The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

In the front room the little assemblage had the effect of some small / religious sect. The people were plainly dressed in a sort of keeping / with their serious faces; there was one girl who had no sign of a ribbon / or lace about her, and looked like a rather athletic boy in her short / hair and black felt hat, and her jacket buttoned to her throat. She sat / with her hands in the side pockets of her coat, and her feet pushed out / beyond the hem of her skirt. There were several men of a foreign type, / with beards pointed and parted; an American, who looked like a / school-master, and whose mouth worked up into his cheek at one side with / a sort of mechanical smile when he talked, sat near a man who was so / bald as not to have even a spear of hair anywhere on his head. The rest / were people who took a color of oddity from these types; a second glance / showed them to be of the average humanity; and their dress and its / fashion showed them to be of simple condition. They were attired with a / Sunday consciousness and cleanliness, though one gentleman, whose coat / sleeves and seams were brilliant with long use, looked as if he would be / the better for a little benzining, where his moustache had dropped soup / and coffee on his waistcoat; he had prominent eyes, with a straining, / near-sighted look.

Kane sat among them with an air at once alert and aloof; his arms were / folded, and he glanced around from one to another with grave interest. / They were all listening, when Ray came in, to a young man who was / upholding the single-tax theory, with confidence and with eagerness, as / something which, in its operation, would release the individual energies / to free play and to real competition. Hughes broke in upon him:

"That is precisely what I object to in your theory. I don't _want_ that / devil released. Competition is the Afreet that the forces of / civilization have bottled up after a desperate struggle, and he is / always making fine promises of what he will do for you if you will let / him out. The fact is he will do nothing but mischief, because that is / his nature. He is Beelzebub, he is Satan; in the Miltonic fable he / attempted to compete with the Almighty for the rule of heaven; and the / fallen angels have been taking the consequence ever since. Monopoly is / the only prosperity. Where competition is there can be finally nothing / but disaster and defeat for one side or another. That is self-evident. / Nothing succeeds till it begins to be a monopoly. This holds good from / the lowest to the highest endeavor -- from the commercial to the esthetic, / from the huckster to the artist. As long, for instance, as an author is / young and poor" -- Ray felt, looking down, that the speaker's eye turned / on him -- "he must compete, and his work must be deformed by the struggle; / when it becomes known that he alone can do his kind of work, he / monopolizes and prospers in the full measure of his powers; and he / realizes his ideal unrestrictedly. Competition enslaves, monopoly / liberates. We must, therefore, have the greatest possible monopoly; one / that includes the whole people economically as they are now included / politically. Try to think of competition in the political administration / as we now have it in the industrial. It isn't thinkable! Or, yes! They / do have it in those Eastern countries where the taxes are farmed to the / highest bidder, and the taxpayer's life is ground out of him."

"I think," said the school-masterly-looking man, "we all feel this / instinctively. The trusts and the syndicates are doing our work for us / as rapidly as we could ask."

A voice, with a German heaviness of accent, came from one of the / foreigners. "But they are not doing it for our sake, and they mean to / stop distinctly short of the whole-people trust. As far back as Louis / Napoleon's rise we were expecting the growth of the corporate industries / to accomplish our purposes for us. But between the corporation and the / collectivity there is a gulf -- a chasm that has never yet been passed."

"We must bridge it! " cried Hughes.

A young man, with a clean-cut, English intonation, asked, "Why not fill / it up with capitalists?"

"No," said Hughes, "our cause should recognize no class as enemies."

"I don't think it matters much to them whether we recognize them or not, / if we let them have their own w'y," said the young man, whose cockney / origin betrayed itself in an occasional vowel and aspirate.

"We shall not let them have their own way unless it is the way of the / majority, too," Hughes returned. "From my point of view they are simply / and purely a part of the movement, as entirely so as the proletariat."

"The difficulty will be to get them to take your point of view," the / young man suggested.

"It isn't necessary they should," Hughes answered, "though some of them / do already. Several of the best friends of our cause are capitalists; / and there are numbers of moneyed people who believe in the / nationalization of the telegraphs, railroads, and expresses."

"Those are merely the first steps," urged the young man, "which may lead / now'ere."

"They are the first steps," said Hughes, "and they are not to be taken / over the bodies of men. We must advance together as brothers, marching / abreast, to the music of our own heart-beats."

"Good! " said Kane. Ray did not know whether he said it ironically or / not. It made the short-haired girl turn round and look at him where he / sat behind her.

"We, in Russia," said another of the foreign-looking people, "have seen / the futility of violence. The only force that finally prevails is love; / and we must employ it with those that can feel it best -- with the little / children. The adult world is hopeless; but with the next generation we / may do something -- everything. The highest office is the teacher's, but / we must become as little children if we would teach them, who are of / the kingdom of heaven. We must begin by learning of them."