"Yes, of course, it must be a free technical school," Pemberton replied literally, "and it must be out there on the West Side."
"But planned for the people, the working people," she insisted.
"Naturally. But we are all the 'people,' aren't we, Mrs. Hart? I haven't much sympathy with this talk nowadays about the 'people' as opposed to any other class."
"That's the unions," the judge nodded sagely. "We are all the 'people.' There is no class distinction in educational matters. We want to offer the best kind of education for the poor boy or the rich boy. What was Powers himself? His school must be a place to help boys such as he was, of course."
They were both completely at sea as to the donor's real intentions, Helen felt sure, and she was eager to have them see the matter as she saw it. Suddenly ideas came to her, things she wished to say, things that seemed to her very important to say. She remembered talks that she had had with the old man, and certain remarks about college education which had dropped from him like sizzling metal.
"But a technological school like the one in Boston,"—Pemberton had instanced this famous school as an example they should follow,—"that's a place to educate boys out of their class, to make them ambitious, to push them ahead of their mates into some higher class."
"Well?" asked Pemberton. "What's the matter with that idea? Doesn't all education do just that for those who are fitted for it?"
"Uncle wanted something so different! He wanted to make boys good workmen, to give them something to be contented with when they had just labor before them, daily labor, in the factories and mills."
The judge's face puckered in puzzle over this speech. He was of an older generation, and he could see life only in the light of competition. Free competition in all the avenues of life—that was his ideal. And the constant labor disputes in Chicago had thickened his prejudices against the working people as a class. He believed, in common with his associates, that their one aim was to get somebody's money without working for it.
But the other man, who was younger and less prejudiced, was more responsive. He felt that this woman had an idea, that she knew perhaps what the benefactor really wanted, and so they talked of the school until the train reached Chicago. As they rose to leave the cars, Pemberton said warmly:—