Frenchmen ain’t strong for Jews.”
The passing of a Broadway car awakens a vague idea of progress, and
some one remarks: “They’ll have them things runnin’ by compressed air
before we know it.”
“I’ve driv’ mule-cars by here myself,” replies another.
A few moments before twelve a great box of bread is pushed outside
the door, and exactly on the hour a portly, round-faced German takes
his position by it, and calls: “Ready!” The whole line at once, like
a well-drilled company of regulars, moves quickly, in good marching
time, diagonally across the sidewalk to the inner edge and pushes, with
only the noise of tramping feet, past the box. Each man reaches for a
loaf and, breaking line, wanders off by himself. Most of them do not
even glance at their bread but put it indifferently under their coats
or in their pockets. They betake themselves heaven knows where--to
lodging houses, park benches (if it be summer), hall-bedrooms possibly,
although in most cases it is doubtful if they possess one, or to
charitable missions of the poor. It is a small thing to get, a loaf
of dry bread, but from three hundred to four hundred men will gather
nightly from one year’s end to the other to get it, and so it has its
significance.
The thing that I protest against is that it endures. It would be so
easy, as it seems to me, in a world of even moderate organization to
do something that would end a spectacle of this kind once and for all,
if it were no more than a law to destroy the inefficient. I say this
not in cruelty but more particularly with the intention of awakening
thought. There is so much to do. In America the nation’s roads have not
even begun to be made. Over vast stretches of the territory of the
world the land is not tilled. There is not a tithe made of what the
rank and file could actually use. Most of us are wanting strenuously
for something.
A rule that would cause the arrest of a man in this situation would
be merciful. A compulsory labor system that would involve regulation
of hours, medical treatment, restoration of health, restoration of
courage, would soon put an end to the man who is “down and out.” He
would of course be down and out to the extent that he had fallen into
the clutches of this machine, but he would at least be on the wheel
that might bring him back or destroy him utterly. It is of no use
to say that life cannot do anything for the inefficient. It can. It
does. And the haphazard must, and in the main does, give way to the
well-organized. And the injured man need not be allowed to bleed to
death. If a man is hurt accidentally a hospital wagon comes quickly. If
he is broken in spirit, moneyless, afraid, nothing is done. Yet he is
in far greater need of the hospital wagon than the other. The treatment
should be different, that is all.
[Illustration]
OUR RED SLAYER
If you wish to see an exemplification of the law of life, the survival
of one by the failure and death of another, go some day to any one of
the great abattoirs which to-day on the East River, or in Jersey City,
or elsewhere near the great metropolis receive and slay annually the
thousands and hundreds of thousands of animals that make up a part of
the city’s meat supply. And there be sure and see, also, the individual
who, as your agent and mine, is vicariously responsible for the awful
slaughter. You will find him in a dark, red pit, blood-covered,
standing in a sea of blood, while hour after hour and day after day
there passes before him a line of screaming animals, hung by one leg,
head down, and rolling steadily along a rail, which is slanted to get
the benefit of gravity, while he, knife in hand, jabs unweariedly at
their throats, the task of cutting their throats so that they may die
of bleeding and exhaustion having become a wearisome and commonplace
labor, one which he scarcely notices at all. He is a blood-red slayer,
this individual, a butcher by trade, big, brawny, muscular, but
clothed from head to foot in a tarpaulin coat and cap, which from long
spattering by the blood of animals he has slain, have become this
darksome red. Day after day and month after month here you may see
him--your agent and mine--the great world wagging its way, the task of
destroying life never becoming less arduous, the line of animals never
becoming less thin.
A peculiar life to lead, is it not? One would think a man of any
sensibility would become heartsick, or at the least, revolted and
disgusted; but this man does not seem to be. Rather, he takes it as a
matter of course, a thing which has no significance, any more than the
eating of his food or the washing of his hands. Since it is a matter
of business or of living, and seeing that others live by his labor, he
does not care.
But it has significance. These creatures we see thus automatically and
hopelessly trundling down a rail of death are really not so far removed
from us in the scale of existence. You will find them but a little way
down the ladder of mind, climbing slowly and patiently towards those
heights to which we think we have permanently attained. There is a
force back of them, a law which wills their existence, and they do not
part with it readily. There is a terror of death for them as there is
for us, and you will see it here exemplified, the horror that makes
them run cold with the knowledge of their situation.
You will hear them squeal, the hogs; you will hear them baa, the sheep;
you will hear the grinding clank of the chains and see the victims
dropping: hogs, half-alive, into the vats of boiling water; the sheep
into the range of butchers and carvers who flay them half-alive;
while our red representative--yours and mine--stands there, stabbing,
stabbing, stabbing, that we who are not sheep or hogs and who pay him
for his labor may live and be merry and not die. Strange, isn’t it?
A gruesome labor. A gruesome picture. We have been flattering ourselves
these many centuries that our civilization had somehow got away from
this old-time law of life living on death, but here amid all the gauds
and refinements of our metropolitan life we find ourselves confronted
by it, and here stands our salaried red man who murders our victims for
us, while we look on indifferently, or stranger yet, remain blissfully
unconscious that the bloody labor is in existence.
We live in cities such as this; crowd ourselves in ornamented chambers
as much as possible; walk paths from which all painful indications of
death have been eliminated, and think ourselves clean and kind and free
of the old struggle, and yet behold our salaried agent ever at work;
and ever the cry of the destroyed is rising to what heaven we know not,
nor to what gods. We dream dreams of universal brotherhood and prate of
the era of coming peace, but this slaughter is a stumbling-block over
which we may not readily vault. It augurs something besides peace and
love in this world. It forms a great commentary on the arrangement of
the universe.
And yet this revolting picture is not without its relieving feature,
though alas! the little softness visible points no way by which the
victims may be spared. The very butcher is a human being, a father with
little children. One day, after a discouraging hour of this terrible
panorama, I walked out into the afternoon sunlight only to brood over
the tragedy and terror of it all. This man struck me as a demon, a
chill, phlegmatic, animal creature whose horrible eyes would contain no
light save that of non-understanding and indifference. Moved by some
curious impulse, I made my way to his home--to the sty where I expected
to find him groveling--and found instead a little cottage, set about
with grass and flowers, and under a large tree a bench. Here was my
murderer sitting, here taking his evening’s rest.
The sun was going down, the shadows beginning to fall. In the cool of
the evening he was taking his ease, a rough, horny-handed man, large
and uncouth, but on his knee a child. And such a child--young, not over
two years, soft and delicate, with the bloom of babyhood on its cheek
and the light of innocence in its eye; and here was this great murderer
stroking it gently, the red man touching it softly with his hand.
I stood and looked at this picture, the thought of the blood-red pit
coming back to me, the gouts of blood, the knife, the cries of his
victims, the death throes; and then at this green grass and this tree
and the father and his child.
Heaven forefend against the mysteries of life and its dangers. We know
in part, we believe in part, but these things surpass the understanding
of man and make our humble consciousness reel with the inexplicable
riddle of existence. To live, to die, to be generous, to be brutal! How
in the scheme of things are the conditions and feelings inextricably
jumbled, and how we grope and stumble through our days to our graves!
[Illustration]
WHENCE THE SONG
Along Broadway in the height of the theatrical season, but more
particularly in that laggard time from June to September, when the
great city is given over to those who may not travel, and to actors
seeking engagements, there is ever to be seen a certain representative
figure, now one individual and now another, of a world so singular that
it might well engage the pen of a Balzac or that of a Cervantes. I have
in mind an individual whose high hat and smooth Prince Albert coat are
still a delicious presence. In his coat lapel is a ruddy boutonnière,
in his hand a novel walking-stick. His vest is of a gorgeous and
affluent pattern, his shoes shiny-new and topped with pearl-gray spats.
With dignity he carries his body and his chin. He is the cynosure of
many eyes, the envy of all men, and he knows it. He is the successful
author of the latest popular song.
Along Broadway, from Union to Greeley Squares, any fair day during
the period of his artistic elevation, he is to be seen. Past the rich
shops and splendid theaters he betakes himself with leisurely grace. In
Thirtieth Street he may turn for a few moments, but it is only to say
good-morning to his publishers. In Twenty-eighth Street, where range
the host of those who rival his successful house, he stops to talk with
lounging actors and ballad singers. Well-known variety stars nod to
him familiarly. Women whose sole claim to distinction lies in their
knack of singing a song, smile in greeting as he passes. Occasionally
there comes a figure of a needy ballad-monger, trudging from publisher
to publisher with an unavailable manuscript, who turns upon him, in
passing, the glint of an envious glance. To these he is an important
figure, satisfied as much with their envy as with their praise, for is
not this also his due, the reward of all who have triumphed?
I have in mind another figure, equally singular: a rouged and powdered
little maiden, rich in feathers and ornaments of the latest vogue;
gloved in blue and shod in yellow; pretty, self-assured, daring, and
even bold. There has gone here all the traditional maidenly reserve you
would expect to find in one so young and pleasing, and yet she is not
evil. The daughter of a Chicago butcher, you knew her when she first
came to the city--a shabby, wondering little thing, clerk to a music
publisher transferring his business east, and all eyes for the marvels
of city life.
Gradually the scenes and superlatives of elegance, those showy men and
women coming daily to secure or sell songs, have aroused her longings
and ambitions. Why may not she sing, why not she be a theatrical
celebrity? She will. The world shall not keep her down. That elusive
and almost imaginary company known as _they_, whose hands are ever
against the young, shall not hold her back.
Behold, for a time, then, she has gone; and now, elegant, jingling with
silver ornaments, hale and merry from good living, she has returned.
To-day she is playing at one of the foremost vaudeville houses.
To-morrow she leaves for Pittsburgh. Her one object is still a salary
of five hundred or a thousand a week and a three-sheet litho of herself
in every window and upon every billboard.
“I’m all right now,” she will tell you gleefully. “I’m way ahead of the
knockers. They can’t keep me down. You ought to have seen the reception
I got in Pittsburgh. Say, it was the biggest yet.”
Blessed be Pittsburgh, which has honored one who has struggled so hard,
and you say so.
“Are you here for long?”
“Only this week. Come up and see my turn. Hey, cabbie!”
A passing cabman turns in close to the walk with considerable alacrity.
“Take me to Keith’s. So long. Come up and see my turn to-night.”
This is the woman singer, the complement of the male of the same art,
the couple who make for the acceptance and spread of the popular song
as well as the fame of its author. They sing them in every part of the
country, and here in New York, returned from a long season on the road,
they form a very important portion of this song-writing, song-singing
world. They and the authors and the successful publishers--but we may
simplify by yet another picture.
In Twenty-seventh or Twenty-eighth Street, or anywhere along Broadway
from Madison to Greeley Squares, are the parlors of a score of
publishers, gentlemen who coördinate this divided world for song
publishing purposes. There is an office and a reception-room; a
music-chamber, where songs are tried, and a stock room. Perhaps, in
the case of the larger publishers, the music-rooms are two or three,
but the air of each is much the same. Rugs, divans, imitation palms
make this publishing house more bower than office. Three or four
pianos give to each chamber a parlor-like appearance. The walls are
hung with the photos of celebrities, neatly framed, celebrities of the
kind described. In the private music-rooms, rocking-chairs. A boy or
two waits to bring _professional copies_ at a word. A salaried pianist
or two wait to run over pieces which the singer may desire to hear.
Arrangers wait to make orchestrations or take down newly schemed out
melodies which the popular composer himself cannot play. He has evolved
the melody by a process of whistling and must have its fleeting beauty
registered before it escapes him forever. Hence the salaried arranger.
Into these parlors then, come the mixed company of this distinctive
world: authors who have or have not succeeded, variety artists who
have some word from touring fellows or know the firm, masters of small
bands throughout the city or the country, of which the name is legion,
orchestra-leaders of Bowery theaters and uptown variety halls, and
singers.
“You haven’t got a song that will do for a tenor, have you?”
The inquirer is a little, stout, ruddy-faced Irish boy from the
gas-house district. His common clothes are not out of the ordinary
here, but they mark him as possibly a non-professional seeking free
copies.
“Sure, let me see. For what do you want it?”
“Well, I’m from the Arcadia Pleasure Club. We’re going to give a
little entertainment next Wednesday and we want some songs.”
“I think I’ve got just the thing you want. Wait till I call the boy.
Harry! Bring me some professional copies of ballads.”
The youth is probably a representative of one of the many Tammany
pleasure organizations, the members of which are known for their
propensity to gather about east and west side corners at night and
sing. One or two famous songs are known to have secured their start
by the airing given them in this fashion on the street corners of the
great city.
Upon his heels treads a lady whose ruffled sedateness marks her as one
unfamiliar with this half-musical, half-theatrical atmosphere.
“I have a song I would like to have you try over, if you care to.”
The attending publisher hesitates before even extending a form of
reception.
“What sort of a song is it?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know. I guess you’d call it a sentimental
ballad. If you’d hear it I think you might----”
“We are so over-stocked with songs now, Madam, that I don’t believe
there’s much use in our hearing it. Could you come in next Friday?
We’ll have more leisure then and can give you more attention.”
The lady looks the failure she has scored, but retreats, leaving the
ground clear for the chance arrival of the real author, the individual
whose position is attested by one hit or mayhap many. His due is that
deference which all publishers, if not the public, feel called upon
to render, even if at the time he may have no reigning success.
[Illustration: Whence the Song]
“Hello, Frank, how are you? What’s new?”
The author, cane in hand, may know of nothing in particular.
“Sit down. How are things with you, anyhow?”
“Oh, so-so.”
“That new song of yours will be out Friday. We have a rush order on it.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, and I’ve got good news for you. Windom is going to sing it next
year with the minstrels. He was in here the other day and thought it
was great.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“That song’s going to go, all right. You haven’t got any others, have
you?”
“No, but I’ve got a tune. Would you mind having one of the boys take it
down for me?”
“Surest thing you know. Here, Harry! Call Hatcher.”
Now comes the pianist and arranger, and a hearing and jotting down of
the new melody in a private room. The favored author may have piano and
pianist for an indefinite period any time. Lunch with the publishers
awaits him if he remains until noon. His song, when ready, is heard
with attention. The details which make for its publication are rushed.
His royalties are paid with that rare smile which accompanies the
payment of anything to one who earns money for another. He is to be
petted, conciliated, handled with gloves.
At his heels, perhaps, another author, equally successful, maybe, but
almost intolerable because of certain marked eccentricities of life and
clothing. He is a negro, small, slangy, strong in his cups, but able to
write a good song, occasionally a truly pathetic ballad.
“Say, where’s that gem o’ mine?”
“What?”
“That effusion.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That audience-killer--that there thing that’s goin’ to sweep the
country like wildfire--that there song.”
Much laughter and apology.
“It will be here Friday, Gussie.”
“Thought it was to be here last Monday?”
“So it was, but the printers didn’t get it done. You know how those
things are, Gussie.”
“I know. Gimme twenty-five dollars.”
“Sure. But what are you going to do with it?”
“Never you mind. Gimme twenty-five bones. To-morrow’s rent day up my
way.”
Twenty-five is given as if it were all a splendid joke. Gussie is a
bad negro, one day radiant in bombastic clothing, the next wretched
from dissipation and neglect. He has no royalty coming to him, really.
That is, he never accepts royalty. All his songs are sold outright. But
these have earned the house so much that if he were to demand royalties
the sum to be paid would beggar anything he has ever troubled to ask
for.
“I wouldn’t take no royalty,” he announces at one time, with a
bombastic and yet mellow negro emphasis, which is always amusing. “Doan
want it. Too much trouble. All I want is money when I needs it and
wants it.”
Seeing that nearly every song that he writes is successful, this is a
most equitable arrangement. He could have several thousand instead of a
few hundred, but being shiftless he does not care. Ready money is the
thing with him, twenty-five or fifty when he needs it.
And then those “peerless singers of popular ballads,” as their programs
announce them, men and women whose pictures you will see upon every
song-sheet, their physiognomy underscored with their own “Yours
Sincerely” in their own handwriting. Every day they are here, arriving
and departing, carrying the latest songs to all parts of the land.
These are the individuals who in their own estimation “make” the songs
the successes they are. In all justice, they have some claim to the
distinction. One such, raising his or her voice nightly in a melodic
interpretation of a new ballad, may, if the music be sufficiently
catchy, bring it so thoroughly to the public ear as to cause it to
begin to sell. These individuals are not unaware of their services in
the matter, nor slow to voice their claims. In flocks and droves they
come, whenever good fortune brings “the company” to New York or the end
of the season causes them to return, to tell of their success and pick
new songs for the ensuing season. Also to collect certain pre-arranged
bonuses. Also to gather news and dispense it. Then, indeed, is the day
of the publisher’s volubility and grace. These gentlemen and ladies
must be attended to with that deference which is the right of the
successful. The ladies must be praised and cajoled.
“Did you hear about the hit I made with ‘Sweet Kitty Leary’ in Kansas
City? I knocked ’em cold. Say, it was the biggest thing on the bill.”
The publisher may not have heard of it. The song, for all the
uproarious success depicted, may not have sold an extra copy, and yet
this is not for him to say. Has the lady a good voice? Is she with a
good company? He may so ingratiate himself that she will yet sing one
of his newer and as yet unheard of compositions into popularity.
“Was it? Well, I’m glad to hear it. You have the voice for that sort of
a song, you know, Marie. I’ve got something new, though, that will just
suit you--oh, a dandy. It’s by Harry Welch.”
For all this flood of geniality the singer may only smile
indifferently. Secretly her hand is against all publishers. They are
out for themselves. Successful singers must mind their P’s and Q’s.
Payment is the word, some arrangement by which she shall receive a
stated sum per week for singing a song. The honeyed phrases are well
enough for beginners, but we who have succeeded need something more.
“Let me show you something new. I’ve got a song here that is fine. Come
right into the music-room. Charlie, get a copy of ‘She May Have Seen
Better Days.’ I want you to play it over for Miss Yaeger.”
The boy departs and returns. In the exclusive music-room sits the
singer, critically listening while the song is played.
“Isn’t that a pretty chorus?”
“Well, yes, I rather like that.”
“That will suit your voice exactly. Don’t ever doubt it. I think that’s
one of the best songs we have published in years.”
“Have you the orchestration?”
“Sure; I’ll get you that.”
Somehow, however, the effect has not been satisfactory. The singer has
not enthused. He must try other songs and give her the orchestrations
of many. Perhaps, out of all, she will sing one. That is the chance of
the work.
As for her point of view, she may object to the quality of anything
except for that which she is paid. It is for the publisher to see
whether she is worth subsidizing or not. If not, perhaps another house
will see her merits in a different light. Yet she takes the songs
and orchestrations along. And the publisher turning, as she goes,
announces, “Gee, there’s a cold proposition for you. Get her to sing
anything for you for nothing?--Nix. Not her. Cash or no song.” And he
thumbs his fingers after the fashion of one who pays out money.
Your male singer is often a bird of the same fine feather. If you
wish to see the ideal of dressiness as exemplified by the gentlemen
of the road, see these individuals arrive at the offices of the
publishers. The radiance of half-hose and neckties is not outdone by
the sprightliness of the suit pattern or the glint of the stone in
the shirt-front. Fresh from Chicago or Buffalo they arrive, rich in
self-opinion fostered by rural praise, perhaps possessed of a new droll
story, always loaded with the details of the hit they made.
“Well, well! You should have seen how that song went in Baltimore. I
never saw anything like it. Why, it’s the hit of the season!”
New songs are forthcoming, a new batch delivered for his service next
year.
Is he absolutely sure of the estimation in which the house holds his
services? You will hear a sequel to this, not this day perhaps but a
week or a month later, during his idle summer in New York.
“You haven’t twenty-five handy you could let me have, have you, Pat?
I’m a little short to-day.”
Into the publisher’s eye steals the light of wisdom and decision. Is
this individual worth it? Will he do the songs of the house twenty-five
dollars’ worth of good next season? Blessed be fate if there is a
partner to consult. He will have time to reflect.