“Well,” the banker returned, “I don’t know that I should have much to say against that. It seems as reasonable as anything in the system of education which we force upon the working classes. They know perfectly well, whether we do or not, that the three R’s will not make their children better mechanics or laborers, and that, if the fight for a mere living is to go on from generation to generation, they will have no leisure to apply the little learning they get in the public schools for their personal culture. In the mean time we deprive the parents of their children’s labor, in order that they may be better citizens for their schooling, as we imagine; I don’t know whether they are or not. We offer them no sort of compensation for their time, and I think we ought to feel obliged to them for not wanting wages for their children while we are teaching them to be better citizens.”
“You know,” said the professor, “that has been suggested by some of their leaders.”
“No, really? Well, that is too good!” The banker threw back his head and roared, and we all laughed with him. When we had sobered down again, he said: “I suppose that when a working-man makes all the use he can of his lower education he becomes a business man, and then he doesn’t need the higher. Professor, you seem to be left out in the cold by our system, whichever way you take it.”
“Oh,” said the professor, “the law of supply and demand works both ways: it creates the demand, if the supply comes first; and if we keep on giving the sons of business men the education of a gentleman, we may yet make them feel the need of it. We shall evolve a new sort of business man.”
“The sort that can’t make money, or wouldn’t exactly like to, on some terms?” asked the banker. “Well, perhaps we shall work out our democratic salvation in that way. When you have educated your new business man to the point where he can’t consent to get rich at the obvious cost of others, you’ve got him on the way back to work with his hands. He will sink into the ranks of labor, and give the fellow with the lower education a chance. I’ve no doubt he’ll take it. I don’t know but you’re right, professor.”
The lawyer had not spoken as yet. Now he said: “Then it is education, after all, that is to bridge the chasm between the classes and the masses, though it seems destined to go a long way around about it. There was a time, I believe, when we expected religion to do that.”
“Well, it may still be doing it, for all I know,” said the banker. “What do you say?” he asked, turning to the minister. “You ought to be able to give us some statistics on the subject with that large congregation of yours. You preach to more people than any other pulpit in your city.”
The banker named one of the principal cities in the East, and the minister answered, with, modest pride: “I am not sure of that; but our society is certainly a very large one.”
“Well, and how many of the lower classes are there in it—people who work for their living with their hands?”
The minister stirred uneasily in his chair, and at last he said, with evident unhappiness: “They—I suppose—they have their own churches. I have never thought that such a separation of the classes was right; and I have had some of the very best people—socially and financially—with me in the wish that there might be more brotherliness between the rich and poor among us. But as yet—”