THE ELUSIVE INSULT
When a man starts on a journey he usually makes a plan before starting.
He will go to this place or that at such a time or times: He will meet
this man and that--and will say to them thus and so. If he is a man of
trained habits--say a commercial traveller for an exacting firm--he will
carry out his plans--or lie about them in his report to the home office.
As my report is to be made to the public there is no need of lying. I
have promised nothing and nothing is expected. My plans went all awry
before I was in the United States two days. But what of that? I may not
find the information I was after, but I am finding things that are
interesting and amusing, so let us carry on. But first a word about
those plans--for what happened to them was rather illuminating. It seems
to cast a light on the law of acceleration that I hear about sometimes.
It has been my experience that a mere observer--"a looker-on here in
Vienna"--seldom arrives at the truth about anything. He sees only the
outside of things. It is when one is actually doing things that he
learns about them. With this in mind I deferred taking the present trip
for many months. Not wishing to come as a holiday onlooker I waited
until actual business made it necessary for me to come. This business
would make it necessary for me to have dealings with men in various
cities, and in order to transact it I would be obliged to keep step with
that part of the business world in which I found it necessary to move. I
would find the chance comments of business conversation more
enlightening than any formal interviews, for they would rise
spontaneously from the soul of things. With all this carefully thought
out I started on my trip.
When I left the farm my plans were vague and leisurely. I had business
to transact, but it was not urgent. It could wait on my convenience and
on the convenience of others. It was little more than a good excuse for
meeting business men in their offices so that I could glimpse what they
were thinking about when off their guard.
When I reached Toronto I found that it would be necessary for me to make
my plans more definite and to speed up to a regular schedule. There
seemed to be more in the business than I thought and it would be well to
make the most of it. So I reformed my plans and prepared to step lively
wherever necessary.
In Boston I was startled to find that further changes in my plans were
advisable. The business looked better than ever, but if I was to
transact it and keep step with the march of things I must exert myself
and move fully three times as fast as had been planned before leaving
Toronto. This would wipe out the holiday aspect of my trip, but it would
give me a more intimate view of the business life of the American
people. I decided to rise to the occasion.
Then I went to New York and what happened to me and my plans may be
indicated by my first experience in the city. Knowing that an old friend
was located at a certain address on lower Broadway I decided to call on
him before doing anything else. I found a real sky-scraper at the
address sought. Looking up his address in the office directory I found
that his room number was 3224. Being accustomed to office buildings and
hotels where the rooms are numbered with the first figure indicating the
floor on which the room is located, I expected to find my friend on the
third floor. Stepping in the elevator I asked for room 3224, and was
promptly whirled to the thirty-second floor. My guess at the location
had been multiplied by ten. And I soon found that this kind of
multiplication touched everything. If Boston made me move three times as
fast as Toronto, New York would make me move ten times as fast and far
as Boston. Right there my plans went glimmering. Like Huck Finn, "I lost
all holts." I was willing to forego a holiday, but I did not propose to
invite apoplexy. Since then I have been doing business in a
catch-as-catch-can way--and getting information and impressions in the
same way. And what I am getting I shall pass on just as I get
it--without plan or too much order. The impossibility of keeping step
with New York without a long previous training has compelled me to give
up the attempt and has restored me to the holiday humor I was in when
leaving the farm. So now we can step lightly again.
One day many years ago I happened to be with the late "Billy" Garrison,
whose memory still lingers in New York newspaper life. A bewildered
individual approached and asked Garrison:
"Are you a Scotchman?"
"No," said the wit, "but if you wait a minute I think I can find you
one."
That swift absurdity epitomizes New York. If you want a man of any
nationality or from any place, you can find him in a minute or two if
you care to search. In trying to get in touch with the United States, or
even the whole world, it is not necessary to leave Manhattan Island. But
I was not searching. I was waiting for mine own to come to me. In this
care-free and receptive mood I met men from many States of the Union and
from many walks of life. Some I met as old friends, some in the way of
business, and some by the simple expedient of borrowing a match in a
smoking-car or hotel lobby. As none suspected any motive beyond what
appeared on the surface, they talked copiously if not always
entertainingly. And I soon discovered the astounding fact that if my
patriotic sentiments were to be outraged I must pave the way for the
insult myself. The war and international relations never cropped up. Of
course the Americans lack the irritant of the adverse exchange which
touches Canadian business life at many points every day and arouses
wrath. As a matter of fact, the exchange gives their dealings with
Canada and Great Britain an added zest and tends to make them take a
placid view of the international situation. That in itself is enough to
increase the irritation of a Canadian, but I could hardly make it a
cause of argument, for exchange is a subject that I do not feel that I
understand except in moments of exalted financial meditation such as
seldom come to me. While I might feel sore about having my Canadian
money discounted, the Americans were not sore at all. Indeed, they went
farther and were unfailing in their sympathy. That hurt a little, but I
could hardly treat it as an insult.
Still I was not without my moments of insight and amusement. I found
that my friends and chance acquaintances, like those who talked in the
parlor car, had one great grievance in common--the activities of
agitators, Bolshevists, I.W.W.'s and all who are attacking American
institutions. This touches them more nearly than international
relations or any criticisms that come from abroad. And all of them dealt
with the trouble in the same strain. They are not afraid of these wild
men or of their wild ideas. But they are hurt and humiliated to find
that people exist, especially within the borders of the United States,
who believe the kind of nonsense that these people talk. Real Americans
feel disgraced that news of that sort of discontent should be going out
to the world. The attitude seems to be one of shame and indignation
rather than of fear or anger. They were hurt to find that any
one--especially any one who had come to America to live--could fail to
see the manifold advantages of living under the Stars and Stripes. No
one was afraid that the radicals could accomplish their ends--they were
simply a noisy, irrational minority--but it was an insult to every
American to have these people denying that the United States is the
finest country in the world. It seemed incredible, stupefying.
The man from Seattle on the observation car was able to give first-hand
information about the I.W.W. and he proceeded to do so volubly and
emphatically. He pinned his faith to the chastening influence of an
accurately applied bludgeon in dealing with this element of society, and
told with relish of how I.W.W. leaders were beaten up whenever they
tried to start something. He established his claim to being a true
American by stating that although living in the West he was born in
Boston and was descended from one of the seven men who had established
the town of Salem. He was all for direct action in dealing with the
advocates of direct action.
The sum of the matter is that the unrest is rousing American citizens to
a keener sense of their heritage as descendants of the men who laid the
foundations of the country, and they are inclined to be intolerant of
any one who questions the soundness and essential rightness of American
institutions. They have no patience with those who would overturn their
system of government. The result will probably be a livelier sense of
citizenship on the part of many who have been neglectful of their duties
in the matter. They will not leave the conduct of affairs to those who
cater to the forces of disruption. They are all for the America of their
fathers, and this unrest will probably cause a rebirth of the
old-fashioned American spirit. The danger is that a nation that has been
roused to a sense of power by the war will act swiftly and intolerantly
without discriminating sufficiently between those who would reform
society and those who would wreck it.