DR. JONATHAN. Germany can"t win, Asher.
ASHER. What makes you say that? We started several years too late.
Dr. JONATHAN. And Germany started several centuries too late.
ASHER. My G.o.d, I hope you"re right. I don"t know.
(He walks once or twice up and down the room..)
I"ve had another letter.
DR. JONATHAN. This morning?
ASHER. No--I got it before I left for Washington. But I didn"t bring it in to you I wanted to think about it.
(He draws the letter, together with a folded paper, from his pocket, and lays the paper down on the bench. Then he adjusts his gla.s.ses and begins to read.)
"Dear dad,
"The sky is the colour of smeared charcoal. We haven"t been in the trenches long enough to evolve web feet, so mine are resting on a duck board spread over a quagmire of pea soup. The Heinies are right here, soaking in another ditch beyond a barbed wire fence, about the distance of second base from the home plate. Such is modern war!
"But these aren"t the things that trouble me. Last night, when I was wet to the skin and listening to the sh.e.l.ls--each singing its own song in the darkness--I was able to think with astonishing ease better than if I were sitting at a mahogany desk in a sound proof room! I was thinking over the talk we had the day I left home,--do you remember it?--about the real issue of this war. I"ve thought of it time and again, but I"ve never written you about it. Since I have been in France I have had a liberal education gathered from all sorts and conditions of men. Right here in the trench near me are a street car conductor, a haberdasher, a Swedish farm hand, a grocery clerk, a college professor, a Pole from the Chicago Stock Yards, an Irish American janitor of a New York apartment house, and Grierson from Cleveland, whose father has an income of something like a million a year. We have all decided that this is a war for the under dog, whether he comes from Belgium or Armenia or that so-called land of Democracy, the United States of America. The hope that spurs us on and makes us willing to endure these swinish surroundings and die here in the mud, if need be, is that the world will now be reorganized on some intelligent basis; that Grierson and I, if we get back, won"t have to rot on a large income and petrified ideas, but will have some interesting and creative work to do. Economic inequalities must be reduced, and those who toil must be given a chance to live, not merely to exist. Their lives must include a little leisure, comfortable homes, art and beauty and above all an education that none of us, especially those of us who went to universities, never got,--but which now should be available for all.
"The issue of this war is industrial democracy, without which political democracy is a farce. That sentence is Dr. Jonathan"s. But when I was learning how to use the bayonet from a British sergeant in Picardy I met an English manufacturer from Northumberland. He is temporarily an officer. I know your opinion of theorists, but this man is working out the experiment with human chemicals. After all, the Const.i.tution of the United States, now antiquated and revered, once existed only in the brains of French theorists! In the beginning was the Word, but the deed must follow. This Englishman, whose name is Wray, has given me the little pamphlet he wrote from his experience, and I shall send it to you.
"Though I am writing this letter in what to me is a solemn and undoubtedly exalted hour, I am sure that my mind was never clearer or saner. Dad, I have set my heart on inaugurating an experiment in industrial democracy in Foxon Falls! I"d like to be able to think--if anything happened to me--that the Pindar shops were among the first in America to recognize that we are living in a new era and a changed world."
(ASHER walks over to the bench and lays down the open letter on it.)
If anything should happen to that boy, Jonathan, there wouldn"t be anything in life left for me! Industrial democracy! So you put that into his head! Socialism, I suppose.
DR. JONATHAN. No, experimental science.
ASHER. Call it what you like. What surprises me is, when I look back over the months you"ve been here, how well we"ve got along in spite of your views.
DR. JONATHAN. Why not say in spite of yours, Asher?
ASHER (smiling involuntarily). Well, it"s been a comfort to drop in here and talk to you, in spite of what you believe. You"ve got the gift of sympathy, Jonathan. But I don"t approve of you"re spending your time in this sort of work--(he waves a hand toward the bench)--which may never come to anything, and in doctoring people for nothing and patching up their troubles. I daresay you enjoy it, but what worries me is how you are going to live?
DR. JONATHAN. By practising your cardinal virtue, thrift.
ASHER. I"ve got a proposal to make to you part of a scheme I"ve been turning over in my mind for the last six months--and when George"s letter came I decided to put it through. I went to New York and had Sterry, a corporation lawyer, draw it up. I"m going to prove I"m not a mossback. It will reorganize the Pindar Shops.
DR. JONATHAN. Well, that"s good news.
ASHER. First, with reference to your part in it, I shall establish a free hospital for my employees, and put you in charge of it, at a salary of five thousand a year. After all, you"re the only Pindar left except George, and I"m satisfied that as a doctor you"re up to the job, since you"ve driven Dr. Senn out of business.
DR. JONATHAN. Practical proof, Asher. Fortunately Dr. Senn has enough to live on.
ASHER. In offering you this position I have only one stipulation to make--(he clears his throat)--it"s about Minnie Farrell. I think the world of Timothy, I wouldn"t willingly hurt his feelings, but I can"t have Minnie with you in the hospital, Jonathan. You deserve a great deal of credit for what you"ve done for the girl, you"ve kept her out of mischief, but considering her past, her life at Newcastle--well, even if I approved of having her in the hospital Augusta would never hear of it.
And then she had some sort of an affair with George--I daresay there was nothing wrong--
DR. JONATHAN. Wrong is a question of code, Asher. We"ve all had pasts--What interests me is Minnie"s future.
ASHER. Of course you wouldn"t decline my offer on Minnie"s account.
DR. JONATHAN. On my own account, Asher. We"ll say no more about Minnie.
ASHER. You refuse to help me, when I"m starting out on a liberal scheme which I thought you would be the first to endorse?
DR. JONATHAN. I have not refused to help you,--but you have not told me the scheme?
ASHER. Well. (He" taps the paper in his hand.) For those employees who serve me faithfully I have arranged pensions.
DR. JONATHAN. For those, in other words, who refrain from taking their destinies in their own hands, and who do as you wish.
ASHER. For those who are industrious and make no trouble. And I have met the objection that they have no share in the enterprise by allowing them, on favourable terms, to acquire stock in the company.
DR. JONATHAN. I see. You will let them acquire half of the stock, in order that they may have an equal voice.
ASHER. Equal? It"s my company, isn"t it?
DR. JONATHAN. At present.
ASHER. I supply the capital. Furthermore, I have arranged for a system of workmen"s committees, which I recognize, and with which I will continually consult. That"s democratic enough--isn"t it? If the men have any grievances, these will be presented in an orderly manner through the committees.
DR. JONATHAN. And if you find the demands--reasonable, you grant them.
ASHER. Certainly. But one thing I set my face against as a matter of principle, I won"t recognize the unions.
DR. JONATHAN. But--who is to enforce the men"s side of this contract?
ASHER. What do you mean?
DR. JONATHAN. What guarantee have they, other than a union organization, that you will keep faith?
ASHER. My word.
DR. JONATHAN. Oh!
ASHER. Never in my life have I regarded my possessions as my own. I am a trustee.
DR. JONATHAN. The sole trustee.
ASHER. Under G.o.d.
DR. JONATHAN. And you have G.o.d"s proxy. Well, it seems to me that that is a very delightful arrangement, Asher--William appears to approve of it, too.