“It aint so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crooks their backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It’s the horrible waste of life involved in it all. I don’t believe God intended a man to be bent to plow-handles like that, but that aint the worst of it. The worst of it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They become machines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous than themselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to these poor devils—to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even to the best of these farmers?”
The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn, a choking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.
“What is such a life worth? It’s all very comfortable for us to say, ‘they don’t feel it.’ How do we know what they feel? What do we know of their capacity for enjoyment of art and music? They never have leisure or opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, and lawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel any longings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higher than their cattle,—are forced to live so. Their hopes and aspirations are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city laborer. It makes me wild to think of it. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn’t any hereafter?”
“Oh, don’t say that, please!” Lily cried.
“But I don’t know that there is,” looking up at her pitilessly, “and I do know that these people are being robbed of something more than money, of all that makes life worth living. The promise of milk and honey in Canaan is all very well, but I prefer to have mine here, then I’m sure of it.”
“What can we do?” murmured the girl.
“Do? Rouse these people for one thing; preach discontent, a noble discontent.”
“It will only make them unhappy.”
“No, it won’t, not if you show them the way out. If it does, it’s better to be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be content in a wallow like swine.”
“But what is the way out?”