i came to america to see men and women and not simply bricks and mortar, to understand a national life rather than to moan over sooty cities and industrial wildernesses. hundreds of thousands of healthy europeans passed annually to america. i wanted to know what this asylum or refuge of our wanderers actually was, what was the life and hope it offered, what america was doing with her hands, what she was yearning for with her heart. i wished to know also what was her despair.
on my second day in new york i was deploring the sky-scraper, when a young american lifted her arms above her head in yearning and aspiration saying, "have you seen the woolworth building? it is a bird's flight of stone right away up into the sky, it is higher and newer than anything else in new york, its cream-coloured walls are pure and undefiled. it is a commercial house, to be let to ten thousand business tenants. but it is like a cathedral; its foundations are on the earth, but its spire is up among the[pg 55] stars; if you go to it at sundown and look upward you will see the angels ascending and descending, and hear the murmur of eternity about it."
i had always thought of the sky-scraper as a black grimy street-front that went up to an unearthly height, a noah's ark of sodden and smoky bricks. that is what a sky-scraper would tend to be in london. i had forgotten the drier, cleaner atmosphere of new york.
i went to see the woolworth building, and i found it something new. it was beautiful. it was even awe-inspiring.
in the evening i asked an american literary man whom i met at a club what he thought was the raison d'être of the woolworth; was it not simply the desire to build higher than all other houses—the wish to make a distinct commercial hit?
he "put me wise."
"first of all," said he, "new york is built on the little island of manhattan. the island is all built over, and so, as we cannot expand outward we've got to build upward. ground rent, too, has become so high that we must build high for economy's sake."
i remarked on the number of men who lost their lives in the building of sky-scrapers. "for every minute of the day there was a man injured in some town or other of the united states," so i had read in an evening paper.
he said the americans were playing large, and must[pg 56] expect to lose a few men in the game. he expected the america of the future would justify all sacrifices made just now, and he gave me in the course of a long talk his view of the passion of america.
"the woolworth building is only an inadequate symbol of our faith," said he. "you british and the germans and french are working on a different principle, you are playing the small game, and playing it well. you stake your efficiency on the perfection of details. in the german life, for instance, nothing is too small to be thought unmeriting of attention."
i told him the watchword of the old chess champion steinitz, "i do not vant to vin a pawn; it is enough if i only veakens a pawn."
"you play chess?" said he, laughing. "that's it exactly. he did not care to sacrifice pieces; he was entirely on the defensive in his chess, eh? and in life he would be the same, hoarding his pennies and his dollars, and economising and saving. that's just how the american is different. he doesn't mind taking great risks; he is playing the large game, sacrificing small things, hurrying on, building, destroying, building again, conquering, dreaming. we are always selling out and re-investing. you are concentrating on yourselves as you are; we want to leave our old bodies and conditions behind and jump to a new humanity. if an american youth could inherit the whole world he would not care to improve it if he saw a[pg 57] chance of selling it to some one and getting something better."
"the spirit of business," i suggested.
"call it what you will."
"but," said i, "does not this merely result in a town full of a hustling, mannerless crowd; trolley-cars dashing along at life-careless speed; a nation at work with loosely constructed machinery; callous indifference on the part of the living towards those whom they kill in their rush to the goal?"
my new acquaintance looked at me in a way that seemed to say "you—britisher." he was a great enthusiast for his country, and i had been sent to him by friends in london who wanted me to get to the heart of america, and not simply have my teeth set on edge by the bitter rind.
"you think the end will justify the proceedings?" i added.
"oh yes," he said. "you know we've only been fifty years on this job; there's nothing in modern america more than fifty years old. think of what we've done in the time—clearing, building, engineering; think of the bridges we've built, the harbours, the canals, the great factories, the schools. we've been taxed to the last limit of physical strength, and only to put down the pavement and the gas-pipes so to speak, the things you found ready made for you when you were born, but which we had to lay on the[pg 58] prairie. we are only now beginning to look round and survey the foundations of civilisation. still most of us are hurrying on, but the end will be worth the trials by the way; we
"are whirling from heaven to heaven
and less will be lost than won."
"but is it not a miserable, heartless struggle for the individual?" said i. "for instance, to judge by the story of the jungle i should gather that the lot of a russian family come fresh to chicago was terrible."
"oh, you mustn't take sinclair literally. he is a socialist who wants to show that society, as it is at present constituted, is so bad that there is no hope except in revolution. there is heartbreak often, but the struggle is not heartless. it is amazingly full of hope. if you go into the worst of our slums you'll find the people hopeful, even in extremity. i've been across to london, and i never saw such hopeless-looking people as those who live in your east ham and west ham and poplar and the rest of them."
"there is hope with us too," i protested. "the people in our slums are very rebellious, they look forward to the dictatorship of will thorne or george lansbury."
"ah well," my friend assented, "that's your kind of hope—rebelliousness, hatred of the splendid and safe machine. that's just it. we haven't your [pg 59]rebelliousness and quarrelsomeness. the new-come immigrant is always quarrelling with his neighbours. it is only after a while that america softens him and enriches his heart. the vastness of america, the abundance of its riches, is infectious; it makes the heart larger. the immigrant feels he has room, life is born in him."
"but," said i, "the great machine is here as in europe. a man is known by his job here just as much as with us, isn't he? he is labelled and known, he fills a fixed place and has a definite rotation. every man says to him 'i see what you are, i know what you are; you are just what i see and no more.' his neighbour takes him for granted thus. out of that horrible taking-for-granted springs rebelliousness and hate of the great machine. you must be as rebellious as we are."
"no, no." my companion wouldn't have it. "we don't look at people that way in america. but you're right about looks. it's looks that make people hate. it's eyes that make them curse and swear and hate. every day hundreds and thousands of eyes look at one. i think eyes have power to create. if thousands and thousands of people pass by a man and look at him with their eyes they almost change him into what they see. if in the course of years millions of eyes look at an individual and see in him just some little bolt in a great machine, then his tender human heart[pg 60] wants to turn into iron. the ego of that man has a forlorn and terrible battle to fight. he thinks he is fighting himself; he is really fighting the millions of creative eyes who by faith are changing flesh and blood into soulless machinery."
"and here?" i queried.
he laughed a moment, and then said seriously, "here it is different. here we are playing large. oh, the dwarfing power, the power to make you mean, that the millions of eyes possess in a country that is playing the small game! they make you feel mean and little, and then you become mean. they kill your heart. your dead little heart withdraws the human films and the tenderness and imaginativeness from your eyes, and you also begin to look out narrowly, dwarfingly, compellingly. you eye the people in the streets, in the cars, in the office, and they can't help becoming what you are."
"but some escape," said i.
"yes, some go and smash windows and get sent to gaol, some become tramps, and some come to america. in giant despair's dungeon poor christian exclaims, 'what a fool i am to remain here when i have in my heart a key which i am persuaded will unlock any of the doors of this castle. strange that it has only now occurred to me that all i need to do is to lift my hand and open the door and go away.' then poor christian books a passage to america or[pg 61] australia. he starts for the new world; and the moment he puts his foot on the vessel he begins to outgrow. he was his very smallest and meanest under the pressure of the old world; when the pressure is removed he begins to expand. he is free. he is on his own. he is sailing to god as himself. the exception has beaten the rule. now i hold as a personal belief that we are all exceptions, that we take our stand before god as tender human creatures of his, each unique in itself. the emigrant on the boat has the delicious feelings of convalescence, of getting to be himself again. he basks in the sun of freedom. the sun itself seems like the all-merciful father, the good shepherd who cares for each one and knows each by name, leading him out to an earthly paradise."
"that paradise is america, eh?" said i rather mockingly, and then i paused and added, "but america ought to be really a paradise; it is pathetic to think of the difference between america as the russian thinks it to be and america as it is. it is a shame that your trusts and tariffs and corrupt police should have made america a worse place to live in than the old world. i know it is the land of opportunity, opportunity to become rich, to get on, to be famous; but for the poor immigrant it is rather the land of opportunism, a land where he himself is the opportunity, which not he but other people have the chance to seize."
my friend was scandalised. "i think it gives every[pg 62] one an opportunity," said he, "even the drunkard and the thief and the embezzler whom you so incharitably hand over to us. you know the saying, 'it takes an ocean to receive a muddy stream without defilement.' the ocean of american life cleanses many a muddy stream of the old world."
"still," said i, "not to abandon oneself utterly to ideas, is it not true that pittsburg actually destroys thousands of slav immigrants yearly? it utterly destroys them. they have no children who come to anything—they are just wiped out. i gather so much from your government survey of pittsburg."
"well," said he, "that survey is just part of the new america, of the new national conscience. terrible things do happen, witness the enormous white-slave traffic. you have just come to us at the right moment to see the initiation of sweeping changes. president wilson is like your david lloyd george, only he has more power, because he has more people at his back. we are just beginning a great progressive era. on the other hand, america is not the place of the weak. that's why we send so many back home from ellis island. we've got something else to do than try and put humpty dumpty up on the wall again. when the weaker get past ellis island into our fierce national life they are bound to go to the wall. we haven't time even to be sorry, and if questioned we can only answer that we believe the sacrifice will be justified."
[pg 63]
i recall to my mind the startling objection of ivan karamazof in the greatest of russian novels. "when god's providence is fulfilled we shall understand all things; we shall see how the pain and death of, for instance, a little child could be necessary. i understand of course what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise, and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud, 'thou art just, o lord, for thy ways are revealed'; but to my mind the pain of one little child were too high a price to pay." ivan karamazof would certainly have renounced the grand future of america bought by the exploitation of thousands of weak and helpless ones.
still i suppose the past must take care of itself, and the america which stands to-day on the threshold of a new era has more thought and tenderness for the victims of its commercial progress. it is making up its mind to save the foreign women and their little babies. for the rest, america plays large, as my friend said. there is a spaciousness with her, there is contrast, there is life and death, virtue and sin, things to laugh over and things to cry over. the little baby buds are taken away and branches are lopped, but the mustard grows a great tree.
there is a chance in america, a chance that you may be a victim, but also a chance that you may be in at the mating of the king.
[pg 64]
* * * * * * *
several months later, when i had tramped some six hundred american miles, and talked to all manner of persons, i realised that america was superlatively a place of hope. i had been continually asking myself, "what is america? what is this new nation? how are they different from us at home in england?" and one morning, sitting under a bush in indiana, the answer came to me and i wrote it down. they are fundamentally people who have crossed the atlantic ocean, and we are stay-at-homes. they are adventurous, hopeful people. they are people who have thrown themselves on the mercy of god and nature.
we live in a tradition; they live in an expectation. we are remedying the old state; they are building the new. we are loyal to the ideas of our predecessors, they are agape to divine the ideas of generations yet to come.
it is possible to come to britain and see what britain is, but if you go to america the utmost you can see is what america is becoming. and when you see the briton you see a man steadfast at some post of duty, but the american is something to-day but god-knows-what to-morrow. our noblest epitaph is "he knew his job"; theirs, "he sacrificed himself to a cause."
observe, "that state of life unto which it shall please god to call me," puts the briton in a static order of things. he is in his little shop, or at the forge, or in the coal yard. within his sight is the norman tower[pg 65] of the village church. he is known to the priest by his name and his job. he is part of the priests' cure of souls. his life is functionised at the village altar and not at the far shrines of ambition. he belongs to the peasant world. even though he is english he is as the russian, "one of god's faithful slaves."
thousands of english, scotch, and irish, simple souls, say their prayers to god each night, not because they are pillars of a chapel or have lately been "saved," but because they have been brought up in that way of life and in that relation to god. they pray god sometimes in anguish that they may be helped to do their duty. they say the lord's prayer, not as a patter, but with the stark simplicity which you associate with the grey wall of the old church.
these village folk of ours are like old trees. close your eyes to the visible and open them to the invisible world, and you see the young man of to-day as the stem, his father as the branch, his grandfather the greater branch. you see in the shadow rising out of the earth the ancient trunk. you think of many people, and yet it is not father and grandfather, and grandfather and great-grandfather, and so on, but one tree, the name of which is the young man leafing in the world of to-day. that man is no shoot, no seedling, he has behind him the consciousness of the vast umbrageous oak. when he says "our father, which art in heaven," the voice comes out of the depths of the[pg 66] earth, and it comes from father and grandfather, and from greybeard after greybeard standing behind one another's shoulders, innumerably.
the place to which it shall please god to call you is not a definite locality in the united states of america; the dream of wealth is dreamed inside each cottage door. each man is intent on getting on, on realising something new. he is revolving in his mind ways of doing more business; of doing what he has more quickly, more economically; ways of "boosting," ways of buying. our customers buy from us: his customers trade with him—they enter into harmony with him. store-keepers and customers sing together like gnats over the oak trees; they make things hum. there is a feeling that whether buying or selling you are getting forward.
the british, however, put a great question-mark in front of this american life. do those who are striving know what they want in the end of ends? do those toiling in the wood know what is on the other side?
the late price collier remarked that the german thinks he has done something when he has an idea and the frenchman when he has made an epigram; it may be inferred that the american thinks he has done something when he has made his pile. the ultimate earthly prize for "boosting" and bargaining is a vulgar solatium,—a big house, an abundant[pg 67] person, a few gold rings, an adorned wife, a high-power touring car. out in those wider spaces where lagging and outdistanced competitors are not taken into your counsel you still handle business. but now it is in "graft" that you deal. you are engineering trusts, and cornering commodities, you develop political "pull," you own saloons, and have ledgers full of the bought votes of italians and slavs.
you are great ... sitting at the steering-wheel of this great ramshackle political and commercial machine, your coat off and your immaculate lawn sleeves tucked up above your elbows, you own to wolfish-eyed reporters that you have an enormous appetite for work and zest for life.
and yet....
what is the crown? you die in the midst of it. there is no goal, no priceless treasure that even in the death-struggle your hands grasp after.
some of your children are going in for a life of pleasure. they go to be the envy of waiters and hotel-porters and all people waiting about for tips, but often to be the laughing-stock of the cultured. one of your sweet but simple-souled daughters is going to marry a broken-down english peer. he will not marry her for less than a million dollars. in the old store where you began business, gossiping over bacon and flour, you would have looked rather blank if some one had said that a foreigner would consent[pg 68] to marry your daughter only on the payment of an indemnity.
"well," said my road-companion to me under a bush in indiana, "the game goes to pass the time. the world is a prison-house, and a good game has been invented, commerce, and it saves us from ennui, that is the philosophy of it all. scores of years pass like an hour over cards. those who win are most interested and take least stock of the time—and they have invented happiness."
but i cannot believe that the american destiny leads up a cul-de-sac. we have been following out a cross-road. there is a high road somewhere that leads onward.
there are two sorts of immigrant, one that makes his pile and returns to europe, the other who thinks america a desirable place to settle in. the second class is vastly more numerous than the first, for faith in american life is even greater than faith in america's wealth.
quite apart from the opportunities for vulgar success america has wonderful promise. it can offer to the newcomer colonist a share in a great enterprise. it is quite clear to the sympathetic observer that something is afoot in the land which in great britain seems to be best known by police scandals, ugly dances, sentimental novels, and boastful, purse-conscious travellers.
[pg 69]
the dream of progress by which westerners live is going to be carried forward to some realisation in america. there is a great band of workers united in the idea of making america the most pleasant and happy place to live in that the world has ever known. i refer to those working with such americans as j. cotton dana, the fervent librarian; mr. fred howe, who is visualising the cities of the future; the president of the city college, who has such regard not only for the cultural but for the physical well-being of young men; jane addams, who with such precision is diagnosing social evils; president wilson, who promises to uproot the tree of corruption; to mention only the chief of those with whom i was brought in contact in my first experience of america.
the political struggles of america form truly a sad spectacle, but by a thousand non-political signs one is aware that there is a real passion in the breast of the individual.
going through the public gardens at newark i see written up: "citizens, this park is yours. it was planted for you, that the beauty of its flowers and the tender greenery of tree and lawn might refresh you. you will therefore take care of it...."
going through albany i find it placarded: "dirt is the origin of sin; get rid of dirt, and other evils will go with it," and the whole city is having a clean-up week, all the school children formed into anti-dirt[pg 70] regiments making big bonfires of rubbish and burying the tomato-cans and rusty iron.
every city in america has been stirring itself to get clean. even in a remote little place like clarion, pa., i read on every lamp-post: "let your slogan be 'do it for home, sweet home'—clean up!" and again in another place, "develop your social conscience; you've got one, make the country beautiful." in new york i have handed me the following prayer, which has seemed to me like the breath of the new passion:
we pray for our sisters who are leaving the ancient shelter of the home to earn their wage in the store and shop amid the press of modern life. grant them strength of body to bear the strain of unremitting toil, and may no present pressure unfit them for the holy duties of home and motherhood which the future may lay upon them. give them grace to cherish under the new surroundings the old sweetness and gentleness of womanhood, and in the rough mingling of life to keep the purity of their hearts and lives untarnished. save them from the terrors of utter want. teach them to stand by their sisters loyally, that by united action they may better their common lot. and to us all grant wisdom and firm determination that we may not suffer the women of our nation to be drained of strength and hope for the enrichment of a few, lest our homes grow poor in the wifely sweetness[pg 71] and motherly love which have been the saving strength and glory of our country. if it must be so that our women toil like men, help us still to reverence in them the mothers of the future. if they yearn for love and the sovereign freedom of their own home, give them in due time the fulfilment of their sweet desires. by mary the beloved, who bore the world's redemption in her bosom; by the memory of our own dear mothers who kissed our souls awake; by the little daughters who must soon go out into that world which we are now fashioning for others, we pray that we may deal aright by all women.
men are praying for women, and women are working for themselves. commercial rapacity is tempered by women's tears, and the tender stories of the shop-girl that o. henry wrote are more read to-day than they were in the author's lifetime. the newspapers are all agog with the "vice-probes," scandals, questions of eugenics, the menace of organised capital, the woman's movement. and they are not so because vice is more prolific than in europe, or the race more inclined to fail, or the working men and working women more tyrannised over. they are so because this generation wishes to realise something of the new jerusalem in its own lifetime. it may be only a foolish dream, but it provides the present atmosphere of america. it discounts the despair which on the one hand prudery and on the other rag-time dancing[pg 72] invite. it discounts the commercial and mechanical obsession of the people. it discounts the wearisome shouting of the cynic who has money in his pocket, and makes america a place in which it is still possible for the simple immigrant to put his trust. in the light of this passion, and never forgetful of it, i view all that comes to my notice in america of to-day.
