“And we will reserve the power of directing and planning the buildings ourselves,” she added.
“I’m glad you’re going to do something for the children,” said Marion. “If you don’t succeed in improving things in this generation much, you will in the next, if you educate the children.”
“That is what I propose to do,” said Salome. “They must have better schools than they ever had.”
“And be compelled to attend them,” interposed Burnham.
“Oh, there are so many things to be done. It will take years to get everything in working order.”
“You have laid out a beautiful scheme, Miss Shepard,” remarked Geoffrey Burnham, “and in most respects a practical one. But you must not be too sanguine. These people are ignorant,—fairly steeped in ignorance. They are jealous, too, and doubtless will mistrust your motives, and believe you have some selfish reason behind all your endeavor.”
“I have,” laughed Salome. “I want my mills to be models, and my people to be the best, most skilled, most intelligent, and most progressive community in America.”
“Bravo!” said Villard. “So do I.”
“I am not so sanguine as you may think,” Salome went on. “I know they are ignorant. How should they be anything else? All their lives they’ve been used as we use the machines in the factory,—to make good cloth, and plenty of money. Nobody has thought of their welfare, or cared what they did, or thought, or became, when working-hours were over. How do we know what sort of men they are, or what capabilities they possess? I read somewhere, only the other day, that there may still be Fichtes tending geese, and Robert Burns’ toiling on the farm; that there may be, yet, successors of William Dean Howells at the type-forms, of T. B. Aldrich at the book-keeper’s desk, of Mark Twain at the pilot-wheel. We have no right to keep them back. But this writer went on to say, that the world has less need of them, even, than of those who cannot aspire to thrive outside the shop, and who go to their daily toil knowing that their highest hope must be not to get ‘out of a job’ and not to have their wages cut. I don’t suppose they will, at once, appreciate our efforts to better their condition. Possibly they will oppose us at first; but we can have no better task to perform than to make them prosperous, contented and joyous in their work. And by making a man of the operative, I fully believe we shall bring material prosperity to the mills.”
“But the expense,” urged Burnham. “Have you calculated that? I doubt if the mills could stand so heavy a burden all at once.”