ORGANIZED FOR PROFIT
With a couple of chance acquaintances I was discussing everyday
activities as reported in the daily papers. A quiet man with a poker
face was listening to our talk. Suddenly he contributed a remark:
"This country is going to hell for lack of leadership."
That sounded familiar. It occurred to me that I had heard the remark
before. I had heard it even in Canada. Shortly afterwards I learned that
the man who had made the remark was a millionaire. Consequently his
pontifical utterance did not surprise me. Monied men really feel deeply
on the matter--but they expect some one else to give the leadership they
so earnestly want. If you listen to their talk you will find that they
give about every reason for the lack but the true one. The people lack
leadership because they are not candid about where they want to go.
There is a lot of talk about social justice, but justice is about the
last thing that many people want. In fact, they seem to be afraid that
they are going to get it. During the war, when the soldiers were
fighting, dying, and passing through hell generally, those who stayed at
home enjoyed a prosperity that never was known before. Capital made such
profits as never were known before; Labor got such wages as never were
known before; farmers, miners, fishermen, lumbermen--men of all classes
enjoyed such prosperity as never was known before. And now they are
clamoring for leaders who will enable them to keep the blood-bought
riches and profits and the wages they got in the world's time of
anguish. They are horrified to find that the bloated, unhealthy profits
of war are losing their value through the operation of laws of
compensation more inexorable than any ever devised by man. Although the
Great War revealed the heroism and spirit of self-sacrifice in many, it
aroused the selfishness of still more. That manufacturer blurted out a
very prevalent conviction when he said, "Any man who didn't make money
during the war must have had something wrong with him." And now these
people are clamoring for leaders who will protect them in their
selfishness. They want to be led into a beatific era, where each will
get more than his share of the good things of life. It is a mistake to
think that the big profiteers are the only ones who are to blame for
existing conditions. There are shoals and swarms of little profiteers
who are just as selfish and rapacious as the big ones. All they lack is
capacity and opportunity, like the little devils described by Kipling.
They
"Weep that they bin
Too small to sin
To the height of their desire."
Humanity will look in vain for true leadership until it is cleansed of
its selfishness.
There are many who are suffering through no fault of their own--many
who gave, toiled, and sacrificed so that freedom might endure, but they
are not the ones whose voices are the loudest to-day. They believed that
an era of justice and brotherly love would follow victory. To-day they
are bewildered and stunned to find that their sacrifices were apparently
made in vain. Many of the returned soldiers with whom I have talked are
as homesick as they were in France for the conditions they left behind
four or five years ago. This home land of insolent wealth and noisy
grumblings--of strife and turmoil--is not the land for whose freedom
they fought. They find it hard to realize that while they were offering
their lives to save the world, the world went money-mad. Can they be
blamed if they are touched with discouragement and disgust?
At the present time there is much in the papers about the reëducation of
soldiers to fit them for a place in civil life. Here is another case
where we are in danger of making a grievous mistake. There is need of
reëducation, of course, but the soldiers are not the only ones who need
to be reëducated. The present idea seems to be that the soldiers must be
reëducated so as to enable them to follow some occupation in our social
organization as it now stands. That will not do, my masters! It is not
good enough! The military training these men have had educated them to
sacrifice everything for the good of humanity--for the protection of
their wives and families and for our protection. Now we propose to
reëducate them so that they may try to compete with us in a struggle for
existence that taxes the strength and resourcefulness of those whose
strength is unwounded and who have made no sacrifices. Just think about
it for a minute. What chance would our reëducated soldiers have against
men who are already over-educated along these lines, and whose careers
have not been interrupted by the need of making sacrifices for their
country? Practically none, and it will be a poor reward to offer them
for what they have done, and are doing, to push them into such an
unequal struggle.
Every day it is becoming more apparent that the world cannot go on as it
was. Unless we rid ourselves of some of our selfishness, we shall be
forced to face more grievous problems than we are facing just now. The
soldier element in our population and in the population of the world
will be too great to be absorbed readily into an unchanged civil life.
Our old god, Profits, will be dethroned, no matter how devotedly we
worship him. The menace of a food shortage is making many people think
more clearly than ever before, and with the possibility of world-hunger
before us Prudhon's assertion that "profit is theft" does not look
nearly so anarchistic as it did. We see that every man should be
rewarded for his services, but the thought that any man should make
profits when all are struggling to bear up under accumulated burdens is
already beginning to provoke rage. We admit every man's right to make a
living, but doubt his right to make a fortune. Our reëducation has
begun, and we must see to it that it goes through properly. We must
learn that success should depend on public service rather than on
private greed. Not until we have learned that can we expect our soldiers
to reënter civil life, and submit to its workaday burdens. And there
will be no place in a reëducated world for parasites or people who will
expect to live through a claim on the services of others. Though the
subject is serious enough, one of Edward Lear's mocking limericks pops
into my head as a symbolical description of the new state of affairs
that seems inevitable:
"There was an old man who said, 'Well!
Will nobody answer this bell?
I have pulled day and night
Till my hair was grown white.
But nobody answers this bell.'"
I am afraid that the people who expect to get their living simply by
ringing a bell will do more than get white hair.