The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [79]
‘Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!’ There was Marshall Nicolls, the pharmacist, in a long-tailed coat, conversing with his son-in-law who worked on a garbage truck. The preacher from the Most Holy Ascension Church had come. And two deacons from other churches. Highboy, wearing a loud checked suit, moved sociably through the crowd. Husky young dandies bowed to young women in long, bright-colored dresses. There were mothers with children and deliberate old men who spat into gaudy handkerchiefs. The room was warm and noisy.
Mr. Singer stood in the doorway. Many people stared at him.
Doctor Copeland could not remember if he had welcomed him or not. The mute stood by himself. His face resembled somewhat a picture of Spinoza. A Jewish face. It was good to see him.
The doors and the windows were open. Draughts blew through the room so that the fire roared. The noises quieted.
The seats were all filled and the young people sat in rows on the floor. The hall, the porch, even the yard were crowded with silent guests. The time had come for him to speak--and what was he to say? Panic tightened his throat. The room waited. At a sign from John Roberts all sounds were hushed.
‘My People,’ began Doctor Copeland blankly. There was a pause. Then suddenly the words came to him.
‘This is the nineteenth year that we have gathered together in this room to celebrate Christmas Day. When our people first heard of the birth of Jesus Christ it was a dark time. Our people were sold as slaves in this town on the courthouse square. Since then we have heard and told the story of His life more times than we could remember. So today our story will be a different one.
‘One hundred and twenty years ago another man was born in the country that is known as Germany--a country far across the Atlantic Ocean. This man understood as did Jesus. But his thoughts were not concerned with Heaven or the future of the dead. His mission was for the living. For the great masses of human beings who work and suffer and work until they die.
For people who take in washing and work as cooks, who pick cotton and work at the hot dye vats of the factories. His mission was for us, and the name of this man was Karl Marx.
‘Karl Marx was a wise man. He studied and worked and understood the world around him. He said that the world was divided into two classes, the poor and the rich. For every rich man there were a thousand poor people who worked for this rich man to make him richer. He did not divide the world into Negroes or white people or Chinese--to Karl Marx it seemed that being one of the millions of poor people or one of the few rich was more important to a man than the color of his skin.
The life mission of Karl Marx was to make all human beings equal and to divide the great wealth of the world so that there would be no poor or rich and each person would have his share. This is one of the commandments Karl Marx left to us: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."‘ A wrinkled, yellow palm waved timidly from the hall. Were he the Mark in the Bible?’
Doctor Copeland explained. He spelled the two names and cited dates. ‘Are there any more questions? I wish each one of you to feel free to start or enter into any discussion.’
‘I presume Mr. Marx was a Christian church man?’ asked the preacher.
‘He believed in the holiness of the human spirit’
‘Were he a white man?’
‘Yes. But he did not think of himself as a white man. He said, "I consider nothing human as alien to myself." He thought of himself as a brother to all people.’
Doctor Copeland paused a moment longer. The faces around him were waiting.
‘What is the value of any piece of property, of any merchandise we buy in a store? The value depends only on one thing--and that is the work it took to make or to raise this article. Why does a brick house cost more than a cabbage? Because the work of many men goes into the making of one brick house. There are the people who made the bricks and mortar and the people who cut down the trees to make the planks used for the floor. There are the men who made the building of the brick house possible. There are the men who carried the materials to the ground where the house was to be built. There are the men who made the wheelbarrows and trucks that carried the materials to this place. Then finally there are the workmen who built the house. A brick house involves the labor of many, many people--while any of us can raise a cabbage in his back yard. A brick house costs more than a cabbage because it takes more work to make. So when a man buys this brick house he is paying for the labor that went to make it. But who gets the money--the profit? Not the many men who did the work--but the bosses who control them. And if you study this further you will find that these bosses have bosses above them and those bosses have bosses higher up--so that the real people who control all this work, which makes any article worth money, are very few. Is this clear so far?