“It will entail extra expense for clerks and book-keepers,” responded Burnham. “That seems unnecessary.”
“The men claim that they have to depend in great measure on the credit system at the stores,” explained Villard. “Their wages coming only once a month, they get short of money. If sickness or other additional expense comes upon them, they are often seriously inconvenienced by lack of their rightful wages. Again, if they are able to put a little money in the savings-bank, why should they not have the benefit of the interest that accrues through the month, rather than we? The money is theirs.”
“On the other hand,” interrupted Burnham, “those men whose first duty, on being paid off, seems to lie in getting gloriously drunk, would have the opportunity just four times as often.”
“We have a work to do in that direction,” said Salome in a pained voice. “In a sense we are our brother’s keepers. I half believe that the solution of the temperance question is largely in the control of the employers of labor; and that the secondary, and often the primary, causes of intemperance are bad and unwholesome food, which create a craving for drink; bad company, which tempts it; squalid houses, which drive men forth for cheerfulness; and the want of more comfortable places of resort which leaves them no refuge but the saloons. It is in our power to remedy all these evils. Give them good sanitation, well-ventilated houses, comfortable homes, and reading-rooms, and coffee-parlors, and only the most depraved will be tempted by the low saloons.”
“But, Miss Shepard, surely you do not propose all these things?” and Geoffrey Burnham looked his astonishment.
“Why not?” was the terse reply.
“Where will your profits come in? You cannot afford it.”
Salome smiled. Her money was her own. Why should she not use it as she pleased?
“No. For the first year or two I shall not pocket an immense profit; that is true,” she assented. “But I am not likely to come to want. And Newbern Shepard’s mills must be put on the basis where he desired, above all things, to see them during his lifetime. He planned a noble scheme. It is my birthright and my duty to carry it into effect. It will cost me something to get the mills where they must be; but it will pay in the end. Of that I feel sure.”
“You are quite right,” said John Villard. “What may we not hope for when the condition of the working-people shall receive that concentrated attention which has hitherto been devoted to the more favored ranks? When charity, which has, for ages past, done so much mischief, shall learn to do good? When the countless pulpits of our country, which have always been so active in preaching Catholicism or Anglicism, Calvinism or Armenianism, and all other isms, shall preach pure and simple Christianity? When, by a healthy environment of the toiling masses, and the exercise of hygienic sense and science, mankind shall be healthy and free from questionable instincts and morbidly exaggerated appetites? I tell you, we cannot even approach an estimate of the extent to which every improvement, social, moral or material, reacts on the nation’s ethical and intellectual progress, and the prosperity of her industries.”