“The comparatively small harm done by immigrants was largely over-balanced by the many advantages the citizens of the United States obtained through the large influx of people from Europe”, said Mr. Forest. “The very fact that hundreds of thousands of able-bodied people, whose rearing and education had cost the European countries millions of dollars, landed on American shores was a great gain to the United States. The very presence of these men and women increased the value of the lands or city lots where they settled, thus enriching the property owners. Many of the immigrants were well trained laborers and mechanics, others artists and scholars. All these men and women were not familiar with the ways and means of their new country, many of them were unable to speak the English language, and they all had, therefore, to start in the very lowest places of American business life—thus naturally elevating all the inhabitants of the United States in a more or less degree, to higher positions in life. Many of these people, coming from all parts of Europe, were ably and well trained, and they became successful competitors of those, who were here before their arrival. But the constant stream of people from Europe to the United States was, nevertheless, steadily enriching and elevating the American people, and all the blows aimed at immigration were, therefore, unwise, and the legislators who proposed such blows remind me of the man who intended to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs”.
“It is, of course, impossible to advance social theories to which everybody will agree”, Mr. Forest said in conclusion. “I maintain, however, that all such theories should be based on two fundamental principles. They should have as an aim the establishment of a state of society, where everybody should be protected against an undeserved poverty, where the brain-cancer, fear of an undeserved poverty, should be cured; and they should preserve competition, the power that is permanently spurring everybody to use his best efforts to elevate himself and humanity”.
CHAPTER VIII.
When I left Mr. Forest after our last conversation I was convinced, partly by his arguments, partly by my own observations, that communism had not established the millennium, as I had first supposed, after the lectures of Dr. Leete; but that it had degraded humanity in every respect.
I felt that I must speak frankly to Dr. Leete about the change in my convictions, resign my position as professor of Shawmut College, and that this would give my life in the society of the twentieth century a new and unpleasant direction.
Dr. Leete had treated me with the utmost kindness, and if I, from the commencement of our relations, had refused to become enthusiastic over communism, my amiable host, I think, would have not only tolerated my views but would have continued his friendship for me, provided I did not join the active opposition to the administration. He might even have consented to my marriage with Edith. But now the circumstances were such, that my change of mind involved the most unpleasant consequences for Dr. Leete. He had recommended me as a man especially qualified above others to become the successor of Mr. Forest as professor of the history of the nineteenth century. I owed my appointment solely to his influence, and there could be no doubt that my apostacy from communism would seriously injure the respect in which Dr. Leete’s advice had been held heretofore. My host would feel this keenly. The rather sudden change in my opinions, the consequence of my very limited knowledge of national economy, could have no other effect upon Dr. Leete’s family, than to destroy their good opinion of me. They would be forced to believe me a shallow, superficial and ungrateful man, who had changed from an enthusiastic advocate of communism to such a decided opponent of this theory that I would resign a position granted to me through Dr. Leete’s efforts, and thus place my kind host in an embarrassing position.
And how would Edith regard my resignation of the professorship? She was attached to her father by a well founded affection and esteem. Would her love for me prove strong enough to overcome the shock my step involved? My blind enthusiasm for the present order of things had been heralded all over the country by the administration organs; they had pointed to the fact that I, a living witness of the civilization of the nineteenth century, had become an almost fanatic advocate of communism. The fact that I had changed my mind after becoming familiar with the facts and circumstances, would compel the administration to treat me as a deceitful, unprincipled demagogue, if not as a scoundrel. There was very little doubt that I would be assigned to the most objectionable work, even if I was spared a term in an insane asylum. And how could I ask Edith Leete, blooming like a beautiful flower in a well protected garden, the house of her highly esteemed father, to join her lot to a man who would be regarded by most of the people either as a superficial babbler or as an unmasked hypocrite, deserving his fate to be degraded to class B of the third grade.
The fear of losing the love of Edith overshadowed for a while all other considerations, for I loved in Edith Leete Edith Bartlett! And the reflection that my resignation would cause the loss of Edith to me weighed upon my mind like a nightmare. Never in my life had I felt so distressed and miserable as on my way to Dr. Leete’s house after my last conversation with Mr. Forest.
For a moment I harbored the idea of ending my misery by my own hand, but I resolved to be a man and face my fate. So I walked to Dr. Leete’s house determined not to deceive my friends nor to shrink from my duty as a man of honor.