“Dat let’s me out!” said old Chaim Menzies, who had already lighted his ten-cent cigar.
The substance of what Bunny wanted was a labor college on a tract of land somewhere out in the country; but instead of spending his million on steel and concrete, he wanted to begin in tents, and have all the buildings put up by the labor of the students and teachers. Everybody on the place was to have four hours’ manual labor and four of class work daily; and they were all to wear khaki, and have no fashionable society. Bunny had the idea of going out among the colleges and high schools, and talking to little groups of students, and here and there seducing one away from football and fraternities to a new dedication. Also the labor unions would be invited to select promising young men and women. It was a thing that should grow fast, and take little money, because, with the exception of building materials, everything could be produced on the place; they would have a farm, and a school of domestic arts—in short, teach all the necessary trades, and provide four hours’ honest work of some sort for all students who wanted to come.
VI
What did they think about it? Chaim Menzies was, as always, the first to speak. Perhaps his feelings had been hurt by the reference to tobacco; anyhow, he said it looked to him like it vas anodder colony; you didn’t change a colony by calling it a college, and a colony vas de vorst trap you could set for de movement. “You git people to go off and live by demselves, different from de rest of de vorkers, and vedder dey are comfortable or vedder dey ain’t—and dey von’t be!—all de time dey are tinking about someting else but de class struggle out in de vorld.”
“That’s quite true,” said Bunny. “But we shan’t be so far from the world, and the purpose of our training will be, not the colony, but the movement outside, and how to help it.”
“De people vot are going to help de movement has got to be in it every hour. You git dem out vun mont’ and dey are no good any more; dey have got some sort of graft den, someting easy, dey are no longer vorkers.”
“But this isn’t going to be so easy, Comrade Chaim—”
“Listen to him! He is going to git nice young college ladies and gentlemen to come and live lives dat vill not seem easy to de vorkers!”
“You might as well admit it, Bunny,” put in Harry Seager. “You’ll have a nice polite place, with all the boys and girls wearing William Morris costumes. They’ll work earnestly for a while, but they’ll never be efficient, and if you really have any buildings put up, or any food raised, you’ll have regulation hard-fisted workingmen to do it. I know, because we’re picking walnuts now!”
“I don’t want a polite place,” said Bunny. “I want a gymnasium where people train for the class struggle; and if we can’t have discipline any other way, how about this as part of the course—every student is pledged to go to jail for not less than thirty days.”
“Attaboy!” cried Peter Nagle. “Now you’re talking!”
“Vot is he going to do—break de speed laws?” inquired Chaim, sarcastically.
“He’s going into Angel City and picket in a strike. Or he’s going to hold Socialist meetings on street-corners until some cop picks him up. You don’t need me to tell you how to get arrested in the class struggle, Comrade Chaim.”
“Yes, but he might run into some judge dat vould not understand de college regulation, and might give him six mont’s.”
“Well, that’s a chance we’ll have to take; the point is simply, no senior student is in good social standing until he or she has been in jail for at least thirty days in a class struggle case.”
“And the teachers?” demanded Gregor Nikolaieff.
“Once every three years, or every five years for the teachers.”
“And the founder! How often for the founder?” Peter clamored in glee; but Dan Irving said the founder would have to wait until he had got rid of his money.
They argued back and forth. Could you interest young people in the idea of self-discipline? Would your danger be in setting the standard too easy, so that you wouldn’t accomplish much, or in setting it too high, so that you wouldn’t have any students? Bunny, the young idealist, was for setting it high; and Harry Seager said that people would volunteer more quickly to die than they would to get along without tobacco. And he wanted to know, what were they going to do about the Communists. Harry was no politician any more, he was a social revolutionist, and only waiting for the day of action. Regardless of what Socialist party members might wish, they couldn’t keep Bolshevik students out of a college, and even if they did, the ideas would bust in.
Bunny answered by setting forth his ideal of the open mind. Why couldn’t the students do their own educating, and make their own decisions? Let the teachers give the information they were asked for: and then let the students thresh it out—every classroom an open forum, and no loyalty except to research and freedom? They were all willing to admit that there would be no use starting a sectarian institution, to advocate one set of doctrines and exclude the others. Also, it took a partisan of each doctrine to set it forth fairly. So then, here was Bunny pinning them down: “Chaim, would you be willing for Harry to explain
