CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS
Before leaving home we were presented with a variety of gifts, ranging
all the way from ear muffs to advice. Having some regard for the
esthetic, we threw away the ear muffs, determining to buy ourselves fur
caps when we should need them. But the advice we could not throw away;
it stuck to us like a poor relation.
In the parlor car, on the way from Buffalo to Cleveland, our minds got
running on sad subjects.
"We have come out to find interesting things--to have adventures," said
my blithe companion. "Now supposing we go on and on and nothing happens.
What will we do then? The publishers will have spent all this money for
our traveling, and what will they get?"
I told him that, in such an event, we would make up adventures.
"What, for instance?" he demanded.
I thought for a time. Then I said:
"Here's a good scheme--we could begin now, right here in this car. You
act like a crazy man. I will be your keeper. You run up and down the
aisle shouting--talk wildly to these people--stamp on your hat--do
anything you like. It will interest the passengers and give us something
nice to write about. And you could make a picture of yourself, too."
Instead of appreciating that suggestion he was annoyed with me, so I
ventured something else.
"How would it be for you to beat a policeman on the helmet?"
He didn't care for that either.
"Why don't you think of something for yourself to do?" he said, somewhat
sourly.
"All right," I returned. "I'm willing to do my share. I will poison you
and get arrested for it."
"If you do that," he criticized, "who will make the pictures?"
I saw that he was in a humor to find fault with anything I proposed, so
I let him ramble on. He had a regular orgy of imaginary disaster,
running all the way from train wrecks, in which I was killed and he was
saved only to have the bother and expense of shipping my remains home,
to fires in which my notebooks were burned up, leaving on his hands a
lot of superb but useless drawings.
After a time he suggested that we make up a list of the things we had
been warned of. I did not wish to do it, but, acting on the theory that
fever must run its course, I agreed, so we took paper and pencil and
began. It required about two hours to get everything down, beginning
with _Aches_, _Actresses_, _Adenoids_, _Alcoholism_, _Amnesia_, _Arson_,
etc., and running on, through the alphabet to _Zero weather_,
_Zolaism_, and _Zymosis_.
After looking over the category, my companion said:
"The trouble with this list is that it doesn't present things in the
order in which they may reasonably be expected to occur. For instance,
you might get zymosis, or attempt to write like Zola, at almost any
time, yet those two dangers are down at the bottom of the list. On the
other hand, things like actresses, alcoholism, and arson seem remote. We
must rearrange."
I thought it wise to give in to him, so we set to work again. This time
we made two lists: one of general dangers--things which might overtake
us almost anywhere, such as scarlet fever, hardening of the arteries,
softening of the brain, and "road shows" from the New York Winter
Garden; another arranged geographically, according to our route. Thus,
for example, instead of listing Elbert Hubbard under the letter "H," we
elevated him to first place, because he lives near Buffalo, which was
our first stop.
I didn't want to put down Hubbard's name at all--I thought it would
please him too much if he ever heard about it. I said to my companion:
"We have already passed Buffalo. And, besides, there are some things
which the instinct of self-preservation causes one to recollect without
the aid of any list."
"I know it," he returned, stubbornly, "but, in the interest of science,
I wish this list to be complete."
So we put down everything: Elbert Hubbard, Herbert Kaufman, Eva
Tanguay, Upton Sinclair, and all.
[Illustration: Chamber of Commerce representatives were with us all the
first day and until we went to our rooms, late at night]
A few selected items from our geographical list may interest the reader
as giving him some idea of the locations of certain things we had to
fear. For example, west of Chicago we listed _Oysters_, and north of
Chicago _Frozen Ears_ and _Frozen Noses_--the latter two representing
the dangers of the Minnesota winter. So our list ran on until it reached
the point where we would cross the Great Divide, at which place the word
"_Boosters_" was writ large.
I recall now that, according to our geographical arrangement, there
wasn't much to be afraid of until we got beyond Chicago, and that the
first thing we looked forward to with real dread was the cold in
Minnesota. We dreaded it more than arson, because if some one sets fire
to your ear or your nose, you know it right away, and can send in an
alarm; but cold is sneaky. It seems, from what they say, that you can go
along the street, feeling perfectly well, and with no idea that anything
is going wrong with you, until some experienced resident of the place
touches you upon the arm and says: "Excuse me, sir, but you have dropped
something." Then you look around, surprised, and there is your ear,
lying on the sidewalk. But that is not the worst of it. Before you can
thank the man, or pick your ear up and dust it off, some one will very
likely come along and step on it. I do not think they do it purposely;
they are simply careless about where they walk. But whether it happens
by accident or design, whether the ear is spoiled or not, whether or
not you be wearing your ear at the time of the occurrence--in any case
there is something exceedingly offensive, to the average man, in the
idea of a total stranger's walking on his ear.
I mention this to point a moral. However prepared we may be, in life, we
are always unprepared. However informed we may be, we are always
uninformed. We gaze up at the sky, dreading to-morrow's rain, and slip
upon to-day's banana peel. We move toward Cleveland dreading the
Minnesota winter which is yet far off, having no thought of the
"booster," whom we believe to be still farther off. And what happens? We
step from the train, all innocent and trusting, and then, ah, then----!
* * * * *
If it be true, indeed, that the "booster" flourishes more furiously the
farther west you find him, let me say (and I say it after having visited
California, Oregon, and Washington) that Cleveland must be newly located
upon the map. For, if "boosting" be a western industry, Cleveland is not
an Ohio city, nor even a Pacific Slope city, but is an island out in the
midst of the Pacific Ocean.
Nor is this a mere opinion of my own. Upon the mastodonic brow of the
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce there hangs an official laurel wreath. The
New York Bureau of Municipal Research invited votes from the secretaries
of Chambers of Commerce and similar organizations in thirty leading
cities, as to which of these bodies had accomplished most for its city,
industrially, commercially, etc. Cleveland won.
No one who has caromed against the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce will
wonder that Cleveland won. All other Chambers of Commerce I have met,
sink into desuetude and insignificance when compared with that of
Cleveland. Where others merely "boost," Cleveland "boosts" intensively.
She can raise more bushels of statistics to the acre than other cities
can quarts. And the more Cleveland statistics you hear, the more you
become amazed that you do not live there. It seems reckless not to do
so. The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce can prove this to you not merely
with figures, but also with figures of speech.
Take the matter of population. Everybody knows that Cleveland is the
"Sixth City" in the United States, but not everybody knows that in 1850
she was forty-third. The Chamber of Commerce told me that, but I have
prepared some figures of my own which will, perhaps, give the reader
some idea of Cleveland's magnitude. Cleveland is only a little smaller
than Prague, while she has about 50,000 more people than Breslau.
If that does not impress you with the city's size, listen to this:
Cleveland is actually twice as great, in population, as either Nagoya or
Riga! Who would have believed it? The thing seems incredible! I never
dreamed that such a situation existed until I looked it up in the "World
Almanac." And some day, when I have more time, I intend to look up
Nagoya and Riga in the atlas and find out where they are.
A Chamber of Commerce booklet gives me the further information that
"Cleveland is the fifth American city in manufactures, and that she
comes first in the manufacture of steel ships, heavy machinery, wire and
wire nails, bolts and nuts, vapor stoves, electric carbons, malleable
castings, and telescopes"--a list which, by the way, sounds like one of
Lewis Carroll's compilations.
The information that Cleveland is also the first city in the world in
its record, per capita, for divorce, does not come to me from the
Chamber of Commerce booklet--but probably the fact was not known when
the booklet was printed.
Besides being first in so many interesting fields, Cleveland is the
second of the Great Lake cities, and is also second in "the value of its
product of women's outer wearing apparel and fancy knit goods."
It is, furthermore, "the cheapest market in the North for pig iron."
There are other figures I could give (saving myself a lot of trouble, at
the same time, because I only have to copy them from a book), but I want
to stop and let that pig-iron statement sink into you as it sank into me
when I first read it. I wonder if you knew it before? I am ashamed to
admit it, but _I_ did not. I didn't consider where I could get my pig
iron the cheapest. When I wanted pig iron I simply went out and bought
it, at the nearest place, right in New York. That is, I bought it in
New York unless I happened to be traveling when the craving came upon
me. In that case I would buy a small supply wherever I happened to
be--just enough to last me until I could get home again. I don't know
how pig iron affects you, but with me it acts peculiarly. Sometimes I go
along for weeks without even thinking of it; then, suddenly, I feel that
I must have some at once--even if it is the middle of the night. Of
course a man doesn't care what he pays for his pig iron when he feels
like that. But in my soberer moments I now realize that it is best to be
economical in such matters. The wisest plan is to order enough pig iron
from Cleveland to keep you for several months, being careful to notice
when the supply is running low, so that you can order another case.
[Illustration: It is an Elizabethan building, with a heavy timbered
front, suggesting some ancient, hospitable, London coffee house where
wits of old were used to meet]
Apropos of this let me say here, in response to many inquiries as to
what the nature of this work of mine would be, that I intend it to be
"useful as well as ornamental"--to quote the happy phrase, coined by
James Montgomery Flagg. That is, I intend not only to entertain and
instruct the reader but, where opportunity offers, to give him the
benefit of good sound advice, such as I have just given with regard to
the purchasing of pig iron.