“Oh,” said the professor, “the law of supply and demand works both ways: it creates the demand, if the supply comes first; and if we keep on giving the sons of business men the education of a gentleman, we may yet make them feel the need of it. We shall evolve a new sort of business man.” “The sort that can’t make money, or wouldn’t exactly like to, on some terms?” asked the banker. “Well, perhaps we shall work out our democratic salvation in that way. When you have educated your new business man to the point where he can’t consent to get rich at the obvious cost of others, you’ve got him on the way back to work with his hands. He will sink into the ranks of labor, and give the fellow with the lower education a chance. I’ve no doubt he’ll take it. I don’t know but you’re right, professor.” The lawyer had not spoken as yet. Now he said: “Then it is education, after all, that is to bridge the chasm between the classes and the masses, though it seems destined to go a long way around about it. There was a time, I believe, when we expected religion to do that.” “Well, it may still be doing it, for all I know,” said the banker. “What do you say?” he asked, turning to the minister. “You ought to be able to give us some statistics on the subject with that large congregation of yours. You preach to more people than any other pulpit in your city.” The banker named one of the principal cities in the East, and the minister answered, with, modest pride: “I am not sure of that; but our society is certainly a very large one.” “Well, and how many of the lower classes are there in it--people who work for their living with their hands?” The minister stirred uneasily in his chair, and at last he said, with evident unhappiness: “They--I suppose--they have their own churches. I have never thought that such a separation of the classes was right; and I have had some of the very best people--socially and financially--with me in the wish that there might be more brotherliness between the rich and poor among us. But as yet--” He stopped; the banker pursued: “Do you mean there are _no_ working-people in your congregation?” “I cannot think of any,” returned the minister, so miserably that the banker forbore to press the point. The lawyer broke the awkward pause which followed: “I have heard it asserted that there is no country in the world where the separation of the classes is so absolute as in ours. In fact, I once heard a Russian revolutionist, who had lived in exile all over Europe, say that he had never seen anywhere such a want of kindness or sympathy between rich and poor as he had observed in America. I doubted whether he was right. But he believed that, if it ever came to the industrial revolution with us, the fight would be more uncompromising than any such fight that the world had ever seen. There was no respect from low to high, he said, and no consideration from high to low, as there were in countries with traditions and old associations.”