"There you are: 'no patience!' But that's another thing we men of the soil be going to teach you chaps who own the soil. 'Patience,' you say. There's a time coming when the rich people will have to be mighty patient, I warn you! And if you're impatient—why, 'tis all one to us, for never was heard that any impatient man could stop the tide flowing."
"I believe that," said Baskerville grimly. "You'll pay us presently for teaching you, and clothing you, and helping to enlarge your minds. When you're learned enough, you'll turn round, like the snake, and bite the hand that fed you. Gratitude the common soul never knows and never will, whatever else it may learn. Knowledge is poison to low natures, and we ought to have kept you ignorant and harmless."
Jack Head stared.
"That's a pretty speech!" he said. "That's a good healthy bit of Christian charity—eh? Why for should you ax so much credit for your side? Take me. What's the rich man done for me? A workhouse boy I was."
"And look at you now—a prosperous man and saving money. Who fed you and taught you and brought you up? The State. Society saved you; society played mother to you; and now you want to kick her. That's how you'd pay your debts. You take a base and a narrow view—dishonest too. The State have got to look after the rich as well as the poor. Why not? The poor aren't everybody. You're the sort that think no man can be a decent member of society unless he was born in a gutter. Class prejudice 'tis called, and some of the chaps who think they're the salt of the earth, stink of it."
"Class be damned," said Mr. Head. "Class is all stuff and nonsense. There are only two classes—good men and bad ones. The difference between a duke and me be difference between a pig with a ring in his nose and another without one. We'm built the same to the last bone in our bodies, and I've got more sense than half the dukes in the kingdom."
"And t'other half have got more sense than you," returned the rider. "It's summed up in a word. Class there will be, because class there must be. The poor we have always with us—you know that well enough. Your books, though they deny most things, can't deny that."
"Another of your silly Christian sayings. We have got the poor with us—but it won't be always. So long as we have the rich with us, we shall have the poor, and no longer. No longer, master! Finish off the one and you'll finish off t'other. That's a bit of home-grown wisdom, that is got from no book at all."
"Wisdom, you call it! And what power is going to root out the rich? How are you clever folk going to alter human nature, and say to this man you shan't save your money and to this man you shall save yours? While some men and women are born to thrift and sense, and some to folly and squandering, there must be rich and poor; and while men are born to hunger for power, there must be war. These things can't be changed. And you can't say where any man can reach to; you can't put up a mark and tell your fellow-man, 'you shan't go higher than that.'"
"Granted. You can't say where they shall reach to; but you can say where they shall start from. Half the world's handicapped at the starting-post. I only ax for the race to be a fair one. I only ax for my son to start fair with yours. If yours be the better man, then let him win; but don't let him win because he's got too long a start. That's not justice but tyranny. Give every man his chance and make every man work—that's all I ask. If a man's only got the wits to break stones, then see that he breaks 'em; and let them who can do better and earn better money not grudge the stone-breaker a little over and above what his poor wits earn in the market."