William Dean Howells

“ I felt that it ought to have been self-evident to him that when a commonwealth of sixty million Americans based itself upon the great principle of self-seeking, self-seeking was the best thing, and whatever hardship it seemed to work, it must carry with it unseen blessings in ten-fold measure. ”

“ We went on to exult in the noble independence of the American character in all classes, at some length. We talked at the Altrurian, but he did not seem to hear us. At last, he asked with a faint sigh, "Then, in your conditions, a kindly impulse to aid one who needs your help, is something to be guarded against as possibly pernicious?"
"Exactly," I said. "And now you see what difficulties beset us in dealing with the problem of poverty. We cannot let people suffer, for that would be cruel; and we cannot relieve their need without pauperizing them." ”

“ I knew that in Altruria, for instance, the possession of great gifts, of any kind of superiority, involved the sense of obligation to others, and the wish to identify one's self with the great mass of men, rather than the ambition to distinguish one's self from them; and that the Altrurians honored their gifted men in the measure they did this. A man reared in such a civilization must naturally find it difficult to get our point of view ”

“ If a few hundred thousand favored Americans enjoyed the privilege of socially contemning all the rest, it was as clearly right and just that they should do so, as that four thousand American millionaires should be richer than all the other Americans put together. ”

“ Makely, "that you would tell us just how you manage with the poor in Altruria."
"We have none," he replied.
"But the comparatively poor—you have some people who are richer than others?"
"No. We should regard that as the worst incivism."
"What is incivism?"
I interpreted, "Bad citizenship."
"Well then, if you will excuse me, Mr. Homos," she said, "I think that is simply impossible. There must be rich and there must be poor. There always have been, and there always will be. That woman said it as well as anybody. Didn't Christ himself say, 'The poor ye have always with you'?" ”

“ She'll want to talk with you, and she won't give the rest of us much of a chance, I guess."
"Oh, I shall be glad to see her," said the Altrurian, "and to tell her everything I can. But won't you explain to me first something about your deserted farms here? It's quite a new thing to me."
"It isn't a new thing to us," said the young fellow, with a short laugh. "And there isn't much to explain about it. You'll see them all through New England. When a man finds he can't get his funeral expenses out of the land, he don't feel like staying to be buried in it, and he pulls up and goes." ”

“ There ain't any public domain that's worth having. All the good land is in the hands of railroads, and farm syndicates, and speculators; and if you want a farm in the west you've got to buy it; the east is the only place where folks give them away, because they ain't worth keeping. If you haven't got the ready money, you can buy one on credit, and pay ten twenty and thirty per cent. interest, and live in a dugout on the plains—till your mortgage matures. ”

“ I left my guest abruptly, with a feeling of vexation not very easily definable. His repetition of questions about questions which society has so often answered, and always in the same way, was not so bad in him as it would have been in a person of our civilization; he represented a wholly different state of things, the inversion of our own, and much could be forgiven him for that reason, just as in Russia much could be forgiven to an American, if he formulated his curiosity concerning imperialism from a purely republican experience. ”

“ The driver touched his horses, and we started briskly off again. But I confess I had quite enough of his pessimism, and as we drove away I leaned back toward the Altrurian, and said, "Now, it is all perfect nonsense to pretend that things are at that pass with us. There are more millionaires in America, probably, than there are in all the other civilized countries of the globe, and it is not possible that the farming population should be in such a hopeless condition. All wealth comes out of the earth, and you may be sure they get their full share of it." ”

“ Then at least, I have not gone radically astray; and I do not think you need take the trouble to explain the Altrurian ideas to the porter. I have done that already, and they seemed quite conceivable to him; he said that poor folks had to act upon them, even here, more or less, and that if they did not act upon them, there would be no chance for them at all. He says they have to help each other, very much as we do at home, and that it is only the rich folks among you who are independent. ”

“ I heard Professor Lumen saying, the other day, that if the farmers were willing to work, as they used to work, they could still get a good living off their farms, and that they gave up their places because they were too lazy, in many cases, to farm them properly. ”

“ But I thought best not to notice it, and I went on: "The land is so rich out there that a farm will often pay for itself with a single crop."
"Is it possible?" cried the Altrurian. "Then I suppose it seldom really happens that a mortgage is foreclosed, in the way our young friend insinuated?"
"Well, I can't say that exactly," and having admitted so much, I did not feel bound to impart a fact that popped perversely into my mind. I was once talking with a western money-lender, a very good sort of fellow, frank and open as the day ”

“ Makely, leaning over towards him, and speaking in a cosy and coaxing tone, as if he must not really keep the truth from an old friend like her, "isn't it a good deal because the farmers' daughters want pianos, and the farmers' sons want buggies? ”

“ The Altrurian, who had not asked anything for a long time, but had listened with eager interest to all that passed, now came up smiling with his question: "Will you kindly tell me what harm would have been done by offering the woman a little money to help finish up her cottage?"
I did not allow Mrs. Makely to answer, I was so eager to air my political economy. "The very greatest harm. It would have pauperized her. You have no idea how quickly they give way to the poison of that sort of thing. As soon as they get any sort of help they expect more ”

“ I could not very well help putting on the pedal in these passages. Mrs. Makely listened almost as eagerly as the Altrurian, for, as a cultivated American woman, she was necessarily quite ignorant of her own country, geographically, politically and historically. "The only people left in the hill country of New England," I concluded, "are those who are too old or too lazy to get away. Any young man of energy would be ashamed to stay, unless he wanted to keep a boarding-house or live on the city vacationists in summer. ”

“ We've got to have schools, and you city folks want good roads when you come here in the summer, don't you? Then the season is short and sometimes we can't make a crop. The frost catches the corn in the field, and you have your trouble for your pains. Potatoes are the only thing we can count on, except grass, and when everybody raises potatoes, you know where the price goes. ”

“ Makely's pretty costume. "Some are poor, and some are rich. That's the way the world has to be made up, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Makely, very dryly, and the talk languished from this point, so that the driver felt warranted in starting up his horses. When we had driven beyond earshot she said, "I knew she was not an American, as soon as she spoke, by her accent, and then those foreigners have no self-respect. ”

“ It will soon blow over. We are always having these political flurries. A good crop will make it all right with them."
"But is it true that they have to pay such rates of interest as our young friend mentioned?"
"Well," I said, seeing the thing in the humorous light, which softens for us Americans so many of the hardships of others, "I suppose that man likes to squeeze his brother man, when he gets him in his grip. That's human nature, you know."
"Is it?" asked the Altrurian. ”

“ I said, "that agriculture is really an operation out there, as much as coal-mining is in Pennsylvania, or finance in Wall street; you have no idea of the vastness of the scale." Perhaps I swelled a little with pride in my celebration of the national prosperity, as it flowed from our western farms of five, and ten, and twenty thousand acres ”

“ Even from a foreigner, the citizen of a Republic founded on the notion, elsewhere exploded ever since Cain, that one is his brother's keeper, the things he asked seemed inoffensive only because they were puerile ”