Ever since I began to read the American magazines one burning question
has consumed me: why is it that only the thoughts of educated people
are written up? Why shouldn’t sometimes a servant girl or a janitress
or a coal-heaver give his thoughts to the world? We who are forced to
do the drudgery of the world, and who are considered ignorant because
we have no time for school, could say a lot of new and different
things, if only we had a chance to get a hearing.
Very rarely I’d come across a story about a shop-girl or a washerwoman.
But they weren’t real stories. They were twisted pictures of the way
the higher-ups see us people. They weren’t as we are. They were as
unreal as the knowledge of the rich about the poor. Often I’d read
those smooth-flowing stories about nothing at all, and I’d ask myself:
why is it that so many of the educated, with nothing to say, know how
to say that nothing with such an easy flow of words, while I, with
something so aching to be said, can say nothing?
I was like a prison world full of choked-in voices, all beating in my
brain to be heard. The minute I’d listen to one voice a million other
voices would rush in crying for a hearing, till I’d get too excited and
mixed up to know what or where.
Sometimes I’d see my brain as a sort of Hester Street junk-shop, where
a million different things--rich up-town silks and velvets and the
cheapest kind of rags--were thrown around in bunches. It seemed to me
if I struggled from morning till night all my years I could never put
order in my junk-shop brain.
Ach! If I only had an education, I used to think. It seemed to me
that educated people were those who had their hearts and their heads
so settled down in order that they could go on with quiet stillness
to do anything they set out to do. They could take up one thought,
one feeling at a time without getting the rest of themselves mixed up
and excited over it. They had each thought, each feeling, laid out in
separate shelves in their heads. So they could draw out one shelf of
ideas while the rest of their ideas remained quiet and still in the
orderly place inside of them.
With me my thoughts were not up in my head. They were in my hands and
feet, in the thinnest nerves of my hair, in the flesh and blood of my
whole body. Everything hurt in me when I tried to think; it was like
struggling up towards something over me that I could never reach--like
tearing myself out inch by inch from the roots of the earth--like
suffering all pain of dying and being born.
And when I’d really work out a thought in words, I’d want to say it
over and over a million times, for fear maybe I wasn’t saying it
strong enough. And I’d clutch at my few little words as a starving man
clutches at crumbs. I could never sit back with the feeling that I had
said what I wanted to say, like the educated people, who are sure of
themselves when they say something. The real thing I meant remained
inside of me for want of deeper, more burning words than I had yet
found in the cold English language.
With all the confused unsureness of myself, I was absolutely sure I had
great things in me. I felt that all I needed was the chance to reach
the educated higher-ups, and all the big things in me would leap out
quicker than lightning. But how was I to reach these American-born
higher-ups when they were so much above me? I could never get into
their colleges because I could never take the time to learn all the
beginnings from school to pass their entrance examinations. And even if
I had the time to study, I wasn’t interested in grammar and arithmetic
and dry history and still drier and deader literature about Chaucer and
Marlowe. I was too much on fire trying to think out my own thoughts to
get interested in the dust and ashes of dead and gone ones. And yet I
was so crazy to reach those who had all that book-learning from school
in their heads that I was always dreaming of the wonderful educated
world that was over me.
Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and stare through
the darkness at an imaginary world of educated people that would
invite me in to share with them their feast of learning. I saw them
sitting around a table talking high thoughts, all the wisdom of the
ages flowing from lip to lip like living light. I saw just how they
talked and how they looked, because once I had worked as a waitress in
a professor’s house. Their words were over my head, but the sound of
their low voices went through me like music of all that I longed and
dreamed and desired to be.
I used to hold myself tight-in, like a wooden dummy, when I passed them
the food. My lips were tight together, my eyes half-closed, like a
Chinaman’s, as though I didn’t see or hear anything but my one business
of waiting on them. But all the time something in the choked stillness
of me was crying out to them: “I’m no dummy of a servant. I want to be
like you. I could be like all of you if I only had a chance.”
“If I only had a chance” kept going round and round in my head.
“Make your chance,” a still voice goaded me.
“If I could only write out my wonderful thoughts that fly away in the
air I’d get myself a first place in America.”
“No, go ahead. Think connectedly for one minute. Catch your crazy wild
birds and bring them down to earth.”
And so I pushed myself on to begin the adventure of writing out my
thoughts.
But who’ll print what I write? was my next bother.
In my evenings off I used to go to the library and kept looking and
looking through all the magazines to see where I could get a start.
At last I picked out three magazines that stood out plainly for their
special interest in working people. I will call them _The Reformer_,
_The People_ and _Free Mankind_.
_Free Mankind_ was a thin, white, educated-looking magazine, without
covers, without pictures, without any advertising. It gave me the
feeling when I looked through the pages that it was a head without a
body. Most of the articles were high words in the air. I couldn’t make
out what they were talking about, but some of the editorials talked
against paying rent. This at once got me on fire with interest, because
all my life the people I knew were wearing out their years worrying
for the rent. If this magazine was trying to put the landlords out of
business, I was with it. So, fired by the inspiration of the moment, I
rushed to see the editor of _Free Mankind_.
I don’t remember how I ever pushed myself past the telephone girl and
secretary, but I found myself talking face to face with a clean, cold,
high-thinking head, Mr. Alfred Nott, editor-boss of _Free Mankind_. My
burning enthusiasm turned into ice through all my bones as I looked
into the terrible, clean face and cold eyes of this clean cold
higher-up. But I heard my words rushing right to him like the words of
a soap-box speaker who is so on fire with his thoughts that even the
cold ones from up-town are forced to listen to him.
“I can put a lot of new life into your magazine,” I said. “I have in me
great new ideas about life, and I’m crazy to give them out to you. Your
magazine is too much up in the head and not enough down on earth. It’s
all words, words, long-winded empty words in emptiness. Your articles
are something like those long sermons about nothing, that put people
to sleep. I can wake up your readers like lightning. I can make your
magazine mean living things to living people.”
The man fell back in his chair as if frightened. His mouth opened to
speak, but no words came from his lips.
“What you tell us about not paying rent is good enough,” I went on.
“But you should tell us how to put an end to all that. I know enough
about not having a place to sleep in to write you something that will
wake up the dead. You’re not excited enough with feelings when you
write, because you live in a soft steam-heated place with plenty of
money to pay for it. But the poor like me, with little rent, and
drying out their heads worrying for that little, they feel what it is
to be under the foot of those Cossacks, the landlords. In my stories
I’d write for you, I’d get the readers so mad, they’d rush out and do
something.”
Even while I was yet talking, Mr. Nott slipped out of the chair and
disappeared like a frightened rabbit. I could see him vanishing through
the door before I could stop my flow of words. I looked about me in the
empty room. I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face.
I ran out of the office with tears in my eyes. And I couldn’t stop my
crying in the street. So this is his Free Mankind! When a person comes
to him with something real he runs away as from a madman. Here was a
paper that would reform the world, and its boss wouldn’t even listen to
one of the people he was setting out to save.
But there were other magazines in America, I told myself. _The
Reformer_ flashed before my eyes, because I remember it said on the
back page, “It speaks for the average man.”
I found myself again face to face with an editor--John Blair, the great
liberal, the friend of an American President, the starter of a new
school that was to gather all the minds of the new world. With this
man I thought I’d begin by asking him a question instead of rushing
myself out to him in all my hungry eagerness.
“Mr. Blair,” I demanded in a voice of choked-in quietness, “do you
think that the educated people know it all?”
He looked at me for a long minute. His lips closed together, his eyes
cool like a judge. I felt he looked me over to decide in what shelf I
belonged in the filing bureau of his college head.
“No, my dear young woman. I don’t say that educated people have a
monopoly of knowledge, but they are the only ones that know how to use
it.”
“Then it’s only the thoughts of educated people for your magazine,” I
cried disappointedly. “How about people like me with a lot to say but
can’t put it in fancy language? Isn’t your new school to be different
from the old colleges in that you want to bring out the new thoughts of
new people like me? Wouldn’t you want to give a person like me a chance
in your magazine?”
“But can you express yourself logically, reasonably?”
“Logic--reason! Reason--logic!” I jumped from the chair with
excitement. “That’s why your magazine is so dull, so dead, because all
your living thoughts die down in the ashes of dead logic. Reason and
logic aren’t life. Hunger and desire are life. I know, because I’m
burning up with it. With this hunger they paint pictures and write
books and sing songs----”
“You Russians are full of interesting stuff. But you’re so incoherent.
You’d be no use to us unless you could learn to think clearly.”
“I know my thoughts are all mixed up,” I pleaded with educated
quietness, “but it’s only because I have so much to give and nobody
wants it. Wouldn’t it be better for your magazine to have my mixed-up
aliveness instead of the cold logic from your college writers?”
He smiled down pityingly on me.
“I’m afraid that such a chaotic mind as yours would be useless to an
intellectual journal. Good day.”
Not crushed, but bitter and hard and with head high, I walked out of
_The Reformer_ office. Were all the magazines that set themselves up to
save the world headed by such narrow-thinking tsars? Only to prove that
all of them were run by some clique of college professors, I went to
the office of _The People_.
Here the editor didn’t run from me like a frightened rabbit or sting me
with logic like John Blair. He cut short the interview by going over
to the shelf and taking down a book which he handed to me with pitying
kindness. “This will help you to think and maybe to write.”
Out in the street, I gave a look at the book. It was Genung’s
“Psychology of Madness.” It grew black and red before my eyes. So it’s
madness to want to give out my thoughts to the world? They turn me down
like a crazy beggar only because I come to give them new ideas.
I threw the book away in the nearest ash can. But that word “madness”
was to me like a red rag to a bull. I had to write now or go crazy with
the wrath these reformers roused in me.
“What’s my place in America?” I asked myself. “Must I remain a
choked-in servant in somebody’s kitchen or somebody’s factory, or will
I find a way to give out my thoughts to America?”
So what I wrote was the story of myself--myself lost in America.
It was like new air in my lungs to let myself loose on paper. But how
could I get it to the American people? One thing I was sure of. I
wasn’t going to subject myself to another insult from those reform
magazines. I don’t know how it happened, but I picked out _Wharton’s
Magazine_, the most literary magazine of all those I looked over,
simply because it looked so solidly high above the rest. My desperate
need for a hearing made me bold. In my ragged coat and torn shoes I
walked into that breath-taking rich office like a millionaire landlord
with pockets full of rent money.
“Do you want something new and different for your magazine?” I asked
with the low voice and the high head of an American-born.
Friendly eyes turned on me. “We’re always seeking something new and
different. Have you got it?”
I looked right into the friendly eyes. This was Mr. Robert Reeves, the
editor. He had the clean, well-dressed look of the born higher-up. But
how different from those others! His face was human. And there was a
shine in the eyes that warmed me.
“I’m an immigrant,” I said. “I have worked in kitchens, factories and
sweatshops. I’m dying away with the loneliness of my thoughts, so I
wrote myself out in a story.”
He snatched up the papers and began to read. A quick light flashed into
his eyes. Then he turned to me.
“I can see you have something original. But I can’t decide just now.
You’ll hear from me as soon as I have read it through.”
I could hardly walk the street for excitement. My life hung on this
man’s answer. And it came two days later in a small envelope. He
offered me two hundred dollars for my story.
I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a dream. And I rushed with the letter
to his office. “You could have given me a hundred dollars, fifty,
twenty-five, and it would have been to me a fortune. But two
hundred--do you mean really to give that much to me?”
He chuckled to himself, and I rushed right on. “I thought New York
was a den of thieves. The landlord robbing you with the rent, and
the restaurants cheating the strength out of every bite of food you
buy. And I thought the college higher-ups were only educated cowards
with dish-water in their veins, scared to death of hungry people like
me, scared to look at the face of suffering. Their logic and their
reason--only how to use their book-learning brains to shut out their
hearts--to make themselves deaf, dumb and blind to the cry of hunger
and want knocking at their doors.”
“Just because you felt all that so deeply you were able to put fire in
your words.”
A thousand windows of light burst open in me as I listened to him. I
was like something choked for ages in the tight chains of ignorance and
fear, breathing the first breath of free air. For the first time my
eyes began to see, my ears began to hear, my heart began to understand
the world’s wonder and the beauty.
A great pity welled up in my heart for the Alfred Notts and the John
Blairs whom I had so mercilessly condemned. Poor little-educated
ones! Why did I fear them and envy them and hate them so for nothing?
They were only little children putting on a long wooden face, playing
teacher to the world. And I was a little scared child afraid of
teacher--afraid they were grown-ups with the power to hurt me and shut
me out from the fun of life.
Why wasn’t I scared of Robert Reeves from the first minute? It was
because he didn’t frighten people with his highness. He didn’t wear a
wooden face of dignity. He was no reformer, no holy social worker--only
a human being who loved people.
That one flash of understanding from Robert Reeves filled me with such
enthusiasm for work that I shut myself off from the rest of the world
and began turning out story after story.
Years passed. The only sign of success I became aware of was the
increasing flood of mail that poured in on me. People who wanted to be
writers asked me for literary help. People who imagined I was rolling
in money sent me begging letters for aid. At the beginning I wanted
to help them all. But I soon saw that I’d have to spend all my time
answering the demands of foolish self-seekers who had nothing in common
with me. And so I had to harden my heart against these time-wasting
intruders.
One day, as I walked out of my house absorbed in one of the characters
that I was writing about, someone stopped me. I looked up. A pale,
thin, hungry-eyed young man asked timidly: “May I speak to you for
a minute?” Then he told me that he had written a book, and that the
publishers had turned it down, so he had printed it himself. “And I
want your opinion,” he pleaded, “because none of the critics would
listen to me.”
“I’m too busy,” I said irritably. “If you had to print the book
yourself it means it’s no good.”
“I thought you, who once had such a hard struggle, would
remember--would understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand except that you killed yourself with the
public.” And I walked off.
I tried to resume the trend of my thoughts, but I could not think. The
pale face, the hungry eyes, followed me accusingly in the street. “You
who once struggled would understand” rang in my ears. And suddenly I
realized how brutal I had been.
“But it’s the merciless truth,” I defended. Nobody could help him till
he finds himself. Nobody helped me till I had found myself.
“No, I’m all wrong,” another voice cried. “Robert Reeves helped me. I
could never have helped myself all alone. You can only help yourself
half the way. The other half is some Hand of God in the shape of a
human contact.”
Something hurt so deep in me I couldn’t work that day. I couldn’t
sleep that night. The pale face and the hungry eyes kept staring at
me through the darkness. I, who judged the Alfred Notts and the John
Blairs--I saw myself condemned as one of them. I had let myself get so
absorbed with the thoughts in my head that I ceased to have a heart for
the people about me.
What would I not have given to see that young man and tell him how I
suffered for my inhuman busy-business, which had shut my eyes to the
hungry hands reaching up to me. But I never saw him again. And yet that
man whom I had turned away like a beggar had brought me the life of a
new awakening. He had made me aware that I could never contribute my
deepest to America if I lost the friendly understanding of humanity
that Robert Reeves had given me, if I lost the one precious thing that
makes life real--the love for people, even if they are lost, wandering,
crazy people.