There was instantaneous silence, the silence of surprise at least, and I went on to show what I had learned from Mill that open competition was the law of life, another name for the struggle for existence; that each country should concentrate its energies on producing the things it was best fitted to produce and trade these off against the products of other nations; this was the great economic law, the law of the territorial division of labor.
“Americans should produce corn and wheat and meat for the world”, I said, and exchange these products for the cheapest English woolen goods and French silks and Irish linen. This would enrich the American farmer, develop all the waste American land and be a thousand times better for the whole country than taxing all consumers with high import duties to enrich a few Eastern manufacturers who were too inefficient to face the open competition of Europe. “The American farmers,” I went on, “should organize with the laborers, for their interests are identical and fight the Eastern manufacturer who is nothing but a parasite living on the brains and work of better men.”
And then, I wound up: “this common sense program won’t please your Senators or your Congressmen who prefer cheap claptrap to thought, or your superfine Professors who believe the war of classes is ‘a mere arithmetical problem’ (and I imitated the Professor’s thin voice), but it may nevertheless be accepted by the American farmer tired of being milked by the Yankee manufacturer and it should stand as the first chapter in the new Granger gospel.”
I bowed to the Mayor and turned away but the audience broke into cheers and Senator Ingalls came over and shook my hand saying he hoped to know me better and the cheering went on till I had gotten back to my place and resumed my seat. A few minutes later and I was touched on the back by Professor Smith. As I turned round he said smiling “you gave me a good lesson: I’ll never make a public speaker and what I said doubtless sounded inconsequent and absurd; but if you’d have a talk with me, I think I could convince you that my theory will hold water.”
“I’ve no doubt you could,” I broke in, heartily ashamed of having made fun of a man I didn’t know; “I didn’t grasp your meaning but I’d be glad to have a talk with you.”
“Are you free tonight?” he went on: I nodded: “Then come with me to my rooms. These ladies live out of town and we’ll put them in their buggy and then be free. This is Mrs.… he added presenting me to the stouter lady and this, her sister, Miss Stevens.” I bowed and out we went, I keeping myself resolutely in the background till the sisters had driven away: then we set off together to Professor Smith’s rooms, for our talk.
If I could give a complete account of that talk, this poor page would glow with wonder and admiration all merged in loving reverence. We talked or rather Smith talked for I soon found he knew infinitely more than I did, was able indeed to label my creed as that of Mill, “a bourgeois English economist” he called him with smiling disdain.
Ever memorable to me, sacred indeed, that first talk with the man who was destined to reshape my life and inspire it with some of his own high purpose. He introduced me to the communism of Marx and Engels and easily convinced me that land and its products, coal and oil, should belong to the whole community which should also manage all industries for the public benefit.
My breath was taken by his mere statement of the case and I thrilled to the passion in his voice and manner though even then I wasn’t wholly convinced. Whatever topic we touched on, he illumined; he knew everything, it seemed to me, German and French and could talk Latin and Classic Greek as fluently as English. I had never imagined such scholarship and when I recited some verses of Swinburne as expressing my creed he knew them too and his Pantheistic Hymn to Hertha, as well. And he wore his knowledge lightly as the mere garment of his shining spirit! And how handsome he was, like a Sun-god! I had never seen anyone who could at all compare with him.
Day had dawned before we had done talking: then he told me he was the Professor of Greek in the State University and hoped I would come and study with him when the schools opened again in October. “To think of you as a cowboy” he said, “is impossible. Fancy a cowboy knowing books of Vergil and poems of Swinburne by heart; it’s absurd: you must give your brains a chance and study.”