incident the other day. The city of Paterson, N. J., is a good market
town. Work is well paid and the workmen are free spenders. It is a city
of many breeds and races of men. On the market you will probably hear
more languages and dialects than were used on the Tower of Babel. A large
share of farm produce is distributed by peddlers—most of them of foreign
blood. They are shrewd and tireless workers. I never can see when they
sleep. Night after night they come on the market to buy produce, and day
after day—through heat and cold, rain or shine—you see them driving their
horses up and down the streets and lanes—always good-natured, always
with a smile. Well, we sold Spot, our black cow, to one of these men—an
Italian. Thomas had done business with him for some years. We had sold
him many goods—he had always paid for them. He made part payment for the
cow by giving about the most remarkable looking check I ever saw. It
was on a first-class bank made out in a straggling hand, and signed by
two names. We had passed several like it before through our bank, so I
deposited it, as usual. In a few days it came back unpaid.
Thomas and I went to Paterson that night to see what was wrong. I wish
some of you whose lives have been spent entirely in the country could
see how this “other half liveth.” This man lived on a side street. The
lower part of his house had been fitted as a little store. In the small
backyard were several milk goats, a small flock of chickens and a shed,
in which were two horses. Under a small, rude shelter of boards was old
Spot, chewing away at green cornstalks. The man was a big, pleasant-faced
Italian. You would mark him for an honest man on his appearance. There
was a brood of children—eight or nine, I should say—and a pleasant-faced
little wife, who carried the latest arrival around at her work. When
confronted with the protested check, this man merely smiled and waved his
hands. He could not read it! Two small boys—the oldest perhaps 12 years
of age—seemed to be the only members of the family who could read and
write English. They read the protest paper to their father and made him
understand. He only smiled and spread out his hands as people do who talk
with their shoulders. These two little boys had made out the check and
signed it for their parents. They either did not figure out their bank
balance, or figured it wrong. There was no attempt at dishonesty, and the
check would finally be honored. That seemed to be all there was to it.
These little boys, through the public school, represented all that these
older people know of the great business life of America.
I know a good many Americans whose pedigrees run back close to Plymouth
Rock. If some of them had let that check go in this way I should have
loaded old Spot right on the truck and carried her home. Thomas knew
this man and his reputation, and his way of doing business. He will pay,
and in a few days of peddling he will pad out his bank account and then
the check will go through. So we shook hands with him and came home. But
that is the way “the other half liveth.” This man and woman came to a
strange land too late in life to acquire a business education. They can
work and plan, but must depend upon those little boys to do business
which requires bookkeeping or banking. All the boys know about American
business is what they learn at the public schools. I wish you could have
seen the way that check was made out—yet any old piece of paper may be
worth more than a gold-plated certificate if there is genuine character
back of it. I am told that in most mill towns the banks carry a good many
accounts just like this one; in fact, a good proportion of the business
is conducted in about that way. It is said that some of the smaller
manufacturers do not keep any set of books which enable them to figure
their income tax! There are some men who could not buy a cow or a cat
from us on credit, while others could have what credit they need right on
their face and reputation.
There is another thing about this trade that will interest dairymen.
We found old Spot giving about 18 quarts of milk per day, on a feed of
green cornstalks and a little grain. This milk will sell for 18 cents,
at least. The cow can live in that little shed until the middle of
December, or about 120 days. In that time she will give 1,500 quarts or
more, which, at 18 cents, means $270, and she can then be sold for at
least $90 for beef! That makes $360 gross income for one cow in four
months. Her feed will be mostly refuse tops and stalks from vegetables
and a small amount of grain. She will be well cared for, carded and
brushed every day, and made comfortable. Thus not half the cows know “how
the other half liveth.” Someone will take these figures, multiply them by
25, and show what tremendous incomes our dairymen are making. The fact
is this man can keep just one cow at a profit. If he kept two the extra
cost of food would about eat up his profits. So we went whirling home
through the dusk, thinking that we had had a glimpse at a little of the
life of the other half, and it made me feel something more of charity for
my fellow men. When you come to think of what the American public school
means to that family, you realize the immense responsibility that goes
with education. We can hardly be too careful about what our schools teach
and how they teach it. I wonder how many of us, if we were transplanted
to some foreign land, would be willing to turn our business over to
our children and let them conduct it as they learned to do it from the
schools! I think we would all be more tolerant and reasonable if we would
let our children bring to us more of the spirit of youth and more of hope
of the future. The rain had stopped, the sky had cleared, the wind had
dried the grass, and on the lawn in front of the house our great army
of children were dancing and playing as if there were no such thing as
tomato rot, wet corn and low prices. I think that these handicaps would
have seemed much lighter if we could have gone out and danced with the
kids. I wonder where, along the road, we gave up doing that.
THE INDIANS WON
Thanksgiving is a time for physical feasting and mental fasting. By the
latter I mean trying to think out some of the problems of life which come
as a sort of shade when we remember all our mercies. A bunch of these
problems came up to me through a cloud of memories as I sat with my feet
on the concrete and my collar turned up.
It was a gray, raw, miserable day—good Indian weather as it turned out.
It seemed as if the sun had covered its face with a blanket in one of
those fits of depression when the impulse is to hide the face from human
eyes. Some 12,000 people were grouped—piled up tier above tier—around a
great field marked out with long white stripes. It was a cold crowd, for
all had their feet on a concrete floor. At one side a devoted little band
of college boys screamed and sang their songs, but for the most part this
great crowd sat cold-eyed and impartial. At one side of the field there
was a dash of bright color where a group of stolid Indians sat wrapped in
big red blankets. Just across from these was another group of men with
green blankets. Between them in the center of the field was a tangled
mass of 22 husky boys in red or green, all fighting for the possession of
a football.
Ah, a football game! What is this so-called farmer doing, wasting part
of the price of a barrel of apples when he ought to be at work? Of
course it is my privilege to say, “That’s my business if I want to,”
but I will answer by saying that I was renewing my youth and studying
human nature. You can’t improve on either operation for a man of my age.
Up some 250 miles nearer the Canadian line the boy had been one of the
1,000 yelling young maniacs who sent these green-clad boys down to meet
the Indians. He could not come, but he wrote me, “Be sure to see the
game; it will be _a peach_.” As a peach grower, I am interested in all
new varieties, and this certainly turned out to be one. It must be said
that these green-clad boys came down out of their hills with a haughty
spirit, wearing pride as conspicuously as they will wear their first
high hat. They had not lost a game, but had trampled over two of the
greatest colleges in the country. They represented the section where
the purest-bred white Americans are to be found. One more victory and
no one could deny their boast that they could stand any other football
team on its head. So they came marching out on the field, very airy, very
confident, and fully convinced of the great superiority of the white man!
I know very little about football. When I played it was more like a
game of tag than a human battering ram. Here, however, was a round of
the great human game which would make anyone thoughtful. Here were
representatives of two races about to grapple. The great majority of the
white thousands who watched them were unconcerned—for a New York audience
is composed of so many races and tongues that it has little sentiment.
All around me, however, there seemed standing up hundreds of swarthy,
dark men whose eyes glittered as they watched the game. You could not
realize how many there were with Indian and Negro blood until such a test
of the white and red races was presented. Then you began to realize what
a race question really means when the so-called inferior race gets a
chance to test its real manhood on terms of equality.
It would have made a theme for a great historian as these young men lined
up for the game. The whites trotted out confident and proud. Why not?
The “betting” favored them, their record was superior, as their race was
supposed to be. The Indians slouched to their places and shambled through
their motions, silent and without great show of confidence. It came to me
as not at all unlikely that a few centuries before the ancestors of these
boys had faced each other under very different circumstances. Francis
Parkman, the historian, tells of a famous battle in the upper Connecticut
Valley. The white settlers had built a stockade as protection against
roving bands of French and Indians. One day this fort was attacked by
such a band, which had come down the valley capturing prisoners and
booty. It was a savage fight, but the white men held their own, and
finally a Frenchman came forward with a white flag for a parley. He
actually offered to buy a supply of corn, as they were out of food, and
then to retreat. In that gray mist, with my feet on the concrete, I could
shut my eyes and see the ancestors of these football players. Stern
white men, gun in hand, peering over the stockade, and silent red men
creeping noiselessly out of the forest to pile up their booty in sight—as
price for the corn. The frost on the leaves told them that Winter with
all its cold and peril was approaching. Here were the necessities of
life—a tremendous bargain. Yet back in the shadow of the woods were the
captives—men, women and children—and the white settlers held out for
_them_. For at that time, if not now, New England _knew the value of a
man_ to the nation. He was far above the dollar, even though the women
and children would be a care and a danger.
In a way, something of the spirit of those grim old fighters lay in the
hearts of these green-clad boys who had come down from these historic old
hills. At that instant, at least, they, too, knew the value of a man. It
was expressed by their little band of singers and cheerers led by the
writhing “cheer leaders”—the glory and fame of the good old college on
the hill. You could not have bought one of these boys for $1,000,000.
On the other hand, these shambling and big-boned Indians seemed to have
something of the same spirit in their hearts. Silent and impassive,
they seemed for the moment to have cast off their college training and
gone back to the free, wild life, only carrying the discipline which
authority and college training had given them. I wonder if any of these
red men thought as they lined up on that field that it was the lack of
just this stern discipline which lost them this country and nearly wiped
out their race? Men fitted to play this game of football never would
have given away Manhattan Island, or permitted a handful of white men to
drive them from the coast. Over 1,000 men, each with the burning drop
of Indian or Negro blood in his veins, were hoping and praying that in
this modern battle the red men would humble the pride of Manhattan, as
their ancestors had lost the island. Out of the gray mist there seemed to
stride ghosts of stout Dutchmen and thin Yankees and silent, noiseless
Indians to watch this fairer combat.
At the signal the ball was kicked far down the field by a white man whose
ancestors may have come with Hendrik Hudson. It was caught by a red man,
whose ancestors may have been kings or chiefs while the white man’s
were European peasants. Back he came running with the ball to form the
basement of a pile of 10 struggling fighters, and the game was on. You
must get someone else to describe the game. I do not understand it well
enough. The two groups of players lined up against each other, and one
side tried to batter the other down, or send a man through with the ball.
Again and again came this fierce shock, and a strange and unexpected
thing was happening. The Indians had no band of singers or cheer leaders,
no pretty girls were urging them on, no pride of superior dominating
race, but silently and resolutely they were smashing the white men back.
It was hard. These boys in green died well. There was one light man who
took the ball and ran through the Indians as his ancestors may have run
the gauntlet, but they pulled him down. Inch by inch the white men were
battered back over the line. The air seemed full of red blankets, for
those substitutes at the side lines were back into the centuries coming
home from a season on the warpath. Yet the green singers yelled on and
shouted their defiance. Then the white men made a great rally and forced
the Indians back, grimly battling over the other line. At the end of the
first half the score stood 10 to 7, in favor of the white men. “It’s all
over,” said a man who sat next to me. “They will come back and trample
all over the Indians, for white men always have the endurance.” A man
nearby with a touch of bronze in his skin glared at us with a look in
his eyes that was not quite good to see. Back came the players, at it
again. There was great trampling, but of the unexpected kind. These
slouching and shambling Indians suddenly turned into human tigers, and
the plain truth is that they both outwitted and walked right over the
green-clad whites. There was no stopping them. All the cheering and
singing and sentiment and “race-superiority” went for nothing. For here
was where pride and a haughty spirit ran up against destruction, and
great was the fall thereof. Yet I was proud of the way these white boys
met their fate. They had been too confident, and had lost what is called
the “psychological drop” on the enemy. The Indians had them at the stake
with a hot fire burning, for no one knows what a victory right there
would have meant for the good old college far away among the hills. Yet,
face to face with fate, cruel, silent and relentless, those boys never
faltered, but fought on. I liked them better in defeat than in their airy
confidence before the game. When it was all over they got up out of the
mud of defeat and gave their college war cry. There may have been a few
cracked and corner-clipped notes in it, but it was fine spirit and good
losing. Nearby the Indians waved their blankets and gave another college
yell. And the 1,000 or more men with that burning drop of blood in their
veins went home with shining faces and gleaming eyes, with better dreams
for the future of their race. For they had made the white man’s burden of
superiority a hard burden to carry.
My football days are over. No use for me to tell what great things I did
30 years ago. This age demands a “show me,” and I cannot give it. If I
had my way I would introduce football, baseball, basketball, pushball
and all other clean and organized games into every country town. I would
organize leagues and contests and get country children to play. Do you
ever stop to think that work, long and continuous, for ourselves and our
children, has not taught us how to organize or use our forces together
as we should? It is true. _Organized_ play will do more to bring our
children together for co-operative work than anything I can think of.
It will give discipline, which is what we need. Two of these green-clad
boys stood an Indian on his head and whirled him around like a top. It
was part of the game. He got up good-naturedly and took his place in the
line. Imagine what his grandfather would have done! One white boy was
running with the ball and two Indians butted him, while another got him
by the legs. The boy simply held on to the ball. It was discipline and
training in self-control. Step on a city man’s foot in a crowded car
and he would want to fight. Our country people need such discipline and
spirit before they can compete with organized business. If I could have
my way I would have our country children drilled in just such loyalty to
the home town or district as these college boys displayed on the field.
Tell me, if you will, how it can be gained now in any way except through
organized and loyal play for our children. You know very well what I
mean. Work is an essential of life, and it must be made the foundation
of character. Organized and clean play is another essential, as I see it
now, and I think its development and firm direction is to be one of the
greatest forces in building up life in the country.
IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL
It was last year, as I recall it, at about this season, one of the
children asked me a strange question:
“_What was the thankfullest day you ever saw?_”
Now I have seen somewhere around 20,000 days come and go, and every one
of them has brought a dozen things to be thankful for. I sometimes think
as the hands crawl around the clock at Hope Farm that the day they are
recording right now is about the best of all. I have passed Thanksgiving
Day in the mud, in the snow, in a swamp, on a mountain, in a crowded
city, on a lonely farm—under about all the conditions you can mention. I
have given hearty thanks over baked beans, salt pork, bread and cheese,
turkey and all the rest, but before the fire tonight somehow they all
burn away except that experience in Ike Sawyer’s Hotel.
They were stuck in the mud—with a broken axle—in a swamp in Northern
Michigan. No one had dreamed of an auto in those days. You forded the
swamp and stream in the primitive old way. It was a rich, middle-aged
lumberman and his young wife. How this tough, hard pine knot of a man
ever selected this soft-handed and selfish girl I cannot see. She had
come with him into the woods on one of his business trips, and the
silence by day and the whispering of the pines at night had filled her
with terror. The rough, sturdy man suddenly saw that, unlike his first
wife, this girl was not a helper and a partner, but a toy—a hothouse
flower who could not live his life or help fight his battles. He had a
great business deal on hand which required all his energies, but this
girl could not understand or help him. She had begged and cried to go
back to “civilization,” and they were on their way. And in this lonely
place the axle of the carriage had snapped and left them in the mud.
It had been one of those gray, melancholy days which seem to fit best
into the idea of a New England Thanksgiving. Now twilight was coming
on and there were dark shadows in the swamp. The woman had climbed out
of the mud and stood on a log by the roadside. She had been crying in
her disappointment, for she had expected to reach the railroad that
night, and spend Thanksgiving in the distant city—far from this lonely
wilderness. Her husband was bargaining with an old farmer who finally
agreed to haul the broken carriage back to the blacksmith shop for
repairs.
“I’ve got entertainment for beast,” he said, “but not for man—so I can’t
put you up. Quarter of a mile down the road Ike Sawyer runs a sorter
hotel.”
He hauled the carriage out of the mud and started back along the road.
There was nothing for us to do but hunt for the hotel. You may have seen
some strong, capable man come to a crisis in his life where it suddenly
flashes upon him that the woman of his choice is after all made of common
clay, with little of that spirit or courage which we somehow think should
belong to the thoroughbred. It was a very doleful, unhappy little woman
and a sad and silent big man who walked through the mud and up the
little sand hill in search of the hotel. They had nothing to be thankful
for, and, yet did they but know it, they were to find the most precious
thing in life in this lonely wilderness.
Around a turn in the road we came in sight of a long, rambling
building, weatherbeaten and out of repair. Over the door was a faded
sign, “Farmers’ Rest.” On the little porch just under this sign sat a
white-haired woman in a wheel-chair. In front of the house a little man
with a bald head and a pair of great spectacles perched at the end of
his nose was chasing a big Plymouth Rock rooster about the yard. The old
people had not noticed us, and we stopped in the road to watch them. The
old man finally cornered the rooster by the garden fence and carried
him flapping and squawking to the old lady. She examined him carefully,
and evidently approved the choice, for the old man, still holding the
rooster, pushed the wheel-chair into the house and then, picking up his
ax, started for the chopping block just as we turned in from the road. We
startled him so that he dropped the rooster. The gray bird did not stop
to welcome us, but darted off into the shadows. He mounted the roost in
the henhouse from which the old man easily pulled him a little later.
You may have seen old pictures of country hotel-keepers bowing and
scraping as their guests arrive. Ike Sawyer could not play the part. He
just peered at us over his spectacles and rubbed his hands together.
“Walk right in,” he said. “Me and Annie can put you up.” Then he led
the way into the rambling old house. It was dark now, and the old man
lighted a lamp so that we could look about us. The old woman did not rise
from her chair, but she smiled up a welcome.
“Ain’t walked for 10 years,” explained her husband. “I play feet and she
plays hands, and between us we make out fine.”
The old man bustled about and started a fire in the big fireplace. The
young woman had entered the poor old building with an angry snarl of
discontent on her face. It was all so mean and hateful to be obliged to
stay in this lonely, dreadful place. As the fire blazed up and filled
the room with warm light, I noticed that the snarl faded out and she sat
watching the old lady with wondering eyes. She went to her room for a
moment, but soon came back to sit by the fire and watch the sweet-faced
old lady “play hands.” On the other side of the fireplace, silent and
strong, her husband sat watching his wife with eyes half closed under his
thick, bushy eyebrows.
I have seen the cook in a quick lunch counter stand in his little box and
toss food together, and I have seen a chef earning nearly as much as the
President daintily working in his great kitchen, but nothing will ever
seem to equal the way that meal was prepared when Annie played hands and
Ike played feet. Ike pushed a little table up in front of his wife, and
at her call brought flour and milk and all that she needed for making
biscuits. He stood beside her chair as the thin fingers did their work.
Now and then he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and once he touched her
beautiful head. As though forgetting her guests Annie would smile back
at him—a beautiful smile which brought a strange look to the face of the
young woman who sat watching them. At first it seemed like an amused
sneer. Then there came a puzzled, curious look—the first faint glimmering
of the thought that this old man and woman _out of their trouble, out
of their loneliness, had found and preserved that most precious of all
earth’s blessings—love_!