As I sat and looked out over the crowds that poured from the shops and
stood, sometimes for the whole of the noon hour, in discomfort perhaps
if the wind was off the lake, and saw the veritable hunger for life
that was in their faces, a hunger surely which no political or economic
system, however wise and perfect, could satisfy, I could not help
thinking that it was a pity the clergy did not understand these people
better, for, after all, the message of the Carpenter who came out of
Nazareth was for the workers and the poor, and He had passionately
thrown Himself on their side. It might have been suggested to that
pastor who complained bitterly that his own pews were empty on Sunday
evenings while the streets outside his church were crowded with people
who for one evening at least were joyous and free from care, that the
Master whom he served would have asked no better congregation than they
and no better auditorium than the street.
But this pastor was used to making suggestions, not to receiving
them; he was not of a mind as open as that one who actually came to
me once to ask me how he could get the workingmen to hear him preach.
He had not failed, he said, to go to them; he had advertised on a
placard hung at the entrance of a factory where two thousand men were
working that on a Monday at noon he would speak to them. They had
known of him, for he had recently been celebrated in the newspapers as
having inaugurated a crusade to close the cheap theaters, whose lurid
melodramas,--I believe lurid is the word in that connection unless
the melodramas are “novelized” and sold for a dollar and a half,--he
said, were detrimental to morals, as no doubt they were. And so when
he appeared, punctually, on that Monday noon, at the rendezvous
appointed by his poster, the workingmen were ready and, when he stood
up to preach to them, they received him with a deafening din, made by
pounding on pieces of metal they had brought from the shop, so that
the poor fellow could not speak at all, and when, with roars of awful
laughter they unfurled some ribald banner fresh from the paint shop of
their establishment, advising him to go to hell where he was always
consigning so many of his fellow human beings, he went away quite
broken-hearted. It was in that mood and perhaps a little chastened
by his experience that he came to see me. I could agree with him, of
course, that the men had acted like the perfect barbarians they could
be at times, but there was nothing I could do for him, nothing I could
tell him. I learned long ago that you cannot tell a man anything unless
he knows it already!
And yet that preacher’s case was perfectly simple. He had come to
the city not long before, and of course, had come from the country.
His training and his experience had all been rural, he knew nothing
whatever of the life of our cities or of their problems; he thought
only in agrarian sequences. He had a little code of conduct consisting
of a few perfectly simple negatives, namely, men should not use
tobacco, or liquor, or attend theaters or circuses, or play with
colored cards, or violate (that is, do anything pleasant on) the
Sabbath day. And whenever he saw people doing any of these things it
was his duty to dissuade them from doing them, and if he could not
dissuade them, then it was the duty of the authorities to force the
people to stop doing these things by sending policemen after them.
Poverty was caused either by drink, or by idleness, though usually by
drink, and if the saloons were closed, drinking would cease!
This was the man’s conception. Of the condition of the workingmen in
the cities he had literally no notion. He knew they worked, and that
working made them tired, of course, just as it made farmers tired.
He saw no difference between the labor in the agricultural field and
that in the industrial field. That men who had been shut up in dusty
factories for six days, working intently at whirling machines, under
the bulb of an electric light, felt, when they came to the one day of
rest, that they should like to go outdoors and breathe the air, and
have some relaxation, some fun, had never occurred to him. That they
had to work so hard, too, that stimulants were perhaps a necessity,
never occurred to him, just as it had never occurred to him that
when one of these workers left home there was no place for him to go
unless he went to a saloon, where there were light and warmth and
companionship, and, above all, liberty; or to a cheap theatre or in the
summer to a baseball game. And he could not understand why these men
resented his suggestion that they give up all these things, and instead
do as farmers do on Sunday, or as they pretend to do, that is, stay
indoors, or, if they do go out, go out to attend church.
And what was most curious of all, he had not the slightest notion of
what we meant when we spoke of the street railway problem. He knew,
of course, that it was proposed to reduce the fare a cent or two
cents, but that was not important; what were two cents? That there
was anything immoral in watering stock, in seizing millions of the
communal value, had never occurred to him, and in the midst of all
the complexities of city life he remained utterly naïve, bound up in
his little code, with not the glimmer of a ray of light on social
conditions or problems, or of economics, or, in a word, of life. To
him there were no social problems that the Anti-Saloon League could
not solve in a week, if wicked officials would only give them enough
policemen and a free rein to do it.
And so he wondered why the workingmen would not come to hear him
preach, or at least would not listen to him at the door of their shop!
And most of the parsons in the town--at that time, though it is not
so any more, so rapidly have changes come in our thought--were of
this frame of mind. Not one of them supported our cause; many of them
denounced it, and continued to denounce it, for years. Now and then
there was one who might whisper to me privately that he understood
and favored our efforts, but not one ever spoke out publicly, unless
it were to denounce us. And several times they attacked me in their
prayers. For instance, if--after I became mayor--I went to deliver
an address of welcome, and a preacher was there to open the assembly
with prayer, he sometimes would take advantage of the situation and,
in the pretense of asking a blessing on the “chief magistrate of our
beloved city,” point out my short-comings and read me a lecture on
my duties with his eyes shut and his hands folded. To that attack it
would have been necessary, I presume, though I am not quite sure of
the ecclesiastical etiquette, to reply with my eyes shut and my hands
folded, but Jones had said: “When He was reviled, He reviled not
again,” and “He that endureth to the end.” It seemed as good a plan
as any. I never replied to these or any other of their attacks. Some
of the leaders of our movement always insisted that the preachers
opposed us because they were influenced, according to the historical
precedents, by their economic dependence on the privileged class. But
if that is true I am sure the influence was unconscious in most cases,
and that they simply did not understand. They were all desperately
sincere. That was the chief difficulty with them.
Indeed, I found it better never to reply to any criticisms or attacks
whatever. The philosophy of that attitude has been pretty well set
forth I think by Emerson, though it has been so long since I have read
it that I do not now know in which of his essays or his poems or his
lectures he revealed it, though probably it would be found in all three
since, shrewd Yankee that he was, he cast every thought he had in three
forms. Had he lived in our day he might in addition have dramatized
each one of them. But from his advice never to apologize, one may
proceed to the virtue of never explaining. It saves an immense amount
of time and energy, for since a politician’s enemies are legion, and
are constantly increasing in number, and can attack him, as it were, in
relays, he must have enormous energy if he is to reply in detail to all
of them; he will find himself after a while more desperately involved
than was the man in Kipling’s story, who through the Indian Government
kept his enemy toiling night and day to answer foolish questions about
pigs, and, what was worse, explaining his previous answers.
Telling what one is going to do is equally as foolish as explaining
what one has done, or denying what one has not done, and so promises
could be dispensed with as easily as retorts and explanations. Long
catalogues of promised prodigies and miracles are of course absurd,
and the bawling and blowing politician (as Walt Whitman called him)
can make them as fluently in his evil cause as can the purest of the
reformers. I had been disgusted too often with such performances to
be able to enter into competition of that sort, and so let our little
platform speak for itself and did not even promise to be good. And the
people understood.
I have often heard men complain of the strain and fatigue of political
campaigning, and I sometimes think much of their distress arises from
the fact that they campaign in ways that are not necessary, if nothing
more derogatory is to be said of them. There is of course the fatigue
that comes of nervous strain and anxiety, and this is very great, but
the haggard visage and the husky voice are all unnecessary. It is no
wonder to be sure that some men break down in campaigns, since their
cause is so bad that anyone might well be expected to sicken in its
advocacy, and in furthering it it is perhaps inevitable that their
efforts partake in a measure of its corruption. There is no exercise
that is physically more beneficial than speaking, especially speaking
in the open air, provided one knows how to use his voice and does not
attempt to shout up the wind; and two or three speeches at noon, just
before luncheon and four or five more in the evening after dinner may
be recommended as an excellent course in physical culture, if when
one is done one’s speeches for the evening one will go home and, for
an hour, read, say “Huckleberry Finn” or “Tom Sawyer” before he goes
to bed. I can recommend these two great American novels with entire
confidence in their power to refresh, and in their deep and true and
delightful philosophy to correct aberrations in the point of view--of
one’s self, in the first place, and of some other things of much more
importance than one’s self. If the cause be one in which one believes
there is an incomparable exhilaration in it all. And it was with some
pride that I came through that first campaign without having lost
either my temper or my voice.
There must always remain the memory of those throngs in the meetings,
those workingmen who came pouring out of the shops and factories at
noon, glad as school boys to be released for a little while from
toil, laughing, whistling, engaging in rude pleasantries, jostling,
teasing and joking each other, and then, suddenly, pausing, gathering
about the motor car, drawing closer, pressing up to the foot-board,
and listening, with eager, intent faces, in which there was such
instant appreciation of a joke, a pleasantry, anything to make them
laugh, and yet somehow the adumbration of a yearning and a hope. Lyman
Wachenheimer--who as judge of the police court once had fined Jones
for contempt of court, but had come later to agree with him and now
was candidate for prosecuting attorney of the county--would stand up
in the car, lean over, and speak to them out of the splendid new faith
in democracy that had come to him, and the rest of us in our turn
would speak. We did not ask them to vote for us; our message was at
least higher than that old foolish and selfish appeal. First of all we
wished them to vote for themselves, we wished them to vote their own
convictions, and not merely to follow with the old partizan blindness
the boss or the employer or someone else who told them how to vote.
And all too soon for the orators warming to their work--they must
speak rapidly, they must speak simply and come to the point, for the
demands of the street meeting are obdurate and out under the open sky
there is short shrift for insincerity or any of the old pretense and
buncombe--the whistle blows, the men turn and scatter, the crowd melts
away, a few linger to the last minute to catch the last word, and then
they turn and run, and as they go they lift high the perpendicular
hand--Walt Whitman’s sign of democracy.... Do you know it? Sometimes
one of the section gang working on the railroad, pausing in his labor
while the Limited sweeps by, looks up and to the idle one on the rear
platform of the observation car, going for his long holiday, he waves
his hand in a gesture instinct with grace and the sincere greeting
of a fellow human being, and perhaps because--alas!--the moment of
their swift and instantly passing communication is isolated from all
the complexities of our civilized life, because it is to vanish too
soon for the differences men have made between themselves to assert
their distinction, there is that one instant of perfect understanding.
Sometimes a man in a boat sailing by will hail you with this gesture
from his passing craft; he is safe from long contact, he can run a
risk and for that little moment yield to the adventure of picking up
an acquaintance. Sometimes it is the engineer of a locomotive leaning
out of his cab window, giving you perhaps a droll wink, and there are
tramps who from a box car will exchange a friendly greeting. And I
shall never forget the little Irish sailor up on the boat deck with
whom I talked in the early darkness of an autumn evening in the middle
of the Atlantic, with the appalling loneliness of the sea as night came
down to meet it in mystery, and the smoke from the funnels trailed up
off to the southwest on a rising and sinister wind; he told me of his
mother and his uncle--“who makes his five guineas a week and doesn’t
know the taste of liquor”--and of his little ambitions, and so, after
a bit, of the mysteries of life, with a perfect _camaraderie_, as we
stood there leaning over the rail, and then, suddenly, when we parted,
invested himself with a wholly different manner, and touched his cap in
a little salute and left me to the inanities of the smoking-room.
It was something like that, those intimacies, vouchsafed for a moment
in our early meetings, whether those at noon or those at night, in the
suffocating little halls, or the cold tent, with the torches tossing
their flames in your eyes as you spoke, and it was even that way in
those curious meetings down in the darker quarter of the town, where
the waste of the city lifted up faces that were seared and scarred with
the appalling catastrophes of the soul that had somehow befallen them,
and there was unutterable longing there.
The one thing that marred these contacts was not only that one was
so powerless to help these men, but that one stood before them in an
attitude that somehow suggested to them, inevitably, from long habit
and the pretense of men who sought power for themselves, that one
needed only to be placed in a certain official relation to them, and
to be addressed by a certain title, to be able to help them. It was
enough to make one ashamed, almost enough to cause one to prefer that
they should vote for someone else, and relieve one from this dreadful
self-consciousness, this dreadful responsibility.
And these were the people! These were they who had been so long
proscribed and exploited; they had borne a few of the favored of the
fates on their backs, and yet, bewildered, they were somehow expectant
of that good to come to them which had been promised in the words
and phrases by which their very acquiescence and subjugation had so
mysteriously been wrought--“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Where? And for them, when? Not through the efforts of those who
employed cold phrases about “good” government, and “reform,” and
“business” administrations, and efficiency methods, and enforcement
of the laws, and law and order, and all that sort of thing, and class
consciousness, and economic, or any other interpretation of history,
or through initiatives, referendums and recalls. What good would any
of these cold and precise formulæ do them? Better perhaps the turkey
at Thanksgiving, and the goose at Christmas time which the old machine
councilman from the ward gave them; of course they themselves paid for
them, but they did not know it, and the councilman did not know it; he
had bestowed them with the voice of kindness, in the same hearty human
spirit in which he came to the wedding or the wake, or got the father
a job, or the oldest son a parole from the workhouse, and rendered a
thousand other little personal services. Perhaps Bath House John and
Hinky Dink were more nearly right after all than the cold and formal
and precise gentleman who denounced their records in the council. For
they were human, and the great problem is to make the government of a
city human.
There were many, of course, even in our own movement, who were not
concerned about that; I was strongly rebuked by one of them once in
that very first campaign for declaring that we were no better than
anyone else, and that all the “good” men of the world could not do the
people much good even if they were elected to the city government for
life. No, we may have efficient governments in our cities, and honest
governments, as we are beginning to have everywhere, and, happily,
are more and more to have, but the great emancipations will not come
through the formulæ of Independents, Socialists, or single-taxers,
nor through Law and Order Leagues, nor Civic Associations. Down
in their hearts these are not what the people want. What they want
is a life that is fuller, more beautiful, more splendid and, above
all, more human. And nobody can prepare it and hand it over to them.
They must get it themselves; it must come up through them and out of
them, through long and toilsome processes of development; for such is
democracy.
“That man’s program will take a thousand years!” Lincoln Steffens had
said in despair that day I introduced him to Jones. Yes--or a hundred
thousand. But there is no other way.