Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/192

Rh "Mrs. Bradley! The idea!"

"Well, how would you like, then, to change jobs with him, and each retain his own salary?"

"Me? Work in the mill, like him, for four hundred dollars a month?"

"Yes."

"I couldn't think of it, Mrs. Bradley. Really, I couldn't."

Barry looked down at his smooth, white hands with their well-manicured extremities, at his carefully creased trousers and his highly-polished shoes.

Mrs. Bradley laughed a little, but not tantalizingly nor maliciously.

"Well," she said, "then we'll not compel you to make the change. But, assuming that you work equally hard, can you give me any good reason why you should receive four times as much pay as he does?"

"Why—why, I can't think of any just at this moment. But there is one. I'm sure there is one."

"Then let's figure the thing out a little farther. You are both men with hearts, brains, bodies, ambitions, desires. There is no natural law which gives one preference over the other. An hour of his time is worth as much to him, as a man, as an hour of your time is worth to you. An hour's labor takes as much of his effort, strength, vitality, as an hour's labor takes of yours. Why should he get one hundred dollars a month for what he gives to society, and you get four hundred dollars a month for what you give?"

"Why, I—I never thought of it just that way."

"Think of it that way, Mr. Malleson. Look at it occasionally from the standpoint of the man who works for wages. If he works equally hard with you to produce the profits that your company earns, why shouldn't he share equally with you in the matter of compensation for his work?"

"Honestly, Mrs. Bradley, I don't know."

"I thought you didn't. I thought you hadn't con-