“If I admit no power but love,” said he,
“how can I have anything to do with government?”
More visitors called, and were admitted, and presently
the little room was packed with people, and a regular
meeting was in progress. I heard more strange
ideas than I had ever known existed in the world.
I tried not to be offended; but I thought there ought
to be at least a few words said for plain ordinary
human beings who carry no labels, so I ventured now
and then to put in a mild suggestion—for
example, that there were quite a few people in the
world who did not love all their neighbors, and could
not be persuaded to love them all at once, and it
might be necessary to put just a little restraint
upon them for a time. Again I suggested, maybe
the workers were not yet sufficiently educated to run
the industries, they might need some help from the
present masters. “Just a little more education,”
I ventured—
And John Colver laughed, the first ugly laugh I had
heard from him. “Education by the masters?
Education at the end of a club!”
“My boy,” I argued, “I know there
are plenty of employers who are rough, but there are
others who are good men, who would like to change
the system, would like to do something, if they knew
what it was. But who will tell them what to do?
Take me, for example. I have a great deal of
wealth which I have not earned; but what can I do
about it? What do you say, Mr. Carpenter?”
I turned to him, as the true authority; and the others
also turned to him. He answered, without hesitation:
“Sell everything that you have and give it to
the unemployed.”
“But,” said I, “would that really
solve the problem. They would spend it, and we
should be right where we were before.”
Said Carpenter: “They are unemployed because
you have taken from them wealth which you have not
earned. Give it back to them.”
And then, seeing that I was not satisfied, he added:
“How hard it is for a rich man to understand
the meaning of social justice! Indeed, it would
be easier for a strike leader to get the truth published
in your ‘Times’, than for a rich man to
understand what the word social justice means.”
The company laughed, and I subsided, and let the wave
of conversation roll by. It was only later that
I realized the part I had just been playing.
It had been easy for me to recognize T-S as St. Peter,
but I had not known myself as that rich young man who
had asked for advice, and then rejected it. “When
he heard this, he was very sorrowful; for he was very
rich.” Yes, I had found my place in the
story!
You may believe that next morning my first thought
was to get hold of the “Times” and see
what they had done to my prophet. Sure enough,
there he was on the front page, three columns wide,
with the customary streamer head:
