Ruth was thunderstruck, Bonbright bewildered. His panacea was not a panacea, then. He studied the plan to better it, and did make minor improvements, but in its elements it was just, fair. Bonbright could not understand, but Malcolm Lightener understood and the professor of sociology understood.
"I can't understand it," Bonbright said to them.
"Huh!" grunted Lightener. "It's just this: You're capital, and they're labor. That's it in a nutshell."
"But it's fair."
"To be sure it's fair—as fair as a thing can be. But the fact remains. Capital and labor can't get together as long as they remain capital and labor."
The professor nodded. "You've said the thing that is, Mr. Lightener. But it's deeper than that. It's the inevitable surge upward of humanity. You rich men try to become richer. That is natural. You are reaching up. Labor has a long way to climb to reach you, but it wants to reach you. Perhaps it doesn't know it, but it does. As long as a height remains to be climbed to, man will try to climb… Class exists. The employer class and the employed. So long as one man can boss another; so long as one man can say to another, 'Do this or do that,' there will be conflict. Everybody, whether he knows it or not, wants to be his own boss, and by as much as he is bossed he is galled … It can never be otherwise…"
"You knew from the beginning I would fail," said Bonbright.
"You haven't failed, my boy. You've done a fine thing; but you haven't solved a problem that has no solution… You are upset by it now, but after a while you'll see it and the disappointment will go. But you haven't failed… I don't believe you will ever understand all you have accomplished."
But Bonbright was unhappy, and he carried his unhappiness to his wife.
"It's all been futile," he said.
She was wiser than he. "No," she said, hotly, "it's been wonderful … Nothing was ever more wonderful. I've told you how I've visited them and seen the new happiness—seen women happy who had never been happy before; seen comfort where there had been nothing but misery … It's anything but futile, dear. You've done your best—and it was a splendid best… If it doesn't do all you hoped, that's no sign of failure. I'm satisfied, dear."