But I couldn't keep the conversation in these delightful channels. Evidently the strike and all that it meant lay heavy upon Mr. Vedder's consciousness, for he pushed back his coffee and began talking about it, almost in a tone of apology. He told me how kind he had tried to make the mill management in its dealings with its men.
"I would not speak of it save in explanation of our true attitude of helpfulness; but we have really given our men many advantages"--and he told me of the reading-room the company had established, of the visiting nurse they had employed, and of several other excellent enterprises, which gave only another proof of what I knew already of Mr. Vedder's sincere kindness of heart.
"But," he said, "we find they don't appreciate what we try to do for them."
I laughed outright.
"Why," I exclaimed, "you are having the same trouble I have had!"
"How's that?" he inquired, I thought a little sharply. Men don't like to have their seriousness trifled with.
"No longer ago than this morning," I said, "I had exactly that idea of giving them advantages; but I found that the difficulty lies not with the ability to give, but with the inability or unwillingness to take. You see I have a great deal of surplus wealth myself--"
Mr. Vedder's eyes flickered up at me.
"Yes," I said. "I've got immense accumulations of the wealth of the ages--ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, and I can't tell what other superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my hand in the most grandiloquent manner.) "I've also quite a store of knowledge of corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain of exceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully of all these varied riches (for I shall still have plenty remaining), but the fact is that this generation of vipers doesn't appreciate what I am trying to do for them. I'm really getting frightened, lest they permit me to perish from undistributed riches!"
Mr. Vedder was still smiling.
"Oh," I said, warming up to my idea, "I'm a regular multimillionaire. I've got so much wealth that I'm afraid I shall not be as fortunate as jolly Andy Carnegie, for I don't see how I can possibly die poor!"
"Why not found a university or so?" asked Mr. Vedder.
"Well, I had thought of that. It's a good idea. Let's join our forces and establish a university where truly serious people can take courses in laughter."
"Fine idea!" exclaimed Mr. Vedder; "but wouldn't it require an enormous endowment to accommodate all the applicants? You must remember that this is a very benighted and illiterate world, laughingly speaking."
"It is, indeed," I said, "but you must remember that many people, for a long time, will be too serious to apply. I wonder sometimes if any one ever learns to laugh really laugh much before he is forty."
"But," said Mr. Vedder anxiously, "do you think such an institution would be accepted by the proletariat of the serious-minded?"
"Ah, that's the trouble," said I, "that's the trouble. The proletariat doesn't appreciate what we are trying to do for them!
They don't want your reading-rooms nor my Emerson and cucumbers.
The seat of the difficulty seems to be that what seems wealth to us isn't necessarily wealth for the other fellow."
I cannot tell with what delight we fenced our way through this foolery (which was not all foolery, either). I never met a man more quickly responsive than Mr. Vedder. But he now paused for some moments, evidently ruminating.
"Well, David," he said seriously, "what are we going to do about this obstreperous other fellow?"
"Why not try the experiment," I suggested, "of giving him what he considers wealth, instead of what you consider wealth?"
"But what does he consider wealth?"
"Equality," said I.
Mr. Vedder threw up his hands.
"So you're a Socialist, too!"
"That," I said, "is another story."
"Well, supposing we did or could give him this equality you speak of--what would become of us? What would we get out of it?"
"Why, equality, too!" I said.
Mr. Vedder threw up his hands up with a gesture of mock resignation.
"Come," said he, "let's get down out of Utopia!"
We had some further good-humoured fencing and then returned to the inevitable problem of the strike. While we were discussing the meeting of the night before which, I learned, had been luridly reported in the morning papers, Mr. Vedder suddenly turned to me and asked earnestly:
"Are you really a Socialist?"
"Well," said I, "I'm sure of one thing. I'm not ALL Socialist, Bill Hahn believes with his whole soul (and his faith has made him a remarkable man) that if only another class of people--his class--could come into tile control of material property, that all the ills that man is heir to would be speedily cured. But I wonder if when men own property collectively--as they are going to one of these days--they will quarrel and hate one another any less than they do now. It is not the ownership of material property that interests me so much as the independence of it.
When I started out from my farm on this pilgrimage it seemed to me the most blessed thing in the world to get away from property and possession."
"What are you then, anyway?" asked Mr. Vedder, smiling.
"Well, I've thought of a name I would like to have applied to me sometimes," I said. "You see I'm tremendously fond of this world exactly as it is now. Mr. Vedder, it's a wonderful and beautiful place! I've never seen a better one. I confess I could not possibly live in the rarefied atmosphere of a final solution. I want to live right here and now for all I'm worth. The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life. 'Why,' I answered without a thought, 'Now.' It has always seemed to me that if a man can't make a go of it, yes, and be happy at this moment, he can't be at the next moment. But most of all, it seems to me, I want to get close to people, to look into their hearts, and be friendly with them. Mr. Vedder, do you know what I'd like to be called?"
"I cannot imagine," said he.
