of England, and has been for over a thousand years. Some time before
the year 600 Queen Bertha, wife of the Saxon king, became a Christian
and built a small church in Canterbury. Then when St. Augustine came
in 597 and took the king and all his army into the church at one big
baptizing, the king gave him the palace and the heathen church, and
they were converted into a cathedral and monastery. St. Augustine
and succeeding archbishops were the heads of the church in England,
and when the Normans came in 1066 they continued the rule. The first
Norman archbishop began the construction of the present cathedral, and
as money was plenty and labor cheap, it was built magnificently. The
Archbishop of Canterbury received the title of Primate of All England,
and he wears it to this day. The English Church is a government
institution, the archbishop is a member of the House of Lords, and the
position is easily the greatest in the Protestant world.
The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, in 1170, was the greatest
thing that ever happened for Canterbury. He was in a controversy with
King Henry, and made life so uncomfortable for the king that Henry
remarked to some of his followers that if he had a few real friends
there would be no Thomas Becket to worry him. Henry was probably drunk
when he made this talk, although it doubtless was an expression of
his real feelings. Four of his knights took him at his word, hiked
to Canterbury, and killed the archbishop right in the cathedral. The
murder was a shock to Christendom. The dead archbishop was canonized as
a saint, and the people generally refused to believe Henry’s statement
that he didn’t mean what he said. Everything went wrong with Henry, and
the sacrilegious act was held responsible. Two years later the king
went to Canterbury and took a whipping on his bare back as a penance
for his remarks, and for years pilgrims came to Canterbury, miracles
were reported wrought by the relics, and the cathedral and Canterbury
got rich from the pilgrim business and the valuable gifts showered upon
the shrine of St. Thomas.
* * * * *
It is customary to consider Thomas Becket a martyr to the cause of
liberty and to indulge in great eulogy of him as a saint. But he was
really a plain man like the rest of us. His trouble with the king came
because Henry wanted to recognize some other bishops, and Thomas, who
was proud and stubborn, claimed that he alone had the power. It was
really a conflict of authority between the church and the state, and a
good deal to be said on both sides. Thomas abused the king viciously
and had several bishops excommunicated because they agreed with Henry.
He also threatened the king, and the disagreement was all over jobs
and money. Those were tough times, and the usual way to get rid of
an enemy was to kill him if you could. Unfortunately for Henry, his
self-appointed friends did a bungling job, Thomas became a saint, and
the king had to concede to the church all the privileges that had
been claimed. Three hundred years later King Henry the Eighth, in
order to secure a divorce and a new queen, overthrew the authority
of the church, made himself the head of it, and incidentally sent to
Canterbury, took all the valuables that had been placed on the shrine
of St. Thomas, and put them in the national treasury, that is, his own
pocket.
* * * * *
But during that 300 years the supremacy of Canterbury as the religious
head of the nation became fixed. The archbishops generally had to go
into politics, many of them achieved greatness, and some were executed
publicly. The cathedral was added to, “restored,” improved, and is
now one of the very finest cathedrals in Europe. To an Englishman or
an American it is more interesting than any other church in England,
except perhaps Westminster Abbey. It has specimens of all kinds of
architecture in its different parts, but they have been so harmoniously
put together that the edifice is imposing on the outside and most
impressive on the inside.
Canterbury itself is a sleepy old town, very full of quaint houses and
with plenty of tradition to make things interesting. Chaucer, Dickens,
Thackeray and other English writers have woven Canterbury into their
stories, and on every side you are shown the places where heroes and
heroines of fiction made their homes. But this week Canterbury is busy.
The last game of the cricket season is being played, and Canterbury
is as crazy over cricket as Hutchinson was over baseball when in the
Western Association. The cricket association of England is made up of
the counties, and I had the opportunity of seeing the game between Kent
and Yorkshire. Fully ten thousand people attended, and I suppose they
enjoyed the game, though English cricket is as tame to an American
as the moo of a cow would seem to a roaring lion, or as spring-water
lemonade would taste to a colonel from Kentucky. The game began at
10 o’clock in the morning, with Yorkshire, the visiting team, at the
bat. At one o’clock the Yorks were put out after making 75 runs. Then
there was lunch, and the crowd stayed on the field and under the trees
for what looked to me like a harvest home picnic in Kansas. At 2
o’clock play was resumed, and continued till 4 o’clock, when the game
stopped for the players and spectators to have tea. Yes, tea! Imagine
an American ball game suspended for a half-hour while the ball-players
enjoyed tea and sandwiches! It was too much for me. I saw the last
half of the first inning would not be ended in one day, so I quit the
cricketers and their tea and went off to look at an old church, which
was more exciting.
* * * * *
There are some peculiarities about cricket when viewed from an
American standpoint. The association or league corresponds very well
to our National or American League. A club of eleven men may be all
professionals, or, as is usually the case, some may be amateurs.
A professional is a player who is paid, and on the score his name
appears without prefix, just “Brown.” But if he is an amateur and plays
without pay, his name is on the score card “J. M. Brown, Esq.” He is
then called a “gentleman player.” The game usually lasts two days. The
side that is in stays in until ten men are put out. The pitcher or
bowler tries to hit the wicket, three little posts that stand like our
baseball home plate, and if he does, the batter is out. The batter, or
in English the batsman, defends the “wicket,” and when he hits the ball
far enough runs to the other wicket, which is located at the pitcher’s
box. If he knocks a fly and it is caught he is out, or if a fielder
gets the ball and hits the wicket while he is running, he is out. Two
batsmen are up at a time, and a man may make a lot of runs. I saw
Woolley, the pride of Kent, score 56 runs, and players often exceed the
hundred mark. If the game is not finished in three days it is declared
off.
* * * * *
The crowd was quiet and ladylike. Occasionally they would applaud and
say “Well bowled, sir,” but they did not tell the umpire he was rotten
and they never urged the visiting club to warm up another pitcher. Not
a word was said by the players, not a pop-bottle was thrown, nobody
was benched and there was never a thought of such a thing. The English
are better sportsmen than we are, and they applaud a good play by a
visitor. A man who tried to rattle the bowler by screaming that his arm
was glass, would be arrested and probably hung.
* * * * *
Besides the cathedral, the quaint buildings and the cricket, Canterbury
also offered an opportunity to see the moving pictures of the
Jeffries-Johnson prize fight in a theater next to the church. Of course
I did not go. I told several Englishmen that in America we considered
these pictures degrading, and as between the fight pictures and the
cathedral I preferred the cathedral. Besides, I had seen the fight
pictures before.
* * * * *
Another very interesting church in Canterbury is St. Martin’s, a little
one, but considered the mother church of England. It is said to be
the one erected for Queen Bertha before her Saxon husband, Ethelbert,
was converted. This was prior to 600. It is on a foundation which was
used for a Roman temple. Within the church is a big stone font said to
have been used for the baptizing of Ethelbert. There is little doubt
but that the history of St. Martin’s is clear and it is the oldest
Christian church in all England.
* * * * *
Associating with old cathedrals and Saxon churches makes one feel a few
thrills. Even the inn where Chaucer put up his pilgrims seems modern.
But cricket and the prize-fight pictures make up a sort of balance, and
second-hand shops with wonderful salesmen bring one back to the 20th
century. Canterbury has a famous brewery which is better patronized
locally than is the cathedral, and farmers are in town trying to get
hop-pickers just like Kansas farmers after hands in harvest-time. If
St. Thomas could come back and see the automobiles running around his
old monastery, notice the electric lights in the cathedral crypt,
observe the American tourists with their guide-books and their gall, he
would probably have some thrills himself.
The English Strike
LONDON, August 28.
There was a great strike of railway men in England last week, the
news of which was sent over the world. As a subject of conversation
and discussion it has taken the place of ordinary sights and tourist
stunts. A very large per cent of the railway employés went out, there
was rioting in several places, the soldiers were called upon, there
was almost war in spots, and several people, innocent by-standers
usually, were killed. The government secured a cessation of the strike
by getting men and managers to agree to submit the differences to a
national commission and be bound by it--an agreement both sides will
break if it does not suit them. A railroad strike is a most serious
thing in England, for in London and the manufacturing centers the
people depend on the railroads to bring in their provisions, and as
ice is almost unknown very few shops have more than a day’s supply of
meats, fish and fresh eatables on hand. So the strike was pinching
millions of people who had no personal interest in its result.
If I were a railroad employé in England I would strike, or at least
I’d strike out for America or some other land where a man has a show.
Railroad men are not well paid in England, rather worse than other
working-men. Engineers, or drivers as they are called, rarely get to
exceed 30 to 35 shillings a week (seven to nine dollars). Firemen,
switch-men, baggagemen, station-men, operators, conductors and brakemen
get from 20 shillings to 35 shillings a week (five to nine dollars).
And yet both passenger fares and freight charges are higher in England
than in Kansas. In discussing the subject with an educated Englishman
I complained that a man with a family could not live on these wages.
“Yes, but they do,” he said; “but the family doesn’t get meat every
day--and the family doesn’t need meat every day.” I argued on, that a
man can’t buy a home, or save anything for trouble or old age. “That’s
true,” he said, “and it is unfortunate. But his children won’t let
him starve, and there is some light job he can do to help out. The
government is now preparing a plan for the pensioning of old people.
When that law is working, a man won’t have to worry about the future.”
Which is a rotten theory. It merely means that with the prospect of a
pension of less than two dollars a week an English laborer can be kept
working at the present low standard. I am for the old-age pension, but
I am for the proper payment of a workingman while he is at the age to
enjoy life. This beautiful England with its castles and palaces and
picture galleries and great history is far behind every other nation
in its treatment of the workingman, and consequently England is now
sitting on a keg of dynamite which is likely to explode. Once get it
out of the heads of the English workmen that they have to submit to
these things and these wages because their fathers did, and that it is
a great blessing to have a king and lords, and the English working-men
will raise Hades with the present political and social conditions in
merry England. It seems to me that the time is not far distant when the
explosion will take place. Only very skillful management on the part
of the English statesmen and the very conservative habits of thought of
the English people prevented most serious trouble last week.
An English workman usually has a large family, and the only way they
can keep from going hungry or to the poorhouse is for the whole family
to work and mother and children earn money to put into the common
treasury. Meat, vegetables, fruit, everything to eat, costs more in
England than it does in Kansas. Rent is less, but our workmen wouldn’t
live as these have to. Clothing is cheaper in some respects and dearer
in others. But the item is small with an English workman. You can see
that after he pays rent and buys food he has very little left for
wearing apparel, so father wears his suit until it is worn out, mother
gets along on second-hand clothing, which is generally used, and the
children have a cheaper grade and little of it.
* * * * *
I am not knocking on the English. This condition which seems so
distressing to me is a product of their conditions and is not
the deliberate purpose of the people. I think it comes from the
conservatism of the English character, and also from the fact that the
English workman competes against the world. English manufactures and
commerce have been built up because in England labor is intelligent,
high-class, and cheap. I can have a tailor-made suit of clothes for
twelve dollars in London. That’s fine for me, but how is it for the
tailor? And it doesn’t help the other English workingman, for he does
not have the twelve. On the other hand, the ability of the American
workman to buy has brought it to pass that he can get just as good a
suit, better fitted and better looking, at a Hutchinson clothing store
for twelve to fifteen dollars,--and he has the money and buys! There
is going to be some discussion of clothing and the woolen schedule
in the United States, and I want to put in this testimony. Before
I left home I bought a suit in Hutchinson for fifteen dollars. No
English tailor-made suit for that price looks near so well, and the
way it fits and hangs is complimented by the English. The only kind
of stuff that is cheaper in England than with us is that in which
hand labor is employed. Women buy laces because they are made by
intelligent working-women who are paid 25 to 50 cents a day. Silk hats
are cheaper, but the same quality hat I buy at home cost me just as
much in London, and shirts, underwear, sox, etc., are as expensive here
as in Hutchinson. I am told the same rule applies to women’s clothes.
Americans who come to England and continue to live on the same standard
they do in America say that living is more expensive here. Of course
they can have three or four servants for the same price they paid the
one hired girl at home, and can pose as being “upper class.”
* * * * *
I went to a barber shop, a first-class one. I was shaved for a
“tuppence” (four American cents) and had my hair cut for a “trippence”
(six American cents). I gave the barber a tip of a penny, for which
he was very thankful, and then I went out of the shop growling at a
country where I could get shaved so cheaply and where a tailor-made
suit cost only $12. In this world of ours we are so dependent on one
another that you can’t cheapen one man without cheapening all the
rest. I asked the street-car conductor and he told me he was paid
five dollars a week--and he has a family of six. The chamber-maid at
the hotel works for a dollar a week and board. A good coachman or
a house-man gets one to two dollars a week and board. A clerk in a
store does well to beat five dollars a week. How do they live? I don’t
know, but they do; but they have all heard of America and Canada and
Australia, and would go there if they could raise the fare, or if it
were not for leaving family and home.
* * * * *
I am getting away from the strike subject. I make myself unpopular
with some of the English, the wealthier people and their foot-men,
by insisting that the railroad men ought to strike and ought to have
their wages doubled, when I have to pay more than two cents a mile for
a second-class fare, and about twice as much for shipping freight as I
would in Kansas. And I always compare with Kansas, a place most of them
never heard of, and I suppose they think I am describing a fictitious
land where the millennium has already arrived.
* * * * *
We spent an afternoon at Richmond, where high hills rise from the
valley of the Thames and the view of English farm and village, river
and forest, is one of the finest in the world. Far away in the distance
is Windsor Castle, the favorite royal dwelling-place, the Thames like
a silver streak dotted with boats and wooded islands, quaint towns
with old churches, and winding roads white with the macadam of chalky
stone, occasional tram-ways, busses with the passengers on top, gardens
and orchards, little strips of pasture with sheep and cows, fences of
hedges and ivy-covered walls,--all of these things are a panorama which
make the breath come fast, the heart beat more rapidly. The ground is
historic, for it has been the living-place and fighting-place of great
men from the time of the Saxons, and every town and hill is like a page
of English history. Beautiful homes adorn the hillside and comfortable
inns offer entertainment to the traveler and the visitor. It is a great
picture, and artists have copied it onto their canvases. Turner and
Gainsborough lived here, and their pictures of English scenery are
more beautiful than their conceptions of saints and their portraits
of sinners. Here is where good King Edward, the most popular monarch
England has had in many years, came for a view and a night out. In the
road-house on the height is the place where Lilly Langtry achieved fame
by slipping a chunk of ice down the back of Edward’s princely neck.
We had lunch at The Boar’s Head and took tea at The Red Dog, two of the
many taverns which show the English taste in names is just the same now
as it was when Pickwick traveled and motor cars were unknown.
Englishman the Great
LONDON, August 31.
London is easily the capital of the world. As much as every other large
nation might argue the question, there is general acceptance of the
fact that Great Britain is the greatest force politically. The English
navy, superior in size and quality to any other two navies, the English
commerce which goes under the English flag to the furthermost parts,
the great English colonies (almost independent states) Canada and
Australia, the rich English possessions like India and South Africa,
the English “spheres of influence” like Egypt and Persia, and the
supremacy of English capital and banking methods,--all of these and the
capable, self-possessed, educated English manhood and womanhood have
made the power of Great Britain foremost among the nations. And London
is not only the political capital of England and its dependencies, but
it is the capital in business, books, art, fashion, science, and money.
The wealth and the literature and the commerce of the world depend on
the judgment of London. The very thought of the power thus included
is impressive. I walked down Threadneedle street and Lombard street,
each about as large as an alley in Hutchinson, and thought of the
millions and millions of money and capital which those plain buildings
contained, and of the power which the men within them possessed. Then I
thought of the eight million people of London, moving around like ants
in a hill, and the size, the activity, and the never-ending motion,
brought most forcibly to mind how insignificant is one man, especially
if he is from Kansas and doesn’t know a soul in all that aggregation.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SEEING LONDON FROM THE OLD ENGLISH BUS]
But there is one part of London in which all English-speaking people
have a part--the London of history, of Dickens, Thackeray, Johnson,
Shakespeare and those men whose names are living long after the
money-lender and the broker are forgotten. A little way from the
Bank and the bankers is the old Curiosity Shop, the Cheshire Cheese,
the Cock, the Temple Courts, and hundreds of names familiar to
every reader of English literature, and instead of being lonesome
and oppressed by the weight of the millions of people and money, I
felt that I had met old friends, and that Little Dorrit, or David
Copperfield, or Samuel Johnson, or Pendennis, or Oliver Twist or some
other acquaintance whom I knew very well was expected every minute.
That is the great beauty of being an American in London, for all of the
history and literature that have centered here is ours as well as our
English cousins’.
* * * * *
The hansom cab and the old omnibus are disappearing before the taxi
and the motor-bus. It is a shame, but the world will move on. Every
Englishman or traveler remembers the London cab, with its two wheels
and hood-shaped carriage, and the driver up behind. There are still a
few, but the taxis are faster, and the London cab horse will soon be
freed. So it is with the old bus, drawn by two good horses and driven
by an expert driver who knew all of the history and romance of the
buildings along the route, and who would impart said information with
decorations and embellishments to the traveler with a sixpence. All
of this so-called progress, the motor cars and the wider streets, are
doubtless more efficient and more sanitary, but they are not near so
picturesque or interesting. The taxicabs go through the London crowds,
the jam of vehicles and the congestion of traffic at a speed that would
not be tolerated in a small town in Kansas. The policeman stands on the
corner and regulates the moving mass, but apparently there is no speed
limit, only punishment for bad driving. The motor-driver who runs over
a man is severely punished, and that makes him careful. The rule works
well, but not quite so well as the one in Paris, which punishes the
pedestrian who gets in the way of the motor car.
* * * * *
Next to the wages problem is the land problem in England. Three or four
men own half the real estate in London. Their ancestors got it in a
fairly legitimate way when it was outlying country, and now it is the
heart of a great city. The English law of heredity keeps the estate
together. The English land conditions are the worst I know of in any
nation in the world. The rich old dukes who own so much of London
cannot be pried loose from their holdings, and the actual residents
cannot buy their homes or their business houses. The proprietor usually
leases for 99 years, but every improvement goes to him eventually; he
will do nothing himself, and the renter pays the taxes. On Piccadilly
street, in the center of the fashionable residence and shop district,
the Marquis of Landsup, or some such title, has a park of twenty acres
which is surrounded by a high stone wall. It is a pretty park, but
the owner’s family is there only a couple of months in the year when
the weather is cold and the park is not usable. The rest of the time
no one but servants and caretakers occupy that beautiful tract, with
the city all around it. And thousands and tens of thousands of people
are walking the streets or living in miserable tenements. I suspect
I’d be a Socialist if I stayed long in London and thought much about
such things as this. With all their brain and intellect the English
statesmen have not solved the land problem in England, and they never
will solve it until they upset the table.
* * * * *