There was one more “nut,” and his name was J. Arnold Ross—no longer “junior.” He had a plan, which he had been turning over and over in his mind; and now he gathered his friends to get their reaction. Old Chaim Menzies, who had been a long time in the movement, and watched most of its mistakes; Chaim was working in a clothing shop, as usual, and giving his spare time to getting up meetings. And Jacob Menzies, the pale student—Jacob had got a job teaching school for a year, but then he had been found out, and now was selling insurance. And Harry Seager, who was growing walnuts, and escaping the boycotts. And Peter Nagle, who was helping his father run a union plumbing business in an open shop city, and spending his earnings on a four-page tabloid monthly ridiculing God. And Gregor Nikolaieff, who had done his Socialist duty working for a year in a lumber camp, and was now assistant to an X-ray operator in a hospital. And Dan Irving, who had come from Washington at Bunny’s expense—these six people sat down with Rachel and Bunny at a dinner party in a private dining-room, to discuss how to save society with a million dollars.
Bunny explained with becoming modesty that he was not putting forth his plan as the best of all possible plans, but merely as the best for him. He wasn’t going to evade the issue by giving his money away, putting off the job on other people; he had learned this much from Dad, that money by itself is nothing, to accomplish anything takes money plus management. Moreover, Bunny himself wanted something to do; he was tired of just looking on, and talking. He had thought for a long time about a big paper, but he had no knowledge of journalism, and would only be a blunderer. The one thing he did know was young people; he had been to college, and knew what a college ought to be, and wasn’t.
“What we’re doing—Rachel and Jacob and the rest of us Ypsels—is trying to work on young minds; but the trouble is, we only get them a few hours in the week, and the things that count for most in their lives are the enemy’s—I mean the schools, the job, the movies—everything. So I want to get some students together for a complete life, twenty-four hours a day; and see if we can’t build a Socialist discipline, a personal life, with service to the cause as its goal. Rachel will agree with me in this—I don’t know if anyone else will—I think one reason the movement suffers is that we haven’t made the new moral standards that we need. Our own members, many of them, are personally weak; the women have to have silk stockings and look like the bourgeoisie, and their idea of freedom is to adopt the bad habits of the men. If the movement really meant enough to Socialists, they wouldn’t have to spend money for tobacco, and booze, and imitation finery.”
“Dat let’s me out!” said old Chaim Menzies, who had already lighted his ten-cent cigar.
The substance of what Bunny wanted was a labor college on a tract of land somewhere out in the country; but instead of spending his million on steel and concrete, he wanted to begin in tents, and have all the buildings put up by the labor of the students and teachers. Everybody on the place was to have four hours’ manual labor and four of class work daily; and they were all to wear khaki, and have no fashionable society. Bunny had the idea of going out among the colleges and high schools, and talking to little groups of students, and here and there seducing one away from football and fraternities to a new dedication. Also the labor unions would be invited to select promising young men and women. It was a thing that should grow fast, and take little money, because, with the exception of building materials, everything could be produced on the place; they would have a farm, and a school of domestic arts—in short, teach all the necessary trades, and provide four hours’ honest work of some sort for all students who wanted to come.
VI
What did they think about it? Chaim Menzies was, as always, the first to speak. Perhaps his feelings had been hurt by the reference to tobacco; anyhow, he said it looked to him like it vas anodder colony; you didn’t change a colony by calling it a college, and a colony vas de vorst trap you could set for de movement. “You git people to go off and live by demselves, different from de rest of de vorkers, and vedder dey are comfortable or vedder dey ain’t—and dey von’t be!—all de time dey are tinking about someting else but de class struggle out in de vorld.”
“That’s quite true,” said Bunny. “But we shan’t be so far from the world, and the purpose of our training will be, not the colony, but the movement outside, and how to help it.”
“De people vot are going to help de movement has got to be in it every hour. You git dem out vun mont’ and dey are no good any more; dey have got some sort of graft den, someting easy, dey are no longer vorkers.”
“But this isn’t going to be so easy, Comrade Chaim——”