Part 16

"It's a good business," said he; "no expense of keeping a shop, double profit,--profit on the goods and profit on the eggs; it pays all right. But I'm tired of it, and I think I shall give it up and buy land." To several of his customers who asked after his business he replied in the same terms. He was getting tired of it, and was thinking of buying land. When I took a photograph of his cart and himself he said he would be very glad to have a copy, just to remind him of old days--for he was thinking of giving it up, etc.

It is interesting to observe the commercialisation that goes on in the country in America. Not only does the egg-bank and travelling store come round, but the cream-vans come also and buy up all the cream, and the baker comes from the bread factory and dumps, twice or three times a week, huge baskets of damp, tasteless loaves, all wrapped in grease-paper. Not many people bake their own bread--they save time and take this astonishing substitute. Then travellers in coffee have exploited special brands--"Euclid Coffee," "Primus Coffee," "Old Reliable," and the like, done up in pound packets. Rural Americans do not realise that good coffee is coffee and no more.

No one had a quart of milk to spare on the road to Angola, so I hit on a plan which I recommend to others in like circumstances. I went to a farmhouse and asked for a cupful of milk to have with my coffee; I got it easily and freely. The farmer was rather touched. But as you cannot make decent coffee with one cupful of milk I went to another farm and begged another cupful, and then to another. I was able to make a good pot of coffee, despite the scarcity of milk.

Whilst I was having lunch, I had an interesting talk with an ancient man who was mowing grass at the side of the road.

"You look like Father Time," said I.

"Well, I've mown a good many days," he replied. "I shall soon die now. There's no strength in me; my day is over."

"Have you enjoyed life?" I asked.

"Yes, I have," he replied, his face lighting up.

"Do you work your farm yourself?"

"No! My son works it; he is twenty-two. Yes, I married late. Thirty-two years I wandered as you are doing. I've been in thirty states. I was ten years on the Lakes, a sailor."

"Ever across the Atlantic?"

"Never on the big waters."

"And how do you think America is going on?"

"I think she is going bad. The new generation is weak. There'll soon be no old farmer stock. The old folk work, but the children go to school. My father was an old Connecticut Yankee--a republican--so am I; but the party has broken up, the country's going wild."

The old man had a dog "Colonel," named after Colonel Somebody, who was his father's Squire in Connecticut.

"A fine dog," said I.

"More helpful than a boy," said the old farmer. "He can drive the hog home straight, and he always helps me up when I tumble down. I'm weak now--have had two strokes, and after the last I was just like a baby. I can't mow properly--no strength to move anything. Often I fall of a heap, and Colonel runs in and gets under my stomach with his head and raises me. A 'cute dog...."

A pleasant vision of not unhappy age!

I passed through Angola--a neat little city round about a shoppy square; a quiet market-place functionising the agricultural country round about. I had dinner at one of several restaurants, and had three quick-lunch courses brought to me at once--an array of nine or ten plates on a little grey stone table--not very appetising.

There were three or four country loungers at the ice-cream bar of the establishment, and a negro was sitting at another table with a tall glass and a straw and a "soda." At my side was what I took to be a piano--very dusty, and with the keyboard out of sight. Suddenly, without any warning, it jumped into music, and thumped out a cake-walk in its interior. It was as if a lot of niggers were doing the dance in an empty room.

I paid no attention, facially. Alas! we are quite familiar with such marvels, with all that can be shown. We raise no eyebrow. But bring in an aboriginal Chinee and sit him there where I was, and start this box a-going, and he'd jump out of his wits. How was it started? Some one went softly across the room and put a cent in a slot--that's all. Is it not maddening to be uninterested, unthrilled? None of us paid any attention. The loungers gossiped with the ice-cream girl, the nigger drew up his soda, I strove with my hard roast beef.

* * * * * * *

St. John's Eve! Unusual things might be expected to happen this night. I had lived with the growing summer, had caught in my hands one evening not long since a large dusky lovely emperor-moth, and had received an invitation from fairyland. The strange thing was that as I tramped out of Angola on the Lagrange Road, it did not occur to me what day it was. Only in the middle of the night did I reflect--there is something unusual astir, something is happening all about me, this is no ordinary night. And only in the morning did I realise it had been St. John's Eve.

I slept by an orchard on a hill. Below me was a little lake, on the right a straw stack, on the left an apple tree, over me a plum tree with wee plums. All night long little apples fell from their weak stalks, the frogs sang--now solos, now choruses, the mosquitoes hummed in the plum tree. On the surface of the little lake little lights appeared and disappeared as the wandering fireflies carried messages from reed to reed. Processions of clouds stole over the starry sky, and I thought of rain, but the whole night was hot and odorous and full of dreams.

I did not awake next morning till it was bright day. Between me and the straw stack there was a fluttering and squawking of young birds being taught to fly by their mother. Every time a young bird alighted after a little flutter, it always fell on its nose. My attention was divided between the birds and a big bee, who thought I had made my bed over his nest. What a distressing way the bumble-bee has of losing himself and thinking you are to blame!

I tramped to the reedy lake of Whip-poor-Will. The wind blew now hot from the sun's mouth, now cold from a cloud's shoulder. The question was, Would the Midsummer day turn to heat or come to rain? It turned to heat. What a day of happiness I spent on the sandy ups and downs of country roads! After weeks among plains, I was glad of a countryside that had corners again. I was among "dear little lakes," the children of the great lakes--in the nursery.

I came to Flint, and met the "pike road" from Detroit to Chicago. Flint has a large general store and a barber's shop. I bought three oranges out of the refrigerator of the store, and, to make them last longer, half a pound of honey-cakes.

At noon I made my mid-day fire in the bed of a dried-up rivulet. The weather was almost too hot for tending a fire; tawny spots appeared on my wrists, and, viewing my face in the metal back of my soapbox, I was startled to see the fire in my eyebrows and cheeks. But with the heat there was a wind, and in the afternoon great cumuli grew up in the sky, and it was possible to think the earth was a ship and the clouds the billows which we were rolling over. Up hill and down dale, round corners, by snug farms with green and crimson cherry orchards, over hills where miles of corn were blanching and waving! I came to Brushy Prairie and camped for the night in an angle of the road beside the village cemetery.

I read and wrote, mended my clothes, cleaned my pack of waste dust, collected hay to make a bed. Many carts came past, and the people in them hailed me with facetious remarks. After I had lain down one old village wife came to see if I were sick and wanted medicine. It was strange to lie by the cemetery and hear a party of girls go by in a buggy, singing, "When the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there."

I lay and watched the sky, scanning the clouds for a certitude of a dry night. A great war was going on between the forces of the clear sky and of the clouds. There was a party of skirmishers advancing from the south-west. There was a long array of clouds in the north and in the south, and the main army lay heavy and invincible in the north-west. But the clear sky scattered the enemy wherever it encountered them, and even forced the main army to take up a new position. The camp of the clouds was made far away, and lights came out in their leaguer.

The night became silent and brilliant and perfect, and I lay with my eyes open, and did not look, but just saw....

I slept. Whilst my eyes were closed there was a great night attack, and when I woke again I found the armies of the clear sky completely routed. There was a shower of rain, and I jumped up and tripped along to the church. The door was open. I struck a match and saw all the pews and prayer-books and hymn-sheets, and away in the shadows the platform and the pulpit.

But the shower ceased. I reflected that if heavy rain came on I could easily come into shelter, so I returned to my hay-spread, and lay down again and watched the renewed battle in the sky.

A desperate rally! One star, two stars were shining, and round about them a great stand was being made. They fought lustily. They seemed to be gaining ground. Yes. Three, four, five stars showed, six.... I fell asleep again, knowing that the side I favoured would win. When I wakened next it was to greet the great General coming from the east in all his war-paint, and hung all over with silver medals. A glorious day followed.

I spent a morning by the clear St. Joseph River. On the road to Middlebury wild raspberries abounded. I could have picked a pound or so of berries along the road. Raspberry bushes occur in many places, but I've seen few raspberries hitherto. That is because the great friends of the raspberries live so near--human boys and girls--and they are always taking the raspberries to school, to church, to the corn-field. If they are going home they insist on taking the little raspberries home too, to the distress of fathers and mothers sometimes, for the raspberries know how to disagree with the children upon occasion, especially the young ones.

There were not many farm-houses about here, but at one of them I was given a pot full of ripe cherries, and made a "smash" of them, and ate them with milk and sugar.

A motorist took me along a dozen miles in a bouncing, petrol-spurting runabout car, a Dutchman, who paid me the compliment of saying I spoke very grammatically for a foreigner.

There was a thundershower in the afternoon. In the evening I obtained permission to sleep in a barn, and the farmer talked to me as I lay in the straw. There had been a runaway team the day before, and his neighbour's bay mare had twenty-four stitches in her now, and he didn't reckon she'd be much more good.

A waggoner taking fowls and dairy produce to sell at restaurants and quick-lunch shops took me into Elkhart next morning. Elkhart is a large city, with many car factories and buggy factories, and by comparison with the country round is very foreign, full of Italians, Poles, and Jews. It is a well-built, handsome city, with much promise for the future.

As I stepped out on the Shipshewaka Road I saw by a notice that a prize was being offered for the most popular woman and the homeliest man. What a contrast this implies to the life of the East. Here is a land where women are public, and where nobility in a man is best expressed by being handy about the house.

I tramped along the north side of St. Joseph's River, through beautiful country under delightful conditions. The cornfields had turned red-gold, the grass was all in flower, and little brown fluffy bees considered it the best time of summer. What a sun there was, what a breeze! I found the "Bachelor's Retreat" on the St. Joseph's River, two boat-houses, a stairway through the forest banks, and a little wooden pier stretching out into the pleasant water--a good place for a swim!

Just before Mishewaka I met old Samuel Judie, seventy-six years of age, lying on a bank with a stick in his hand, tending the cows of his own farm and philosophising on life.

"It's a marvellous thing that the sun stands still and the earth goes round it," said he. "A marvellous thing that there are stars. They find out how to make automobiles, and they find out lots of things about the stars, but the human race won't ever know out the facts."

To most of the remarks I made Mr. Judie answered "Shah."

"England has fifty million people."

"Oh, shah!"

"London is twenty miles broad and twenty miles long."

"Oh, shah!"

"There are plenty of farms of only ten acres."

"Oh, shah!"

He grumbled a great deal at the automobiles.

"Last Sunday," said he, "a man and his wife were knocked down just here. They had been saving and pinching for years, and had at last cleared the mortgage off their farm, and were reckoning to live decently. The automobile cut the woman's head right off, and the man is lying in the hospital. There ought to be a law against the automobiles rushing through from Elkhart to South Bend on Sundays."

"I suppose South Bend is a rich place?"

"Shah!"

"What do they make there?"

"Boots, waggons, ploughs, the wooden parts of Singer's sewing-machines.... They are terribly hard up for hands.... You'd get a job easy.... There is a great lot of girls working in the factories, many foreign. They soon marry and go on to a farm. Factory folks make a pile of money; get tired, and then buy a few acres of land and live on it. Farms about here are split up into small portions and sold to poor folk. Some want me to divide up my farm and sell part of it, but I won't do it."

Mr. Judie had had to work all his life, and to work hard a good deal of it, and he felt entitled to have his own mind on any subject, and to act accordingly.

A wealthy American took me along in his car through Mishewaka to South Bend, and showed me the great factory of wind-mill sails, Dodge's factory of "transmission power" of pulleys and connections and all things that join up engines and plant; then the famous Studebaker's factory of plough-handles, shafts, waggons, etc., the rubber-boot factory, Singer's frame factory, and several other establishments which indicated how busy these Indiana cities are.

I tramped out to New Carlisle, spending a night there under a deep dark maple tree, which after sunset looked like a great overlapping thatch--not a poke of light came through. As I lay beside the highroad, and as the American holidays had just commenced, scores of cars came by, and as each one appeared on the road horizon it lit up my leafy ceiling with its great flashlights. How hot the night was.... I slept without covering. It was hot even at dawn.

It was next day on the road to Michigan City that I gave water to a thirsty calf, who actually ran to me and butted into me to persuade me to fill his bucket. It was on this road that having thrown a potful of water at some sheep they followed me down the dusty road, crying to me to do it again.

Michigan City was sweltering. I took refuge from the heat in the waiting-room of the large railway station, and watched the crowds in the New York and Chicago trains, and the rush of the restaurant boys with hundreds of cones of ice-cream.

A pretty negress came and sat next me and began talking.

"Ah come over heer two manths ago to the carnaval, and have been playing _vaudy-ville_, but the home folks said ah mus' come back. Mai, how I cried when I heard. I did take on...."

She was under police supervision, and a big Irish policeman came and took her away when he saw her talking with me. She stood on the platform until the train came in, and then she was put in charge of a guard. She had, no doubt, been arrested under suspicious circumstances in the streets of Michigan, and had been brought before a kind magistrate, who had forborne to punish her on condition that she went back to her mother.

The road from Michigan undulated over a weedy wilderness and gnat-swarming marshes. I had a bad time as to the heat and the mosquitoes, and, despite use of strong disinfectants, I got badly stung, and was consequently feverish for some days. I was also very idle, very much inclined to sit on palings and consider how hot it was. On the Sunday, just to see whether the plaints of the farmers were justified, I made a census of all the vehicles that passed me. On the Monday I got to Hammond, and on Tuesday came in by car to Chicago. That day was the hottest of the year. Fifty-three people died from the heat in the city that day. I could have understood a few tramps dying even on the road.

XVI

THE CHOIR DANCE OF THE RACES

The road into Chicago was one of increasing noise and smoke and desolation, of heat and gloom, and the rumour of a sordid defeat of life. I remember Calumet City by the factory stacks, the chimneys whose blackness seemed fainting out of sight in the haze of the heat. Dark smokes and white steams curled above many workshops; along the roadside black rivulets flowed from the factories. There were heaps of ashes and tin cans lying in odorous ponds. The leaves of the trees and the grasses of the fields were wilted and yellowed by the airs and fumes of Chicago. At Hammond a drunken, one-armed man followed me for about a mile, attracting a crowd of street Arabs by his foul language. East Chicago looked to me like parts of suburban London, and I was reminded in turns of Peckham, Hackney Marshes, Commercial Road, Whitechapel. There was, however, much that was unlike anything in London--the ominous squads of factory chimneys; clouds of heavy-rolling, ochreous fumes and smoke; palings with such advertisements as "Read no scab newspapers" or "You'll Holler"; wooden houses; dilapidated, ramshackle frame-buildings of grey wood; broken-down verandahs; black stairways; grey washing hanging on strings from stairway to stairway; half-naked children; piles of old cans and rusty iron.

The vehicles increased on the highway, the lumber of much traffic commenced, the red and yellow tramcars multiplied, railway lines crossed the road, and by the rush of trains one felt that all the traffic of Eastern and Central America was converging to one point. The open country disappeared. The air of the roadway became full of dust. The heat increased ten degrees, and to move a limb was to perspire. Foreigners jostled one another on the sidewalks, negroes and negresses sat in doorways. The odour of carcases came to the nostrils from Packing-town, and at last the great central roar of traffic--Chicago.

I can give no account of the great city here--it would be only to recount and add together the uglinesses and the promises of other cities. It was at once worse and better than I had expected. The hopelessness of the picture given by Upton Sinclair in _The Jungle_ I felt to be exaggerated. I was told at Hull House that the novelist had got all his stories at the stockyards, but that the massed calamities that are so appalling in the story never occurred to one family in real life. The effect of accumulated horrible detail in _The Jungle_ deprives you at the time of any love towards America; it made me, a Briton, feel hatred towards America, and when first I read the book I felt that no Russian who read it carefully would entertain willingly the idea of going to America. If he had entertained the idea, having read _The Jungle_ he would abandon it. It is an astonishing tract on the fate of a Russian peasant family leaving the land of so-called tyranny for a land of so-called freedom; and its obvious moral is that Russia is a better country for the individual than America--that America takes the fine peasant stock of Europe and shatters it to bits.

It is true that Chicago makes a convenience of men, and that there man exists that commerce may thrive rather than that commerce exists that man may thrive. It is a place where the physical and psychical savings of Europeans are wasted like water, and where no one understands what the waste means. Spending is always joyful, and Chicago is a gay city. It is full of a light-hearted people, pushing, bantering, laughing, blindfolded over their spiritual eyes. In such places as Chicago the immigrant finds a market for things he could never sell at home--his body, his nerve, his vital energy; a ready market, and he sells them and has money in his pocket and beer in plenty. Listen to the loud-voiced, God-invoking crowd in the saloons! They have the proceeds that come of selling the savings of Europe. They have come out of the quiet villages and forests where, from generation to generation and age to age, the peasantry live quiet lives, and grow richer and richer in spirit and nerve. But these in the Chicago streets and saloons have found their mysterious destiny, to lavish in a life, and for seemingly worthless ends, what hundreds of quiet-living ancestors have saved. The tree of a hundred years falls in a day and becomes timber, supporting a part of the fabric of civilisation for a while.

The strangest thing is the clamour of the Chicago crowd--it is dead-sure about everything in the world, ignorant, cocksure, mocking. It does not know it is losing, does not know that it is blind-folded, because it is the victim of destiny.

Part of the spiritual blindness of the great city is the belief it holds that there is no other place of importance but itself. And many outsiders take the city at its own estimate. But Chicago is not America, neither is New York or any other great city. If going to America meant going only to the great cities, then few but the Jews would emigrate from Europe.

The ideals of America cannot be worked out merely in the great cities. The cities are places of death, of the destruction of national tissue, and of human combustion, necessary, no doubt, as such, certainly not places where one need worry about national health. The national health is on the farms of Pennsylvania and Indiana and Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, the Dakotas, the Far West. The men range big out there; the stand-by of the people will always be found in these places and not in the cities.

And New York and Chicago, though necessary, are abnormal. They are not so much America as unassimilated Europe. The population of a city should be the natural sacrifice of the population of the country. It is often deplored that the country people are forsaking the land and flocking to the towns; but the proper people to replenish the failing stock of the cities is just those whom instinct and destiny prompt to leave the country. It is most bewildering to the student of America that her city-populations are replenished by the foreign immigrants, by people nursing, it is true, American sentiments, but not yet born into the American ideal, not made America's own. The natural place for the first generation of immigrants is on the land. If Chicago seems too large, too sudden a growth, disorderly, unanticipated, altogether out of hand, it is because of the hordes of foreigners who are there, who have not the impulse to co-operate, and who do not readily respond to the efforts of the idealist and politician. And they do not readily respond because they have not lived long enough in the true American atmosphere, have not served a quiet apprenticeship in the country, but have been dumped into an industrial wilderness served with the yellow press and "sped up."