“That’s beautiful work,” she said. “If I’d been brought up to that, I’d have joyed in it, because there’s something to show for it, and you’d know the flowers and ribbons you painted was brightening up other people’s homes. But my work—just shifting paper and putting the zinc between the sheets for the glazing rollers—there’s nothing to it.”
“Don’t you say that. All necessary work is fine if it’s done well, same as you did it. But there’ll be no more of that sort of work for you. Your place will be at home; and I shouldn’t be content for you just to do housewife’s work neither, Medora. You’re going to be my right hand and look after my papers and help me with the big things I hope to do—not in the Mill, but out of it.”
“I never shall be clever enough.”
“Yes, you will. You’ll come to it when you get a grasp of all the questions we’re out to solve. You’ll begin at the beginning, where I did, and master the theory of socialism—the theories I should say, because it’s a science that’s in the making and clever men are still working out the details. There’s a lot of difference of opinion, and so far as I can see, our leaders—the ‘intellectuals,’ as they are called—don’t see eye to eye by any means yet. They’re all for universal democracy, of course, and the government of the people by the people and the redistribution of wealth and the uplift of the worker and so on; but they differ as to how it’s to be done and how the mass is to be brought out of slavery to the promised land. In fact no two of ’em think the same, strange to say.”
“It’s a big subject,” said Medora blankly.
“It’s the only subject.”
“I lay you’ve thought it all out.”
“I’ve got my ideas, and in our evenings I shall put ’em before you and read you a lot I’ve written about it. We’ll go over it together, and you’ll bring your own wits to work on it when you’ve mastered all the different opinions.”
“I wish I was half as clever as you think,” she said.
“You don’t know what you can do till you try. The first thing is to get interested in it and let it soak into you. Once you feel like I do, that it is the only thing that really matters for the race, then you’ll properly live for it.”