life gets hold of a brainy man of fair education,” began Amory slowly, “that is, when he marries he becomes, nine times out of ten, a conservative as far as existing social conditions are concerned. He may be unselfish, kind-hearted, even just in his own way, but his first job is to provide and to hold fast. His wife shoos him on, from ten thousand a year to twenty thousand a year, on and on, in an enclosed treadmill that hasn’t any windows. He’s done! Life’s got him! He’s no help! He’s a spiritually married man.”
Amory paused and decided that it wasn’t such a bad phrase.
“Some men,” he continued, “escape the grip. Maybe their wives have no social ambitions; maybe they’ve hit a sentence or two in a ‘dangerous book’ that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I did and were knocked off. Anyway, they’re the congressmen you can’t bribe, the Presidents who aren’t politicians, the writers, speakers, scientists, statesmen who aren’t just popular grab-bags for a half-dozen women and children.”
“He’s the natural radical?”
“Yes,” said Amory. “He may vary from the disillusioned critic like old Thornton Hancock, all the way to Trotsky. Now this spiritually unmarried man hasn’t direct power, for unfortunately the spiritually married man, as a by-product of his money chase, has garnered in the great newspaper, the popular magazine, the influential weekly—so that Mrs. Newspaper, Mrs. Magazine, Mrs. Weekly can have a better limousine than those oil people across the street or those cement people ‘round the corner.”
“Why not?”
“It makes wealthy men the keepers of the world’s intellectual conscience and, of course, a man who has money under one set of social institutions quite naturally can’t risk his family’s happiness by letting the clamor for another appear in his newspaper.”
“But it appears,” said the big man.
“Where?—in the discredited mediums. Rotten cheap-papered weeklies.”
“All right—go on.”
“Well, my first point is that through a mixture of conditions of which the family is the first, there are these two sorts of brains. One sort takes human nature as it finds it, uses its timidity, its weakness, and its strength for its own ends. Opposed is the man who, being spiritually unmarried, continually seeks for new systems that will control or counteract human nature. His problem is harder. It is not life that’s complicated, it’s the struggle to guide and control life. That is his struggle. He is a part of progress—the spiritually married man is not.”
The big man produced three big cigars, and proffered them on his huge palm. The little man took one, Amory shook his head and reached for a cigarette.
“Go on talking,” said the big man. “I’ve been wanting to hear one of you fellows.”
GOING FASTER
“Modern life,” began Amory again, “changes no longer century by century, but year by year, ten times faster than it ever has before—populations doubling, civilizations unified more closely with other civilizations, economic interdependence, racial questions, and—we’re dawdling along. My idea is that we’ve got to go very much faster.” He slightly emphasized the last words and the chauffeur unconsciously increased the speed of the car. Amory and the big man laughed; the little man laughed, too, after a pause.
“Every child,” said Amory, “should have an equal start. If his father can endow him with a good physique and his mother with some common sense in his early education, that should be his heritage. If the father can’t give him a good physique, if the mother has spent in chasing men the years in which she should have been preparing herself to educate her children, so much the worse for the child. He shouldn’t be artificially bolstered up with money, sent to these horrible tutoring schools, dragged through college… Every boy ought to have an equal start.”
“All right,” said the big man, his goggles indicating neither approval nor objection.
“Next I’d have a fair trial of government ownership of all industries.”
“That’s been proven a failure.”
“No—it merely failed. If we had government ownership we’d have the best analytical business minds in the government working for something besides themselves. We’d have Mackays instead of Burlesons; we’d have Morgans in the Treasury Department; we’d have Hills running interstate commerce. We’d have the best lawyers in the Senate.”
“They wouldn’t give their best efforts for nothing. McAdoo—”
“No,” said Amory, shaking his head. “Money isn’t the only stimulus that brings out the best that’s in a man, even in America.”
“You said a while ago that it was.”
“It is, right now. But if it were made illegal to have more than a certain amount the best men would all flock for the one other reward which attracts humanity—honor.”
The big man made a sound that was very like boo.
“That’s the silliest thing you’ve said yet.”
“No, it isn’t silly. It’s quite plausible. If you’d gone to college you’d have been struck by the fact that the men there would work twice as hard for any one of a hundred petty honors as those other men did who were earning their way through.”
“Kids—child’s play!” scoffed his antagonist.
“Not by a darned sight—unless we’re all children. Did you ever see a grown man when he’s trying for a secret society—or a rising family whose name is up at some club? They’ll jump when they hear the sound of the word. The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we’ve forgotten there’s any other way. We’ve made a world where that’s necessary. Let me tell you”—Amory became emphatic—“if there were ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered a green ribbon for five hours’ work a day and a blue ribbon for ten hours’ work a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon. That competitive instinct only wants a badge. If the size of their house is the badge they’ll sweat their heads off for that. If it’s only a blue ribbon, I damn near believe they’ll work just as hard. They have in other ages.”
“I don’t agree with you.”
“I know it,” said Amory nodding sadly. “It doesn’t matter any more though. I think these people are going to come and take what they want pretty soon.”
A fierce hiss came from the little man.
“Machine-guns!”
“Ah, but you’ve taught them their use.”
The big man shook his head.
“In this country there are enough property owners not to permit that sort of thing.”
Amory wished he knew the statistics of property owners and non-property owners; he decided to change the subject.
But the big man was aroused.
“When
