WOLFFERT'S NEIGHBORS
I had not been to visit Wolffert and, indeed, had but a hazy idea of where he lived, knowing only that he had a room in the house of some Jew in the Jewish quarter. Hitherto our meetings had taken place either in John Marvel's narrow little quarters or in mine at the old Drummer's. But having learned from John that he was ill, I got the address from him, and one afternoon went over to see him. I found the place in a region more squalid than that in which John Marvel and I had our habitation and as foreign as if it had been in Judea or in a Black Sea province. In fact, it must have exhibited a mixture of both regions. The shops were small and some of them gay, but the gayest was as mean as the most sombre. The signs and notices were all in Yiddish or Russian, the former predominating, and as I passed through the ill-paved, ill-smelling, reeking streets I could scarcely retain my conviction that I was still in an American city. It was about the hour that the manufactories of clothing, etc., closed and the street through which I walked was filled with a moving mass of dark humanity that rolled through it like a dark and turgid flood. For blocks they filled the sidewalk, moving slowly on, and as I mingled in the mass, and caught low, guttural, unknown sounds, and not a word of English all the while, I became suddenly aware of a strange alien feeling of uncertainty and almost of oppression. Far as eye could see I could not descry one Saxon countenance or even one Teuton. They were all dark, sallow, dingy, and sombre. Now and then a woman's hat appeared in the level moving surge of round black hats, giving the impression of a bubble floating on a deep, slow current to melt into the flood. Could this, I reflected sombrely, be the element we are importing? and what effect would the strange confluence have on the current of our life in the future? No wonder we were in the throes of a strike vast enough to cause anxiety!
I was still under the dominion of this reflection when I reached the street in which Wolffert had his home, and, after some difficulty, discovered the house in which he had his abode.
The street was filled with wretched little shops, some more wretched than others, all stuck together in a curious jumble of tawdry finery and rusty necessities. Among them were many shops where second-hand clothing was exhibited, or, from appearances, clothing for which that term was a flattering euphemism. I stopped at one where second-hand shoes were hung out, and, opening the door to ask the way, faced a stout, shapeless woman with a leathery skin and a hooked nose, above which a pair of inquisitive black eyes rested on me, roving alternately from my feet to my face, with an expression of mingled curiosity, alarm, and hostility. I asked her if she could tell me where the number 1 wanted was, and as my inquiry caused not the least change of expression, I took out my card and wrote the number down. She gazed at it in puzzled silence, and then with a little lighting of her dark face, muttered a few unintelligible words and bustled back to where a curtain hung across the narrow shop, and lifting one corner of it gave a call which I made out to be something like "Jacob." The next moment a small, keen-looking boy made his way from behind the curtain and gazed at me. A few words passed between the two, in a tongue unknown to me, and then the boy, laying down a book that he carried in his hand, came forward and asked me in perfectly good English, "What is it you want?"
"I want to know where number 5260-1/2 —— Street is. I have that address, but cannot find the number."
"I'll show you." His eyes too were on my shoes. "The numbers of the streets were all taken down last year, and have not been put back yet. That is where Mr. Wolffert lives. Do you know him?"
"Yes, I am going to see him."
He turned and said something rapidly to his mother, in which the only word I recognized was Wolffert's name. The effect was instantaneous. The expression of vague anxiety died out of the woman's face and she came forward jabbering some sort of jargon and showing a set of yellow, scattering teeth.
"I'll show you where he lives. You come with me," said Jacob. "She thought you were an agent." He suddenly showed a much better set of teeth than his mother could display—"She don't speak English, you see." He had laid down his book on the counter and he now put on his cap. As he passed out of the door he paused and fastened his eyes on my feet. "You don't want a pair of shoes? We have all sorts—some as good as new. You can't tell. Half the price, too."
I declined the proffered bargain, and we walked up the street, Jacob discoursing volubly of many things, to show his superior intelligence.
"What was your book?" I inquired.
"U. S. History. I'm in the sixth grade."
"So? I should think you are rather small to be so high?" My ideas of grades were rather hazy, having been derived from "Tom Brown at Rugby" and such like encyclopædias.
"Pah! I stand next to head," he cried contemptuously.
"You do! Who stands head?"
"Iky Walthiemer—he's fourteen and I ain't but twelve. Then there is a fellow named Johnson—Jimmy Johnson. But he ain't nothin'!"
"He isn't? What's the matter with him?"
"He ain't got no eye on him—he don't never see nothin'."
"You mean he's dull?"
"Sure! Just mem'ry, that's all. He's dull. We beat 'em all."
"Who are 'we'?"
"We Jews."
"So——"
"Well, here we are. I'll run up and show you the door"—as we stopped at a little butcher shop beside which was a door that evidently led up a stair to the upper story.
"All right. You know Mr. Wolffert?"
"Sure! We all know him. He's a Jew, too."
"Sure!" I tried to imitate his tone, for it was not an accent only.
He ran up the stair and on up a second flight and back along a dark, narrow little passage, where he tapped on a door, and, without waiting, walked in.
"Here's a man to see you."
"A gentleman, you mean," I said dryly, and followed him, for I have a particular aversion to being referred to to my face as a mere man. It is not a question of natural history, but of manners.
"Well, Jacob," said Wolffert when he had greeted me, "have you got to the top yet?"
"Will be next week," said Jacob confidently.
I found Wolffert sitting up in a chair, but looking wretchedly ill. He, however, declared himself much better. I learned afterward—though not from him—that he had caught some disease while investigating some wretched kennels known as "lodging houses," where colonies of Jews were packed like herrings in a barrel; and for which a larger percentage on the value was charged as rental than for the best dwellings in the city. His own little room was small and mean enough, but it was comfortably if plainly furnished, and there were books about, which always give a homelike air, and on a little table a large bunch of violets which instantly caught my eye. By some inexplicable sixth sense I divined that they had come from Eleanor Leigh; but I tried to be decent enough not to be jealous; and Wolffert's manifest pleasure at seeing me made me feel humble.
We had fallen to talking of his work when I said, "Wolffert, why do you live in this horrible quarter? No wonder you get ill. Why don't you get a room in a more decent part of the town—near where John Marvel lives, for instance?"
Wolffert smiled.
"Why?—what is the matter with this?"
"Oh! Why, it is dreadful. Why, it's the dirtiest, meanest, lowest quarter of the city! I never saw such a place. It's full of stinking"—I was going to say "Jews"; but reflected in time to substitute "holes."
Wolffert, I saw, supplied the omitted objection.
"Do you imagine I would live among the rich?" he demanded; "I thought you knew me better. I don't want to be fattened in the dark like a Strasbourg goose for my liver to make food acceptable to their jaded appetites. Better be a pig at once."
"No, but there are other places than this—and I should think your soul would revolt at this—" I swung my arm in a half circle.
"Are they not my brethren?" he said, half smiling.
"Well, admit that they are—" (And I knew all along that this was the reason.) "There are other grades—brethren of nearer degree."
"None," he ejaculated. "'I dwell among my own people'—I must live among them to understand them."
"I should think them rather easy to understand."
"I mean to be in sympathy with them," he said gently. "Besides, I am trying to teach them two or three things."
"What?" For I confess that my soul had revolted at his surroundings. That surging, foreign-born, foreign-looking, foreign-spoken multitude who had filled the street as I came along through the vile reek of "Little Russia," as it was called, had smothered my charitable feelings.
"Well, for one thing, to learn the use of freedom—for another, to learn the proper method and function of organization."
"They certainly appear to me to have the latter already—simply by being what they are," I said lightly.
"I mean of business organization," Wolffert explained. "I want to break up the sweat shop and the sweat system. We are already making some headway, and have thousands in various kinds of organized business which are quite successful."
"I should not think they would need your assistance—from what I saw. They appear to me to have an instinct."
"They have," said Wolffert, "but we are teaching them how to apply it. The difficulty is their ignorance and prejudice. You think that they hold you in some distrust and dislike, possibly?" As his tone implied a question, I nodded.
"Well, that is nothing to the way in which they regard me. You they distrust as a gentile, but me they detest as a renegade."
"Well, I must say that I think you deserve what you get for bringing in such a mass of ignorance. Now, you are an American, and a patriotic one. How do you reconcile it with your patriotism to introduce into the body politic such an element of ignorance, superstition, and unrest?"
"Why," said Wolffert, "you don't know our people. The Jew is often an element of ignorance and superstition, though he is not alone in this, but he is never an element of unrest—when he is justly treated," he added after a pause. "But, whatever these people are in this generation, the next generation—the children of this generation—will be useful American citizens. All they require is a chance. Why, the children of these Russian Jews, baited from their own country, are winning all the prizes in the schools," he added, his pale face flushing faintly. "That lad who showed you in is the son of parents who sell second-hand shoes in the next street and cannot speak a word of English, and yet he stands at the head of his class."
"No, second!" I said.
"How do you know?"
"He told me."
"The little rascal! See how proud he is of it," said Wolffert triumphantly.
"He tried to sell me a pair of shoes."
Wolffert chuckled. "Did he?" Then he sobered, catching my thought. "That is the most important thing for him at present, but wait. Let this develop." He tapped his forehead. "He may give you laws equal to Kepler's or a new philosophy like Bacon's. He may solve aerial navigation—or revolutionize thought in any direction—who knows!"
His face had lighted up as he proceeded, and he was leaning forward in his chair, his eyes glowing.
"I know," I said, teasingly. "He'll sell shoes—second-hand ones polished up for new."
I was laughing, but Wolffert did not appreciate my joke. He flushed slightly.
"That's your gentile ignorance, my friend. That's the reason your people are so dense—they never learn—they keep repeating the same thing. No wonder we discover new worlds for you to claim!"
"What new worlds have you discovered?"
"Well, first, Literature, next commerce. What is your oldest boasted scripture?"
"I thought you were talking of material worlds!"
"We helped about that, too—did our full part. You think Queen Isabella pawned her jewels to send Christobal Colon to discover America—don't you?"
I nodded.
"Well, the man who put up the money for that little expedition was a Jew—'Arcangel, the Treasurer.' You never heard of him!"
"Never."
"He did it all the same. If you would read something else beside your narrow English writings, Glave, you would learn something of the true history of civilization." Now and then Wolffert's arrogance, like Antipater's, showed through the rents in his raiment.
"What for instance? since you appear to know it all."
"Well, almost any other history or philosophy. Read the work of the thinkers old and new—and see how much deeper life is than the shallow thing called by that divine name by the butterflies and insects and reptiles who flaunt their gauzy vans in our faces or fasten their brazen claws in our vitals. Meantime, you might read my book," he said with a smile, "when it comes out."
"Well, tell me about it meantime and save me the trouble. I sometimes prefer my friends to their books."
"You were always lazy," he said smiling. But he began to talk, laying down his philosophy of life, which was simple enough, though I could not follow him very far. I had been trained in too strict a school to accept doctrines so radical. And but that I saw him and John Marvel and Eleanor Leigh acting on them I should have esteemed them absolutely utopian. As it was, I wondered how far Eleanor Leigh had inspired his book.
XXXVIII
WOLFFERT'S PHILOSOPHY
(WHICH MAY BE SKIPPED BY THE READER)
As Wolffert warmed up to his theme, his face brightened and his deep eyes glowed.
"The trouble with our people—our country—the world—is that our whole system—social—commercial—political—every activity is based on greed, mere, sheer greed. State and Church act on it—live by it. The success of the Jew which has brought on him so much suffering through the ages has revenged itself by stamping on your life the very evil with which you charge him—love of money. What ideals have we? None but money. We call it wealth. We have debased the name, and its debasement shows the debasement of the race. Once it meant weal, now mere riches, though employed basely, the very enemy and assassin of weal. The covetousness, whose reprobation in the last of the commandments was intended as a compendium to embrace the whole, has honeycombed our whole life, public and private. The amassing of riches, not for use only, for display—vulgar beyond belief—the squandering of riches, not for good, but for evil, to gratify jaded appetites which never at their freshest craved anything but evil or folly, marks the lowest level of the shopkeeping intellect. The Argands and the Canters are the aristocrats of the community, and the Capons are the fit priests for such people."
He turned away in disgust—but I prodded him.
"What is your remedy? You criticise fiercely! but give no light. You are simply destructive."
"The remedy is more difficult to give," he said gravely; "because the evil has been going on so long that it has become deep-rooted. It has sunk its roots into, not only the core of our life, but our character. It will take long to eradicate it. But one economic evil might be, and eventually must be changed, unless we wish to go down into the abyss of universal corruption and destruction."
"You mean——?"
"Capitalism—the idea that because a man is accidentally able to acquire through adventitious and often corrupt means vast riches which really are not made by himself, but by means of others under conditions and laws which he did not create, he may call them his own; use them in ways manifestly detrimental to the public good and, indeed, often in notorious destructiveness of it, and be protected in doing so by those laws."
"'Accidentally'—and 'adventitious means'! That does not happen so often. It may happen by finding a gold mine—once in ten thousand times—or by cornering some commodity on the stock or Produce Exchange once in one hundred thousand times, but even then a man must have intellect—force—courage—resourcefulness—wonderful powers of organization."
"So has the burglar and highwayman," he interrupted.
"But they are criminals—they break the law."
"What law? Why law more than these others? Is not the fundamental law, not to do evil to others?"
"The law established by society for its protection."
"Who made those laws?"
"The people—through their representatives," I added hastily, as I saw him preparing to combat it.
"The people, indeed! precious little part they have had in the making of the laws. Those laws were made, not by the people—who had no voice in their making, but by a small class—originally the Chief—the Emperor—the King—the Barons—the rich Burghers—the people had no part nor voice."
"They received the benefit of them."
"Only the crumbs which fell from their masters' tables. They got the gibbet, the dungeon, the rack, and the stick."
"Wolffert, you would destroy all property rights."
"My dear fellow, what nonsense you talk. I am only for changing the law to secure property rights for all, instead of for a class, the necessity for which no longer exists, if it ever did exist."
"Your own law-giver recognized it and inculcated it." I thought this a good thrust. He waved it aside.
"That was for a primitive people in a primitive age, as your laws were for your people in their primitive age. But do you suppose that Moses would make no modification now?"
"I have no idea that he would. For I believe they were divine."
"Surely—Moses acted under the guidance of the great Jehovah, whose law is justice and equity and righteousness. The laws he gave were to inculcate this, and they served their purpose when Israel served God. But now when He is mocked, the letter of the law is made an excuse and is given as the command to work injustice and inequity and unrighteousness. Surely they should be, at least, interpreted in the spirit in which they were given. You claim to be a Christian?"
"A very poor one."
"In name, at least, you claim that there has been a new dispensation?"
"Yes—an amplification—a development and evolution."
"Precisely. In place of an 'eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth—the other cheek turned—to do to others as you would have them do to you!'"
"That is the ideal. I have not yet reached that degree of——" I paused for the word.
"I, too, acknowledge that evolution, that ideal. Why should we not act on it?"
"Because of human nature. We have not yet reached the stage when it can be practically applied."
"But human nature while it does not change basically may be regulated, developed, uplifted, and this teaching is based on this principle. It has not yet borne much apparent fruit, it is true; but it is sound, nevertheless. We both in our better moments, at least, feel it to be sound, and there has been a little, however little uplift, and however hard to maintain.
"You believe in the development of man; but you look only to his material development. I look for his complete development, material and spiritual. As he has advanced through the countless ages since God breathed into him the breath of Life, and by leading him along the lines of physical development to a station in creation where the physical evolution gave place to the ever-growing psychical development; so I believe he is destined to continue this psychical or spiritual growth, increasing its power as the ages pass and mounting higher and higher in spiritual knowledge, until he shall attain a degree of perfection that we only think of now as a part of the divine. We see the poet and the saint living to-day in an atmosphere wholly distinct from the gross materialism of common humanity. We see laws being enacted and principles evolved which make for the improvement of the human race. We see the gradual uplifting and improvement of the race. War is being diminished; its horrors lessened; food is becoming more diffused; civilization—material civilization—is being extended; and the universal, fundamental rights are being a little more recognized, however dimly. This means growth—the gradual uplifting of mankind, the diffusion of knowledge, as well as of food—the growth of intellectuality. And as this comes, think you that man will not rise higher? A great reservoir is being tapped and from it will flow, in the future, rich streams to fertilize the whole world of humanity. Aspirations will leap higher and higher, and the whole race in time will receive new light, new power, new environments, with an ever-widening horizon, and a vast infinitude of spiritual truth as the field for the soul's exercise."
"It is a dream," I said, impressed by his burning eyes, his glowing face, as he drifted on almost in a rhapsody.
"Yes—a dream; but it might come true if all—if you and all like you—I mean all educated and trained people, would unite to bring it about. Your leader preached it, you profess the principles now, but do not practise them. The State has been against it—the Church equally. It is full of sham."
"It was Jerusalem that stoned the prophets," I interrupted. He swept on with a gesture.
"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?"
"His teachings? John Marvel's exposition of them in his life bore a part and, thus, perhaps——"
"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?"
"Provided you allow me to define what you mean—provided it does not injure his neighbor. You, as a lawyer, quote your Sic utere tuo ut non."
"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.