Part 9

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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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It is a great thing to be able to speak the language and not have to rely so much on holding up your fingers and making faces. We have been for so many weeks among the Dutch and the French that it is a positive pleasure to just listen to the conversation around us and know that we can understand. A little knowledge of a foreign tongue leads to many mistakes. I heard a Frenchman in a London hotel giving an account of his day’s experience to an English lady. Among other things he said he went to a linen store and left an order for table linen, and added, “and I will have my entrails on it.” Of course he meant his initials, but he had been careless with his dictionary. And yet it is very hard for us to understand the ordinary London cab-driver or workman. His accent is so different that it is almost like another language. And even an educated Englishman will give you a direction like this: “Go to the next turning on the left, bear a bit to the right until you get to the top of the street.” Which means in American go to the next corner, turn to the left, then a little to the right to the end of the street. I never can understand why the English people generally murder their language as they do. But perhaps I am like the little American girl I met in Germany. She had learned German at home, and I asked her how she got along in Berlin. “Not very well,” she said, “they talk such bad German.”

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The transportation in the center of London is confined entirely to busses and cabs. There is too much traffic and the streets are too narrow for street railways. In the outer parts of the city a number of street cars, or “trams” as they are called, are operated. Every bus and every tram has seats on the roof, and they are the choice seats on the vehicle. From one of these top seats is the place to see London, and the traveler has the advantage of not only being able to note the sights on the pavement and the walks, but he can look in the second-story windows and see how people live. There are no great skyscrapers in London, the business houses usually being six stories or less in height. The residences are nearly always three or four stories, and either built flush to the street, with a garden or court in the rear, or back from the street and the yard inclosed by a high stone wall. The Englishman goes on the old principle that an Englishman’s house is his castle, and puts up high walls between himself and his neighbors. A front porch, or an open lawn in front of a private house, would be regarded as freakish or an evidence of insanity. On the other hand, there are many public parks and pretty green squares in London which are breathing-spots for the congestion of humanity within this great city.

The “City of London” which has a Lord Mayor is the little old city which is the hub of the whole business. It is the section of the banks and the great institutions of finance, and is about the size of Hutchinson, but a solid mass of stone structures and narrow streets. Only about 30,000 people reside there. The London of the present is London County, covers about 900 square miles and is therefore about the size of Reno county. That is the area in which 8,000,000 people live. It is governed by a County Council, elected by the taxpayers, which is a very active body and is doing much to improve the conditions. London has fine water and visitors are even urged to drink it--something new in Europe. Taxes, or “rates” as they are called, are high, and include everything from real estate and personal to income tax and a stamp tax on receipts and drafts. The great problem of improving a city is to get the money without distressing the people. It requires large sums to make and care for parks, streets, schools, paving, water-works, light, and the other things that the city must have in order to be modern, healthful, and comfortable. The citizens everywhere groan under the weight of taxation, and yet they should not if the money is properly spent. These streets, police, schools, fire departments and such are as necessary as the walls of our homes, which also require money to build and maintain. The certainty of death and taxes is proverbial. There is no way to avoid the former and the only way to dodge taxes is to go to an uninhabited island and live by yourself. And then if some other individual comes along, the first thing the original tax-dodger will do is to tax the other fellow.

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The ordinary English home has the front room of the house for the dining-room. The “drawing-room” is at the rear and the kitchen quite a distance from the dining-room. The drawing-room is used only on special occasions and the dining-room is the family living-room. The English are great home-makers, and their houses are always well furnished and look as if folks lived there. On the continent the fashion is to go out for the evening meal to restaurant or café, but the Englishman comes home and stays there. The table is spread with the family and intimate friends around, and supper is served at 8 o’clock or later. You see the Englishman has already had three meals--breakfast, luncheon, and tea; so the evening meal is late. To me the most attractive part of English life is that in the home. The Englishman gathers his family about him, pulls down the blinds, reads his newspaper and is in his castle, which no lord or duke can enter without his consent. This simple virtue of home-living is rare in Europe, and in the family circle which gathers at the table and at the altar the young Englishman gets the habit of thought and manner which marks him wherever he goes, and which has made his country the greatest of all the nations.

The North of Ireland

LONDONDERRY, IRELAND, September 8.

Crossing the Irish Sea from Fishguard in southern Wales to Rosslare in southern Ireland, I met a jolly Irishman from Cork. When I told him I was going to the North of Ireland he remonstrated. “Don’t do it, mon. Every Irishman up there is a Scotchman!” But I had seen the beautiful South of Ireland and we had to come to Londonderry to take the ship for home, so the warning of the Corker was in vain. I found that he was right. Soon after we left Dublin we came upon linen factories and distilleries and Presbyterian churches, people too busy to jolly a stranger, and cannily seeking the surest way to a sixpence. In the South of Ireland no one is too busy to talk with the stranger and to tell him all the legendary lore of the country, while in the North one shrinks from stopping the busy worker, even to ask him which way is straight up. The people of both ends of Ireland are pleasant and the American dollar is greatly admired, but the process of extracting it is painless, even pleasant, in Cork, while it hurts enough to notice in Belfast. The South is almost entirely agricultural and is social, while the North is filled with factories and notices not to allow your heads to stick out of the windows. The people of the South are poorer but happier; the people of the North are busier and more worried in their looks. The Irishman in the South smiles pleasantly without an apparent thought of the money he is going to make, the Irishman in the North smiles after he gets the money.

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All of this Emerald isle is green, and picturesque scenery with lakes and falls, glens and fields, rugged coasts and beautiful beaches is to be found from Queenstown to Portrush.

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We stopped a day in Dublin, which is an Irish city with a large tinge of English. It was the capital of Ireland prior to the consolidation of the Irish Parliament with that of Great Britain, and may still be called so because the Lord-Lieutenant Governor lives here and has a sort of a court. There are about 400,000 people, packed in too tightly and with not enough work to keep many of them in decent living and style. That is the trouble in Ireland--one of their troubles, the lack of opportunity for work. There is not much for the energetic young Irishman to do but to emigrate, and he goes to America or Canada or Australia, or even to England, to get a job and a chance. The land is nearly all owned by men who do not live in Ireland, and is rented to farmers who find that when they improve their places it means a raise in rent. The new land law which gives a man a sort of title to his leased land, and makes a court of arbitration as to rent and purchase, is improving conditions in Ireland and they are better off now in respect to land than they are in England, except for the blight of absentee landlordism, the system which takes the rent-money and spends it in London or in Paris.

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Dublin is perking up some on the prospect of home rule, which would bring an Irish legislature to Dublin and make the city a real capital. But the prospect for home rule is dubious. The Irish party holds the balance of power in the English Parliament and has been allied with the Liberals in their reforms and the dehorning of the House of Lords. The Liberals have promised the Irish home rule, and the leaders will try to fulfill the promise, but they may find it hard work to line up their followers, and let it go until another general election. There are so many other questions involved in English politics that home rule may be lost in the shuffle, but as the Irish are the best politicians in the world they are looking forward to success after a lovely fight.

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The city of Belfast, a hundred miles north of Dublin, is the center of the linen trade. The English Parliament a couple of hundred years ago prohibited the manufacture of wool in Ireland because it competed with English trade, but promoted the spinning of linen. The climate is just right, labor is cheap, and Irish linen is the best in the world. We visited a linen mill, and also a cottage where the hand looms were at work. The wages paid to good hands are 50 to 75 cents a day. This would be fair wages in Europe, but the work is not always steady and many days are lost in setting the patterns and fixing the looms. The manager of the factory said that most of his best men went to America--he himself had two sons in New York. The wages here will keep soul and body together if the body is willing to get along on fish and potatoes. But there is no outcome, no prospect of a future which shall include a beefsteak once a week. The manager had been in America and he knew the difference. “Our workmen are all right because they don’t know the luxuries the American workman has, except by hearsay. Of course if they once get the appetite for meat and a new suit of clothes every year they have to leave us. But a two-eyed beefsteak makes a good meal.” A two-eyed beefsteak is an Irish name for a herring.

Belfast has great ship-building yards, next to Glasgow the greatest in the world. It also has large distilleries which supply England and America. I am told that the consumption of liquor is on the decrease in Ireland. I hope so. But the distilleries keep building additions and enlarging their plants.

Which recalls the old story of the Illinois statesman who was a great drinker and was ruining the prospect of a useful life. His family and friends tried to stop him, but the habit or disease could not be overcome. One night a friend had him out for a walk, trying to sober him up for important business the next day. They passed a distillery and the friend said: “John, what a fool you are to try to drink all the whisky that is made. You can’t do it. See that busy distillery with its bright lights and throbbing engines. You can’t beat it.” John looked, and then with drunken dignity replied: “Perhaps you’re right. But don you shee I’m making ’em work nights?”

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The drink problem is the hardest to solve in Great Britain, England, Ireland and Scotland. It is worse than the wage problem or the land problem. In no other countries that I have visited are the evils of booze so plainly in evidence as in the British Isles. In Germany the sight of the family in the beer garden with their mugs of creamy liquid, their good-nature and their temperance, does not make an unpleasant impression. In France and the southern countries, where wine is the common beverage, one does not worry about this custom. But in England, Ireland and Scotland, where you see men and women drunk in the streets and in the gutters, where you see children ragged and barefooted, homes cheerless and pauperism prevalent, all plainly because of the drink, the sensibility of even the most seasoned is shocked. Public-houses with women behind the bars, open seven days in the week and handing out the whisky which temporarily exhilarates and then stupefies and degrades, are one of the companion pictures to the great buildings, wonderful achievements and artistic developments which one sees in every British town. The temperance societies work hard, the government would help if it dared, but the drinking, the suffering and the pauperizing process goes on. The distilleries are enlarging, and working nights.

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