THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY
[Illustration: Michigan Avenue, Chicago, from the steps of the Art
Institute.]
THE
VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY
BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
WALTER TITTLE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1918, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1918
Reprinted November, December 1918
[Illustration]
TO MY CHILDREN
ELIZABETH, MEREDITH, AND LIONEL
IN TOKEN OF MY AFFECTION
AND WITH THE HOPE THAT THEY MAY BE FAITHFUL TO THE
HIGHEST IDEALS OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE FOLKS AND THEIR FOLKSINESS 1
II. TYPES AND DIVERSIONS 39
III. THE FARMER OF THE MIDDLE WEST 83
IV. CHICAGO 135
V. THE MIDDLE WEST IN POLITICS 181
VI. THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST 235
AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
In the reprintings of a book of this character it would be possible
to revise and rewrite in such manner as to conceal the errors or
misjudgments of the author. It seems, however, more honest to permit
these impressions to stand practically as they were written, with only
a few minor corrections. It was my aim to make note of conditions,
tendencies, and needs in the Valley of Democracy, and the conclusion of
the war has affected my point of view with reference to these matters
very little.
The first months of the present year have been so crowded with
incidents affecting the whole world that we recall with difficulty the
events of only a few years ago. We have met repeated crises with an
inspiring exhibition of unity and courage that should hearten us for
the new tasks of readjustment that press for attention, and for the
problems of self-government that are without end. I shall feel that
these pages possess some degree of vitality if they quicken in the
mind and heart of the reader a hope and confidence that we of America
do not walk blindly, but follow a star that sheds upon us a perpetual
light.
M. N.
INDIANAPOLIS, June 1, 1919.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Michigan Avenue, Chicago, from the steps of the Art
Institute _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“Ten days of New York, and it’s me for my home town” 6
Art exhibits ... now find a hearty welcome 20
The Municipal Recreation Pier, Chicago 66
Types and Diversions 74
On a craft plying the waters of Erie I found all the
conditions of a happy outing and types that it is always a
joy to meet 78
The Perry Monument at Put-in Bay 80
A typical old homestead of the Middle West 100
Students of agriculture in the pageant that celebrated the
fortieth anniversary of the founding of Ohio State
University 114
A feeding-plant at “Whitehall,” the farm of Edwin S.
Kelly, near Springfield, Ohio 120
Judging graded shorthorn herds at the American Royal
Live Stock Show in Kansas City 132
Chicago is the big brother of all lesser towns 142
The “Ham Fair” in Paris is richer in antiquarian loot,
but Maxwell Street is enough; ’twill serve! 152
Banquet given for the members of the National Institute
of Arts and Letters 176
There is a death-watch that occupies front seats at every
political meeting 194
The Political Barbecue 198
THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY
France evoked from the unknown the valley that may, in more than one
sense, be called the heart of America.... The chief significance and
import of the addition of this valley to the maps of the world, all
indeed that makes it significant, is that here was given (though not of
deliberate intent) a rich, wide, untouched field, distant, accessible
only to the hardiest, without a shadowing tradition or a restraining
fence, in which men of all races were to make attempt to live together
under rules of their own devising and enforcing. And as here the
government of the people by the people was to have even more literal
interpretation than in that Atlantic strip which had traditions of
property suffrage and church privilege and class distinctions, I have
called it the “Valley of the New Democracy.”
--JOHN H. FINLEY: “The French in the Heart of America.”
THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY
CHAPTER I
THE FOLKS AND THEIR FOLKSINESS
I
“The great trouble with these fellows down here,” remarked my friend as
we left the office of a New York banker--“the trouble with all of ’em
is that they forget about the _Folks_. You noticed that when he asked
in his large, patronizing way how things are going out West he didn’t
wait for us to answer; he pressed a button and told his secretary to
bring in those tables of railroad earnings and to-day’s crop bulletins
and that sort of rubbish, so he could tell _us_. It never occurs to ’em
that the Folks are human beings and not just a column of statistics.
Why, the _Folks_----”
My friend, an orator of distinction, formerly represented a tall-corn
district in Congress. He drew me into Trinity churchyard and discoursed
in a vein with which I had long been familiar upon a certain
condescension in Easterners, and the East’s intolerable ignorance
of the ways and manners, the hopes and aims, of the West, which move
him to rage and despair. I was aware that he was gratified to have an
opportunity to unbosom himself at the brazen gates of Wall Street,
and equally conscious that he was experimenting upon me with phrases
that he was coining for use on the hustings. They were so used, not
without effect, in the campaign of 1916--a contest whose results were
well calculated to draw attention to the “Folks” as an upstanding,
independent body of citizens.
Folks is recognized by the lexicographers as an American colloquialism,
a variant of folk. And folk, in old times, was used to signify the
commonalty, the plain people. But my friend, as he rolled “Folks”
under his tongue there in the shadow of Trinity, used it in a sense
that excluded the hurrying midday Broadway throng and restricted its
application to an infinitely superior breed of humanity, to be found
on farms, in villages and cities remote from tide-water. His passion
for democracy, his devotion to the commonweal, is not wasted upon New
Englanders or Middle States people. In the South there are Folks, yes;
his own people had come out of North Carolina, lingered a while in
Kentucky, and lodged finally in Indiana, whence, following a common
law of dispersion, they sought new homes in Illinois and Kansas.
Beyond the Rockies there are Folks; he meets their leaders in national
conventions; but they are only second cousins of those valiant freemen
who rallied to the call of Lincoln and followed Grant and Sherman into
battles that shook the continent. My friend’s point of view is held by
great numbers of people in that region we now call the Middle West.
This attitude or state of mind with regard to the East is not to be
taken too seriously; it is a part of the national humor, and has been
expressed with delightful vivacity and candor in Mr. William Allen
White’s refreshing essay, “Emporia and New York.”
A definition of Folks as used all the way from Ohio to Colorado, and
with particular point and pith by the haughty sons and daughters of
Indiana and Kansas, may be set down thus:
FOLKS. _n._ A superior people, derived largely from the Anglo-Saxon
and Celtic races and domiciled in those northern States of the
American Union whose waters fall into the Mississippi. Their
_folksiness_ (_q. v._) is expressed in sturdy independence, hostility
to capitalistic influence, and a proneness to social and political
experiment. They are strong in the fundamental virtues, more or less
sincerely averse to conventionality, and believe themselves possessed
of a breadth of vision and a devotion to the common good at once
beneficent and unique in the annals of mankind.
We of the West do not believe--not really--that we are the only true
interpreters of the dream of democracy. It pleases us to swagger a
little when we speak of ourselves as the Folks and hint at the dire
punishments we hold in store for monopoly and privilege; but we are far
less dangerous than an outsider, bewildered or annoyed by our apparent
bitterness, may be led to believe. In our hearts we do not think
ourselves the only good Americans. We merely feel that the East began
patronizing us and that anything we may do in that line has been forced
upon us by years of outrageous contumely. And when New York went to bed
on the night of election day, 1916, confident that as went the Empire
State so went the Union, it was only that we of the West might chortle
the next morning to find that Ah Sin had forty packs concealed in his
sleeve and spread them out on the Sierra Nevadas with an air that was
child-like and bland.
Under all its jauntiness and cocksureness, the West is extremely
sensitive to criticism. It likes admiration, and expects the Eastern
visitor to be properly impressed by its achievements, its prodigious
energy, its interpretation and practical application of democracy, and
the earnestness with which it interests itself in the things of the
spirit. Above all else it does not like to appear absurd. According to
its light it intends to do the right thing, but it yields to laughter
much more quickly than abuse if the means to that end are challenged.
The pioneers of the older States endured hardships quite as great
as the Middle Westerners; they have contributed as generously to
the national life in war and peace; the East’s aid to the West,
in innumerable ways, is immeasurable. I am not thinking of farm
mortgages, but of nobler things--of men and women who carried
ideals of life and conduct, of justice and law, into new territory
where such matters were often lightly valued. The prowler in these
Western States recognizes constantly the trail of New Englanders who
founded towns, built schools, colleges, and churches, and left an
ineffaceable stamp upon communities. Many of us Westerners sincerely
admire the East and do reverence to Eastern gods when we can sneak
unobserved into the temples. We dispose of our crops and merchandise as
quickly as possible, that we may be seen of men in New York. Western
school-teachers pour into New England every summer on pious pilgrimages
to Concord and Lexington. And yet we feel ourselves, the great body
of us, a peculiar people. “Ten days of New York, and it’s me for my
home town” in Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, or Colorado. This expresses a very
general feeling in the provinces.
It is far from my purpose to make out a case for the West as the true
home of the Folks in these newer connotations of that noun, but rather
to record some of the phenomena observable in those commonwealths where
we are assured the Folks maintain the only true ark of the covenant
of democracy. Certain concessions may be assumed in the unconvinced
spectator whose path lies in less-favored portions of the nation. The
West does indubitably coax an enormous treasure out of its soil to be
tossed into the national hopper, and it does exert a profound influence
upon the national life; but its manner of thought is different: it
arrives at conclusions by processes that strike the Eastern mind as
illogical and often as absurd or dangerous. The two great mountain
ranges are barriers that shut it in a good deal by itself in spite
of every facility of communication; it is disposed to be scornful of
the world’s experience where the experience is not a part of its own
history. It believes that forty years of Illinois or Wisconsin are
better than a cycle of Cathay, and it is prepared to prove it.
[Illustration: “Ten days of New York, and it’s me for my home town.”]
The West’s philosophy is a compound of Franklin and Emerson, with a
dash of Whitman. Even Washington is a pale figure behind the Lincoln of
its own prairies. Its curiosity is insatiable; its mind is speculative;
it has a supreme confidence that upon an agreed state of facts the
Folks, sitting as a high court, will hand down to the nation a true
and just decision upon any matter in controversy. It is a patient
listener. Seemingly tolerant of false prophets, it amiably gives them
hearing in thousands of forums while awaiting an opportunity to smother
their ambitions on election day. It will not, if it knows itself, do
anything supremely foolish. Flirting with Greenbackism and Free Silver,
it encourages the assiduous wooers shamelessly and then calmly sends
them about their business. Maine can approach her election booths as
coyly as Ohio or Nebraska, and yet the younger States rejoice in the
knowledge that after all nothing is decided until they have been heard
from. Politics becomes, therefore, not merely a matter for concern when
some great contest is forward, but the year round it crowds business
hard for first place in public affection.
II
The people of the Valley of Democracy (I am indebted for this phrase
to Dr. John H. Finley) do a great deal of thinking and talking; they
brood over the world’s affairs with a peculiar intensity; and, beyond
question, they exchange opinions with a greater freedom than their
fellow citizens in other parts of America. I have travelled between
Boston and New York on many occasions and have covered most of New
England in railway journeys without ever being addressed by a stranger;
but seemingly in the West men travel merely to cultivate the art of
conversation. The gentleman who borrows your newspaper returns it
with a crisp comment on the day’s events. He is from Beatrice, or
Fort Collins, perhaps, and you quickly find that he lives next door
to the only man you know in his home town. You praise Nebraska, and
he meets you in a generous spirit of reciprocity and compliments
Iowa, Minnesota, or any other commonwealth you may honor with your
citizenship.
The West is proud of its talkers, and is at pains to produce them for
the edification of the visitor. In Kansas a little while ago my host
summoned a friend of his from a town eighty miles away that I might
hear him talk. And it was well worth my while to hear that gentleman
talk; he is the best talker I have ever heard. He described for me
great numbers of politicians past and present, limning them with the
merciless stroke of a skilled caricaturist, or, in a benignant mood,
presented them in ineffaceable miniature. He knew Kansas as he knew his
own front yard. It was a delight to listen to discourse so free, so
graphic in its characterizations, so colored and flavored with the very
soil. Without impropriety I may state that this gentleman is Mr. Henry
J. Allen, of the Wichita _Beacon_; the friend who produced him for my
instruction and entertainment is Mr. William Allen White of the Emporia
_Gazette_. Since this meeting I have heard Mr. Allen talk on other
occasions without any feeling that I should modify my estimate of his
conversational powers. In his most satisfying narrative, “The Martial
Adventures of Henry and Me,” Mr. White has told how he and Mr. Allen,
as agents of the Red Cross, bore the good news of the patriotism and
sympathy of Kansas to England, France, and Italy, and certainly America
could have sent no more heartening messengers to our allies.
I know of no Western town so small that it doesn’t boast at least one
wit or story-teller who is exhibited as a special mark of honor for
the entertainment of guests. As often as not these stars are women,
who discuss public matters with understanding and brilliancy. The old
superstition that women are deficient in humor never struck me as
applicable to American women anywhere; certainly it is not true of
Western women. In a region where story-telling flourishes, I can match
the best male anecdotalist with a woman who can evoke mirth by neater
and defter means.
The Western State is not only a political but a social unit. It is
like a club, where every one is presumably acquainted with every
one else. The railroads and interurbans carry an enormous number of
passengers who are solely upon pleasure bent. The observer is struck
by the general sociability, the astonishing amount of visiting that
is in progress. In smoking compartments and in day coaches any one
who is at all folksy may hear talk that is likely to prove informing
and stimulating. And this cheeriness and volubility of the people one
meets greatly enhances the pleasure of travel. Here one is reminded
constantly of the provincial confidence in the West’s greatness and
wisdom in every department of human endeavor.
In January of last year it was my privilege to share with seven other
passengers the smoking-room of a train out of Denver for Kansas
City. The conversation was opened by a vigorous, elderly gentleman
who had, he casually remarked, crossed Kansas six times in a wagon.
He was a native of Illinois, a graduate of Asbury (Depauw) College,
Indiana, a Civil War veteran, and he had been a member of the Missouri
Legislature. He lived on a ranch in Colorado, but owned a farm in
Kansas and was hastening thither to test his acres for oil. The range
of his adventures was amazing; his acquaintance embraced men of all
sorts and conditions, including Buffalo Bill, whose funeral he had
just attended in Denver. He had known General George A. Custer and
gave us the true story of the massacre of that hero and his command
on the Little Big Horn. He described the “bad men” of the old days,
many of whom had honored him with their friendship. At least three of
the company had enjoyed like experiences and verified or amplified his
statements. This gentleman remarked with undisguised satisfaction that
he had not been east of the Mississippi for thirty years!
I fancied that he acquired merit with all the trans-Mississippians
present by this declaration. However, a young commercial traveller
who had allowed it to become known that he lived in New York seemed
surprised, if not pained, by the revelation. As we were passing from
one dry State to another we fell naturally into a discussion of
prohibition as a moral and economic factor. The drummer testified to
its beneficent results in arid territory with which he was familiar;
one effect had been increased orders from his Colorado customers.
It was apparent that his hearers listened with approval; they were
citizens of dry States and it tickled their sense of their own
rectitude that a pilgrim from the remote East should speak favorably
of their handiwork. But the young gentleman, warmed by the atmosphere
of friendliness created by his remarks, was guilty of a grave error of
judgment.
“It’s all right for these Western towns,” he said, “but you could never
put it over in New York. New York will never stand for it. London,
Paris, New York--there’s only one New York!”
The deep sigh with which he concluded, expressive of the most intense
loyalty, the most poignant homesickness, and perhaps a thirst of long
accumulation, caused six cigars, firmly set in six pairs of jaws, to
point disdainfully at the ceiling. No one spoke until the offender had
betaken himself humbly to bed. The silence was eloquent of pity for one
so abandoned. That any one privileged to range the cities of the West
should, there at the edge of the great plain, set New York apart for
adoration, was too impious, too monstrous, for verbal condemnation.
Young women seem everywhere to be in motion in the West, going home
from schools, colleges, or the State universities for week-ends, or
attending social functions in neighboring towns. Last fall I came
down from Green Bay in a train that was becalmed for several hours
at Manitowoc. I left the crowded day coach to explore that pleasing
haven and, returning, found that my seat had been pre-empted by a very
charming young person who was reading my magazine with the greatest
absorption. We agreed that the seat offered ample space for two and
that there was no reason in equity or morals why she should not finish
the story she had begun. This done, she commented upon it frankly and
soundly and proceeded to a brisk discussion of literature in general.
Her range of reading had been wide--indeed, I was embarrassed by its
extent and impressed by the shrewdness of her literary appraisements.
She was bound for a normal school where she was receiving instruction,
not for the purpose of entering into the pedagogical life immediately,
but to obtain a teacher’s license against a time when it might become
necessary for her to earn a livelihood. Every girl, she believed,
should fit herself for some employment.
Manifestly she was not a person to ask favors of destiny: at eighteen
she had already made terms with life and tossed the contract upon the
knees of the gods. The normal school did not require her presence until
the day after to-morrow, and she was leaving the train at the end of
an hour to visit a friend who had arranged a dance in her honor. If
that species of entertainment interested me, she said, I might stop for
the dance. Engagements farther down the line precluded the possibility
of my accepting this invitation, which was extended with the utmost
circumspection, as though she were offering an impersonal hospitality
supported by the sovereign dignity of the commonwealth of Wisconsin.
When the train slowed down at her station a commotion on the platform
announced the presence of a reception committee of considerable
magnitude, from which I inferred that her advent was an incident of
importance to the community. As she bade me good-by she tore apart a
bouquet of fall flowers she had been carrying, handed me half of them,
and passed from my sight forever. My exalted opinion of the young women
of Wisconsin was strengthened on another occasion by a chance meeting
with two graduates of the State University who were my fellow voyagers
on a steamer that bumped into a riotous hurricane on its way down Lake
Michigan. On the slanting deck they discoursed of political economy
with a zest and humor that greatly enlivened my respect for the dismal
science.
The listener in the West accumulates data touching the tastes and
ambitions of the people of which local guide-books offer no hint. A
little while ago two ladies behind me in a Minneapolis street-car
discussed Cardinal Newman’s “Dream of Gerontius,” with as much avidity
as though it were the newest novel. Having found that the apostles
of free verse had captured and fortified Denver and Omaha, it was a
relief to encounter these Victorian pickets on the upper waters of the
Mississippi.
III
One is struck by the remarkable individuality of the States, towns, and
cities of the West. State boundaries are not merely a geographical
expression: they mark real differences of opinion, habit, custom, and
taste. This is not a sentimental idea; any one may prove it for himself
by crossing from Illinois into Wisconsin, or from Iowa into Nebraska.
Kansas and Nebraska, though cut out of the same piece, not only seem
different but they _are_ different. Interest in local differentiations,
in shadings of the “color” derived from a common soil, keep the visitor
alert. To be sure the Ladies of the Lakes--Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit,
Milwaukee, Toledo, Duluth--have physical aspects in common, but the
similarity ends there. The literature of chambers of commerce as to the
number of freight-cars handled or increases of population are of no
assistance in a search for the causes of diversities in aim, spirit,
and achievement.
The alert young cities watch each other enviously--they are enormously
proud and anxious not to be outbettered in the struggle for perfection.
In many places one is conscious of an effective leadership, of a man
or a group of men and women who plant a target and rally the citizenry
to play for the bull’s-eye. A conspicuous instance of successful
individual leadership is offered by Kansas City, where Mr. William R.
Nelson, backed by his admirable newspaper, _The Star_, fought to the
end of his life to make his city a better place to live in. Mr. Nelson
was a remarkably independent and courageous spirit, his journalistic
ideals were the highest, and he was deeply concerned for the public
welfare, not only in the more obvious sense, but equally in bringing
within the common reach enlightening influences that are likely to be
neglected in new communities. Kansas City not only profited by Mr.
Nelson’s wisdom and generosity in his lifetime, but the community will
receive ultimately his entire fortune. I am precluded from citing in
other cities men still living who are distinguished by a like devotion
to public service, but I have chosen Mr. Nelson as an eminent example
of the force that may be wielded by a single citizen.
Minneapolis offers a happy refutation of a well-established notion that
a second generation is prone to show a weakened fibre. The sons of the
men who fashioned this vigorous city have intelligently and generously
supported many undertakings of highest value. The Minneapolis art
museum and school and an orchestra of widening reputation present
eloquent testimony to the city’s attitude toward those things that
are more excellent. Contrary to the usual history, these were not
won as the result of laborious effort but rose spontaneously. The
public library of this city not only serves the hurried business man
through a branch in the business district, equipped with industrial
and commercial reference books, but keeps pace with the local
development in art and music by assembling the best literature in these
departments. Both Minneapolis and Kansas City are well advertised by
their admirably managed, progressive libraries. More may be learned
from a librarian as to the trend of thought in his community than from
the secretary of a commercial body. It is significant that last year,
when municipal affairs were much to the fore in Kansas City, there was
a marked increase in the use of books on civic and kindred questions.
The latest report of the librarian recites that “as the library more
nearly meets the wants of the community, the proportion of fiction used
grows less, being but 34 per cent of the whole issue for the year.”
Similar impulses and achievements are manifested in Cleveland, a city
that has written many instructive chapters in the history of municipal
government. Since her exposition of 1904 and the splendid pageant
of 1914 crystallized public aspiration, St. Louis has experienced
a new birth of civic pride. Throughout the West American art has
found cordial support. In Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Cincinnati,
Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, and Kansas City
there are noteworthy specimens of the best work of American painters.
The art schools connected with the Western museums have exercised a
salutary influence in encouraging local talent, not only in landscape
and portraiture, but in industrial designing.
By friendly co-operation on the part of Chicago and St. Louis smaller
cities are able to enjoy advantages that would otherwise be beyond
their reach. Lectures, orchestras, and travelling art exhibits that
formerly stopped at Chicago or jumped thence to California, now find a
hearty welcome in Kansas City, Omaha, and Denver. Thus Indianapolis was
among the few cities that shared a few years ago in the comprehensive
presentation of Saint Gaudens’s work. The expense of the undertaking
was not inconsiderable, but merchants and manufacturers bought tickets
for distribution among their employees and met the demand with a
generosity that left a balance in the art association’s treasury. These
Western cities, with their political and social problems, their rough
edges, smoke, and impudent intrusions of tracks and chimneys due to
rapid development and phenomenal prosperity, present art literally as
the handmaiden of industry--
“All-lovely Art, stern Labor’s fair-haired child.”
If any one thing is quite definitely settled throughout this territory
it is that yesterday’s leaves have been plucked from the calendar:
this verily is the land of to-morrow. One does not stand beside the
Missouri at Omaha and indulge long in meditations upon the turbulent
history and waywardness of that tawny stream; the cattle receipts
for the day may have broken all records, but there are schools that
must be seen, a collection of pictures to visit, or lectures to
attend. I unhesitatingly pronounce Omaha the lecture centre of the
world--reception committees flutter at the arrival of all trains.
Man does not live by bread alone--not even in the heart of the corn
belt in a city that haughtily proclaims itself the largest primary
butter-market in the world! It is the great concern of Kansas that
it shall miss nothing; to cross that commonwealth is to gain the
impression that politics and corn are hard pressed as its main
industries by the cultural mechanisms that produce sweetness and light.
Iowa goes to bed early but not before it has read an improving book!
[Illustration: Art exhibits ... now find a hearty welcome.]
In those Western States where women have assumed the burden of
citizenship they seem to lose none of their zeal for art, literature,
and music. Equal suffrage was established in Colorado in 1893,
and the passing pilgrim cannot fail to be struck by the lack of
self-consciousness with which the women of that State discuss social
and political questions. The Western woman is animated by a divine
energy and she is distinguished by her willingness to render public
service. What man neglects or ignores she cheerfully undertakes, and
she has so cultivated the gentle art of persuasion that the masculine
check-book opens readily to her demand for assistance in her pet causes.
It must not be assumed that in this land of pancakes and panaceas
interest in “culture” is new or that its manifestations are sporadic or
ill-directed. The early comers brought with them sufficient cultivation
to leaven the lump, and the educational forces and cultural movements
now everywhere marked in Western communities are but the fruition
of the labors of the pioneers who bore books of worth and a love of
learning with them into the wilderness. Much sound reading was done in
log cabins when the school-teacher was still a rarity, and amid the
strenuous labors of the earliest days many sought self-expression in
various kinds of writing. Along the Ohio there were bards in abundance,
and a decade before the Civil War Cincinnati had honest claims to being
a literary centre. The numerous poets of those days--Coggeshall’s
“Poets and Poetry of the West,” published in 1866, mentions one hundred
and fifty-two!--were chiefly distinguished by their indifference to the
life that lay nearest them. Sentiment and sentimentalism flourished
at a time when life was a hard business, though Edward Eggleston is
entitled to consideration as an early realist, by reason of “The
Hoosier Schoolmaster,” which, in spite of Indiana’s repudiation of it
as false and defamatory, really contains a true picture of conditions
with which Eggleston was thoroughly familiar. There followed later E.
W. Howe’s “The Story of a Country Town” and Hamlin Garland’s “Main
Travelled Roads,” which are landmarks of realism firmly planted in
territory invaded later by Romance, bearing the blithe flag of Zenda.
It is not surprising that the Mississippi valley should prove far more
responsive to the chimes of romance than to the harsh clang of realism.
The West in itself is a romance. Virginia’s claims to recognition as
the chief field of tourney for romance in America totter before the
history of a vast area whose soberest chronicles are enlivened by
the most inthralling adventures and a long succession of picturesque
characters. The French voyageur, on his way from Canada by lake and
river to clasp hands with his kinsmen of the lower Mississippi; the
American pioneers, with their own heroes--George Rogers Clark, “Mad
Anthony” Wayne, and “Tippecanoe” Harrison; the soldiers of Indian wars
and their sons who fought in Mexico in the forties; the men who donned
the blue in the sixties; the Knights of the Golden Circle, who kept the
war governors anxious in the border States--these are all disclosed
upon a tapestry crowded with romantic strife and stress.
The earliest pioneers, enjoying little intercourse with their fellows,
had time to fashion many a tale of personal adventure against the
coming of a visitor, or for recital on court days, at political
meetings, or at the prolonged “camp meetings,” where questions of
religion were debated. They cultivated unconsciously the art of
telling their stories well. The habit of story-telling grew into a
social accomplishment and it was by a natural transition that here
and there some one began to set down his tales on paper. Thus General
Lew Wallace, who lived in the day of great story-tellers, wrote “The
Fair God,” a romance of the coming of Cortez to Mexico, and followed
it with “Ben Hur,” one of the most popular romances ever written.
Crawfordsville, the Hoosier county-seat where General Wallace lived,
was once visited and its romanticism menaced by Mr. Howells, who sought
local color for the court scene in “A Modern Instance,” his novel
of divorce. Indiana was then a place where legal separations were
obtainable by convenient processes relinquished later to Nevada.
Maurice Thompson and his brother Will, who wrote “The High Tide at
Gettysburg,” sent out from Crawfordsville the poems and sketches that
made archery a popular amusement in the seventies. The Thompsons, both
practising lawyers, employed their leisure in writing and in hunting
with the bow and arrow. “The Witchery of Archery” and “Songs of Fair
Weather” still retain their pristine charm. That two young men in an
Indiana country town should deliberately elect to live in the days of
the Plantagenets speaks for the romantic atmosphere of the Hoosier
commonwealth. A few miles away James Whitcomb Riley had already begun
to experiment with a lyre of a different sort, and quickly won for
himself a place in popular affection shared only among American poets
by Longfellow. Almost coincident with his passing rose Edgar Lee
Masters, with the “Spoon River Anthology,” and Vachel Lindsay, a poet
hardly less distinguished for penetration and sincerity, to chant of
Illinois in the key of realism. John G. Niehardt has answered their
signals from Nebraska’s corn lands. Nor shall I omit from the briefest
list the “Chicago Poems” of Carl Sandburg. The “wind stacker” and the
tractor are dangerous engines for Romance to charge: I should want
Mr. Booth Tarkington to umpire so momentous a contest. Mr. Tarkington
flirts shamelessly with realism and has shown in “The Turmoil” that he
can slip overalls and jumper over the sword and ruffles of Beaucaire
and make himself a knight of industry. Likewise, in Chicago, Mr.
Henry B. Fuller has posted the Chevalier Pensieri-Vani on the steps
of the board of trade, merely, we may assume, to collect material
for realistic fiction. The West has proved that it is not afraid of
its own shadow in the adumbrations of Mrs. Mary A. Watts, Mr. Robert
Herrick, Miss Willa Sibert Cather, Mr. William Allen White, and Mr.
Brand Whitlock, all novelists of insight, force, and authority; nor may
we forget that impressive tale of Chicago, Frank Norris’s “The Pit,” a
work that gains in dignity and significance with the years.
Education in all the Western States has not merely performed its
traditional functions, but has become a distinct social and economic
force. It is a far cry from the day of the three R’s and the dictum
that the State’s duty to the young ends when it has eliminated them
from the illiteracy columns of the census to the State universities
and agricultural colleges, with their broad curricula and extension
courses, and the free kindergartens, the manual-training high schools,
and vocational institutions that are socializing and democratizing
education.
IV
In every town of the great Valley there are groups of people earnestly
engaged in determined efforts to solve governmental problems. These
efforts frequently broaden into “movements” that succeed. We witness
here constant battles for reform that are often won only to be lost
again. The bosses, driven out at one point, immediately rally and
fortify another. Nothing, however, is pleasanter to record than the
fact that the war upon vicious or stupid local government goes steadily
on and that throughout the field under scrutiny there have been
within a decade marked and encouraging gains. The many experiments
making with administrative devices are rapidly developing a mass of
valuable data. The very lack of uniformity in these movements adds to
their interest; in countless communities the attention is arrested
by something well done that invites emulation. Constant scandals in
municipal administration, due to incompetence, waste, and graft, are
slowly penetrating to the consciousness of the apathetic citizen, and
sentiment favorable to the abandonment of the old system of partisan
local government has grown with remarkable rapidity. The absolute
divorcement of municipalities from State and national politics is
essential to the conduct of city government on business principles.
This statement is made with the more confidence from the fact that it
is reinforced by a creditable literature on the subject, illustrated
by countless surveys of boss-ridden cities where there is determined
protest against government by the unfit. That cities shall be conducted
as stock companies with reference solely to the rights and needs of
the citizen, without regard to party politics, is the demand in so
many quarters that the next decade is bound to witness striking
transformations in this field. Last March Kansas City lost a splendidly
conducted fight for a new charter that embraced the city-manager plan.
Here, however, was a defeat with honor, for the results proved so
conclusively the contention of the reformers, that the bosses rule,
that the effort was not wasted. In Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and
Minneapolis, the leaven is at work, and the bosses with gratifying
density are aiding the cause by their hostility and their constant
illustration of the evils of the antiquated system they foster.
The elimination of the saloon in States that have already adopted
prohibition promises political changes of the utmost importance in
municipal affairs. The saloon is the most familiar and the most
mischievous of all the outposts and rallying centres of political
venality. Here the political “organization” maintains its faithful
sentinels throughout the year; the good citizen, intent upon his lawful
business and interested in politics only when election day approaches,
is usually unaware that hundreds of barroom loafers are constantly
plotting against him. The mounting “dry wave” is attributable quite as
much to revolt against the saloon as the most formidable of political
units as to a moral detestation of alcohol. Economic considerations
also have entered very deeply into the movement, and prohibition
advocated as a war measure developed still another phase. The liquor
interests provoked and invited the drastic legislation that has
overwhelmed their traffic and made dry territory of a large area
of the West. By defying regulatory laws and maintaining lobbies in
legislatures, by cracking the whip over candidates and office-holders,
they made of themselves an intolerable nuisance. Indiana’s adoption of
prohibition was very largely due to antagonism aroused by the liquor
interests through their political activities covering half a century.
The frantic efforts of breweries and distilleries there and in many
other States to persuade saloon-keepers to obey the laws in the hope of
spiking the guns of the opposition came too late. The liquor interests
had counselled and encouraged lawlessness too long and found the
retailer spoiled by the immunity their old political power had gained
for him.
A sweeping Federal law abolishing the traffic may be enacted while
these pages are on the press.[A] Without such a measure wet and dry
forces will continue to battle; territory that is only partly dry
will continue its struggle for bone-dry laws, and States that roped
and tied John Barleycorn must resist attempts to put him on his feet
again. There is, however, nothing to encourage the idea that the
strongly developed sentiment against the saloon will lose its potency;
and it is hardly conceivable that any political party in a dry State
will write a wet plank into its platform, though stranger things have
happened. Men who, in Colorado for example, were bitterly hostile to
prohibition confess that the results convince them of its efficacy. The
Indiana law became effective last April, and in June the workhouse at
Indianapolis was closed permanently, for the interesting reason that
the number of police-court prisoners was so reduced as to make the
institution unnecessary.
The economic shock caused by the prostration of this long-established
business is absorbed much more readily than might be imagined. Compared
with other forms of manufacturing, brewing and distilling have been
enormously profitable, and the operators have usually taken care of
themselves in advance of the destruction of their business. I passed
a brewery near Denver that had turned its attention to the making
of “near” beer and malted milk, and employed a part of its labor
otherwise in the manufacture of pottery. The presence of a herd of
cows on the brewery property to supply milk, for combination with malt,
marked, with what struck me as the pleasantest of ironies, a cheerful
acquiescence in the new order. Denver property rented formerly to
saloon-keepers I found pretty generally occupied by shops of other
kinds. In one window was this alluring sign:
BUY YOUR SHOES
WHERE YOU BOUGHT YOUR BOOZE
V
The West’s general interest in public affairs is not remarkable when
we consider the history of the Valley. The pioneers who crossed the
Alleghanies with rifle and axe were peculiarly jealous of their rights
and liberties. They viewed every political measure in the light of
its direct, concrete bearing upon themselves. They risked much to
build homes and erect States in the wilderness and they insisted, not
unreasonably, that the government should not forget them in their
exile. Poverty enforced a strict watch upon public expenditures, and
their personal security entered largely into their attitude toward the
nation. Their own imperative needs, the thinly distributed population,
apprehensions created by the menace of Indians, stubbornly hostile to
the white man’s encroachments--all contributed to a certain selfishness
in the settlers’ point of view, and they welcomed political leaders
who advocated measures that promised relief and protection. As they
listened to the pleas of candidates from the stump (a rostrum fashioned
by their own axes!) they were intensely critical. Moreover, the
candidate himself was subjected to searching scrutiny. Government,
to these men of faith and hardihood, was a very personal thing: the
leaders they chose to represent them were in the strictest sense
their representatives and agents, whom they retired on very slight
provocation.
The sharp projection of the extension of slavery as an issue served
to awaken and crystallize national feeling. Education, internal
improvements to the accompaniment of wildcat finance, reforms in State
and county governments, all yielded before the greater issue. The
promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness had led the
venturous husbandmen into woods and prairies, and they viewed with
abhorrence the idea that one man might own another and enjoy the fruits
of his labor. Lincoln was not more the protagonist of a great cause
than the personal spokesman of a body of freemen who were attracted
to his standard by the facts of his history that so largely paralleled
their own.
It is not too much to say that Lincoln and the struggle of which he was
the leader roused the Middle West to its first experience of a national
consciousness. The provincial spirit vanished in an hour before the
beat of drums under the elms and maples of court-house yards. The
successful termination of the war left the West the possessor of a new
influence in national affairs. It had not only thrown into the conflict
its full share of armed strength but had sent Grant, Sherman, and many
military stars of lesser magnitude flashing into the firmament. The
West was thenceforth to be reckoned with in all political speculations.
Lincoln was the precursor of a line of Presidents all of whom were
soldiers: Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, McKinley; and there was no
marked disturbance in the old order until Mr. Cleveland’s advent in
1884, with a resulting flare of independence not wholly revealed in the
elections following his three campaigns.
My concern here is not with partisan matters, nor even with those
internal upheavals that in the past have caused so much heartache to
the shepherds of both of the major political flocks. With only the
greatest delicacy may one refer to the Democratic schism of 1896 or to
the break in the Republican ranks of 1912. But the purposes and aims
of the Folks with respect to government are of national importance.
The Folks are not at all disposed to relinquish the power in national
affairs which they have wielded with growing effectiveness. No matter
whether they are right or wrong in their judgments, they are far from
being a negligible force, and forecasters of nominees and policies for
the future do well to give heed to them.
The trend toward social democracy, with its accompanying eagerness
to experiment with new devices for confiding to the people the power
of initiating legislation and expelling unsatisfactory officials,
paralleled by another tendency toward the short ballot and the
concentration of power--these and kindred tendencies are viewed
best in a non-partisan spirit in those free Western airs where the
electorate is fickle, coy, and hard to please. A good deal of what was
called populism twenty years ago, and associated in the minds of the
contumelious with long hair and whiskers, was advocated in 1912 by
gentlemen who called themselves Progressives and were on good terms
with the barber. In the Progressive convention of 1916 I was struck
by the great number of Phi Beta Kappa keys worn by delegates and
sympathetic spectators. If they were cranks they were educated cranks,
who could not be accused of ignorance of the teachings of experience in
their political cogitations. They were presumably acquainted with the
history of republics from the beginning of time, and the philosophy to
be deduced from their disasters. It was because the Progressive party
enlisted so many very capable politicians familiar with organization
methods that it became a formidable rival of the old parties in 1912.
In 1916 it lost most of these supporters, who saw hope of Republican
success and were anxious to ride on the band-wagon. Nothing, however,
could be more reassuring than the confidence in the people, _i. e._,
the Folks manifested by men and women who know their Plato and are
familiar with Isaiah’s distrust of the crowd and his reliance upon the
remnant.
The isolation of the independent who belongs to no organization and is
unaware of the number of voters who share his sentiments, militates
against his effectiveness as a protesting factor. He waits timidly in
the dark for a flash that will guide him toward some more courageous
brother. The American is the most self-conscious being on earth and he
is loath to set himself apart to be pointed out as a crank, for in
partisan camps all recalcitrants are viewed contemptuously as erratic
and dangerous persons. It has been demonstrated that a comparatively
small number of voters in half a dozen Western States, acting together,
can throw a weight into the scale that will defeat one or the other
of the chief candidates for the presidency. If they should content
themselves with an organization and, without nominating candidates,
menace either side that aroused their hostility, their effectiveness
would be increased. But here again we encounter that peculiarity of
the American that he likes a crowd. He is so used to the spectacular
demonstrations of great campaigns, and so enjoys the thunder of the
captains and the shouting, that he is overcome by loneliness when he
finds himself at small conferences that plot the overthrow of the party
of his former allegiance.
The West may be likened to a naughty boy in a hickory shirt and
overalls who enjoys pulling the chair from under his knickerbockered,
Eton-collared Eastern cousins. The West creates a new issue whenever
it pleases, and wearying of one plaything cheerfully seeks another. It
accepts the defeat of free silver and turns joyfully to prohibition,
flattering itself that its chief concern is with moral issues. It
wants to make the world a better place to live in and it believes in
abundant legislation to that end. It experiments by States, points with
pride to the results, and seeks to confer the priceless boon upon the
nation. Much of its lawmaking is shocking to Eastern conservatism, but
no inconsiderable number of Easterners hear the window-smashing and are
eager to try it at home.
To spank the West and send it supperless to bed is a very large order,
but I have conversed with gentlemen on the Eastern seaboard who feel
that this should be done. They go the length of saying that if this
chastisement is neglected the republic will perish. Of course, the
West doesn’t want the republic to perish; it honestly believes itself
preordained of all time to preserve the republic. It sits up o’ nights
to consider ways and means of insuring its preservation. It is very
serious and doesn’t at all like being chaffed about its hatred of Wall
Street and its anxiety to pin annoying tick-tacks on the windows of
ruthless corporations. It is going to get everything for the Folks
that it can, and it sees nothing improper in the idea of State-owned
elevators or of fixing by law the height of the heels on the slippers
of its emancipated women. It is in keeping with the cheery contentment
of the West that it believes that it has “at home” or can summon to its
R. F. D. box everything essential to human happiness.
Across this picture of ease, contentment, and complacency fell the
cloud of war. What I am attempting is a record of transition, and
I have set down the foregoing with a consciousness that our recent
yesterdays already seem remote; that many things that were true only a
few months ago are now less true, though it is none the less important
that we remember them. It is my hope that what I shall say of that
period to which we are even now referring as “before the war” may
serve to emphasize the sharpness of America’s new confrontations and
the yielding, for a time at least, of the pride of sectionalism to the
higher demands of nationality.