like this. There is legitimate work, and there’s work
that–well,
that isn’t legitimate. The farmer works the soil and produces
grain. He’s making something that is good for humanity. He
actually, in a way, creates something, the grain that will fill
the
mouths of the hungry.”
“And then the railroads and market-riggers and the rest proceed
to rob him of that same grain,”–Daylight broke in Dede smiled
and
held up her hand.
“Wait a minute. You’ll make me lose my point. It doesn’t hurt
if they rob him of all of it so that he starves to death. The
point is that the wheat he grew is still in the world. It
exists. Don’t you see? The farmer created something, say ten
tons of wheat, and those ten tons exist. The railroads haul the
wheat to market, to the mouths that will eat it. This also is
legitimate. It’s like some one bringing you a glass of water,
or taking a cinder out of your eye. Something has been done, in
a
way been created, just like the wheat.”
“But the railroads rob like Sam Scratch,” Daylight objected.
“Then the work they do is partly legitimate and partly not. Now
we come to you. You don’t create anything. Nothing new exists
when you’re done with your business. Just like the coal. You
didn’t dig it. You didn’t haul it to market. You didn’t deliver
it. Don’t you see? that’s what I meant by planting the trees
and building the houses. You haven’t planted one tree nor built
a single house.”
“I never guessed there was a woman in the world who could talk
business like that,” he murmured admiringly. “And you’ve got me
on that point. But there’s a lot to be said on my side just the
same. Now you listen to me. I’m going to talk under three
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168
heads. Number one: We live a short time, the best of us, and
we’re a long time dead. Life is a big gambling game. Some are
born lucky and some are born unlucky. Everybody sits in at the
table, and everybody tries to rob everybody else. Most of them
get robbed. They’re born suckers.
“Fellow like me comes along and sizes up the proposition. I’ve
got
two choices. I can herd with the suckers, or I can herd with the
robbers. As a sucker, I win nothing. Even the crusts of bread
are
snatched out of my mouth by the robbers. I work hard all my
days,
and die working. And I ain’t never had a flutter. I’ve had
nothing but work, work, work. They talk about the dignity of
labor. I tell you there ain’t no dignity in that sort of labor.
My other choice is to herd with the robbers, and I herd with
them.
I play that choice wide open to win. I get the automobiles, and
the porterhouse steaks, and the soft beds.
“Number two: There ain’t much difference between playing halfway
robber like the railroad hauling that farmer’s wheat to market,
and playing all robber and robbing the robbers like I do. And,
besides, halfway robbery is too slow a game for me to sit in.
You don’t win quick enough for me.”
“But what do you want to win for?” Dede demanded. “You have
millions and millions, already. You can’t ride in more than one
automobile at a time, sleep in more than one bed at a time.”
“Number three answers that,” he said, “and here it is: Men and
things are so made that they have different likes. A rabbit
likes a vegetarian diet. A lynx likes meat. Ducks swim;
chickens are scairt of water. One man collects postage stamps,
another man collects butterflies. This man goes in for
paintings, that man goes in for yachts, and some other fellow for
hunting big game. One man thinks horse-racing is It, with a big
I, and another man finds the biggest satisfaction in actresses.
They can’t help these likes. They have them, and what are they
going to do about it? Now I like gambling. I like to play the
game. I want to play it big and play it quick. I’m just made
that way. And I play it.”
“But why can’t you do good with all your money?”
Daylight laughed.
“Doing good with your money! It’s like slapping God in the face,
as much as to tell him that he don’t know how to run his world
and that you’ll be much obliged if he’ll stand out of the way and
give you a chance. Thinking about God doesn’t keep me sitting up
nights, so I’ve got another way of looking at it. Ain’t it
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funny, to go around with brass knuckles and a big club breaking
folks’ heads and taking their money away from them until I’ve got
a pile, and then, repenting of my ways, going around and
bandaging up the heads the other robbers are breaking? I leave
it to you. That’s what doing good with money amounts to. Every
once in a while some robber turns soft-hearted and takes to
driving an ambulance. That’s what Carnegie did. He smashed
heads in pitched battles at Homestead, regular wholesale
head-breaker he was, held up the suckers for a few hundred
million, and now he goes around dribbling it back to them.
funny? I leave it to you.”
He rolled a cigarette and watched her half curiously, half
amusedly. His replies and harsh generalizations of a harsh
school were disconcerting, and she came back to her earlier
position.
“I can’t argue with you, and you know that. No matter how right
a woman is, men have such a way about them well, what they say
sounds most convincing, and yet the woman is still certain they
are wrong. But there is one thing–the creative joy. Call it
gambling if you will, but just the same it seems to me more
satisfying to create something, make something, than just to roll
dice out of a dice-box all day long. Why, sometimes, for
exercise, or when I’ve got to pay fifteen dollars for coal, I
curry Mab and give her a whole half hour’s brushing. And when I
see her coat clean and shining and satiny, I feel a satisfaction
in what I’ve done. So it must be with the man who builds a house
or plants a tree. He can look at it. He made it. It’s his
handiwork. Even if somebody like you comes along and takes his
tree away from him, still it is there, and still did he make it.
You can’t rob him of that, Mr. Harnish, with all your millions.
It’s the creative joy, and it’s a higher joy than mere gambling.
Haven’t you ever made things yourself–a log cabin up in the
Yukon, or a canoe, or raft, or something? And don’t you remember
how satisfied you were, how good you felt, while you were doing
it and after you had it done?”
While she spoke his memory was busy with the associations she
recalled. He saw the deserted flat on the river bank by the
Klondike, and he saw the log cabins and warehouses spring up, and
all the log structures he had built, and his sawmills working
night and day on three shifts.
“Why, dog-gone it, Miss Mason, you’re right–in a way. I’ve
built hundreds of houses up there, and I remember I was proud and
glad to see them go up. I’m proud now, when I remember them.
And there was Ophir–the most God-forsaken moose-pasture of a
creek you ever laid eyes on. I made that into the big Ophir.
Why, I ran the water in there from the Rinkabilly, eighty miles
away. They all said I couldn’t, but I did it, and I did it by
myself. The dam and the flume cost me four million. But you
should have seen that Ophir–power plants, electric lights, and
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hundreds of men on the pay-roll, working night and day. I guess
I do get an inkling of what you mean by making a thing. I made
Ophir, and by God, she was a sure hummer–I beg your pardon. I
didn’t mean to cuss. But that Ophir !–I sure am proud of her
now, just as the last time I laid eyes on her.”
“And you won something there that was more than mere money,” Dede
encouraged. “Now do you know what I would do if I had lots of
money and simply had to go on playing at business? Take all the
southerly and westerly slopes of these bare hills. I’d buy them
in and plant eucalyptus on them. I’d do it for the joy of doing
it anyway; but suppose I had that gambling twist in me which you
talk about, why, I’d do it just the same and make money out of
the trees. And there’s my other point again. Instead of raising
the price of coal without adding an ounce of coal to the market