AN UPLIFTER RULED BY ENVY
The uplifter saw the men between heats drinking beer out of tin pails.
"Why do those big fine fellows drink beer," he asked me, "when they have plenty of water?"I asked him: "Why don't you drink beer?"
"It makes me bilious," he replied. "If I drink one glass of beer every day for a week it upsets me and I get weak and dizzy.""Do you think that one drink of beer a day will upset those fellows and make them dizzy?""Evidently not."
"Then when you oppose beer you are doing it to keep yourself from getting sick, aren't you? Do you really care a darn whether those fellows get sick at the stomach or not?""Certainly, I--"
"You don't want them to get sick at the stomach ?""Then, why did you give that lecture on corned beef and make those strong fellows all sick at the stomach while you enjoyed your own dinner?""I didn't know it would disturb them so. Besides I wanted to keep them from getting sick later.""Well, they prefer to have their health now, and wait for their sickness until later on. You are doing no man a favor by making him sick when he is feeling well. If God is willing for them to be well, and they want to be well, and the only thing that keeps them from being well is you, aren't you afraid that they will pile on to you and knock the daylights out of you?""I am really working for their good."
"Then you want their stomachs to have what agrees with them?""Certainly."
"Well, I'll tell you something, then. Water doesn't always agree with the stomach as well as beer does. You never worked at terrific muscular exertion handling white-hot iron in a mill like this. You haven't got the muscles to do it, and I doubt if you've got the heart. You can not know the condition a man is in when he hits his hardest lick here. But they know, and I know. Some of the men feel they can't drink water at that time. My pal tells me that his stomach rejects it; his throat seems to collapse as he gulps it. But beer he can drink and it eases him. The alcohol in beer is a blessing at that time. It soothes his laboring stomach until the water can get into his system and quench the man's thirst. Iron workers in the Old World have used malt beverages for generations. Why take away the other man's pleasure if it doesn't injure you? If it was deadly we would have been weakened in the course of generations. But look at the worker's body. It is four times as strong as yours." I saw an envious look in his eye.
"Of course I inherited my muscular build," I apologized, "and so I try to make the most of it in boasting to you fellows who haven't any muscle. But really I envy you. You have education and brain power. That's what I lack and that's what I want above all other things. I try to study at night and educate myself. But Ihaven't got any chance against you fellows who are born intellectual and have college training on top of it. So if I have talked sharp to you, my cussedness is really due to envy. Ireally want to be in your shoes, and I haven't got the brains for the job."This worked.
"There is nothing about me for a fellow like you to envy," he said condescendingly. "I'm no better off than you are. In fact, Ienvy you fellows. You are never sick; you can eat and digest anything. I really envy you. You are built like a young Hercules and are never ashamed when you strip. When I put on a bathing suit I am embarrassed until I get out of sight in the water, because I'm all skin and bones. My arms and legs are the size of broomsticks.""Oh, well," I said, "you're just as well off without the Hercules shape. You are always healthy.""Healthy? What I call health, you fellows would regard as the last stages of decrepitude. A little beer and tobacco knocks me over. If I drank coffee and ate pie the way you do, I'd have to take morphine to get a night's sleep. You fellows need never envy us intellectuals. You can drink and smoke and eat anything, and all the poisons you take in are sweated out of your pores in this terrific labor, so that every night you come out as clean and lusty as a new-born child. I'd swap all my education in a minute for the mighty body and the healthy and lusty living that you enjoy. If you knew how much I envy you, you would never think of envying me."He had blurted out the truth. It wasn't love of comrades that gave a motive to his life. It was envy that turned him inside out. Envy was the whole story, and he admitted it.
