The others rewarded my humor with a smile, but the banker said: “Then I wonder you were not ashamed of filling our friend up with that stuff about our honoring some kinds of labor. It is true that we don’t go about openly and explicitly despising any kind of honest toil—people don’t do that anywhere now; but we contemn it in terms quite as unmistakable. The working-man acquiesces as completely as anybody else. He does not remain a working-man a moment longer that he can help; and after he gets up, if he is weak enough to be proud of having been one, it is because he feels that his low origin is a proof of his prowess in rising to the top against unusual odds. I don’t suppose there is a man in the whole civilized world—outside of Altruria, of course—-who is proud of working at a trade, except the shoemaker Tolstoy, and is a count, and he does not make very good shoes.”
We all laughed again: those shoes of Count Tolstoy’s are always such an infallible joke.
The Altrurian, however, was cocked and primed with another question; he instantly exploded it: “But are all the working-men in America eager to rise above their condition? Is there none willing to remain among the mass because the rest could not rise with him, and from the hope of yet bringing labor to honor?”
The banker answered: “I never heard of any. No, the American ideal is not to change the conditions for all, but for each to rise above the rest if he can.”
“Do you think it is really so bad as that?” asked the minister, timidly.
The banker answered: “Bad? Do you call that bad? I thought it was very good. But, good or bad, I don’t think you’ll find it deniable, if you look into the facts. There may be working-men willing to remain so for other working-men’s sake, but I have never met any—perhaps because the working-man never goes into society.”
The unfailing question of the Altrurian broke the silence which ensued: “Are there many of your working-men who are intelligent and agreeable—of the type you mentioned a moment since?”
“Perhaps,” said the banker, “I had better refer you to one of our friends here, who has had a great deal more to do with them than I have. He is a manufacturer, and he has had to do with all kinds of work-people.”
“Yes, for my sins,” the manufacturer assented; and he added: “They are often confoundedly intelligent, though I haven’t often found them very agreeable, either in their tone of mind or their original way of looking at things.”
The banker amiably acknowledged his thrust, and the Altrurian asked: “Ah, they are opposed to your own?”