AMERICA AT HOME

A. MAURICE LOW

AUTHOR OF

THE SUPREME SURRENDER

LONDON

GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED

SOUTHAMPTON ST., STRAND, W.C.

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GENEfo

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THE FLAT IRON BUILDING (THE MOST STRIKING 'SKY SCRAPER' IN NEW YORK).

PREFACE

MANY years ago a shipwrecked man was cast not far from that historic rock where the Pilgrim Fathers landed, and there discovered by a passing Irishman. This Good Samaritan quickly revived the unfortunate with copious draughts of the * crayture,' and sent him on his way rejoicing.

On hearing of the charitable deed, one of his friends asked Pat how he happened to know the correct remedy for the case. He answered quietly, ' Devil a bit do I know of medicine ; but, sir, I like whisky myself, and thought he might too.'

So it is with the contents of this little book. It does not pose as a profound critique of American psychology, nor a minute investigation into social and political conditions in the United States, but rather as a rapid presentation of the phases of life which have appealed to me, and I trust may interest the reader.

This is not, however, a plea for a special dispensation of criticism such as is offered by the producer of the so-called popular forms of theatrical entertainments, who argues that as nothing serious was contemplated, nothing serious in the way of comment should follow.

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PREFACE

' You must not take me seriously,' is his effort to disarm criticism in advance, 'because I do not take myself seriously.'

Now I, on the contrary, have a serious purpose. Although my comments may be a surface play over national traits, rather than an analysis of character and institutions, still, if I have not replaced the lay figure conception of * Uncle Sam ' as an individual enthusiasti cally provincial, strenuously acquisitive, and infinitely crude, by a panoramic view of a great Nation — a Nation in flux, it is true, but crystallizing with amazing rapidity into an heroic mould, I have failed in my task. An attempt has been made frankly to present the truth about the American at home as it is borne in upon me after years of sojourn in that ' home,' and not the caricature which is supposed to inspire the amused admiration of the public. On this point I await the judgment of my readers.

I have not discussed the American temperament as demonstrated in present-day literature and art, for the reason that all literary efforts in the United States now seem to me to tend to inculcate the obvious without a hint of the subjective grasp of life which is the only touch to make a work vital and lasting, and because there is as yet no national school of American art.

Whether the artistic temperament exists in sufficient intensity in America to blossom on the native soil, is an unanswered question ; for whenever a young man in America feels the inspiration to devote himself to an

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PREFACE

artistic career, he is packed off by public acclaim to Paris, where the probabilities are that he attaches him self to some school and becomes a mere copyist.

So there is no representative Gallery of American Art, and not until one or two generations have assimilated foreign influences with the natural bent toward individu ality supplied by conditions in America, can we hope for native work. Even then the results may not be great immediately; but if the United States is as determined to be as great in art as she has become in manufactures, the future is certain.

The future is the keynote of Uncle Sam's daily song. f

The sculptor, George Wade, says : ' I could tell an American immediately, not by manner, walk or clothes, or anything external, but by the peculiar expression of the eye. It is an expression I find it hard to analyse. It is a look that seems to embrace the future rather than the present or the past. The American face has the open-eyed look of confident anticipation.'

And the two French writers who have collaborated on LOncle Sam Chez lui pay this tribute to American uniqueness :

' Formed out of an aggregation of different races, the American people forms a race by itself — individual, characteristic, and, from many points of view, very superior. It is as ridiculous to say that it is solely Anglo-Saxon as that it is Latin. The American has neither the egotism of the Englishman nor the arrogance of the German, but he possesses their practical sense ;

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PREFACE

he has not the light-heartedness of the Frenchman, but his suppleness; he has not the obsequious politeness of the Italian or the Spaniard, but a profound respect for established institutions.

1 The American is himself and nothing but himself. His character is difficult to define. Polite, affectionate, and loquacious by turns, he may become, without apparent reason, brusque, crabbed, and reserved. Even after living with him for many years, it is impossible to know him completely. He is a man of surprises. One appreciates and esteems him, one does not judge him.'

With this I agree, with some modifications — the modifications lie in the pages beyond.

A. M. L.

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CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGK

I. THE GREAT REPUBLIC — YESTERDAY, TO-DAY,

AND TO-MORROW .... I

II. THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM . . IO

III. BOSSES, BIG AND LITTLE .... 26

IV. ARE THERE CLASSES IN THE UNITED

STATES? . . ... 41

V. THE EAST AND THE WEST . . . -55

VI. THE AMERICAN GIRL 70

VII. WASHINGTON, THE REPUBLICAN COURT . 84

VIII. THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR . . . /' IOI

IX. EDUCATION AND LABOUR . . . -US

X. SOCIAL CUSTOMS I 29

XI. HOW AMERICA AMUSES ITSELF . . . 144

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CONTENTS

CHAP PAGE

XII. A RICH MAN'S PARADISE .... 159 XIII. THE MIDDLE-CLASS PLAYGROUND . 172

XIV. THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO . .184

XV. THE AMERICAN PRESS .... 2OO

XVI. WHAT UNCLE SAM THINKS OF HIMSELF AND

ALL THE REST OF THE WORLD . .219 INDEX . 229

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE FLAT IRON BUILDING (THE MOST STRIKING

* SKY-SCRAPER ' IN NEW YORK) . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON. . . . IO

INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

WASHINGTON 36

A WESTERN COWBOY 64

TYPE OF AMERICAN GIRL 70

NIAGARA FALLS I3O

BASEBALL I44

HUNTING IN 'TEXAS' .160

THE BEACH AT ATLANTIC CITY . . . .172 SOUTHERN NEGRESS ^4

IMPERIAL SOUTHERN NEGRO'S ' SHACK ' . ,198 GROUP OF CROW CHIEFS 22O

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AMERICA AT HOME

CHAPTER ONE

THE GREA T REPUBLIC— YESTERDA Y, TO-DA Y, AND TO-MORROW

IN the old days, the days some years behind us, when to Englishmen America was an undiscovered country, before British peers had contracted the habit of marry ing American girls, when the American invasion had not swept over Europe, when American goods were not seen in every European shop, and Americans, men and women, were not the mainstay of hotel-keepers, dress makers, and dealers in works of art — in those days it used to be said that when an adventurous Englishman landed in New York, before even he had left the gang way and set his foot on American soil, he was captured by a horde of ravenous reporters who, with wide-open notebooks and pencils poised in the air waiting for his answer to the inevitable question, asked him for his ' Impressions of the United States ' : for be it understood once and for all that no true American ever talks about his country as America. It is always the £7-nited States. In those days it used to be said that after an English man had taken a stroll up Fifth Avenue, and with all the love of his race for reckless daring penetrated to the

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AMERICA AT HOME

wilds of Central Park (which is to New York what Hyde Park is to London), searched vainly for the Indians whom he fondly believed made Central Park their happy hunting grounds, and who in the interval between slaying buffaloes scalped the inoffensive stockbroker on his way to business, or the guileless Tammany politician returning to his virtuous home, with his pockets bulging with the spoils of politics ; and with superb courage braved the unknown by going as far ' West ' as Niagara Falls, he returned to England and immediately sat himself down to write a book on America.

Allowing for that playful love of humour which vents itself in skilful exaggeration of national foibles, which is an inherent gift of the American, and which is perhaps one of the reasons why he is naturally buoyant and always disposed to look upon the bright side of things, the sarcasm was not unwarranted. Even at a date so recent as a quarter of a century ago the Americans were still, as a people, boyishly young, and they had still to find themselves. They had all the stripling's en thusiasm and all his self-consciousness. They were like a lusty youth sensible of his great physical strength, of his superb power to battle and to win, and yet aware, although he tried to forget it, that his manners lacked a certain polish, that his hands were uncomfortably large, and his feet entirely too prominent. He wanted to make a good impression. He wanted to be liked. The distinguished Englishman, the traveller, the author, the scientist, must be impressed with the country that he was about to visit, and he was expected, as every guest is, to say pleasant things to his host.

Unfortunately not every Englishman carried his polite ness with him across the Atlantic. Sometimes novelty did not appeal to him, sometimes the difference between

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THE GREAT REPUBLIC

the old and newer civilisation was too marked to appeal to him. He failed to grasp the significance of Democracy, to be impressed with the resistless energy of a young i race only fairly started in the great battle for national i supremacy ; he even sneered at some things. And then i he went back home and wrote his book. Small wonder the majority of Englishmen had curious ideas of America and the Americans, and Americans came to believe that there was little love for their country in England.

Fortunately to-day all that has been changed. Americans and Englishmen now know each other very well, and the more they know of each other the greater , admiration each has for the fine qualities of the other. / Climate, political and social institutions, methods of work and methods of play, modes of living, these and many other things make the Englishman and the American unlike, and yet unlike as they may be in many respects in so many are they alike that they are the only two great nations that can always meet on common ground. They speak the same language, and how much that means only one who has lived in the United States can properly appreciate. The men of other races may be foreigners, the Englishman never is. They not only speak the same language, but fundamentally they think the same thoughts. Love of liberty, love of justice, love of right, are expressed in the same terms by the English man as by the American. They need no interpreter. They both sought and found their inspiration at thet same fountain-head. They sat at the feet of law and\ were taught by the same teacher. The literature of England is the heritage of America. All those things for which Englishmen battled, all those things which make a people strong and a nation great, belong to America by right ; they are part of the inheritance of the

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AMERICA AT HOME

race ; they are a family possession belonging as much to the younger as to the older brother.

Yesterday a sprawling infant, to-day the United States is a full-grown man. Its progress has been marvellous, the wonder of all the world ; it has been so phenomenal that the world still seeks explanation for it and is puzzled to find the true reason. If the past is any guide to the future, what may not one expect of a country so great in all that goes to make greatness, of a people so amazingly energetic and whose ambition is so boundless ? They have rounded out little more than a century of national existence, and yet in that century they have done that which other nations and other peoples have done not nearly so well in several centuries. In the little more than a hundred years which is the history of the American people they have grown from a handful of struggling colonists to a race eighty millions strong ; they have become one of the richest and mostV prosperous people in the world ; they have become one of the greatest of commercial nations ; they are destined to take a leading part in international politics.

They fought us and they taught us the iron was in their blood ; they fought each other, a war compared with which other wars are insignificant, and the iron of the fathers was in the veins of their sons ; they fought nature and with iron hand subdued her. From a handful of settlers contending against wild beasts and the even greater savagery of the Indian, they have spread across a mighty continent until one flank rests upon the Atlantic and the other upon the Pacific, typical that Europe as well as Asia must reckon America in all their calculations. Other nations are sobered no less than hampered by tradition. The civilisation of England as well as the major part of

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THE GREAT REPUBLIC

Europe has settled itself into well-established grooves. England is one of the most progressive countries in the world, and yet in England progress — which means innovation and improvement, the casting aside of the old for the new, the adoption of modern facilities to meet modern requirements, whether it be in the machinery of society or the machinery of manufacture — must first overcome the resistance of conservatism, the objection to accepting the new and the untried for the old and tested. In America one finds no such obstacles. That a thing or an idea is new is no valid objection to its use ; in fact, it is often its strongest argument. It is new, therefore it is assumed to be better than the old; it is American, therefore it is better adapted to American ideas and customs. "We make our prece dents," was the reply returned by a great American public man when he was told that a certain thing which he proposed to do was revolutionary and with out the warrant of precedent to sanction it. That is the spirit of the American. Mere age is not sacred. The American refuses to be tied to the past, he lives in the present, and the genius of the day in which he: lives may be greater than that of the day of his father. That being so, it is no disrespect to the memory of his father to refuse to be satisfied with those things which satisfied him, but which he knows can be im proved upon.

Yet it must not be assumed that the Americans, as a people, are entirely without the saving balance of conservatism, or that they are lacking in self-restraint, or that they delight in innovation simply because they continually seek for change. They are, as a nation and a people, emotional and their feelings are easily reached. Nominally Anglo-Saxons, with the principal

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AMERICA AT HOME

characteristics of the Saxon forming a solid foundation, largely influencing them mentally and morally, domin ating their social customs and their political institutions, they have become a mixed race, and, like all mixed races, they are a composite of the nationalities they have absorbed. The raw material, so to speak, the elements which go to make the stock of a nation, has been hammered into shape and fused and moulded into the finished product under the forced draught of a young country, a country with virgin soil, a country with boundless resources, a country where strong men become stronger and even the weakling may find health ; where men think for themselves and act for themselves ; where everything is in a state of constant flux, almost of unrest ; where the stimulus of the ozone in the air, of clear, bright skies, long, hot summers and hard, cold winters, makes men active, alert, vigorous ; where competition is very keen, but where the rewards of successful endeavour are very great ; where education is more diffused among all classes than it is anywhere else in the world.

All these things — not to overlook political institutions, a by no means insignificant factor in the grand total — make the American what he is. He can be easily moved, he responds quickly if the right chord is touched, he takes up with a fad or champions a cause with all the enthusiasm of which he is capable, and for the time being believes thoroughly in that which he has espoused; which explains why Americans for the moment have often done things inscrutable to Europeans, why their politics are so intense, why to-day a man is a popular hero and the next week he is the target for malice and cheap wit. The first ebullition is the ex pression of the emotional American, but under the

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THE GREAT REPUBLIC

light layer of emotion is the solid substratum of the Anglo-Saxon conservatism, which always acts as a counterpoise after the first excitement has vented itself, j Often it would seem as if a majority of the American people were the victims of a craze and as if the sanity of a nation lodged in the saving remnant of the minority. But the most vociferous shouting is not always the work of the largest numbers. When the count has been made reason has generally triumphed over emotion; the firm hand of common sense has curbed the recklessness of impetuosity.

Other nations have so nearly completed their social problems that the social structure is well-nigh finished. In America the work is still in course of construction. It is the difference between living in a house to which one has fallen heir, a house in which one's ancestors lived, which one may not radically change but may only repaint or repaper, and the house which one builds from the ground up, where one can observe brick layer and stonemason and carpenter at work, where one can alter the plans to suit his fancy while the work is in progress, and where, not satisfied with his house when it is completed, he can pull down a wing and rebuild to suit his newer or more advanced ideas. The American can watch his civilisation being made, he ' can see his social advancement going forward, he is a ; spectator of the evolution of his race. There is no finality in America or American institutions. There is respect for the wisdom of the men whose wisdom has stood the test of time, there is acceptance of that which has proved itself useful for the purpose for which it was intended, but no American makes a vow of per petual obedience, or relinquishes his right to tear down so that he may upbuild more skilfully. And yet,

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AMERICA AT HOME

paradoxical as it may seem, with this tidal flow of national character American institutions remain firmly anchored, basically they remain unshaken by the passing storm of popular passion, they are foundationed in the abiding faith of the people.

The American system of government has endured for one hundred and twenty-five years. It has faced more than one crisis. It has been subjected to more than one supreme test. It has emerged triumphant. It has contended with treason at home and enemies abroad. At the time when the courage of men was most des perately tried that courage never faltered. The Republic has lived because its children believe in the Republic. They may change their laws, they may alter their social institutions, they may modify their policy to keep pace with newer requirements, but the fundamental principles are unchangeable and unalterable.

Yesterday a sprawling infant, to-day a full-grown man ; what of the to-morrow ? It is an entrancing subject for speculation. The gift of prophecy is given to few men, and yet one need not be endowed with the power of prescience to see what lies ahead of this young giant. If it shall continue to make the same progress during the second century of its existence that it did in its first — and there is every reason to believe that its progress will be cumulative — it will have a population larger than that of any other country, its wealth will be greater, its commerce more extensive, its material re sources more abundant. It is to-day one of the great nations of the world ; to-morrow it may well be the greatest. Its wealth, its commerce, its power may dominate the world. To-day its voice in international councils is only infrequently heard ; and because other nations are not familiar with it, it is listened to with

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THE GREAT REPUBLIC

only a portion of the respect to which it is entitled. Then all nations will treat it with the courtesy that strength exacts. The power of the United States will be as potent at the council table as it will be in the markets of the world.

Come, let us see more of these wonderful people and this marvellous country. I promise you it will not be time wasted, and it will not be a journey without interest. We shall wander a bit farther than Central Park ; and although we may see no Indians, and no buffaloes may delight our eyes, we shall see things even more curious and more fascinating — we shall see a people at work and at play, a nation in the making.

CHAPTER TWO THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM

IN the United States manhood suffrage exists. Practi cally every citizen of the United States, whether native born or naturalised, is entitled to vote for the candidate for the Presidency, members of Congress, and State and municipal officers. The exceptions are to be found in some of the Southern States, where to deprive the negroes of the right of suffrage certain educational qualifications have been imposed, which the negroes, being illiterate, are unable to meet.

The United States is a sovereign nation in its relations with other sovereign nations ; it is a federation of States in its domestic relations. By virtue of the terms of the federal constitution adopted in 1787, with its subsequent amendments, the various States delegated to the Federal or General Government certain powers which the Federal Goverment may alone exercise, but all other authority is retained by the States. Thus, the General Government, acting through Congress, has the sole power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the national debt, to provide for the common defence, to borrow money on the credit of the United States, to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, to coin money, to declare war, to raise armies, to support a navy — in short, to do all those things

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AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM

which are inherent in sovereignty and which can be done more properly and more conveniently by a central Government than by separate Governments.

Each State is sovereign within its own borders. Each State makes its own constitution and can adopt such form of constitution as it pleases, provided only that it is a Republican form of government — as under the fourth article of the federal constitution the United States is pledged * to guarantee to every State in the Union a Republican form of government ' — and is not in dero gation of any of the inhibitions of the federal constitution. For example, the constitution prohibits the granting of any title of nobility by the United States, or the passage of any bill of attainder or ex post facto law. The constitution of a State that should contain provisions recognising titles of nobility or sanctioning attainder would be null and void because unrepublican in form and essence.

The government of the United States is vested in three branches — the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. The President, popularly termed 'the chief executive ' or ' chief magistrate,' is more than a mere executive or administrative officer. It is his duty to see that the national laws are properly observed and executed, which is the purely administrative function of his office, but in addition he has the power of initiative. He is required under the constitution to give Congress from time to time ' information of the state of the Union, and recom mend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient,' which he does in the form of written communications to both Houses of Congress. The most important message is sent at the beginning of every session of Congress, when the President reviews at length, often at unnecessary and

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wearisome length, domestic and foreign relations, and makes such recommendations as he thinks advisable. During the session, as occasion may arise, he sends to Congress special messages advising legislation or a particular action on the part of the law-making body ; but he may not put his recommendations in the form of a bill — or more properly speaking, while the constitution does not prohibit him from doing so, inasmuch as the essence of the American system of government is a com plete severance of the legislative and executive functions, for the President to put his general recommendations in the form of a specific measure would be regarded as an attempt on the part of the executive to infringe upon the prerogatives of the legislature.

All bills after having passed both Houses of Congress are sent to the President for his approval. If he ap proves them he appends his signature within ten days and the bill becomes a law ; but if he should object to a bill he returns it to the House in which it originated, with his objections in writing, when if two-thirds of the House vote in favour of its passage, the objections of the President to the contrary notwithstanding, the bill goes to the other House, where it requires a similar two-thirds vote to secure its passage. Such a bill is said to be passed over the President's veto, and does not require his signature. If the President does not approve of a bill, and yet does not feel warranted in vetoing it, he may retain it in his possession for ten days, at the end of which period the bill automatically becomes a law without his signature, unless Congress in the mean time should have adjourned, when the bill fails to become a law.

The President is charged with the conduct of foreign relations, but his power is narrowly circumscribed and

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limited. He alone can give instructions to his ambassa dors and foreign ministers ; he can direct them to pursue a certain policy, but he is quite powerless to. accomplish anything unless Congress in some cases or the Senate in others give their approval. Thus, the President cannot declare war ; that is a power reserved to Congress. The President cannot make a treaty. The President can initiate treaty negotiations, direct his plenipotentiary to sign the convention on behalf of the United States and secure the signature of the contracting Power, but the treaty is not a treaty until it has been ratified by the Senate, and it requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senators present to assent to ratification. It is only within the last few years, since the United States has ceased to be isolated and has become a factor in interna tional politics, that some of the disadvantages of this method of conducting foreign relations have become apparent. Secrecy is often essential in negotiations, but secrecy is impossible when a treaty must be com municated to the Senate. The Senate discusses treaties in what is known as an " executive session," that is, be hind locked doors, and every member takes an oath not to divulge the proceedings ; but a secret shared in by ninety-two men, some of whom may be opposed to the treaty through personal or political prejudices, can never remain a secret for more than a day or two. Tradition and practice reject the idea of secret treaties or c entangling alliances ' of any kind, which is one reason why the diplomacy of the United States has always been straightforward and above-board and direct to the point, and has commanded the admiration of the world for its honesty and moderation. There has never been an attempt made to ' play off ' one nation against the other, or to nullify one treaty by making a treaty with another

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nation containing antagonistic provisions. In the interest of morality the American system is to be commended ; in the interest of diplomacy and material advantages the system has its disadvantages.

Every person who is a cog in the great machinery of government — Senators and members of the House of Representatives alone excepted — owes his official existence to the President. Members of the Cabinet, justices of the Supreme Court, judges of the inferior federal courts, ambassadors, ministers, secretaries and consuls, assistant secretaries and other subordinate departmental officials, collectors of customs and col lectors of the excise (called * internal revenue' in the United States), prosecuting attorneys, postmasters — in short, that great host comprising the civil legion — are appointed by the President, or more correctly they are nominated by the President to the Senate, which body has the power to acquiesce in the President's selection, that is, confirm the nominee, or reject the nomination, which prevents the person from holding the office to which he has been designated. Nominations, like treaties, are considered by the Senate in executive session — which appears to the outsider to savour too much of Star Chamber methods to be democratic — but unlike treaties a majority vote and not two-thirds is sufficient to confirm or reject.

The framers of the constitution, partly because they were not sure of the wisdom of putting unlimited power in the hands of the people, partly because they were afraid of putting too much power in the hands of any one branch of their Government, devised a system of complicated check and counter-check which should make each co-ordinate branch a balance on the other and preserve the true equilibrium. Hence the

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explanation of the President nominating federal officials and the Senate being required to confirm them ; theoretically excellent, but in its practical workings its soundness may often be questioned. If there was no check on the President, an unworthy, dishonest or unscrupulous President might fill up the public service with his partisans, with men who might subvert the con stitution and turn his presidency into a dynasty ; an honest President, but one of low intellect or easily con trolled by his friends, might appoint unworthy men who would reflect disgrace or bring disaster upon the country. The power of confirmation is the safeguard. In the Senate men's characters are sifted ; their ability or lack of ability, their standing financially, morally, socially can be freely discussed and considered in connection with the par ticular positions for which they are designated, because there is no record of what a Senator says, which is the excuse for the perpetuation of the secret session ; but even Senators are human, with all the frailties of poor humanity, and safely ensconced behind barred doors may avail themselves of the opportunity to seek revenge upon an enemy.

But now see how this system of check on the Presi dent works. An office is vacant — an embassy, an assis tant secretaryship, a consulate in a fever-stricken port in South America — it makes no difference whether it is a big prize or a very little one, there will always be a Senator with a constituent to be taken care of; if the place is big enough a possible rival can be made innocuous by being shunted into a dignified position ; or an active party worker can be stimulated to further activity by being honoured with an appointment \ or the working politician who looks for his reward to the party in power receives his pay for services rendered by

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drawing a salary from the Government. No matter whether it is the very big man, or the man in the second rank, or the quite unimportant individual who is appointed, he feels under obligations to his Senator, the appointment redounds to the credit of the Senator, for it convinces his constituents, and in a scarcely lesser degree the country at large, that he has influence with the President, consequently he is a man of importance, and in politics in the United States success is the touch stone. We are therefore called upon to witness the not elevating spectacle of Senators thronging the President's anteroom urging him to appoint a constituent to a petty place, wasting his time in dilating upon the virtues and abilities of their constituents and preventing the Pre sident from considering more important matters.

The President, of course, makes use of his patronage to gain two ends. Every President looks forward to a re-election and to strengthen himself by judicious appoint ments ; often he can convert a stubborn foe into a devoted adherent by the skilful bestowal of patronage. Sometimes appointments are simply bribes. A measure is pending whose passage the President deems essential for party success, but which has encountered determined opposition. The recalcitrants are placated by being permitted to. name men for certain places, and it is understood that this is the price that the President must pay to beat down opposition. Patronage, how ever, is a weakness as well as a tower of strength to the President; in fact, many astute observers consider that in the long-run patronage does more harm than good, because for every friend gained a dozen enemies are made. One can easily see why. Senators A., B., G, D., and E. desire to secure a certain important appointment, and each man thinks it essential for his

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own prestige that his candidate and not the other man's should be appointed. If A. is the winner, B., C., D., and E. are disappointed, very often sullen and angry, and the President must for his own safety mollify them. When one remembers that this office brokerage business is going on all the time, and that hour after hour, day after day, during every week in the year, the President must listen to appeals for places, that whether it be a postmaster, an ambassador, or the ranking officer in the army who is to be appointed he will have to listen to conflicting claims — and if he is a timid man he will for ever see the spectre of defeat looming before him because of the politicians he has angered — it will be understood that unless the President is adroit, tactful, courageous, and resolute he is in danger of shipwreck over his appointments.

Because the two systems — the English and the American — are so different the Englishman must not look upon the American as being bad or vicious and without any redeeming virtues, or pharisaically arrogate to himself a monopoly of all that is good. The American system is good in that any man may aspire to any place, and it really rests with the man himself whether his ambition shall be gratified. In the United States politics is a business and the labourer is deemed worthy of his hire, so that no man is asked to work for nothing. Fifteen hundred pounds a year, which is the salary of a member of Congress, is a small income com pared with the large fees earned by successful lawyers or the fortunes made by bankers or merchants, but to some men it spells comfort and meets all their desires. A poor man cannot be an ambassador, because his salary of ,£3,500 is manifestly inadequate to support ambassa dorial state, and it is seldom that a poor man is a

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member of the Cabinet, because his salary of ^2,400 is worse than genteel poverty \ but there are diplomatic missions with salaries sufficient to tempt poor men ; there are places below Cabinet rank that are attractive to men who must depend upon their own exertions for their daily bread.

There is no man in the English political system that exactly corresponds with the President, but in a measure it may be said that the President is both King and Premier. In many respects he exercises much greater and more real power than the sovereign, because while the King has theoretically a veto power it is a power never exercised, and it is his ministers who are the real governors of the Empire. The President, like the Premier, is the political head of his party ; but although the President has in some respects greater powers than the Premier, in others his hands are tied. So long as the Premier retains the confidence of the country, as represented by the majority in the Commons, he can shape his policy as he pleases, but this the President cannot do. By virtue of his position as President, and also because of the fact that he is the political head of his party, he can bring certain influence to bear upon Congress, but it does not necessarily follow that Congress will adopt his suggestions. It has happened that a President has been confronted by an adverse majority in Congress, and that majority, of course, has delighted in thwarting the President, in defeating his policies, in contemptuously ignoring his recommendations. It has happened that a President has quarrelled with his party majority in Congress and has been rendered impotent, but the President has no remedy. He could not dis solve Congress, he could do nothing but maintain an armed neutrality and use patronage.

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The President's chief advisers are members of his Cabinet, so called. The American Cabinet, like the British Cabinet, is an extra constitutional creation ; un like the British Cabinet it is not even a committee of the Privy Council, for in America the President has no Privy Council, there is no one with whom he can divide responsibility, and whatever is done by a Cabinet Minister is done in the President's name and con structively by him in person. The constitution does not recognise the Cabinet, but by a casual reference takes notice of * the Heads of Departments.' The machinery of the Government is placed in nine separate compart ments, each in charge of a chief engineer, and these nine men constitute the Cabinet. They are the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, the Attorney-General, the Postmaster-General, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Secretary of Commerce and Labour. There is nothing to prevent the President from inviting subordinate officials to assist the Cabinet in its deliberations, nothing except custom ; and the Americans, with all their love of novelty, their progres- siveness, and readiness to adopt anything new that is good, show their Anglo-Saxon origin by their reverence for what has been sanctioned by custom and their respect for the law, written or unwritten. Custom, there fore, having established that only the heads of depart ments shall constitute the Cabinet, that council is not an elastic body as it is in England, neither has it the power of the British Cabinet. In the first place, its members hold office simply at the pleasure of the President and may not differ from him, nor may they incur popular hostility, for in that case they damage the prestige of the administration, and self-preservation being

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the first law of nature a President naturally throws a secretary overboard to save himself from shipwreck. The case of Mr. Alger, Secretary of War in the McKinley Cabinet, is typical. Justly or unjustly Mr. Alger was held responsible by the country for the mistakes which marked the Spanish war and the country was clamouring for a victim. President McKinley stood by his War Minister as long as possible ; then he felt that his own safety demanded a concession to public sentiment, and Alger was made a vicarious sacrifice. It was intimated to him that his resignation would be accepted, and immediately it was placed in the President's hands.

Marshall Jewell was Postmaster-General in General Grant's second administration. One day after a Cabinet meeting Grant said to Jewell as the members were leaving :

1 Wait a minute, Mr. Postmaster-General, I have something to say to you.' When the two men were alone Grant said : * I should like your resignation.'

' Certainly,' replied Jewell, f as soon as I return to my department I shall write it out and send it to you.'

1 You will find paper and pen there,' said Grant, pointing to a desk, ' you can write it out now.'

When a mandarin receives a sword from his emperor and is told to make use of it, he promptly falls upon it : there is no escape for him. Every Cabinet Minister must be prepared to take his official life whenever the President raises his eyebrows.

Members of the Cabinet are appointed by the Presi dent and must be confirmed by the Senate. They all receive the same salaries, ,£2,400 a year, and nothing in the way of allowances or other emoluments. They hold office nominally for four years, but the death of a President or the end of an administration dissolves a

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Cabinet, as every President selects his own advisers. In the event of the death of both the President and Vice-President the members of the Cabinet succeed to the presidency in the order of precedence — first the Secretary of State, then the Secretary of the Treasury, and so on, except that a naturalised citizen is ineligible to the succession.

Sometimes members of the Cabinet are contemptu ously referred to as * the President's chief clerks,' a sarcastic but not entirely untruthful characterisation. It has been pointed out that a secretary holds office simply at the pleasure of the President, so that in a sense the President is the Cabinet's master, and even if all the Cabinet should differ from him his fiat is supreme. But the strength of the President and the weakness of the Cabinet is the structure of the American constitu tion, which centres all power in the President, which does not recognise any delegated or divided authority and really, within well-defined bounds, makes the Presi dent an autocrat. His power is greater and more autocratic, within certain limits, than the Premier's, because the President has an assured tenure of four years, because he need care nothing about a majority in Congress, and because he need not give a thought to his Cabinet. The British Premier must always recognise his master — public opinion.

It has already been said that everything done by a member of the Cabinet is done in the name of the President. When the Secretary of State writes to a Minister for Foreign Affairs, he uses the phrase : ' I am directed by the President,' or * the President directs me to say.' This is no empty formula. The Secretary of State can only act after he has been directed to do so by the President ; no secretary would take action on any

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important matter without consulting the President and receiving his permission. As the American Cabinet Minister does not sit in Congress, he is not a political chief and is not a constructive statesman. The Secretary of the Treasury, unlike the Chancellor of the Exchequer, cannot provide the machinery for collecting the money which later he is to disburse; he must raise revenue according to the manner indicated by Congress ; he must not disburse a sixpence unless Congress has pre viously sanctioned it. The Secretary of the Treasury may feel quite certain that bankruptcy stares the nation in the face, but he would be powerless to prevent it if Congress, in its wisdom, should have made bankruptcy inevitable by legal enactment.

As the Cabinet is not represented in Congress, official communications between the two branches of the govern ment are in writing, and occasionally the heads of departments appear before committees to explain esti mates and other matters of departmental administration. All the secretaries, with the exception of the Secretary of State, submit annual reports, and at frequent intervals during a session special reports. Information required by Congress is obtained by the passage of a resolution requesting the President or directing the Secretary, as the case may be, to furnish it, if not incompatible with the public interest. The President may withhold in formation or direct members of the Cabinet to do so if he should consider publicity inadvisable, but usually the information is furnished.

Practically the President is elected by direct, popular vote, but theoretically the people vote for electors — the so-called ' electoral college ' — who in turn vote for the candidates for President and Vice-President, who are voted for on the same day and on the same ticket. The

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electoral college is another of those elaborate series of checks which so delighted the framers of the constitution, but to-day it is as archaic and as much a useless relic of the day when customs and morals were both different as is the pearl-handled sword which the Lord Mayor, in token of submission, offers to the King when he visits his loyal city of London. The people could not be trusted to vote directly for the presidential candidates, so they vote for electors, each State being entitled to as many electors as it has members and Senators in Con gress, and these electors, in theory, later meeting and electing the President. As a matter of fact, the popular vote determines the election, although to comply with the requirements of the constitution and the law, Con gress formally meets to receive the electoral returns and make official announcement of what all the world has long known.

The Vice-President is by law the presiding officer of the Senate. He is not permitted to take part in debate, and may not vote unless to break a tie. So long as the President lives or retains his health he is merely a presiding officer; in case of the President's death or disability he succeeds him.

Members of the House of Representatives are elected for a term of two years, and receive a salary of .£1,500 a year, and in addition mileage, and other allowances equivalent to about £350 a year. Each State is entitled to a certain number of representatives based on popula tion, the State being divided into as many 'Congressional districts ' as there are members of Congress, the endeavour being to make each district contain approximately the same number of persons. The constitution provides that no person may be a member of Congress ' who shall not, when elgc4§d, t>e an inhabitant of that State in which

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he shall be chosen/ which in the British constitution would prevent an Englishman standing for a Scotch constituency. The law does not compel a man to be an ' inhabitant ' of the district he represents, but custom does, and it is a custom seldom ignored. The result is that Congress is often deprived of the services of strong and able men, because they are unfortunate enough to live in districts where the majorities are of the opposite political faith, or even in States, as in some of those of the South, where one party rules. In nearly all the Southern States the Republicans are in such a hopeless minority that only Democrats are elected to Congress.

The powers of the House of Representatives are practically analogous to those of the House of Commons. All bills raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives, and by the unwritten law supply bills are first passed by the House, but the Senate in both cases may change the bills by amendment. All other legislation may originate in either House, and the House may amend any bill passed by the Senate.

Senators are elected by the legislature of the State they represent for a term of six years. Each State, irrespective of size or population, is entitled to two Senators. In addition to its legislative functions the Senate, as already explained, confirms all nominations and ratifies treaties. These powers cause the Senate to regard itself as superior to the House, and the Senate is often referred to as ' the Upper House,' or ironically as ' the American House of Lords.3 The Senate is not popular with the country at large ; and as many of its members are rich men whose only claim to distinction is their wealth, it is not surprising that in some parts of the country the Senate should be looked upon as an aristocratic body farther removed from the people than

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the members of the House of Representatives, who, elected by direct vote of the people, must every two years go back to the people to give an account of their stewardship, and receive an endorsement of their past actions or meet with condemnation.

CHAPTER THREE BOSSES, BIG AND LITTLE

IN the United States politics occupy a larger share of the attention of a larger number of men than in any other country in the world. The reason, or, to be exact, the reasons, because there are two, are obvious. In America politics is a profession ; it is a means whereby thousands, in the aggregate hundreds of thousands, of men earn a living. It is a business like any other. It is bread and butter, and in some cases jam and cake as well. That is one reason ; but there is also another why America is the paradise of politicians. There are not only politics as the term is understood in England — the government of the Empire and a seat in Parliament — but every State (and there are forty-six) is, so far as its domestic concerns are concerned, a separate principality, with all the machinery of government. In national politics there are Presidents and Vice-Presidents, members of the Cabinet and judges, members of Con gress and members of the diplomatic corps, office holders of high and low degree ; in the States there are governors, judges, members of the legislature, and an army of State officials. And nobody, from the President down, works for glory. Every man is paid. Politics is a recognised profession ; the ' party ' is the fairy god mother whose magic wand turns the desert into pleasant

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places where the faithful find rest after the heat and labour of a strenuous campaign. In England an election affects the fortunes of only a very few persons ; in America it is of direct interest to thousands, which is the reason why American politics are always so intense, why an American electoral campaign arouses such enthusiasm and passion, why an American takes to politics as naturally as a duck does to water, and why the ' boss ' is an institution.

The American boss is sui generis. There is nothing quite like him in any other country ; nothing that could be like him in any other political system. He is as much a product of American social conditions as the famous big trees of California are the product of the luxurious soil of that Garden of Eden. The big trees of California if transplanted to Europe would die and wither. The American boss, if transplanted to the political system of England, or any other European country, would die of inanition. It is only possible for him to exist in the United States.

There are bosses and bosses. There are bosses who hold a State in the hollow of their hands, who make and unmake Governors, and Senators, and members of Congress ; whose States are so important and so in fluential that they make or unmake Presidents ; who exercise a dominating influence on politics and legislation ; without whose consent Congress cannot act. And from the big boss standing at the very head of the column, the scale ranges down to the city boss and the ward boss; and the boss, whether he happens to be big or little, is always an interesting study.

Bosses are born and not made. But no man is born to boss-ship. He acquires it by the exercise of his superior qualities of shrewdness, or natural capacity to

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be a leader of men, or money, or a combination of all these, but it is to be noted that the boss is seldom a boss because he has a large bank account. Usually it is the other way. When a man begins his career as a boss he is generally poor, and it is only after he has entered into the possession of his kingdom and enjoyed it for some years, that he becomes a solid and substantial citizen, and has the satisfaction of being able to count his possessions of money and stocks and bonds and to feel that he has not wasted his opportunities.

Properly to understand what boss-ship means, one must understand American political methods. Every State has its legislature or local parliament, composed of two houses, the lower house, usually called the House of Representatives, and the upper house, or Senate. These members of the legislature are nominated at district conventions, to which delegates are sent who have been elected at what are known as primaries. At the primary every person who subscribes to the principles of the party. holding the primary may vote for a delegate, and these delegates then meet in convention and nominate the candidates for the Senate and House of Representatives. The basis of the political system, therefore, is the primary, and it is the primary which is the weakest link in the American political chain. The primary usually is a small gathering held in the evening in some obscure place, more often than not a hall over a public-house, or some Other equally undesirable place of meeting. The professional politician, the man whose business or social engagements do not press heavily upon him, the young fellow who will vote for the first time at the coming election — in short, all men lowest in the scale of society — are willing enough to go to the primary ; but the man who has a dinner-party on hand

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that night, or is kept at the bedside of a patient, or who must prepare the case which is coming on for trial next day, has neither the time nor the inclination to go to the primary. Naturally, what might be expected happens. The delegates to the convention are neither intellectually nor morally men of the highest stamp, and men of their own type may be, and probably will be, nominated as candidates.

But do not suppose that 'the men who attend the primaries are free agents. Not at all. The local boss — for in every district there is a boss, although a small one — has taken pains to see that the right men are elected to the convention. How he achieves this result depends much on the man, although the methods are similar in all cases and vary only in detail. For instance, in one case the boss is a man who governs because of his personal following; because he is well liked, because he is a man who has the natural gift for governing men. He is able by argument, by persuasion, by threat, by bribe, by promise of preferment, by any one of a dozen different means, to induce his followers to believe that it is for their interest that Smith and Jones shall be elected and that Brown and Black shall not. He works hard, very hard indeed. He is up early and late seeing the voters, arguing, entreating, drinking with them in saloons, telling good stories, being hail-fellow-well-met where that policy is most effective, or holding out the promise of a place for a brother or a nephew or a son in the police force or in one of the public departments if selfishness is the controlling motive. But he always knows his man. He knows whether he can be ap proached from his strong side or his weak side, whether he or his wife is really the head of the family, whether it is advisable to kiss the baby or to give a dollar to

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the small boy, whether an order for coal or a good word to the landlord will be most effective.

The boss does not work for salary, but his emoluments come in a different way. More often than not he is a petty local office holder enjoying his place through the favour of some man a little higher up in the political scale, and his place depends on the continuance of the party in power. Therefore, he has every interest, material as well as political, in seeing that the party in power retains its control, and moreover he knows that his chance for advancement depends on his work. If he proves himself a man of skilful manipulative ability, if he shows that he can hold his followers in line, that they do not break away from his instructions but vote as they are told, then his superiors, who always recognise the importance of able lieutenants, will suitably reward him. It is to his interest that he shall do his work thoroughly and faithfully, and he usually does.

Now we come to the convention. Here there is another type of boss, a boss of special skill and ability, with even a greater knowledge of men and affairs, and who is somewhat more cultured and a little better versed in the affairs of the world. However, it is only a difference of degree. The same methods are used here as before, much the same arguments are employed, and here, as elsewhere, there is the same appeal to the vanity or cupidity of men. A man may be elected a member of the legislature or a senator simply because he is a good fellow, because he is the kind of man who for years has been " running with the boys," who stands up at the bar and takes his drink with them, who tells a good story, who goes to banquets and picnics, who is free with his money. Or he may be nominated because he happens to be an Irishman, and nine-tenths of the

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people living in his district are Irish ; or because he is a German, and the population is largely German, or for some other equally unimportant reason. Or it may be that his manager has promised that he will vote for or against a certain bill, or that he will champion a cause. It is quite immaterial how the argument is used so long as it is an argument that has its influence. A seat in the legislature is usually regarded as a stepping-stone to higher and more important places. A man goes to the legislature where the salary is insignificant, and often spends much more than his salary to gratify that ambition. But it makes him known, it gives him an opportunity to air his oratory, if he has oratory ; to pose as the representative of down-trodden labour, if that happens to be the special role he desires to play ; to have his name associated with a measure which shall herald him as a man of ability, knowledge, and courage.

But it must not be forgotten that there are chances in the legislature for a legislator who is not burdened with a conscience. There are always laws to be passed or not to be passed that will be for the advantage of certain great interests. For instance, a railroad wants a fran chise for which it is prepared to pay handsomely, and the member of the legislature willing to sell his vote can frequently obtain money enough to live in comfort for the next year. Or the defeat of a bill can be made equally profitable. An honest member of the legislature, who cares more for the public than he does for monopoly, introduces a bill requiring a railway company to make certain improvements for the protection of the travelling public which would entail an expense of several hundred thousand dollars. The railway company naturally objects to that heavy expenditure, and to save it is willing to pay ,£5,000 or £10,000, if the bill can be

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conveniently killed. There are various ways of killing bills known to shrewd legislators.

The ambition of the member of the legislature is to be elected to Congress. It is generally believed, not only in Europe, but by many people in the United States who are not familiar with affairs, that members of Congress as a body are corrupt. This, I beg to assure the reader, does Congress a great injustice, and I say this as one with experience, having lived for more than twenty years in Washington and having in that time become intimately acquainted with members of Congress, the doings and proceedings of Congress, and the methods by which legislation is enacted. The average member of Congress, far from being corrupt, is scrupulously honest ; and in an assembly consisting of nearly five hundred men, the members of Congress, whether in Senate or House, who are open to direct bribery may be counted at any one time on the fingers of one hand. Remember, of course, I am talking of present conditions. It is probably true that in the old days — that is to say, in the days imme diately following the war and even as late as, perhaps, 1880 — there was much bribery in Congress, but I am quite certain that to-day there is practically none. In fact, conditions are such that bribery — that is to say, bribery in the open and accepted term of the word, the selling of a member's vote for money — is impossible.

But while members of Congress are honest they are also subject to certain influences, and the great power of monopoly and plutocracy is able to make itself felt in Congress and shape legislation ; probably to a greater extent in the United States than in any other country. To understand how it is possible for monopoly and wealth to control the actions of Congress it becomes necessary to go back to first principles and explain the

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method by which Congressmen are elected. The candi dates for Congress, like the candidates for the State legislature, are nominated in convention, and it is in the State convention that the power of the State boss is directly exerted. A governor is never nominated (and when I say never, of course I use that word in a broad sense, as occasionally a convention has been known to break away from its leaders) unless the managers have beforehand agreed upon the nominee. Preceding the convention, there is much intrigue and manipulation to control the delegates and win them over to the support of the candidate the boss is championing. In certain States, in New York for instance, peculiar conditions have made the power of the boss so all-supreme that no one has the temerity to challenge it, and whatever a certain Senator used to say in New York was law, and the convention was simply called to ratify his fiat. Some times there is a sham fight over one of the minor nominees ; sometimes the boss must make a trivial con cession to a recalcitrant element and must not drive matters too far ; sometimes it is wise to defer to public sentiment by throwing overboard the man he may have selected and accepting another a trifle less objectionable ; but usually and in effect ' the slate,5 so called, as agreed upon by the boss and his lieutenants, is submitted to the convention and the convention accepts it.

When the State ticket has been nominated, with the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary of State, and the other officials placed before the public and making their campaign for election, it becomes necessary for the boss to raise money for the expenses of the campaign, and a campaign in the United States is a very expensive affair. A certain portion of this money is obtained by assessing the candidates, who are expected to make

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generous contributions, and thus it often happens that a man with nothing to commend him except his money receives a nomination because it is known that he will make a heavy contribution to the party's war chest. The money received from the candidates is only a fraction of the total that will be expended, and money must be obtained from other sources. There are two classes, animated by widely separated motives, always to be relied on. There are the men who have nothing to ask in the way of favours from the legislature, but who believe in the principles of the party ; Republicans who want to see a Republican Governor elected because they are convinced it is for the best interest of the State; Democrats who hope to see the Republican candidate defeated and a Democrat elected, — these men contribute various amounts according to their means. These sums, however, are comparatively small compared to the money obtained from the great joint-stock companies, which, being the creatures of the State and owing their existence to the charters and laws passed by the State Legislature, know that it is the part of wisdom to keep on good terms with the party boss. It has already been said that it is quite easy for a corrupt or dishonest legisla ture to make it expensive and inconvenient for railway, telegraph, telephone, gas and tramway companies, and therefore the boss goes to these large companies and politely requests — in the same way that the late Mr. Dick Turpin used to * request ' his victims to hand over their money and valuables — a contribution to his campaign fund. Most of them hasten to comply, for the same reason that led the late Jay Gould to remark on one occasion before an investigating committee that in a Democratic State he was always a Democrat, and in a Republican State he was always a Republican. Managers

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of great companies are neither Republicans nor Demo crats when it comes to a matter of business, and in the United States politics are always business.

A railway company contributes ,£5,000 or ;£i 0,000 to the campaign fund, and in contributing it gives the boss to understand that certain legislation which has been talked about, which is in the air, and which it fears, must not be passed at the next session of the legislature ; or, that legislation in which it is interested will be presented to the legislature, and the boss must use his influence to secure its passage. The basic theory of American politics is Bismarck's cynical motto of Do ut des, or, translated into modern English and as the American politician understands it, ' Gratitude is a lively sense of favours to come.' Strange as it may seem, bosses are usually honest — that is, honest in political matters, and honest in carrying out their pledges. A boss takes ,£5,000 from a railway company, gives, of course, no receipt for it, enters into no contract, but simply with a nod or a wink lets it be understood that what the railway manager understands he also under stands, and nine times out of ten that contract will be as rigidly and strictly observed as if it had been signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of witnesses, and entered of record.

The same system prevails in the election of members of Congress, and the election of the President, only magnified tenfold, twentyfold, sometimes a hundred fold, depending entirely upon the strenuousness of the campaign and the danger of the opposing party winning the election. It has been said that the election of Mr. McKinley in 1896, when the country was so tremendously wrought up over the Bryan compaign, involved an ex penditure of more than £"1,000,000 on the part of the

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Republicans. This enormous sum was in the main obtained from the great financial and business interests of the United States. They were fighting for their own. They looked upon the election of Mr. Bryan as one of the greatest catastrophes that could befall the country, and to avert it regarded almost any means as legitimate. When the late Senator Hanna, who was the Republican campaign manager, the boss of all bosses, needed money, a thousand pounds or fifty thousand pounds, he went to Wall Street or to the great bankers of Boston, Phila delphia, Chicago, and other moneyed centres, and told them if they were really sincere in their desire to see Mr. McKinley elected and Mr. Bryan defeated, it was necessary that they give the money asked for. And they gave it. They regarded it in the light of a policy of insurance, and they could better afford to pay the premium than run the risk of losing everything.

Here, again, it must not be imagined that these capitalists, even while protecting their own interests, did not avail themselves of the opportunity to obtain what they wanted. It was clearly understood that Congress should pass certain financial legislation, that certain things should be done in regard to the tariff, and other things should not be done, and so with other important measures that would come before the National Legis lature. By this arrangement there was no necessity for individual interests dealing with individual members of Congress — by offering them bribes or holding out any other inducement. They had made their bargain with the party manager. They had his pledge that in case of the election of his candidate the things they demanded should be done, and those things which they feared should not be done. Of course, the con tract was scrupulously observed.

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That is the system which prevails in every election, great or small, whether in a city election, a State election, or a National election. The bosses are dealt with. In the case of the city and the State, even after dealing with the bosses, it is sometimes necessary to buy a certain number of men in the Board of Aldermen or in the State Legislature, but in Congress it is not necessary, because it is much more difficult for a member of Congress to pass a bill or to defeat it unless he is acting as the spokesman of his manager. All bills of a public character — legislation affecting the tariff, finance, subsidies to steamships, and other matters of the same kind — become party questions, and the party bosses, the President and the managers of the party in and out of Congress, determine the action to be taken, which at once makes the proposed legislation a party measure, and lines up parties for or against it. If it is a Republican measure every Republican is expected to and must vote for its passage or run the risk of being branded a traitor to his party and inviting his political doom. On the other side, the Democrats will be found in opposition, and no Democrat would dare to vote in its favour unless he could give such an extremely good explanation that it would satisfy his constituents. As a matter of fact, his course would not be condoned, and the man who felt that his conscience compelled him to vote in support of a measure which was opposed by his party would experience the fate of all martyrs. He would suffer for the sake of his conscience.

The State boss is usually in politics for the love of the game, for the prestige and the power which it gives him. Senator Platt, until a few years ago, when failing health compelled him to retire from active participation in

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politics, was openly referred to as the Republican boss of New York, and he did not resent that title, nor did he ever deny that he was the boss ; on the contrary, he was particularly anxious to have it known that he was the dictator of Republican politics in the State of New York and that his will must be respected. Mr. Platt is a wealthy business man, the president of one of the great express companies, and formerly devoted as much of his time to politics as he did to business. He is not a man who makes money out of politics, and even his bitterest enemies admit that he is personally honest and that he has spent a large fortune in politics. But although his enemies are perfectly willing to certify to his integrity, they do not hesitate to charge him with many things done in the name of politics which would not stand the scrutiny of ethical consideration. Mr. Platt is too old and experienced a campaigner, and probably just a trifle too cynical, to take the trouble to enter any denials. In politics, according to the American creed, one may do certain things which one dare not do in society or business. Politics is war, and in war all is fair, and especially fair if you happen to win. That might be the motto of the American politician.

The city boss is usually a different type of man to the State boss. In New York the boss of Tammany has frequently been an illiterate, unprincipled freebooter, who has plundered his satrapy without conscience and without remorse, and whose principal object has been, like the South American dictator, to pile up a sufficiently large bank account against the day of revolution, so that when forced to flee he will not go forth into the world naked, but he will still be able to wear fine raiment and his wife will be shielded from the bitter blast of adversity by diamonds and satins. Help your friend always, but in

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helping him don't forget also to help yourself, is one of the cardinal principles of the Tammany political faith. Let Tammany grant a favour to a contractor — a chance to plunder the city and make a million ; but when he gets his million, Tammany will not forget to claim its tithe of corruption. Let a gambler make his pile if he can, but Tammany takes mighty good care that while he is making his stake he is enriching its coffers. It is the same thing in Philadelphia, and many other large cities. The boss is there for plunder. The mission of the boss is to make money, and the boss usually fulfils his mission.

How does a man become a boss, the reader may ask. How does a man become a leader of men anywhere ? If one can answer the latter question one can answer the former. There are some men who are endowed with certain talents or abilities, a certain power to wield and sway and manipulate men, a certain force, whatever it may be, a certain way which enables them to acquire leadership. It is these men who rise to the top. No man suddenly becomes a boss any more than a man suddenly becomes a general or a man at one jump becomes Premier of Great Britain. The boss serves his apprenticeship. It is a case unmistakably of the survival of the fittest. A young fellow who goes into politics in any large city is at first simply a private in the ranks, to do as he is told to do, to vote as he is directed to vote, to act as he may be instructed to act in whatever is demanded of him. There are, of course, a certain number, the larger number, who in politics, as in every other relation of life, always remain privates ; but here and there, say one in a thousand, or perhaps even ten thousand, a man shows special qualities which attract the attention of those immediately above him and win him

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promotion ; and precisely as a private is promoted to be a corporal, a corporal a sergeant, and so on up, in the political army the man who shows he has ability, or superior audacity, or absolute unscrupulousness, or has the indefinable something that attracts men and therefore enables him to make use of them for his own ends, earns his promotion and his commission.

The professional politician, the man who makes of politics his vocation, has the advantage over the non- professional that every master of his craft has over the amateur. The professional politician, like the professional athlete, keeps himself in constant training, and is ready for whatever emergency may be required of him. The non-professionals, the so-called ''respectable element," as they are sneeringly termed by their opponents, the good citizens, lawyers, doctors, business men, think they have performed their political duty when they have cast their ballots ; and while the non-political American always votes for a President, usually for a Governor, and generally for a Congressman, he is frequently too careless or too indifferent or too busy to bother about primaries or municipal elections. The result, of course, is that the candidates of the " respectable element " are defeated and the candidates of the professional politicians are elected, which explains why there is a Tammany in New York, and why the antitype of Tammany is to be found in dozens of other cities.

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CHAPTER FOUR ARE THERE CLASSES IN THE UNITED STATES?

IT is the boast of the American that neither classes nor caste exist in the United States ; that the restricted and painful influence of class does not make itself felt in his country ; and when he refers to the Declaration of Independence and repeats the sonorous phrase of that majestic document, that all men are born free and equal, he really imagines that mere words have made class distinction impossible. And yet it would be foolish to ignore the fact that in the United States / not less than in England there are classes. If this were the time and the occasion for entering into a discussion of a complex and extremely complicated sociological question, one would be justified in pointing out that in every civilised state of society classes must exist; that there must be the class of the intellectual and the class of the ignorant, the class of the poor and the class of the rich, the class of the honest and the class of the vicious ; but that is a little foreign to the general subject and need not now be considered.

Only hypocrisy would close its eyes to the fact that there are social divisions in the United States. Every, year the lines are more tightly drawn, and it must be admitted that wealth makes classes. Money exercises a baneful influence in the United States because to a very

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large extent money is the foundation on which an aris tocracy is being erected. It is not, of course, an aristocracy in the European sense of the word, not an aristocracy such as is known in England ; it does not owe its existence to hereditary titles or nobiliary creations ; and yet it is ,an aristocracy, a class apart from the great mass of the people, a class that arrogates to itself certain things and owes its prominence simply to the fact that it has great riches.

There is the aristocracy of blood and the aristocracy of money. There is a small and dignified circle of men and women who are proud of the fact that they 'are descended from the early settlers, who can trace their lineage back to the roster of those immortals who, setting sail from Holland, cast themselves on the tumultuous body of water, braving the fury of man no less than the wrath of God, and for the sake of the immortal truths which they held to be dear to them, more dear than life itself, were willing to face the dangers and perils of that mysterious and unknown land across the sea. The history of the United States, that history as it is written to-day, abounds with the names of these men, the descendants of the pioneers, of that zealous band who came over in the Mayflower and fought nature and wild beasts and savages in the settlement of the storm-swept Atlantic coast. These are the men who have done most to make the United States what it is, and to them the civilised world owes an eternal debt of gratitude. They were patriots; austere, it is true, in their view of life ; rigid in their conception of duty ; their thoughts tinged with gloom, seeing little of the brighter side of existence, impressed always with the responsibility of living and the fear of the future, which was never absent ; too serious, in

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fact, too deficient in that most priceless and saving grace of humour, to see that life was something more and better than a mere round of monotonous duty. And yet it is the spirit of the Puritan that has made this remarkable, mixed and heterogeneous race, the American, who is a product of Europe as well as of his own country, what he is. The spirit of the Puritan has made the American do things which have won for him the admiration of the world ; the spirit of the Puritan has inspired him to win the West, to make of his country in some respects the greatest and fore most country in the world ; it has made him do in a short time what it has taken other nations centuries to accomplish. The history of the United States is a chronicle of the effect and influence of Puritanism in accomplishing the destinies of the country ; it is the Puritan and the sons of the Puritan who have always ranked high in the councils of State ; who have always stood for all that was best and truest. These men have written their names on every stone that entered into the fabric. These men have given of their sons to their country's cause whenever she demanded it.

In New York, Boston, and Philadelphia one will find this aristocratic element, but most of these old families are not families of great wealth as American fortunes are ranked nowadays, and they are more content to es cape the glare of publicity than to seek it. They have, however, adopted one curious way to let the world know that they are able to count grandfathers among their hereditary possessions. When the English visitor reads in the society columns that Richard Smith II. or John Jones III. (but, of course, they have much more high-sounding patronymics) has given a dinner, he wonders whether Smith is one of the reigning

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sovereigns of America or merely a member of a mediatised house, and he is told that Mr. Smith being in the direct line of descent from the original and only Smith it is considered desirable to perpetuate the name ; and as c junior ' would be confusing after the second generation, numerals are used. A century hence it will sound quite imperial to read of ' President Brown XIX.'

The aristocracy of America — the real aristocracy in the sense of ruling society, but not the real aristocracy in the other sense — consists of the men who have made their great fortunes or have inherited large wealth, and by their business abilities have increased their inheritances. These are the men and their wives and daughters of whom Europe sees and hears so much ; who spend half the year in Europe buying priceless art treasures and giving lavish entertainments ; who have million-dollar ' cottages ' in Newport, who keep their yachts in com mission the year round, who own racing studs, whose fancy-dress balls are chronicled at length in the daily newspapers, and whose daughters when they marry foreign noblemen are given pages in the newspapers, and whose trousseaux are not only described, but illus trated.

A few years ago it was distinctly true that there was no leisure class in the United States. To-day one will often hear it said that there cannot exist an aristocracy in America because an aristocracy is only possible where there is a large leisure class, and the idle rich are not known in America. But this is only partially true. The leisure class is constantly growing and now consists of rich men, the serious business of whose lives is to devise means to amuse themselves and kill time. They are men who either do nothing or have merely a nominal

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ARE THERE CLASSES?

connexion with great business enterprises which they have inherited, the real management being in the hands of less known but more capable men.

In the United States, unlike England, it is not a family tradition for its members to follow certain professions. In England the heir to a title will, as a usual thing, enter Parliament, one of the younger sons will go into the diplomatic service, another into the army, perhaps still another into the church. In the United States young men of great wealth and good family do not go into politics, and it is only the rare exception when a man of that class is found in Congress. At the present time there are a few men answering to that description, but the number is limited. Neither the army nor the navy is a fashionable profession as it is in England. In both branches of the service there are men of inherited wealth and high social standing, but here again the number is limited. It is easy enough to understand why the jeunesse dor'ee of America finds no attraction in military service. There are no household troops in the United States as there are in England, there is no corps d^lite^ membership in which is a patent of social distinction, and until recently there was no great opportunity for a man to distinguish himself in active service. When a man enters the American army after graduating from West Point, where for four years he must do more serious work than suits the taste of a youth the heir to millions, whose idea of life is luxurious indolence, he was formerly sent out West and remained there for several years. In the early days, when the West was an unsettled desert, when the army post was the focus around which gathered the little settlement, there was a certain spice of adventure for the army officer because he was liable at any time to be dispatched with a troop

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of cavalry or a company of infantry to round up a band of savage Indians who had taken the war path, and the chances were at least even that instead of his capturing the redskins they would hang his scalp and those of his men in their tepees. But now even that inducement to an adventurous spirit has gone by. The Indians nowa days are good Indians — that is to say, the warriors have been killed, and those that are left have become con taminated by contact with white civilisation, and so long as they are given their rations and a sufficient amount of tobacco and whisky they make no trouble. Life on the plains is nothing more than a life of the most monotonous and commonplace routine, nothing more than drill and petty inspections and the ordinary everyday life of a garrison post in time of profound peace. Since the Spanish war and the acquisition of the Philippines there has been some improvement and a greater opportunity for an officer to distinguish himself. But the change has been so recent that it has not affected the general feeling of the rich young American for the army. The army is simply the means of professional livelihood. The son of a poor man dependent upon his own resources goes into the army as the sons of other men similarly situated study law or medicine.

It is precisely the same in regard to the navy. The navy is not the natural point of attraction for members of certain families. A naval officer has always more or less social standing, and for that reason a great many young men are attracted to it, and the glamour of brass buttons and gold braid is dear to them — especially as it is doubly dear to the American girl, and that is a thing not to be despised. But the millionaire's son, the man who can do what he pleases, who does not have to work, who can elect between a life of work

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and a life of enjoyment, finds little attraction in the navy.

As neither the army nor the navy nor politics is fashionable — and in the army and navy a man must work hard, and in politics if he is to make any kind of a name he must also work hard and subject himself to a great many undesirable surroundings — it follows almost as a matter of course that a young man whose father is rich, when he comes to his majority, prefers to enjoy life rather than to submit to those inconveniences. If he is a man who delights in the vanity of seeing his name constantly paraded in the papers, in what better way can he gain his object than to set up a racing stable and win the Futurity, or the American Derby ? He may be quite sure the newspapers will give him more space in that case than if he were to deliver an eloquent oration in Congress. His great speech on the tariff or finance would be dismissed in half a column. If he wins the Futurity he will get a page or even two pages, with almost a life-size picture of himself, his horse, his dog, his clothes, and for ever after what he says will be quoted with the air of authority. Or he may obtain equal fame by breaking the record in his automobile, or by giving an elaborate or bizarre entertainment.

The very rich form a class by themselves, because, unless a man is very rich, he cannot, to use the American colloquialism, " trot in that class." He cannot, if he is a man of any sensitiveness, accept favours which he is unable to reciprocate, any more than he can humiliate himself by going to dinners and not giving them. And really his presence is not desired. The very rich, with their yachts and private cars, and houses scattered throughout the country, enjoy themselves in their own way, and keep to themselves ; they are interested in

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themselves and not in persons who do not belong to their set. And from the very rich there is a gradually descending scale to sound the sharp note of class dis tinction. In every city there is a standard of money, according to its size. In New York a man with a million dollars is no longer accounted rich, while in a smaller city the possessor of a million is a plutocrat to be envied and respected. I do not wish to be understood as implying that there is no intercourse between the members of the various sets and circles or that they have no point of contact. Naturally they have. At the house of the very rich one may often meet the genteel pauper ; at the house of the society leader it would not be surprising to meet a person distinctly not in society, but the fact of that person being at that particular house on that particular occasion does not mean that the person is in society — not at all. The host, and especially the hostess, would emphatically deny that. For any one of a dozen reasons that person has been invited, but it is no indication of intimacy, and social intimacy between the person of small means and the person of large means is rare.

These class distinctions are more marked in the large cities and in the cities that are old as age is counted in America. In New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Wash ington, and some of the cities of the South, one finds class very sharply defined. In the newer and smaller cities of the West these social distinctions do not exist, because the people are too new and know too much of each other. It was only yesterday, so to speak, that everybody was on a level, and it would be ridiculous for the man whose father, within the memory of the majority of the people, worked on the road in his^shirt sleeves with pick and shovel, and whose mother in her younger

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days worked over the washtub, to put on airs because he has money. But in the older-established East, where ' the father working in his shirt sleeves has become a tradition, time has softened the crudities of the shirt sleeves ; they have become refined and gilded by pure gold : they are something even to be admired. Time lends its magic touch — even to shirt sleeves. What contemporaries call dishonesty, biography terms enter prise ; what at that time appeared like the stealing of negroes in Africa to sell as slaves in America is trans muted into the laudable term of "commerce." The past is forgotten in misty tradition; the present is a golden age.

It is undoubtedly an aristocracy of money rather thaa an aristocracy of birth or achievement. It is, of course, always a question what constitutes the best society in America. You will be told by members of the so-called " Four Hundred " — the people who believe that they are the crime de la crime — that they are society. You will be told by college professors, university presidents, men of learning, scientists, writers, clergymen, artists, that they are the real aristocracy and brains of America, that the vulgar rich are nothing, that, as Mr, Andrew Carnegie said not long ago, nobody pays any attention to them — they represent nothing except themselves, and they are more to be pitied than to be envied. Mr. Carnegie, one uf the richest men in America, can afford to pity them, but to most people they are objects of envy ; and the men and women on the outside, who, like the " peri at the gate of Eden stood disconsolate," would be only too glad to change places with them even at the risk of incurring Mr. Carnegie's pity.

What constitutes society in the United States ? It is a question that has often been asked and never satis-

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factorily answered. Certainly not blood or breeding, because some of the best-born and best-mannered men and women are not recognised by society and have no place in society; certainly not great scientific, artistic, or literary attainments, because one never hears of a savant^ a writer, or a painter in society, unless society takes him up as a fad for a brief season and tires of him after the novelty has worn off; certainly not great services to the State, either civil or military, because the poor statesman is no more in society than is the army or navy officer who has no other resources than his pay.

On the other hand, the rich man and his wife, who are neither witty nor wise, who, to be quite frank, are often stupid and uninteresting, and who have nothing to commend them but their money, but who because of their money can give great entertainments, are wel come guests at the most exclusive houses and are able to command the attendance of the elect at their functions. And curiously enough no people recognise their shortcomings so quickly as to do the Americans themselves and discuss them with such frankness.

American writers are always fond of telling their countrymen and women that they are ill-bred and snobbish. Thus, in a recent magazine article a New York woman with an established place in society says the striking difference between Eastern and Western society is that the Western woman ' is generally not afraid to admit that she is enjoying herself; and almost always she reveals a willingness to extend cordiality to a casually made acquaintance. This last concession we all know is not a mark of highest fashion in the East. Some haughty dames there are who would perish rather than accord it ; and there is no one like

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your aristocrat of dollars and cents for putting people she does not know in their places.'

1 It is absurd and unbelievable,' this same writer observes, ' how tremendous a force, in the far-away semi-civilised portions of our country, is the " society column " of the New York newspaper. Its favourite heroes and cherished heroines are intimately known, and quoted by their familiar names, on the lips of thousands who lead lives of constant, homely toil, and who can never in reason expect to emulate such habits and example. In this way, weak women and ignorant young girls are everywhere being trained in the belief that extravagant show and inane triviality are the chief aim and end of a successful social career. No wonder the ill-used word " society " is rarely accepted by Americans in the broader sense, but is regarded as applying mainly to the capers cut by certain people in their summer diversions at Newport, and to the amount of cash embodied in houses, balls, dinners, clothes, and jewels in New York.'

Of the tendency of the 'aristocrat of dollars and cents' to put people in their proper places, this story is told of an Englishman 'of high rank and place,' whose simplicity and bonhomie of spirit led him to ask a young woman with whom he was dancing at an Assembly ball to go out with him to supper. " Oh ! but I couldn't possibly," she answered, with a gleam of mischief in her eyes. " I know my place too well." Pressed for an explanation by the bewildered Earl, she said : " I'm not in the set of the people who brought you

here. Of course, they expect you to take in Mrs. ,

and if you didn't do it, and did take me to their table, I'd have such a horrid time, I couldn't stand it, really."

' The singular part of this in the Englishman's eyes

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was that the pretty girl in question came of a family who had been a generation ago eminent in social place and fortune in New York ; and that, although now poor, she could boast a line of ancestry representing the best in America. He was told, also, that the leaders of fashion who had him in charge were wholly without position in society by inheritance ; that some of them were in trade purveying to the luxuries demanded by their " set " at the present moment. And, failing to understand the puzzle, his lordship calmly gave it up ! '

This authority on fashionable society answers the question I asked above, how it happens that the rich parvenu is accepted by society. 'As a matter of fact, society everywhere/ she says, 'is a mart, where one pays for what one gets. The person who contributes what is the most in demand — amusement, entertain ment, novelty, variety — wins the tribute of the suffrage of fashion. The members of old families, who go out seldom, who sniff at existing conditions, and make no effort to be agreeable, are rewarded by the name "Cave-Dwellers," and are left severely to themselves. Those, on the contrary, who philosophically adapt their ideas to the modern trend of things, who accept the present social evolution for just what it yields them in return, are made welcome, although they may not, perhaps, presume upon their consciousness of gentle breeding and ancient lineage. . . .

' While this endures, we are not likely to see among us the fashionable interest in artistic and literary people such as we note in London. A " celebrity " now and then may be found at an ultra-fashionable function ; but his kind do not take root easily in that soil, and wisely find their pleasure in a wider sphere.'

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society is Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, the wife of a great rail way magnate. Her views of society delivered to a reporter are characteristically out-spoken. ' American society,' she says, ' aims to be too exclusive, and it simply makes this country the object of ridicule abroad. Just think, for instance, how many worthy people — artists, writers, thinkers, and the like — are excluded from " society," or the " Four Hundred " as it is called in this country, whereas in foreign society such congenial souls are welcomed with open arms. That is what I dislike about America. Talent and intellect should open the portals to society. That is where other countries show understanding and where America displays snobbishness.'

And then she raps her social compeers in this lively vein:

' And now, Mrs. Fish, regarding the Four Hundred ? ' queried the interviewer.

' Oh, the Four Hundred ! ' she exclaimed, with another shrug, 'doesn't it sound ridiculous? Just as if in this country there could be just four hundred persons — and no more — worthy to be called the elect ! Isn't it absurd ? America is too new and too big for that sort of narrowness. It is not typical of the American prin ciples ; it does not do justice to the American ideal.'

Yet Mrs. Fish, like all other rich Americans, recognises the existence of classes, for she says :

1 1 would not like to be a President, or a President's wife. I should not like to have to eat with negroes. I do not believe in equality. It would never do. We cannot mix with the negro at all, and negro equality will never come about. There will always be classes in this country. We are coming more and more to have an aristocracy and a common people. I do not believe in being too democratic.'

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Mrs. Fish was asked about a statement alleged to have been made by her recently concerning the decline of Newport. She said : ' Newport is not declining. True, it is being invaded by vulgar and newly rich people of the parvenu class, who form a rather common circle, but the high classes are still there in greater numbers than ever. Newport is just now paying too much attention to foreign lords. By marrying European noblemen, American girls are laying themselves liable to the ridicule of the whole world,3

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CHAPTER FIVE THE EAST AND THE WEST

THE United States is really two countries — the East and the West. In all things that go to make a nation the two sections are, of course, one. There is as much patriotism in the East as there is in the West, but it takes a different form. The people of the East believe as fully in the destiny of their country and the future greatness of the Imperial Republic as do the people of the West ; but in habit of thought, in manner of life, in the point of view, they are in so many things dissimilar that they might almost be two nations.

The man of the West is by environment and natural conditions a man of a large and free life. He is still to-day in certain sections a pioneer. In other places he is the son of a pioneer whose father only a few short years ago, as the progress of society is measured, carved his way out of the wilderness and brought Nature under\ his subjection. The West is still in a primitive stage. Civilisation is there, it is true, but it is a civilisation \ which has not yet taken on all the refinements and the niceties of life, which come from years of the practice of social amenities. It is a rather rough, boisterous, and joyous state of being. The men who make up the West are men of an intense vitality and sturdy physique, men who have got whatever they possess by the force of courage and

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intelligence and the determination to succeed. They have won because they deserved to win.

When one talks of the West one uses a very indefinite term. The West is that part of the country which is always just a little bit beyond where one happens to live. To the Easterner, to the New Yorker, the West is Chicago, and the average New Yorker thinks he has gone very far west when he gets off the train in Chicago j but to the Chicago man the West is anywhere between his city and the Pacific Coast. Broadly speaking, the geo graphical division of East and West is the Mississippi River. Everything east of the Mississippi is East, and everything west of that mighty stream is West.

The East is the oldest settled portion of the country, and in the East one finds the largest cities and the greatest social and intellectual development. In the great cities of the East, New York, Boston and Philadelphia, owing to the close contact with Europe, both social and commercial, there is perhaps a stronger feeling and appreciation and liking for Europeans and European customs than there is in the West. The New Yorker of wealth and standing would consider that he had not properly observed the canons if he did not visit Europe and become fairly well acquainted in a superficial way with its countries and its peoples, but he has no great longing for the West. It has no particular attractions for him unless he happens to be a hunter or has mining or other business interests, and so it comes about that one will find many men of wealth and good education and much leisure in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston who have visited many parts of the Continent, who have spent months in travelling about Europe, but who know nothing of the beauties of the Rockies, or the grandeurs of California, to whom Chicago is merely a name and Colorado, is only a

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geographical expression. The Westerner, on the other hand, is naturally attracted to New York and the East. Of New York he reads much in his daily papers. He reads florid accounts of the great hotels, of the museums and picture galleries, of the wealth of the ' upper ten,' of their ex travagance ; and to go to New York is not only a pleasure, but in some respects it is an education. Hence one will find that more Westerners know the East than Easterners know the West.

Outside the large cities of the West, where life is much the same as it is in any other cities, with only the difference of a greater freedom of intercourse and a more generous bonhomie, the life of the West is very largely agricultural. In the European sense of the term there is no such thing as a peasantry in the United States. There are no people whose ancestors for generations back were born on the soil, who have always lived on it, whose daily life has been spent in contact with it, and whose children will follow in their footsteps after they have gone. There are farm workers, but the farm worker of America is an entirely different being from the agricultural labourer of England or the French or German peasant. The farmer of the West is usually an American. He has pioneered his way from the East. He found life there hard, and he carved out for himself a new life in the West. He needed assistance, and he turned to the emigrants who have come from Europe, the men and women from Scandinavia and Germany, from England and Ireland and Scotland, who enjoy a social intercourse with their masters which is never found in Europe. There at least no class exists. The "hired girl," the farm.hands — everybody in fact who works on the farm is always a member of the family. They sit down with the master and his wife to the noonday dinner. They are

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on terms of easy familiarity with them ; and although they are simply working for a fixed sum and have no interest in the farm outside of their monthly wages, the line between employer and employee is not rigidly drawn and is not obvious.

In a country of such enormous distances as the United States, where millions of acres yet remain to be brought under cultivation, farms and settlements in the newer part of the West are necessarily scattered and neighbours are few. Life on the farm is naturally lonely, especially in the winter time when the snow lies heavy on the ground and intercourse between neighbours is often interrupted for weeks at a time. In the older days of the far West, women were frequently driven into insanity by their monotonous existence. Living day after day in the same nerve-destroying atmosphere, having little opportunity for conversation, their strength weakened by excessive physical labour, with nothing to relieve the eye but the interminable monotony of snow-covered wastes, it was not to be wondered at that loneliness made them mad.

It is this somewhat isolated and self-centred life which makes the Westerner an extremely patriotic, not to say pugnacious, individual. He glories in the fact that he is an American. He has been brought up on the Declaration of Independence, the Monroe Doctrine, and the " Fourth of July," and he really believes every thing that has been taught him by over-zealous teachers or that he has heard from flamboyant orators. In his eyes the United States is the greatest and most formid able power in the world. It can do anything that it may care to do and no one shall say it nay.

Englishmen visiting the West are often struck by this peculiar Western idiosyncrasy and set it down to blague ;

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but it is something more than that, it is something really finer than that. The Westerner is not a humbug ; he is not a braggart ; he is not a boaster ; and he is certainly not a bully. When he talks about his country — and he often talks about it, with a devotion almost passionate, he really, sincerely, and honestly believes and means all that he says. He is a product of his environment. He has not been cabined, cribbed, and confined by a life spent in the artificial restraints of a large city. He has lived in the free and open air of his great prairies. He has seen the wilderness reduced from savagery to civilisation ; he has seen the little clearing grow into a settlement ; he has seen the settlement extend into a village ; he has seen the village develop into a city ; and he has seen the city transformed into a metropolis. A man may well feel proud of having witnessed such a transformation ; he may well feel that it is the magician's touch that has wrought it.

Think of it ! Less than half a century ago the city of Chicago — a city of now nearly 2,000,000 inhabitants, the greatest grain-market in the world, one of the greatest ports in the world (the reader will perhaps doubt this statement, but he must remember the enormous traffic of the lakes which makes its port in Chicago), this wonderful city less than half a century ago was merely a stockade, the trading-post of a few adventurous whites who were plucky enough and rash enough to deal with the Indians, and who were in perpetual danger of losing their lives to the fury of the redskins. And so one can go all over this marvellous West. One can find in cities all the luxuries, all the refinements of creature comforts superior to those in some European cities two hundred years old, with better hotels and greater con veniences — and these cities of the American West are

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mere mushroom growths. They have sprung up over night and they are still so new that even tradition does not exist. It is not wonderful, then, that the Westerner takes a pride in himself and in his country ; that with so much already accomplished he feels that whatever the future demands that shall be done.

The Easterner has none of this feeling. He has got over the first exuberance of boyhood, and having reached almost mature manhood feels that it is more becoming his dignity to exercise greater self-control. The difference between the East and the West is largely the difference between the young fellow just out of college, whose view of life is always rose-coloured, and who knows nothing of disappointment, and the man who has long left his college days behind him and who has been sobered by contact with the world. The West knows not of disappointment or lost hopes. The life of the farmer is often hard — very hard indeed. His crops fail him. He is driven out of house and home by cloud bursts, by tornadoes, by the overflow of rivers. His cattle are destroyed by disease or the inclemency of the elements. The market for his products falls to a point where there is no profit, in fact, where, as happened a few years ago, it was cheaper for the farmer to burn maize than it was to send it to market, and yet with all that the future always lies bright and dazzling before him. The future of the West is the future of the United States. Not only the people of the United States, but the people of the whole world, must rely upon him for theirtcorn and their wheat and their cattle ; and when things go wrong and hard times come upon him he simply grits his teeth and tightens his belt and looks forward with confidence to next year, which is to recoup him for all his losses.

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THE EAST AND THE WEST

The life of the West moves in more even grooves and more well-defined orbits than in the East. The big cities of America in the East, like the big cities of Europe, are rapidly becoming over-congested, and the struggle for existence is keen ; it is a much more severe struggle and much more intense than in the West. The American works hard. One cause that has contributed to make the United States what it is, is the intensity of purpose of the American. The average man works longer hours than the average Englishman, and during those hours he works more thoroughly. Hard work is required and the example is set by the employer. Em ployers as a rule work harder than their employees, and it is their inspiration and example which tell all along the line.

When a great political or social question convulses the nation the difference between East and West is more than ever emphasised. The East, more conservative, closer in touch with European affairs, realising the necessity of retaining friendly relations with England and other foreign countries, has often counselled peace or moderation when the West, more local, more self- reliant, more indifferent to foreign opinion, has clamoured loudly for action, which if taken might have produced the most disastrous consequences. Take, for example, that most remarkable Presidential campaign of 1896, when Mr. Bryan was nominated by the Democrats against Mr. McKinley. One the antithesis of the other, one the absolute exponent of the typical West, the other the exponent of the East — although Mr. McKinley was by the accident of geography a Western man, but by affiliation and temperament of the East, and although he came from Ohio, Ohio is to-day no longer West and almost touches the East. Mr.

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AMERICA AT HOME

Bryan was the champion of silver, Mr. McKinley was the champion of gold. Mr. Bryan was the champion of the down-trodden masses — or rather he told them he was their champion — of the masses who thought they were down-trodden, who thought that Mr. McKinley was the representative of greed and of men who were determined to fasten the gold standard upon the country so as to increase their unholy wealth and virtually to reduce the common people to slavery. The West was aflame for silver ; the East was solidly arrayed against it. Had the election occurred within a month or so after Mr. Bryan's nomination, every close observer, every politician who is acquainted with the facts, admits that Mr. Bryan would have been triumphantly elected and the country would have committed itself to a silver policy. Owing to the influence of the East, to the money contributed by the East and the campaign of education that was carried on, a sufficient number of the voters of the West were converted, the fallacy of the doctrine was exposed, and Mr. McKinley, as every one knows, became President of the United States.

Any cloud on the horizon of American international relations emphasises again the temperamental difference between East and West. The respectable newspapers of the East — of course, I do not allude to the * Yellow Press,' which is always ready to exploit a sensation that promises to sell a few extra papers — frown upon the mere mention of war and point out the iniquity of such talk. But the Western papers are far less careful in their utterances, and the casual way in which they discuss war with England or Germany might make one believe that war between two great Powers is of no greater moment than an expedition to round up a few recalcitrant redskins. In this they simply voice the

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THE EAST AND THE WEST

public opinion of their communities ; and if they do not absolutely favour war, at least they do not strenuously oppose it, and while seemingly counselling moderation and expressing the horror they have of war, they insist that the dignity of the United States must be upheld, even at the expense of war. That is a line of argument always easily understood and generally gratifying to the Western people.

The spirit of the West is the spirit of war, of the war fare of its pioneers on the forests, of war on wild beasts, of war against the Indian ; and all that the people of the West have or that they are they have won, if not at the point of the bayonet, at least at the blade of the axe, or the muzzle of the rifle or the shotgun ; and when one talks of war to them — war with a great and powerful nation — it has fewer horrors for them than for a less militant people. Nowhere in the world have the teach ings of history left such a profound impress as in the West. The Westerner remembers when his nation, a handful of feeble colonists, warred, and warred success fully, against the mightiest military power of the world \ how England was taught more than one lesson on the sea by the United States; how she carried war into Mexico ; and how, greatest of all, for four years she waged that titanic struggle with the South and emerged from it triumphant, greater, more powerful, more prosperous — a nation so great and so firmly united that since then no nation has deemed it advisable to thwart her will. These are the things the Westerner remembers, and they are things to make him regard war with less fear than other people. But the Westerner, like the West, is still young. He has all the glorious enthusiasm of youth and youth's supreme self-confidence.

It is well for the Englishman, who is often puzzled by 63

AMERICA AT HOME

American politics, to bear in mind the difference between the West and the East, as it will frequently explain things which otherwise are inexplicable. Englishmen are, as a rule, badly informed on America and American affairs, principally because the source of their information is the New York Press, and because the ordinary Englishman who visits the United States seldom goes even as far West as Chicago, and still less often to the Pacific Coast. The East, especially New York, is in some respects far less in touch with the West than it is with Europe. I have alluded to the self-centred and narrow life of the Westerner, and yet the life led by the New Yorker is in many respects hardly less self-centred and narrow. The New Yorker is busy about his own affairs, those affairs that centre in the small circle in which he lives, whose boundary does not extend outside of the Island of Manhattan on which New York is situated. The average business man or lawyer or doctor or newspaper writer finds so much to occupy him in New York — finds that his whole world is in New York, finds that his life is the life of New York, and that New York gives him every thing that he wants or desires, everything that administers to his comfort or his amusement or his profit— that he is quite content to ignore the rest of the country, for which he has almost the same supercilious contempt that the Englishman used to have for the American in that remote era of antiquity when neither understood the other. There is a mighty South, those great States south of the Potomac, of which the Easterner knows nothing, which he hears about only in an indirect and rather vague way. There is a mighty West, a West that he knows raises the grain out of which is made the bread which he eats, the West which supplies his beef and his mutton and many other things which he must have, but

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THE EAST AND THE WEST

that to him mean no more than that rubber grows on the banks of the Amazon, or that the coffee which he drinks at his breakfast table comes from Brazil. His world is the world of Broadway or Fifth Avenue. His associates are the men and women who constitute his social circle. What the West may think, what the West wants, means to him very little.

Of course one must make proper exceptions. The great banker or business man whose ramifications extend all over the United States, the great railroad manager whose system, either direct or through affiliated lines, spans the continent, the great shippers of wheat and cattle, the Rockefellers and the Morgans and the Car- negies, know the West, know the aspirations and the motives and the prejudices of the. West, as well as do the Westerners themselves, and so do some of the more intelligent representatives of the Press. But these, after all, are only a little leaven which scarcely leavens the whole lump. I have repeatedly remarked the indifference with which New Yorkers, who! spend their whole time in New York, receive intelligence or information about the West. It does not appeal to them ; it has really no interest for them. I remember very well that a few months prior to the nomination of Mr. Bryan, in 1896, business matters brought me in contact with one of the leading business men in New York. Knowing that I had recently been in the West and the South, he was good enough to believe that my views were worth hearing, and he invited me to meet a few men of commercial prominence so that I might give them the results of my observations. I advanced the opinion that the Democrats would nominate a silver man on a silver platform, although I could not at that time predict Mr. Bryan's nomination, nor could any one else, as it was an accident.

65 F

AMERICA AT HOME

The answer made by my friend was typical of the New York view. "What you say is incomprehensible," he replied. " The West cannot be so insane ; and moreover, even if the West has gone crazy on the silver question, as you seem to think, New York will not permit disaster to overtake the country by allowing a silver man to be nominated."

I pointed out to him that while New York un doubtedly exercised great influence on political counsels, and owing to its importance and population was fre quently able to make its voice heard, still it must not be forgotten that the weight of numbers told ; and in a national convention, where the majority ruled, if the West was for silver it would not make the slightest differ ence what the East wanted. This answer apparently made no impression. I was again told that New York would not allow the West to commit the stupendous folly of espousing silver, and it was ridiculous to talk about the nomination of a silver candidate. A few months later the eyes of New York were opened, and it was a some what expensive lesson that those New Yorkers learned.

During the last few years, especially since the West has been extremely prosperous and has been able to pay off much of the money it borrowed from the East, New York has taken a different view of the West. It has come to realise that the star of empire is moving West, that in the future the West will govern the East ; that no matter how rich the East may be the West will be still richer, and that it is only a question of time when the East will bow to the West, and the West will no longer be subservient to the East.

One thing that exercises a commanding influence on the life as well as the political destinies of the West is its enormous foreign population. In some of the

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THE EAST AND THE WEST

Western States, in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas more notably, there is a large German and Scandinavian population, who even after they become naturalised still retain their national habits and their national prejudices. In certain cities — in Milwaukee, the most important city of Wisconsin, and Cincinnati, the largest city of Ohio, for example — the Germans constitute respectively sixty and sixty-five per cent, of the total population, and those cities are German rather than American. That is a thing which the politician must always remember, and he is never per mitted to forget it. It has always been a debatable proposition whether the German who has left the Father land to escape military service, or with the hope of bettering himself in the land beyond the seas, still retains any affection for the land of his birth or is anti- German. That is a question which has often been discussed, but which no one is able definitely to answer. Here and there things crop out that lead us to believe that the German in America is still a German. A few years ago certain remarks made by a distinguished admiral of the American navy were supposed to cover a veiled threat to Germany, and were promptly and hotly resented by some of the most influential Germans in Milwaukee ; and so intense was their indignation that it was deemed advisable by prominent Republican politicians to issue a semi-official dementi of the admiral's remarks and to make it apparent that they were not approved by the President. The Germans, as a rule, are Republicans, and naturally Republican politicians must be careful not to offend the * German vote.'

In the Civil War the Germans of the West did valiant service for the Union. They enlisted in large numbers in the Union army, and some of the most distinguished

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AMERICA AT HOME

generals on the Union side were Germans. That the German is deeply attached to his adopted country no one doubts, and if the United States should be engaged in war with any other power except Germany it is quite certain that the Germans would quickly respond to the call to arms ; but if the United States should ever find itself involved in war with Germany it is at least doubt ful whether the German would fight against the country of his birth. However, that is an academic question and seems far removed from the domain of practical interest. f One can hardly contemplate such a contingency as the '• tragedy of war between Germany and the United States. It has been said that the Germans are largely Republi can in their political affiliations, and some people attribute that to the fact that the Irish are almost to a man Democrats, and between the Irish and the Germans in the United States there exists no great love. It is the conglomeration of racial elements in the United States that exercises such a controlling influence on politics. We have seen the difficulties that the politician labours under in the so-called German States and cities, and the care he must show to do nothing to antagonise the German vote. In cities where there is a large Irish vote, in New York and Boston for instance, it is equally essential that the politician shall do nothing to offend Irish feelings. In the old days when relations between England and Ireland were so strained that almost open warfare existed, the Irish in the United States and some American politicians cunningly played on sentiment for their personal advantage. Happily that state of affairs no longer exists ; and now that Englishman and Irishman are dwelling in amity, and the most distressful isle is at peace with the predominant partner, the Irishman has become very much less of an issue in the United States,

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THE EAST AND THE WEST

and it is no longer possible for demagogues to fire the Irish heart by twisting the British lion's tail. And with this better understanding between Irishmen and English men, there has come about a better understanding between England and the United States. It was this feel ing, which few Englishmen recognised, that caused much of the prejudice in the United States against England, which gave rise to the belief that for centuries England had despoiled and enslaved Ireland, that England had played the part of the bully and the usurer, that English landlords regarded Irish peasants simply as a means to provide money for their extravagant pleasures. It was quite natural that the Irishmen of the United States, their descendants and their sympathisers, should make the most of this to keep alive the feeling of hostility against England, and that the newspapers, partly be cause it was popular, partly because it was profitable, as it appealed to their Irish readers, helped to perpetuate the hostility, and thus made thousands of Americans, who were ignorant of the facts, believe all that was said on the hustings and platform, and to accept as truth all that they read in the newspapers in times of excitement and political campaign.

More and more every year the foreign element is being absorbed into the American, and perhaps the time is coming when the real American type will evolve itself. In fact, some writers assert that time is very close at hand. There is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Latin and Teuton which has made the American a conglome rate people, a people who combine in themselves all that is best of all that they have absorbed ; a people who have worked out their own destiny, who have triumphed against overwhelming odds, with the world's admiration to encourage them to still greater things.

CHAPTER SIX THE AMERICAN GIRL

To Europeans the typical figure of the United States is always * Uncle Sam ' — a figure almost as familiar as burly John Bull, and resembling the modern Englishman as little as Uncle Sam does the American. The American cartoonist who depicts his country, especially when it is a representation of America triumphant, or America pathetic, or America in all the dignity of her strength, .always draws a woman — a woman young and graceful land beautiful, who faces the world with the serenity of confidence that comes from the knowledge that she rules, ftt is appropriate that Columbia is a woman. In the [United States woman dominates.

In all that goes to make America unlike any other . country, nothing so marks the contrast as the difference between the American girl and the European girl. The American girl is the product of her environment, she is what she is because America is America. The American girl ! — she is worthy of a book, and not a mere chapter. There is that about her that captivates, that attracts, that makes her a constant surprise and a constant joy. She is her own enigma. She is not a type, because she is never the same and never like her sister. She is her self.

The American girl is given more freedom and allowed 70

TYPE OF AMERICAN GIRL.

V

THE AMERICAN GIRL

greater liberty than the girl of other countries. In the ' best society,' in those families where there are traditions to be lived up to, where there is pride of ancestry and great wealth, the young girl is hedged about with as many restrictions as in Europe ; she is always chaperoned and under the watchful eye of parents or governesses or companions. But even so the liberty she is permitted is amazing and somewhat astounding to foreigners, especially to the Latins, who are unable to understand the free and frank intercourse and bon cama raderie that exists between the sexes in America. It is the difference in temperament, in education, in social institutions.

The American girl likes the society and companionship A of the American boy, and her parents- regard that liking as quite natural, and to be encouraged rather than to be frowned upon. There is no reason in their opinion why young people of opposite sexes should not enjoy each other's companionship and be brought much in contact ; there is every reason why this should be encouraged, because it is looked upon as good for both. It makes the boy and youth have a respect for woman and treat her with the chivalrous deference to which she is entitled by her sex \ it makes the girl more independent and better fitted to meet men when she takes her place in her world.

The attitude of the American towards his womankind is fundamentally different to that of the European. Admitting that a woman is always physically the inferior L of man, he sees no reason why women are to be ! regarded as mentally or morally his inferiors ; why they i are to be treated as dependents and nqt as equals ; why the c sphere ' of woman travels in a different orbit to his own. The result is that both legally and

AMERICA AT HOME

socially women have almost, but not quite, equal rights with men. In a few Western States they are accorded the right to vote, but in the great majority of the States they are still denied a privilege demanded by a few, and for which the majority care nothing; politically, no matter how well educated, cultured, or rich they may be, they are still rated one degree lower than the negro or the ignorant and semi-civilised foreigner. But in nearly all other respects they are on terms of equality with men. They may control their own property and dispose of it by will ; they can sue or be sued ; they can enter into contracts ; the same grounds that enable a man to obtain relief in the divorce courts can be asserted by them.

Many foreign observers find the American girl a forward young person and bemoan the fact that she has none of the reserve and shrinking modesty that are deemed essential to the properly brought up jeune fille of their native lands — the young woman of gentle birth who sits sedately in the presence of her elders, who timidly raises her eyes when she is addressed by a young man, and who hides behind the veil of her maidenly reserve when the end has come to an exceedingly commonplace conversation. And compared to this ideal, the foreign observer finds that the American girl is deficient in womanliness, and he wonders no longer that men and women marry and unmarry with such startling rapidity. She is no longer content, he says, to be merely wife and mother ; she aspires to be something more than that, to be the intellectual partner of the man she has married, to be a mother and still to receive the attentions that were so dear to her as a girl.

All of which is true, or true at least in part The freedom of life in America, the contact of the sexes, the

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THE AMERICAN GIRL

natural gravitation of boys to girls, of youths to young women, of men to women, the fact that from the earliest age they are thrown much with each other and that they are not rigidly separated, make the American girl not less feminine than her European sister, not less fascinating, or captivating, or less subtle, but in all respects more so because she begins her knowledge of the world and practises her powers at an age when European girls are entirely ignorant of the power of attraction of women for men.

With the exception of the daughters of the rich, the great majority of American girls are sent to mixed schools, where their playmates and rivals are boys, where they quickly learn — because the American girl is precocious and develops rapidly — that the strongest boy is no match for the weakest girl if she only knows how to use her weakness. A good-natured American philo sopher once observed that the American girl begins to flirt before she is out of the nursery, and becomes engaged while still in short dresses. Perhaps the American girl does begin to flirt at an early age, but it is usually an innocent and harmless flirtation ; it would be more correct, and it would be robbed of its offensive implication, to term it an intellectual matching of wit rather than love-making. School-girls frequently develop a violent and ardent affection for a boy in their class, which has been known to last as long as one term. These affairs break no hearts and cause no tears.

One reason for the precocity of the American girl is that the nursery occupies a much more subordinate place in the average American house than it does in Europe. In the families of the very rich in America the care of children devolves as much upon servants as it does in Europe, but among the great middle class,

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even among the upper middle class, and in those

families with money enough to have several nurses, the

V mother takes charge of her children. Daughters are

i much with their mothers, and they become their com-

\ panions younger than they do in Europe. At an age

when the French girl, for instance, is still demurely

attending her convent, or the English girl is in the

hands of her governess, her more emancipated sister

1 across the Atlantic is calling with her mother on her

'friends, or assisting her in the drawing-room on her

reception days. She is also receiving her own friends.

American girls of sixteen are allowed to have boys of

their own age or a trifle older call upon them ; and

these young persons, entirely too dignified to play, are

fond of mimicking society. They sit and talk just like

their elders ; they discuss their acquaintances, Susie

Smith's party of the night before, or Bessie Brown's

1 small and early ' to be held next week. Nor is this

artificial or forced. It comes quite natural to these girls

and boys to be interested in their social affairs and to

enjoy that life.

One feature of American life, and especially in its influence upon the American girl, and also to a marked I extent upon the American boy, is the system of co education, and the mingling of girls and boys in the same school and the same class from infancy to adolescence, and also in the universities. At some of the universities young men and women — the " co-eds," as they are called — are instructed in the same classes, and are taught the same subjects. It is a question often discussed whether the system is good or bad, and, of course, both sides can advance equally strong arguments in support of their position. The opponents of co education claim that the close contact of the sexes at

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THE AMERICAN GIRL

a peculiarly impressionable age is morally and intellec tually detrimental, that it turns their thoughts from study and makes them too fond of each other's society, and often leads to marriage at too early an age. The argument of the advocates of the system is that the presence of young women in a college exercises a restraining and humanising influence, that it makes men less brutal and more refined, and the young women • better able to understand the world, and to cope with it when they are thrown on their own resources ; and] as the majority of young women who go to college do' so with the intention of taking up a professional career and earning their own livelihood, this knowledge of the world is worth a great deal to them. It is obvious that much can be said on both sides, and that, like many other American institutions, it cannot be disposed of lightly, or by the obiter dicta of preconceived prejudices or insufficient information.

Colleges solely for the education of young women, of which the most famous are Smith and Wellesley in Massachusetts, and Vassar in New York, are to feminine America what Oxford and Cambridge are to England, and as unlike Girton as Oxford is to a dame's school. The usual age of admission is about seventeen, and graduation takes place between twenty and twenty- one. Practically the girls live the life of university undergraduates. They have their own rooms, which they furnish according to their tastes and their means ; they attend lectures or evade them as do undergraduates ; they have their boating, athletic, and social clubs, and devote almost as much time and attention to athletic sports peculiarly suitable for girls as do their brothers at Harvard and Yale.

Whether it is advisable to send a girl to college is 75

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another disputable and often discussed question. I have frequently been told by women, the graduates of colleges, that it was not beneficial, as at an age when a girl needed the influence of home, and especially the discipline and advice of a mother, she was removed from parental control, and acquired a somewhat false concept of life. In the case of a girl of the middle class, if one may use that term without causing offence in America— that is to say, the daughter of a man of small means and obscure position — after returning home from her college course she is generally dissatisfied with her surroundings, and instead of being better fitted to understand life or make the most of her opportunities, she is restless and discontented, she misses the stimulus and excitement of the companionship of several hundred girls of her own age, and either escapes from the monotony of humdrum existence by an early marriage, which too frequently has an unfortunate ending, or else remains at home disappointed and doing nothing.. / '

It has often been remarked that the intellectual college graduate seldom marries a man of her own in tellectual attainments, which is perhaps a wise dispensa tion of Providence to preserve the average of intelligence and not put too much in one family, so that the expense of her education — and it costs as much to keep a girl at one of these colleges as it does a man at Oxford or Cambridge— is money wasted, and her knowledge of the binomial theorem is of little value to her when confronted with the more complicated problem of suppressing a fractious child's desire for the unobtainable. On the other hand, I have been told by many women that college life is as advantageous for a girl as it is for a young man, because not only does it give her a thorough education, but it gives her something that is even more

THE AMERICAN GIRL

valuable : it teaches her the priceless qualities of tact and forbearance, and makes her understand human nature at a time when the girl who is not in college has no opportunity to acquire that knowledge or to understand its importance. Here again I forbear to advance any opinion. Certainly where women who have had practical experience differ, it would be ill becoming for an outsider to dogmatise, and especially so in discussing that most mysterious of all mysteries — the American girl.

The American girl who has left school or college and is formally * out,' no matter whether she be the daughter of a man who has a recognised place in society or her father makes no pretensions to social position, is largely her own mistress and does not have to wait until she is married to enjoy her liberty. Fifth Avenue, like Mayfair, is a stickler for the proprieties and the conventions, and insists that the maiden whose heart is still fancy free may not attend places of amusement or be seen in public in the evening unchaperoned by parent or married relative or companion of dignified age and sedate mien, but in circles only one degree less fashionable the chaperone is not regarded as all-essential. Mothers and fathers who are neither ignorant nor indifferent, who look very carefully after their daughters and who are ever vigilant to guard them from peril, do not object to their daughters going to the theatre with a young man unaccompanied by older persons, provided they know the young man and have confidence in him. The American parent realises that the society young people like best is the society of each other, and that it is foolish for them to spoil sport by getting in the way, and they have brought the art of self-effacement to a science. When a young man makes an evening call on a young woman he does

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not have to talk to her in the presence of her father, mother, sisters, and brothers. He and she are given the * parlour ' to themselves and may converse without the embarrassment of onlookers. Of course I do not refer to engaged couples. Naturally they are allowed to flock by themselves.

The intercourse between young men and young women in America is placed on a basis that does not rest on sentiment and yet from which sentiment is never entirely absent. It begins and ends often merely as good fellowship, as a frank liking on both sides, or a com panionship in which both find much pleasure, but it need not necessarily go any farther. It is not taken for granted that because a man calls on a young woman, or takes her to the theatre, or sends her flowers or candy, that he is in love with her, or because she accepts his trifling attentions that she is in love with him. Neither may entertain the slightest thought of love, or both may be consumed with the tender passion, but it is recognised that both may have full opportunity for discovering the depth of their sentiments. That a girl who is pretty and attractive, who is bright and just enough of a coquette to know the extent of her powers, should receive inno cent attentions surprises neither herself, her family, nor her friends. They accept it. A man may be seen much, within the limits recognised as conventional by society, with a young woman and still not be charged with paying her attentions. The friends of both will conclude, and perhaps quite correctly, that they are approaching that phase in their existence when their world will be bounded by themselves, but fathers do not ask young men their intentions because they have talked or walked with their daughters half a dozen times.

THE AMERICAN GIRL

The American girl, and the American woman when she leaves girlhood behind her — in that long interval between bridehood and grandmotherhood — it must be frankly confessed, even if it makes some of her English sisters a trifle envious, does have a good time, because America is the paradise of women. In dealing with men most Americans are brusque ; and one must say, with all due recognition of the very many charming traits possessed by Americans, that courtesy and national politeness are not numbered among them. The Ameri can who 'works for wages,' to use an Americanism, resents the idea of inferiority on his side or superiority on the part of anybody else. The tramway conductor, the railway guard, the policeman, almost any man who is clothed with a little brief authority, when he deals with a man seems only too delighted to show by his loud tone and dictatorial manner that he has his victim at his mercy, that he considers himself as good as any one else, and perhaps just a little bit better. He does this more to assert his independence than for any other reason. He does not want to lie under the charge of being servile or that he permits anybody to * boss ' him. The story is told of a distinguished and elderly senator who opened his door to leave his house and was con fronted on the doorstep by an obvious working-man.

'Well, my man,' said the senator good-naturedly, ' what can I do for you ? '

' I'm not your man ; I'm nobody's man except my wife's,' the fellow answered, with some asperity. ' I've come to paint the house.'

The painter who treated a leading member of the Senate as his equal, who resented being addressed as ' his man,' because that implied the relation of servant and master, was not ashamed to admit his subjection

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AMERICA AT HOME

to his wife. In his relations with women the American is essentially gallant and their slave, which makes him treat all women with a surprising deference. Let a man approach a policeman in a large city and ask for in formation, and the policeman will growl out something that may be either a curse or a benediction. Let a woman, especially if she be young, pretty, and well- dressed, ask the same information of the same police man, and she will be answered with such politeness and courtesy and respect that it would seem as if every policeman took lessons in deportment, and, like the ever-to-be-remembered Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., held that the expression ' If you please ' is highly proper to be used in addressing the public.

In the winter the American girl finds her principal amusement at the theatre and parties, and she usually dances well and with much grace ; but it is in the summer that she enjoys herself the most and appears at her best. The Americans live much out-of-doors in summer because the summers are long and hot, and those persons who are compelled to remain in the city after broiling all day are grateful for a breath of fresh air at night. The rich girl, in the daintiest of white frocks, in which she is even more attractive than in her most elaborate ball costume, at seashore or mountain resort rows or strolls or sits on the porch of a villa or fashionable hotel attended by her cavaliers, or one particular cavalier, undisturbed by thought of heat. Her less-favoured city sister, who must spend most of the summer in the city, in her own way gets equally as much pleasure out of those months of heat, with far less expense. Every city has its popular resort where the young people congregate, where they may sit and talk and walk, where at a trifling cost they

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may indulge themselves in the ' ice cream ' so dear to the heart and palate of every American girl.

Climatic conditions necessitate the wearing of light clothes ; and the * summer girl,' in her diaphanous shirt waists, her white skirts, and her mannish straw hat, is a picture to delight the eye, and is the inspiration for poet and paragrapher. A curious feature of city life in summer after the sun goes down is the open street car — Anglic^ the tram — which for warm-weather use has neither windows nor doors, crowded with young women and their escorts, who take a ' street car ride ' (an American always says ' ride ' when he means ' drive ' or is driven or mechanically propelled) to get a breath of fresh air. The cars running at ten or twelve miles an hour create a strong current, and as they are open on all sides except the top a ' ride ' from the city to the suburbs is the easiest and cheapest way to obtain relief from pavements discharging their stored- up heat. On these evening excursions the American girl scorns head-covering. It is not an unusual sight to see a whole car-load of young women with bare heads, waists of filmy texture, and arms bare to the elbow. Even elderly women go bareheaded in summer.

The American girl is so petted and courted and deferred to that she vigorously resents being placed on the shelf merely because she has entered into matrimony, and as a wife she retains her youth and \ her good looks surprisingly late in life. The American/ girl is good-looking, well set up, and knows what suits ! her and how to wear her clothes. Mere man may not discuss a subject so abstruse and terrifying as dress, nor would his opinion be worth a button on a question so delicate as whether the American girl is shamefully extravagant, and always appears becomingly and taste- Si G

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fully dressed because she spends a great deal more than her European sister, or because she has greater taste. But whatever the cause, her clothes look as if they were worn and not merely put on. With all her love of gaiety and vanity — and she is generally quite conscious of her looks and fond of admiration — she makes a fond mother and a devoted wife. While she \will not consent to being submerged by her children, she gives much of her time to them, and is still able to find time to be much with her husband. The average American husband makes a confidante and a companion of his wife, discussing with her his business and other affairs, but not often seeking her advice. A rather critical foreign observer has made the discovery that the American wife is always seeking not only to reach her husband's intellectual level, but to rise superior to it and overwhelm him, and the more she shines in comparison with him the greater her joy. The foreigner of an inquiring turn of mind is apt to gain curious impressions, and sometimes he meets curious people and thinks they are typical. Aftejr_peading some of these criticisms one is reminded of the neat retort of an American woman in London, who at a dinner-party was compelled to listen to someXatr/er ill-natured flings at her country and her countrymen. Finally unable to restrain herself any longer she turned to her critic, and with her sweetest and most engaging smile re marked: 'My dear Lord X., what very extraordinary letters of introduction you must have had.'

No one who really knows America well would contend that the American woman competes with her husband for supremacy or endeavours to become his rival. She is quite content to acknowledge him as the head of the house and to respect him accordingly; in fact,

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the woman who considers herself superior to her husband is exceedingly rare. She interests herself in his affairs, whether they be the affairs of the counting- house or the forum, but she seldom advises him. And her peculiarly dependent and subordinate position is in no way better illustrated than in her abstention \ from any active interests in politics. One would natur- I ally suppose that in America of all countries women would play an active part in politics and wield great influence, but the ' political woman ' is quite unknown. ) A woman who should canvass for or with her husband would do his cause irretrievable harm, and a man who was suspected of being influenced in his political judg ment by his wife would find his career brought to an untimely end. This opposition to women mixing in politics arises partly from custom and partly from the feeling men have that there is a better field for the activities of women than the hustings, and that the participation of women in politics would rob them of ( some of that feminism which is their greatest charm. . For the American has no love for the strong-minded I masculine woman. He likes her to be healthy and to golf or fish if he goes in for those forms of recreation ; but he wants her always to be a woman, to have the peculiarly feminine touch ; to wear a dash of his favourite colour at her throat or waist, even if she is sitting in a boat all day drawing fish out of the water and no one sees her except himself.

CHAPTER SEVEN WASHINGTON, THE REPUBLICAN COURT

A YEAR or so ago there came to Washington an English man whose reputation as a literary man is international and who had been invited to deliver a series of lectures in America. He expressed a desire to see the President, of whom he had heard much, but feared that his wish could not be gratified as his visit in Washington was limited to three days. Mentioning the matter to his host the day after his arrival, the latter said :

1 Have you anything on hand at the present time ? '

' Nothing that cannot be deferred until later,' replied the guest.

* Very well, then,' the host answered, ' let us go and call upon the President.'

The literary man from London thought this was a sample of the American joke of which he had heard so much, but noticing that his host was quite serious inquired if he really meant that they could call on the President in this familiar way and without even the formality of making an appointment or having obtained permission, and, as a stranger new to American customs, asked to be informed as to the etiquette of being received by the President.

'The President,' said the Washington man, 'is in his office every morning from nine until half-past one,

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except on Tuesdays and Fridays, when the Cabinet meets at eleven and usually sits for a couple of hours. On the other days the President receives official callers, Members of Congress and other officials and such private persons as are introduced by an official or who are otherwise properly vouched for. I hold no official position, but I think I am sufficiently sure of my ground to assure you that we shall see the President unless he is engaged with other callers, and in that case we shall see him to-morrow.'

So the two men walked over to the White House — the Englishman delicately hinted that surely they ought to take a carriage, but the American laughed and said the President wouldn't know whether they walked or came in a wheelbarrow, and what was more it would make no difference — and after waiting a few minutes, they met the President and talked with him for a quarter of an hour, and the Englishman went away amazed at the simplicity of Republican institutions, and not a trifle shocked that so little divinity did hedge the ruler of a great nation.

I cite this incident because it is typical of the democracy of Washington and the simplicity of Re publican institutions. The White House, in which the President and his family live, is the one residence in America tenanted by a civil official the property of the National Government (some of the States provide official residences for their Governors, but they are supported by the States and not by the General Govern ment). It is a not unattractive house, but it is neither majestic nor imposing, and it falls far short of being a palace ; in fact, there are private houses in Washington more spacious and more richly furnished than that in which the President lives. The White House, or the

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Executive Mansion as it is sometimes called, like the English Prime Minister's official residence, faces the State Department (the Foreign Office) and is within a stone's throw of the Treasury ; and the same building that houses the State Department also holds the offices of the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of War. But the Prime Minister's official residence is huddled away at the end of a narrow street which the stranger would miss unless his attention were directed to it, while the White House fronts the principal street of the city, and on which the electric trams run night and day.

In Washington there are no sentries in front of the public buildings or the White House, because a military display is not supposed to be in keeping with Republican institutions. There are a few city policemen in and about the White House, but there are no liveried servants, no groom of the chambers or palace officials. The servants are all negroes, which tradition requires. Adjoining the White House is a small, squat, ugly one- storey building that at first glance one takes to be the stable and later discovers is the President's- office. A policeman stands at the door; but the visitor having business with the President, if he is known, is admitted to the President's office by his messenger, a retired army captain in mufti ; or if he is unknown he must first see the President's secretary, at whose door stands a coloured messenger.

In the United States public men are easily approach able. It is a polite fiction that those who sit in the seats of the mighty are the servants and not the masters of the people, and although like the American servant they often run the household and have an uncomfortable way of showing their power, yet theoretically they are the servants and must not too openly flaunt their power in

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the faces of the sovereign people, because the dear people have an unpleasant way of showing their resent ment when their servants assume too many airs.

The President, of course, does not see every one who may take it into his head to call upon him. That would be impossible. Under the American political system, as I have already explained, the President com bines the functions of both King and Prime Minister, and between disposing of great matters of State and making appointments to petty officers his time is fully occupied ; but the President is much more accessible than is an English member of the Cabinet, or even a minor Government official. Members of Congress have the privilege of calling on him and bringing with them their friends, the blushing bride and the all-too-self-conscious groom from the rural districts, who are in Washington on their honeymoon and who regard an opportunity to shake hands with the President as one of the great events of their lives. And so we read in a daily paper that ' the President's handshaking record for the present year was broken to-day, no less than three hundred people, mostly women, from all parts of the country re ceiving his hearty grip.' There is no reason why the President's time should be wasted in this fashion, but it is a custom sanctified by long usage and one of the penalties the President pays for greatness, and the public would resent any curtailment of their vested right to gaze upon the President. Every President is afraid of being regarded as ' aristocratic ' or exclusive. It must be understood, however, that all this applies only to the time the President spends in his office. When he leaves his desk and enters the White House proper, the bars are put up and like any other gentleman he receives only those persons in his house whom he cares to see.

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At the White House no one calls upon the President unless he is invited or is on terms of sufficient intimacy to justify his calling in the same way that he would visit a friend whom he knew well enough to go to his house without invitation.

While the dominant note of Washington is democratic, and the President as well as other high officials surround themselves with as little state or exclusiveness as is com patible with their positions, there is one peculiarity about the etiquette imposed upon the President which is in marked contrast to that of royalty ; regarding the President as holding for the time being the same place at the head of the State as the King. The King may choose his friends wherever he will, and without regard either to station or nationality, but the President may not make an intimate friend of a foreigner in an official position, and especially not of an ambassador or minister. The Americans, with all their progressiveness and disregard for tradition and precedent in most of the relations of life, are in some things slaves to tradition, and one of the unwritten laws of their country is that no President may leave the country during his incum bency of the White House. The fiction that an embassy is foreign soil prohibits the President setting foot in an embassy ; and during the more than twenty years that I have lived in Washington, I cannot recall any President having entered an embassy, until Mr. Roosevelt, after the death of Lord Pauncefote, in violation of all tradition and in disregard of precedent, drove to the British embassy and in person tended his condolences to the family of the late ambassador.

As custom does not sanction that the President shall convey the impression that his personal feelings incline him too strongly to one nation at the expense of another,

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no President may be too openly intimate with a diplomat. Once during the season the President gives a dinner to the ambassadors and ministers and their wives, and on New Year's Day he holds a levte which every member of the corps is expected to attend. During the winter the President gives four or five evening receptions, the first in honour of the diplomatic corps, when the diplomats, their wives and daughters, pass in procession in front of the President, his wife, and the wives of the members of the Cabinet. These occa sions afford no opportunity for conversation outside of banalities ; and unlike the New Year receptions of the German Emperor or the Czar of Russia, when both those sovereigns more than once have availed themselves of the occasion to send to foreign countries messages through their ambassadors, private conversation between the President and a foreign envoy at an official reception would be considered revolutionary and cause a sensation. The President never dines at a private house except those of the members of the Cabinet, or very quietly with a few intimate friends, where it is not etiquette for a foreign minister to be among the invited guests, nor is it considered proper for the President, except on rare occasions, to attend a reception at a private house where he would meet official and general society. Mr. Roosevelt has set a new example in social matters by giving every season several musicaks to which members of the diplomatic corps and other persons have been invited, but on these occasions there is, of course, little opportunity for intimate conversation. Ambassadors have the right of personal intercourse with the President in the transaction of their business, and occasionally avail themselves of their privilege, but not often, as the real business of diplomacy is carried on with the

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Secretary of State, and it is only on rare or extraordinary occasions that they personally confer with the President. Members of the Cabinet are easily accessible, only a private secretary standing between them and the outside public. Members of Congress are officially entitled to be admitted to the Cabinet member's room whenever they call upon him, unless he happens to be engaged, and between nine in the morning and one in the afternoon the Cabinet members expect to be con stantly interrupted by official callers and to answer the questions that may be put to them. The difference between the parliamentary systems of England and the United States makes this almost necessary. Members of the American Cabinet are not members of Congress ; they do not occupy seats in either House, and they are not permitted to address Congress. If Congress desires to obtain information from the President or a member of the Cabinet, there is no way of orally questioning a minister, but a resolution must be offered and adopted asking the President or the member of the Cabinet, as the case may be, to communicate the information to Congress if not incompatible with the public interest. If the President deems it advisable that the facts sought shall be furnished, in the course of a few days they are transmitted in writing and printed for the use of Con gress, and a copy is furnished to every member — and to anybody else who may desire it, as all public documents are printed by the Government at its own expense for gratuitous distribution, and they may be sent free by post under the frank of a Member of Congress or one of the Departments. To avoid the formality of the adoption of a resolution Members of Congress often obtain information from a member of the Cabinet by calling upon him and making a semi-official request,

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which the member of the Cabinet is generally only too glad to honour.

The time of Cabinet members is much taxed in listening to the pleas of Congressmen and politicians for places for their constituents and other favours. When one realises the enormous amount of time a public man, from the President down, has to devote to petty things, it is always a wonder that there is any time left for the real business of government, or that it should be so well done. Nearly every Member of Congress begins his day by 'making the rounds of the Departments ' — in trying to secure, for instance, the appointment of a postmaster at an insignificant place at a salary of a few hundred dollars a year, or asking for the discharge of a private from the army, or getting a pension for a man who fought in the war of the Rebellion. This business could be equally as well transacted with minor officials as with a member of the Cabinet ; but Congressmen seem to think that they are not doing their full duty to their constituents unless they have personal interviews with the head of the Department, who must be decently polite and consent to be bored unless he wants to make trouble for him self as well as the President.

Congress consists of a Senate and the House of Representatives. The former is presided over by the Vice-President, or in case of his death by a senator elected for the time being, and the House by the Speaker, who is elected by the members every two years. It sits in the Capitol, a building of Grecian design, majestic in its proportions and graceful in its lines, surrounded by grounds, which for nine months in the year are green and serve to throw into greater prominence the white marble building. The Capitol

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is always the Mecca of sightseers to Washington, and the thousands of people who come from all parts of the country are never tired of having pointed out to them the men of the hour, whose names they constantly read in their daily newspapers. Compared to the House of Lords or to the House of Commons, the two Chambers in Washington are remarkable for their severe simplicity and the absence of ornate decoration, but the most striking difference between the American and British Houses of Parliament are the spacious galleries for vistors and the desks on the floor. The American Congressman is not embarrassed by women watching his deliberations ; on the contrary, he welcomes them and does everything to provide for their comfort and to enable them to see all that goes on, and to be seen by the members from the floor. There are galleries to which admission can be obtained only by a card procured from a member, but there are also galleries open to the public, in which anybody, man or woman, white or black, may sit, and so far as being able to see and hear goes there is no difference between the public and the private galleries.

Instead of sitting on benches at right angles to the Speaker, Members of Congress sit at desks which are arranged in semicircular form facing the Speaker as seats are in a theatre. Every member has his own desk. To a person unfamiliar with the procedure of the House it appears to be a noisy and disorganised body, and it is the constant remark of strangers on entering the gallery for the first time that they are unable to understand the subject under discussion. That is not due to the Speaker having a weak voice or being unfamiliar with the art of elocution, because most Members of Congress have considerable experience

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in public speaking and rely almost as much upon their oratory as anything else to secure prominence in public affairs ; but it comes from the fact that except on extra ordinary occasions, or unless there is a great question before the House in which the whole country is interested, speeches are made ' for home consumption.' Members do not speak to influence the House, or to elucidate a measure, but for the benefit of their constituents, and to be able to circulate a speech in their districts and impress the electors with their importance and ability. Congress publishes every day a verbatim report of its proceedings, known as the Congressional Record^ which appears every morning, and every member is entitled to several copies, which can be sent by post without cost under his frank. When a member makes a speech he is careful to see that the Congressional Record is given wide circulation in his district, and that the papers friendly to him use copious extracts. The result is that Members of Congress, or at least a majority of them, are more interested in legislation peculiarly local than they are in national affairs, so that while a member is making a speech, with the exception of a little knot of his personal friends, who for the sake of friendship have to suffer, the House scatters to committee room or the restaurant, and those members who remain at their desks are busy with their correspondence or chatting in none too subdued tones with their neighbours.

The American dislike of uniforms or livery, because they are supposed to savour too much of { aristocracy/ makes itself only too obvious in Congress, where there are no uniformed officials, but where the messengers and doorkeepers and other attendants wear whatever they please, slouch in and out of the house according to their fancy, and are on terms of easy familiarity with the

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members. Members and employees constantly pass to and fro in front of the Speaker's chair, often in front of the member who is speaking ; there is a constant suc cession of messengers bringing in cards of visitors, and of page-boys running errands for members. The result is the noise and confusion on the floor that so unfavour ably impresses the visitor.

It is permitted to a Member of Congress to be humorous when he makes a speech, which makes the Congressional Record anything but dry reading. Thus, to illustrate a point in his speech a member told the story of Miss Week who was wedded to Mr. Day. The editor of the local paper began his account of the wedding with this verse :

A Week we lose : a Day we gain.

But why, prithee, should we complain ?

There soon will be Days enough

To make a Week again.

The American Member of Congress is fond of point ing his moral with a humorous story. ' I have often illustrated this matter of the solution of problems,' said a member, ' by the experience of the woman with eleven children who had seven apples to divide among them, and who had never studied fractions. The problem finally had to be put to the kindergarten class, and when the teacher had announced it one little fellow held up his hand, and, when told he might speak, said, " My mamma would make apple sass." She'd cook the fractions out of it, don't you see,' the orator added when the laugh had subsided.

' Capital and labour get along pretty well out our way. The best definition of the conflict which sometimes goes on between them was told me by a Minnesota man when I was a very young man. " If I should loan you $10,

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that would be^capital," he said. " But if I should try to get it back, that would be labour." J

1 There were two Irishmen at a wake, and as they sat beside the coffin of the dear departed Pat says to Mike :

'" And what did he die of?"

' " Gangrene," says Mike.

1 " Let's be thankful for the colour," said Mike gravely.'

To point his moral a member told this story :

1 Do you remember the story of a Southern man who wanted to buy a good hunting horse? He found an owner who assured him that the horse would stand while a rifle was fired over the saddle. "And," added this owner, anxious to sell his horse, "he is also a good pointer. He will point birds as well as a dog."

* It was agreed that the prospective purchaser should give the animal a trial. "If he proves to be a good pointer," said he to the owner, " I will give you a higher price for him."

* So he started off with the new horse. While fording a stream, the animal stumbled, and the rider got a thorough ducking, at which he was much exasperated.

* " You said nothing to me about his stumbling," he roared at the owner on returning.

' " Ah," replied the owner, " I forgot to warn you that he points for fish as well as for birds." '

The social life of Washington is very attractive. In Washington everybody in society is in politics or holds an official position, but not everybody in politics is in society. There are many members of the Senate and House who are dependent upon their salaries of ^1,500 a year, and these men naturally cannot afford to cut much of a figure in society ; as a matter of fact, they are compelled to live with great economy and be con-

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tent with the indifferent accommodation of second-rate boarding-houses and minor hotels. On the other hand, there are many rich men in Congress who entertain lavishly, who live in fine houses and spend a great deal of money during the season. A rich senator or member of the House will not find it difficult to gain admission to the best social circles of the capital.

Washington is the only city in the United States where the laws of precedence are observed ; and because there is no social court of last resort, and the American table of precedence, like the British constitution, depends for its interpretation upon the latest official dictum, there is often much confusion and frequently much heart-burning, especially in the feminine breast. The position of the President is, of course, fixed, and it was always supposed that the Vice-President, as the next in line of succession to the presidency, ranked immediately after the President ; but when ambassadors were first accredited to the United States, as the personal repre sentatives of royalty, they claimed precedence directly after the President, but they were finally induced to surrender this claim in favour of the Vice-President. The members of the Cabinet, who are appointed by the President and hold office at his pleasure during his administration, are regarded as part of his entourage and are accorded precedence immediately after the President. So far all is plain sailing; but it is a question still unsettled whether the members of the Supreme Court of the United States, who hold life positions, outrank the members of the Senate, who although elected for a term of only six years claim superiority over the members of the Supreme Court because they must be confirmed by the Senate before they can take their seats on the bench, while a senator is elected by the people of his

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State — he is in theory and in practice the representative of a sovereign State, and is solely responsible to his State for his actions.

Some years ago, on the death of the President and the Vice-President the Speaker of the House was next in the line of succession to the presidency ; but that has now been changed, and in the event of the death of the President and the Vice-President the members of the Cabinet succeed to the presidency in the order of the creation of their Departments, beginning with the Secretary of State and running down to the Secretary of Commerce and Labour, who is the junior member of the Cabinet. Now that the Speaker of the House is no longer in the line of succession his precedence is uncertain ; but some Speakers have been tenacious of their supposed rights, and one may hear the story told in Washington drawing-rooms of the Speaker who, after having accepted a dinner invitation, at the last moment withdrew his acceptance because he would have been preceded by an ambassador, and he claimed that as the mouthpiece of the representatives of the American people his dignity would not permit him to walk into the dining-room behind a foreigner — much to the despair of his hostess, who had to rearrange her dinner list and the seats at the table.

While the President officially and socially has no peer, and the wife of the President is by courtesy ' the first lady of the land,' Presidents and their wives have not often been social arbiters. The explanation is simple. Presidents have usually been men well advanced in years, who with their wives have cared little for social gaieties, and who before their elevation to the presidency were generally men of small means and humble surroundings, who knew little of society, and who being too set in

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their ways and too old to change were quite content to live in the White House in the same fashion that they had formerly lived in their own homes. Mr. McKinley spent many years in Washington as a Member of Congress, and made one of the less fashionable hotels his home; and so did Mr. Harrison when he was a member of the Senate. Mr. Cleveland entered the White House as a bachelor and cared nothing for society ; Mr. Garfield, as a Member of Congress, lived very modestly ; Mr. Hayes came from a small town in Ohio, where a woman in a d'ecollete dress would have been looked upon as immoral.

The members of the diplomatic corps used to consti tute an exclusive circle, and were regarded with awe by the untutored multitude. Many a marvellous story was written by the industrious and untrammelled penny-a-liner, who not being burdened by facts or responsibility made the virtuous farmers of Maine or Nebraska believe that Washington was a sink of iniquity. In those days the members of the diplomatic corps kept very much to themselves except on purely formal occasions, when they were compelled to meet the people to whom they were accredited, but they did it grudgingly and no real intimacy existed. Now while the diplomatic corps, or some of its members, constitute the highest social circle and still retain a certain exclusiveness, they no longer shut them selves up behind their legation walls, but regard it as one of the duties of diplomacy assiduously to cultivate both the official and social world, and during the season there is not a night when ambassadors, ministers, and secretaries are not hosts or guests and meet the men and women who constitute official and social Washington.

Washington is unlike any other city in the United States. It is the one city of consequence that has no

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commercial interests, and owes its importance to its being the capital of the nation. It has no great manufacturing establishments, no army of factory workers. To the majority of its people it makes little difference whether cotton is cornered or stocks go up or down. In New York or Boston or Chicago business occupies the first place in the thoughts of most of their people, and people talk and think money. In Washington they talk and think politics, literature, art ; and whereas in other cities their people are local and are more intimately interested in their own immediate affairs than they are in the greater affairs of their own or foreign countries, in Washington, because men are assembled from all parts of the country, and from every corner of the earth, because there is a large naval and military representation, with many prominent scientific and literary men, society is cosmopolitan rather than local : it is the society of a capital rather than the society of a sprawling village that still retains all of its village characteristics even though it has the veneer of a city, which is the impression one has of society in most of the large American cities.

Washington is also peculiar in that in a land where universal suffrage exists it is only in the capital of the nation that the right of suffrage is denied ; where the people have no voice in the government, and where a benevolent autocracy rules. The local administrators are three Commissioners appointed by the President, who are paid salaries of ^1,000 a year. These three men are to Washington what the mayor and aldermen are to any other American city, what the County Council is to London. They derive their authority from Con gress, which frames the budget on estimates prepared by the Commissioners, who within certain latitude have wide discretion, but who may not spend a penny unless 99

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it has been previously authorised by Congress, who cannot make or modify a law, who may not employ an additional policeman or fireman except by the express authorisation of Congress. Washington is noted for its able, honest, and economical municipal government. This is perhaps a sad commentary on democracy and the virtue of popular suffrage, but it can be easily understood. The average American city is governed by saloon-keepers and professional politicians ; the governors of Washington are men of intelligence and standing.

i Many wealthy persons, who are neither politicians nor in official life, captivated by the charm of Washing ton, make it their winter residence. It is an attractive city, with its well-paved, clean, and wide streets, where men work — but in a different way to what they do in New York or the other large commercial centres — where life moves more leisurely, and the jargon of the market place is not the only thing heard in public places, where the greatest game ever played by man is always being 1 played, in which the pawns are men and the prize is power.

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CHAPTER EIGHT THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR

THE Americans are essentially a race of shopkeepers, and that term is not used in derogation or in the contemptuous way in which Napoleon employed it when he referred to England, but as indicating that the natural trend and tendency of the American is towards business ; and commerce is the foundation of civilisation, and those nations which have excelled in commerce have usually excelled in the arts and sciences, as well as in military achievements. Napoleon sneered at the British as a nation of shopkeepers, but he discovered to his sorrow that it was the nation of shopkeepers, the nation of business people, that crushed his ambitions and destroyed the power of the great destroyer.

The Americans are by instinct business men. They are keen, alert, progressive, and hardworking — qualities that spell success in business ; and they have the additional virtues of great audacity, vivid imagination, and venturesomeness. In their own country there is nothing too great, too bold, seemingly too impossible for them not to attempt nor to accomplish. When one sees the lines spanning the continent, and when one recalls the history of how these trans-continental railways were built, one is forced to believe that their projectors were more than mere business men of great

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ability ; that they were gifted with the power to read the future, that they could see the time when the vast stretches of unbroken country between the Atlantic and the Pacific would be rich and populous cities, and that only the railways were needed to bring to the prairies and plains of the West the millions from Europe eagerly seeking homes under more favourable circum stances.

In building great bridges or dams, in tunnelling mountains, in turning rivers from their beds (if that were an obstacle in the path of the iron horse), the harnessing of the great falls of Niagara so as to light a city and move tram-cars — everything that has required scientific and technical skill of a high order has been solved by the American engineer, who has found behind him the American capitalist. The American capitalist is willing to put his money in any enterprise that promises a large return, because he is a natural speculator, and he is ready to risk his capital if there is a chance of handsome profits.

One reason the American has been so successful as a business man is that the best talent of the country goes into business. It is the one thing above all others which offers the greatest prizes. Wealth counts for more in the United States than in any other country, and great wealth means power ; frequently it is the means of obtaining power. There is no limit to ambition in the United States. There is no limit beyond which a man cannot pass, as there is in Europe. Any American may aspire to be President, and for some that ambition will be gratified. A man who has ' made his pile ' — and fortunes are made with startling rapidity in the land of opportunities — as a diversion may go into politics and obtain a seat in the House of Representatives, or in the

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Senate, or in the Cabinet ; and there is always the White House as a possibility. If he is rich and promi nent in politics he has an assured position.

There is nothing disgraceful about trade in the United States. It is one of the virtues of democracy that a man or woman who works is not regarded as inferior to those who do not have to work or are the possessors of hereditary wealth. Remembering what has been said in a previous chapter about class distinction, the reader must not accept this too literally or imagine that the humbler worker, the clerk or other wage-earner, can take his or her place among the elect. That, of course, is not to be understood ; but because a man is in trade, or because he keeps a shop, he is not in a class by himself, although the aristocracy of wealth or blood will not admit him to their class if they can help it. Of course there is trade and trade. The banker has always been the aristocrat among traders, and the banker in the United States is much like his colleague in other countries, but what constitutes aristocracy in trade in England does not find its counterpart in the United States. In England it is accepted as a matter of course that the man who supplies the British working-man with his beer, providing only he can induce a sufficient number of working-men to consume a sufficient amount of his beer, will in the fulness of time gain a peerage ; but in the United States, curiously enough, brewers, although most of them are rich enough to maintain two or three peerages, do not cut much of a social figure. Most of the American brewers, however, if one may be permitted to be slightly paradoxical, are Germans, which perhaps is the reason why they are not leaders of fashion, and they are much given to marrying and intermarrying among themselves.

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The greatest opportunities for wealth and distinction in business are to be found in banking and railway management ; after that the direction of industrial enterprises, and manufacturing on a large scale. Hundreds of young men after graduating from the universities and other seats of learning, if they do not take up law or medicine, enter the service of the railways and other large concerns because they know the magnifi cent prizes that are to be won, providing they have the requisite abilities. To succeed in business in America a man must have capacity of a high order and qualities which not every one possesses. He must not only have that special sixth sense of money acquisition, but he must be of more than ordinary foresight and able to comprehend the present needs as well as the future of a country which is continually growing and expanding, and whose business affairs are always more or less in a state of flux. Take as a typical industry the manufacture of iron. There may be a year of depression, of hard times, when it is necessary for the manufacturer to curtail output and to practise the strictest economy so as to market his product at the lowest price to keep his works going, and then comes a year when bountiful crops or an unusual demand on the part of Europe for American products puts everything on the ' boom ' and factories are working day and night. The man with the genius to ' sense ' the storm before the clouds break, and have everything snug and shipshape, and who intuitively knows that the storm is over before he sees the sun through the rift, is the man who finds his reward in millions.

Millionaires in the United States are made quickly and a new crop springs up every few years, some of whom keep their fortunes and some lose them even

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more rapidly than they made them. ' It is only three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in America,' is the remark one often hears, meaning that the founder of the family fortunes worked in his shirt sleeves, and by his labour amassed his wealth and left it to his son, who played the gentleman and left a much smaller fortune to his son, who completed the wreck and ended where his grandfather began. As the law does not sanction entail and public opinion disapproves of primogeniture, it is difficult to tie up a great fortune or to favour one child at the expense of all the others, but it is less true now than it was in the past that inherited fortunes are quickly dissipated. The heirs are either shrewd enough to be able to manage their fortunes, which they frequently increase by judicious investments, or else they turn their backs on business and are satisfied to place their affairs in the hands of men better qualified to manage while they spend their incomes in making life yield the greatest enjoyment.

According to popular belief, both in America and Europe, all the great American fortunes have been made by manufacturers who are favoured by the pro tective tariff. This is only true in part. Great fortunes have been made by tariff-protected manufacturers, but the richest men in the United States are those whose wealth has been made from transportation; whose ancestors were pioneers in railways when both railways and the country were young; who like masters of the art of war were able to see every strategical point, and to seize it long before their opponents suspected even their purpose.

Perhaps the time may come when an American historian with the patient industry of a Gibbon may write the early history of the rise and growth of the

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American railway. It will be of more thrilling and romantic interest, more absorbing, more full of ad venture than anything the writer of the most luxuriant and vivid imagination ever dared to offer in the form of fiction. The early history of the American railway is the history of indomitable courage and great shrewd ness combined with unscrupulousness and the debauch of legislatures and public officials. To obtain franchises and other extraordinary powers in the gift of the State dubious methods were resorted to ; having obtained them the public was made to pay; the railways were in many instances used simply as a football, whose stocks were kicked up or down as it suited their owners, who made money whatever happened, but who ruined thousands by their operations. Thirty years or so ago the * railroad wrecker ' was regarded as almost respect able, and, if he was looked upon askance by some persons, society as a whole did not regard him as a pariah. The railroad wrecker by sinister methods, by false rumours, by bribery, by every method that was unworthy, depreciated the price of the shares of a railway so that they could be obtained for a fraction of their value, or better still forced the company into bankruptcy, had it administered in such a manner that it ceased to have any commercial worth, stripped it and plundered it, so complicated and involved its affairs, so disheartened its innocent stockholders that, dis couraged and in many cases ruined, unable to meet the * assessments ' that were levied upon them, they yielded in despair, and were at last only too glad to be relieved of their property. American commercial morality no longer countenances the railroad wrecker. There are other ways by which the public can be fleeced, and be made to contribute to the welfare of

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legalised chevaliers of industry. It is no longer re garded as good form to rob with deliberation ; there must be at least a semblance of misfortune or un avoidable accident when the crash comes, and an explanation more or less plausible to excuse the non- fulfilment of glittering promises.

There are only two families in the United States at the present day who have a hereditary connection with railways, and this is significant as showing how quickly possession passes when the men who created no longer live. The Vanderbilts and the Goulds still control the great properties that were founded by the former three generations back, and in the case of the Goulds by the father of the present head of the family. But the names of Garrett, of Scott, of Stanford, of Huntington, men who were contemporaries of Vanderbilt and Gould, who built some of the most important railway lines, who were their allies or opponents according to cir cumstances, are now only a memory. Their descendants were unequal to the task, and in one case at least the second generation would have seen a return to the shirt sleeves had not death providentially intervened.

The founder of the Vanderbilt fortune had little education but great shrewdness, and before railways were commercially possible he had amassed a modest competence, which increased amazingly when he built and operated railways. His son, who was even a greater commercial genius than his father, vastly in creased the family fortune, and since his death it has grown by its own accretions. Wealth in the United States, beyond a certain point, multiplies by the force of attraction; and where prudence is exercised, which has always been a characteristic trait of the Vanderbilt family, each generation leaves to its heirs a larger

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fortune. The manager of Jay Gould's fortune and estate is his son George, who, as a railway manager, has greater constructive ability and a broader grasp than his father; he is bringing up his sons to be practical railway managers, and he will doubtless leave to them a much greater fortune than that which he inherited.

The richest man in the United States, who is gener ally believed to be the richest man in the world, whose income is said to exceed that of any other, is Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who began life with nothing and made his fortune in the oilfields of Pennsylvania. The history of Mr. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company, which he founded and controls, is the most marvellous record^of romance, business shrewdness, business villainy, and audacity the world has ever known. Mr. Rockefeller in the early days of the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania was a clerk in a small shop in Cleveland, and with the extraordinary ability to see opportunities for making money perceived sooner than anybody else the millions in the slimy fluid oozing out of the ground. It would take too long to trace the rise of the Standard Oil Company and the growth of the Rockefeller millions, but it may be said in a few words that Mr, Rockefeller by various means, some of which can hardly stand the scrutiny of day, although most of them have been exposed by means of investigations by committees of Congress and State legislatures, trials at law and other ways, gradually obtained possession of the entire output of oil of the United States, driv ing all rivals and competitors out of the field, until to-day the Standard Oil Company dictates the price of every gallon of oil used by the American people and is enabled to charge whatever it pleases. Mr. Rockefeller's wealth increased so enormously and so

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rapidly, his surplus income was so large, that it be came necessary for him to invest in railways, iron mines, banks and manufacturing companies, all of which he dominates, until to-day his power is so great and so wide-reaching, his control of n^ea and millions so absolute, that in finance and business he exercises almost autocratic sway and appears to be apart from and superior to his fellow-men.

Mr. Rockefeller is unlike any other American million aire. Politics apparently do not interest him ; society does not appeal to him ; sport has no attractions for him. With his wealth and his power he might lead society as he now leads finance and commerce ; but although he has an estate that a prince might envy and a king crave, and he could gratify the most ex travagant tastes and never miss the money, he gives no great entertainments, no guests throng his great mansion. No matter what criticisms may be directed against his business methods, his private life is ex- amplary and pious ; he is a man of strong religious convictions and has given millions to endow the University of Chicago. His son and heir is no less remarkable. Like his father he is of a serious turn of mind, and none of the follies of youth was ever charged to his score or turned his thoughts from the all-important business of life of making money and safely investing it. His recreation is teaching a Bible class for young men.

The senior Rockefeller differs from nearly all other American millionaires in that he is not a speculator. He aims to control articles of prime necessity, articles the people must have, no matter what happens. They must burn oil and gas; they must have iron and copper and sugar, and they must enrich Mr. Rockefeller

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by using them. Mr. Rockefeller does not have to speculate, because speculation implies risk and un certainty. The public may be in doubt as to whether the shares of a company in which Mr. Rockefeller is interested will go up or down, but Mr. Rockefeller never is. With the inevitableness of fate things happen as he ordains, and as the tides perform their predestined purpose, and the glacier with irresistible force crushes everything in its path, so Mr. Rockefeller fulfils his destiny and can scorn the risks that mortals must incur. Day after day he becomes richer and more powerful, until men wonder whether such wealth and such power concentrated in the hands of a single man may not be a menace to the Republic.

During the last few years, years of phenomenal prosperity in the United States, and years of financial insanity almost, the public bought shares of all kinds in companies that were supposed to be capable of earning large dividends, and an entirely new crop of millionaires sprang up. Men have made enormous fortunes by combining industrial establishments into trusts, and the trust promoter has become a recognised power in the financial community and has made for himself his millions, but how much he has made for the public time will tell. Most of these trusts are too new for one to be able to say much about their solvency. There are people who believe that the trust is founded on false economic principles and that, being over-capitalised and over-weighted, it must fall because of its inherent weakness.

It is marvellous, the millions these men have made in a few years, and the way in which obscure men have by a lucky coup developed into financiers of the first rank. Everything conspired to help them. Great

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industrial activity and bountiful crops made the American manufacturer as well as the American farmer rich, and everybody had money seeking investment. Anything that offered a rich return, any venture promising large dividends, was quickly absorbed by the public, who believed in the promises of prospectuses with the faith of children in the fairy tales of their childhood. Later they were disillusioned. Just as children discover that giants and fairies are fiction, so these deluded persons discovered that the glittering promises were not fulfilled and that their money had gone into the pockets of the promoters. The trust promoters have yachts and palaces ; the public is poorer than it was before the trust madness numbered its victims by the thousands.

The struggle for wealth in the United States is desperate and ceaseless. Money is what every one wants, and money is what every one is trying to obtain. It is at once the test and the gauge of success, the . standard by which everybody is rated. The man who has made his ' pile ' has demonstrated himself a man of capacity, and the larger his fortune the greater the evidence of his ability and shrewdness. For money is a substantial thing, and it proclaims its own importance. Men sometimes win position and power by accident ; if a man has money the world accepts it as proof of his intelligence. Nor is this entirely a sordid test. The man of ability in his own specialty, whether it happens to be law, medicine, or commerce, may look for an adequate reward for his labours, and can usually count on being recompensed according to his worth. The doctor may not hope to earn the great fees that are made by the corporation lawyer ; the lawyer is seldom able to amass the fortune of the man in trade ; but the

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fact that a doctor is well off, or a lawyer is rich, or a merchant is a millionaire, means that they have made of life a success, and the Americans worship the great god success.

There is every encouragement to a man to succeed. The youngster who goes into business in America has his future in his own hands. To a certain extent that is true in other countries, but only to a degree. In America the young man is given every opportunity to show his worth ; he may think for himself, and if he can prove that he is not a mere machine, he may feel sure of promotion. He is not kept at arm's length by his employer. If he has a suggestion to make that may be for the benefit of the business, the employer will be glad to receive it, to adopt it if it commends itself to his judgment, and to remunerate him for it if it proves profitable. In American business houses there are few traditions, because most business houses are too new to be able to support the luxury of tradition, usually a very expensive luxury and the bar to progress. The man of business makes of novelty a fetish, and is always searching for additional idols to set up in his temple. The tradesman, whether he is in business on a large or a small scale, believes in novelty, because his customers always demand it, and the man who shows the most enterprise is usually the man who succeeds best. It is this characteristic that gives the young man his chance. There is always a market for ideas. The man who is content to do well the work that is placed before him seldom rises beyond a subordinate position, but the man with initiative may look forward with confidence to the future.

The American works harder than the Englishman. In the large cities shops are usually open for business

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at eight o'clock, and clerks in offices and wholesale houses are at their desks before nine o'clock, and the interval that elapses before the proprietors put in an appearance is brief. Half an hour is generally allowed for lunch, which for most men actively engaged in business is merely a ' snack,' as the American does not take kindly to a heavy meal in the middle of the day. The rich man in business seldom spends much time on lunch, unless it is a cover to discuss affairs with a customer or an associate, and afternoon tea is unknown. Between lunch and ' quitting time,' never before five, and usually six o'clock, there is no break. In the banks and the large establishments Saturday is generally a half-holiday, but in many of the smaller shops, and especially in the West, where the hours are longer than in the East, the stores are kept open until nine o'clock or even later, Saturday being the favourite shopping night for the multitude, as it is the popular pay-day.

The 'week-end' is little known in America, except among the rich. The great banker or financier of New York or Boston who has his country house at the sea shore or in the country, during the height of the summer, when, owing to the intense heat, business is practically at a standstill, may not come into town on Saturday, but as his house is connected by telephone with his office he can keep in touch even while away. The man in comfortable circumstances, but who has not yet arrived at the dignity of an establishment in the country, will rush for a train late in the afternoon and spend Sunday with his wife and children at the seaside, often returning to the city late on Sunday night so as to be at his office early on Monday morning. Clerks whose offices close at one o'clock go to the baseball game, or to the seaside, if it is accessible, or they make Sunday the 113 I

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great day of rest and recreation. The average man in business takes his vacation in the summer, its length depending entirely upon his wealth. If he is rich and has partners who can manage affairs while he is absent, he may be gone three months ; if he is not overburdened with money, and must rely largely upon his own exer tions, he will probably feel that two weeks are all that he can afford to take. Employees in offices and large wholesale houses are generally allowed two weeks' vaca tion with full pay.

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CHAPTER NINE

EDUCATION AND LABOUR

IN the United States Senate all matters relating to education or labour are referred to the same cpmmittee, and it is appropriate that the. two should be joined, because there is perhaps no other country in which education has such a great influence on labour, and in which labour is so eager to secure education.

In America there exists almost a passion for education, c It is one of the national characteristics. It is indicative of the universal desire to succeed and to advance in the social scale. The working-man, the immigrant whose English is almost unintelligible, the former negro slave who can neither read nor write — all are affected by this American spirit and insist that their children shall learn so that they may be better off in a worldly sense than their fathers. It is not an uncommon thing for a woman to work hard so that her daughter may go through the high school ; for a woman on a farm to slave to earn money to keep her daughter at the university — her daughter who shall be something better than a farmer's wife, who shall have a chance to make a career as a lawyer or a doctor.

Education is not a function of the General Government, but is carried on by the States. Practically every State has a complete system of public education, and in

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nearly all the States it is obligatory for children of a prescribed age to attend school for certain months of the year, and the employment of children of school age is prohibited. The public schools of England — Eton, Harrow, and the other great foundations — have no exact counterpart in America, and the so-called public schools of the United States would be knownjas the council schools in England, but the difference is as great as the designa tion. The fundamental distinction is that of caste and class. In America attendance at a public school is not a sign of poverty and has no stigma attached to it. The public schools are supported by the tax-payers, and the children of men of wealth as well as men without wealth are sent there; hence the son of a man worth millions may be the seat-mate of the son of his father's coachman ; the daughter of a leader of society may sit in school next to the child of her mother's hairdresser. When Mr. Mosely's education commission visited Washington, surprise was expressed by some of its members that the President's son should be a public- school pupil, but it caused neither surprise nor comment in Washington. In a Washington public school it would not be exceptional to find enrolled among the scholars the children of justices of the Supreme Court, members of the Cabinet, Senators, and officers of high rank in the army and navy, as well as the children of bricklayers, small shopkeepers, and postmen. The public school is the most democratic institution in America, but like all things American its democracy stops at a certain point. Men of wealth and position do not object to their children attending the public school when they are young, but after they reach a certain age almost invariably they are sent to a private boarding-school preliminary to their entering college. The fondness of the American mother

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and father for the society of their children, the absence of the nursery, the more intimate relationship existing between mother and children in America than in England, and the personal supervision of the American mother over her children are reasons why it is not considered desirable to send children of a tender age away from the protecting influence of home to the more dangerous environment of the boarding-school. A man of position argues that it does his son of twelve no great harm to be brought in contact with boys lower in the social scale, but from that age on it is advisable to have him associate with his equals. The same argument applies even more forcibly to the girl.

I cannot speak too highly of the American public school and the American system of education. The curriculum begins with the kindergarten and ends at the high school, in which the young man or woman can obtain an education equal almost to that offered by the universities. In the first eight grades the pupil is well grounded in grammar, history, arithmetic, elementary mathematics and English literature, but neither modern nor ancient languages are taught until he enters the high school. A boy who has gone through the eighth grade has a fair education, and is qualified to fit himself for further knowledge if he has the disposition to study. The high school, with a course of from two to four years, is divided into two branches — the business, where the student is taught shorthand, typewriting, and bookkeeping, and is given a thorough theoretical commercial training, and the scientific or classical, where he prepares himself for entrance to the university or a professional career. So highly are many of these high schools regarded that some of the leading universities will admit a student on certificate and without examination ; and many young

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men, studying to equip themselves for a profession, after leaving the high school are able to take immediately the strictly professional cours-e that entitles them to practise their profession. In some of the States there are manual training schools, where youths serve a regular apprentice ship at their respective trades, and in addition to the practical work they take an academic course, especial stress being laid on drawing, because of the importance of a workman being able to make and interpret plans, German, because of the acknowledged position of Germany in the industrial arts, and mathematics, because of their practical value in engineering.

The States of the American Union have from the very beginning of their existence as States recognised the importance of education and its value as a com mercial asset, and have been generous in its support ; in the early days sacrifices were often made to provide for the schools. The great universities of America that are best known in Europe — Harvard, Yale, Princeton — are not State institutions, but have been endowed by private munificence, but in several of the States there are universities maintained and managed by the States. Of recent years it has become fashionable for rich men to pose as the patrons of learning. Two of the most notable instances are the Leland Stanford University in California, and the University of Chicago ; the former the late Senator Stanford's memorial to his son ; the latter the project of Mr, John D. Rockefeller, the head of the great Standard Oil Trust, both of whom have given millions of pounds to their projects. Mr. Andrew Carnegie has established and endowed with .£2,000,000 the Carnegie Institute in Washington ; but this is not a university in the popular sense, but is for the purpose of conducting higher research,

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Judged by statistics the percentage of illiterates in the United States is higher than in some European countries, and far exceeds that of England ; but these figures are misleading, because the illiterates in America are recruited principally from the immigrants of mature age who are unable to profit by the educational facilities of their adopted country, and from the negroes of the South who, born in slavery, have not used their freedom to acquire even the rudiments of knowledge. If these two classes were excepted, if the negro and the immigrant were subtracted from the great body of illiterates, it would be found, I think, that the percentage of literacy among native-born Americans, or the naturalised of only one generation back, is higher than among any other nation in the world ; due to the fact that it is impressed upon every American, upon the native American as well as the naturalised American, that if he would succeed he must have at least a common school educa tion, and that the demands made upon the worker in every walk of life can only be met by the cultivation of his intellectual powers. It has been well said that the republic is opportunity ; and every boy starting in life is quickly made to understand that his future rests with himself, and that if he hopes to raise himself from the class in which he was born he must have education and the comprehension intelligently to perceive that which is required of him. In some cases extreme poverty pre vents the boy from attending school, or compels him to leave at a tender age so as to earn a miserable pittance to contribute to his own support or that of others, but the son of any well-to-do and thrifty mechanic or small shopkeeper may acquire a fairly good education without expense. Before leaving the subject of the public school I must not forget to mention that in the South,

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the habitat of the negro, there are separate schools for the coloured race, who are given practically the same educational advantage as the whites.

I have referred to the c private ' schools of America, and there are many of these institutions, which are practically the antitype of Eton and Harrow and the other well-known English public schools. They are private in the sense that they receive no grant from the State and derive their incomes from the fees paid by the pupils or from endowments or voluntary gifts and con tributions, and are not subject to State or Governmental control or supervision. In these schools the boys live in dormitories, each boy having his separate room or sharing it with another ; they are divided into classes in the usual way according to their capacity, and the system is substantially the same as that in the large English public schools. The boys go in for good healthy sports, and like all right-minded and active youths are much more interested in football and baseball than they are in Latin and Greek, but they are kept pretty well up to the mark and made to work. There are a few of these schools so exclusive that the number of pupils is limited and prefer ence is given to the sons or immediate relatives of former pupils. I have in mind a certain school where it is customary on the birth of a boy for his father immedi ately to enter him as a pupil, so that when he is of proper age there will be a place for him. An amusing story is told of a young man, who in the exuberance and pride of the knowledge that he might shortly expect to become a father, made application for his prospective son, informing the principal that in due time the boy's name would be communicated. Unfortunately the boy turned out to be a girl, but, nothing daunted, the father wrote again, stating that the application still held good.

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The two great public schools of America — public in essence, but not so denominated — are the Military Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where young men are trained for admission to the respective services. These youths are appointed, or more properly, nominated, by members of Congress, and in some cases by the President, and after passing a rigid physical and mental examination they are en rolled as cadets, passing at the end of four years into the army as second lieutenants and the navy as mid shipmen. They are given a thorough professional and general education without cost and are paid .£100 a year, which covers their living and incidental expenses, so that the sons of poor men are not debarred from entering the army or navy. Military and naval officers are very proud of their training system and believe that the American officer is better educated and more scientific than the foreign officer, because the standard at the Academies is higher than in similar institutions abroad.

For those men and women who were debarred the privileges of education in their youth, and for those young people whose craving for knowledge has not been satisfied and who are unable to attend school during the day, there are in all the large cities night schools, and the University Extension Movement and the Settle ment Houses further promote the spread of knowledge.

The great problem confronting America is the assi milation of its aliens, the conversion of the horde of ignorant foreigners who are annually dumped on its shores — who know nothing of English and even less of American ideas and institutions — into Americans in fact as well as in name.

Labour in the United States is more liberally re-

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compensed than in any other country. Working-men can be broadly divided into two classes — the skilled worker who has served an apprenticeship and is a master of his craft, and the unskilled labourer who does work requiring brute strength rather than intelligence. The former constitutes the hierarchy of labour and wields great power in the management of trade unions and in improving the general condition of labour ; the latter is usually unorganised and exerts little influence.

The factory system was early transplanted from England and is coincident with the general expansion of industrial occupations in the United States. Without attempting to raise the political or economic question whether the protective system in America has been the cause of high wages, or whether, as American free traders are fond of asserting, the wages of American working- men would be equally as high without protection owing to superior natural advantages, the fact remains that the American working-man is better paid than the work ing-man in any other country. Wages vary according to location, labour commanding the highest price in the large cities of the East, where the cost of living is also higher ; but domestic service is better paid in the West than in the East. Bricklayers, for instance, in New York city earn one pound a day, compositors on morning newspapers sixteen shillings, carpenters and plumbers from twelve to fourteen and fifteen shillings ; unskilled labour is rarely paid less than six shillings a day ; and although the cost of living is nominally somewhat higher in America than it is in England, and actually much higher than in Germany and other Con tinental countries, the American working-man because of his larger wages is not only able to live better, but to lay by something for old age or accident.

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Figures are misleading, and mean nothing unless accompanied by a detail of elaborate explanation and comparison entirely out of place in a work of this character. It would be easy enough to show what the working-man pays for rent, provisions, and clothes, but those prices would be meaningless unless, in the case of rent, for instance, compared with the same accommo dations and relative accessibility to his place of employment of the British working-man. In the matter of clothing the question of quality is a determining and disputed factor, the American contending that the cloth woven on American looms is equally as durable as the cloth worn by English workmen. It is sufficient to say that with the possible exception of rent the American workman pays no more for his clothing and provisions than does the British workman ; that many articles of diet are cheaper in America than in England ; that there is a greater choice of fruits, vegetables, and fish in America ; that in times of even moderate pros perity it is only the idle, dissolute, or physical incapa citated who are constantly on the border line of starvation ; that in good times every man willing to work can find employment at fair wages; that the working-man in good standing, as well as the unskilled labourer, has meat every day, usually more than once a day, varied by poultry and fish with nutritious vegetables, and he may have decent surroundings, and save if he is careful and temperate.

In a country where every male on attaining his majority is entitled to cast a vote for the election of the lowest as well as the highest official, it follows as a matter of course that the working-men exercise great political power, and that political power the politician is never permitted to forget. The working-man frequently

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coerces politicians, capitalists, Members of the Legislature and Members of Congress, who are careful to do nothing to antagonise what is generically known as the labour vote. It would naturally be expected that in America, where the labour vote constitutes in round numbers one- seventh of the electorate, there would be a distinct labour party which would be represented in Congress by its own members and form a separate parliamentary group, but the labour party has not yet appeared in American politics.

Labour easily divides itself into four racial divisions. There are the Americans of native birth or parentage, the Irish, the Germans, and the races from Southern Europe. The native-born American is a Republican or a Democrat owing to circumstances and the accident of environment ; the Irish almost to a man have been and are Democrats ; the Germans in the large cities of the East in the main are Democrats, while in the Western States they are largely Republicans ; and the Italians, the Russians, and the Slavs are Democrats if they happen to settle in democratic states or cities, and Republicans if they are thrown among Republicans. The first three classes — the Americans, the Irish, or at least a large portion of them, and the Germans — constitute the skilled labour of America, while the Italian and the Slav are now doing the manual, unskilled work that was formerly done by the Irish. It follows, therefore, that with labour so divided by racial prejudice it becomes almost impossible to solidify it into a political party or unify it in its own interest.

There is still another reason why it has been found impossible to make a united labour party, although frequently the attempt has been essayed. Much jealousy exists among the labouring men, and great distrust and

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fear of themselves. A Member of Congress is paid a salary of .£1,500 a year, and a Congressman's salary is a prize worth competing for by any highly skilled and well- paid artisan, who has to work eight and nine hours a day and earns from £200 to £300 a year. Election to Congress lifts a man immensely in the social scale, and would put the labour member in a class much higher than that of his former associates and fellow workers. Envy at making one of their members * a gentleman,' and the fear that if he should be elected to Congress he would cease to be a working-man and come under the influence of capital, are responsible more than any other causes for the failure to create a labour party.

This divergence of political belief and this distrust of themselves have nullified the political power of the labour unions, but while the union exerts no influence politically — that is, the union as an entity — its influence both economically and socially has been felt most sen sibly. The increase of wages that has been progressive in the United States during the last few years is largely owing to the efforts of the trade unions and the steady pressure put upon employers by them ; and as a majority of the skilled workers of the country are members of the unions, in case of a disagreement and a strike the unions have it in their power either temporarily to bring indus trial operations to a standstill or at least seriously to dislocate them.

It is for this reason that the more intelligent among labour leaders discourage the trade union from becoming a political body. Once that should come to pass, they say, labour would be merely an annex to the great political parties and would be rendered impotent either to reward its friends or punish its enemies. Labour is powerful, they say, because its political action is always

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an unknown quantity ; because this uncertainty is a threat that inspires respect and makes it the object of solicitous consideration on the part of politicians. The chief purpose of the union, according to the labour leader, is not to put this party or that in office, but it is to obtain higher wages, shorter hours, and better social conditions for its members, and that only can be accom plished by encouraging the industrial worker to be a free political agent and to vote for the candidate who pro mises best to bring about those results.

The relations existing between labour and capital in the United States are, speaking broadly, those of an armed truce between nations immediately preceding a declaration of war. There is little, if any, feeling of common purpose between them, or consciousness of common interests. Labour is engaged in a perpetual struggle to compel capital to accede to its demands, to increase its wages, and to diminish its hours. I shall not here attempt to weigh the rights and wrongs on either side, to apportion the blame, or to make any attempt to investigate the causes. It may be sufficient to say that neither side is entirely to blame nor entirely innocent. While much of the discontent and dissatisfac tion on the part of labour is caused by the tyranny and oppression of capital and the knowledge that capitalists have made huge fortunes at the expense of labour, the determination of employers not to adopt a more con ciliatory attitude toward their employees or voluntarily to improve their conditions is the natural consequence of the high-handed manner in which working-men attempt to redress their grievances, real or imaginary, and their ingratitude.

Without going into causes, I think it can be said without fear of contradiction that, because of the power

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of labour, politicians and the Press have been afraid to express their convictions or to advocate measures that would be in the interest, not of capital or of labour, but of both, and society generally. Frequently strikes have been ordered for the most trivial reasons. The sym pathetic strike is a favourite weapon of the unions ; employers have locked out their men rather than make a trifling concession ; the arrogance of capital has been met by the intolerance of labour ; and the newspapers have been silent, and reprobated neither labour leaders responsible for causing untold distress to men forced to strike, nor captains of industry who have made the public suffer to gratify the caprice of capitalistic greed and pride.

For many years the doctrine of laissez faire has prevailed because it accorded with the spirit of democracy to believe that it was not the business of the State to settle disputes between man and man ; they could fight it out between themselves, and all that the State was required to do was to keep the ring and see fair play. But now it has gradually dawned upon the compre hension of the law-makers that industrial warfare is no more to be permitted than any other form of anarchy, and the organisation of the Civic Federation, of which the late Senator Hanna was the president, and the existence of other similar machinery to bring about a better state of feeling between employer and employee will probably before long lead to more harmonious relations between capitalists and wage-earners. In other respects the State has regarded the working-man as peculiarly under its guardianship, and has made wise and liberal laws for his protection, and to save him from the rapacity or cupidity of the employer. Every State makes its own labour laws, and the same spirit actuates

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most of them. Sunday and legal holidays are observed as days of rest ; in many States the normal day is fixed by legal enactment at nine hours, while in some occupa tions it is limited to eight. There are stringent provisions regulating the employment of women and children, and in the older States of the East, notably Massachusetts, which has always set the example in advanced labour legislation, sanitary and other regulations in factories are strictly observed and rigidly enforced, and the comfort of the operatives is carefully looked after,

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CHAPTER TEN

SOCIAL CUSTOMS

ONE of the peculiarities of America, one that always impresses the foreigner who has spent sufficient time in the country to know it and whose judgment is not founded upon a superficial acquaintance of a few weeks in the larger cities of the East, is the difference in social customs and the point of view in various places. In New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, among the very rich, there is almost as rigid adherence to form and the strict canons of etiquette as there is in Europe ; in the West, except in a few of the largest cities, strict regard for conventional etiquette is deemed of less importance. In New York the dress suit is an essential part of every man's wardrobe who makes the slightest pretension to having any knowledge of the world, and even the man of small means and minor social position considers it incumbent ' to dress ' when he takes his wife or other women to the theatre. In a city of the size and importance of Chicago the dress suit, while not unknown, is sparingly used, and in the smaller cities of that Western country the man who dresses for the theatre makes himself conspicuous.

An Englishman relates an amusing account of his experiences in a Western city of considerable preten sions — a city as large as Birmingham, but not so im-

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portant. He went there on business, accompanied by his wife. The evening of their arrival they accepted an invitation to the theatre ; and not thinking that the customs of the newer West were different from those they had always known, and deeming it unnecessary to consult any authorities on etiquette, they proceeded to dress as they would for a theatrical performance in London ; the man in the conventional black of evening, his wife in a dress to show her shoulders. As they went to their seats in the dining-room they felt they were attracting entirely too much notice, and when they sat down so marked was the attention of every body in the room that the Englishwoman asked her husband in a whisper if there was anything wrong about her looks, as everybody stared at her. He gallantly told her that she looked unusually stunning, which was perhaps the reason, and advised her not to worry. She looked about the room, in which there were perhaps not less than a hundred women, and discovered to her amazement that she alone wore a low-neck dress, which naturally made her most decidedly conspicuous. Being a woman of quick wit she realised the situation at once and understood how shocking her bare arms and shoulders must seem to those other women with their dresses buttoned up to their necks and prolonged to their wrists, and asked her husband what she should do.

1 Do nothing, my dear, but eat your dinner,' he replied.

'But I can't sit here in this way,' she answered. ' I feel as much out of place as if I were walking in Bond Street in a bathing suit. I shall either have to change this waist or you will have to get me a scarf to throw over my shoulders.' 130

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Telling the incident later when it was a less painful memory, she said she felt that her dress was entirely out of place. * I don't mean any play on words/ she quickly added, with a somewhat ghastly smile as she recalled the humiliation of that time, * but I wished that some of the material trailing on the ground could have been on my bodice at that particular moment.' When her husband returned a minute or two later with a lace scarf which she put about her shoulders, { I heard,' she said, ' an audible sigh of relief go up throughout the room. Outraged propriety was ap peased.' After their experience in the dining-room it occurred to them that if a woman at dinner in a decollete dress created such a sensation the results might be equally unfortunate at the theatre. What was to be done ? There was no British consul to whom they could appeal for advice ; they knew no one who could serve as their social mentor.

' Ask the manager of the hotel,' said the wife ; ' hotel managers in this country, I have been told, know everything.'

That suggestion did not appeal to the husband, who after a few minutes' reflection turned to his wife with triumph written on his face. ' I know,' he said. ' I'll telephone to our host; he's a good chap and will know.'

Of course the host had a telephone in his house and there was a telephone in the room of the hotel, so it was easy enough to get into communication with him, but it was not quite so easy to ask a compara tive stranger what his wife should wear. Never good at finessing, this man, after vainly endeavouring to frame a subtle question, was at last compelled bluntly to ask : * What shall my wife wear ? ' and over the

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wire came this Delphic reply in the hearty tone of sincerity : ' Oh, tell her to come just as she is. Any thing that she wears will be just right ; we don't go in much for style here.'

That settled it. It were better to err on the safe side, and a change was quickly made to a dress more in keeping with the Western idea of convention. At the theatre there was not a single woman in a dtcollett dress, and during the course of the evening the English woman shuddered as she realised how narrowly she had escaped the frightful impropriety of appearing at the theatre in bare neck and arms ; and when later she laughingly told her hostess, that estimable woman gasped and said that if she had society would have talked about it for the next month. In the West a woman never appears decolletl except at a ball, and even then the very smallest display of the female form is all that society will countenance. According to the Western code, Satan is supposed to ride on a woman's bare shoulders.

This hostess said that the ' society ' of her city would have been given food for gossip, and the use of this word ' society ' is a constant surprise to the foreigner. You pick up a local paper and read of the elopement of two ' prominent young society people ' in some small place, only to discover that the girl is the local telephone operator and the man is the proprietor of a grocery store. Because the girl is pretty and vivacious and the man is well off according to the community's standard of wealth, they are ' prominent socially ' and so regarded by their associates. Social standing is not gauged nationally, but parochially ; and as there is no national standard, and there is nothing to determine social status, it is established by local conditions. A man may be 132

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prominent in New York and totally unknown in the West ; the leading citizen of a small place in the West, or even a city of great commercial importance, is merged into the mass when his local background no longer reflects his greatness.

Marriage and the severing of the marriage tie are attended with much less formality in the United States than in any other highly civilised country, which has created the impression — for which American writers are more largely responsible than foreigners — that the sanctity of marriage is lightly held, and that, to speak quite bluntly, the Americans, as a race, are less moral than the English. This, I hold, does them a great injustice. I doubt if there is any nation where the home, and family are held so sacred, where the chastity of women is so great, where flagrant immorality on the part of men or women so quickly leads to social ostracism as it does in the United States. It is quite true that marriage and divorce are easy ; but it must be re membered that in America Church and State are separate, and in the eyes of the law — no matter what may be the view of the Church — marriage is simply a civil contract, a contract entered into like any other agreement between two persons of legal age, that imposes certain legal obligations, but like any other contract is terminable for any breach of the covenant. To make a marriage valid it does not have to be performed in a church or by an ordained minister ; it is equally binding if the marriage ceremony is read by a magistrate or a properly authorised civil officer, such as an alderman or a mayor ; in some States the c common-law marriage,' an agreement between the parties to regard each other as husband and wife, and to live together in the marital relation, is a legal marriage, the issue of the union are legitimate, and the wife is

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entitled to her dower and other property rights in her husband's estate. Every State has its own marriage and divorce laws ; in some States only a violation of the marriage vow is ground for divorce, in other States the laws are much more lax or liberal, according as one may choose to regard them, and any one of a dozen causes is sufficient ground for divorce.

The ease with which divorce can be procured has created the belief in Europe that in America divorce is a recognised social institution and that the divorced person, man or woman, does not lose social caste by having been set free from the matrimonial bonds. Society — and here I use the word not in its restricted sense as applying to any particular set of persons, but in its broader meaning of the whole body politic — does not look with favour upon the divorcedj even upon the innocent party, who is always under a stigma ; always ex cepting the very rich, who are a law unto themselves, who because of their great wealth can do as they please, and who are so far above public opinion that they can afford to defy it.

It is true that divorces are more numerous in America than in England, but that comes from the difference in social institutions, laws, and national temperament ; and while much can be said on both sides, it can only be said here, in regard to a question so important as this, that while many Americans, especially clergymen and others who look upon marriage as a sacrament, regret the frequency of divorce, it is abhorrent to American \ ideas that a woman, the wife of a drunkard or the wife i of a brute who maltreats her, because she merely committed an error of judgment by marrying a worth less man, should be compelled to pay such a heavy penalty as to be bound to him for life. Such a woman,

SOCIAL CUSTOMS

according to the chivalrous sentiments of Americans, is entitled to her freedom, to marry a more worthy man, and to obtain the happiness to which she is justly en titled.

In marked contrast to liberality of ideas in one direction is the extremely narrow view entertained in another. No woman smokes publicly in America — that is, no woman with a reputation. Should a woman attempt to light a cigarette in a public place, in a restaurant the equal of the Carlton or Prince's, not only would the management protest, but she would forfeit the respect of other women ; and those women who smoke in the privacy of their own homes are careful not to do so except in the company of their intimates.

There is less drinking in America than in England, and it is done in another way. I think it is quite a safe assertion that there are thousands of middle-class, well-to- do families where wine, beer, or spirits is never seen on the table except on rare occasions when a particularly-to- be-honoured guest is entertained. You may go into a restaurant car or a restaurant where it is patent the diners are not forced to economise, and you will notice that the persons who order wine are in a decided minority. The American does not think it is necessary to drink with his meals ; it is a foreign and extravagant fashion that he does not encourage.

I refer, of course, to the great middle class. Once again let it be said that the rich are a class to them selves. With them wine is considered a necessity ; and the rich and the imitators of the rich are so numerous in America, that America, I am told, drinks more cham pagne than any other country in the world. Champagne is the drink of society. Ice water and champagne are the national beverages of America.

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The middle-class American who does not drink at dinner will take his drink either before or after, some times both. A cocktail before dinner is supposed to be conducive to appetite ; whisky and water after dinner is supposed to insure a night's sound rest. The American of social and convivial inclination invites his friends to take a drink, and standing in front of a bar tosses off his allowance of Rye or Bourbon whisky and hastily gulps down a swallow of water ; repeating this at frequent intervals according to his capacity and conviviality.

Drinking by business men during business hours is frowned upon and not considered good form ; although of course there is much of it done. But employers, and especially the large employers of labour, set their faces severely against the use of liquor by their employees, and the man who is known to drink is in danger of dis missal. The American working-man is a lighter drinker than the European, although his drink bill is heavy enough. In England compositors working on morning newspapers may drink while at work, but may not smoke in some offices. In America any man who should bring beer into the composing room would be summarily dis charged, but an attempt to interfere with his vested right to smoke or chew tobacco would lead to a strike.

Not only are the Americans a moral, but, which follows as a matter of course, they are a religious people, although there is no endowed church and the State concerns itself no more with a man's religious belief than it does with the opinion he holds on art or literature. There is no church, but all churches ; no one religion, but every religion from Confucianism to Christian Science ; there is nothing to prevent a prophet from writing a new creed and preaching the gospel. Churches are maintained entirely by private contributions

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and receive no aid from the State. In the larger and wealthier cities some of the Episcopal and a few of the Roman Catholic churches own valuable property or are richly endowed through the liberality of their supporters ; but the great majority of all churches, whatever the denomination, are solely dependent upon pew rents and other forms of voluntary contributions, and it naturally follows that where the parishioners are rich the clergymen are well paid, and in a poor parish the ministers are ill requited for their self-sacrifice. In America the clergy command great respect, for they are usually men of high character whose lives are an example to right living.

In most American cities Sunday is strictly kept as a day of rest and religious observance. In some of the Western cities where the foreign element predominates theatres are open and the day is one of enjoyment rather than religious devotion ; in New York so-called ' sacred ' concerts, where the music is more secular than sacred, are permitted ; and in Washington, owing to the example set by the diplomatic corps, Sunday is con sidered as good a day as any other for dinner giving ; but to the Puritan conscience of New England and the strict if somewhat narrow concept of life of the Southerner and Westerner of native American stock, this is a desecration and profanation of the Sabbath that always meet with the condemnation of the Press and pulpit ; but despite these fulminations the diplomatic corps con tinues its sinful course with unimpaired digestion. With these exceptions Sunday in America is as lugubriously dreary as the most rigid Covenanter could desire. Unlike the British workman the American workman cannot obtain his beer on Sunday, as the public-houses are closed all day, and with the exception of the ' drug store ' (the chemist's) all shops are shut. The working- 137

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man and the great middle class may go into the country or on an excursion to the seaside, and society after church may take a sedate walk.

The American city is a city of homes ; and just as it is the ambition of the Englishman who is ' something in the city ' to retire and own a place in the country, so it is the ambition of most Americans to own the houses in which they live. In the large cities, both East and West, during the last few years the apartment house has become extremely popular, and people find the domestic problem greatly simplified by living in flats. It is popular because it is cheaper, as heat and light are generally included in the rent, and it involves less labour on the housewife. Flats require fewer servants, and that is something to be thankful for, as the ' servant- girl problem ' in America is one that the American, with all his ingenuity, has not yet succeeded in solving. Servants in America are generally very incompetent and very expensive. The native American girl does not take kindly to domestic service, and would rather work in a shop or a factory than cook or make beds, so that most servants in America are Irish, German, Scandi navian or negroes, who are paid from £2 to ^4 a month, who are independent, and, as a rule, unsatisfactory.

But the American servant has some virtues, and not the least is that she is a harder worker than the English servant, which reduces the number of servants in the average household. The American woman has less false pride than the English woman and does not engage in a desperate and never-ending struggle to keep up appearances. It is not a positive disgrace for an American woman to do her own housework ; and where the English woman of extremely limited means will consider it absolutely necessary to have two servants, a 138

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cook and a housemaid, the American woman will manage very comfortably with one general servant, because the mistress will go into the kitchen, dust, or make the beds.

In the large cities in fashionable and even semi- fashionable neighbourhoods house rent is prohibitive for persons of small means. In New York, for instance, ,£2,000 a year will command a modest house in a neighbourhood corresponding to Belgravia, and in the Mayfair of New York, Fifth and Madison Avenues, and the adjacent streets the rent is much higher. Just as in London the man of slender means houses himself in the suburbs, so the New Yorker of the same relative position lives in Brooklyn or New Jersey or in the extreme northern end of New York city in a flat ; and he can rent a flat in New York for from £7 to .£200 or more a month, the price depending upon size, neighbour hood, and the luxury of his surroundings. In Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago the same conditions exist, although rents are a trifle lower than in New York, but in the smaller cities houses are not beyond the reach of even a modest income. In Washington, for instance, one can obtain a fairly comfortable house of eight or ten rooms within ten minutes' walk of the White House, the President's official residence, for about £"100 a year, and in a less fashionable neighbourhood for half that sum, while a larger house in a more aristocratic part of the city will rent for £250 and more.

Rent in America always includes taxes and rates. An American house has usually more conveniences than an English house. An American house without a bathroom with the hot water heated from the kitchen ' range ' is rare ; there are speaking-tubes and electric bells, a dumb waiter or lift from the kitchen to the butler's pantry adjoining the dining-room, chandeliers — 139

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which are fixtures of the house and installed by the landlord or builder — and not infrequently electric lights as well. Nor must one forget the greatest convenience and the greatest curse of the American house — the furnace. The American loves to live in a dry tem perature that is maddening to everybody except an American to the manner born, a mummy, or a salamander. Practically all American houses are heated by hot water, hot air, or steam furnaces, which are a great convenience in ctoing away with open fireplaces and keeping passages and halls well warmed ; but Americans in winter-time are apparently afraid of the least breath of fresh air, and a temperature of from 75 to 85 degrees is not considered extraordinary. Of recent years the mortality from pneumonia in large cities has reached the proportions of an epidemic, and many physicians ascribe the high death rate to the debilitating effect of super-heated rooms ; for not only does the American's house suggest an oven, but so do his office, his place of amusement, his tramway, and his railway carriage.

It is possible for the man of small means, for the clerk or artisan, to own his own house, because in nearly every city houses can be bought on instalments by small monthly payments in the same way that one can buy in England an encyclopaedia or jewellery ; and as the law does not allow estates to be entailed, and the transfer of land is both simple and inexpensive, property is bought and sold as easily as any other commodity. A house is sold for a small first cash payment, and the monthly payments, including interest, are not much more than the rent, so that the occupier is practically buying on about the same terms as he would rent, and if he has been shrewd and invested in a suburb where property appreciates he can often sell

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his house at a substantial increase. The working-man in America who does not own his house lives in the large cities in a ' tenement,' a big building housing sometimes a hundred families, or in a modern flat where he has greater privacy and more comforts, or in a small house in the suburbs. Every American city has excellent tramways, or ' street-car service ' as it is known in America, on which the fare is five cents (2%d.) for a long or short distance; the cars running from eight to twelve miles an hour at frequent intervals, so that the workman can live some distance from his work without being unduly inconvenienced.

The ' street car ' is an American institution, and to thousands and hundreds of thousands of persons it is their only means of locomotion, because the American hates to walk and can find no pleasure in walking simply for the sake of amusement. A brilliant Englishwoman who was in America not long ago, observing this consti tutional dislike of the American to use his legs, remarked that a few generations hence Americans would be born without legs, and those members would be as much a rudimentary survival of a useless organ as the vermi form appendix now is ; and the American to whom this remark was made laughed and said : ' When I want to get somewhere I am generally in a hurry, and it is much easier to jump on a car than it is to walk ; and when I want to enjoy myself I know a great many better ways than to tire myself out by walking some where and returning.'

The street car has become a necessity because no American city knows the luxury and convenience of the English cab. It is true that there are cabs for hire in American cities, but woe betide the unfortunate and unsuspecting stranger who is beguiled into taking one

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without having first made a careful bargain with the piratical driver. He can make up his mind to be robbed, and if he remonstrates he will be insulted and threatened with bodily violence ; and the police being generally in league with the driver they will give the ' fare ' no protection. The consequence is that the average American seldom calls a cab; the street car takes him to and from his office in the morning and evening; his wife uses it in the afternoon when she goes calling or shopping ; and in the evening when they go to the theatre or to a dinner, unless it happens to be very wet or the streets are deep in snow, the street car is quite good enough for them. For the street car runs everywhere, and one is rarely more than a few ' blocks ' (that is, the length of a street from turning to turning) from a car. The street car (always a private enterprise and never a municipal undertaking) because of the two dominant characteristics of the American — haste to reach his objective point, and his dislike of pedestrianism — usually pays a good return on the money invested, so that there is every inducement to its owners to extend the service to keep pace with the demands of its patrons and the growth of population ; because the greater the facilities for travel the greater the temptation to the American to jump on a car rather than to walk.

The primitive passion of woman is a bargain, and if Eve had been able to go shopping the tragedy of the Garden and all its ultimate consequences might have been avoided. Shopping is made very easy for the American woman. The telephone is no longer a luxury or a rarity : even people of quite moderate means are able to have an instrument in their houses, through which they send their orders to the butcher and the greengrocer. But that, of course, is not shopping. The

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American woman is as fond of chaffering in the bazaar as her Oriental sister ; nothing gives her greater delight than to price goods even if she does not buy, and before she makes the purchase of the material for her new dress she is sure to visit one or more shops, to have the stuffs spread out before her, and to ask for what she terms ' samples,' but which the Englishwoman calls ' patterns,' so that she can take them home, submit them to the judgment of her friends and have all the delight of anticipation.

It is the aim of the shopkeeper in America to please his patrons, and in his efforts to please he is in some respects surprisingly liberal and does everything possible to draw the public to his emporium. In the best shops everything is marked in plain figures and from this price there is no deviation ; in fact, no one would suggest offering a lower price than that asked, because it would be useless and it would betray bucolic ignorance. Nor may the assistants misrepresent the quality of the goods they sell. The American pro prietor of a large shop prides himself on keeping faith with the public and establishing a reputation for scrupulous honesty. His advertising is generally of a high order; it is often surprisingly well written, with not a little literary flavour, and, while it naturally has a tendency to paint the lily and gild refined gold, it does not wilfully falsify, or offer as all wool that which is half shoddy. Any article, no matter how trifling, is always delivered free of charge, no cost is made for packing or boxing, small silverware is engraved with an initial or monogram without extra cost ; in the large shops there are rooms where women can write their letters or rest, or where parcels may be left until they are ready to be called for. 143

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HOW AMERICA AMUSES ITSELF

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WHEN an American works he works hard; when he plays he plays with equal vigour. Americans as a race have all the English love for play and pleasure and are almost equally as fond of outdoor sports; but the indictment brought by Rudyard Kipling against the English nation, of devoting more time and thought to cricket and polo and racing than to the serious business of life, would not lie against America. Every year young America, male or female, displays greater zest for open-air life. Girls sail, row, fish, ride, drive, hunt and shoot big game just like their brothers, and often excel them, but except among the very rich these things are simply a relaxation from the more serious duty of life — that is, money making — and are not permitted to interfere with a man's real vocation. The young man whose only vocation is to spend money and enjoy himself is almost as keen a sports man as the - young Englishman of similar position, always, however, with the difference that is racial as distinguishing the English and the Americans. The English, as more than one foreign observer has noticed, have such a surplus stock of superabundant vital energy that it must be worked off in the form of violent and active exercise that tires their muscles. The 144

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American, despite his great and almost resistless activity j and energy in business and other great affairs, is pre- I eminently a conservator of energy, and does not en- I courage the wasting of energy when it can be preserved. * The Americans excel all other nations in their labour- saving devices, in making a machine to take the place of human hands ; and this characteristic, in its origin purely utilitarian, has left its impress upon the national character to such an extent that the American would be lazy were it not that he is the most untiring of men when the practical is to be accomplished,

The American is gregarious and loves the society of his fellow man. In his pleasures he wants to be one of a great crowd ; the larger the crowd the better he likes it ; a cheering, pushing, somewhat excited throng is necessary to his idea of enjoyment; the contact of elbows, so distasteful to some races, gives him the keenest delight.

The national game of America, the game that is to the United States what cricket is to England, is baseball. Baseball, I believe, is a modified and magnified game of rounders, and according to its enthusiasts it is one of the most scientific and interesting games that can be played, combining everything that gives a contest zest — skill, an element of luck, good judgment, audacity when bold ness is demanded, caution when safety depends on circumspection. I am not qualified to speak of the merits of the game, as it does not appeal to me and I have never been able to become sufficiently absorbed to appreciate its science. Because the American likes to • take his pleasures without too much physical exertion, he hires professionals to play baseball for his amusement. All ' during the long summer thousands of people go to the baseball games played by the professionals, but of these 145 L

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thousands very few handle a bat or ball themselves. In England the man who enjoys cricket, the clerk or the professional man who has left his youth many years be hind him, gets his enjoyment more from playing than from merely watching a game, but in America no man of dignified position would think of playing baseball. A physician of good standing, a lawyer of prominence, a clergyman who should put on flannels and get a couple of hours' vigorous exercise by playing on the 'diamond,' would be regarded as decidedly queer by his clients or his parishioners and would find himself much and un pleasantly talked about.

Professional baseball is profitable alike to the players, who are paid large salaries, and the owners of the clubs, who are baseball entrepreneurs for exactly the same reason that other men are theatrical managers — for the profit that accrues to them. In several of the larger cities there are clubs which play in turn all the cities in the 'league.' The players are under contract to their clubs and may not leave a club to join another without the consent of the managers, and managers encourage the greatest rivalry between the clubs by appealing to local sentiment so as to stimulate interest in the game and increase the attendance.

The enthusiasm displayed by the spectators is sur prising and almost unbelievable ; the great pitcher or catcher is a hero, and is an object of far greater curiosity to his admirers than a statesman or a military com mander. As showing the pinnacle of fame on which the successful baseball player sits enthroned, a President of the United States told this story. A father took his schoolboy son to see the President, and the boy asked him to autograph his portrait. When the President handed the picture back to the boy, the father said : 146

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'Keep it carefully, and some day you may become famous and be President.'

' If you want to be really famous/ said the President satirically to the boy, ' you must play on your college ball team. Have you heard the story of General Bragg's son?

' General Bragg was a distinguished general in the Civil War and later a prominent figure in our civil affairs. On one occasion he went to Boston to deliver an important address, and shortly after his arrival several Harvard undergraduates called. General Bragg naturally took this as a compliment, and to show his appreciation remarked that he felt flattered to think his small services to his country should be recognised so .gracefully by his young friends in coming to see him.

' There was an awkward pause, and then one under graduate, bolder than the rest, with the audacity of youth, blurted out: "You know why we come to see you? Well, you're the father of Jack Bragg, and the way he pitched against Yale and won the game was a corker ! " '

That boys and young men should be unrestrained in their enthusiasm is not surprising, but that men fairly advanced in years, in their daily affairs sedate and unemotional, should at a baseball game forget their self-control and vie with their sons in noisy de monstration is one of the amazing side-lights on the American character ; but there is never a game that does not cause staid and respectable pillars of society to act like lunatics — applauding their favourites when they score, savagely denouncing the umpire when his decisions arouse their resentment. The life of the umpire is not exactly a life of dignified ease. The public derides him, the players frequently insult him, 147

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and sometimes he is bodily assaulted. The newspapers always devote a great amount of space to baseball games^; and while the speech of an important public man may be ' cut ' to suit the exigencies of space, the baseball reporter is given all the room he needs for his adjectives, and the portraits of players usually accompany the description of the game.

Baseball is not entirely confined to professionals, and is much played by schoolboys and collegians, but these games do not attract a tithe of the attention or the audience of the professional game. There is nothing that corresponds to the famous Eton and Harrow cricket match or compares with it as a social event. Perhaps its nearest approach, curiously enough, is in midwinter when the university football games are played.

Football between the colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell in the East, and some of the larger institutions in the West, has become immensely popular during the last few years. The football field has not yet been invaded by the professional ; there are no professional football teams, and the college teams are made up entirely of undergraduates. One of the most popular games of the season is between the military academy at West Point and the naval academy at Annapolis, which, for the last few years, has been played at Philadelphia in the presence of 25,000 people. A tremendous impetus to its popularity and fashionable character was given by the attendance two years ago of the President, who was accompanied by other well-known people, and caused the occasion to assume the 9haracter of a social event. These games are usually played in November, when the weather is always bitterly cold, and the men and women — and there are almost as many women and girls present to cheer on their favourites as 148

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there are men — experience much discomfort from the biting air, but so keen is their enjoyment of sport they forget everything else. A football field at one of these great games is always an inspiring and blood-quickening sight. Everybody wears the colours of the players ; there are the crimson flags of Harvard or the blue of Yale; there are the leaders of the chorus — the young men with their megaphones and flags, who when a touch-down has been scored or a goal kicked lead the college cheer, and from all parts of the field there rises the shout of ' Rah, rah, rah ! rah, rah, rah ! rah, rah, rah — Harvard ! ' to the frantic waving of flags and coloured streamers. Everybody at a game is a partisan, nobody is indifferent, and every partisan tries to out- shout his opponent and to show ' the proper spirit,' as schoolboys term it. The Latins are popularly supposed to be the most excitable of races, and a bull-fight sets on fire all their passions, but the most aroused Spanish patron of the bull-ring might look with envy and amaze ment upon the ' phlegmatic ' American applauding the prowess of his football champions.

Football as played in America entails a good deal of danger upon its votaries. Never a football season passes without several of the players being killed, many permanently injured, and many more seriously hurt. Players have been carried off the field unconscious, but that does not bring the game to an end, as there are always substitutes waiting to take the place of the men who drop out of the ranks, and an injury received on the football field is looked upon by the collegian's associates as something to be proud of, a proof of his valour and devotion to his side, and is acclaimed accordingly. Probably one reason why the colleges now pay so much attention to football is its commercial value. These

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great intercollegiate games put a large amount of money into the treasury of the various athletic associations, and not only pay for trainers and other expenses, but leave a handsome surplus.

Baseball and football are the amusements of the multitude ; the rich, as in all other things, have their own means of finding distraction. The twin sports of kings, yachting and racing, are as popular in America as they are in England, and during the summer the water and the turf appeal to their followers. Owners usually commission their steam and sailing yachts early in the summer, and cruise about the Eastern Atlantic coast, while those who have racing yachts take part in the various regattas and other prize contests that are held every year. The infinite charm of the American girl is perhaps never more dangerously potent than on a yacht, when in the daytime in her white duck or blue serge, well set up, trim, graceful, she is the ideal of girlish beauty and healthy womanhood, and in the evening in the saloon in her laces and diaphanous attire, or on deck in the moonlight lazily thumbing a guitar and softly singing a ' coon ' song or a ballad of love, she holds undisputed sway. Yachting is fashion able because it is an expensive amusement and only the rich can afford the luxury. Its expense and its select- ness, the knowledge a yacht owner has that he is in no danger of being brought in contact with the common herd, is perhaps one of the chief attractions it has for the fortunate few.

The race track is as popular in America as it is in England, and enormous amounts of money change hands on the results of every race. There are a few men who keep racing stables merely for the love of the sport, but to the masses a horse race is either the occasion 150

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for an afternoon's enjoyment or an opportunity to make money with the least possible exertion, and for one man who occasionally sees a race run, there are hundreds who place their bets through commissioners or in poolrooms, the evils of which are so great and so demoralising that most of the large cities have endeavoured to abolish the poolroom by drastic legis lation. Betting on racehorses, however, is too pro fitable for the bookmakers quietly to submit to their business being abolished, and they maintain their illegal traffic despite the vigilant efforts of the authorities to suppress it. The poolroom is a gambling place pure and simple. The poolroom proprietor will accept a bet from anybody, old or young, man or woman ; he will take anything from a shilling up \ office boys and junior clerks are induced to wager their money with the hope of a large return, which is never realised. The poolroom and the bucket shop, where the same class of people bet on the fluctuations of stocks, have done more to demoralise the youth of America than any other agencies. The desire to get rich quickly, to obtain money without working for it, to make in a day what by honest effort would require a year of strenuous labour, is inherent in the American character, and the publicity given by the Press to the Aladdin-like stories of fortunes won over-night on the stock exchange and the turf always encourage the petty speculator to be lieve that he may be equally successful. Of course he never is.

Cricket is played in America, but only to a very limited extent. There are cricket clubs in New York, Philadelphia, and some parts of Massachusetts, but the game is not popular and the American is unable to understand what there is about it to make Englishmen

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enjoy it so thoroughly. Americans who go to a cricket match applaud good play, but they never let them selves loose as they do at baseball. Tennis has its admirers, polo is a fad of the idle rich, but the game of all others that has become a veritable craze is golf, which is played morning, noon, and night by its victims, old and young, male and female, wherever links can be laid out. A few years ago the bicycle was a favourite form of recreation and exercise, but it has now lost its popularity and is regarded merely as a convenient means of locomo tion and not as a means of amusement. Its place among those able to afford it has been usurped by the automobile, which might almost be taken as emblema tical of the American, because the automobile 'gets there ' with the least possible waste of time ; it is full of energy waiting to be released ; a touch of the ringer and it is off; it does not efface itself, and it works with a good deal of noise.

The great mass of Americans — in fact, all those except the few who are rich enough not to have any business to occupy their attention — give little thought to amusement of an outdoor character except when they are on their summer vacations. Schoolboys are given holidays at Christmas and Easter, but to the breadwinner Christmas Day is the sole holiday of the winter, and that he usually spends quietly with his family, or in trying to make him self believe that he is enjoying a relief from business, while secretly he chafes at a day of enforced idleness and plans how he shall make up for lost time. There is often a football game on Christmas Day, to which the college boy, his sister, and somebody else's sister go in large numbers with here and there a sprinkling of the college boy's father and mother, especially if the father is a graduate of alma mater. Eastei Monday is not a

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holiday and passes quietly and unnoticed except among the children, with whom the old German fashion sur vives of dyeing eggs. It is an occasion, however, when sweethearts exchange gifts appropriate to the season, and when young men may send boxes of candy and flowers to the young women of their acquaintance. The dis play of flowers in every large American city at that time of the year is always striking, and the extravagance of Americans is in no way better shown than in the pre posterous sums they spend for plants and flowers that live for a day. One of the New York papers last Easter commented on the fact that the Easter lily, so long the symbol of the season, had been compelled to take a secondary place, not because it was less beautiful than formerly, but because it cost too little. The lily had become too common and too cheap, and the American scorns a cheap gift. Azaleas can be cultivated until they sell for j£io, and this price, in the eyes of recipients as well as givers, makes them a fit present. The florists, of course, prefer to sell an azalea costing ;£io, rather than a bunch of lilies costing as many shillings, and, as this paper remarks, ' so long as purchasers were willing to pay these amounts the florists wisely decided to gratify them, and the lilies disappeared from the market for all practical purposes.'

The Americans have three holidays peculiarly their own. ' Decoration Day,' the 3oth of May, flows out of the war of the Rebellion ; a day dedicated to the memory of the men who laid down their lives fighting for the pre servation of the Union. On that day the graves of soldiers sleeping in national and other cemeteries are strewn with flowers by tender hands and in all reverence, by widows and children, by men and women who are not of kin to the dead, but who honour their services and desire 153

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to show their gratitude. In all the large cities the statues erected to perpetuate the great names of the war, the military and naval commanders and the immortal President who towers above them all, Lincoln, who freed the slaves and saved the Union from dissolution, are decorated with flowers and flags, and in all the cities of the North and West there are orations at the cemeteries, where the deeds of the dead are recited to the living and serve to keep alive the spirit of patriotism. Originally a Northern celebration, the South looked on sullenly at these celebrations ; but of recent years, since sectionalism has almost disappeared, since the bitter memories of the civil war have been effaced and the United States is once more in fact, as in name, one country, the South has joined with the North in recognising the symbolic meaning of the day, and that the honouring of the dead who died in the defence of their country and in the performance of their duty casts no aspersion on the living who were equally devoted to their concept of duty.

The devotional and oratorical exercises are usually brief, and the remainder of the day is given over to merrymaking and amusement ; and although many thousands go to the cemeteries and take part in the exercises, many more thousands look forward to Decoration Day as a holiday, and the amusement caterers always provide extra attractions for them. Decoration Day is to the American what Easter Mon day is to England.

Even greater than Decoration Day as the holiday of the masses, because it comes at a time when respite from work for a brief twelve hours is a tremendous relief, is ' Fourth of July,' that day being to America what the Fourteenth of July is to France, its great national fete. It was on the Fourth of July that the 154

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Declaration of Independence was adopted, the declar ation by which the bonds were severed between Great Britain and her North American colonies, and the day is held sacred by all Americans. It is a day when patriotism may find full vent, when the flamboyant speaker may give full expression to all the burning patriotism that is in him ; it is a day much esteemed by the orator big and small ; by the great man of national reputation who is invited to deliver a formal address in New York, and the little man of merely local reputation who is the star of the occasion in some struggling mining village in the far West, but who feels himself to be greater and more important than the big man in New York. Big man or little man, there is little difference in their fervour. They both sound the praises of their country, they both tell of its glorious achievements in the past and the still more glorious achievements it is to accomplish in the future ; they both delight, in the words of the vernacular, ' to make the eagle scream.' A Fourth of July celebration in the smaller places of the West is decidedly interesting. The serious way in which the orators take themselves, their unbounded belief in the might of their country, and the sincerity of their con viction that the frown of the Z7-nited States makes the whole world tremble, is ridiculous because it is gro tesque, and yet it commands admiration because it is so intensely typical of the faith of the people and the assured belief they have in their destiny. Like Decoration Day, in the large cities only the minority go to hear patriotic orations, and the majority give themselves up to a day of pleasure. Baseball, horse racing, picnics, and every other form of enjoyment is indulged in.

But, to be slightly Irish, it is the evening that is the 155

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best part of the day, for the evening of the Fourth of July is the English Fifth of November, when fireworks are set off as a fitting ending of that day of rejoicing. In England on Guy Fawkes Day there are no fire works until after nightfall, but the American boy is too impatient to wait until night, and all during the day, and in some places even two days before, one's nerves are destroyed by the explosion of firecrackers. The American boy revels in uproar, and the larger his fire cracker and the more noise it makes the better pleased he is. Night brings rockets, Roman candles, and other pyrotechnic novelties, and many of the seaside resorts make their fireworks a special feature, and draw large crowds.

The third distinctive American holiday is ' Thanks giving Day,' always the last Thursday in November. This holiday dates from the time of the Puritans, and was originally, as its name implies, a day solemnly observed to give thanks to the Almighty for His manifold goodness vouchsafed to His people during the past year. The custom has endured until the present. The President issues a proclamation exhorting people to attend church, and give thanks for the evidences of Divine favour, and the Governors of the State follow the President's example and issue proclamations to their people to the same effect. Many people obey the injunction of the Presi dent by attending church, and a great many more simply treat the day as a holiday and make of it a miniature Christmas. In those cities where football is popular the most important game of the year is played on that day, and it is an occasion for family reunions and feasting. Just as turkey and plum pudding are always the pieces de resistance of the English Christ mas dinner, so turkey, cranberry sauce, and mince-pie 156

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are the central features of the American Thanksgiving Day dinner. The theatres cater to young people by giving special matintes, and in the evening the places of amusement are always crowded.

The climate of America, in summer-time, inviting to outdoor life, and the liking of Americans for gaiety, colour, light, and motion, make them improve every natural advantage and convert it into a means of amusement. A river such as the Thames would never be permitted to go to waste in America ; but would be dotted with excursion steamers, on which for a small price people could get a breath of fresh air after the heat and toil of the day. Whenever there is a small lake adjacent to a city it is made a ' resort ' and becomes the playground of the masses, who patronise the various attractions offered for their amusement, listen to the music, and eat and drink in moderation. On all the rivers there are excursion steamers plying between the cities and river resorts, and where a city has neither river nor lake, a park or picnic ground in the outskirts, always easily accessible by street cars, is the substitute. The Americans have more of the light-hearted joyousness of the French than the English, and like the French have all their fondness for eating out-of-doors.

The theatre in winter is the favourite form of amuse ment for both men and women, and because of the freedom permitted to young women they may, except in the very highest circles, attend the theatre with young men unchaperoned. In the smaller places of the West where theatrical companies do not penetrate, the lyceum is the great form of amusement. During the winter lectures are delivered by popular speakers, the lectures interspersed with musical and other forms of light enter tainment. The Americans as a people are fond of 157

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music and musical comedy, a great deal of which has been given in England in recent years by American theatrical companies, but classical and other music of a high order does not appeal to them, In New York during the winter there is usually a season of German or Italian opera which is expensive and fashionable and therefore, in a sense, popular, as people who are not fashionable go to the opera as much to see the occupants of the boxes, whose names are printed on the pro grammes, and the magnificent display of jewellery, as they do to hear the music. There are usually brief seasons of opera, after the New York season, in Boston and Philadelphia, and sometimes in Chicago and Washington ; but with the exception of New York and Boston there is little really good music, and high-class music at popular prices, such as one hears in London or Paris or through out Germany, is unknown in the United States. In some of the larger cities military and other bands play in the parks during the summer, but their audience demand 'ragtime' and 'coon songs,' and as the muni cipal authorities do not consider it to be their duty to elevate the musical taste of the community, they make no objection to the bandmasters playing any jingle the people may ask for.

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CHAPTER TWELVE A RICH MAN'S PARADISE

IN the winter the rich men of America, and more especially the wives of rich men, turn their faces to the South and escape from the rigours of northern climates to the land of sunshine and flowers in southern latitudes. Some go as far West as southern California, a land where the roses bloom the year round, but for most this is too long a journey, and the rich people of New York and the other parts of the North and East spend the late winter and early spring in Florida, where huge and luxurious hotels have been put up to house these many- plumaged birds of passage, and where, reading of blizzards in the West and snowstorms in the East, they, lolling in flannels and lawn dresses and toying with iced concoc tions, under shaded porches trying to escape the glare of the sun, complain of the heat. Except in occasional spots, Florida is not scenically beautiful and has little to attract the visitor, but it is fashionable for the idle rich to go South in the winter, and being fashionable it is the proper thing.

Towards the end of March, when Florida and the other Southern resorts are too hot for comfort, the Easterners leisurely retrace their steps. The interven ing time before summer really comes is spent in New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut, where many rich

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New Yorkers have country homes, and, imitating the example of Englishmen of wealth and leisure, it has become fashionable for a part of the spring to be spent in the country. One of the most fashionable places in the neighbourhood of New York is Lakewood in the neighbouring state of New Jersey, about an hour's travel by rail from the city of New York. New Jersey is flat and sandy and about as unromantic and ugly as one can imagine, but Lakewood has acquired fashionable pro minence nominally on the ground that it is salubrious and its climate is milder than that of New York. One goes through barren sand-dunes to come to this settle ment of rich men's houses, where George Gould, the son of the late Jay Gould, the great railroad magnate, has put up a palace that is one of the most beautiful and artistic in the country.

But the paradise of the rich, a place in which only those anointed by the dollar may enter, is Newport, in the State of Rhode Island, on the Eastern Atlantic Coast about midway between New York and Boston. Newport is perhaps the most artificial place in the world. Originally a quiet, quaint little settlement off the beaten tourist track, it was discovered by some people who had an eye for beauty and who were charmed by its natural loveliness. Inland it has all the soft prettiness of the Sussex country, and on the seashore where the Atlantic Ocean sweeps in through Narragansett Bay it reminds one of a Devonshire village, only there is more colour in sky and sea, the sun blazes more intensely, and there is no old-world air of repose and attachment to the past in the clanging trolley cars (Anglice, trams) and the puffing, snorting fifty-mile-an-hour automobiles.

Nature was in generous mood when she dowered 160

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Newport with all the beauty of land and sea and made it an ideal retreat for poet or painter, and man with his bizarre ideals of fashion has spoiled Nature's handiwork.

Here in the early days came a few persons of moderate means who built unpretentious summer houses, who lived simple lives, enjoyed in rational fashion the soft beauty of their surroundings, found rest and recreation in sky, and sea, and all of their mysteries, and returned to town refreshed by primitive pleasures. For many years the tide of travel passed its doors but never tarried there, and then by one of those unaccountable freaks of fashion it was suddenly discovered by the elect and became the rage. The modest country villa no longer sufficed. The newcomers put up large and expensive houses, every season saw the limit expand, and to-day there are ' cottages ' costing a million dollars or more, and Newport in summer merely duplicates the exclusive quarter of New York in the height of the season.

It is an artificial place, and the life its people lead is equally artificial. The same persons who during the winter met at each other's houses at dinners and teas and other functions, who gossiped in Florida hotels and slew reputations at Lakewood, continue the same pleasurable diversion at Newport, bored beyond measure, wearied by the monotony, aware of the poverty of their ideas but seeing no escape from them, because American high society is not intellectual, and the American society girl, pretty and attractive though she is, is not a reader and is too frivolous to be a thinker.

Bellevue Avenue and the Ocean Drive, the fashion able promenades of Newport, are thronged every after noon with a magnificent display of horses and carriages

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and automobiles, and a still more magnificent display of beautiful women faultlessly dressed, who put them selves on parade and who know they are watched and criticised by the members of their set. A commentator on American society remarked of Newport that the smart set devoted themselves to pleasure regardless of expense, which evoked the neat retort from a man who knew his Newport very well, that they really devoted themselves to expense regardless of pleasure. There are teas and fetes and dinners chronicled at much length in the newspapers for the delectation of the less fortunate, but the least fortunate are less to be pitied than these weary leaders of society going through day after day their Sisyphuslike task of vainly trying to find enjoyment and never overtaking it.

Because Bellevue Avenue and the Ocean Drive lead to the Elysian fields of plutocracy, it is the aim of every social climber to be admitted to the Newport Olympus, but the gods are jealous of their own and only after severe probation do they admit the lesser deities. The haughty exclusiveness of American society to which Mrs. Fish referred, and which I have quoted in a previous chapter, manifests itself nowhere else so obnoxiously as it does where Dives has set up his cottage. The millionaire born to his millions looks down with contempt and regards as a parvenu the millionaire who has made his millions. The Ultima Thule of ambitious mothers from the West with marriageable daughters whose fathers have made their fortunes is to contract alliances for their daughters with Eastern men of wealth and family, or better still foreigners of title. Newport offers the way for entering this charmed circle, because it is smaller than New York or Boston and people are brought more in contact, and eligible

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foreigners are among its attractions ; so that many people of wealth but of uncertain social standing have begun their campaign by renting Newport villas and ending with the proud knowledge that they are the parents-in-law of peers.

But Newport, or rather its aristocratic oligarchy, does not take kindly to this invasion. Newport is in danger of being made .common, and once allow Newport to become simply an ordinary residential place for million aires, and its charm would be destroyed. The haughty rich cannot prevent the mere rich from coming to Newport if they have such bad taste as to go where they are not wanted, but they can at least close the door of society to them. The edict has gone forth. It has been announced through the public Press that while the undesirable may come to Newport and build their palaces they must not expect to find themselves ad mitted to the charmed circle. And yet there are Americans who delight in telling the foreigner that class distinctions do not exist in America, and who honestly believe what they say !

Even less does Newport encourage the casual stranger to rest within its gates. The average person on a vacation or the tripper from New York or Boston—and to both it is easy of access — does not go to Newport unless his curiosity takes him to see the place of which he has heard so much, and a few hours is amply sufficient for that purpose, because there is nothing there for the outsider. There are no public amusements, no means for whiling away an idle hour ; the hotels are few and ruinously dear ; the shops are branches of New York, London, or Paris houses, and what one buys in Newport can be bought in New York for about half, or in Paris or London for a quarter. Newport does not

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encourage the casual stranger with a lean pocket-book. Millionaires only need apply.

Even at Newport the millionaires live at a feverish pace and are constantly trying to devise new schemes for amusement. Novelty is what they crave, and the desire ' to be original,' to be talked about, to gain a reputation for daring and doing things out of the common, leads to some choice exhibitions of folly. In passing, Newport habituts always affect great disgust when the newspapers exploit their vagaries at much length, but it may be questioned if their vanity is not really tickled by the attention they attract, and if they would not feel disappointed if they were considered < of so little conse quence that no one cared what they did.

Newport has its own ideas of what constitute wit and originality. Thus, one woman known by name through out the breadth and length of the land, issued invitations to a select company to meet a Mr. So-and-So, and intimated that the guest of honour was a distinguished foreign traveller. When the guests assembled they were gravely presented to an organ-grinder's monkey, which was placed on a chair at the table, and whose antics were found to be vastly amusing by these men and women of huge wealth. Other similar buffoonery has marked the fashionable society of the most fashionable resort in America.

It must be said, however, in justice to Newport, that some of its denizens furnish more rational pleasure to their friends, and having the command of unlimited means they do not hesitate to spend them to gratify a caprice. Americans of great fortunes do not count the price of their pleasure, and have almost an Oriental contempt for cost. There was one Newport woman who wanted a musical comedy then being given in New 164

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York, and much talked about, to be seen by her friends. In the same way that a Sovereign issues a royal com mand, she informed the manager of the theatre that she desired the performance to be given at her Newport villa on a certain date, and to save him from any loss she paid what the performance would have brought that night if every seat in the theatre had been sold, and in addition all the expenses of bringing his company to and from Newport. The performance was given on a temporary stage erected in the grounds of the villa, which were beautifully illuminated with electric lights especially strung for the occasion. In days gone by Oriental potentates clapped their hands, and slaves worked miracles, but to-day the American millionaire or his wife writes a cheque and commands the services of anybody they desire.

The dominant note of Newport is money. Riotous extravagance obtrudes itself. The houses, although they are always called cottages or villas, are large and costly ; the horses and carriages are the finest ; the servants are numerous and properly supercilious and haughty, as the servants of the wealthy should be, resplendent in hand some liveries, spick-and-span, showing they have only recently come from the tailors ; the dresses of the women at what in the humility of the rich is called a ' small ' entertainment or a ' quiet ' dinner cost more than those worn at a court \ the diamonds and other jewels proclaim their owners' millions ; the automobiles that go snorting up and down Bellevue Avenue wrecking the peace of the occasional pedestrian — who, of course, is an outsider, a tourist attracted by the natural beauty of the place, and therefore has no rights that the millionaire is bound to respect — make more noise and emit more varied and all- pervading odours than automobiles elsewhere, and their 165

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owners glory in their speed and cost. In the harbour are always several magnificent steam yachts. The simple life is unknown. People go there ostensibly to relax from the stiff formality of a winter's season and to enjoy the country, but as a matter of fact there is more formality and stiffness and observance of the social code than there is anywhere else with one or two exceptions, and being a small place its artificiality is so obtrusive that from it there is no escape. Its habitues, however, delight in the life and all that it means. They would not miss their Newport season for ten times what it costs, and to be written about in the newspapers, and to have their enter tainments chronicled at great length, and their pictures appear in the Sunday supplements, is their ideal of life and the fulness thereof.

Another fashionable resort is Bar Harbour, on the coast of Maine, in some respects one of the most beautiful spots in America, as there mountain and ocean meet. Although distinctly fashionable, it is less so than New port, which affects to look down on Bar Harbour ; and this assumed superiority gave an opportunity to a well- known woman famous for her mordant wit to remark, ' People who have been warned off the grass at Newport go to Bar Harbour and really think they are in society.' There are many handsome villas in Bar Harbour, and life there is very similar to that in Newport, only less vulgar, because that word properly conveys the impres sion one gets of Newport and its people. Bar Harbour has more hotels and boarding-houses for the moderately well off than Newport, but the elect of Bar Harbour keep strictly to themselves and spend their time in riding and driving, dining and being dined.

The greganousness of middle-class America has been alluded to in a previous chapter, and the same desire to

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flock together is found in society. In America one does not find, as in England, great houses scattered over the country, whose owners enjoy the knowledge that they have no near neighbours and that the people who share their hospitality are those especially invited for a definite occasion. In America the rich always herd in colonies. If a man discovers an attractive place for a summer or winter residence and builds a house, his first thought is to induce a friend to imitate his example, who in turn per suades his friend, so that the circle is ever widening, and in a short time there are many people of the same social set and of about the same financial position gathered together in one place. One of the pleasures derived from being rich, according to the American idea, comes from being able to parade wealth, and exhibiting it to people equally as rich.

Another place much in favour with the wealthy, although it is neither as aristocratic nor as exclusive as Newport or Bar Harbour, is Saratoga, in New York State, in the midst of ideally beautiful country. Saratoga, as an American magazine writer described it, * has just a dash of Monte Carlo, a bit of Baden-Baden, and a little of Wiesbaden in its composition. It is a sporting town like Monte Carlo, only its sporting aspect is not so conspicuous. It is a health town for the healthy who do not need it, like Baden-Baden. And then, for the very few, it is really a place to recuperate, like Wiesbaden.'

Early in the summer, in June and July, it is quiet and decorous enough. For many years its springs have been famous for their curative properties, and middle-aged men and women of generous habit predisposed toward gout or embonpoint vainly imagine they can atone for six months of indiscretion by sipping highly flavoured water, taking exercise behind a pair of fat, sedate horses, playing six- 167

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penny whist and going to bed an hour earlier than usual. But in August, Saratoga awakes from its somnolent respectability. It becomes the gayest of the gay. Its attractions are many ; ' the extremes of life come very close together.'

August in Saratoga is devoted to horse racing, and it is, I believe, the only town in the world where an entire month is given up to the race track. Imagine what that means. During that month the horse is crowned king, and he is a monarch who gathers about him a brilliant court. It is the Derby and Ascot, not for one day, but for thirty ; it is Auteuil and Longchamps, not for a single afternoon, but for a whole month of afternoons ; it is all that goes to make the charm of an English race track — beautiful horses, and women more beautiful, blue skies and gipsies and fakirs, with the vivacity and dash and colour of a French race meeting, to which you may add the indescribable characteristics of the American — the keen sense of enjoyment, the activity, the ceaseless movement, the laughter, the aban don of the hour. Only the light-hearted and the gay go to Saratoga, and with them life means excitement, change, something different to the life they lead during the other eleven months of the year.

The circle of society is complete at Saratoga. The millionaire horse owner and the penniless tout, whose luck will pay the price of his supper or send him supperless to sleep under the eaves of the millionaire's stable, touch elbows ; the woman who prides herself on her exclusiveness brushes skirts with a woman of the half-world; the debutante and the professional gambler, side by side in the grand-stand, cheer on the horse in which their hopes are centred — only the gambler shows less emotion when the horse which he

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has backed for thousands loses by a head to the horse which wins for the debutante a five-pound box of candy.

In the month of August in Saratoga everybody talks and thinks horse, and this common purpose breaks down the barriers of restraint. Convention is not entirely ignored, class distinctions still exist, the for mality of an introduction is not dispensed with ; but the freemasonry of sport is in the air. There is less rigid adherence to the code in Saratoga than else where ; there is more good fellowship. Racing is both business and pleasure ; most people try to make a pleasure out of the business and to turn their business into profitable pleasure. The object every one has in view in going to Saratoga is to drink the full beaker of life ; to drink at the springs — not the springs that send their crystal bubbles gurgling to the surface, but the springs of passion, that make the blood run fire and intoxicate with the delirium of success. And it is the contrast of the surroundings that quickens the emotions. Saratoga is quaint and peaceful, and lazily sleeps under the shade of its tree-bowered roads ; the race track is a polychrome of green and brown and blue — green fields and brown trees, and blue hills that fade away into the distance and are lost in a thin haze ; and a lake of ultramarine set in an emerald frame, around which cluster picturesque places of refreshment.

Racing begins at two in the afternoon and ends as twilight enfolds the day. The devotee of pleasure has much time to spare both before and after the bell rings. In the morning there are late breakfasts at the club house and stables ; in the evening there are dinners at the lake and the great hotels, which blaze with electric lights and the jewels on the velvety skin of women (for Saratoga is of the world worldly, and the woman in a 169

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dinner dress causes no comment) ; and there is the roar of voices and the music of the orchestra to join in this ocean of sound. And after dinner, when the air is redolent with the balsamic perfume of the pines, when a cool, sweet breeze sweeps through the old- fashioned streets, when the piazzas are crowded with men and women smoking and drinking and lazily thank ful for the joy of living, a space away the lights are twinkling in the club-houses, where over the green cloth men may lose all that they won a few hours earlier on the green turf or recoup themselves for their ill-luck. Saratoga is one of the very few places in America where gambling is recognised and tolerated ; where thousands may be staked on the turn of a card. Repeated attempts have been made by clergymen and other good people to suppress it, but their efforts have proved unsuccessful because the sentiment of the com munity approves of gambling, and it is entirely too pro fitable an industry not to be carefully fostered. People go to Saratoga to gamble just as they go to Monte Carlo ; and if there were no games of chance, the one place like the other would soon sink in popular favour.

Probably there is no class in the world — and there has never been any class in the history of the world since the days of Cleopatra, when in a moment of caprice and to show her contempt for riches she dissolved her priceless pearls in wine — that spends so much money on its pleasure as American millionaires. The Americans have a natural love for flowers, and this fondness is cultivated, because at certain seasons of the year flowers are extremely expensive and the money spent by the rich for floral decorations, for their dinners and other entertainments, is almost in credible. Hundreds of pounds paid for flowers to 170

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decorate a house for an evening's entertainment would not be regarded as anything especially notable or cause undue comment, and on extraordinary occasions the hundreds have run into thousands. The Ameri can millionaire these days must not only have his house in the city in which he nominally lives and transacts his business, but he finds it necessary in order properly to keep up his state and position in society to have a winter residence near by where he can spend the week-end if he feels so inclined, a ' cottage ' in Newport, Bar Harbour, or some other equally fashionable place, and a villa in the south. The democratic American million aire with his fondness for aristocratic exclusiveness, when he goes back and forth between his various possessions, dislikes the contamination of the common herd, and to enjoy his much-desired privacy travels either in his private car or his yacht. The possession of a yacht costing in the first place from ,£30,000 to £60,000 is not unusual, with an additional £20,000 or £30,000 a year to maintain ; and there are men who are not satisfied with one yacht, but who are the owners of three or four vessels. Rich men keep their private cars ready for use whenever they may desire to take a journey, but there are some men whose ideas are on such a grand scale that a single car is not large enough for them, and they charter special trains when they take a party of friends on a little trip of a few thousand miles.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE MIDDLE-CLASS PLAYGROUND

WHILE the very rich in summer are dawdling and philandering at Newport and Bar Harbour, the masses, the backbone of America, are enjoying their vacations in a more sensible fashion, and in a way that really gives them great enjoyment. There are so-called ' summer resorts ' — in England they would be generally known as * the sea-side ' — convenient to nearly every large city in the country, even although these places are not always on the sea; but the most famous sea shore resort in America, and one that is a combination of several of the best-known places of that character in England and on the Continent, is Atlantic City, in the State of New Jersey, on the eastern Atlantic coast. Atlantic City is distinctly the playground of the great middle-class. It is a city of some thirty thousand people ; and during the summer months, from the begin ning of June until the end of August, it houses a population of never less than two hundred thousand persons. It is a city of hotels, boarding-houses, and summer cottages, and its chief industry is the enter tainment of the summer vacationist. It is one of the finest beaches in the world ; stretching for five miles along the Atlantic Ocean is a smooth and sandy floor, 172

/ OF THE

( UNIVERSITY I * V °F

^^^Sa. ' ^-^3*^

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ideal for bathing or for those persons who find their enjoyment in watching the water and the bathers.

It is a place where the god of pleasure reigns supreme, where people give themselves up to merriment, where for a week or month they spend there, according to the length of their vacation, they leave care behind and endeavour to get as much fun as possible out of life. If the reader can imagine Margate, Brighton, and Trouville amalgamated some idea may be formed of Atlantic City, because in its composite character and its ever-changing panoramic kaleidoscope it suggests both England and France. Not the very rich or fashionable go to Atlantic City in the summer, because the common people are there in force — although it is much affected by the rich and fashionable at Easter, when the people are at work and have no time for play — but persons of means and recognised position in society have been known to spend a month or two at Atlantic City in the season because they enjoy the bathing and the climate suits them — a climate, be it remarked, where the sun shines with intense heat, which adds so much to the colour and gaiety of the place.

Colour and gaiety riot in Atlantic City. There is never a dull or quiet moment there. From early in the morning until late at night the beach and the c board walk,' the great promenade of Atlantic City, are thronged, and there one may see women beautiful in face and form and no less beautifully and expensively dressed than their more aristocratic sisters in Newport, but who are there for what the Americans call 'a good time,' and who have it. It has been said that not the ultra-fashion able go to Atlantic City, yet there are many cottages owned by people of wealth and station, and it has

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happened that an ambassador of an inquiring turn of mind has preferred the middle-class environment of Atlantic City to the aristocratic and exclusive dulness of Newport.

Everybody bathes in Atlantic City, and in the morning between ten and half-past twelve the beach is thronged with men and women in their bathing suits. The amalgamation of the sexes does not end at the water's edge. The Americans do not bathe from a bathing machine as custom requires in England, but they undress in bathing houses, the majority of which in Atlantic City are a couple of hundred feet or more from the ocean, and men and women emerge from these bathing houses in their bathing suits. The effect at times is startling. The American woman, especially if she be young and pretty and proud of her figure, whether in the ballroom or on the beach, clothes herself in the most attractive way, and her bathing costume is not the unsightly and sacklike covering, always muddy blue in colour, one sees at Margate, but is a blouse and skirt and bloomers, black or red orgreen or blues of various shades, daintily trimmed, and the wearers are almost as critical about the fit as they are about that of an evening dress.

The Atlantic City sea nymph, the veritable ' Guardian Naiad of the strand,'

attired in one of these bewitching costumes, with her hair coiled up on the top of her head and hidden under a silk handkerchief of the colour of her suit, with her pink-and-white feet winking in and out of the sand, quite unabashed in the company of her male escort, whose manly form is about as well covered as a schoolboy's on the cinder track, leisurely strolls out from her bathing

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house, crosses the ' boardwalk,' goes down a flight of steps, walks a hundred feet or so across the sand, stopping frequently on her journey to talk to friends, and then finally makes her acquaintance with the ocean. The sea in front of the beach is a mass of men and women, boys and girls, and very young children, splashing about in the water, the majority of whom go out not more than a few feet from shore. Bathing in America is not a quick dip or a long swim and a return to the normal garb of civilisation, but the Atlantic City Nereides are amphibious ; and after they have been gently caressed by the surf for a few minutes, like modern Aphrodites they emerge from the sea, and crouch on the hot sand with the still hotter sun beat ing down on them, lie there in supreme content until their clinging and dripping garments have been dried, when they return once more to the pleasure of being tumbled about by the waves. This leisurely manner of bathing makes the beach an ever-changing and animated picture. At all times during the bathing hours there are as many persons on the sand as there are in the water ; and from the water arises a never-ending Babel of sound ; feminine shrieks of the timid, as an impertinent or boisterous wave is too rough in its embrace, or the childish treble of little ones when they first feel the water ; while from the beach there comes a mighty roar, as men and women and young people go romping about the sand, scattering it over each other or burrowing in it and revelling in its heat. The Americans are fond of heat and warmth, and the temperature of Atlantic City, which few Europeans could endure, is to them a perpetual delight.

The oldest and the most staid become youthful at Atlantic City. The germ of light-heartedness is in the

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air and no one can escape from it, nor does any one try very hard. It is no place for the melancholy or those with nerves. One must be sound mentally and bodily to catch its step.

To women — mostly young, usually good-looking, and not averse to attracting attention — who delight in doing audacious things and pushing propriety to the verge without quite stepping across it, Atlantic City offers the opportunity they desire, because there the boundary line between the conventional and the un conventional has never been delimited, and Mrs. Grundy is the one visitor in all that cosmopolitan throng who is given no welcome. One may do in Atlantic City what one would not be permitted to do anywhere else ; and although occasionally a highly respectable and middle-aged matron from the West is shocked and watches with jealous care over her husband to see that he does not stray from the well-trod path of narrow routine, the middle-aged matron is in the minority, and the great majority, old and young, men and women, go to Atlantic City enjoying all that they see, even although they are virtuously thankful that such dreadful goings on would not be tolerated in the less rarefied atmosphere of their homes. They have much the same feeling that English people have when they go to a Paris music-hall. There is a fascination for most persons to be within handstretch of the prohibited, and to know that they are immune from its danger.

Atlantic City is all on the surface. It may be, and is, decidedly unconventional, especially from the British standpoint, and Mrs. Grundy would, in all probability, denounce it as sinful and demoralising to old and young, but it is not immoral. It has the unaffected innocence of a little child that is unabashed in the presence of its 176

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own nakedness. Like a little child it romps and plays before the whole world and affects a pretty unconsciousness of the attention of doting admirers. It is too essentially middle-class for its folly to degenerate into wickedness ; and the tone of middle-class America is distinctly healthy. A young woman may walk the beach in the full light of day in the most abbreviated of costumes and no one thinks any the worse of her, because publicity is her protector and her every movement is made before a thousand eyes ; but after the bathing hour, when night falls, there is a different code, and should she adopt the unconventional in dress, or make herself unduly con spicuous in a hotel or on the ' boardwalk,' she at once classes herself among the forbidden. Atlantic City is free and easy, unceremonious and undignified, good- naturedly boisterous and unnecessarily loud, but it is respectable, it must maintain its respectability, otherwise it would cease to be the playground of the middle- class ; and if that ever happens evil days will fall upon it, and the hotels that stretch in an unbroken row for miles facing the ocean would go into the hands of receivers and the glory of the city by the sea would depart for ever.

People who go to Atlantic City and disport them selves for their own amusement or the enjoyment of the spectators must expect to receive the attention of the newspapers, and perhaps that is no more distastful to them than are the lucubrations of Mr. Jenkins to the Newport cottager. Here, for instance, is what an Atlantic City correspondent writes to a paper noted for its disapproval of the sensational; what the account would have been in a c yellow journal ' one does not even dare to imagine.

'First among these are Two Little Girls in Green. 177 N

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That is what they have been called by the boardwalkers and the sand-flappers since they made their first ap pearance on the edge of the surf more than six weeks ago. But they are far from being little. They are strapping, handsome, fine-limbed young women. They are twins and dark.

' Their bathing dresses, like the girls themselves, are exactly alike. They are of Nile green mohair. The skirts are exceedingly short. The twins go stockingless, and wear sandals, the ribbons of which are of the same colour as their suits, cross their legs many times, and are tied in sizeable knots at their knees.

' The raven hair of the two girls is unconfined, and hangs below their waists. Their arms are bare to the shoulders, and on each arm they wear heavy bands, about an inch wide, of dull gold, and below these, on their left arms, slender circlets of gold terminating in serpents' heads with emerald eyes.

1 They are as striking a pair of young women as have cavorted near these waters for many years. Trustworthy witnesses aver that the twins have been seen to moisten their sandals in all of four inches of water, but the ordinary run of beach-strollers declare that the twins haven't been within twenty feet of the sea's verge since they first made their appearance here.

c The two girls possess an immense amount of poise, and they don't appear to be in the least bothered by the attention and comment they invariably arouse when they show up on the sands. They often enjoy themselves by playing " catch " with a large green " medicine ball." They spend most of their bathing time in parading up and down the strand with their arms about each other's waist. While they don't appear to mind being stared at, they are averse to being snapshotted by the hordes of

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camera fiends, infesting the beach like sand-flies, and they keep a wary eye out for the kodakers. When they perceive that they're within range of a lens they quickly take to their heels, and none of the lens gunners has yet succeeded in catching them.

' A couple of pretty blonde girls, sisters, get themselves up in bathing dresses of vivid yellow silk, with yellow silk stockings, sandal ribbons, huge yellow bows in their hair, and all the rest of it. The only touch of any other colour in their make-up is the brilliant green sash which they wear about their waists. Irishmen on the board walk and on the beach, while expressing their admiration for the physical conformation of the young women, view with an aslant gaze the mating of the yellow and the green.

' These sisters drive on the beach at the bathing hour every day in a double-seated trap of a bright yellow hue, and pulled by a pair of small white donkeys rigged out in russet harness, to which many little tinkling bells are attached. Both of the donkeys wear straw hats, trimmed with green ribbon of the same tint as the young women's bathing dresses. The girls conduct themselves with great propriety, although when they first arrived on the beach in their trap they sent the donkeys along at a licketty-split clip, which caused them to be warned against fast driving on the strand. They, too, seem to regard the sea-water as something merely to be looked at, for they have not dampened their bathing apparel in the surf up to the hour of this writing.

' A quintet of actresses who have a cottage all dress themselves for bathing in baby blue mohair suits of the same cut, and they go through a performance every morning that makes them the focus of the eyes of the sand-loungers, They are all expert swimmers, veritable 179

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mermaids, and their little performance is a mute but eloquent protest against the heavy hampering skirts which women wear while bathing.

'After dallying about the sands for a spell, they all approach the water in a body. Just as they get to the verge, they get together in a close group. Then their skirts all drop off at once. A coloured maid gathers up the skirts, and the five women of the stage, skirtless and free to race into the flood in their bloomers, swim out beyond the breaker line, and cavort around like dolphins for half an hour or so without ever touching bottom with their feet.

' Then they make for the shallows again in a body, run out of the water, grab their respective skirts from the black maid, hop into them in something less than no time, and then make for their bathing house. They are all pretty, well and amply formed women, and their little act has come to be one of the expected and waited- for features of the kaleidoscopic bathing hour. The dictum of the authorities against the skirtless bathing suits doesn't apply to them, for the reason that they are not beach paraders. The rule against the skirtless bathing dress was framed for the purpose of forestalling women of the strand-strolling class who have an aversion for the taste of sea water.'

The American newspapers are the keenest critics of national foibles, and take malicious delight in good- naturedly spearing every prevailing fad. In view of what I have said about Atlantic City bathing costumes, the point of the following little dialogue in a prominent newspaper is readily appreciated :

'HER BATHING SUIT.

' EVELYN : (< If you wish to be very smart this season, 1 80

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you must go down to the sea with a Trouville cloak over your bathing suit."

{ MIRABELL : " How ridiculous ! What is the use of having a stunning figure, I'd like to know ? ' "

The paucity of material in a bathing suit is the stock theme of the newspaper humourist, and the paragraphs that have been written on the young woman who goes to a shop and asks for a ' sample ' and triumphantly exhibits it to her husband as the material out of which she is going to make her bathing suit are endless. The following is a typical example of a newspaper ' bathing- suit joke ' :

' MRS. BIXBY : " What do you think of my bathing dress ? " '

' BIXBY : " It's an improvement over your other one ; this one is visible to the naked eye." '

Atlantic City by day is a huge mass of energy and volatile spirits ever seeking release; Atlantic City by night suggests a mammoth factory where a thousand looms keep up their ceaseless task, where to the hum and the clatter of whirling machinery, the shuttles in their insatiable greed fly back and forth weaving the threads into a complicated pattern, where the brain goes dizzy trying to follow the swiftly moving bobbin, won dering whether a thing so instinct with life ever tires or ever sleeps. Atlantic City never tires and never sleeps. At night the hotels, which range from good to very bad, whose tariffs would tax the revenues of a grand-duke or meet the pocket-book of a not over well paid mechanic, where one may eat for a shilling or dine for a pound, are thronged with their guests, who wear silks or fustian according to their class, who whether they drink iced water or iced champagne are equally enjoying themselves, and have no false pride about 181

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letting their neighbours see that they are on pleasure bent. The lights blaze, the music blares, the waiters rush about, women laugh and men talk, there is the perpetual energy and motion of the sea always heaving, always rising, always falling, never for a second still even in its gentlest moods.

After dinner all Atlantic City goes to the ' board walk,' a promenade stretching for five miles along the ocean front, so called from its having been in its earlier days a somewhat shaky wooden way perched a few feet above the sand ; but now modernised into a steel construction, and without a rival in the world. On the land side it is fringed with shops, on the other there is the unbroken stretch of sand when the tide is low, and when the sand is hidden there are the white- crested waves tumbling and splashing beneath one's feet.

The ' boardwalk ' is always crowded by day, but at night, in the height of the season, especially at the week end, it is literally packed, and progress is slow. People stroll up and down, or they sit in the little pavilions that are found at frequent intervals, or they buy wonderful and weird things made of shells and lettered in gilt * A present from Atlantic City,' or Japanese and Chinese curios that they can buy for much less at their homes, but which have an added value when brought back at the bottom of a trunk (the American never talks about his 'boxes,' but always his 'trunks,' and his luggage always is * baggage'), or they go to the various amusements devised to coax the nimble sixpences and shillings from the pockets of the unwary. They ride on the merry-go- rounds, they shoot the chutes, they loop the loop, they do many other things that would horrify and disgust Newport — but they do have a good time, there is no 182

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doubting the genuineness of their laughter and the sincerity of their enjoyment, and Newport and the * Four Hundred ' may go hang for all they care. One reason, perhaps the reason of all reasons, why Atlantic City amuses itself so thoroughly is that the story of Atlantic City is always the story of the man and the maid. If the city girl would shoot the chutes 'just to see what it is like ' and because it is only at Atlantic City that she has the chance, there is always a man of her acquaintance to accompany her, to take the place of a complacent mother to whom new sensations do not appeal, to help her in and out of the car, sometimes gently to hold her in her seat when nearing the danger point. The man and the maid, as the reader has been already told, bathe together ; it is the man who teaches the maid to swim and protects her from the too boisterous assault of the waves ; it is the man who sports with the maid on the sands, who takes her fishing and sailing. Neither man nor maid goes his or her own way alone. In Atlantic City they are always together.

Atlantic City is not the only middle-class playground, although it is the most popular and the largest. A few miles to its south, also on the Atlantic coast, is Cape May, which is much frequented in summer, but it does not offer all the attractions of its better-known rival, and life jogs more quietly. There are several other resorts on the Atlantic coast, as there are on the Pacific coast and on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico ; and in the interior, remote from ocean or gulf, lakes and rivers are the focal points around which the people gather in summer-time.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO

MANY are the problems that the United States must solve before it has worked out its destiny and placed upon a secure and lasting foundation the civilisation that it has established to meet its own peculiar conditions ; but there is no problem confronting it more difficult or more urgent, that demands the wisest statesmanship and the broadest tolerance and charity, than that commonly known in America as ' the negro question.'

It is always a dangerous thing to discuss in America the negro question and the relations between the whites and the blacks, because it is the one question above all others that arouses the fiercest passion, that is treated from the standpoint of prejudice rather than from fact. If a foreigner is presumptuous enough, after investigation, observation, and study, to reach certain conclusions, and those conclusions reflect upon the whites, he is invariably told that he is incompetent to express an opinion ; that he speaks without exact know ledge of his subject, and his bias in favour of the negro is all too apparent. But the foreigner finds company among Americans. The whites of the South resent with equal hostility and bitterness anything that may be said or written by Northern men in favour of the negro and in criticism of the South. Like the foreigner the 184

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THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO

Northerner is told that he is quite incompetent to testify on a question about which he has no knowledge. In the opinion of the South only the South really is qualified to govern the negro.

Until 1863 the negro was a slave. He belonged body and soul to his master, who held power of life and death over him. He had no rights in the eyes of the law ; the law recognised him no more than it did any other animal, but it recognised the full rights of his master, and those rights the law guarded with great jealousy. In that year, as one of the direct results of the attempt of some of the Southern States to secede from the Union, the status of the negro was transformed from that of a chattel to a man ; from slave he became free. Here perhaps it would have been wiser if the North had stopped and given to the former slaves the political privileges enjoyed by the whites only after they had shown themselves fitted to enjoy them. But a wave of emotion ran through the North. Many well-meaning but foolish people, those fanatics who in every cause by their intemperate zeal do more harm than its most implacable foes, magnified the slave into a hero ; for him they had an intense pity, his wrongs burned in them, they stood convicted by their own consciences for having allowed the brutal and demoralising institution of slavery to exist, and the only way they could atone for their sin and in a measure repair the wrong was to welcome the black man as a brother, to treat him as one of them selves, to forget the distinction of colour and give him all the privileges they themselves enjoyed.

It was a mistake, of course, arid to-day no one recognises that more thoroughly than the men of the North ; but it was done, the black man was made the equal of the white in the eyes of the law, he was given

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the same political rights, he was permitted to make laws for the white. It is now recognised that it would have been better for both, for blacks as well as whites, if there had been a period of probation and tutelage, if a property or educational qualification had been required before the negroes were permitted to exercise the right of suffrage. It was not to be expected that the mere act of manumission would change the character or elevate the intelligence of the negro. It would have set at defiance all the teaching of history, it would have made a mockery of civilisation, evolved as the result of character wrought by painful progress and the restraint of individual liberty for the greater liberty of the whole.

For centuries the negro had been steeped in the lowest barbarism. His mental and moral development had been stunted. Brought from Africa to the United States, his surroundings and his environment had not raised him mentally or morally. He remained a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, a field hand who worked on the cotton and tobacco plantations, whose value was rated according to the amount of labour he peformed, or he might be trained to perform a few menial tasks — to be coachman or house servant. But whatever his occu pation, whether in the field or in the house, he was condemned to involuntary servitude, he could aspire to do nothing, even if he were capable of an aspiration ; the greatest boon he could ask was to be the property of a humane owner.

The great Civil War changed all that. It not only gave the blacks their freedom, but it ruined their former masters. The South was an agricultural region ; it was believed that only negroes were able to stand the effects of that semi-tropical climate, and that the work on plantations and in rice swamps must be 1 86

THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO

done by black labour. Much of the wealth of the great landowners of the South was represented by their slaves. The war desolated the South. Its fields were drenched with blood, its accumulated wealth disappeared in the awful struggle that for four years taxed its resources to the uttermost, its cities were destroyed, its commerce ruined, its slaves free — free to do as they pleased, to work or to idle. The South lay prostrate, spent, broken in spirit, bankrupt.

With peace came a new order of things. Slowly the South recovered. It once again took heart. The world must have its cotton and its tobacco, and men set to work to repair their shattered fortunes. But the old order had passed never to return. The negro remained in the South because of a catlike attachment to the place he knew, because he knew no other place ; because, catlike, he loves to bask in the sun, and life is a less intense struggle under the semi-tropical heat of Southern skies than elsewhere. But he was no longer a chattel to be ordered to do his appointed task at the behest of his white master, to be flogged into submission if he refused. He was his own master. He stood his equal before the law and at the ballot box. * All men are created free and equal,' Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, and the ballot of the white man counted for no more than the ballot of the black. The election of a President might hinge on the votes of negroes with the marks of their gyves still visible.

It is this right — the right of the black man to political privileges equal to those of the white — that lies at the bottom of the hatred of the Southern whites for the negroes. In the Southern States the negro, if permitted to vote as his inclinations dictated, would be a political factor, and his vote would be cast almost solidly for the 187

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Republican party. The negro 1 owes his freedom to the Republican party, his slavery was made possible by Democratic ascendency ; it is therefore natural that he should show his gratitude by voting for the Republicans. Hence the Republican party in the South has come to be known as the black man's party, the party of the negro. The Democratic party of the South is the white man's party, the party of respectability, of culture, of traditions ; it is tancUnnt noblesse which remembers the time when black men were chattels and might be treated according to the whim of the moment, It has never reconciled itself to the new order of things, to the revolution which made a black man the equal of the white in the eyes of the law, which permitted him to make laws for the white, often his former owner or the son of the man who bought or sold him. In the North it has been possible, it has frequently happened, for men to forget party defending or sustaining a principle ; in the South this has been impossible. The line of cleavage has been sharply drawn. The whites allied themselves against the blacks ; the fear of negro domination has been the Democratic jehad which when preached has always been successful. This fear, real or assumed, solidified the South and made it regarded as invulnerable to Republican assault.

The white man of the South asserts that the negro is a menace to the home and the honour of women ; that is his palliation for the lynching of the negro. The highest duty of man, he contends, is to protect women, and when the negro transgresses he invites his death ; but to make the death more horrible, to serve as a warning to his race, it must be summary vengeance ; it

1 Macmillarfs Magazine, April, 1900. ' The Future of the Negro,' by A. Maurice Low.

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must be death with all its terrors, death usually at the scene of the crime and before the criminal has time for repentance. The law is too slow, too cumbersome, too doubtful to be trusted ; only Judge Lynch can be relied upon, and Judge Lynch is always a hanging judge and would make bloody Jeffreys blush for very shame. Another argument used by the Southerner in extenuation of his conduct is that manhood suffrage having made the vicious and ignorant negro the political equal of the virtuous and highly civilised white, it is repulsive that the black man shall rule and govern and make laws for the whites. It was asserted by the Democratic speakers and newspapers during the last campaign in North Carolina that the States were being negroised and in danger of being dominated by the blacks ; this was the only excuse the whites gave for their determination not to permit the negroes to vote, the same excuse which the South has always offered when it condescends to defend a negro massacre. But it is inconceivable that a minority can dominate a majority ; it is still more in conceivable that an uneducated, timorous, poor, and leaderless minority is a menace to a majority claiming to possess education and courage, with money sufficient to carry out its plans, and in control of troops, police, and other governmental agencies.

The population of the United States, not including its dependencies, according to the last census, that of 1900, was 75>994>575> °f which 66,809,196 were white and 8,833,994 were negroes or of negro descent. There were 351,385 persons in addition generically grouped as ' coloured ' for census purposes, which included Japanese, Chinese and Indians, but they need not be taken into account in the present calculation. Of the eight million and more negroes, all but one million — to be 189

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exact, 7,867,285 — were in the Southern States, those States in which slavery formerly existed as a recognised social institution. In those States there were only two in which the blacks outnumbered the whites — Mississippi, with a population of 641,200 whites and 907,630 blacks, and South Carolina, with 557,807 whites and 782,321 blacks. The whites, therefore, being in the majority in the South, are not in danger of being dominated by the black minority.

The blacks being citizens of the United States, being freemen with all the political privileges of freemen, naturally aspire to turn their political power to advan tage, which means to hold office. They can hope for nothing from the Democrats, who, controlling all the State offices, give no appointments to negroes, and so they must look to a Republican administration in Washington for their reward. A President can appoint a coloured man a postmaster or a collector of customs ; it has been the practice for this to be done, but these appointments always arouse the resentment of the whites of the South, who declare that it is an insult to have a negro placed in authority over them, and they assert that whenever a black is put in office it makes the race more arrogant and more impertinent in their deal ing with the whites. It encourages them to believe, according to Southerners, that they are the equal of the whites, that they are 'just as good' as any body else. This the Southerner will not tolerate. He refuses to subscribe to the doctrine of racial equality in the concrete when it is the equality of whites and blacks, even although he is proud of the Declaration of Independence in the abstract and glories in the greatness of its author — Thomas Jefferson, a Southern Democrat.

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Parenthetically it may be remarked that the solicitude of the Republicans to provide offices for Southern negroes is not so entirely unselfish as not to be in fluenced by political considerations. The million negroes living in Northern States might in a close presidential election hold the balance of power. Based on the known coloured population in some of those States and the majorities that the Republicans received at recent elections, it is clearly demonstrated that had the negro voted for the Democratic candidates those States would have gone Democratic instead of Republican. It is assumed, of course, that the negroes practically voted unanimously for the Republicans because of their natural Republican affiliations, as has already been ex plained ; but if the negroes had any reason to believe that they were not being properly rewarded by their Republican friends, and if they were not given an occa sional office in the South, it might be easy to induce them to believe that their interests were with the Democratic party. Republicans, quite naturally, do not openly put such a sordid construction upon their interest in the welfare of the negro and probably would deny that they are influenced by mere political consider ations, yet one must not overlook stubborn ' facts ; and the knowledge Democrats have that the result of a presidential election may turn upon the votes of illiterate and half-civilised blacks is one of the reasons for the intense bitterness of the Southerner and makes him more convinced than ever that the suffrage should not have been placed in the hands of the negroes.

The white men of the South claim that they are justi fied in attempting to keep the blacks in subjection and restricting their exercise of the suffrage, as they have done, either by constitutional methods, by imposing 191

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educational and other qualifications, or by the more illegal and often simpler plan of forcibly preventing them from going to the polls, because, as has already been said, it is an inversion of natural laws for a superior and highly civilised race to be subject to an inferior race low in the scale of civilisation. The negro, according to his white accuser,1 is lazy, thrift less, unfit to govern himself and therefore totally unfit to govern others, undisciplined, brutal ; a beast with all the unrestrained passions of a beast, whose very pres ence is a menace to his white neighbour, especially to white women. It has been shown that, inasmuch as the whites are numerically in the majority, the fear of negro domination is a phantom only. Of the other accusations brought against the negro, accusations affecting his character morally, intellectually, and in dustrially, it may be conceded that they are partly true, although exaggerated. The negro is not all bad, and for much of his badness he may thank his associa tions. As a slave the negro learned nothing from his Southern master except the lesson of unrestrained passion, of cruelty, of depravity, of the triumph of material over moral forces. As a freeman he has learned to despise and fear his former master because he is both despised and feared by him ; he has learned that he is of an inferior race whose rights the superior race will ignore and violate on every occasion ; neither by precept nor example has he profited. Little as the negro has to thank the Southerner, still less has the Southern white to feel any gratitude to the negro.

The real curse of slavery is only now at this late day

being understood, and, as usual, the third and fourth

generations are paying for the sins of the first. The

1 ' The Future of the Negro.'

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South, from the time of the Confederation until the Civil War, was denied what has been the salvation of every other race— the strengthening of the upper classes by intermarriage with the peasantry. Races die at the top and need to be fed from the bottom, from men and women who actually spring from the soil. The human race can no more live without contact with mother earth than can trees or flowers. What perhaps more than anything else has made the Englishman and the American of the Northern States the virile, energetic, hardy man he is, is the constant mingling of the blood of the classes. King Cophetua could marry a beggar maid to the advantage of the royal house ; the heir to an English dukedom may be only three generations removed from an American farmer. The South has been denied this inestimable blessing. In the true sense of the word there has never been a Southern peasantry. The black man, who tilled the fields and performed the functions of the peasant, was a slave and not a free peasant; there was no chance for him to rise in the social scale or to be the founder of a family. The slave woman might be, and often was, the concubine of her master ; she could never aspire to be his wife. Black slavery was more destructive than any other form of slavery the world has ever known. One does not need to search very deep into history to know that in the days of white slavery women of the enslaved race were the mothers of children whose free fathers frequently educated them and who became no insignificant factors in affairs of State. These things were possible when the offspring of the illegiti mate union were of the same colour and facial char acteristics as the father; they were impossible when the child of a slave bore the brand of slavery in his 193 0

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face and colour; there was no hope for him, nothing to live for except the eternal degradation of the curse of slavery.

In preventing a replenishment of the blood, in pre venting the strain of the soil from mixing in the arteries of the social classes above them, the negro laid a curse upon the South ; but that was not all. From time immemorial certain tasks were assigned to the blacks, tasks which no self-respecting white man might be permitted to undertake. The division of labour was as rigidly and narrowly drawn as in the most autocratic of military systems. Certain things an officer may do ; other things he is not permitted to do. So it was in the South. What a white man might be permitted to do was part of the social code, and it could not be trans gressed. Furthermore, the white planter, the great slave-owner, had his energy destroyed by being waited upon and attended by slaves, who performed services which the master, living up to the requirements of his own social code, regarded as derogatory, but which men, where the institution of slavery was unknown, did for themselves to their moral and physical profit. Of course, it should be remembered that in talking of the whites of the South one refers to the landed proprietors, the men who, until the Civil War sounded the death of slavery, were the aristocracy of America. There was an inferior social white class, never a genuine peasantry, which is to be found to this day. The Poor Whites, the White Trash, as they are popularly termed, is no misnomer. Between the Poor Whites of the South, who live principally in the mountains, and have never seen a railway train (but who, no matter how poor, always own a gun and a mongrel cur), and the negro there is little to choose ; if anything, perhaps, the negro 194

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is less illiterate, but no less revengeful, passionate, and superstitious.

I confess to a feeling of sympathy for the white man of the South. Until thirty-five years ago he lived what to him was the only life for a gentleman. He was rich, generous, and hospitable; he was the owner of vast estates and numerous slaves ; he lived almost in feudal style ; he held in his hands the lives of his subjects ; he married and intermarried in his own caste ; he felt himself to be above and apart from the rest of his race. It was not the highest ideal of life; it was not a life which broadened or ennobled ; but it was the one which the Southerner knew, and to it he clung with passionate love, In the early days of the Republic, when the strain had not been vitiated, when the effect of the blood of the Beggar Maid was still making itself felt, the South gave to the country its great men, men great in states manship, learning, and philosophy ; and Virginia, a Southern [ State, proudly wore the title of Mother of Presidents. Then came the war which destroyed the political supremacy of the South, which bathed the land in blood and carried desolation to every Southern hearth, which worked a social revolution and placed the negro (up to that time a chattel, a thing, something without a soul, and with a body valuable only as a commercial asset like a horse or plough), on the same political equality as his former master. Suppose the Indian Mutiny had been successful, suppose Englishmen from the governing class had become the governed, suppose, owing to great property interests, they were still compelled to live as servants where formerly they had been masters — imagine these things, and one can understand, and yet not completely, the feeling of the Southerner. He had fought for years in the forum to 195

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preserve and perpetuate the institution of slavery ; finally, finding oratorical weapons powerless, he had drawn the sword to protect what he firmly believed to be his rights. It is pure speculation to say that had slavery not existed there would have been no Civil War ; but it is history, so far as the South is concerned, that the war was waged to maintain the supremacy of slavery.

The greatest blot on the civilisation of America to-day is the barbarous and too often unprovoked murder of negroes by mobs. The Southerner pleads in extenuation that the sanctity of the home and the preservation of the social system justify brutal and repressive measures. I cannot go into that phase of the question here, but it is sufficient to say that not every negro lynched has committed the one unspeakable crime that might excuse his being done to death in passion. For petty offences, sometimes on suspicion merely and at other times pour encourager les autres^ negroes have been wantonly and fiendishly tortured to death ; and if the best statistics to be obtained are reliable the evidence is conclusive that mere lust of blood and the revenge of hate are the real reasons why the Christian sentiment of America is continually shocked by the accounts of negroes burned at the stake, or torn from the hands of their jailors and put to death with all the refinement of cruelty practised by the Indians when the West of America was a wilderness.

While the people of the Northern States tolerate the negro, concede to him the enjoyment of his political rights, and encourage him to work out his own salvation in his own way, racial antipathy even there is equally strong. The negro exists by sufferance, but he is never welcomed ; he is always an outcast ; his black skin 196

THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO

is always a bar ; fashionable hotels find an ever-ready excuse to refuse him accommodation ; the theatres dis courage his patronage, no matter how well behaved and cultivated he is. Nothing that President Roosevelt has done since he entered the White House aroused such an outcry and caused him to be so fiercely criticised as when he, in an incautious moment, invited Mr. Booker Washington, writer, educator, sociologist, but a black born in slavery, to break bread with him as his equal. Some of Mr. Roosevelt's strongest admirers and warmest friends disapproved of his course, because they believed it was as dangerous and injurious to the blacks as it was to the whites to try to create the impression that the two races could meet on terms of social equality. It is obvious that social equality is impossible, and that the blacks must remain a race separate and apart, if not for ever, at least for so many generations to come, that the present life of man and the lives of their children's children will not see the amalgamation of the races.

Even on the verge of the grave the colour line is drawn. The following is taken from the New York Sunt a newspaper noted for its accuracy and strict regard for the truth : —

'COLOUR LINE AT THE SCAFFOLD.

1 PITTSBURG'S SHERIFF RESENTS ORDER TO HANG NEGRO 'AND WHITE MAN TOGETHER.

* Pittsburgh March u, 1904. — Sheriff Dickson has received an order from Gov. Pennypacker to hang William L. Hartley and John Edwards on the same day, and is much disturbed over it.

' " Under the circumstances," he said, " it strikes me as entirely improper that the two men should be hanged 197

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at the same time. One is a white man and the other a negro, and there is a natural prejudice against associating the races.

"'They were never together in their life, and that is another reason why they should not meet death together. Of all places in the world, the scaffold is one where nothing that could offend the condemned man should be done. There is more than sentiment in this, there is humanity." '

As might naturally be expected the negro is a happy- go-lucky individual, who perhaps is only a shade more lazy than the white man, and who, like the white man, accepts the curse of Adam with resignation but without enthusiasm. He toils because he has to do, and not because he likes ; if he did not have to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow he would spend his days lying on his back in the sun, and his nights in eating sweet potatoes, 'possum, and water-melon, according to the season, and drinking whisky. And yet it must not be imagined from this picture that the negro spends all his time in loafing. Having to work, a great many of them work not only hard, but with fidelity and intelligence ; and the progress the race has made in the two score years that it has been liberated from slavery, and its thirst for knowledge, are perhaps greater and more remarkable than any other race has ever shown. Such men as Frederick Douglass and Booker Washington are those rare beings endowed with the divine touch of genius, and genius knows neither colour nor race — it has been cradled in the _muck-heap>s well as in the palace, and the occasional genius is no criterion of the capacity of a people ; but when one remembers that there are negro preachers, lawyers, doctors, professors, writers, as well as successful business men and skilled artisans, every un- 198

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prejudiced person must admit that the race has made most substantial progress, and that it gives bright promise of the future.

As indicating what the negro has done, the following dialogue took place between Booker Washington and a farmer at one of Mr. Washington's { conferences.'

' Do you mortgage your crop now ? ' the farmer was asked.

' No, sah. Ah takes mortgages now, an' ah takes 'em off'm white men.'

' And what interest do you charge ? '

'Ah charges 'bout the same as they used to charge of me.'

The negro has a keen sense of humour and enjoys having a moral wrapped up in a homely illustration. A negro at this conference, to impress upon his hearers the necessity of acquiring property, told the story of Jerry and the ferry. A white man without three cents to pay his ferry fare went to a negro named Jerry and tried to borrow the money.

1 No, sah, ah won't let you have it,' replied Jerry, { for a white man who hain't got three cents is just as well off on one side of the river as on the other.' ' And so it is,' continued the speaker, * with a negro who hain't got three cents. It don't make much difference which side of the river he's on ! '

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE AMERICAN PRESS

IN some respects the American newspaper Press is superior to the Press of England, Germany, or France. It excels the daily papers of those countries in the special training and development of its reporters, and in having cultivated the art of descriptive writing until it rises almost to the excellence of literature. And yet, unlike the special writers on the European Press, the American reporter is seldom if ever a * literary man,' and although many reporters are university graduates, probably a majority of the best reporters on the leading American papers are men with only a limited education ; it is the rare exception when a reporter has written a book or done any serious literary work, and he rather affects a scorn for the closet worker, the man who laboriously polishes and revises, and is proud of his ability to write under pressure, to produce a vivid, graphic, dramatic account of a great event that is so compelling and so well told that even the most indifferent reads it, and reading it recognises the skill and power of the writer,

This talent for descriptive writing is peculiar to the American reporter and is largely acquired. There is little resemblance between the American and English newspaper, practically there is none between the American and Continental journal. The American

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newspaper, whether it is published in New York or a small city, whether it is a great metropolitan daily or a village weekly, is managed on the theory that the things of greatest interest to the largest number of readers are those things happening close at hand — that is to say, in the immediate vicinity. For instance, an acci dent in New York causing the death of three people would be regarded worthy of a far more extended account in the New York newspapers than an accident in San Francisco causing the death of ten people, unless in the latter case there were extraordinary features, when the affair would be exploited at length. American newspaper managers are students of human nature. They know that the great weakness of man kind is curiosity ; that the ordinary man is a great deal more interested in the domestic infelicities of his next- door neighbour than he is about people two miles away whom he does not know even by sight. Putting this principle into practice, the aim of every newspaper con ductor is to gather and present in the most entertaining form, first, the news of the neighbourhood; second, everything relating to men and women who occupy prominent positions and who are known by reputation ; third, anything that is either unique or startling or that from its unusual character shall be of general interest to a large class of readers.

The result is that while the average newspaper is an excellent photograph of the day's doings, like all photographs it cannot discriminate and has little flexi bility ; it accentuates the foreground and only vaguely pictures the background ; its focus is often strained, and its proportion is frequently distorted. In a word, in its desire to chronicle the local news it is too local ; believing that the local gossip is really of more interest

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than greater things outside of the immediate local radius, its vision becomes narrowed, its view is usually provincial and not infrequently parochial.

It is the common remark of visiting foreigners, of Englishmen especially, that they are unable to find any news in an American newspaper, that the pages are filled with things that they cannot understand, and that have not the slightest interest for them. The criticism is quite true, but in a measure it proceeds from igno rance ; and yet it is the same criticism that many Americans make when, travelling in their own country, far removed from their homes they read the newspapers of the place in which they happen to be. Although Boston is less than three hundred miles from New York, the New Yorker transiently in Boston finds a great deal of space devoted — or as he would think, wasted — to events that mean really nothing to him because they are purely local ; and while they are undoubtedly of great interest to the people of Boston, Massachusetts, or New England generally, in which the Boston papers largely circulate, they are not of the slightest importance to the outsider. And the farther afield one goes the more strikingly emphasised is the local point of view. The New Yorker in Boston finds at least one-half of the news in a Boston paper fairly intelligible ; in Chicago, which is a thousand miles away the interest decreases in inverse ratio with the distance ; in San Francisco, which is three thousand miles away, the interest approaches the vanishing point.

This system naturally tends to make unduly prominent the local news, and to exalt the reporter who is the gatherer of local news. Every American newspaper has its staff of leader writers (the leader in America is always called an * editorial '), many of whom are men of great 202

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ability and force of expression, clear thinkers and logical reasoners, with a wide knowledge of politics, history, economics, or whatever else their special subject may be, and the tradition attaching to the 'opinions of the paper,' a tradition derived from England, causes the editorial- writer to be regarded with much respect by reporters ; but, except in few and isolated instances, no American newspaper is bought for its leaders, and no American newspaper could long live that did not first give the news, no matter how brilliant its editorials. The Ameri can reads the news first and the editorials afterwards. To a certain extent he is influenced by a leader, but not nearly to the same extent that an Englishman is. The American boasts that he does his own thinking and forms his own opinions ; and while, of course, this statement must be accepted with a proper allowance, still it is undeniably true that his conclusions, often extremely erroneous, are more affected by the reporter, who presents the facts, than by the leader-writer, whose; argument is an interpretation of the reporter's presen tation.

The American reporter, unlike his English or Con tinental confrere, is a man of importance, and really makes the paper. A successful reporter — and parenthe tically it may be added that all that has been said about the reporter applies to the special correspondent, who is often a reporter detailed as a correspondent, and whose work is usually similar — must combine many qualities. He must be alert, resourceful, of good judg ment, with a keen and almost intuitive perception for the news that will interest the readers of his paper ; he must get the news at least as soon as his rivals, and if he can obtain it before them so much the better — be cause the American editor is very keen on publishing 203

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exclusive news, or, as it is known professionally, ' a scoop,' and is much given to cackling about his * scoops,' and he must be able under the most disadvantageous con ditions to produce a well-written narrative that must not sacrifice description to facts, and yet must be some thing more than a mere bald recital of the facts. The ordinary reporter, of course, is simply a recorder of the everyday things that go to make up the history of a city's twenty-four hours — the accidents, crimes, proceedings of the courts, meetings — but every reporter attempts to put a certain individuality into his work, to describe even an ordinary occurrence in a manner that shall command the attention of the reader. He is given much latitude, and is encouraged to be original, and for this is usually rewarded. On the large papers there are always reporters who are employed especially to write about the ' big things,' which demand a power to visualise above the ordinary. These occurrences are not infrequent. An international yacht race, a great political meeting, a state or national convention, an inauguration, the visit of a foreign prince, the return of a conquering hero, a strike involving a hundred thousand men, the great horse-race of, the year, a long-distance automobile race, or the naval manoeuvres, are the subjects for his facile pen. And as a rule they are amazingly well written. Whether the event has taken place around the corner or a thousand miles away, the reader will be presented with a picture of what took place, he will be able to trace the logical development of the sequence, before him will be placed the scenes and the men, he will hear what they said, and see the manner in which they said it.

If Mr. Chamberlain, for instance, makes a great speech — the announcement of a new fiscal policy, or 204

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a momentous declaration affecting the interests of the Empire — the average English newspaper will contain half a dozen lines of introduction, principally devoted to giving the names of the prominent persons on the platform, the chairman, and the men who moved and seconded the vote of thanks. It there is applause or dissent it will be indicated in the body of the speech in brackets. If Mr. Roosevelt makes a speech, familiar as are Mr. Roosevelt's methods of public speaking, his manner, looks, and dress, the reporters of the papers published in the city in which he speaks, and the correspondents representing large out-of-town papers, will write from a third of a column to a column de scriptive of the scene, the gathering, the oratory, the dress of the speaker, the impression he made on the audience, the applause at particular moments, especially if it reached unusual proportions. In a word, there is an attempt to enter into the psychology both of the speaker and the audience, to see into the mind of the orator, and to share the feelings of his auditors ; to give a living picture rather than merely to reproduce words. It may be asked, of course, whether this is of any particular value, whether the opinion of one man, the reporter, is worth any more than the judgment of any other single individual, who simply translates his own feelings and reproduces the impression made upon him, even if the reporter is of sound judgment, ripe experi ence, perfectly truthful, and without bias. It is not necessary to furnish the answer, as every reader will reach his own conclusion ; but it may be properly sug gested that a picture is always more attractive than a plan, that a perspective relieved by light and shade more correctly represents an object than a plain geo metrical drawing.

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The Pressman has a higher standing and more privileges than his European colleague. He also takes more liberties. If a newspaper thinks it important that its readers should know the opinion of any man occupying a high public position or who is prominent in any walk of life, he simply directs a reporter to interview him, and few public or prominent men object to being interviewed. Occasionally a man finds it inconvenient to answer the questions put to him, and either declines to talk or is evasive ; a few men make it a rule never to be quoted ; but the majority are not unduly reticent, and a reporter never has the slightest hesitation in putting direct and leading questions to public men. One can scarcely conceive English reporters taking up their stations in Downing Street when the Cabinet is sitting and asking the members of the Cabinet as they come out what they have been discussing, but that sight may be witnessed regularly twice a week in Washington after every meeting of the Cabinet. As the members leave the White House they are asked what they talked about for the past two hours. Sometimes, when matters of great im portance have been considered which it is not advisable for the public to know, the ministers are politely evasive and mendaciously diplomatic; at other times they are not averse to taking the public into their confidence, and they give a brief rtsume^ but in that case their names are not used as the authority for the information. Indeed, so well is the status of the reporter recognised that in the White House office there is a room specially set apart for the use of the Press, so placed that every man as he leaves the President's room can be seen and pounced upon and asked to explain the object of his visit. Interviewing has become a fine art in America, and al though it is sometimes abused it serves a useful purpose. 206

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The difference between the news columns of an English and American newspaper is no more radical than between their leader pages. The column leader is seldom seen in an American paper, because few Americans have the patience to read a column of argument. The American buys a newspaper for its news, and he wants to be able to grasp it in the quickest and easiest way possible. That is why the * headline ' is always a prominent feature in all American newspapers. A London newspaper printing an account of a railway accident would probably use this heading in not over large type :

ACCIDENT ON MIDLAND GREAT WESTERN.

SEVERAL PASSENGERS REPORTED KILLED AND INJURED.

The American newspaper describing a similar railway accident would have a 'heading' reading substantially as follows :

THIRTY PEOPLE KILLED.

TRAIN PLUNGES INTO A RIVER IN COLORADO.

MORE THAN A HUNDRED PERSONS SERIOUSLY

INJURED— TWO CARS REMAIN ON THE

TRACK AND CATCH FIRE— A BROKEN AXLE THE

CAUSE OF THE DISASTER.

This is a modest and quiet heading, and would be found in newspapers of a conservative and sober cast of thought, and the type would not be obtrusively large or black. The sensational paper would have a heading half a column long in heavy black type describing * the ghastly scenes ' and ' heroic rescues,-' and pictures of the train plunging from the bridge into the river, ' drawn by our special artist from description telegraphed by 207

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our special correspondent.' But whether the heading is sensational or modest, big or little, the purpose is always to enable the reader to obtain at a glance the salient facts. If he is sufficiently interested to care about the details he will read them ; if a railway accident in Colorado does not appeal to him he turns to the next column. In this way a busy man can read his morning paper as he swallows his cup of coffee or absorb the contents of his evening paper as he rides home on the trolley.

The American 'leader' lacks the ponderosity of the English ' leader,' and does not quite reach the frothy lightness of a premier Paris. It smacks less of the midnight oil, of ripe scholarship ; one feels in stinctively that the writer takes himself less seriously than the English writer ; that he is not impressed with the belief that what he says will be carefully read by foreign ministers and make them pause in their fell designs. The American ' leader ' is short and crisp. Usually it has a point to make, and makes it, sometimes it leaves the barb sticking in its victim. But the day of sensational journalism in America now only survives in Athe smaller places of the Far West. Colonel Diver, the editor of the New York Rowdy Journal^ and Jefferson Brick were possibly true to life when Dickens visited America sixty years ago, but now they are caricatures. The editorial, especially in times of political excitement, is still venomous, abusive, and often grossly unfair; it lampoons or excoriates, it has no mercy, it never considers the feelings of the person attacked, but it does not descend to indecent personalities. Ridicule is the great weapon employed because broad humour rather than delicate wit appeals to the American. A man or a cause that can be made ridiculous can be more 208

THE AMERICAN PRESS

easily destroyed by a neat epigram or a stinging phrase than by'a columbiad 'of solid argument. The American, and especially the American politician, is sensitive and self-conscious and hates to be made ridiculous.

A newspaper to succeed must not be too profound, rather it must be light and entertaining. Of all things, the American hates to be bored by his newspaper ; for a newspaper to be termed heavy or dull is fatal. The better-class newspapers that have traditions to-maintain, and think it is incumbent upon them to instruct as well as to entertain, have wit enough to understand that their instruction must be sugar-coated. A two-column article, let us say, on archaeological discoveries in Greece written by a great archaeologist so much absorbed in his speciality as to have stifled his imagination, who writes only for the cognoscenti^ one would rarely if ever find in an American newspaper, because the editor knows it would interest too limited a circle of readers, and its proper place is one of the serious monthlies or quarterlies, but he would be glad to have a * popular ' article on the same subject written in a ' popular ' vein by a well-known writer. Names count for much. The writer on archaeological discoveries in Greece may have nothing more than a schoolboy's acquaintance with Greek archaeology ; but if his name happens to be promi nently before the public, no matter in what connection, so that it can be properly exploited, the article will be considered much more valuable than a more scholarly and profound article written by an unknown or,. at least, less well-known man.

The enterprise — using that word in its proper meaning

— of the American Press is proverbial and wonderful.

No expense is too great when news of importance is to

be procured; no effort too arduous to terrify the re-

209 p

AMERICA AT HOME

porter. If an African explorer is lost, an American reporter will essay to find him ; if an Arctic discoverer needs succour, an American reporter will go to the rescue, and an American newspaper will pay the expenses. In time of disaster or danger, when a tidal wave engulfs a city or plague rages, wherever there is death or calamity, the reporter fearlessly goes, knowing the risks he incurs, but, like the soldier, regarding them as all part of the day's work and to be met as they come because his duty demands that his paper shall have the news. In a hundred other ways legitimate enterprise is shown.

One of the striking features of the American Press is the Sunday paper. Every morning newspaper issues a Sunday edition, which has from sixteen to fifty or more pages. A few of these pages are given up to the tele graphic and local news, but the bulk of the paper is made of special articles, - stories, fashions and pictures, the latter especially, as most of the Sunday papers are simply an excuse to print pictures of men and women, of their jewels or their houses or horses, of automobiles or yachts — of anything, in fact, that can be photographed or drawn ; and many papers include a ' comic supple ment ' in colours, which originally was intended solely for the amusement of the children, but is now read with even more zest by their parents. That is one of the secrets of the Sunday paper's success. It has something in it for every member of the family. The man reads it for the news, the woman for the fashions or its society gossip, the young girl for the stories, the boys for the puzzles, even the very small child can be interested in the 'funny,' pictures. As everybody has leisure on Sunday, and most Americans cultivate the reading of newspapers to the exclusion of other forms of reading, the Sunday 210

THE AMERICAN PRESS

newspaper enjoys a larger circulation than the daily : and selling for twopence-halfpenny as against the daily selling for a halfpenny or a penny, it is the most profitable issue of the week, besides being the best day for the advertiser, who is willing to pay higher rates as he is assured of a larger circulation and knows that his announcements will be more carefully read.

There are more newspapers and periodicals of all sorts — weeklies, semi-weeklies, tri-weeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies — published in the United States than in any other country in the world. The total number of newspapers and other periodicals is 24,000, of which? about 2,400 are dailies and 16,000 weeklies. According to the census returns of 1900, newspaper printing and publishing is one of the country's great activities. The figures for that year, the latest avail able, placed the capital invested in the business at $293,000,000 (say ^58,600,000), which gave employ ment to 163,000 persons, whose wages for that year were ^17,000,000. 'Very nearly half of the world's 50,000 newspapers and periodicals are published in the United States,' says a recent American writer, and he adds : ' Ours — dailies, weeklies, and monthlies — have a larger individual circulation than Europe's. New York has more publications of all sorts than has London. Americans read more than do any other people.' That the American is a more voracious newspaper reader than the European is not, I believe, open to question, due to the general high level of intelligence, and because newspaper reading in the United States has become a fixed habit. In America it must be a very small community that does not boast its weekly news paper ; and whenever a new settlement is opened up, in the mining camps of the West or the boom towns of the

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South, the saloon, the church, and the newspaper are the triune evidences of civilisation, progress, and light. Every American reads his newspaper, and many read nothing else except the popular magazines, which again, if too frequent comparison is not invidious, are superior to the English magazines that cater to the same class of readers. The American ' ten cent ' magazine, which corresponds in price to the sixpenny publication of England, contains stories by the best authors of the day and other entertaining and instructive articles, and the illustrations are of a high order. The American magazine of this price is usually sold at wholesale at a fraction over threepence-halfpenny a copy, which is below the actual cost of production ; but the difference is made up out of the advertising, which commands high figures. The Americans are the greatest and most ingenious advertisers in the world, and it is the advertiser who makes it possible for the publisher to issue a high-class magazine at a low price. Perhaps it is needless to add that neither publisher nor advertiser is a philanthropist and is not controlled by altruism. The advertiser uses the pages of the magazine because they bring him profitable business and the publisher finds his profits to be equally large. The most expensive magazines, those selling for a shilling or more, appeal to a more intellectual and cultivated class and are equally profitable to their owners. It is some what curious that while America has more and better magazines of the character I have described than any other country, the number of serious weeklies is extremely limited, and so are the ' heavy ' monthlies.

It has often been asserted that the American news paper, despite its large circulation, wields very little real influence because, as Mr. Edward Bok, the editor of the 212

THE AMERICAN PRESS

Ladies' Home Journal^ one of the most successful pub lications of its kind in the world, recently wrote, the crime of the modern newspaper is ' the forgetfulness of the moral responsibility that should be felt for whatever it publishes ' ; in other words, because no one takes the newspaper seriously and on general principles is inclined to disbelieve much that it publishes unless there is unim peachable evidence to the contrary. Nor is this charge without foundation. The American newspaper is much given to exaggeration, to inaccuracy, to the distortion of news to square with its politics or principles, or lack of principles. I am dealing now, of course, with the respect able Press. The so-called ' Yellow Press ' is as vile, infamous, and untruthful as the worst gutter-rag of the Boulevards, the only difference being the limitations of decency hedging Anglo-Saxon convention and the wide latitude permitted by Latin morality. Martin Chuzzlewit leaning over the rail of the Screw tied up at the dock in New York was greeted with cries of the newsboys, selling the Sewer, with ' the Sewer's exposure of the Wall Street gang, and the Sewer's exposure of the Washington gang, and the Sewer's exclusive account of a flagrant act of dis honesty committed by the Secretary of State when he was eight years old, now communicated at great expense by his own nurse,' and the Martin Chuzzlewits of to-day may buy the antitype of the Sewer on the streets of New York; only to-day's Sewer, while no less injurious to public morals, is more ingenious in its malicious mendacity and more destructive in corrupting the public taste. To the ' Yellow ' journal nothing is sacred so long as it can be turned into a sensation sufficiently alluring to filch the coppers from the pocket of the ignorant ; there is no lie so preposterous that it will not be told, no truth so patent that it will be printed, if it will help an opposing cause ; 213

AMERICA AT HOME

no woman's fame is safe, no man's reputation secure; even the grave is no haven of refuge from the * enter prise ' of c Yellow ' journalism. It always steals the livery of heaven to serve its own unrighteousness. It prates much of morality, of honesty, of civic virtue, and its proprietors are notorious for their dissolute lives and the flouting of their vices in the face of decent society. It affects great concern for the welfare of the poor, and champions the cause of the masses against the encroach ments of plutocratic greed, shouting on every occasion its love for all mankind and its patriotism, and at the same time it eagerly lends itself to schemes for private gain or the designs of the enemies of its country if they shall lead to pecuniary or social advancement. ' Of all the forces that tend for evil in a great city like New York,' President Roosevelt scathingly yet truthfully wrote when he was police commissioner of that city, ' probably none are so potent as the sensational papers. Until one has had experience with them it is difficult to realise the reckless indifference to truth or decency displayed by papers such as the two that have the largest circulation in New York City. Scandal forms the breath of the nostrils of such papers, and they are quite as ready to create as to describe it. To sustain law and order is humdrum, and does not readily lend itself to flaunting woodcuts; but if the editor will stoop, and make his subordinate stoop, to raking the gutters of human depravity, to upholding the wrong-doer, and furiously assailing what is upright and honest, he can make money, just as other types of pander make it.'

But dismissing the * Yellow ' Press, which only the dis solute and the ignorant read, without being hypercritical, captious, or unjust one can bring the charge against the respectable Press of being less careful and less weighted 214

THE AMERICAN PRESS

by its responsibilities than the Press of a highly civilised country ought to be. Mr. Bok, in the article I have already referred to, cites several instances of this 'for- getfulness of moral responsibility,' and he tells what happened, not in the office of a ' Yellow ' paper, but in the editorial room of what is generally accepted as a reputable newspaper.

A report came over the cable that an English manu facturing concern had placed an order ' for five thousand tons of steel with the English representative of the United States Steel Corporation. The message went to the managing editor. Steel stock was low that day. The paper had ' interests.'

' Work this up, Miller,' said the editor, and with the order went a look.

I The " old man " tells me to work this up/ said the man to the financial editor of the paper. ' How far would you go ? '

{ As far as your imagination will carry you, I should say,' was the reply.

When the story appeared the tonnage of the order had surprisingly changed, and when the correspondent in London read his dispatch in the paper a week later he could scarcely believe his eyes.

Here are two instances cited by Mr. Bok of political 1 forgetfulness of moral responsibility ' in dealing with friend and foe.

A reporter on a New York newspaper of standing was sent out by his editor to ' cover ' a Bryan meeting during the campaign of 1900. He brought back a report that after Mr. Bryan had been speaking five minutes a number of people walked out.

I 1 would change that,' said the editor, as he looked over the report, and taking a pencil he scratched out

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1 a number of people/ and substituted for it * nearly half the audience.'

1 But there wasn't a hundred,' said the reporter.

* Send this up,' said the editor to the ' copy ' boy, and the report went to the composing-room.

' What did you do ? ' I asked the reporter.

' Do ? I'd be hanged if I would stand for that sort of thing, and I gave up my job then and there.'

'I attended in 1900 the Philadelphia Republican Convention that nominated McKinley for President, and named Roosevelt for Vice-President. I was sur prised at the lack of enthusiasm. I asked the "head- writer " on a leading newspaper how it compared with other conventions.

' " Stupidest convention I ever attended. You see, the nominations were cut-and-dried. The expected happened. That accounts for the lack of 'go.'" This was the principal editor of one of the best-known news papers in the country, and he was to " do " the story himself.

' The next day I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read of the " unprecedented enthusiasm " which made this convention " eclipse all previous conventions in spontaneity of outbursts of applause." The writer had seen many conventions, but this " far overshadowed all in the tumult of enthusiasm, which lasted fifteen minutes." But as I had been there I knew that it had lasted just three minutes.

'I saw the editor the next day. "Did you write that ? " I asked.

'"Yes. Why?"

1 " But I thought you told me "

( " Oh, well," he answered, smiling, "it would never 216

THE AMERICAN PRESS

do to say that. Of course, the account was somewhat embellished. But we have to 'whoop it up' for the party, you know." '

Despite all its faults, the American newspaper Press has been a great civilising and educational instrument, and has tended to elevate rather than lower the moral tone. In an essay written by the late Charles Dudley Warner several years ago he remarked that the American newspaper voiced the moral sentiment of its particular community, and no matter how objectionable the char acter of the paper might be it was always a trifle better than the people upon whose patronage it relied for its support.

Nobody, I think, will challenge this assertion. Even the worst paper is better than its readers, and is restrained by the sobering influence of power; the majority of newspapers strive to foster a healthy spirit of public and private morality, because the newspapers, with few exceptions, are owned by respectable men, by men of standing in their respective communities, and the editor is always a personage and usually pro minent in affairs, who to maintain his self-respect must keep the moral tone of his paper at least equal to the moral level of his friends and associates. The American newspaper has performed its share in bringing civilisation to the edge of the wilderness. The pioneer, the ad venturer, the miner, the trapper — every man who has left the softer life of the settled cities behind him and gone into the unknown, fraught with all its perils and hardships, to build up new cities, has felt himself not quite so entirely divorced from his old life when the printing press has followed him, and he has been able to keep in touch in a measure with the great world lying

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AMERICA AT HOME

far outside his own clearing when by the light of a flaring pine torch or the fitful glimmer of an oil lamp he has read of progress and new discovery, which has heartened him to keep up the struggle, often severe and discouraging enough to dispirit the most resolute.

218

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WHAT UNCLE SAM THINKS OF HIMSELF AND ALL THE REST OF THE WORLD

UNCLE SAM is mightily well pleased with himself, and he has every reason to be. When he looks around and sees what his children have done, when he watches his eighty millions at work and at play on a territory as large as all Europe, linking hands with two oceans, delving in the earth for coal in the East or gold in the West, bringing to the surface iron and copper, toiling with ceaseless energy and intelligence in the factories that fabricate everything that man needs for his use or pleasure, raising on their broad farms wheat and corn sufficient not only to feed themselves, but also the millions in Europe less fortunate; when he sees all these substantial evidences of prosperity, when he knows the enterprise and genius of his children and the spirit that animates them, is it any wonder that he should think well of himself and feel content with all that they have done in the brief life-history of the nation ?

The American believes in himself. That alone carries him far, The American believes in his destiny. That gives him confidence to face the future. The' future for him is always one of promise. There are nations who live on their past, who long that their days of greatness might return, and who look to the future 219

AMERICA AT HOME

with trembling. No such qualms agitate the American. He is as a youth at school who has won all the prizes, who at college has carried off the honours. Shall life terrify such a one ? He looks upon it as waiting for him to conquer it, to win in a larger arena greater and more substantial prizes. To the American everything is before him. He is as convinced that his people are the chosen people, his race the world's greatest race, as he is that nature has endowed his vast continent ! with more lavish generosity than that of any other land. Everything points to the fulfilment of his destiny — and destiny has declared that he shall march on ever triumphant.

We talk of the American people, but there is no such thing. There is an amalgamation and conglomera tion of races living in America, and this admixture, this confusion of Saxon and Celt and Latin and Teuton, has produced a new type that appropriately has its habitat in a new environment with new social and political institutions. From this melting-pot of the races has come forth a new race — a race of * hustlers,' who are so much impressed by all that they have done that they must proclaim it to all the world, who are given not a little to boasting and not a little to exaggeration, and yet who have done things so wonderful that neither boast nor exaggeration can diminish the wonder of their accomplishments, whose self-reliance and courage and tenacity of purpose tell the history of the past and give guarantee of the future.

Coupled with the American's self-satisfaction is a slight feeling of mingled pity and contempt for the ' foreigner' — foreigner himself although the American may have been only a generation or two back. But much of the spirit and strength of America comes from the power

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UNCLE SAM AND THE WORLD

to absorb the foreigner, to make him quickly become an American in thought and manner and feeling. The American, therefore, whether American by birth or an American by adoption, is imbued with the patriotic belief that his country and his people are really superior to Europe and Europeans, and he has a sincere regret that the universal scheme of things is not so arranged that a little of his good fortune can be shared by others. He may go to Europe and enjoy all that Europe offers him for his amusement or intellectual development, he may appreciate the art and science and literature of Europe, and yet he returns more fully convinced than ever that the future of the world lies in the keeping of America. This is patriotism, a very wonderful and sublime thing > a thing not be sneered at. It means much.

Not long ago I was at the White House waiting to see the President. Three other men were in the President's ante-room also waiting to see the President. I judged from their conversation that they were trying to secure a certain appointment. They were probably men of some substance, men of more than ordinary shrewdness, but not of extraordinary cultivation or learn ing. Suddenly, one of the men, apropos of nothing, remarked to his companion, in a detached and almost impersonal tone : ' By gad, we're a great people.' ' The greatest on earth,' was the answer, made dispassionately, and as if the remark were so obvious that it scarcely called for comment. Would one hear three Englishmen under similiar circumstances talking in this strain ? Would they think it ? But the American not only thinks it but believes it. Does not belief in a nation's greatness inspire greatness ?

The American tries no more earnestly to impress on 221

AMERICA AT HOME

the foreigner the glories of his country at large than he seeks to make his fellow countryman, who comes for the first time to his State, concede its charms. Deep is the love of the American for his native State or the State to which he owes allegiance by adoption, and he quickly and hotly resents any attempt to detract from its fair fame. He would have every one praise the city of his residence ; and although he may be indifferent as to its government or may know that it is corrupt and inefficient, his civic pride is so great that in talking to the stranger he forgets those things, and only dilates upon its beauties and its perfections.

What always impresses the foreigner is the spon- taneousness and genuineness of the American and his desire to be on friendly terms with his fellow man. This frankness finds its expression when two Americans strike up a casual acquaintance. Americans have none of that reserve that makes the Englishman so un approachable until the barrier with which he surrounds himself has been properly broken down by the formality of an introduction. An American travelling in a railway train opens a conversation with a stranger in the smoking compartment, offers him the contents of his cigar case or his flask, talks politics or stocks, shakes hands with him at parting, and says, ' I'm pleased to have met you and hope we shall meet again ; when next you come to my city let me know and we'll lunch at the club,' exchanges cards, and really means all that he says.

As a nation the Americans are full of nervous energy ; to them the greatest disgrace is to loaf and the one thing to command admiration is to ' hustle ' ; their emotions are quickly reached and easily expend themselves, and all their customs are affected by the national temperament, so that to the foreigner they seem to be wanting in

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UNCLE SAM AND THE WORLD

repose, No people appreciate their defects and short comings more than do the Americans themselves, and the newspapers are continually pointing out the necessity for greater national self-restraint. Typical of what one may read in many prominent journals is this from one of the best-known newspapers of the West :

1 Many American people will rush to the door to see the fire-engine go by ; they will stick their heads out of the window at the sound of a street band ; they will idly watch a negro engaged in digging a post-hole or opening a sewer ; they will crowd pell-mell around a man throwing a fit in a public place. If a guard-line is stretched out or a sign-post put to warn passers-by off the grass, they will gather in multitudes to gaze upon it, chatter about or contemplate in silence these ordinary phenomena. If a duke is available to sight he is mobbed by a rude manifestation of curiosity, and whenever the paranoiac Carrie Nation gets on a rampage and runs amuck in the White House and United States Senate, there are hundreds of morbid sightseers ready to egg her on to the ultimate limit of extravagant spectacularity.

'Every succeeding year finds us in a worse state of hysteria, of excitability, and frenzied and shatterpated curiosity. You may reckon with some degree of certainty on what one lone American will do at any given junction of affairs. He behaves rather meekly in strange surroundings. If his own house is afire there is not much likelihood of his throwing out the mirror and carefully carrying out the pillow. He will never run through a crowded street yelling at the top of his voice to overtake a procession of minstrels or to see a dog-fight. Even when in the bosom of his family, when reading his daily paper, he will reprobate sensational 223

AMERICA AT HOME

news and " Yellow " journalism. But let him join a crowd of his fellows, and there is no telling what he will or will not do. He might lynch a man, mob a duke, vote the Populist ticket, smash saloons, follow some Bacchante of madness to the last extremity, and then go home and regret his crime, his foolishness, and disgrace.'

Yet this feverish, excitable, burning-the-candle-at-both- ends kind of life is supposed not to be without its merits, and finds its defenders among the Press. There died recently in Denver a man of some prominence locally, and commenting upon his death, one of the Denver papers said :

'Tom Maloney was one of the great American spenders — the men who spend money, mind, physical force, vitality, and sleep, with equal and unstinted lavishness. They know no place but the front ranks. They can't breathe anywhere else. They seem to have fun while they fight for life. To live they must do what would kill ordinary men. To be contented they must waste the elements of happiness. Their idea of excellence is magnificence. Their favourite virtue is strength. Their dearest comfort is power. Their idea of good cheer is to win. Their thought of comfort is to conquer. Effort, vitality, and dollars are the same to them — made to spend. Tom Maloney died young. But he lived while he lived, and he did not live in vain ; nor do the American spenders live in vain. They are an essential American element, as necessary in our national life as the men who grew strong, and ate and drank and made merry and lusted in their valour, and practised feats of arms, in the old days, only to fall in the front ranks of the charge, while the thin, pale, cold- eyed general on the hill reaped the victory.'

That the American as a rule lives his life, crowding 224

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into it all that it can hold, may be conceded, and it is the ambition of most Americans to live this life. The average American would rather wear out than rust out ; his hope is to be able to live well and to spend freely ; to work and to make money, and money is merely a means of greater enjoyment and higher comforts. As a people the Americans are extravagant, but not im provident. They have none of the niggardly thrift of the French ; they scrutinise their expenditures less closely than do the English ; their unit of calculation is the dollar rather than the shilling, and that in itself broadens the basis of calculation; but their savings- banks deposits, their life-insurance policies, and their individual homes all testify eloquently to their power of saving and a careful provision for old age. But, speaking broadly, no American will haggle over coppers like the French peasant, or screw and pare and stint himself little luxuries like the bourgeoisie of France. The shopkeeper's wife is never his cashier unless his earnings are so slender that the few dollars thus saved are an object ; boys and girls are not put to work at an early age unless impelled by dire necessity. Men and women do not work early and late simply to add a few dollars every year to their pitiful savings, denying themselves in the meantime every pleasure and making life simply a monotonous treadmill from which the only escape is the grave. They will work hard, very hard, with the hope of ample reward, and to obtain some of this reward even before they quite attain the summit of their ambitions. The more money an American earns, the more he spends, is a common remark, and, generally speaking, it is true. With the American it is constitutional not to be satisfied with the same things later in life that met his requirements when he was 225 Q

AMERICA AT HOME

younger. A clerk working on a salary looks forward to having that salary progressively advanced, and with each succeeding advance, instead of continuing his expendi tures on the same scale as before and saving the increase, he lives up to his new income.

It is no reproach to the American to be told that he spends money freely, extravagantly even. He admits it, and justifies it on the ground that money simply exists to be spent, that the desire to have money so as to spend it rationally incites him to renewed efforts. He boasts that no man need remain poor if he has energy, industry, and even ordinary ability. It is this impulse to possess some of the comforts and luxuries of life that keep men keyed up to the top notch. Of course one has reference to that class which is dependent upon its own efforts for a living, not to the persons of inherited wealth or the very rich in business or the professions. Their incomes are so large they can use them as they see fit.

The Americans have often been told by their foreign critics that their pace is too fast to last, and that they are wearing themselves out by their feverish and unnecessary activity and their too close application to money-getting ; that the average duration of life is shorter in America than in Europe ; that they are a nation of dyspeptics with wire-drawn nerves. Half-truths are proverbially the most difficult lies to combat, and it is almost impos sible to answer national generalities ; besides, they are true or false according only to the point of view and not from any other criterion. To the Oriental, English activity is not only phenomenal, but idiotic. Why should sane men subject themselves to intense bodily fatigue by chasing a small ball over a field? No sane Oriental would do any such foolish thing, consequently the 226

UNCLE SAM AND THE WORLD

English are not sane. Now from the American point of view if a thing were to be done it were well that it should be done ' right away ' instead of at some indefinite time. Americans are always in a hurry, but are they any the worse for it ? Unquestionably they are less phlegmatic than Englishmen and scarcely less volatile than French men, but the Englishman who has lived long in America loses some of his phlegm and catches the swing of his surroundings.

Uncle Sam has heard for years that he is dyspeptic and nervous, but it is difficult to convince the old gentle man that his constitution is really shattered. He compares his sons with those of Europe, he sees how well they withstand fatigue, with what zest they enter into their sports and the avidity with which they grapple their work, and a benign smile is his answer to his critics. He has no means of knowing whether his children are really shorter lived than those of Europe, but he thinks not. Doctors have often told him that work never yet killed anybody ; that when men have good food and healthy surroundings they can work up to the limit with body and brain ; that anxiety and insuffi cient nutrition slay their thousands while properly directed labour kills not even its tens. Uncle Sam and the doctors must settle that between themselves. Uncle Sam, if his opinion is privately asked, will tell you he believes that it might be a good thing if Europe had some of his superfluous energy and worked with as much vim as he does ; but then Uncle Sam is an opinionated old gentleman, and it is difficult to make an old man set in his ways think they can be changed to advantage.

Of one thing Uncle Sam is quite convinced, and no amount of argument would ever alter his conviction. He knows that he has done well, he feels that he owes 227

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his success to the pace he set at the beginning, and he

intends to keep that pace up so long as he retains his

vigour and will-power. The rest of the world may dawdle

and waste in play the time it should devote to work, but

| not he. Uncle Sam has a big family, but it is not yet big

j enough for him. Uncle Sam has a big cash-box, but it

is not so large as he would like to have it. Uncle Sam's

< ambitions are boundless. He wants to be the biggest

\thing in all creation, and he knows he will be eventually.

*Work, work, work, says Uncle Sam.

And now let us bid adieu to Uncle Sam. I promised the reader when we set out on our travels that it would not be time wasted or a journey without interest ; that we should wander far and see many curious and fascinat ing things, a people at work as well as at play, a nation in the making. I hope that the reader has not been disappointed.

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INDEX

America, I ; English ignorance of, 2 ; humour of, 2 ; English attitude toward, 3 ; harm caused by, 3 ; progress in, 4 ; conservatism of, 5 ; past and future, 4 ; unhampered by tradition, 4 ; political system, 6 ; paradise of woman,

79

American girl, 70

Americans, the, an emotional people, 6 ; a mixed race, 6 ; effect of political institutions, 6; resentment of social in feriority, 79 ; gallantry toward women, 80 ; naturally men of business, 101 ; boldness of, 101 ; why they have been successful, 102; work hard, H2; a moral people, 136; religion of, 136 ; amusements of, 144 ; fond of a crowd, 145 ; believe in themselves, 219; their inspiration, 221 ; local attachment of, 222 ; spontaneousness and genuine ness, of, 222 ; spend money freely, 225 ; always in a hurry, 226; their ambition boundless, 228

American type, the, 22O

Annapolis, 121

Appointments, power of the President over, 14 ; used as bribes, 1 6

Aristocracy, 42 ; of money, 49

Army and navy not fashionable,

47 Atlantic City, 172

Bar Harbour, 166

Baseball, 145

Board schools (see also Public

Schools), 116 Bosses, 27 Bryan, Mr., 61

Cabinet, the, 19 ; how a President rids himself of an obnoxious member, 20 ; members always subject to the President's control, 21 ; communication between Cabi net and Congress, 22 ; easily accessible, 90

Campaign expenses, 33

Capital and labour, 126

Certain cities German rather than American, 67

Class distinctions, 41

Climate, 81

Co-education, 74

Colour line, 184

Congress, 10, II, 12, 96; members of, honest, 32 ; how they are influenced, 32 ; party control of members, 37 ; oratory of, 93 ; humour of, 94 ; salary of members, 23

Constitution, essence of, 1 1

Decollett, 132

229

INDEX

Decoration Day, 153 Dismissing a Cabinet Minister,

20

Divorce. See Marriage and

Divorce Drinking, 135

East and West, 55

Easterner, the, narrow and self- centred, 64

Education, 115; colleges for young women, 74 ; American system, 117 ; public schools, 116

Electoral college, 23

Energy of Americans, 226

England and America, alike and unlike, 3

English ignorance of America, 2, 64 ; attitude toward, 2

Extravagance, 225

Fish, Mrs. Stuyvesant, her

comments on society, 53 Flats, 138 Flowers, American fondness for,

'53

Foreign population, political

influence of, 66 Foreigner, the, what the

American thinks of him, 221 Fortunes, how made, 104 Fourth of July, 154

German, the, 67

Girl, American, 70 ; precocity of, 73 ; influence of college education upon, 74 ; her in tercourse with young men, 77 ; amusements in summer and winter, 80 ; taste in dress, 81 ; as a wife and mother, 82

Gould family, the, 107

Government, system of, firmly established, 8 ; three branches of, II

Gregariousness of the American,

H5 Growth of the West, 59

Hanna, Senator, 127

House of Representatives, 24, 92

Humour, 94, 180.

Illiterates, 119

Institutions, no finality in 7 ;

foundationed in the faith of

the people, 8 Irish, the, 68

Labour, 121, 124, 126

— unions, 125 Lakewood, 160 Leisure class, 44 Life, freedom of, 72

McKinley, President, 61 Marriage and divorce, 133 Military academy, 121 Millionaires, 107, 109, no Money, love of, 1 1 1 Moneyed aristocracy, 44 Music, 157

Naval academy, 121 Negro, the, 184 Newport, 160 Newspapers, 200

Patronage, political, use of, 16 Party discipline, 37 Peasantry, 57 Platt, senator, 38 Political patronage, 16

— system, compared with Eng lish, 17 ; the convention, 30

Politics, a profession, 26 ; why it interests so many people, 26 ; avoided by young men of wealth, 45

President, functions and duties of, I ; compared with king and premier, 18 ; power over

230

INDEX

Cabinet, 19 ; how elected, 22 ;

how he transacts business, 87 ;

restrictions imposed upon, 88 Press. See Newspapers Primary, the, 28 Public schools, 116; democracy

of, 116 Puritan, the, 43

Racial divisions, 124

Religion, 136

Rents, 139

Representatives. See House of Representatives

Republican institutions, sim plicity of, 84

Rich, the, a separate class, 47 ; their amusements, 159

Rockefeller, John D., 108

Saratoga, 167 Schoolboys, 1 20 Schools, mixed, 74

— public. See Public Schools

— board. See Board Schools Senate, the, 13, 15, 24 Senators, election of, 24 Servants, 138

Shopping, 142

Smoking, 135

Snobbishness of the rich, 162

Social customs, difference in, 129 ; an Englishman's experi ence, 130

Social divisions, 47

— problems, 7 Society, 49, 132

Sports and pastimes, 145

States, the, 10

States legislature, 28

Success, in

Suffrage, 10

Sunday, how observed, 137

Tammany Hall, 40

Thanksgiving Day, 156

Theatre, 157

Trade, how it is regarded, 103

Traditions, 5

Tramways, 141

United States. See America Universities, 118

Vanderbilt family, the, 107 Vice-president, the, 23

Wages, 122

War, how the West regards it,

62

Washington, city of, 84 Wealth, 104, ill West, the, conditions in, 55 ;

growth and development of,

59 ; spirit of, 63 ; influence of

immigration on, 66 West Point, 121 White House, the, 85 Wit. See Humour Woman, American. (See also

Girl, American) ; must not

mix in politics, 83 Working man, the, his political

power, 123

231

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