CHAPTER XXXV. AN UPLIFTER RULED BY ENVY

The uplifter saw the men between heats drinking beer out of tin pails.

“Why do those big fine fellows drink beer,” he asked me, “when they have

plenty of water?”

I asked him: “Why don't you drink beer?”

“It makes me bilious,” he replied. “If I drink one glass of beer every

day for a week it upsets me and I get weak and dizzy.”

“Do you think that one drink of beer a day will upset those fellows and

make them dizzy?”

“Evidently not.”

“Then when you oppose beer you are doing it to keep yourself from

getting sick, aren't you? Do you really care a darn whether those

fellows get sick at the stomach or not?”

“Certainly, I--”

“You don't want them to get sick at the stomach?”

“Then, why did you give that lecture on corned beef and make those

strong fellows all sick at the stomach while you enjoyed your own

dinner?”

“I didn't know it would disturb them so. Besides I wanted to keep them

from getting sick later.”

“Well, they prefer to have their health now, and wait for their sickness

until later on. You are doing no man a favor by making him sick when he

is feeling well. If God is willing for them to be well, and they want

to be well, and the only thing that keeps them from being well is you,

aren't you afraid that they will pile on to you and knock the daylights

out of you?”

“I am really working for their good.”

“Then you want their stomachs to have what agrees with them?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, I'll tell you something, then. Water doesn't always agree with

the stomach as well as beer does. You never worked at terrific muscular

exertion handling white-hot iron in a mill like this. You haven't got

the muscles to do it, and I doubt if you've got the heart. You can not

know the condition a man is in when he hits his hardest lick here. But

they know, and I know. Some of the men feel they can't drink water at

that time. My pal tells me that his stomach rejects it; his throat seems

to collapse as he gulps it. But beer he can drink and it eases him.

The alcohol in beer is a blessing at that time. It soothes his laboring

stomach until the water can get into his system and quench the man's

thirst. Iron workers in the Old World have used malt beverages for

generations. Why take away the other man's pleasure if it doesn't injure

you? If it was deadly we would have been weakened in the course of

generations. But look at the worker's body. It is four times as strong

as yours.” I saw an envious look in his eye.

“Of course I inherited my muscular build,” I apologized, “and so I

try to make the most of it in boasting to you fellows who haven't any

muscle. But really I envy you. You have education and brain power.

That's what I lack and that's what I want above all other things. I

try to study at night and educate myself. But I haven't got any chance

against you fellows who are born intellectual and have college training

on top of it. So if I have talked sharp to you, my cussedness is really

due to envy. I really want to be in your shoes, and I haven't got the

brains for the job.”

This worked.

“There is nothing about me for a fellow like you to envy,” he said

condescendingly. “I'm no better off than you are. In fact, I envy you

fellows. You are never sick; you can eat and digest anything. I really

envy you. You are built like a young Hercules and are never ashamed when

you strip. When I put on a bathing suit I am embarrassed until I get out

of sight in the water, because I'm all skin and bones. My arms and legs

are the size of broomsticks.”

“Oh, well,” I said, “you're just as well off without the Hercules shape.

You are always healthy.”

“Healthy? What I call health, you fellows would regard as the last

stages of decrepitude. A little beer and tobacco knocks me over. If I

drank coffee and ate pie the way you do, I'd have to take morphine to

get a night's sleep. You fellows need never envy us intellectuals. You

can drink and smoke and eat anything, and all the poisons you take in

are sweated out of your pores in this terrific labor, so that every

night you come out as clean and lusty as a new-born child. I'd swap all

my education in a minute for the mighty body and the healthy and lusty

living that you enjoy. If you knew how much I envy you, you would never

think of envying me.”

He had blurted out the truth. It wasn't love of comrades that gave a

motive to his life. It was envy that turned him inside out. Envy was the

whole story, and he admitted it.