censorious religious America. It is supremely the vehicle of the
consciously virtuous. It is also a specially rural vehicle. I think
those who ride in buggies despise motorists from the bottom of their
hearts; they think them vulgar townspeople, and consider motoring a
form of trespass. But the automobilists are not prevented, and they
bear no rancour. They haven't time to consider the countryman. The man
in the buggy belongs to the past. In the future there will not be time
to be condemnatory, and the man who stands still to feel self-virtuous
will go to the wall.
The people who will continue to feel superior to the motorists will be
tramps sitting on palings, grinning at them as they pass by. They also
will remain the only people the motorists, rushing abreast of Time,
will ever envy. However much progress progresses there will always
remain those who sit on the palings and grin.
VI
THE REFLECTION OF THE MACHINE
As I tramped from village to village I was surprised to see
so much stained glass in the churches of the Methodists, the
Congregationalists, and other Puritans. Until quite modern times
stained glass belonged exclusively to the ritualistic denominations.
The Puritan, believing in simplicity of service, and in spirit rather
than in form, put stained glass in the same category as the burning of
incense, singing in a minor key, and praying in Latin. It partook of
the glamour of idolatry; it had a sensuous appeal; it blurred the pure
light of understanding. The true Puritan meeting-place is one of clear
glass windows, hard seats, and a big Bible. It seems a pity that a very
clear profession of faith should be blurred by picture windows--and,
let me add by way of parenthesis, cushioned seats and revivalist
preachers.
I examined in detail the coloured glass of a fine "Reform Church" that
I passed on the road. The windows were rather impressive. They were not
representations of scenes in Holy Writ, they contained no pictures of
saints or angels, of the Saviour, or of the Virgin. So they escaped the
imputation of idolatry. They were just pictures of symbolical objects
or of significant letters. Thus, one window was the bird and symbolised
Freedom, another was an anchor and symbolised Hope, another was a
crown and symbolised Eternal Life. In one window the letters C.E. were
illuminated--meaning Christian Endeavour, I presume; on another window
was the open Bible, symbolising the foundation of belief. In every case
the whole window was stained, and the little symbolical picture was set
against a brilliant background.
It was all in good taste, and was a pleasant ornament, which made the
church look very attractive exteriorly. But it was a compromise with
a spirit not its own. My explanation is, some one must have wanted
chapels to put in stained glass. Some one now has a great interest
in making them put in stained glass. He is the manufacturer of that
commodity. He has put stained glass on the market in such a way that
every church is bound to have it. And he has devised a way of not
offending the rigorous Puritans. "What is wrong in coloured light?"
said he. "Nothing. It is only what you use it for. We can use it to
show the things in which we believe." If incense could be manufactured
in such a way as to make millions of dollars it would find its way
somehow into the chapels. I was walking one day with an itinerant
preacher, a man who called himself "a creed smasher." He wanted to
weld all creeds into one and unify the Church of Christ. "Think of
commerce," said he, "already it has stopped the wars of the nations;
in time it will calm the wars of the sects. If only the churches were
corporations, and Methodists could hold shares in Roman Catholicism,
and Roman Catholics in Methodism!"
Commerce is exerting an influence that cannot be withstood. To take
another instance, it has provided America with rocking-chairs and
porch-swings. Although the Americans are an extremely active people,
much more so than the British, yet their houses are all full of
rocking-chairs, and on their verandahs they have porch-swings and
hammocks. The British have straight-backs.
The Americans did not all cry out with one voice for rocking-chairs and
swings. The Pilgrim Fathers did not bring them over. The reason they
have them lies in the fact that some manufacturer started making them
for the few. Then ambition took possession of him and he said, "There's
something in rocking-chairs. I'm going to turn them out on a large
scale."
"But there aren't the customers to buy them," some one objected.
"Never mind, we'll make the customers. We'll put them to the people in
such a way that they gotta buy. We'll make 'em feel there's going to
be such an opportunity for buyin' 'em as never was and never will be
again."
"You believe you'll succeed?"
"We'll make it so universal that if a man goes into a house and doesn't
see a rocking-chair and a porch-swing he'll think, 'My Lord, they've
had the brokers in!'"
So rocking-chairs and porch-swings came. So, many things have come to
humanity--many worse things.
I had just written this note, for I have written most of my book by the
road, when I heard the following interesting talk about the town of
Benton, Pennsylvania. I was walking from Wilkes Barre to Williamsport,
and Benton is on the way. It is a place that has had many fires lately.
"Ah reckon ah know wot cleared Benton out more'n fires."
"What's that?"
"Wy, otomobeeles; mortgaging their farms to get 'em. There's not much
in Benton. You couldn't raise a hundred dollars. It's the agents and
the boosters of the companies that are mos' to blame, no doubt, but
they're fools all the same who buy otomobeeles when they cahn pay their
bills at the stores."
"What agents?" I asked. "D'you mean commercial travellers?"
"No. The agents in the town. Every little town has a man, sometimes
two or three men, who are agents for the companies who manufacture the
cars; they are just like the insurance agents, and are always talking
about their business, comparing makes of car, praising this one and
that, and getting folks on to want them."
"I suppose the companies want to make the motor car a domestic
necessity, a thing no one can do without," I remarked.
"You're right; they do and they will. They'll fix that in time, you
betcher, we'll all be having them. Then when we cahn do without 'em
they'll raise the prices on us. Already they've started it with the
gasoline; there's plenty motor spirit in the world, but the company
gets possession of it and regulates the prices. An' you cahn make an
oto go without gasoline. They can put it on us every time."
I should say society at Benton was suffering very badly from the
influence of depraved commercialism. Some years ago Miss Ida Tarbell
exposed what has been called "The Arson Trust," a company formed for
setting fire to insured establishments on a basis of 10 per cent profit
on the spoil. Benton might have furnished her with some interesting
examples. There have been so many fires in the little town of late that
tramps are refused the shelter even of barns, as if their match-ends
were responsible. On the Fourth of July three years ago half the town
was burnt down. Last year in a gale the shirt factory was gutted; the
workmen had banked the fire up for the night, and about twenty minutes
after the last man had left the works there was an explosion, and the
red coals were scattered over the wooden building. Two months ago a
large house took fire, and just a week before I reached the settlement
the large Presbyterian church was consumed. Indeed, as I came into the
town I remarked with some surprise the charred walls and beams of the
church, and read the pathetic printing on the stone of foundation,
"This stone was laid in 1903."
I had an interesting account of the church from the wife of a farmer at
whose house I stayed a night. The church had been insured for seventeen
thousand dollars, and it was twelve thousand dollars in debt. The money
borrowed was not secured on the church building, but on the personal
estates of many people in the town. Consequently, several people were
liable to be sold up if the money were not forthcoming. Two days before
settling day the fire took place, and there was doubtless rejoicing in
some hearts. The villagers had tried hard to make the place pay, they
had even let a portion of the church building to be used as a bank!
Bazaars had failed. The debt-raiser had tried "to put a revival over
on to them," but had failed. The minister, not receiving his salary,
had abandoned them, and at last the bare fact remained of the big white
church and the big unpaid debt. Then occurred the providential fire.
But the insurance company would not pay the seventeen thousand dollars.
The fire had taken place under suspicious circumstances, and it was
said there would be a legal fight over it. The conflagration had
occurred on the night of a school-opening meeting. Choice flowers
had been sent from many houses in the town, and it was beautifully
decorated. There was, however, nothing obviously inflammable in the
church; it was built largely of brick and stone. But about an hour
after the people had gone home the fire broke out. Next day it was
found that the big Bible had been soaked in coal oil. Oiled newspaper
was found, and it was alleged that the fire brigade would have saved
the church, but that as fast as they put it out in front somebody else
was lighting it up behind. Anyhow, the insurance company refused to pay
the seventeen thousand dollars. But it cannot refuse absolutely; the
advertisement of failure to pay would be too damaging--it will put up a
new church instead! The Presbyterian church will be resurrected.
"I put Benton up against the world for fires," said my hostess. "For a
small place, only a thousand people, I reckon there isn't its like."
For my part I felt sorry for the Bentonians, even for those who set the
fire alight, supposing it was deliberately lighted. When commercial
interest is the greatest thing in the world there are opportunities
for a few men to feel themselves great and powerful, but that glory
of mankind is far overbalanced by the occasions on which it causes
man to be mean. Commercial tricks bring the holy spirit of man
into disrepute. To find oneself mixed up in certain machinations is
poignantly humiliating. We have all of us been wounded in that way ere
now. The just pride of the soul has been offended, and we have thought
how shameful a thing it was to have become mixed up in it at all, by
_it_ meaning the world, the whole shady business, call it what you will.
As I went along from village to village in New York and Pennsylvania
I was struck by the uniformity of the architecture. Every church
and school and store and farmstead seemed standard size and "as
supplied." There seemed to be a passion for having known units. Not
only in architecture was this evident, but in every utensil, machine,
carriage, dress of the people. It was evident in the people themselves.
Americans have the name of being extremely conventional. I think that
is because, under the present domination of the _commercial machine_,
American boys and girls and men and women are all turned into standard
sizes. If Americans have rigid principles of ethics it is because
they believe all the parts of the great machine are standardised, and
that when any one part wears out there must always be an accurately
fitting other part ready to be fixed where the old one has fallen out.
Personality itself is standardised; thus the tailor-priest advertises
his wear, "Preserve your Personality in Clothes. Occasionally you
have observed some article of wear that has led you to the mental
conclusion--'That's my style--that's me.'"
[Illustration: THE TRAMP'S DRESSING-ROOM.]
It was strange to me to find that even tramps and outcasts, who fulfil
little function in the machine, were expected to conform to type. I
was stared at, questioned; my rough tweeds, so suitable to me, were an
object of mirth; my action of washing my face and my teeth by the side
of the road was a portentous aberration. I remember how astonished a
motorist and his wife appeared when they came upon me in the act of
drawing a pail of water for a thirsty calf one morning in Indiana. The
temperature stood at ninety-five in the shade--all nature was parched,
and as I came along the highway a calf, fastened by a chain to the
steel netting of a field, came up and rubbed his nose on my knees. As
calves don't usually take the initiative in this way, I concluded he
expected me to do something for him. There was an empty pail beside
him. I took it to the farmhouse pump and drew water. As I did so, the
farmer and his wife drew up at the farm in their motor, and they looked
at me curiously. The calf came bounding towards me and almost upset the
pail in his eagerness to drink. Then he gulped down all the water, and
whilst I went to draw another pailful he executed a sort of war-dance
or joy-dance, throwing out his hind legs and bounding about in a way
that testified his happiness. The farmer's wife broke silence:
"Wha' yer doing?"
"I'm giving the calf some water."
"Nao," said she, and looked at her husband, "giving the calf some
water, can--you--beat--that?"
I gave the calf his second bucketful and then started off down the way
again, and the farmer and his wife looked after me in blank surprise.
In America no tramp has any compassion for thirsty calves, he is not
expected to look after the thirst of any one but himself. The farmer
and his wife looked at one another, and their eyes seemed to say, "But
tramps don't do these things!"
Thence it may be surmised that America is no place for individuals
as such. Originality is a sin. Americans hate to give an individual
special attention, special notice. Even personal salvation is merged
in mass salvation. The revivalist, his press agents, and stewards are
a means of wholesale salvation. A revival meeting is a machine for
saving souls on a large scale. It might be thought that the revivalist
himself took his stand as an exceptional individual. Not at all: he is
only a type. American public opinion does not allow a man to stand out
as superior. It is surprising the dearth of noble men in the popular
estimate of to-day. Mockery follows on the heels of noble action or
individual action, and reduces it to type. That is a great function of
the American Press of to-day, the defaming of men of originality and
the explaining away of noble action. I remember a conversation I heard
at Cleveland. Roosevelt had just cleared himself of the press libel of
drunkenness.
"Wasn't it a good thing to clear the air, so," said one man, "and get
clear of the charge once for all?"
"I don't think he got clear of it," said the other. "It's all very
well to bring an action against the editor of a provincial paper, but
why didn't he take up the cudgels against one of the powerful New
York journals, who said the same thing? They had money and could have
defended their case."
"I don't think money was needed--except to buy evidence."
"If you ask me," said the other, "it was all a very shrewd
electioneering dodge. Roosevelt is an expert politician. He knows
the value of being in the limelight, and he knows that nothing will
fetch more votes in the United States just now than a reputation for
sobriety. He was just boosting himself and the home products."
That is a fair example of the way people think of striking
personalities and original views.
Then every man is considered a booster. Boosting is accepted as a
national and individual function. Towns are placarded: "Boost for your
own city and its own industries. Make a habit of it." In Oil City, for
instance, I found in every shop a ticket announcing "Booster Week June
9-16." In that week Oil City was going to do all it could to call
attention to itself. Citizens would pledge themselves to speak of Oil
City to strangers in the train and when on visits to other towns. The
city of Newark, New Jersey, is always recommending its own people and
visitors to "Think of Newark." Whenever you enter into conversation
with an American you find him suddenly drifting towards telling you
the name of a hotel to stay at, or of an establishment where they sell
"dandy cream," or he is praising the bricks turned out by the local
brick works, or the conditions of the employment of labour in some silk
works on which his native town is dependent for prosperity. In a widely
distributed "Creed of the American" I read, "I remember always that I
am a booster." Even fathers refer to their new-born babies as "little
boosters." It should be remembered when Americans are boasting of their
native land and its institutions that they were cradled in boosting.
It is a habit that in many ways has profited America. It has attracted
the emigrant more than all that has ever been printed about it. It is a
great commercial habit. But it is in the end degrading.
What is the name of the fairy who has muttered an incantation over the
Pilgrim Father and changed him into a booster? And is a booster only a
Pilgrim Father who brags about the stuff he manufactures?
It seemed to me that by substituting the idea _booster_ for the idea
_man_ you get rid of so many of the weaknesses of flesh and blood. A
man who is boosting day in and day out, using his tongue as a sort of
living stores' catalogue, is necessarily loyal to the great machine.
But loyalty to the machine has its dangers. On my journey to Chicago I
made some interesting observations in Natural History. I got into the
train at Franklin to go to Oil City, some five or six urban miles. What
was my astonishment to see that each of the eight or nine passengers in
my car had fixed their railway tickets in the ribbons of their hats,
and they themselves were deep in their newspapers. The conductor came
along and took the tickets from their hats and examined them, collected
those that were due to be given up and punched those that were not, and
stuck them back in the ribbons of the hats, the wearers reading their
newspapers all the time and making not the slightest sign that they
noticed what the conductor was doing. The only sign of consciousness I
observed was a sort of subtle pleasure in acting so--the sort of mild
pleasure which suffuses the faces of lunatics when they are humoured by
visitors to the asylum. They were shamming that they were machinery,
and in almost the same style as the man who is under the delusion that
he is a teapot, one arm being his spout and the other his handle.
Thus the elevator man in the Department Store also thinks himself a bit
of machinery. He seems to be trained to act mechanically, and never to
alter the staccato patter that comes from his mouth at each floor. He
speaks like a human phonograph.
Then all waiters, shop-attendants, barbers, and the like try to behave
like manikins. Most of all, in the language of Americans is the
mechanical obsession apparent. A man who is confined in a hospital
writes: "I'm _holding down a bed_ in the hospital over here." The
man who meets another and brings him along, simply "collects" him in
America. The baseball team that beats another 6-0 "slips a six-nothing
defeat" on them. Especially in baseball reports, commercialism and
rhythms heard in great "works" abound.
The influence of great machinery gets to the heart of the people. A
man when he joins a gang of workmen is taught to co-operate; he has to
trim off any original or personal way of doing things, and fit in with
the rest of the gang. When the gang is going mechanically and easily, a
man quicker than the rest is taken as leader, and the speed of the work
is raised. The mechanical action in each individual is intensified, is
perfected. Cinematograph films are even taken of gangs at work; the
pictures are shown before experts, who indicate weak points, recommend
discharges or alterations and show how the gangs can be reconstituted
to work more smoothly. Each man is drilled to act like a machine, and
the drilling enters into the fibre of his being to such an extent that
when work is over his muscles move habitually in certain directions,
and the rhythm of his day's labour controls his language and his
thought.
In the factory it is the same. In a vast mechanical contrivance there
is just one thing that machinery cannot do; so between two immense
complicated engines it is necessary to place a human link. A man goes
there, and flesh and blood is grafted into steel and oil. The man
performs his function all day, but he also senses the great machine in
his mind and his soul; and when he goes out to vote for his President,
or talk to men and women about the world in which he lives, he does so
more as a standardised bit of mechanism, than as a tender human being.
Alas, for the men and women who wear out and cease to be serviceable!
They are the old iron, and their place is the scrap-heap. "White trash"
is the name by which they go.
Bernard Shaw, and indeed many others, look forward to the diminution of
toil by machinery. The minimising of toil is to them a great blessing.
Because machinery lessens toil they are on the side of machinery.
Meanwhile life shows a paradox. The Russian peasant who works without
machines toils less than the American who takes advantage of every
invention. The Russian emigrant who comes to America simply does not
know what work is, and he stares in amazement at the angry foreman who
tells him, when he is at it at his hardest, to "get a move on yer."
In America the Americans slave; they slave for dollars, for more
business, for advancement, but in the end for dollars only, I suppose.
They will fill up any odd moment with some work that will bring in
money. They will make others work, and take the last ounce of energy
out of their employees. The machine itself is the size of America, and
only in little nooks and corners can anything spring up that is not
of the machine. Even millionaires know nothing more to do than to go
on making millions. Yet there is not a feverish anxiety to get money.
Losses are borne with equanimity. It's just a matter of "the apple
tree's loaded with fruit. I'm going up to get another apple."
Present experience shows that machinery increases the toil of mankind.
It need not increase it, but it does. It might diminish it, but there
are many reasons why it does not. For one thing, it increases the
standard of living. It makes rocking-chairs, porch-swings, automobiles,
and the like indispensable things. First, machinery makes the things,
then the things make the machinery duplicate themselves. So it raises
the standard of living and increases the toil of mankind. It is going
on increasing the standard of living for the rich, for the middle-class
aping the rich, and for the working men aping the middle-class.
Is it good, then, that the standard of living is being raised? Well,
no; because the standard of living now means the standard of luxury. I
should have used that phrase from the beginning.
I said this to a man on the road, and he asked me what I thought a
man should live for, but I could not answer him. Each man has his
individual destiny to fulfil. Destiny is not a matter of the clothes
you wear or of the cushions you sit upon. The beggar pilgrim going
in rags to Jerusalem may be more happy than a Pierpont Morgan, who
writes pathetically at the head of the bequest of his millions that he
believes in the blood of Jesus.
One thing I noted in America, that the blossom of religion seems to
have been pressed between Bible leaves, withered and dried long ago.
What is called religion is a sort of ethical rampage. The descendants
of the Puritans are "probing sin" and "whipping vice." The rich are
signing cheques, the hospitals are receiving cheques. The women of
the upper classes are visiting the poor and adopting the waifs. But
seldom did I come in contact with a man or a woman who stood in humble
relation to God or the mystery of life. Even the great passion to put
things right, lift the masses, stop corruption, and build beautiful
cities and states is begotten in the sureness of science rather than
in the fear of the Lord. Far from fearing God, preachers announce from
their pulpits that they are "working with Him," or "co-operating with
the inevitable tendencies of the world," or "hastening on the work
of evolution." For my part I believe that it is my sacred due to my
brother that he be given an opportunity of facing this world, the
mystery of its beauty and of his life upon it, that he find out God
for himself and learn to pray to Him. But that is at once Eastern and
personal.