at once, the loudest of which, Professor Oleny’s finally drowned
out the others, “... money without intelligence is the most fatal
combination conceivable to man! Economic prosperity would spell speedy
destruction without an overhauling of education.” He spun like a
pinwheel for a moment, in a sparkling, devastating characterization of
American schools, and of their deadening effect on the brains which
passed through them, and began on a description of what schools should
be.
But I had heard him lecture on that only the day before and, looking
away from him, sought out the face of my cousin, the business-man.
He had sat through it all, and now continued to sit through the
free-for-all debate which followed, without opening his mouth except to
emit an occasional thoughtful puff of cigar-smoke. His thoughts seemed
to be with the billowing smoke-rings, which he sent towards the ceiling
rather than with the great sweep of the subjects being discussed. I
knew well enough that his silence did not come in the least from any
inability to follow the pyrotechnics about him, and I felt in his
absent preoccupation something of the disdain, traditionally felt for
talkers and reformers by men of action--when in the twentieth century
and in the United States, you say “man of action” you mean of course,
“business-man.”
It nettled me a little, and after the others had gone and he was
finishing the end of his cigar, I said challengingly, “I suppose you
think they are all off! I suppose you think that you know what is the
matter with the world and that it is something quite different.”
He considered the end of his cigar meditatively and answered mildly, “I
don’t _think_ I know, I _know_ I know.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” I said, amused and ironic. “Would you mind
telling me what it is?”
He shucked further down in his chair, tipped his head back and looked
up at the ceiling. “Well, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you a
story that happened just lately in one of the biggest mail-order houses
in this country. Of course, I know that you don’t fully appreciate the
importance of mail-order houses, not being in business. And they’re too
through and through American a growth for people like your friends
to-night to know about or talk about. But some of the best brains and
real sure-enough genius in the United States have gone into creating
the mail-order house idea. Maybe you might allow that to be a good
enough reason for considering for a moment what goes on inside one of
them ... what?
“As a matter of fact, the story isn’t just about a mail-order house,
but about what is the matter with the world ... the very same subject
your friends were debating. My story won’t have so many long words in
it as they use, nor so many abstract ideas ... at least on the surface;
but it won’t do you any harm to soak it away and think it over. I’ll
tell you what, _I’ve_ been thinking it over this evening, as I listened
to the talk. I only heard the story this morning, and it’s stuck in my
head all day ... and especially this evening, as they were all talking
about how to hit on some organization of society that would really fix
things up, once and for all.”
He paused for a moment, stretched his legs out straight before him and
put his hands into his pockets. “If I really told you all you ought
to know, to understand the background and setting of the story, I’d
be sitting here to-morrow morning still talking. So I won’t try, I’ll
just tell you the plain story as it happened. You try to imagine
the background: an organization as big, as complicated, with as many
chances for waste motion, or overorganization, or poor organization as
society itself. And not only power and glory, but _cash_, plenty of
hard cash as immediate reward for the successful use of brains.
“Well now, into that arrives a smart youngster full of enthusiasm for
making things run better, just like your friends to-night; dead sure
just like them that _he_ has the key; with lots of pep and brains and
interest in his job, pushing his way right up from the stenographer’s
desk, with his eye on the Manager’s. Do you get him? Well, he’s laid
awake nights, thinking how to improve the organization, partly because
he wanted to improve it, partly because he wanted to get the credit
for it ... just like your friends again. And because he is a smart
young fellow as keen as a razor, he soon figured out a way to increase
business, to increase it like a house afire, and to handle it once it
was increased.
“He went to the big man of the concern and laid out his plans. Now,
you’d better believe the big men in any organization always have a glad
hand out for anybody in the concern who’ll show interest and brains;
and the boy got treated like a king. Sure, he could try out his plan!
On a small scale at first, to see how it would work. Let him take a
county out of each of six selected states, and concentrate on them.
And, sure, yes, indeed, he could have anything in the organization he
wanted, to make his try with.
“So the boy went away bounding like a rubber-ball and planned his
campaign. I won’t bother you by trying to tell you what it was....
It wouldn’t interest you, and anyhow you couldn’t understand the
business details. It was a mixture of intensive publicity, special
attention paid to detail, a follow-up system that meant personal care
and personal acquaintance with the tastes of customers, and intimate
knowledge of what past orders from customers had been. To get the
right kind of assistants he went through the various departments of
that big organization and hand-picked his staff; the very best of the
publicity men, the smartest of the order-clerks, the brightest of the
stenographers. And then they just tore in and ate up the territory they
were practising on! They plowed it with publicity, and sowed it with
personal service, they reaped, by George, a harvest that would put your
eye out! Business increased by a twenty-five per cent, by a fifty per
cent! At the end of a year, the boy, too big for his skin, paraded into
the Manager-in-chief’s office with statistics to prove a seventy-five
per cent increase over any business ever done there before! Well, that
was simply grand, wasn’t it? Yes, the Manager would certainly sit up
and take some notice of a system that had accomplished _that_!”
My cousin had finished his cigar, now threw the butt into the
fire-place, and sat looking at the embers with a somber expression.
I couldn’t see anything to look somber about. Indeed I found myself
stifling a yawn. What did I care how much business a mail-order house
did or how they did it?
My cousin answered my thought, “Don’t you see that the story is all
about the same general idea you were all discussing this evening? It
is about getting things done more intelligently, more efficiently,
about avoiding fool mistakes, about rising to big opportunities, about
learning how to scramble over the obstacles that prevent human beings
from being intelligent and efficient and effective. Now, then, at the
first take-off, the boy had soared right over those obstacles, hadn’t
he? But the Manager-in-chief knew a thing or two about them, too. In
fact he had grown bald and gray trying to climb over those very same
obstacles. But you can be sure the boy didn’t once think that his chief
might be just as anxious as he was to have things done better. Boys
never do....” There was a pause, while my cousin considered the embers
moodily.
“So, by and by, after the boy had fizzed the place all foamy with his
wonderful statistics, the bald-headed, gray-haired Manager began to
come down to brass tacks, and to inquire just how the thing had been
done. The boy was crazy to tell him, went into every detail; and the
Manager listened hard.
“And then he shook his old bald gray head. He said: ‘Young fellow, you
listen to me. It takes _sense_ to run that system of yours. You’re
counting on everybody, from you right down to the boy that works your
mimeograph, paying attention to what he’s doing, using his brains and
using them every minute. If everybody doesn’t, you won’t get your
results, will you? Now, consider this, how did you get hold of a staff
that would have any brains to use and would use them? _You_ know how!
We let you run a fine tooth comb through our whole organization,
thousands and thousands of employees. You took out of every department
the very best they had; three or four out of hundreds, and they are
the only ones out of thousands who amount to anything after years of
training at our expense. And then you put your very best licks into
it yourself. Now, who are you? You’re the first stenographer we’ve
had in ten years, who took enough interest in the business as a whole
to have a single idea about it. You tell me something. Suppose we
reorganized along your lines, who would I get to run all the other
departments and keep up the high-speed efficiency and red-hot ambition
you’ve shown, which is the _only_ reason your scheme works? You know
as well as I do I can’t find another _one_, let alone the eighty or
ninety I’d have to have, if we tried to do business on your plan. And
if I could--supposing for the sake of argument that an angel from
Heaven served such department heads to me on a silver platter, where am
I going to find staffs to work with them. You’ve _got_ all the really
efficient employees we’ve been able to rake in from the whole United
States in the past twenty years.
“‘Did you ever have to work with a plain, ordinary six-for-a-quarter
stenographer, such as the business colleges turn out, such as you
mostly get? You’ve built your machine so that only brains and sense
will run it. How long would it take a couple of hundred of such stenogs
to smash your system into splinters? Did you ever have to try and get
work out of the average dressy young employee who puts ninety-eight
and a half per cent of what gray matter he has on his neckties and
the bets he made on the horse-races, and the little flier he took on
stocks; and one and a half per cent of his brains on his work when
somebody higher up is looking at him? How do you suppose you can
persuade a crowd of light-weights like that to care a whoop whether
Mrs. Arrowsmith in Cohoes, N. Y., is satisfied with the color of the
linoleum rug she bought?’”
My cousin looked at me hard, and again answered an unspoken thought of
mine. “Are you wondering why hadn’t the boy interrupted long before
this, to hold up his end, if he was really so enthusiastic as I’ve
said? This is the reason. Though he hadn’t let on to the Manager, he
really had had plenty of troubles of his own, already, keeping even his
hand-picked crew up to the scratch. Many’s the time he’d been ready to
murder them! Drive as hard as he might, he couldn’t keep them steadily
up to the standard he’d set for his work. He’d noticed that. Oh, yes,
of course, he’d noticed it all right, and he’d been furious about it.
But until that minute, he hadn’t thought of it--what it meant; and the
minute the Manager spoke, he knew in his bones the old man was right.
And he felt things come down with a smash.
“It pretty nearly knocked him silly. He never said a word. And the old
bald-head looked at him, and saw that in the last three minutes the boy
had grown up ... he’d grown up! That hurts, hurts more than any visit
to the dentist. I know how he felt; probably the Manager knew how he
felt. Anybody who’s ever tried to get anything done has run his head
into that stone wall.
“Well, he was sorry for the kid, and tried to let him down easy.
He went on talking, to give the boy time to catch his breath. ‘You
understand, I’d like, maybe more than you, to reorganize the whole ball
o’ wax, on any lines that would work better. And there are lots of good
points in your plan that we _can_ use, plenty of ’em. This invention
of yours about cross-indexing orders now, that is a splendid idea. I
believe we could install that ... it looks _almost_ fool proof! And
maybe we might run a special mailing-list along the lines you’ve worked
out. Lemme look at it again. Well, I guess the mistakes the stenogs
would make _might_ be more than offset by the extra publicity ... maybe!
“But the lad was feeling too cut up to pay any attention to these
little poultices. He stood there, and almost fell in pieces, he
was thinking so hard. Not very cheerful thoughts, at that. When he
could get his breath he leaned over the table and said in a solemn,
horrified voice, ‘Good God, Mr. Burton, why then ... why then....’ He
was all but plumb annihilated by the hardness of the fact that had just
hit him on the head. He broke out, ‘What’s the _use_ of inventing a
better system as long as ... as long as ...?’ he got it out finally.
‘Why, Mr. Burton, there just aren’t enough folks with sense to go
around!’”
My cousin stood up, moved to the hall, secured his hat and looked in
at me through the door-way. “Poor kid!” he commented pityingly. “Just
think of his never having thought of that before!”
UNCLE ELLIS
I never saw my Uncle Ellis because he died before I was born, but I
heard a great deal about him when I was a child. His stepdaughter
married one of our fellow-townsmen, and lived next door to us when I
was a little girl, and her mother, my great-aunt, Uncle Ellis’ third
wife, lived with her. Whatever Cousin Ruth did not say about her
stepfather, Aunt Molly supplied. The two women spent the rest of their
lives hating him, and for his sake hated, distrusted and despised all
men.
The gruesome impressions of married life which float through the
air to most little girls, came to me from their half-heard and
half-understood stories of Uncle Ellis. He had killed his first two
wives, they said, just as much as though he had taken an ax to them,
and only his opportune death had saved Aunt Molly from the same fate.
His innumerable children--I would never venture to set down how many
he had, all in legal marriage--feared and detested him and ran away
from home as soon as they could walk. He was meanness itself, secret,
sneaking meanness, the sort of man who would refuse his wife money
for a wringer to do the family wash, and spend five dollars on a box
of cigars; he would fly into a black rage over a misplaced towel, and
persecute the child who had misplaced it, till she was ready to commit
suicide; and then open his arms with a spectacular smile to the new
baby of a parishioner. After mistreating his wife till she could hardly
stand, she used to hear him holding forth in a boys’ meeting, exhorting
them to a chivalric attitude towards women.
Aunt Molly died long ago, firing up to the last in vindictive
reminiscences of her husband. Ruth is dead now, too, in the fullness of
time. I am a middle-aged woman, and probably the only one now alive who
ever heard those two talk about Uncle Ellis; and I had forgotten him.
If he stayed at all in my memory it was with the vague, disembodied
presence of a character in a book.
About a month ago, I accepted an invitation to speak at a convention in
a town in the middle-west which I had never seen, but the name of which
seemed slightly familiar; perhaps, I thought, because I had learned it
in a geography lesson long ago. But when I arrived I understood the
reason. It was the town where for many years Uncle Ellis had been
pastor of the church. At the railway station, as I stepped down on the
platform, one of the older women in the group who met me, startled
me by saying, “We have been especially anxious to see you because of
your connection with our wonderful Dr. Ellis Randolph. I was a young
girl when he died, but I can truly say that my whole life has been
influenced for good by the words and example of that saintly man.”
The elderly man beside her added, “You will find many here who will
say the same. In the formative period of our town’s history he made an
indelible impression for good.”
They took me to his church, where a large bronze tablet set forth
his virtues and his influence. They showed me the Ellis Randolph
Memorial Library. I was shown the public playground which he conceived
a generation before any one else thought of such a thing. But what
made the deepest impression on me were the men and women who came to
shake my hand because I was Uncle Ellis’ niece, because they wanted to
testify to the greatness of his value in their lives. The minister of
the town, a white-haired man, told me with a deep note of emotion in
his voice, that Dr. Randolph had done more than merely save his life;
in his wayward youth he had saved his soul alive. The banker told me
that he had heard many celebrated orators, but never any one who could
go straight to the heart like Dr. Randolph. “I often tell my wife that
she ought to be thankful to Dr. Randolph for a lecture on chivalry to
women which he gave to us boys, at an impressionable moment of our
lives.”
And the old principal of the school said, “Not a year goes by that I
do not thank God for sending that righteous man to be an example to my
youth. He left behind him many human monuments to his glory.”
What did I say to them? Oh, I didn’t say anything to them. I couldn’t
think of anything to say.
GOD’S COUNTRY
When I was a faculty-child living in a middle-western university town
we were all thrilled by the news that the energetic Chancellor of the
University had secured as head of the Department of Chemistry a noted
European scientist. Although still young he had made a name for himself
by some important discoveries in organic chemistry. We talked about
those discoveries as fluently, and understood about them as thoroughly
as we all now discuss and understand the theories of Professor Einstein.
Professor Behrens was not only a remarkable chemist, so we heard, but a
remarkable teacher and a man of wide sympathies and democratic ideals.
It was the candid period in American life, when, especially in the
west, the word “Europe” was pronounced with a very special intonation,
of which Henry James’ wistful admiration was the quintessence. It was
the time in American university life when Germany was the goal toward
which all our younger scholars ran their fastest race. Yet here was
Professor Behrens, leaving a University not only European but German,
from which our younger professors were proud to have a Ph.D. and
deliberately choosing our new, raw, young institution for the sake of
the free, untrammeled, democratic life in America. It went to our heads!
Passages in his letter of acceptance were read to my mother by my
father, who had borrowed the letter from the Chancellor. “I have a
family of children and as they grow older I am more and more aware
of the stifling, airless stagnation of European life. I want them to
know something bigger and freer than will ever come to them in this
Old World of rigid caste lines and fixed ideas. My wife and I, too,
wish to escape from the narrowness of this provincial town where
an arrogant young lieutenant swaggering about in his gold-braided
white broadcloth uniform is much higher in social rank than the most
learned and renowned member of the University faculty; where a rich
lumber-merchant, brutal and ignorant, can buy his way into political
position and parade about with sash and gold chain and the insignia of
the office of Mayor.”
We were all righteously indignant over such elements of life in
Europe, and quite exalted in our certainty that the distinguished
immigrant would find nothing like that in our midst. The sole and only
representative of the military caste was the lieutenant who drilled
the university battalion, and he was a most unassuming young American
who never on any occasion wore white broadcloth, put on his plain
dark-blue uniform as seldom as possible, and for the most part wore
a pepper-and-salt business suit and a derby hat. Since there were no
trees on the Western plains, there was no equivalent to the iniquitous
lumber merchant, the nearest approach being a man who had made a good
deal of money out of lucky guesses in real estate. But he would have
dropped dead before putting on a sash and a gold chain.
So we awaited the Behrens full of pride and pleasure. When they
arrived, everybody in the faculty gave receptions and lunch-parties for
them, and all we children rejoiced in the unlimited leavings of fried
chicken (it was in September), ice cream, and cake, which were at our
disposition after these “functions,” as the Faculty ladies called them.
Although surprisingly unceremonious as to table manners, the Behrens
were as nice as we expected to find them; and they were evidently
delighted with the warm-hearted, open-handed good nature of Americans,
by the cordiality of their reception (which seemed quite to amaze them)
by the wide-open doors which led anywhere they might wish to go, by the
absence of class distinction, and by the generosity with which America
supported universities, hospitals, libraries, and public schools.
When the University opened, Professor Behrens threw himself into his
teaching and soon became one of the favorite professors. He had a song
sung about him at the winter concert of the Glee Club; and the Junior
year-book was dedicated to him in the spring. By that time the Behrens
children, who were in the eighth, fifth, and third grades of my public
school were no longer to be distinguished from the rest of us, running
and yelling on the hard-beaten earth of the playground, and thoroughly
acquainted with duck-on-a-rock, prisoner’s base, and run-sheep-run.
Julie and I were classmates in the fifth grade that year, and the next
and the next.
But just as we were about to pass together into the exalted rank of the
eighth grade, Professor Behrens received a call to be Rector (Julie
explained to me that this had nothing to do with a church, but was the
same as our Chancellor) of a university in his own country.
It seemed such an advancement to be promoted from Professor to
Chancellor that it was no surprise to have him accept, and to see Mrs.
Behrens begin hastily to pack up the family belongings. But what
did surprise us was the sudden revelation brought out by this event,
of a great home-sickness on the part of the Behrens to get back to a
“civilized country.” This was one of the phrases Julie overheard her
father saying to her mother, which she repeated to me, and I to my
parents. A faculty circle gets its news by about the same channels as
an army post or a village sewing circle. So by the time this remark
had reached my parents it did not surprise them. The Behrens, although
still heartily grateful for all the kindness that had been shown
them, although still feeling a lively affection for the good-hearted
qualities in American life, could not conceal their immense relief at
the prospect of the change. Professor Behrens discussed the question
with the open frankness of a scientist before a new phenomenon: “I
had no idea, till I had to go without them, how vital to civilization
are the finer shades, the polish, the stability, the decorum, which
comes only with long life of a society in an old country. I had never
thought of them, had always supposed, of course, they were to be found
everywhere. It is not that I blame America for not having them ...
nothing but time can give them ... but there is no denying that they
give a different color to life, the same difference of color there
is between camping out in a cave, ever so fine and airy and open a
cave, and living in a well-ordered house with the appurtenances of
civilization. There is a certain something which springs up from such
niceties of life.... I can hardly wait to get home, and give a real
dinner with well-trained servants, and cultivated, established guests
who have had a social position for so long that it is a part of them.
The crudeness, the abruptness, the roughness in human intercourse
here! And the total lack on the part of people in the lower classes of
any sense of the fitness of things! The _conductor on the street-car_
slapped me on the back the other day!”
So we gave them a grand good-by reception in the gymnasium, and we
faculty-children fairly swam in lemonade and wallowed in left-over
cake. The faculty presented Professor Behrens with a beautifully bound
edition of Emerson, and Mrs. Behrens with a little pearl pendant; and
then they went away, and we supposed we would never see them again.