Fresh from these two masters, I met Ernest and related my experience. He looked at me with a pleased expression, and said:
‘Really, this is fine. You are beginning to dig truth for yourself. It is your own empirical generalisation, and it is correct. No man in the industrial machine is a free-will agent, except the large capitalist, and he isn’t, if you’ll pardon the Irishism.2 You see the masters are quite sure that they are right in what they are doing. That is the crowning absurdity of the whole situation. They are so tied by their human nature that they can’t do a thing unless they think it is right. They must have a sanction for their acts.
‘When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must wait till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or ethical, or scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing is right. And then they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses of the human mind is that the wish is parent to the thought. No matter what they want to do, the sanction always comes. They are superficial casuists. They are Jesuitical. They even see their way to doing wrong that right may come of it. One of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and butter of the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the theory of the divine right of kings—commercial kings in their case.3
‘The weakness in their position lies in that they are merely business men. They are not philosophers. They are not biologists nor sociologists. If they were, of course all would be well. A business man who was also a biologist and a sociologist would know, approximately, the right thing to do for humanity. But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. History, some day, will have an excruciating laugh at their expense.’
I was not surprised when I had my talk out with Mrs Wickson and Mrs Pertonwaithe. They were society women.4
Their homes were palaces. They had many homes scattered over the country, in the mountains, on lakes, and by the sea. They were tended by armies of servants, and their social activities were bewildering. They patronised the university and the churches, and the pastors especially bowed at their knees in meek subservience.5 They were powers, these two women, what of the money that was theirs. The power of subsidisation of thought was theirs to a remarkable degree, as I was soon to learn under Ernest’s tuition.
They aped their husbands, and talked in the same large ways about policy, and the duties and responsibilities of the rich. They were swayed by the same ethic that dominated their husbands—the ethic of their class; and they uttered glib phrases that their own ears did not understand.
Also, they grew irritated when I told them of the deplorable condition of Jackson’s family, and when I wondered that they had made no voluntary provision for the man. I was told that they thanked no one for instructing them in their social duties. When I asked them flatly to assist Jackson, they as flatly refused. The astounding thing about it was that they refused in almost identically the same language, and this in face of the fact that I interviewed them separately and that one did not know that I had seen or was going to see the other. Their common reply was that they were glad of the opportunity to make it perfectly plain that no premium would ever be put on carelessness by them; nor would they, by paying for accidents, tempt the poor to hurt themselves in the machinery.6
And they were sincere, these two women. They were drunk with conviction of the superiority of their class and of themselves. They had a sanction, in their own class-ethic, for every act they performed. As I drove away from Mrs Pertonwaithe’s great house, I looked back at it, and I remembered Ernest’s expression that they were bound to the machine, but that they were so bound that they sat on top of it.
1 Before Avis Everhard was born, John Stuart Mill, in his essay, On Liberty, wrote: ‘Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its class feelings of superiority.’
2 Verbal contradictions, called bulls, were long an amiable weakness of the ancient Irish.
3 The newspapers, in 1902 of that era, credited the president of the Anthracite Coal Trust, George F. Baer, with the enunciation of the following principle: ‘The rights and interests of the labouring man will be protected by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the property interests of the country.’
4 Society is here used in a restricted sense, a common usage of the times to denote the gilded drones that did no labour, but only glutted themselves at the honey-vats of the workers. Neither the business men nor the labourers had time or opportunity for society. Society was the creation of the idle rich who toiled not and who in this way played.
5 ‘Bring on your tainted money,’ was the expressed sentiment of the Church during this period.
6 In the files of the Outlook, a critical weekly of the period, in the number dated August 18, 1906, is related the circumstance of a working man losing his arm, the details of which are quite similar to those of Jackson’s case as related by Avis Everhard.
Chapter 5
The Philomaths
ERNEST WAS often at the house. Nor was it my father, merely, nor the controversial dinners, that drew him there. Even at that time I flattered myself that I played some part in causing his visits, and it was not long before I learned the correctness of my surmise. For never was there such a lover as Ernest Everhard. His gaze and his hand-clasp grew firmer and steadier, if that were possible; and the question that had grown from the first in his eyes, grew only the more imperative.
My impression of him, the first time I saw him, had been unfavourable. Then I had found myself attracted towards him. Next came my repulsion, when he so savagely attacked my class and me. After that, as I saw that he had not maligned my class, and that the harsh and bitter things he said about it were justified, I had drawn closer to him again. He became my oracle. For me he tore the sham from the face of society, and gave me glimpses of reality that were as unpleasant as they were undeniably true.
As I have said, there was never such a lover as he. No girl could live in a university town till she was twenty-four and not have love experiences. I had been made love to by beardless sophomores and grey professors, and by the athletes and the football giants. But not one of them made love to me as Ernest did. His arms were around me before I knew. His lips were on mine before I could protest or resist. Before his earnestness conventional maiden dignity was ridiculous. He swept me off my feet by the splendid invincible rush of him. He did not propose. He put his arms around me and kissed me and took it for granted that we should be married. There was no discussion about it. The only discussion—and that arose afterwards—was when we should be married.
It was unprecedented. It was unreal. Yet, in accordance with Ernest’s test of truth, it worked. I trusted my life to it. And fortunate was the trust. Yet during those first days of our love, fear of the future came often to me when I thought of the violence and impetuosity of his love-making. Yet such fears were groundless. No woman was ever blessed with a gentler, tenderer husband. This gentleness and violence on his part was a curious blend similar to the one in his carriage of awkwardness and ease. That slight awkwardness! He never got over it, and it was delicious. His behaviour in our drawing-room reminded me of a careful bull in a china shop.1
It was at this time that vanished my last doubt of the completeness of my love for him (a subconscious doubt, at most). It was at the Philomath Club—a wonderful night of battle, wherein Ernest bearded the masters in their lair. Now the Philomath Club was the most select on the Pacific Coast. It was the creation of Miss Brentwood, an enormously wealthy old maid; and it was her husband, and family, and toy. Its members were the wealthiest in the community, and the strongest-minded of the wealthy, with, of course, a sprinkling of scholars to give it intellectual tone.