[CHAPTER XII]
PRINCE KROPOTKIN'S COW
Some of my experiences led me to wonder if there is a correspondence course for economists and statesmen. Anyway, I have been coming into contact with thinkers, the perfection of whose theories can only be accounted for on the hypothesis that they are graduates of a correspondence school. They have world-shaping plans that could only be excused on the plea that those who propound them either know God's plan or have a better one. Only a correspondence school could give a man such sublime self-confidence. Still, the reading of many books on economics, and class papers, would have much the same effect as a correspondence course, and that probably accounts for the finished thinkers that are forever putting one down in arguments.
But this is a tough old world and politics is a science too human to be put into books. The economists take no account of "human cussedness" or the instinct to do anything except what the wise of the world say that we should do. No matter how beneficent your theory may be, we will have none of it—and a good thing it is for the world that we will not.
Still, the correspondence-school statesmen and economists are so much a part of the life of to-day, with its agitations and movements and tiresome futilities, that one must give them some attention. The mildest of these world-shapers are clamoring for the nationalization of everything from railroads to cranberry bogs. Indeed, I have met with thinkers to whom all this would be merely a preliminary step. I have heard it gravely suggested, or rather vehemently suggested, that things will not be right in this world until all the inequalities due to education and variations of brain power are also wiped out. This would give us equality with a vengeance: the kind of blessed equality we have in the stable at home, where the cattle are all chained so that the energetic red cow cannot get more than her share of the food. The simple fact is that in the new world social theories are being reduced to an absurdity, even before being applied. This is the land of violent contrasts, and the programme I laid out for myself has enabled me to see some of these contrasts at their sharpest. I have made it a point to hunt up friends of my youth who have either grown up with the country or have gone down under its progress. In one city on the Canadian prairies I found a friend so prosperous that he was living in the almost sybaritic luxury of a great hotel of the kind that show how railroading pays in Canada. Another friend was "down and out" in the same city, and lending an attentive ear to the wildest kind of propaganda. Being an old friend, the rich man poured forth the story of his prosperity and his wrath against those who are hampering capital and threatening to put an end to progress. Moved by the same bond of sacred friendship, the poor man told of the greed and rapacity of which he had been the victim. The poor man had lacked what another friend called "the monetary clutch," and while he had seen wealth all about him, had been unable either "to have or to hold." How would it be possible for any one to hold the scales between these two men? I didn't try. I passed on to another city, where the same condition developed in another way. An old friend took me to his club, where I enjoyed luncheon with a number of men who were prosperous and satisfied. A few hours later I accidentally found myself at a gathering of city employees who were preparing for a strike. They advocated direct action with guns. "Why not?" they asked. "The Governments of the world are settling their differences with guns and high explosives and why shouldn't the down-trodden use the same method?"
It is almost certain that the social problems pressing for settlement will be settled here first. In one of the old lands a poet wrote:
"Lazarus sits as he sat through history,
Through pride of heroes and pomp of kings,
At the rich man's gate, the eternal mystery,
Receiving his evil things."
In that land I have seen the people of place and power pass through the streets entirely indifferent to the misery by which they were surrounded, while those who were in misery were so accustomed to that condition that they looked at their oppressors with dull apathy. Here it is different; this is a new country. Dives and Lazarus are both here, but they have known one another all their lives. They were brought up in the same town and played with the same pup. Lazarus received the same public school education as Dives, and perhaps beat him in his classes. He is lacking in respect for him, and if there is any way by which he can force a showdown while Dives is here—before he is in torment—he is going to force it.
But no matter what changes may be adopted, whether revolutionary or reactionary, there is an irreducible minimum of work that must be done. The world must be fed and clothed.