A heavy rainstorm came up during the day, and I had concluded that the
condition of the streets would be such that my hosts would have to give
up the idea of going out to dinner, although the dining-hall I had
understood to be quite near. I was much surprised when at the dinner
hour the ladies appeared prepared to go out, but without either rubbers
or umbrellas.
The mystery was explained when we found ourselves on the street, for a
continuous waterproof covering had been let down so as to inclose the
sidewalk and turn it into a well lighted and perfectly dry corridor,
which was filled with a stream of ladies and gentlemen dressed for
dinner. At the corners the entire open space was similarly roofed in.
Edith Leete, with whom I walked, seemed much interested in learning
what appeared to be entirely new to her, that in the stormy weather the
streets of the Boston of my day had been impassable, except to persons
protected by umbrellas, boots, and heavy clothing. "Were sidewalk
coverings not used at all?" she asked. They were used, I explained, but
in a scattered and utterly unsystematic way, being private enterprises.
She said to me that at the present time all the streets were provided
against inclement weather in the manner I saw, the apparatus being
rolled out of the way when it was unnecessary. She intimated that it
would be considered an extraordinary imbecility to permit the weather
to have any effect on the social movements of the people.
Dr. Leete, who was walking ahead, overhearing something of our talk,
turned to say that the difference between the age of individualism and
that of concert was well characterized by the fact that, in the
nineteenth century, when it rained, the people of Boston put up three
hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth
century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.
As we walked on, Edith said, "The private umbrella is father's favorite
figure to illustrate the old way when everybody lived for himself and
his family. There is a nineteenth century painting at the Art Gallery
representing a crowd of people in the rain, each one holding his
umbrella over himself and his wife, and giving his neighbors the
drippings, which he claims must have been meant by the artist as a
satire on his times."
We now entered a large building into which a stream of people was
pouring. I could not see the front, owing to the awning, but, if in
correspondence with the interior, which was even finer than the store I
visited the day before, it would have been magnificent. My companion
said that the sculptured group over the entrance was especially
admired. Going up a grand staircase we walked some distance along a
broad corridor with many doors opening upon it. At one of these, which
bore my host's name, we turned in, and I found myself in an elegant
dining-room containing a table for four. Windows opened on a courtyard
where a fountain played to a great height and music made the air
electric.
"You seem at home here," I said, as we seated ourselves at table, and
Dr. Leete touched an annunciator.
"This is, in fact, a part of our house, slightly detached from the
rest," he replied. "Every family in the ward has a room set apart in
this great building for its permanent and exclusive use for a small
annual rental. For transient guests and individuals there is
accommodation on another floor. If we expect to dine here, we put in
our orders the night before, selecting anything in market, according to
the daily reports in the papers. The meal is as expensive or as simple
as we please, though of course everything is vastly cheaper as well as
better than it would be prepared at home. There is actually nothing
which our people take more interest in than the perfection of the
catering and cooking done for them, and I admit that we are a little
vain of the success that has been attained by this branch of the
service. Ah, my dear Mr. West, though other aspects of your
civilization were more tragical, I can imagine that none could have
been more depressing than the poor dinners you had to eat, that is, all
of you who had not great wealth."
"You would have found none of us disposed to disagree with you on that
point," I said.
The waiter, a fine-looking young fellow, wearing a slightly distinctive
uniform, now made his appearance. I observed him closely, as it was the
first time I had been able to study particularly the bearing of one of
the enlisted members of the industrial army. This young man, I knew
from what I had been told, must be highly educated, and the equal,
socially and in all respects, of those he served. But it was perfectly
evident that to neither side was the situation in the slightest degree
embarrassing. Dr. Leete addressed the young man in a tone devoid, of
course, as any gentleman's would be, of superciliousness, but at the
same time not in any way deprecatory, while the manner of the young man
was simply that of a person intent on discharging correctly the task he
was engaged in, equally without familiarity or obsequiousness. It was,
in fact, the manner of a soldier on duty, but without the military
stiffness. As the youth left the room, I said, "I cannot get over my
wonder at seeing a young man like that serving so contentedly in a
menial position."
"What is that word 'menial'? I never heard it," said Edith.
"It is obsolete now," remarked her father. "If I understand it rightly,
it applied to persons who performed particularly disagreeable and
unpleasant tasks for others, and carried with it an implication of
contempt. Was it not so, Mr. West?"
"That is about it," I said. "Personal service, such as waiting on
tables, was considered menial, and held in such contempt, in my day,
that persons of culture and refinement would suffer hardship before
condescending to it."
"What a strangely artificial idea," exclaimed Mrs. Leete wonderingly.
"And yet these services had to be rendered," said Edith.
"Of course," I replied. "But we imposed them on the poor, and those who
had no alternative but starvation."
"And increased the burden you imposed on them by adding your contempt,"
remarked Dr. Leete.
"I don't think I clearly understand," said Edith. "Do you mean that you
permitted people to do things for you which you despised them for
doing, or that you accepted services from them which you would have
been unwilling to render them? You can't surely mean that, Mr. West?"
I was obliged to tell her that the fact was just as she had stated. Dr.
Leete, however, came to my relief.
"To understand why Edith is surprised," he said, "you must know that
nowadays it is an axiom of ethics that to accept a service from another
which we would be unwilling to return in kind, if need were, is like
borrowing with the intention of not repaying, while to enforce such a
service by taking advantage of the poverty or necessity of a person
would be an outrage like forcible robbery. It is the worst thing about
any system which divides men, or allows them to be divided, into
classes and castes, that it weakens the sense of a common humanity.
Unequal distribution of wealth, and, still more effectually, unequal
opportunities of education and culture, divided society in your day
into classes which in many respects regarded each other as distinct
races. There is not, after all, such a difference as might appear
between our ways of looking at this question of service. Ladies and
gentlemen of the cultured class in your day would no more have
permitted persons of their own class to render them services they would
scorn to return than we would permit anybody to do so. The poor and the
uncultured, however, they looked upon as of another kind from
themselves. The equal wealth and equal opportunities of culture which
all persons now enjoy have simply made us all members of one class,
which corresponds to the most fortunate class with you. Until this
equality of condition had come to pass, the idea of the solidarity of
humanity, the brotherhood of all men, could never have become the real
conviction and practical principle of action it is nowadays. In your
day the same phrases were indeed used, but they were phrases merely."
"Do the waiters, also, volunteer?"
"No," replied Dr. Leete. "The waiters are young men in the unclassified
grade of the industrial army who are assignable to all sorts of
miscellaneous occupations not requiring special skill. Waiting on table
is one of these, and every young recruit is given a taste of it. I
myself served as a waiter for several months in this very dining-house
some forty years ago. Once more you must remember that there is
recognized no sort of difference between the dignity of the different
sorts of work required by the nation. The individual is never regarded,
nor regards himself, as the servant of those he serves, nor is he in
any way dependent upon them. It is always the nation which he is
serving. No difference is recognized between a waiter's functions and
those of any other worker. The fact that his is a personal service is
indifferent from our point of view. So is a doctor's. I should as soon
expect our waiter today to look down on me because I served him as a
doctor, as think of looking down on him because he serves me as a
waiter."
After dinner my entertainers conducted me about the building, of which
the extent, the magnificent architecture and richness of embellishment,
astonished me. It seemed that it was not merely a dining-hall, but
likewise a great pleasure-house and social rendezvous of the quarter,
and no appliance of entertainment or recreation seemed lacking.
"You find illustrated here," said Dr. Leete, when I had expressed my
admiration, "what I said to you in our first conversation, when you
were looking out over the city, as to the splendor of our public and
common life as compared with the simplicity of our private and home
life, and the contrast which, in this respect, the twentieth bears to
the nineteenth century. To save ourselves useless burdens, we have as
little gear about us at home as is consistent with comfort, but the
social side of our life is ornate and luxurious beyond anything the
world ever knew before. All the industrial and professional guilds have
clubhouses as extensive as this, as well as country, mountain, and
seaside houses for sport and rest in vacations."
NOTE. In the latter part of the nineteenth century it became a practice
of needy young men at some of the colleges of the country to earn a
little money for their term bills by serving as waiters on tables at
hotels during the long summer vacation. It was claimed, in reply to
critics who expressed the prejudices of the time in asserting that
persons voluntarily following such an occupation could not be
gentlemen, that they were entitled to praise for vindicating, by their
example, the dignity of all honest and necessary labor. The use of this
argument illustrates a common confusion in thought on the part of my
former contemporaries. The business of waiting on tables was in no more
need of defense than most of the other ways of getting a living in that
day, but to talk of dignity attaching to labor of any sort under the
system then prevailing was absurd. There is no way in which selling
labor for the highest price it will fetch is more dignified than
selling goods for what can be got. Both were commercial transactions to
be judged by the commercial standard. By setting a price in money on
his service, the worker accepted the money measure for it, and
renounced all clear claim to be judged by any other. The sordid taint
which this necessity imparted to the noblest and the highest sorts of
service was bitterly resented by generous souls, but there was no
evading it. There was no exemption, however transcendent the quality of
one's service, from the necessity of haggling for its price in the
market-place. The physician must sell his healing and the apostle his
preaching like the rest. The prophet, who had guessed the meaning of
God, must dicker for the price of the revelation, and the poet hawk his
visions in printers' row. If I were asked to name the most
distinguishing felicity of this age, as compared to that in which I
first saw the light, I should say that to me it seems to consist in the
dignity you have given to labor by refusing to set a price upon it and
abolishing the market-place forever. By requiring of every man his best
you have made God his task-master, and by making honor the sole reward
of achievement you have imparted to all service the distinction
peculiar in my day to the soldier's.