Part 64 (1/2)

”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?”

”His teachings? John Marvel's exposition of them in his life bore a part and, thus, perhaps----”

”That is it.”

”Why should I not partic.i.p.ate 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--Compet.i.tion.”

”'Compet.i.tion,'” I quoted, ”'is the soul of trade.'”

”Compet.i.tion,” 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 subst.i.tute 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 acc.u.mulate gold?

He worked to feed his starving children.”

”But, would they work--this great cla.s.s?”

”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 n.o.bler 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 cla.s.s, create a great reservoir from which to draw a better cla.s.s. The trouble with you, my dear friend,” said Wolffert, ”is that you are a.s.suming 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.”