Through the Eye of the Needle

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I believe my husband hurried it a little, though he did not shorten it,
and we got back to the Maritime Region almost a week sooner than we had
first intended. I found my dear mother well, and still serenely happy in
her Altrurian surroundings. She had begun to learn the language, and she
had a larger acquaintance in the capital, I believe, than any other one
person. She said everybody had called on her, and they were the kindest
people she had ever dreamed of. She had exchanged cooking-lessons with
one lady who, they told her, was a distinguished scientist, and she had
taught another, who was a great painter, a peculiar embroidery stitch
which she had learned from my grandmother, and which everybody admired.
These two ladies had given her most of her grammatical instruction in
Altrurian, but there was a bright little girl who had enlarged her
vocabulary more than either, in helping her about her housework, the
mother having lent her for the purpose. My mother said she was not
ashamed to make blunders before a child, and the little witch had taken
the greatest delight in telling her the names of things in the house and
the streets and the fields outside the town, where they went long walks
together.

X

Well, my dear Dorothea, I had been hoping to go more into detail about my
mother and about our life in the Maritime Capital, which is to be our
home for a year, but I had hardly got down the last words when Aristides
came in with a despatch from the Seventh Regionic, summoning us there on
important public business: I haven't got over the feeling yet of being
especially distinguished and flattered at sharing in public business; but
the Altrurian women are so used to it that they do not think anything of
it. The despatch was signed by an old friend of my husband's, Cyril
Chrysostom, who had once been Emissary in England, and to whom my husband
wrote his letters when he was in America. I hated to leave my mother so
soon, but it could not be helped, and we took the first electric express
for the Seventh Regionic, where we arrived in about an hour and forty
minutes, making the three hundred miles in that time easily. I couldn't
help regretting our comfortable van, but there was evidently haste in the
summons, and I confess that I was curious to know what the matter was,
though I had made a shrewd guess the first instant, and it turned out
that I was not mistaken.

The long and the short of it was that there was trouble with the people
who had come ashore in that yacht, and were destined never to go to sea
in her. She was hopelessly bedded in the sand, and the waves that were
breaking over her were burying her deeper and deeper. The owners were
living in their tent as we had left them, and her crew were camped in
smaller tents and any shelter they could get, along the beach. They had
brought her stores away, but many of the provisions had been damaged, and
it had become a pressing question what should be done about the people.
We had been asked to consult with Cyril and his wife, and the other
Regionic chiefs and their wives, and we threshed the question out nearly
the whole night.

I am afraid it will appear rather comical in some aspects to you and Mr.
Makely, but I can assure you that it was a very serious matter with the
Altrurian authorities. If there had been any hope of a vessel from the
capitalistic world touching at Altruria within a definite time, they
could have managed, for they would have gladly kept the yacht's people
and owners till they could embark them for Australia or New Zealand, and
would have made as little of the trouble they were giving as they could.
But until the trader that brought us should return with the crew, as the
captain had promised, there was no ship expected, and any other wreck in
the mean time would only add to their difficulty. You may be surprised,
though I was not, that the difficulty was mostly with the yacht-owners,
and above all with Mrs. Thrall, who had baffled every effort of the
authorities to reduce what they considered the disorder of their life.

With the crew it was a different matter. As soon as they had got drunk on
the wines and spirits they had brought from the wreck, and then had got
sober because they had drunk all the liquors up, they began to be more
manageable; when their provisions ran short, and they were made to
understand that they would not be allowed to plunder the fields and
woods, or loot the villages for something to eat, they became almost
exemplarily docile. At first they were disposed to show fight, and
the principles of the Altrurians did not allow them to use violence in
bringing them to subjection; but the men had counted without their hosts
in supposing that they could therefore do as they pleased, unless they
pleased to do right. After they had made their first foray they were
warned by Cyril, who came from the capital to speak English with them,
that another raid would not be suffered. They therefore attempted it
by night, but the Altrurians were prepared for them with the flexible
steel nets which are their only means of defence, and half a dozen
sailors were taken in one. When they attempted to break out, and their
shipmates attempted to break in to free them, a light current of
electricity was sent through the wires and the thing was done. Those
who were rescued--the Altrurians will not say captured--had hoes put into
their hands the next morning, and were led into the fields and set to
work, after a generous breakfast of coffee, bread, and mushrooms. The
chickens they had killed in their midnight expedition were buried, and
those which they had not killed lost no time in beginning to lay eggs for
the sustenance of the reformed castaways. As an extra precaution with the
"rescued," when they were put to work, each of them with a kind of shirt
of mail, worn over his coat, which could easily be electrized by a
metallic filament connecting with the communal dynamo, and under these
conditions they each did a full day's work during the Obligatories.

As the short commons grew shorter and shorter, both meat and drink, at
Camp Famine, and the campers found it was useless to attempt thieving
from the Altrurians, they had tried begging from the owners in their
large tent, but they were told that the provisions were giving out there,
too, and there was nothing for them. When they insisted the servants of
the owners had threatened them with revolvers, and the sailors, who had
nothing but their knives, preferred to attempt living on the country.
Within a week the whole crew had been put to work in the woods and fields
and quarries, or wherever they could make themselves useful. They were,
on the whole, so well fed and sheltered that they were perfectly
satisfied, and went down with the Altrurians on the beach during the
Voluntaries and helped secure the yacht's boats and pieces of wreckage
that came ashore. Until they became accustomed or resigned to the
Altrurian diet, they were allowed to catch shell-fish and the crabs that
swarmed along the sand and cook them, but on condition that they built
their fires on the beach, and cooked only during an offshore wind, so
that the fumes of the roasting should not offend the villagers.

Cyril acknowledged, therefore, that the question of the crew was for the
present practically settled, but Mr. and Mrs. Thrall, and their daughter
and son-in-law, with their servants, still presented a formidable
problem. As yet, their provisions had not run out, and they were living
in their marquee as we had seen them three weeks earlier, just after
their yacht went ashore. It could not be said that they were molestive in
the same sense as the sailors, but they were even more demoralizing in
the spectacle they offered the neighborhood of people dependent on hired
service, and in their endeavors to supply themselves in perishable
provisions, like milk and eggs, by means of money. Cyril had held several
interviews with them, in which he had at first delicately intimated, and
then explicitly declared, that the situation could not be prolonged.
The two men had been able to get the Altrurian point of view in some
measure, and so had Lady Moors, but Mrs. Thrall had remained stiffly
obtuse and obstinate, and it was in despair of bringing her to terms
without resorting to rescue that he had summoned us to help him.

It was not a pleasant job, but of course we could not refuse, and we
agreed that as soon as we had caught a nap, and had a bite of breakfast
we would go over to their camp with Cyril and his wife, and see what we
could do with the obnoxious woman. I confess that I had some little
consolation in the hope that I should see her properly humbled.

XI

Mr. Thrall and Lord Moors must have seen us coming, for they met us at
the door of the tent without the intervention of the footman, and gave us
quite as much welcome as we could expect in our mission, so disagreeable
all round. Mr. Thrall was as fatherly with me as before, and Lord Moors
was as polite to Cyril and Mrs. Chrysostom as could have been wished. In
fact he and Cyril were a sort of acquaintances from the time of Cyril's
visit to England where he met the late Earl Moors, the father of the
present peer, in some of his visits to Toynbee Hall, and the Whitechapel
Settlements. The earl was very much interested in the slums, perhaps
because he was rather poor himself, if not quite slummy. The son was then
at the university, and when he came out and into his title he so far
shared his father's tastes that he came to America; it was not slumming,
exactly, but a nobleman no doubt feels it to be something like it. After
a little while in New York he went out to Colorado, where so many needy
noblemen bring up, and there he met the Thralls, and fell in love with
the girl. Cyril had understood--or rather Mrs. Cyril,--that it was a
love-match on both sides, but on Mrs. Thrall's side it was business. He
did not even speak of settlements--the English are so romantic when they
_are_ romantic!--but Mr. Thrall saw to all that, and the young people
were married after a very short courtship. They spent their honeymoon
partly in Colorado Springs and partly in San Francisco, where the
Thralls' yacht was lying, and then they set out on a voyage round the
world, making stops at the interesting places, and bringing up on the
beach of the Seventh Region of Altruria, on route for the eastern coast
of South America. From that time on, Cyril said, we knew their history.

After Mr. Thrall had shaken hands tenderly with me, and cordially with
Aristides, he said, "Won't you all come inside and have breakfast with
us? My wife and daughter"--

"Thank you, Mr. Thrall," Cyril answered for us, "we will sit down here,
if you please; and as your ladies are not used to business, we will not
ask you to disturb them."

"I'm sure Lady Moors," the young nobleman began, but Cyril waved him
silent.

"We shall be glad later, but not now! Gentlemen, I have asked my friends
Aristides Homos and Eveleth Homos to accompany my wife and me this
morning because Eveleth is an American, and will understand your
position, and he has lately been in America and will be able to clarify
the situation from both sides. We wish you to believe that we are
approaching you in the friendliest spirit, and that nothing could be more
painful to us than to seem inhospitable."

"Then why," the old man asked, with business-like promptness, "do you
object to our presence here? I don't believe I get your idea."

"Because the spectacle which your life offers is contrary to good morals,
and as faithful citizens we cannot countenance it."

"But in what way is our life immoral? I have always thought that I was a
good citizen at home; at least I can't remember having been arrested for
disorderly conduct."

He smiled at me, as if I should appreciate the joke, and it hurt me to
keep grave, but suspecting what a bad time he was going to have, I
thought I had better not join him in any levity.

"I quite conceive you," Cyril replied. "But you present to our people,
who are offended by it, the spectacle of dependence upon hireling service
for your daily comfort and convenience."

"But, my dear sir," Mr. Thrall returned, "don't we _pay_ for it? Do our
servants object to rendering us this service?"

"That has nothing to do with the case; or, rather, it makes it worse. The
fact that your servants do not object shows how completely they are
depraved by usage. We should not object if they served you from
affection, and if you repaid them in kindness; but the fact that you
think you have made them a due return by giving them money shows how far
from the right ideal in such a matter the whole capitalistic world is."

Here, to my great delight, Aristides spoke up:

"If the American practice were half as depraving as it ought logically to
be in their conditions, their social system would drop to pieces. It was
always astonishing to me that a people with their facilities for evil,
their difficulties for good, should remain so kind and just and pure."

"That is what I understood from your letters to me, my dear Aristides. I
am willing to leave the general argument for the present. But I should
like to ask Mr. Thrall a question, and I hope it won't be offensive."

Mr. Thrall smiled. "At any rate I promise not to be offended."

"You are a very rich man?"

"Much richer than I would like to be."

"How rich?"

"Seventy millions; eighty; a hundred; three hundred; I don't just know."

"I don't suppose you've always felt your great wealth a great blessing?"

"A blessing? There have been times when I felt it a millstone hanged
about my neck, and could have wished nothing so much as that I were
thrown into the sea. Man, you don't _know_ what a curse I have felt my
money to be at such times. When I have given it away, as I have by
millions at a time, I have never been sure that I was not doing more harm
than good with it. I have hired men to seek out good objects for me, and
I have tried my best to find for myself causes and institutions and
persons who might be helped without hindering others as worthy, but
sometimes it seems as if every dollar of my money carried a blight with
it, and infected whoever touched it with a moral pestilence. It has
reached a sum where the wildest profligate couldn't spend it, and it
grows and grows. It's as if it were a rising flood that had touched my
lips, and would go over my head before I could reach the shore. I believe
I got it honestly, and I have tried to share it with those whose labor
earned it for me. I have founded schools and hospitals and homes for
old men and old women, and asylums for children, and the blind, and deaf,
and dumb, and halt, and mad. Wherever I have found one of my old workmen
in need, and I have looked personally into the matter, I have provided
for him fully, short of pauperization. Where I have heard of some gifted
youth, I have had him educated in the line of his gift. I have collected
a gallery of works of art, and opened it on Sundays as well as week-days
to the public free. If there is a story of famine, far or near, I send
food by the shipload. If there is any great public calamity, my agents
have instructions to come to the rescue without referring the case to me.
But it is all useless! The money grows and grows, and I begin to feel
that my efforts to employ it wisely and wholesomely are making me a
public laughing-stock as well as an easy mark for every swindler with a
job or a scheme." He turned abruptly to me. "But you must often have
heard the same from my old friend Strange. We used to talk these things
over together, when our money was not the heap that mine is now; and it
seems to me I can hear his voice saying the very words I have been
using."

I, too, seemed to hear his voice in the words, and it was as if speaking
from his grave.

I looked at Aristides, and read compassion in his dear face; but the face
of Cyril remained severe and judicial. He said: "Then, if what you say is
true, you cannot think it a hardship if we remove your burden for the
time you remain with us. I have consulted with the National and Regional
as well as the Communal authorities, and we cannot let you continue to
live in the manner you are living here. You must pay your way."

"I shall be only too glad to do that," Mr. Thrall returned, more
cheerfully. "We have not a great deal of cash in hand, but I can give you
my check on London or Paris or New York."

"In Altruria," Cyril returned, "we have no use for money. You must _pay_
your way as soon as your present provision from your yacht is exhausted."

Mr. Thrall turned a dazed look on the young lord, who suggested: "I don't
think we follow you. How can Mr. Thrall pay his way except with money?"

"He must pay with _work_. As soon as you come upon the neighbors here for
the necessities of life you must all work. To-morrow or the next day or
next week at the furthest you must go to work, or you must starve."

Then he came out with that text of Scripture which had been so efficient
with the crew of the _Little Sally_: "For even when we were with you this
we commanded you, that if any would not work neither should he eat."

Lord Moors seemed very interested, and not so much surprised as I had
expected. "Yes, I have often thought of that passage and of its
susceptibility to a simpler interpretation than we usually give it.
But--"

"There is but one interpretation of which it is susceptible," Cyril
interrupted. "The apostle gives that interpretation when he prefaces the
text with the words, 'For yourselves know how you ought to follow us; for
we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you. Neither did we eat any
man's bread for nought; but _wrought with travail_ night and day, that we
might not be chargeable to any of you: not because we have not power, but
to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us.' The whole economy
of Altruria is founded on these passages."

"Literally?"

"Literally."

"But, my dear sir," the young lord reasoned, "you surely do not wrench
the text from some such meaning as that if a man has money, he may pay
his way without working?"

"No, certainly not. But here you have no money, and as we cannot suffer
any to 'walk among us disorderly, working not at all,' we must not exempt
you from our rule."

XII

At this point there came a sound from within the marquee as of skirts
sweeping forward sharply, imperiously, followed by a softer _frou-frou_,
and Mrs. Thrall put aside the curtain of the tent with one hand, and
stood challenging our little Altrurian group, while Lady Moors peered
timidly at us from over her mother's shoulder. I felt a lust of battle
rising in me at sight of that woman, and it was as much as I could do to
control myself; but in view of the bad time I knew she was going to have,
I managed to hold in, though I joined very scantly in the polite
greetings of the Chrysostoms and Aristides, which she ignored as if they
had been the salutations of savages. She glared at her husband for
explanation, and he said, gently, "This is a delegation from the
Altrurian capital, my dear, and we have been talking over the situation
together."

"But what is this," she demanded, "that I have heard about our not
paying? Do they accuse us of not paying? You could buy and sell the whole
country."

I never imagined so much mildness could be put into such offensive words
as Cyril managed to get into his answer. "We accuse you of not paying,
and we do not mean that you shall become chargeable to us. The men and
women who served you on shipboard have been put to work, and you must go
to work, too."

"Mr. Thrall--Lord Moors--have you allowed these people to treat you as if
you were part of the ship's crew? Why don't you give them what they want
and let them go? Of course it's some sort of blackmailing scheme. But you
ought to get rid of them at any cost. Then you can appeal to the
authorities, and tell them that you will bring the matter to the notice
of the government at Washington. They must be taught that they cannot
insult American citizens with impunity." No one spoke, and she added,
"What do they really want?"

"Well, my dear," her husband hesitated, "I hardly know how to explain.
But it seems that they think our living here in the way we do is
orderly, and--and they want us to go to work, in short."

"To _work!_" she shouted.

"Yes, all of us. That is, so I understand."

"What nonsense!"

She looked at us one after another, and when her eye rested on me, I
began to suspect that insolent as she was she was even duller; in fact,
that she was so sodden in her conceit of wealth that she was plain
stupid. So when she said to me, "You are an American by birth, I believe.
Can you tell me the meaning of this?" I answered:

"Cyril Chrysostom represents the authorities. If _he_ asks me to speak, I
will speak." Cyril nodded at me with a smile, and I went on. "It is a
very simple matter. In Altruria everybody works with his hands three
hours a day. After that he works or not, as he likes."

"What have we to do with that?" she asked.

"The rule has no exceptions."

"But we are not Altrurians; we are Americans."

"I am an American, too, and I work three hours every day, unless I am
passing from one point to another on public business with my husband.
Even then we prefer to stop during the work-hours, and help in the
fields, or in the shops, or wherever we are needed. I left my own mother
at home doing her kitchen work yesterday afternoon, though it was out of
hours, and she need not have worked."

"Very well, then, we will do nothing of the kind, neither I, nor my
daughter, nor my husband. He has worked hard all his life, and he has
come away for a much-needed rest. I am not going to have him breaking
himself down."

I could not help suggesting, "I suppose the men at work in his mines, and
mills, and on his railroads and steamship lines are taking a much-needed
rest, too. I hope you are not going to let them break themselves down,
either."

Aristides gave me a pained glance, and Cyril and his wife looked grave,
but she not quite so grave as he. Lord Moors said, "We don't seem to be
getting on. What Mrs. Thrall fails to see, and I confess I don't quite
see it myself, is that if we are not here _in forma pauperis_--"

"But you _are_ here _in forma pauperis_," Cyril interposed, smilingly.

"How is that? If we are willing to pay--if Mr. Thrall's credit is
undeniably good--"

"Mr. Thrall's credit is not good in Altruria; you can pay here only in
one currency, in the sweat of your faces."

"You want us to be Tolstoys, I suppose," Mrs. Thrall said,
contemptuously.

Cyril replied, gently, "The endeavor of Tolstoy, in capitalistic
conditions, is necessarily dramatic. Your labor here will be for your
daily bread, and it will be real." The inner dullness of the woman came
into her eyes again, and he addressed himself to Lord Moors in
continuing: "If a company of indigent people were cast away on an English
coast, after you had rendered them the first aid, what should you do?"

The young man reflected. "I suppose we should put them in the way of
earning a living until some ship arrived to take them home."

"That is merely what we propose to do in your case here," Cyril said.

"But we are not indigent--"

"Yes, you are absolutely destitute. You have money and credit, but
neither has any value in Altruria. Nothing but work or love has any value
in Altruria. You cannot realize too clearly that you stand before us _in
forma pauperis_. But we require of you nothing that we do not require of
ourselves. In Altruria every one is poor till he pays with work; then,
for that time, he is rich; and he cannot otherwise lift himself above
charity, which, except in the case of the helpless, we consider immoral.
Your life here offers a very corrupting spectacle. You are manifestly
living without work, and you are served by people whose hire you are not
able to pay."

"My dear sir," Mr. Thrall said at this point, with a gentle smile, "I
think they are willing to take the chances of being paid."

"We cannot suffer them to do so. At present we know of no means of your
getting away from Altruria. We have disused our custom of annually
connecting with the Australasian steamers, and it may be years before a
vessel touches on our coast. A ship sailed for Boston some months ago,
with the promise of returning in order that the crew may cast in their
lot with us permanently. We do not confide in that promise, and you must
therefore conform to our rule of life. Understand clearly that the
willingness of your servants to serve you has nothing to do with the
matter. That is part of the falsity in which the whole capitalistic world
lives. As the matter stands with you, here, there is as much reason why
you should serve them as they should serve you. If on their side they
should elect to serve you from love, they will be allowed to do so.
Otherwise, you and they must go to work with the neighbors at the tasks
they will assign you."

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