good-tempered and good-natured than the Englishman. Women, children,
and animals are treated with considerably more kindness. The American
translation of paterfamilias is not domestic tyrant. Horses are driven
by the voice rather than by the whip. The superior does not thrust his
superiority on his inferior so brutally as we are apt to do. There is
a general intention to make things pleasant--at any rate so long as it
does not involve the doer in loss. There is less _gratuitous_
insolence. Servility, with its attendant hypocrisy and deceit, is
conspicuously absent; and the general spirit of independence, if
sometimes needlessly boorish in its manifestations, is at least sturdy
and manly. In England we are rude to those weaker than ourselves; in
America the rudeness is apt to be directed against those whom we
suspect to be in some way our superior. Man is regarded by man rather
as an object of interest than as an object of suspicion. Charity is
very widespread; and the idea of a fellow-creature actually suffering
from want of food or shelter is, perhaps, more repugnant to the
average American than to the average Englishman, and more apt to act
immediately on his purse-strings. In that which popular language
usually means when it speaks of immorality, all outward indications
point to the greater purity of the American. The conversation of the
smoking-room is a little less apt to be _risqué_; the possibility of
masculine continence is more often taken for granted; solicitation on
the streets is rare; few American publishers of repute dare to issue
the semi-prurient style of novel at present so rife in England; the
columns of the leading magazines are almost prudishly closed to
anything suggesting the improper. The tone of the stage is distinctly
healthier, and adaptations of hectic French plays are by no means so
popular, in spite of the general sympathy of American taste with
French. The statistics of illegitimacy point in the same direction,
though I admit that this is not necessarily a sign of unsophisticated
morality. In a word, when an Englishman goes to France he feels that
the moral tone in this respect is more lax than in England; when he
goes to America he feels that it is more firm. And he will hardly find
adequate the French explanation, _viz._, that there is not less vice
but more hypocrisy in the Anglo-Saxon community.
There is another very important sphere of morality in which the
general attitude of the United States seems to me very appreciably
superior to that of England. It is that to which St. Paul refers when
he says, "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." American
public sentiment is distinctly ahead of ours in recognising that a
life of idleness is wrong in itself, and that the possibility of
leading such a life acts most prejudicially on character. The American
answer to the Englishman trying to define what he meant by "gentlemen
of leisure" "Ah, we call them _tramps_ in America"--is not merely a
jest, but enshrines a deep ethnical and ethical principle. Most
Americans would, I think, agree strongly with Mr. Bosanquet's
philosophical if somewhat cumbersomely worded definition of legitimate
private property, "that things should not come miraculously and be
unaffected by your dealings with them, but that you should be in
contact with something which in the external world is the definite
material representative of yourself" ("Aspects of the Social Problem,"
p. 313). The British gentleman, aware that his dinner does not agree
with him unless he has put forth a certain amount of physical energy,
reverts to one of the earliest and most primitive forms of work,
_viz._, hunting. There is a small--a very small--class in the United
States in the same predicament; but as a rule the worker there is not
only more honoured, but also works more in accordance with the spirit
of the age.
The general attitude of Americans towards militarism seems to me also
superior to ours; and one of the keenest dreads of the best American
citizens during a recent wave of jingoism was that of "the reflex
influence of militarism upon the national character, the
transformation of a peace-loving people into a nation of swaggerers
ever ready to take offence, prone to create difficulties, eager to
shed blood, and taking all sorts of occasions to bring the Christian
religion to shame under pretence of vindicating the rights of humanity
in some other country." The spectacle of a section in the United
States apparently ready to step down from its pedestal of honourable
neutrality, and run its head into the ignoble web of European
complications, was indeed one to make both gods and mortals weep. But
I do not believe it expressed the true attitude of the real American
people. Perhaps the personal element enters too largely into my
ascription of superior morality to the Americans in this matter,
because I can never thoroughly enjoy a military pageant, no matter how
brilliant, for thinking of the brutal, animal, inhuman element in our
nature of which it is, after all, the expression: military pomp is to
me merely the surface iridescence of a malarious pool, and the honour
paid to our life destroyers would, from my point of view, be
infinitely better bestowed on life preservers, such as the noble and
intrepid corps of firemen. Sympathisers with this view seem much more
numerous in the United States than in England.[11]
The judgment of an uncommercial traveller on commercial morality may
well be held as a feather-weight in the balance. Such as mine is, it
is gathered mainly from the tone of casual conversation, from which I
should conclude that a considerable proportion of Americans read a
well-known proverb as "All's fair in love or business." Men--I will
not say of a high character and standing, but men of a standing and
character who would not have done it in England--told me instances of
their sharp practices in business, with an evident expectation of my
admiration for their shrewdness, and with no apparent sense of the
slightest moral delinquency. Possibly, when the "rules of the game"
are universally understood, there is less moral obliquity in taking
advantage of them than an outsider imagines. The prevalent belief that
America is more sedulous in the worship of the Golden Calf than any
other country arises largely, I believe, from the fact that the
chances of acquiring wealth are more frequent and easy there than
elsewhere. Opportunity makes the thief. Anyhow, the reproach comes
with a bad grace from the natives of a country which has in its annals
the outbreak of the South Sea Bubble, the railway mania of the Hudson
era, and the revelations of Mr. Hooley.
Politics enter so slightly into the scope of this book that a very few
words on the question of political morality must suffice. That
political corruption exists more commonly in the United States than in
Great Britain--especially in municipal government--may be taken as
admitted by the most eminent American publicists themselves. A very
limited degree of intercourse with "professional politicians" yields
ample confirmatory evidence. Thus, to give but one instance, a wealthy
citizen of one of the largest Eastern towns told me, with absolute
ingenuousness, how he had "dished" the (say) Republican party in a
municipal contest, not in the least because he had changed his
political sympathies, but simply because the candidates had refused to
accede to certain personal demands of his own. He spoke throughout the
conversation as if it must be perfectly apparent to me, as to any
intelligent person, that the only possible reason for working and
voting for a political party must be personal interest. I confess this
seemed to me a very significant straw. On the other hand the
conclusions usually drawn by stay-at-home English people on these
admissions is ludicrously in excess of what is warranted by the facts.
"To imagine for a moment that 60,000,000 of people--better educated
than any other nation in the world--are openly tolerating universal
corruption in all Federal, State, and municipal government is simply
assuming that these 60,000,000 are either criminals or fools." Now,
"you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the
people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of
the time." A more competent judge[12] than the present writer estimates
the morals of the American political "wire-puller" as about on a level
with those of our company directors. And before my English readers
make their final decision on the American political system let them
study Chapter XLVI. of that very fascinating novel, "The Honorable
Peter Stirling," by Paul Leicester Ford. It may give them some new
light on the subject of "a government of the average," and show them
what is meant by the saying, "The boss who does the most things that
the people want can do the most things that the people don't want."
We must remember, too, that nothing is hidden from general knowledge
in America: every job comes sooner or later into the merciless glare
of publicity. And if our political sins are not the same as theirs,
they are perhaps equally heinous. Was not the British landlord who
voted against the repeal of the corn laws, so that land might continue
to bring in a high rent at the expense of the poor man, really acting
from just as corrupt a motive of self-interest as the American
legislator who accepts a bribe? It does not do to be too superior on
this question.
We may end this chapter by a typical instance of the way in which
British opinion of America is apt to be formed that comes under my
notice at the very moment I write these lines. The _Daily Chronicle_
of March 24, 1896, published a leading article on "Family Life in
America," in which it quotes with approval Mme. Blanc's assertion that
"the single woman in the United States is infinitely superior to her
European sister." In the same issue of the paper is a letter from Mrs.
Fawcett relating to a recent very deplorable occurrence in Washington,
where the daughter of a well-known resident shot a coloured boy who
was robbing her father's orchard. In the _Chronicle_ of March 25th
appears a triumphant British letter from "Old-Fashioned," asking
satirically whether the habit of using loaded revolvers is a proof of
the "infinite superiority" of the American girl. Now this estimable
gentleman is making the mistake that nine out of ten of his countrymen
constantly make in swooping down on a single _outré_ instance as
_characteristic_ of American life. If "Old-Fashioned" has not time to
pay a visit to America or to read Mr. Bryce's book, let him at least
accept my assurance that the above-mentioned incident seems to the
full as extraordinary to the Bostonian as to the Londoner, and that it
is just as typical of the habits of the American society girl as the
action of Miss Madeleine Smith was of English girls.
"Of all the sarse thet I can call to mind,
England doos make the most onpleasant kind.
It's you're the sinner ollers, she's the saint;
Whot's good's all English, all thet isn't, ain't.
She is all thet's honest, honnable, an' fair.
An' when the vartoos died they made her heir."
FOOTNOTES:
[9] See, _e.g._, "Ad Familiares," 5, 18.
[10] This was written just after President Cleveland's pronunciamento
in regard to Venezuela, and thus long before the outbreak of the war
with Spain.
[11] This paragraph was written before the outbreak of the
Spanish-American war; but the events of that struggle do not seem to
me to call for serious modification of the opinion expressed above.
[12] Sir George Campbell, in "Black and White in America."
VII
Sports and Amusements
In face of the immense sums of money spent on all kinds of sport, the
size and wealth of the athletic associations, the swollen salaries of
baseball players, the prominence afforded to sporting events in the
newspapers, the number of "world's records" made in the United States,
and the tremendous excitement over inter-university football matches
and international yacht-races, it may seem wanton to assert that the
love of sport is not by any means so genuine or so universal in the
United States as in Great Britain; and yet I am not at all sure that
such a statement would not be absolutely true. By true "love of sport"
I understand the enjoyment that arises from either practising or
seeing others practise some form of skill-demanding amusement for its
own sake, without question of pecuniary profit; and the true sport
lover is not satisfied unless the best man wins, whether he be friend
or foe. Sport ceases to be sport as soon as it is carried on as if it
were war, where "all" is proverbially "fair." The excitement of
gambling does not seem to me to be fairly covered by the phrase "love
of sport," and no more does the mere desire to see one's university,
state, or nation triumph over someone else's university, state, or
nation. There are thousands of people who rejoice over or bewail the
result of the Derby without thereby proving their possession of any
right to the title of sportsman; there is no difference of quality
between the speculator in grain and the speculator in horseflesh and
jockeys' nerves. So, too, there are many thousands who yell for Yale
in a football match who have no real sporting instinct whatever.
Sport, to be sport, must jealously shun all attempts to make it a
business; the more there is of the spirit of professionalism in any
game or athletic exercise the less it deserves to be called a sport. A
sport in the true sense of the word must be practised for fun or
glory, not for dollars and cents; and the desire to win must be very
strictly subordinated to the sense of honour and fair play. The
book-making spirit has undoubtedly entered far too largely into many
of the most characteristic of British sports, and I have no desire to
palliate or excuse our national shortcomings in this or other
respects. But the hard commercial spirit to which I have alluded seems
to me to pervade American sport much more universally than it does the
sport of England, and to form almost always a much larger factor in
the interest excited by any contest.
This is very clearly shown by the way in which games are carried on at
the universities of the two countries. Most members of an English
college are members of some one or other of the various athletic
associations connected with it, and it cannot be denied that the
general interest in sport is both wide and keen. But it does not
assume so "business-like" an air as it does in such a university as
Yale or Princeton. Not nearly so much money is spent in the
paraphernalia of the sport or in the process of training. The
operation of turning a pleasure into a toil is not so consistently
carried on. The members of the intercollegiate team do not obtain
leave of absence from their college duties to train and practise in
some remote corner of England as if they were prize-fighters or
yearlings. "Gate-money" does not bulk so largely in the view; in fact,
admission to many of the chief encounters is free. The atmosphere of
mystery about the doings of the crew or team is not so sedulously
cultivated. The men do not take defeat so hardly, or regard the loss
of a match as a serious calamity in life. I have the authority of Mr.
Caspar W. Whitney, the editor of _Forest and Stream_, and perhaps the
foremost living writer on sport in the United States, for the
statement that members of a defeated football team in America will
sometimes throw themselves on their faces on the turf and weep (see
his "Sporting Pilgrimage," Chapter IV., pp. 94, 95).[13] It was an
American orator who proposed the toast: "My country--right or wrong,
my country;" and there is some reason to fear that American college
athletes are tempted to adapt this in the form "Let us _win_, by fair
means or foul." I should hesitate to suggest this were it not that the
evidence on which I do so was supplied from American sources. Thus,
one American friend of mine told me he heard a member of a leading
university football team say to one of his colleagues: "You try to
knock out A.B. this bout; I've been warned once." Tactics of this kind
are freely alleged against our professional players of association
football; but it may safely be asserted that no such sentence could
issue from the lips of a member of the Oxford or Cambridge university
teams.
Mr. E.J. Brown, Track Captain of the University of California,
asserted, on his return from a visit to the Eastern States, that
Harvard was the only Eastern university in which the members of the
athletic teams were all _bonâ fide_ students. This is doubtless a very
exaggerated statement, but it would seem to indicate which way the
wind blows. The entire American tendency is to take amusement too
seriously, too strenuously. They do not allow sport to take care of
itself. "It runs to rhetoric and interviews." All good contestants
become "representatives of the American people." One serious effect of
the way in which the necessity of winning or "making records" is
constantly held up as the _raison d'être_ of athletic sports is that
it suggests to the ordinary student, who has no hopes of brilliant
success in athletics, that moderate exercise is contemptible, and that
he need do nothing to keep up his bodily vigour. Thus, Dr. Birkbeck
Hill found that the proportion of students who took part in some
athletic sport was distinctly less at Harvard than at Oxford. Nor
could I ascertain that nearly so large a proportion of the adult
population themselves played games or followed athletics of any kind
as in England. I should say, speaking roughly, that the end of his
university career or his first year in responsible business
corresponded practically for the ordinary American to the forty-fifth
year of the ordinary Englishman, _i.e._, after this time he would
either entirely or partially give up his own active participation in
outdoor exercises. Of course there are thousands of exceptions on both
sides; but the general rule remains true. The average American
professional or business man does not play baseball as his English
cousin does cricket. He goes in his thousands to see baseball
matches, and takes a very keen and vociferous interest in their
progress; but he himself has probably not handled a club since he left
college. No doubt this contrast is gradually diminishing, and such
games as lawn tennis and golf have made it practically a vanishing
quantity in the North-eastern States; but as one goes West one cannot
but feel that baseball and other sports, like dancing in China, are
almost wholly in the hands of paid performers.
The national games of cricket and baseball serve very well to
illustrate this, as well as other contrasts in the pastimes of the two
nations. In cricket the line between the amateur and the professional
has hitherto been very clearly drawn; and Englishmen are apt to
believe that there is something elevating in the very nature of the
game which makes it shed scandals as a duck's back sheds water. The
American view is, perhaps, rather that cricket is so slow a game that
there is little scope for betting, with all its attendant excitement
and evils. They point to the fact that the staid city of Philadelphia
is the only part of the United States in which cricket flourishes;
and, if in a boasting mood, they may claim with justice that it has
been cultivated there in a way that shows that it is not lack of
ability to shine in it that makes most Americans indifferent to the
game. A first-class match takes three days to play, and even a match
between two teams of small boys requires a long half-holiday. Hence
the game is largely practised by the members of the leisure class. The
grounds on which it is played are covered with the greenest and
best-kept of turf, and are often amid the most lovely surroundings.
The season at which the game is played is summer, so that looking on
is warm and comfortable. There is comparatively little chance of
serious accident; and the absence of personal contact of player with
player removes the prime cause of quarrelling and ill-feeling. Hence
ladies feel that they may frequent cricket matches in their daintiest
summer frocks and without dread of witnessing any painful accident or
unseemly scuffle. The costumes of the players are varied, appropriate,
and tasteful, and the arrangement of the fielders is very picturesque.
Baseball, on the other hand (which, _pace_, my American friends, is
simply glorified rounders), with the exception of school and college
teams, is almost wholly practised by professional players; and the
place of the county cricket matches is taken by the games between the
various cities represented in the National League, in which the
amateur is severely absent. The dress, with a long-sleeved semmet
appearing below a short-sleeved jersey, is very ugly, and gives a sort
of ruffianly look to a "nine" which it might be free from in another
costume. The ground is theoretically grass, but practically (often, at
least) hard-trodden earth or mud. A match is finished in about one
hour and a half. In running for base a player has often to throw
himself on his face, and thereby covers himself with dust or mud. The
spectators have each paid a sum varying from 1s. or 2s. to 8s. or even
10s. for admission, and are keenly excited in the contest; while their
yells, and hoots, and slangy chaff are very different to the decorous
applause of the cricket field, and rather recall an association
football crowd in the Midlands. As a rule not much sympathy or
courtesy is extended to the visiting team, and the duties of an
umpire are sometimes accompanied by real danger.[14] Several features
of the play seem distinctly unsportsmanlike. Thus, it is the regular
duty of one of the batting team, when not in himself, to try to
"rattle" the pitcher or fielder by yells and shouts just as he is
about to "pitch" or "catch" or "touch." It is not considered
dishonourable for one of the waiting strikers to pretend to be the
player really at a base and run from base to base just outside the
real line so as to confuse the fielders. On the other hand the game is
rapid, full of excitement and variety, and susceptible of infinite
development of skill. The accuracy with which a long field will throw
to base might turn an English long-leg green with envy; and the way in
which an expert pitcher will make a ball deflect _in the air_, either
up or down, to the right or left, must be seen to be believed. A
really skilful pitcher is said to be able to throw a ball in such a
way that it will go straight to within a foot of a tree, _turn out for
the tree_, and resume its original course on the other side of it!