the road into chicago was one of increasing noise and smoke and desolation, of heat and gloom, and the rumour of a sordid defeat of life. i remember calumet city by the factory stacks, the chimneys whose blackness seemed fainting out of sight in the haze of the heat. dark smokes and white steams curled above many workshops; along the roadside black rivulets flowed from the factories. there were heaps of ashes and tin cans lying in odorous ponds. the leaves of the trees and the grasses of the fields were wilted and yellowed by the airs and fumes of chicago. at hammond a drunken, one-armed man followed me for about a mile, attracting a crowd of street arabs by his foul language. east chicago looked to me like parts of suburban london, and i was reminded in turns of peckham, hackney marshes, commercial road, whitechapel. there was, however, much that was unlike anything in london—the ominous squads of factory chimneys; clouds of heavy-rolling, ochreous fumes and smoke; palings with such advertisements as "read no scab [pg 275]newspapers" or "you'll holler"; wooden houses; dilapidated, ramshackle frame-buildings of grey wood; broken-down verandahs; black stairways; grey washing hanging on strings from stairway to stairway; half-naked children; piles of old cans and rusty iron.
the vehicles increased on the highway, the lumber of much traffic commenced, the red and yellow tramcars multiplied, railway lines crossed the road, and by the rush of trains one felt that all the traffic of eastern and central america was converging to one point. the open country disappeared. the air of the roadway became full of dust. the heat increased ten degrees, and to move a limb was to perspire. foreigners jostled one another on the sidewalks, negroes and negresses sat in doorways. the odour of carcases came to the nostrils from packing-town, and at last the great central roar of traffic—chicago.
i can give no account of the great city here—it would be only to recount and add together the uglinesses and the promises of other cities. it was at once worse and better than i had expected. the hopelessness of the picture given by upton sinclair in the jungle i felt to be exaggerated. i was told at hull house that the novelist had got all his stories at the stockyards, but that the massed calamities that are so appalling in the story never occurred to one family in real life. the effect of accumulated horrible detail in the jungle deprives you at the time of any[pg 276] love towards america; it made me, a briton, feel hatred towards america, and when first i read the book i felt that no russian who read it carefully would entertain willingly the idea of going to america. if he had entertained the idea, having read the jungle he would abandon it. it is an astonishing tract on the fate of a russian peasant family leaving the land of so-called tyranny for a land of so-called freedom; and its obvious moral is that russia is a better country for the individual than america—that america takes the fine peasant stock of europe and shatters it to bits.
it is true that chicago makes a convenience of men, and that there man exists that commerce may thrive rather than that commerce exists that man may thrive. it is a place where the physical and psychical savings of europeans are wasted like water, and where no one understands what the waste means. spending is always joyful, and chicago is a gay city. it is full of a light-hearted people, pushing, bantering, laughing, blindfolded over their spiritual eyes. in such places as chicago the immigrant finds a market for things he could never sell at home—his body, his nerve, his vital energy; a ready market, and he sells them and has money in his pocket and beer in plenty. listen to the loud-voiced, god-invoking crowd in the saloons! they have the proceeds that come of selling the savings of europe. they have come out of the quiet villages and forests where, from generation to generation and[pg 277] age to age, the peasantry live quiet lives, and grow richer and richer in spirit and nerve. but these in the chicago streets and saloons have found their mysterious destiny, to lavish in a life, and for seemingly worthless ends, what hundreds of quiet-living ancestors have saved. the tree of a hundred years falls in a day and becomes timber, supporting a part of the fabric of civilisation for a while.
at the fountain in the park: a hot day in chicago
at the fountain in the park: a hot day in chicago.
the strangest thing is the clamour of the chicago crowd—it is dead-sure about everything in the world, ignorant, cocksure, mocking. it does not know it is losing, does not know that it is blind-folded, because it is the victim of destiny.
part of the spiritual blindness of the great city is the belief it holds that there is no other place of importance but itself. and many outsiders take the city at its own estimate. but chicago is not america, neither is new york or any other great city. if going to america meant going only to the great cities, then few but the jews would emigrate from europe.
the ideals of america cannot be worked out merely in the great cities. the cities are places of death, of the destruction of national tissue, and of human combustion, necessary, no doubt, as such, certainly not places where one need worry about national health. the national health is on the farms of pennsylvania and indiana and minnesota, michigan, iowa, the dakotas, the far west. the men range big out there;[pg 278] the stand-by of the people will always be found in these places and not in the cities.
and new york and chicago, though necessary, are abnormal. they are not so much america as unassimilated europe. the population of a city should be the natural sacrifice of the population of the country. it is often deplored that the country people are forsaking the land and flocking to the towns; but the proper people to replenish the failing stock of the cities is just those whom instinct and destiny prompt to leave the country. it is most bewildering to the student of america that her city-populations are replenished by the foreign immigrants, by people nursing, it is true, american sentiments, but not yet born into the american ideal, not made america's own. the natural place for the first generation of immigrants is on the land. if chicago seems too large, too sudden a growth, disorderly, unanticipated, altogether out of hand, it is because of the hordes of foreigners who are there, who have not the impulse to co-operate, and who do not readily respond to the efforts of the idealist and politician. and they do not readily respond because they have not lived long enough in the true american atmosphere, have not served a quiet apprenticeship in the country, but have been dumped into an industrial wilderness served with the yellow press and "sped up."
america will have to guide the flow of the [pg 279]immigrants, and learn to irrigate with it and make fertile the middle and the far west. it is over-commercialisation and near-sightedness that clamours for more labour in the great cities. the size of a city is never too small. in the normal state of a nation the city functionises the country, and according to the strength of the people in the background the state of the great town will be busy or slack. it is good news that negotiations are being made with the trans-atlantic shipping companies to ship immigrants to the far western coast via the panama canal, at rates not very much heavier than at present exist for shipment to boston and philadelphia and new york. a man and his wife planted on the land in the east are worth ten given to the greedy cities of the west.
in the matter of the colonisation of her own country america might learn a great deal from russia, especially in the matter of railway transit. it is all to the advantage of a country that means of transit are cheap, and that there be a brisk circulation of the blood of the body-politic. as a newspaper realises that the cheaper its price the greater its success, the greater its circulation, so america might realise that the cheaper were its railway fares the more facility would there be for the mingling of the peoples, the assimilation of foreigners, and the development of the country.
in america it costs 39 dollars 60 cents to go as far[pg 280] as denver, colorado, which is about 2000 miles, and $76.20 to go to san francisco. a comparison with the russian rates will give an idea how much more cheaply it is possible to carry people:
railway rates
of course, the cost of working is more in america than in russia, and the trains are twice as fast; but that is not enough to set off against the enormous differences in fares. a great profit is made out of the railway business, and the profit is at the expense of america as a whole. it is absurd to compare the prices of fares in america with the prices of fares in great britain. it is bad enough with us, but ours is a small territory; it does not cost much to go from end to end. but america is a vast country. it costs almost a year's wages to pay the fare of a family across it. you think twice before determining to travel even a thousand miles. the consequence is that the circulation of people is sluggish in the extreme. the east begins to get congested, and the cities are packed with people who would gladly have gone straight to the west if facilities had been granted them.
[pg 281]
in the development of democracy it is circulation that is important, the circulation of opinion, of sentiment, of ideals. the large circulation of interest and affection caused by the reduction of postage rates down to a penny in britain and two cents in america has given an immense impetus to democratic development; the larger circulation of ideas and opinions caused by the reduction of the price of newspapers to a cent has also been advantageous. but how much more important than the circulation of opinions, ideas, and sentiments is the circulation of the people themselves, controlled by the price of fares on railways! how much more swiftly would the american democracy become homogeneous if it were possible to travel a thousand miles for five dollars. that would entail either nationalisation of railways or subsidisation by the government. but it would be worth it to the american people.
because of the heavy expense of railway travelling america is only dimly conscious of itself, geographically and ethnologically. americans even boast of the distances between their towns and between different points of the country. chicago, only one-third of the way across the continent, is called "the west." indiana and illinois and minnesota are "out west." it is as if we referred to berkshire or warwickshire as the west of england.
in due course, it may be imagined, the united[pg 282] states government will assume state-control of many of the railways, and ten dollars will pay your fare from new york right across. immigrants will not be allowed to settle in great cities till they have spent ten years on the land. such a provision would make it easier to admit all sorts and conditions of europeans at ellis island; and at the corresponding immigration stations at other ports a great deal of the white slave trouble would be averted, and the shelter of immigrants would not absorb so much of the urban attention so urgently needed elsewhere.
* * * * * * *
railways have as much power to make the new american as the newspaper has. perhaps they have more power; for the railways can afford great opportunities for social mingling. the railway can take any immigrant to a place where he will be not merely a hireling, but a living organism grafted into the vast body of america. at present the high fares deter the immigrant, and he is cooped up in districts which he would like to leave, but cannot; in districts where he must remain foreign and not american.
for there is an impulse to move and to mingle. if railway facilities were granted there would be a great deal more social and commercial intercourse over the surface of america. each new immigrant who comes into the united states is particularly[pg 283] wanted somewhere; his landing is not an accident. some village or countryside has called him, and will still call him, though he be frustrated at first, doing the wrong sort of work among the wrong group of people.
the great heterogeneous mass of peoples wants to become one nation. there is a power which works through the peoples for that end. the people are ready to mingle; they are already mingling; they are going to and fro and in twos and threes, and every step and every transaction is something essential in the making of the coming homogeneous nation.
it is a choir dance, a dance of molecules or atoms, if you will, but a dance of human atoms, and one that yields a mystic music that can be heard by the poet's ear. leading the peoples in the involutions and evolutions of the choir dance is a masked figure, not itself one of the people. what is that figure? not trade, i think, though it helps; not common interest, though it is perhaps a rule of the dance; not even the american idea. the masked figure that leads is a fate; it is an instinct of destiny.
the dance is being played out on a vast stage with much scenery—the three-thousand-mile stretch of america, east to west: the industrial east, with its hills; the corn plains and forests of the middle west; the wild west; the luxuriant and wonderful south.
[pg 284]
there are waiting throngs cooped up in cities and at temporary standing-places.
the welter of negroes and spaniards and half-castes in the south, in the black pale; the swedes and norwegians and finns in the middle west; the million jews in new york; the millions of them elsewhere, saying, as mary antin, that america and not judea is the promised land, the place where the tribes will be gathered together again and form a nation; the great anglo-saxon stock of america, who would feel themselves to be the leaven, the ruling principle in the choir dance; the dutch-americans of pennsylvania; the irish, of whom there tend to be more in america than in ireland; the slovaks and ruthenians on the pennsylvanian collieries; the italian gangs on the road and the italian quarters of a thousand towns; the poles, of whom in new york alone there are more than in any city in poland; the enormous number of germans living on the land; the hundred thousand russian working men in pennsylvania alone; the molokan russians in california, and the russian gold-washers; the red indians on the reservations; the composite gangs of all nations in the world going up and down the country doing jobs.
the jews bring music, mathematical instinct, a sense of justice, industry, commercial organisation, and commercial tyranny, national wealth, material prosperity, restlessness.
[pg 285]
the english bring ignorance, pluck, and honour; the scottish bring their brains and their morals; the irish bring generosity, cleverness, laziness, hatred of jews and of meanness.
the germans bring the idea of growth and development, evolution, and with it their own music. they also bring an instinct for efficiency and shining armour.
the negro brings sensual music and dancing, a taste for barbaric splendour, the gentleness of little children, and the wildness of the beasts of the forest at night; and he brings imitativeness, subserviency, a taste for slavery.
the red indians bring the remembrance of the virgin continent—litheness of limb, subtler ear and nose and eyes for the things of the earth.
the italians bring their emotionalism and excitability, their songs, their passion, their fighting spirit.
the little russians, slovaks, poles, great russians bring patience to endure suffering, but withal a spirit of anarchism which prompts them to do astonishing things without apparent cause, mystical piety, charity, much sin, much intemperance, much love and human tenderness. they bring also the tartar commercial spirit, and a zest for haggling over prices and for making deals.
the french bring economy, vivacity, journalistic genius.
but what do they not bring, all these peoples?[pg 286] there are marvellous gifts closed in all of them, mysterious potentialities that it were folly to attempt to name.
each race has its special function, its organic suitability and psychic value. there are male races like the jews; female races like the germans. there are races that bring spirit, races that bring body.
german goes down the middle with english; swedish with irish; russian with pole; jew with each and all. it is not always with the negro that the negro dances, not always with the italian that the italian is partnered, nor hungarian with hungarian, nor lithuanian with lithuanian. secretively, unexpectedly, on unanticipated impulses, strangers obey the magic wand and rhythmical gestures of the great conductor of the dance, and become one with another in the evolution of america. the dance has been open some time, but it is only now becoming general. the waiting throngs on all sides are just beginning to break up and go mingling up and down and in and out, carrying messages, making sacrifices, performing rites. the victims are blindfolded; the conquerors have the light of destiny on their brows.
a spectacle for the gods! in the old world the heavenly powers have looked down more or less on the antagonism of the races, war and enmity and all that results from great battles, the rout of armies, the sacking of cities, the sinking of ships—
[pg 287]
looking over wasted lands.
blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
but in the new world the peoples are joined in co-operation and friendship, working out in peace and trade the synthesis of a new race. the gods look down on factory-chimneys belching smoke, on kingdoms covered with red-gold corn uncoveted by men of arms, on hurrying trains and the dancing peoples going hither and thither, with smiles and little enchantments and allurements. they look upon the protestant pulpits where the puritans preach, on the roman catholic church and the confessionals, on the orthodox church, on the baptists, on the mormons; and on the way the varying peoples flock around temples, and in and out of church doors, carrying messages, receiving messages. they look upon many developments that we have so aptly called movements, the mysterious "woman's movement", the romanising movement, the socialistic movement. they look upon a million schools where the children, the second generation of the dancers, are polished and tested and clothed before they in their turn join the throng at the side and go down the middle with their partners.
it is like a kaleidoscope, and at each successive[pg 288] revolution the peoples change their aspects and their pattern; but there is no reverting to the original pattern, as in the kaleidoscope. the constituents of the pattern are divining what the next pattern will be, and it is always a new pattern, something nearer to the great coming unity, the new american nation. in no one particular bosom is the destiny of america; one man by himself means nothing there. it is a whole people that is living or will live. once the foreigner parts from the waiting throngs at the side and enters the mystic dance, his own little consciousness and purpose become but a part of the much greater consciousness and purpose of the whole. it is not the development of one sort of person, but the combination of a million sorts to make one. it is not the development of a race, as is our own british progress in great britain, but something which seems rather novel in the history of mankind, the making of a new democracy. it is not a gladstone or a bismarck or an alexander the liberator, who is leading this development that i have called a choir dance, not a lincoln or a roosevelt or a wilson. men have only their parts to play in the making of a democracy; if they could make it all by themselves, or originate the making, or achieve the making, it would not be a democracy that they were making. as i said, it is a masked figure that leads the mystic movement—a fate. in one sense there are many fates also among the dancers and[pg 289] mingled with them,—a mysterious and wonderful ballet, perfect in idea and in fulfilment.
and as it is with men so it is with the rites they perform. there are myriads of rites in the movement of the dance, but not one of them is charged with absolute significance. thus in the mazes of evolution there stands impregnable, as it would seem, the historic open bible of america. around it, marking time, is a massed host of americans, now reinforced by newcomers, now diminished by secessions, swayed to this way and to that by streams of catholics, streams of hebrews, streams of pleasure-lovers, but as yet holding its own, and claiming in sonorous choruses that the bible shall be the leaven of the new america.
at another point of vantage on the stage you may see the jews proclaiming by vote that america is no longer a christian country, and calling the intellectuals and pleasure-wanters to support, if not judaism, at least rationalism and "intelligent" materialism.
at another point you see the menace of the half-civilised negro, the spectacle of the rapid multiplication of a people over whom there is no control, and in whose nature lies, apparently, an enormous physical power to degrade the type of the whites.
there is the phenomenon of the wholesale slaughter and sacrifice of blindfolded foreigners exploited in industrial cities; forests of men used up as the forests of wood are worn away into daily newspapers and rubbish.
[pg 290]
you see the booths where dancers make voluntary abdication of european nationality and take the oaths of american citizenship.
you see the prizes for which, in the dance, whole crowds seem to be straining and yearning and even struggling, the prize of wealth, of even a little wealth, of a name printed in a newspaper, of a name printed in all newspapers, the prize of fame, of political position, of premiership. you see the wild political campaigns.
you see the places where the ambitious laze by the way, the baseball races where men are shouting themselves and others mad for an empty game, the halls of rag-time and trotting. you see in thousands of instances actions which seem to disgrace the name of america and to augur ill for her future,—women sold into evil, negroes burned at the stake, heinous crimes committed against children. but the destiny of the great choric dance cannot be thwarted by any of these things. death is useful to life, darkness to brightness, sin to virtue—useful in a way which it is not necessary for the individual to penetrate. each man fulfils his destiny, guides others according to his light, acts according to his inclination, temptation, and conscience. the whole nation takes care of itself.
* * * * * * *
wherever i went in the states i was asked by journalists to say what i thought the resultant type of[pg 291] american was going to be. america seemed feverishly anxious to get an answer to that question. no one can answer it, but it is exciting to speculate.
"are you aware that in a few years we shall come to such a pass that it will be a stand-up fight, americans versus jews?" said one man to me. "the influence of the other races goes for nothing beside the influence of the jews. the jews are buying up all the real estate, they make any sacrifice for education, they get the better of christians nine times out of ten. a jewish pedlar comes past this door one day, and i think, 'poor wretch!' next year he comes past in a buggy; next year i find he owns a big general store in the town; next year he owns a department store and employs a thousand hands. he is too much for us."
what is to be the emerging american? at new york i was inclined to answer, "a sort of english-speaking russian jew who believes in dollars and sensual pleasures before all else, who, however, reads advanced literature, and whilst he is poor is an anarchist, and when he is rich is more tyrannous than the tsar—more tyrannous, but never illegally so." but when i escaped into the country i found that new york was not america, but only a great hostelry on the threshold of that country. i learned the great control power of the anglo-saxon and dutch americans, the subtle influence of the russian people, who[pg 292] after all not only dominate the jews in russia, but give them many traits of the russian national character, making out of a materialist something which is almost a sentimentalist. there are many jews in russia who have become de-judaised by the russians, and indeed the christian jew has become part of the very fabric of that bureaucracy which the poor persecuted mob of hebrews hate and fear. the russians are a strong influence in the development of the american. and the germans and norwegians and swedes and danes, who swiftly change to a species of american hardly distinguishable from the old anglo-saxon and dutch type? they cannot go for nothing, they are not simply raw material, but are moulders and fashioners as well. the coming american will be a very recognisable relation of the teutonic peoples. but he will nevertheless be clearly and decidedly different from any one race on the continent.
even to-day an american is distinctly recognisable as such on the pavements of london, berlin, or paris. you know him by his face; he does not need to speak to reveal his nationality. you can even tell a man who has spent five years in the country; something new has been moulded into his face and has crept into his eyes. i have even noticed it in the face of russian peasants returning from america after two years away from russia, travelling in a russian train to their little village home.
[pg 293]
"you are american?" i asked of them.
"yes, boss, you are rait," they replied, and smiled knowingly.
they then began to enlarge on what a wonderful place america was—just like american tourists in switzerland.
but the american of to-day is not the american of to-morrow. the tsar's subjects coming into america at the rate of a quarter of a million a year ensure that, the flocking of almost whole nations from south-eastern europe ensure it. as i said, none can tell what the new american nation will be. we can only watch the wonderful patterns and colours that form in the great ballet and choir dance, the mingling in the labyrinths of destiny, the disappearances and the emergences, the involution and the evolution. it is something enacted within the mystery of the human race itself.
