forming your character and life?"

"Not my character. My father taught me before I was able to read. Possibly I have extended his teachings!"

"Have His teachings had no part in deciding you as to your work?"

"That is it."

"Why should I not participate in the benefit of the wisdom of a Jewish rabbi?" said Wolffert, scornfully. "Did Jesus utter his divine philosophy only for you who were then savages in Northern Europe or half-civilized people in Greece, Italy, and Spain? Your claim that he did so simply evinces the incurable insularity of your people."

"What is your remedy? Socialism?"

"Call it what you will. That is a name which some prefer and some detest. The fact is, that the profit system on which all Modern Capitalism rests is radically and fundamentally vicious and wrong. Men work and strive, not to produce for use, for service, but for profit. Profit becomes the aim of human endeavor--nothing higher or better--Competition."

"'Competition,'" I quoted, "'is the soul of trade.'"

"Competition," he said, "may be the soul of trade, but that trade is the trade in men's souls, as well as bodies--in the universal soul of the people. It sets man against man, and brother against brother--Cain against Abel--and is branded with the curse of Cain."

"What would you substitute for it?" I demanded.

"The remedy is always a problem. I should try co-operation--in this age."

"Co-operation! It has been proved an absolute failure. It makes the industrious and the thrifty the slave of the idle and spendthrift. Men would not work."

"An idle and time-worn fallacy. The ambitious do not work for gold, the high-minded do not--John Marvel does not--Miss Leigh does not. The poor do not work for wealth, only for bread, for a crust, with starvation ever grinning at them beside their door which cannot shut out its grisly face. Look at your poor client McNeil. Did he work to accumulate gold? He worked to feed his starving children."

"But, would they work--this great class?"

"Yes, they would have to work, all who are capable of it, but for higher rewards. We would make all who are capable, work. We would give the rewards to those who produce, to all who produce by intellect or labor. We would do away with those who live on the producers--the leeches who suck the life-blood. Work, intellectual or physical, should be the law of society."

"They would not work," I insisted.

"Why do you go on drivelling that like a morning paper. Why would they not work! Man is the most industrious animal on earth. Look at these vast piles of useless buildings, look at the great edifices and works of antiquity. Work is the law of his awakened intellect. There would still be ambition, emulation, a higher and nobler ambition for something better than the base reward they strive and rob and trample each other in the mire for now. Men would then work for art, the old mechanic-arts would revive in greater beauty and perfection than ever before. New and loftier ideals would be set up. There would be more, vastly more men who would have those ideals. What does the worker now know of ideals? He is reduced to a machine, and a very poor machine at that. He does not know where his work goes, or have an interest in it. Give him that. Give his fellows that. It will uplift him, uplift his class, create a great reservoir from which to draw a better class. The trouble with you, my dear friend," said Wolffert, "is that you are assuming all the time that your law is a fixed law, your condition of society a fixed condition. They are not: There are few things fixed in the world. The universal law is change--growth or decay. Of all the constellations and stars, the Pole star alone is fixed, and that simply appears so. It really moves like the rest, only in a vaster orbit with other stars moving about it."

I smiled, partly at his grandiose imagery and partly at his earnestness.

"You smile, but it is true. There are few fundamental laws. The survival of the fittest is one of them in its larger sense. It is that under which my people have survived."

"And that all men are by nature entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

"Not at all, or, at least, only in the larger sense. If they were entitled to life, neither nature nor the law would deprive them of it--if to liberty, neither could interfere with it--if to the pursuit of happiness, we should have to reconstruct their minds."

"Then, in Heaven's name, what are they entitled to?" I exclaimed.

"First, under certain conditions, to the best fruits of properly organized society; to light--enlightenment--then to opportunity to have an equal chance for what they are willing to work for."

"Among other things, to work?" I hazarded, feeling that he had delivered himself into my hands. "Every man has a right to labor at whatever work and for whatever prices he pleases," I said; "that you will admit is fundamental?"

"If the laborer and his employer contract, no one else has a right to interfere."

"Not the public--if they are injured by it?"

"Except by law."

"Who make the laws? The people in theory now, and some day they will do it in fact. As the spirit of the time changes, the interpretation of the law will change, and the spirit is changing all the time."

"Not in this particular."

"Yes, in all respects. Men are becoming more enlightened. The veil has been torn away and the light has been let in. As soon as education came the step was taken. We are in a new era already, and the truth is, you and your like do not see it."

"What sort of era? How is it new?"

"An era of enlightenment. Men have been informed; they know their power; 'the tree of knowledge has been plucked.'"

"They don't appear to do much with the knowledge."

"You think not? It is true that they have not yet learned to apply the knowledge fully, but they are learning. See how Democracy has ripened over the earth, overthrowing tyranny and opening the door of opportunity for all mankind--how the principles of Socialism have spread within the last generation, in Germany, in England, now in America and Russia. Why, it is now an active, practical force."

"Oh! not much," I insisted.

"A great deal, taking into account the opposition to it. It is contrary, remember, to the established usage and belief of thousands of years. It proposes to supplant what you have been trained to consider the foundation of your life, of society, of order, and you have been trained to believe that your most precious rights are bound up with that system. Every force of modern life is arrayed against it, yet it advances steadily; because, under your system, lies the fundamental error and sin which enables one man to hold another down and live off of him. You do not see that a new era is dawning, that man is developing, society passing into a new phase. Democracy has come to stay; because it is informed. More and more men are thinking, more and more men are learning to think."

"But they will not be able to upset the established order."

"There is no established order. It is always upset in time, either for good or ill. It never abides, for change is the law."

"Generally for ill. Content is lost."

"Generally for good," flashed Wolffert. "The content you speak of is slavery--stagnation and death. When a man ceases to move, to change consciously, he changes most, he dies. That is the law that for the universal good underlies all growth. You cannot alter it."

He ceased speaking and I took my leave, feeling that somehow he had grown away from me.

THE CONFLICT

Wolffert's book was never finished. When he got well, it was laid aside for more imperative work. The misery in the city had increased till it threatened the overthrow of everything. It was necessary to do his part to ameliorate the wretchedness; for his word was a charm in the foreign district where disturbance was most to be feared. He was the most talked of man in the city. He worked night and day.

For a little time it looked as though the efforts of the peace-makers, among whom were conspicuous in the poor section of the town John Marvel and Wolffert, to bring about a better feeling and condition were going to be successful. The men began to return to work. The cars were once more being operated, though under heavy police protection, Collis McSheen having had it made clear to him by his former friends like Canter and others that he must act or take the consequences.

One evening not long afterward, under prompting of an impulse to go and see how my poor woman and little Janet were coming on, and possibly not without some thought of Eleanor Leigh, who had hallowed her doorstep the last time I was there, I walked over to that part of the town. I took Dix along, or he took himself, for he was my inseparable companion these days. Eleanor Leigh had been there, but she had gone to the old Drummer's to see Elsa, who was ill, and had taken Janet with her. The mother said the child was afraid to go out on the street now, and Miss Eleanor thought it would do her good. The poor woman's pitiful face haunted me as I turned down the street. Though the men were returning to work, the effect of the strike was still apparent all through this section of the town. The streets were full of idlers, especially about the bar-rooms; and their surly looks and glum air testified to the general feeling.

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