Thurber smiled and said:
“It does sound worldly, especially to a minister, Priddy, but the strange thing about it is, as I have figured it out, that if I do take an educated, intelligent, thoroughly scientific interest in my employees, and manage to clean up their tenements, their morals and their minds through welfare work, I shall, in the same stroke, be increasing their loyalty to the business, be redoubling their efficiency, be preparing a higher grade of workman: all of which will increase the earnings of my plant.”
“In other words, Thurber, you are going to work on the principle that humanity and welfare work are good business policy?”
“Yes,” nodded Thurber. “If you, as a minister, were phrasing it you would say, ‘Godliness is profitable in all things’—even in good industrial management—to mix in Shakspeare, it is ‘twice blessed, it blesseth him that giveth’—the employer—‘and him that receiveth’—the worker. That’s what I call ‘the glimpse’ and you may imagine how eagerly I am tugging at the strings in order to be working it out practically.”
“But it may turn out to be fine theory: mere dreaming, Thurber?”
“Oh no,” he protested. “Read the countless numbers of sociological works that I have and follow the countless numbers of experiments that have been made in this direction and you will agree that it is the most sane procedure.”
“College has meant something very definite to you, then, Thurber?”
“I should say it had. I tell you I believe I understand, now, the tremendous suggestion that lies behind the college emphasis that its students stand in their businesses and interests against mere commercialism and flood them with intelligent, moral service. Besides, think what significance lies in my studies now: the whole course seems bent to broaden me towards the intelligent, economical use of human beings: psychology will give me trained insight, a course or two in physiology helps me to understand the limits of workingmen’s endurance and wide reading in literature will aid me to intelligently work out a policy of self-culture in the workingmen’s libraries I shall form. Oh, I have come to realize that a business education is a thousand times more than learning bookkeeping, the names of the tools, and a little mathematics from which to compute wages. It demands, in my estimation, the broadest college culture and I mean to secure it.”
“Just the antithesis of your father’s theory,” I suggested.
“Yes, and think, too, how much he has lost by it. You would understand how enthusiastic I am about it, Priddy, if you could have one glimpse of the people and tenements around father’s mill. I feel that right there is my call.”