"But there are men who steal, and vainly try
To gild the crime with pompous charity."
There was another man, Mr. C., who also had the genius for combination.
He understood the value of capital, the value of labor; knew exactly
how much could be done with machinery; understood the economy of things;
knew how to do everything in the easiest and shortest way. And he, too,
was a manufacturer and had in his employ many thousands of men, women,
and children. He was what is called a visionary, a sentimentalist,
rather weak in his will, not very obstinate, had but little egotism; and
it never occurred to him that he had been selected by Providence, or any
supernatural power, to divide the property of others. It did not seem
to him that he had any right to take from other men their labor without
giving them a full equivalent. He felt that if he had more intelligence
than his fellow-men he ought to use that intelligence not only for his
own good but for theirs; that he certainly ought not to use it for the
purpose of gaining an advantage over those who were his intellectual
inferiors. He used to say that a man strong intellectually had no more
right to take advantage of a man weak intellectually than the physically
strong had to rob the physically weak.
He also insisted that we should not take advantage of each other's
necessities; that you should not ask a drowning man a greater price for
lumber than you would if he stood on the shore; that if you took into
consideration the necessities of your fellow-man, it should be only to
lessen the price of that which you would sell to him, not to increase
it. He insisted that honest men do not take advantage of their fellows.
He was so weak that he had not perfect confidence in the great law
of supply and demand as applied to flesh and blood. He took into
consideration another law of supply and demand; he knew that the
workingman had to be supplied with food, and that his nature demanded
something to eat, a house to live in, clothes to wear.
Mr. C. used to think about this law of supply and demand as applicable
to individuals. He found that men would work for exceedingly small wages
when pressed for the necessaries of life; that under some circumstances
they would give their labor for half of what it was worth to the
employer, because they were in a position where they must do something
for wife or child. He concluded that he had no right to take advantage
of the necessities of others, and that he should in the first place
honestly find what the work was worth to him, and then give to the man
who did the work that amount.
Other manufacturers regarded Mr. C. as substantially insane, while
most of his workmen looked upon him as an exceedingly good-natured
man, without any particular genius for business. Mr. C., however,
cared little about the opinions of others, so long as he maintained his
respect for himself.
At the end of the first year he found that he had made a large profit,
and thereupon he divided this profit with the people who had earned
it. Some of his friends said to him that he ought to endow some public
institution; that there should be a college in his native town; but Mr.
C. was of such a peculiar turn of mind that he thought justice ought
to go before charity, and a little in front of egotism, and a desire
to immortalize one's self. He said that it seemed to him that of all
persons in the world entitled to this profit were the men who had earned
it, the men who had made it by their labor, by days of actual toil. He
insisted that, as they had earned it, it was really theirs, and if it
was theirs, they should have it and should spend it in their own way.
Mr. C. was told that he would make the workmen in other factories
dissatisfied, that other manufacturers would become his enemies, and
that his course would scandalize some of the greatest men who had
done so much for the civilization of the world and for the spread of
intelligence. Mr. C. became extremely unpopular with men of talent, with
those who had a genius for business. He, however, pursued his way, and
carried on his business with the idea that the men who did the work were
entitled to a fair share of the profits; that, after all, money was not
as sacred as men, and that the law of supply and demand, as understood,
did not apply to flesh and blood.
Mr. C. said: "I cannot be happy if those who work for me are defrauded.
If I feel I am taking what belongs to them, then my life becomes
miserable. To feel that I have done justice is one of the necessities of
my nature. I do not wish to establish colleges. I wish to establish
no public institution. My desire is to enable those who work for me to
establish a few thousand homes for themselves. My ambition is to
enable them to buy the books they really want to read. I do not wish to
establish a hospital, but I want to make it possible for my workmen
to have the services of the best physicians--physicians of their own
choice.
"It is not for me to take their money and use it for the good of others
or for my own glory. It is for me to give what they have earned to them.
After I have given them the money that belongs to them, I can give them
my advice--I can tell them how I hope they will use it; and after I have
advised them, they will use it as they please. You cannot make great
men and great women by suppression. Slavery is not the school in
which genius is born. Every human being must make his own mistakes for
himself, must learn for himself, must have his own experience; and if
the world improves, it must be from choice, not from force; and every
man who does justice, who sets the example of fair dealing, hastens the
coming of universal honesty, of universal civilization."
Mr. C. carried his doctrine out to the fullest extent, honestly and
faithfully. When he died, there were at the funeral those who had worked
for him, their wives and their children. Their tears fell upon his
grave. They planted flowers and paid to him the tribute of their love.
Above his silent dust they erected a monument with this inscription: