CHAPTER XVI

AMERICA OF TO-DAY VIEWED FROM NEW YORK

1

"We don't know where we are going, but we're on the way," runs a light-hearted, popular saying. "Heaven or Hell--which?" the evangelists ask in one breath. No national answer will be given to the query, but if some one replies "Hell," no one will be greatly shocked, whereas, if some one replies "Heaven," his neighbor will turn upon him with a smile and a rude handshake and a "I'm with you, so glad that you're on our side."

If you say, "Roses spring up in the footsteps of America," Americans will believe you. But if you say, "Curses follow the Gringo in his march of destiny," the American interest in your opinion will rapidly grow less. America's faith in that America is doing right, that she has a divinely appointed mission, is short of nothing save the faith of the Catholic Church. Naturally such a faith is the main vital current of her existence. The saying, "I believe, therefore I am," may be changed for America into "I believe, therefore I do."

This faith, however, reacts badly upon critical literature. Many books on America are written for an American public which demands praise. The rest of the world is profoundly affected by what America does, and will be even more so by what she will do. For as she plunges forward along her way of destiny, be it blindly or with open eyes, she not only achieves for herself but makes way and changes the way of other peoples and other nations.

Some study in a scientific spirit seems necessary at this hour, not one tinged with the spleen of France, or the self-conscious spirit of comparison of England; not a pro-Latin study, nor a study conceived in _parti pris_ from a socialistic or capitalistic end--but a dead level dispassionate facing of things as they are and as to honest eyes they tend to be.

2

In England and Scotland the working-class population far exceeds in number the middle and upper classes. Enfranchised as it is, men and women both, it has the political power to seize the reins of government and take control into its hands. In America the situation is considerably different. Numerous as is the working class in America, it is outnumbered by the middle class. And the middle class is more comfortable, more self-assured, than that class in England. In England many middle-class people are so cramped and pinched economically that they are embittered against the rest of society and are ready to throw in their lot politically with Socialists and Radicals.

In British journalism there is much talk of the "Have-nots"--but such an expression would mean little in America: the Haves are so numerous that other people are not heard. What I mean is: the sense of property is capable of being more widely and more strongly developed even than in Britain.

With other nations one might make an even more striking comparison. Russia is a nation of "Have-nots"; Germany is a nation of a few rich and of broad poverty-stricken masses. Or to come nearer to the countries now under view, one may say of Mexico that poverty is national there. In America possession is national. The dollar is in America almost a national emblem.

There we have a very marked fundamental condition for future development. Britain is in danger because her masses do not obtain a fair share of the prosperity of the country as a whole. America is not in that sort of danger.

It may be urged that America has a violent Labor element, and that she has been harassed by such prolonged strikes as that of the coal operatives, the steel workers, the railway men. It is true that there is a violent element, but that element is foreign and illiterate. The real under-dog in America is the foreigner and the colored man. He is not regarded as a fellow citizen but as a hired mercenary, one in a gang of Chinese, a member of a slave caste. Even if he has his papers as a United States citizen he finds, like Eugene O'Neill's stoker--the "Hairy Ape"--that he does not really "belong."

Skilled men, craftsmen, artisans, shopmen, what in England we call the "respectable" working class, have in America no consciousness of inferiority. They have their Ford cars and their "Victrolas," they dance, the men wear ironed trousers, the women "bob" their hair. They are affiliated to religious organizations, they are also masons of some rite, probably not Rotarians or Kiwanis, but Red Men perhaps. In politics, they almost infallibly vote Democrat or Republican. Labor politics make no progress, because in the many millions they have only many thousand votes.

The American government machine is guaranteed against Radical interference for a long time. For Republicanism is founded on the Banks of America, and Democratism on the industries. Both parties are based solidly on the rights of possession, the rights of property, the rights of capital.

3

American commerce, therefore, enjoys a remarkable sense of security. No draught blows from Russia or elsewhere into the comfortable interior where the game is being played. Production on an ever grander scale is achieved; the wealth of the nation is enhanced, the buying power of every individual is increased, the triumphs of salesmanship are eclipsed, the glory of the great firms is brighter and fuller, their advertisements more extensive.

The enormous production is a fact, and not to be gainsaid. But in their commerce as a whole there are certain very important artificial elements which show it in part not as a reality but as a great game. A number of fortunes are made; that again is not to be gainsaid, and material luxuries are widely distributed--but the picture of American comfort is not quite so good as it looks. "There's a catch somewhere."

The catch is in the tariff. The tariff makes sure that Americans shall buy American-made goods at the American price. Salesman and buyer are tied together in a three-legged race, and the tariff is the binding matter. For if the tariff were removed there would be a bad falling apart of producer and consumer. All prices in the United States seem to me higher than world prices. Therefore, if the tariff were removed, cheap foreign goods would naturally rush in. America can make a good article at a good price; it is yet to be proved that, like pre-war Germany, she might make the best article at the lowest price.

This not only affects manufactured goods, but food. The tariff plus commercial organization has raised the cost of food to fifty per cent above world price. The mere food budget of the American housewife is nearly double that of her European sister, though the food be of the same quantity. I say not quality, because in my opinion European food is generally more fresh than American food: "Storage" is the enemy of good quality.

American salesmen outside of the New World fail to obtain the quantity of business which their enormous commercial background would suggest. It may be said, if with pardonable exaggeration, America is not as aggressive in world-markets as she is at home. In finance she has become a world power, but the bulk of her trade is in North and South America.

Within America, within the American Empire, in Latin America generally, the American salesman has matters more and more his own way. It may well be asked--If he possess the New World what need has he of the Old?

The Old World has not, however, necessarily finished with America, and European business only awaits its chance to descend upon American lands. A great economic competition between East and West is not one of the least likely developments of the future--let but Europe find peace once more.

4

Meanwhile American prosperity increases on a grand scale, and the chief sign of it is increased leisure. The leisure class grows. It far outnumbers the leisure class of England or of any other nation. There are more Americans than English at Monte Carlo, more Americans in Switzerland, in Egypt, on the Norwegian fjords, in Athens, in Rome, in Northern Africa. There are many thousands of leisure Americans in London and at the shrines of England and ensconced in English country houses or enjoying the hospitality of country gentry--very greatly more than there are leisure Englishmen or Frenchmen or any other nationality at the shrines or country houses of America.

In America the leisured appear everywhere. The East is larded with leisure; the West runs on it as on oil. Care-free children in tens of thousands get educated, graduate, and have leisure. Something has to be done for the children of leisure--to make life more interesting.

A life of cars and country clubs will not suffice--especially for the women, who are almost always more ambitious than the men. There is a demand for careers by those who do not necessarily demand pay, a demand for greater interest. The Astors have found admirable scope in British politics. Such success as Lady Astor has attained is doubtless open to a few more. Americans range in surprising numbers behind successful British politicians, delighting in entertaining them when they can. Various very good looking and capable Americans hold, as it were, advanced posts in English society life. The competition to be presented at Court is greater each year, though greater numbers are actually received. The American Embassy is broadened out to an extensive social platform crowded with people whose estate and position in American life is such that they can hardly be ignored.

The diplomatic service generally in Europe is greatly used by the leisured Americans, and there come people with academic missions, advisory people of various kinds, who for one reason or another obtain interviews with distinguished men and then arrange dinner parties and talk, obtain impressions, get inside, have a finger in the pie.

That same force drives in American politics at home, by intrigue and by lobbying, trying to find a way of life, a larger interest, for the leisured. The American Republic, the old United States, affords little scope for the new ever-increasing class. But America as an Empire, America with a great Army and a great Fleet, America with a deep foreign policy which kept foreign powers all speculating on her next move, America as a world power, would give scope.

Most abhorrent to the leisured class is the primitive State; most desired is the State in its highest development. For a leisured class is not compatible with pure democracy. The present commercial system, however, is producing a leisured class in ever greater numbers. Does it not, therefore, follow that the commercial system itself is incompatible with pure democracy?

5

But of course it is not the four hundred of New York who are New York, but, as O. Henry briefly and brilliantly suggested in his book of stories, it is the four million--and no upper four thousand or upper forty thousand can be America.

Indeed, in many vital matters, the forty thousand have been thwarted by the hundred million. The forty thousand did not want Prohibition and they were not eager for the enfranchisement of women. The forty thousand at least professed themselves in favor of the Versailles Treaty and ready to help Europe to peace. The "representative" American in Europe nearly always treats Prohibition as a joke, or blames it on the women's vote, and as regards our European tangle is all optimism and happy encouragement.

English celebrities visiting America are usually entertained by one of the forty thousand who make a display of liquor, warming the vitals of our said celebrities who come back to England with an idea of a new drunken America.

You would not think that America was a pious, God-fearing country with some millions of people leading sober and righteous lives and yearning for the establishment of the Kingdom. The moral passion of the American masses is kept out of sight as if it were something pitiful or disgraceful. The forty thousand would not care to see America defined as--_the nation which voted itself dry_. It would rather define America as--_the nation which built the Panama Canal_. There is in a way a conflict between the claims of moral achievement and material achievement. Thus again in some minds America is _the nation which won the war_, but in many more she is _the nation which fed starving Europe_. To many she is _the nation of Roosevelt_, but to many more she is _the nation of Abraham Lincoln_.

Still to-day, the moral passion of America identifies America, and it is a pity that the world outside, and even part of America herself, should be deceived by the noisy Jazz band exterior by which America seems to choose to signalize herself to the world.

To what extent America has been "cleaned up" has never been divulged to the outside world. The forty thousand are ashamed of it. The others do not travel much and have little means of comparison. It is not only that drunkenness has been eliminated, but vices of other kinds.

"What an extraordinary moral city, compared with Paris or London!" was Wilfrid Ewart's surprised remark to me. And he had been walking Broadway at midnight without remarking a single _fille de joie_. And in order to make a test of the alleged "wetness" of America, Vachel Lindsay and I made a tour of the old barrooms of New York. The poet was for several years a Y. M. C. A. worker, and he had a round of barrooms, visiting them all regularly, and distributing literature relating to activities other than the consumption of beer. We made a remarkable pilgrimage together.

By every reckoning New York and Chicago are the richest fields for the "boot-legger" that America holds. If you can prove that these are relatively free of liquor you can be sure that the rest of America is very free. What did we find?

In one old bar, one bartender, four or five loungers with pots, and in the back a solitary foreign woman resting her bare arms on a sodden table, waiting for a customer. Every one regarded us suspiciously and nervously. Another bar had been converted into a restaurant; there was a lookout man at the door, and he worked a STOP-GO indicator in the restaurant. When the indicator turned to STOP the customers put their drinks under the table; when it returned to GO they brought it out again. That seemed to us a pretty flagrant case of "wetness." But as Vachel remarked to me--even there all the objectionable aspects of the saloon have been removed. No one objects on moral grounds to people having wine with their meals. It is the filth, the vice, the point of view of the barroom, that America fought and these can never come back.

Five or six large saloons had been converted into shops; sometimes one saloon into three shops, leased for considerable spaces of time and quite lost to drinking. Those bars which remained, shut or selling root beer, seemed to be holding on to valuable sites in the hope that after all there might be a reversal of the Prohibition Law.

But, as Lindsay pointed out, Prohibition is now part of the Constitution; it was adopted by many States prior to 1917, it has been enacted separately by all the States as well as by the Federal Government, and to go back on it it would have to be voted out by a majority of the States of the Union once more--which is unthinkable.

Wilfrid Ewart made many jests at the expense of the Statue of Liberty. All new-come Englishmen do. How can it be a "sweet land of liberty when one's liberty to have a drink is taken away?" is a favorite query.

The true answer to that question is that America, like England, is governed by majority opinions. The majority of American citizens wanted the abolition of the saloon, and they got it.

As regards the advantage of it, I saw New York in 1913 and can compare its huge gin-palaces of that time, the swarms of unfortunate girls going in and out, the police exploitation of them, the night court for women on Sixth Avenue, with cleaned-up New York in 1922. The advantage seems inestimable.

As regards the reality of Prohibition, I will say this--Even near the Mexican Border, after a forty-mile ride in the snow, when one would give a good deal for a stiff drink, not a rancher but was a teetotaler.

The little cities of America are now totally devoid of public vice. The prisons of Kansas are empty. In the large cities the police are notably impoverished. It is no use the foreign tourist going to the police and saying, "Show me the vice of your city." There is nothing to show. Go a round of the ice cream parlors. Yonder in a small den loving couples are eating hot tamales. On a corner a youth is surreptitiously lighting a cigarette. The nation is on a high level of morality, and this is reflected in the physique of its children. With all this, I ought perhaps to make a warning--there is almost no religion. Moral fervor stands instead of religion. The note of wonder, of awe, of divine praise, is almost entirely absent.

The upper forty thousand, as I have said, take little heed of this. They believe that they control the springs of action and can make the hundred million do what they want them to do. The party system in politics with no other choice but that of Republican or Democrat seems to facilitate their influence. "Cleaning up" is a passion of the hundred million; very well, it can be harnessed to the designs of the forty thousand. Let them "clean up" Cuba, "clean up" the Central American Republics, "clean up" Mexico.

6

One thing the hundred million will not tolerate in their midst and that is, a foreign point of view in morals. The "dago" will do things no "white man" will stand. So also will the Hun and the "Hunky," the Slav, the "Greaser," the "nigger." An associating of foreigners with unnatural vice is all too common. The fairskinned Anglo-Saxon, despite all admixtures, remains the dominant type. He rejects the melting pot. He alone is the hundred-per-cent American and will not be adulterated. He is opposed to color, to all dark skins, be they Italian or Ethiopian, and he is opposed to European religions which seem to permit low morals. Out of this has arisen on the one hand the spirit of Hearst's newspapers, on the other the new development of the Ku Klux Klan.

It is this movement largely which has shut the door to further immigration from Europe. The idea was obtained during the War that American ideals and standards had become endangered by a too great influx of foreigners into America. The Germans, the Russians, the Irish, all forgot that they were Americans first--all the "hyphenates" waved their flags of origin. This naturally caused the lurid limelight of the Press to be turned upon the foreign elements in the midst, and it was seen how differently the foreigners lived and how much lower were their moral standards.

Even while America seemed to be fighting for Europe, her opinion of Europeans, never high, was suffering a severe depression. It is a national fact to-day that America trusts no foreigners.

7

Provincialism is widely spread. People are not only ill-informed regarding foreign countries, but credulous, and the press reflects their state of mind. A country like Russia might almost be in the moon, to judge by current opinions concerning her. Doubtless it would be absurd to go to America to obtain information about Europe.

On the other hand, education goes further in America than in any other country. You often hear exaggerated statements of what the Russian Bolsheviks are doing for the education of the Russian masses--they have "voted" and "assigned" and "planned"--and they have no teachers. But America has teachers and schools, the best equipped in the world. She is ready to spend money; she has faith in education, she has the will to get it. The High Schools of America are very remarkable, both in the number of them and in their size. Americans who have not traveled in the old home countries of Europe can hardly measure what magnificent institutions they have in their public schools, and what an advantage the average American child holds over the average child of any other nation.

Again, the number of colleges and universities is phenomenal. It reflects no doubt the wealth of America and also the turning of the back upon America's raw, primitive, uncouth past. England, by virtue of her history, is too phlegmatic to do much for the higher education of the masses.

I sent ye to school and ye wadna learn, I bought ye books and ye wadna read,

is the traditional attitude of the Englishman. "Too much of school makes Jack a dull boy," says he, and takes his boy away. In this I believe the Englishman is largely wrong. The dull, ignorant part of our population is far larger than it ought to be, and constitutes a national danger.

How far education in America is ahead of education in England may be judged by the size of the reading public. Lytton Strachey's _Queen Victoria_ has five readers in America for every one in England. A similar ratio existed for Maynard Keynes' _Economic Consequences of the Peace Treaty_ and for Wells' _Outline of History_.

There is, therefore, an educated class far in excess of the upper forty thousand. There may be a whole million of well-read people. And the number progresses with the children who swarm through new big schools and universities.

8

Where is it all going? Is it drifting southward as I am, to Mexico, to Empire? Will it stay where it is and wax more illustrious? "Tell me where you have come from and I will tell you where you are going," saith the Cynic. "An evil crow, an evil egg." America as a nation was born in the throes of the War of North and South. Or it rose out of Washingtonian independence and Jeffersonian idealism. Or it arose from the Puritanism of the Pilgrim Fathers, or from the adventure spirit of the gentlemen of Virginia. From such origins one could chart some kind of destiny. But not with surety. One must go further back to the spirit of Elizabethan sailors, to Drake, and a thousand others. Latin America derives from the Conquistadores of Spain, but Anglo-Saxon America derives as surely from the English conquerors. America was Imperial before she was Democratic, and English before she was American. But then again the English, or at least the Saxons, were a sturdy, independent race, intolerant of bondage, urgent for their civic rights, always proud of freedom. If there is one thing that is with difficulty soluble in Anglo-Saxondom, it is character. It is by virtue of character that England has been a ruler of peoples, and possibly again it is character as much as business and excessive wealth and a leisured class that will lead America along her road of destiny. It is still in the air as to which road that will be--the way of Roosevelt or the way of Lincoln.