go to America the utmost you can see is what America is becoming. And
when you see the Briton you see a man steadfast at some post of duty,
but the American is something to-day but God-knows-what to-morrow. Our
noblest epitaph is "He knew his job"; theirs, "He sacrificed himself to
a cause."
Observe, "that state of life unto which it shall please God to call
me," puts the Briton in a static order of things. He is in his little
shop, or at the forge, or in the coal yard. Within his sight is the
Norman tower of the village church. He is known to the priest by his
name and his job. He is part of the priests' cure of souls. His life
is functionised at the village altar and not at the far shrines of
ambition. He belongs to the peasant world. Even though he is English he
is as the Russian, "one of God's faithful slaves."
Thousands of English, Scotch, and Irish, simple souls, say their
prayers to God each night, not because they are pillars of a chapel
or have lately been "saved," but because they have been brought up in
that way of life and in that relation to God. They pray God sometimes
in anguish that they may be helped _to do their duty_. They say the
Lord's Prayer, not as a patter, but with the stark simplicity which you
associate with the grey wall of the old church.
These village folk of ours are like old trees. Close your eyes to the
visible and open them to the invisible world, and you see the young
man of to-day as the stem, his father as the branch, his grandfather
the greater branch. You see in the shadow rising out of the earth the
ancient trunk. You think of many people, and yet it is not father and
grandfather, and grandfather and great-grandfather, and so on, but
one tree, the name of which is the young man leafing in the world
of to-day. That man is no shoot, no seedling, he has behind him the
consciousness of the vast umbrageous oak. When he says "Our Father,
which art in heaven," the voice comes out of the depths of the earth,
and it comes from father and grandfather, and from greybeard after
greybeard standing behind one another's shoulders, innumerably.
The place to which it shall please God to call you is not a definite
locality in the United States of America; the dream of wealth is
dreamed inside each cottage door. Each man is intent on getting on, on
realising something new. He is revolving in his mind ways of doing more
business; of doing what he has more quickly, more economically; ways of
"boosting," ways of buying. Our customers _buy from_ us: his customers
_trade with_ him--they enter into harmony with him. Store-keepers and
customers sing together like gnats over the oak trees; they make things
hum. There is a feeling that whether buying or selling you are getting
forward.
The British, however, put a great question-mark in front of this
American life. Do those who are striving know what they want in the end
of ends? Do those toiling in the wood know what is on the other side?
The late Price Collier remarked that the German thinks he has done
something when he has an idea and the Frenchman when he has made an
epigram; it may be inferred that the American thinks he has done
something when he has made his pile. The ultimate earthly prize for
"boosting" and bargaining is a vulgar solatium,--a big house, an
abundant person, a few gold rings, an adorned wife, a high-power
touring car. Out in those wider spaces where lagging and outdistanced
competitors are not taken into your counsel you still handle business.
But now it is in "graft" that you deal. You are engineering trusts, and
cornering commodities, you develop political "pull," you own saloons,
and have ledgers full of the bought votes of Italians and Slavs.
You are great ... sitting at the steering-wheel of this great
ramshackle political and commercial machine, your coat off and your
immaculate lawn sleeves tucked up above your elbows, you own to
wolfish-eyed reporters that you have an enormous appetite for work and
zest for life.
And yet....
What is the crown? You die in the midst of it. There is no goal, no
priceless treasure that even in the death-struggle your hands grasp
after.
Some of your children are going in for a life of pleasure. They go to
be the envy of waiters and hotel-porters and all people waiting about
for tips, but often to be the laughing-stock of the cultured. One of
your sweet but simple-souled daughters is going to marry a broken-down
English peer. He will not marry her for less than a million dollars.
In the old store where you began business, gossiping over bacon and
flour, you would have looked rather blank if some one had said that a
foreigner would consent to marry your daughter only on the payment of
an indemnity.
"Well," said my road-companion to me under a bush in Indiana, "the game
goes to pass the time. The world is a prison-house, and a good game
has been invented, commerce, and it saves us from ennui, that is the
philosophy of it all. Scores of years pass like an hour over cards.
Those who win are most interested and take least stock of the time--and
they have invented happiness."
But I cannot believe that the American destiny leads up a cul-de-sac.
We have been following out a cross-road. There is a high road somewhere
that leads onward.
There are two sorts of immigrant, one that makes his pile and returns
to Europe, the other who thinks America a desirable place to settle in.
The second class is vastly more numerous than the first, for faith in
American life is even greater than faith in America's wealth.
Quite apart from the opportunities for vulgar success America has
wonderful promise. It can offer to the newcomer colonist a share in a
great enterprise. It is quite clear to the sympathetic observer that
something is afoot in the land which in Great Britain seems to be
best known by police scandals, ugly dances, sentimental novels, and
boastful, purse-conscious travellers.
The dream of Progress by which Westerners live is going to be carried
forward to some realisation in America. There is a great band of
workers united in the idea of making America the most pleasant and
happy place to live in that the world has ever known. I refer to those
working with such Americans as J. Cotton Dana, the fervent librarian;
Mr. Fred Howe, who is visualising the cities of the future; the
President of the City College, who has such regard not only for the
cultural but for the physical well-being of young men; Jane Addams, who
with such precision is diagnosing social evils; President Wilson, who
promises to uproot the tree of corruption; to mention only the chief
of those with whom I was brought in contact in my first experience of
America.
The political struggles of America form truly a sad spectacle, but by a
thousand non-political signs one is aware that there is a real passion
in the breast of the individual.
Going through the public gardens at Newark I see written up: "Citizens,
this park is yours. It was planted for you, that the beauty of its
flowers and the tender greenery of tree and lawn might refresh you. You
will therefore take care of it...."
Going through Albany I find it placarded: "Dirt is the origin of sin;
get rid of dirt, and other evils will go with it," and the whole
city is having a clean-up week, all the school children formed into
anti-dirt regiments making big bonfires of rubbish and burying the
tomato-cans and rusty iron.
Every city in America has been stirring itself to get clean. Even in a
remote little place like Clarion, Pa., I read on every lamp-post: "Let
your slogan be 'Do it for Home, Sweet Home'--clean up!" and again in
another place, "Develop your social conscience; you've got one, make
the country beautiful." In New York I have handed me the following
prayer, which has seemed to me like the breath of the new passion:
We pray for our sisters who are leaving the ancient shelter of
the home to earn their wage in the store and shop amid the press
of modern life. Grant them strength of body to bear the strain
of unremitting toil, and may no present pressure unfit them for
the holy duties of home and motherhood which the future may lay
upon them. Give them grace to cherish under the new surroundings
the old sweetness and gentleness of womanhood, and in the rough
mingling of life to keep the purity of their hearts and lives
untarnished. Save them from the terrors of utter want. Teach them
to stand by their sisters loyally, that by united action they
may better their common lot. And to us all grant wisdom and firm
determination that we may not suffer the women of our nation to be
drained of strength and hope for the enrichment of a few, lest our
homes grow poor in the wifely sweetness and motherly love which
have been the saving strength and glory of our country. If it must
be so that our women toil like men, help us still to reverence in
them the mothers of the future. If they yearn for love and the
sovereign freedom of their own home, give them in due time the
fulfilment of their sweet desires. By Mary the beloved, who bore
the world's redemption in her bosom; by the memory of our own dear
mothers who kissed our souls awake; by the little daughters who
must soon go out into that world which we are now fashioning for
others, we pray that we may deal aright by all women.
Men are praying for women, and women are working for themselves.
Commercial rapacity is tempered by women's tears, and the tender
stories of the shop-girl that O. Henry wrote are more read to-day than
they were in the author's lifetime. The newspapers are all agog with
the "vice-probes," scandals, questions of eugenics, the menace of
organised capital, the woman's movement. And they are not so because
vice is more prolific than in Europe, or the race more inclined to
fail, or the working men and working women more tyrannised over. They
are so because this generation wishes to realise something of the New
Jerusalem in its own lifetime. It may be only a foolish dream, but it
provides the present atmosphere of America. It discounts the despair
which on the one hand prudery and on the other rag-time dancing
invite. It discounts the commercial and mechanical obsession of the
people. It discounts the wearisome shouting of the cynic who has money
in his pocket, and makes America a place in which it is still possible
for the simple immigrant to put his trust. In the light of this
passion, and never forgetful of it, I view all that comes to my notice
in America of to-day.
IV
INEFFACEABLE MEMORIES OF NEW YORK
First, the flood of the homeward tide at six-thirty in the evening, the
thousands and tens of thousands of smartly dressed shop-girls hurrying
and flocking from the lighted West to the shadowy East--their bright,
hopeful, almost expectant features, their vivacity and energy even at
the end of the long day. I felt the contrast with the London crowd,
which is so much gloomier and wearier as it throngs into our Great
Eastern terminus of Liverpool Street. New York has a stronger class of
girl than London. Our shop-girls are London-bred, but your Sadie and
Dulcie are the children of foreigners; they have peasant blood in them
and immigrant hope. They have a zest for the life that New York can
offer them after shop-hours.
The average wage of the American shop-girl is stated to be seven
dollars (twenty-eight shillings) per week; the average wage in London
is about ten shillings, or two and a half dollars.[1] I suppose that
is another reason why our New York sisters are more cheerful. Despite
the high price of food in New York there must be a comparatively broad
margin left to the American girl to do what she likes with. The cult of
the poor little girl of the Department Store is perhaps only a cult.
For there are many women in New York more exploited than she. When the
shop-girl sells herself to rich men for marriage or otherwise she does
so because she has been infected by the craze for finery and wealth, is
energetic and vivacious, and is morally undermined. It is not because
she is worn out and ill-paid. If New York is evil it is not because
New York is a failure. The city is prosperous and evil as well. The
freshness and health and vigour of the rank and file of New York were
amazing to one familiar with the drab and dreary procession of workers
filing into the city of London at eight in the morning and away from it
at the same hour in the evening.
Then the Grand Central Station, with its vast high hall of marble,
surmounted by a blue-green ceiling which, aping heaven itself, is
fretted and perforated and painted to represent the clear night sky.
That starry roof astonished me. It reminded me of a story I heard of G.
K. Chesterton, that he lay in bed on a Sunday morning and with a crayon
mounted on a long handle drew pictures on the white ceiling. It was
like some dream of Chesterton's realised.
For a long time I looked at the painted roof and picked out my
beloved stars and constellations,--the planets under which I like to
sleep,--and then I thought, "Strange, that out in the glowing Broadway,
not far away, the real stars are hidden from the gaze of New York by
flashing and twinkling and changing sky-signs in manifold colour and
allurement. Every night the dancing-girl is dancing in the sky, and
the hand pours out the yellow beer into the foaming glass which, like
the vision of the Grail, appears but to vanish; every night the steeds
prance with the Greek chariot, the athletes box, the kitten plays with
the reel. These are the real stars and constellations of Broadway, for
Charles's Wain is never seen, neither Orion nor the chair of Cassiopeia
nor the Seven Sisters. To see them you must come in here, into the
Grand Central Station."
But apart from this paradox, what a station this is--a great silent
temple, a place wherein to come to meditate and to pray. It is more
beautiful than any of the churches of America. How much more beautiful
than the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, for instance. That cathedral
will be the largest church in the world when it is finished, and,
vanity of vanities, how much more secular it is than the station! It is
almost conceivable that after some revolution in the future, New York
might change its mind and go to worship at the Grand Central Station
and run its trains into the Cathedral of St. John.
Americans are proud of saying that the Woolworth Building, the Grand
Central Station, the Pennsylvania Railway Station, and the New York
Central Library show the New York of the future. Almost everything else
will be pulled down and built to match these. They are new buildings,
they are the soul of the New America finding expression. They are
temples of a new religion. Americans pray more and aspire more to God
in these than they do in their churches.
* * * * * * *
There stands out in my memory the East Side, and the slums which I
walked night after night in quest of some idea, some redeeming feature,
something that would explain them to me. I walked almost at random,
taking ever the first turning to the left, the first to the right, and
the first to the left again, coming ever and anon to the river and the
harbour, and having to turn and change.
The East Side is more spectacular than the East End of London. The
houses are so high, and there is so much more crowding, that you get
into ten streets of New York what we get into a hundred streets. The
New York slums are slums at the intensest. The buildings, great frames
of rags and dirt, hang over the busy street below, and are wildly alive
from base to summit. All day long the bedding hangs out at the windows
or on the iron fire-escapes attached to the houses. Women are shouting
and children are crying on the extraordinary stairs which lead from
room to room and story to story in the vast honeycomb of dens. On the
side-walk is a rough crowd speaking all tongues. The toy doors of the
saloons swing to and fro, simple couples sit on high stools in the
soda-bars and suck various kinds of "dope." Lithuanian and Polish boys
are rushing after one another with toy pistols, the girls are going
round and round the barber's pole, singing and playing, with hands
joined. The stores are crowded, and notices tell the outsider that he
can buy two quarts of Grade B milk for eleven cents, or ten State eggs
for twenty-five cents. You come to streets where all the bakers' shops
are "panneterias," and you know you are among the Italians. One Hundred
and Thirteenth Street as it goes down from Second Avenue to First
Avenue is full of Greeks and Italians, and is extraordinarily dark and
wild; men of murderous aspect are prowling about, there is howling
across the street from tenement to tenement. Dark, plump women stand at
doorways and stare at you, and occasionally a negress in finery trapes
past.
You come to little Italian theatres where the price of admission is
only five cents, and find them crammed with families, so that you
cannot hear _Rigoletto_ for the squalling of the babies. There are mean
cinema houses where you see only worn-out and spoiled films giving
broken and incoherent stories. And all the while the lights and
shadows play, the Greek hawker of confectionery shouts:
"Soh-dah!"
"Can-dee!"
You continue your wanderings and you strike a nigger district.
Negresses and their beaux are flirting in corners and on doorsteps.
Darky boys and girls are skirling in the roadway. Smartly dressed young
men, carrying canes, come giggling and pushing one another on the
pavement, crying out music-hall catches--"Who was you with last night?"
and the like.
You know the habitat of the Jew by the abundance of junk-shops,
old-clothes shops, and offices of counsellors-at-law. It seems the
Jews are very litigious, and even the poorest families go to law for
their rights. You find windows full of boxing-gloves, for the Jews are
great boxers in America. You find stalls and push-carts without end.
And every now and then rubbish comes sailing down from a window up
above. That is one of the surest signs of the Jews being installed--the
pitching of cabbage-leaves and fish-bones and sausage-parings from
upper windows.
What a sight was Delancey Street, with its five lines of naphtha-lit
stalls, its array of tubs of fish and heaps of cranberries, its
pavements slippery with scales, the air heavy with the odour of fish!
On one of the first of my nights out in the New York streets I came on
a most wonderful sight. After prolonging a journey that started in
the centre of the city I found myself suddenly plunging downward among
dark and wretched streets. I was following out my zigzag plan, and came
at last to a cul-de-sac. This was at the end of East Ninth Street. It
was very dark and forbidding; there were no shops, only warehouses and
yards. There were no people. I expected to find a new turning to the
left, and was rather fearsome of taking it even should I find it. But
at length I saw I had come to the East River. At the end of the street
the water lapped against a wooden landing-stage, and there I saw a
picture of wonder and mystery.
High over the glimmering water stood Brooklyn Bridge, with its long
array of blazing electric torches and its procession of scores of
little car-lights trickling past. The bridge hung from the high heaven
by dark shadows. It was the brightest ornament of the night. I sat on
an overturned barrow and looked out. Up to me and past me came stalking
majestic ferry-boats, all lights and white or shadowy faces. Far away
on the river lay anchored boats with red and green lights, and beyond
all were the black silhouettes of the building and shipping on Long
Island Shore.
* * * * * * *
It was interesting to me to participate in the Russian Easter in New
York, having lived in the Protestant and Roman Catholic Easters a whole
month before on the emigrant ship on the day we reached New York. I
came to the diminutive Russian cathedral in East Ninety-Fifth Street
on Easter Eve at midnight. I had been at a fancy-dress party in the
evening, and as fortune would have it, had gone in Russian attire; that
is, in a blue blouse like a Moscow workman. What was my astonishment to
find myself the only person so dressed in the great throng of Russians
surging in and out of the cathedral and the side street where the
overflow of them talked and chattered. They were all in bowler hats,
and wore collars and ties and American coats and waistcoats. They even
looked askance at me for coming in a blouse; they thought I might be a
Jew or a German, or a foolish spy trying to gain confidences.
I shall never forget the inside of the cathedral at one in the morning,
the vociferous singing, the beshawled peasant girls, the tear-stained
faces. Priest after priest came forward and praised the Orthodox Church
and the Russian people, and appealed to the worshippers to remember
that all over the Russian world the same service was being held, not
only in the great cathedrals and monasteries, but in the village
churches, in the far-away forest settlements, at the shrines in lonely
Arctic islands, in the Siberian wildernesses, on the Urals, in the
fastnesses of the Caucasus, on the Asian deserts, in Jerusalem itself.
It was pathetic to hear the priests exhort these young men and women
to remain Russians--they were all young, and they all or nearly all
looked to America as their new home. On all ordinary occasions they
longed to be Americans and to be called Americans; but this night a
flood of feeling engulfed them, and in the New York night they set sail
and looked hungrily to the East whence they came. They held tapers.
They had tenderly brought their cakes, their chickens and joints of
pork, to be sprinkled with holy water and blessed by the priest for
their Easter _breakfast_. It was sad to surmise how few had really
fasted through Lent, and yet to see how they clung to departing
tradition.
Coming out of the cathedral we each received a verbose revolutionary
circular printed in the Russian tongue: "Keep holy the First of May!
Hail to the war of the Classes! Hurrah for Socialism! Workmen of all
classes, combine!"--and so on. In Russia a person distributing such
circulars would be rushed off to gaol at once. In New York it is
different, and "influences" of all kinds are in full blast. I looked
over the shoulders of many groups outside the cathedral on Easter Day
and found them reading those New York rags, which are conceived in
ignorance and dedicated to anarchism. It seems the Russian who comes
to New York is at once grabbed by the existent Social-Democratic
organisations, and though he go to church still, he begins to be
more and more attached to revolutionism. It is strange that these
organisations are directed, not against the Tsar and the officialdom
of Russia, but against the Government of the United States and the
commercial machine. There is no question of America being a refuge for
the persecuted Russian. The latter is assured at once that America is
a place of even worse tyranny than the land he has come from. But if
he does not take other people's word he soon comes to that conclusion
on his own account. For he finds himself and his brothers working like
slaves and drinking themselves to death through sheer boredom, and he
finds his sisters in the "sweat-shops" of the garment-workers, or loses
them in houses of evil.
* * * * * * *