Appearances: Being Notes of Travel

II

A CONTINENT OF PIONEERS

The American, I said, in the previous letter, is the average Western man. It should be added, he is the average man in the guise of pioneer. Much that surprises or shocks Europeans in the American character is to be explained, I believe, by this fact. Among pioneers the individual is everything and the society nothing. Every man relies on himself and on his personal relations. He is a friend, and an enemy; he is never a citizen. Justice, order, respect for law, honesty even and honour are to him mere abstract names; what is real is intelligence and force, the service done or the injury inflicted, the direct emotional reaction to persons and deeds. And still, as it seems to the foreign observer, even in the long-settled east, still more in the west, this attitude prevails. To the American politician or business man, that a thing is right or wrong, legal or illegal, seems a pale and irrelevant consideration. The real question is, will it pay? will it please Theophilus P. Polk or vex Harriman Q. Kunz? If it is illegal, will it be detected? If detected, will it be prosecuted? What are our resources for evading or defeating the law? And all this with good temper and good conscience. What stands in the way, says the pioneer, must be swept out of it; no matter whether it be the moral or the civil law, a public authority or a rival in business. "The strong business man" has no use for scruples. Public or social considerations do not appeal to him. Or if they do present themselves, he satisfies himself with the belief that, from activities so strenuous and remarkable as his, Good must result to the community. If he break the law, that is the fault of the law, for being stupid and obstructive; if he break individuals, that is their fault for being weak. Vae victis! Never has that principle, or rather instinct, ruled more paramount than it does in America.

To say this, is to say that American society is the most individualistic in the modern world. This follows naturally from the whole situation of the country. The pioneer has no object save to get rich; the government of pioneers has no object save to develop the country quickly. To this object everything is sacrificed, including the interests of future generations. All new countries have taken the most obvious and easy course. They have given away for nothing, or for a song, the whole of their natural resources to anybody who will undertake to exploit them. And those who have appropriated this wealth have judged it to be theirs by a kind of natural right. "These farms, mines, forests, oilsprings – of course they are ours. Did not we discover them? Did not we squat upon them? Have we not 'mixed our labour with them'?" If pressed as to the claims of later comers they would probably reply that there remains "as much and as good" for others. And this of course is true for a time; but for a very short time, even when it is a continent that is being divided up. Practically the whole territory of the United States is now in private ownership. Still, the owners have made such good use of their opportunities that they have created innumerable opportunities for non-owners. Artisans get good wages; lawyers make fortunes; stock and share holders get high dividends. Every one feels that he is nourishing, and flourishing by his own efforts. He has no need to combine with his fellows; or, if he does combine, is ready to desert them in a moment when he sees his own individual chance.

But this is only a phase; and inevitably, by the logic of events, there supervenes upon it another on which, it would appear, America is just now entering. With all her natural resources distributed among individuals or corporations, and with the tide of immigration unchecked, she begins to feel the first stress of the situation of which the tension in Europe has already become almost intolerable. It is the situation which cannot fail to result from the system of private property and inheritance established throughout the Western world. Opportunities diminish, classes segregate. There arises a caste of wage-earners never to be anything but wage-earners; a caste of property-owners, handing on their property to their descendants; and substantially, after all deductions have been made for exaggeration and simplification, a division of society into capitalists and proletarians. American society is beginning to crystallise out into the forms of European society. For, once more, America is nothing new; she is a repetition of the old on a larger scale. And, curiously, she is less "new" than the other new countries. Australia and New Zealand for years past have been trying experiments in social policy; they are determined to do what they can to prevent the recurrence there of the European situation. But in America, there is no sign of such tendencies. The political and social philosophy of the United States is still that of the early English individualists. And, no doubt, there are adequate causes, if not good reasons for this. The immense wealth and size of the country, the huge agricultural population, the proportionally smaller aggregation in cities has maintained in the mass of the people what I have called the "pioneer" attitude. Opportunity has been, and still is, more open than in any other country; and, in consequence, there has hardly emerged a definite "working class" with a class consciousness. This, however, is a condition that cannot be expected to continue. America will develop on the lines of Europe, because she has European institutions; and "labour" will assert itself more and more as an independent factor in politics.

Whether it will assert itself successfully is another matter. At present, as is notorious, American politics are controlled by wealth, more completely, perhaps, than those of any other country, even of England. The "corporations" make it a main part of their business to capture Congress, the Legislatures, the Courts and the city governments; and they are eminently successful. The smallest country town has its "boss," in the employ of the Railway; the Public Service Corporations control the cities; and the protected interests dominate the Senate. Business governs America; and business does not include labour. In no civilised country except Japan is labour-legislation so undeveloped as in the States; in none is capital so uncontrolled; in none is justice so openly prostituted to wealth. America is the paradise of plutocracy; for the rich there enjoy not only a real power but a social prestige such as can hardly have been accorded to them even in the worst days of the Roman Empire. Great fortunes and their owners are regarded with a respect as naïf and as intense as has ever been conceded to birth in Europe. No American youth of ambition, I am told, leaves college with any less or greater purpose in his heart than that of emulating Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller. And, on the other hand, it must be conceded, rich men feel an obligation to dispose of their wealth for public purposes, to a degree quite unknown in Europe. By these lavish gifts the people are dazzled. They feel that the millionaire has paid his ransom; and are ready to forgive irregularities in the process of acquiring wealth when they are atoned for by such splendid penance. Thus the rich man in America comes to assume the position of a kind of popular dictator. He is admired on account of his prowess and forgiven on account of his beneficence. And, since every one feels that one day he may have the chance of imitating him, no one judges him too severely. He is regarded not as the "exploiter," the man grown fat on the labour of others. Rather he is the type, the genius of the American people; and they point to him with pride as "one of our strong men," "one of our conservative men of business."

Individualism, then, is stronger and deeper rooted in America than elsewhere. And, it must be added, socialism is weaker. It is an imported article, and it does not thrive on the new soil. The formulæ of Marx are even less congenial to the American than to the English mind; and American conditions have not yet given rise to a native socialism, based on local conditions and adapted to local habits of thought. Such a native socialism, I believe, is bound to come before long, perhaps is arising even now. But I would not hazard the assertion that it is likely to prevail. America, it would seem, stands at the parting of the ways. Either she may develop on democratic lines; and Democracy, as I think, demonstrably implies some kind of socialism. Or she may fossilise in the form of her present Plutocracy, and realise that new feudalism of industry which was dreamt of by Saint-Simon, by Comte, and by Carlyle. It would be a strange consummation, but stranger things have happened; and it seems more probable that this should happen in America than that it should happen in any European country. It is an error to think of America as democratic; her Democracy is all on the surface. But in Europe, Democracy is penetrating deeper and deeper. And, in particular, there can be little doubt that England is now more democratic than the United States.

III

NIAGARA

I shall not describe Niagara; instead I shall repeat a conversation.

After a day spent in visiting the falls and the rapids, I was sitting to-night on a bench on the river bank. The racing water-ridges glimmered faintly in the dusk and the roar of the falls droned in unwavering monotony. I fell, I think, into a kind of stupor; anyhow, I cannot remember when it was that some one took a seat beside me, and began to talk. I seemed to wake and feel him speaking; and the first remark I definitely heard was this: "All America is Niagara." "All America is Niagara," the voice repeated – I could see no face. "Force without direction, noise without significance, speed without accomplishment. All day and all night the water rushes and roars. I sit and listen; and it does nothing. It is Nature; and Nature has no significance. It is we poets who create significance, and for that reason Nature hates us. She is afraid of us, for she knows that we condemn her. We have standards before which she shrinks abashed. But she has her revenge; for poets are incarnate. She owns our bodies; and she hurls us down Niagara with the rest, with the others that she loves, and that love her, the virile big-jawed men, trampling and trampled, hustling and hustled, working and asking no questions, falling as water and dispersing as spray. Nature is force, loves force, wills force alone. She hates the intellect, she hates the soul, she hates the spirit. Nietszche understood her aright, Nietszche the arch-traitor, who spied on the enemy, learned her secrets, and then went over to her side. Force rules the world."

I must have said something banal about progress, for the voice broke out:

"There is no progress! It is always the same river! New waves succeed for ever, but always in the old forms. History tells, from beginning to end, the same tale – the victory of the strong over the sensitive, of the active over the reflective, of intelligence over intellect. Rome conquered Greece, the Germans the Italians, the English the French, and now, the Americans the world! What matters the form of the struggle, whether it be in arms or commerce, whether the victory go to the sword, or to shoddy, advertisement, and fraud? History is the perennial conquest of civilisation by barbarians. The little islands before us, lovely with trees and flowers, green oases in the rushing river, it is but a few years and they will be engulfed. So Greece was swallowed up, so Italy, and so will it be with England. Not, as your moralists maintain, because of her vices, but because of her virtues. She is becoming just, scrupulous, humane, and therefore she is doomed. Ignoble though she be, she is yet too noble to survive; for Germany and America are baser than she. Hark, Hark to Niagara! Force, at all costs! Do you hear it? Do you see it? I can see it, though it is dark. It is a river of mouths and teeth, of greedy outstretched hands, of mirthless laughter, of tears and of blood. I am there, you are there; we are hurrying over the fall; we are going up in spray."

"Yes," I cried as one cries in a nightmare, "and in that spray hangs the rainbow."

He caught at the phrase. "It is true. The rainbow hangs in the spray! It is the type of the Ideal, hanging always above the Actual, never in it, never controlling it. We poets make the rainbow; we do not shape the world."

"We do not make the rainbow," I said. "The sun makes it, shining against it. What is the sun?"

"The sun is the Platonic Good; it lights the world, but does not warm it. By its illumination we see the river in which we are involved; see and judge, and condemn, and are swept away. That we can condemn is our greatness; by that we are children of the sun. But our vision is never fruitful. The sun cannot breed out of matter; no, not even maggots by kissing carrion. Between Force and Light, Matter and Good, there is no interchange. Good is not a cause, it is only an idea."

"To illuminate," I said, "is to transform."

"No! it is only to reveal! Light dances on the surface; but not the tiniest wave was ever dimpled or crisped by its rays. Matter alone moves matter; and the world is matter. Best not cry, best not even blaspheme. Pass over the fall in silence. Perhaps, at the bottom, there is oblivion. It is the best we can hope, we who see."

And he was gone! Had there been anyone? Was there a real voice? I do not know. Perhaps it was only the roar of Niagara. When I returned to the hotel, I heard that this very afternoon, while I was sunning myself on one of the islands, a woman had thrown herself into the rapids and been swept over the fall. Niagara took her, as it takes a stick or a stone. Soon it will take the civilisation of America, as it has taken that of the Indians. Centuries will pass, millenniums will pass, mankind will have come and gone, and still the river will flow and the sun shine, and they will communicate to one another their stern immortal joy, in which there is no part for ephemeral men.

IV

"THE MODERN PULPIT"

It is a bright July morning. As I sit in the garden I look out, over a tangle of wild roses, to a calm sea and a flock of white sails. Everything invites to happy thought and innocent reverie. Moreover, it is the day of rest, and every one is at leisure to turn his mind towards pleasant things. To what, in fact, are most people on this continent turning theirs? To this, which I hold in my hand, the Sunday newspaper.

Let us analyse this production, peculiar to the New World. It comprises eight sections and eighty-eight pages, and very likely does really, as it boasts, contain "more reading matter than the whole Bible."

Opening Section 1, I read the following headings:

"Baron Shot as Bank-teller – Ends Life with Bullet."

"Two fatally Hurt in Strike Riots at Pittsburg."

"Steals a Look at Busy Burglars."

"Drowned in Surf at Narragansett."

"Four of a Family fear a Dogs' bite" (sic).

"Two are Dead, Two Dying; Fought over Cow."

Section 2 appears to be concerned with similar matter, for example:

"Struck by Blast, Woman is Dying."

"Hard Shell Crabs help in giving Burglar Alarm."

"Man who has been Married three times denies the Existence of God."

But here I notice further the interesting and enigmatic heading:

"Will 'boost' not 'knock' New York,"

and roused for the first time to something like curiosity, read:

"To lock horns with the muckrakes and to defend New York against all who defame and censure it the Association for New York was incorporated yesterday."

I notice also "Conferences agree to short rates on woollen goods," and am reminded of the shameless bargaining of which, for many weeks past, Washington has been the centre; which leads me to reflect on the political advantages of a Tariff and its wholesome effect on the national life.

Section 3 deals with Aviation and seaside resorts:

"Brave Lake Placid," I read, "Planning New Hotel."

"Haines Falls entertaining a Great Throng of People."

"Resound with the Laughter and Shout of Summer Throngs."

Section 4 consists entirely of advertisements:

"Tuning-up Sale," I read. "Buff-and-crimson cards will mark the trail of all goods ready for the sale. We are tuning up. By September it is our intention to have assembled in these two great buildings the most fashionable merchandise ever shown. No one piece of goods will be permitted to linger that lacks, in any detail, the æsthetic beauty demanded by New York women of fashion. Everything will be better and a definite percentage lower in price than New York will find in any other store. Do not expect a sale of ordinary proportions. To-morrow you will find the store alive with enthusiasm. This is not a summer hurrah." And so on, to the end of the page. Twelve pages of advertisements, uninterrupted by any item of news.

Section 5 is devoted to automobile gossip and automobile advertisements.

Thereupon follows the Special Sporting Section:

"Rumsom Freebooters defeat Devon's first."

"'Young Corbett' is chipped in the 8th."

"Doggett and Cubs each win shut out."

"Brockett is easy for Detroit Nine."

Glancing at the small type I read: —

"Englewood was the first to tally. This was in the fourth inning. W. Merritt, the first man up, was safe on Williams' error, and he got round to third on another miscue by Williams. Charley Clough was on deck with a timely single, which scored Merritt. Curran's out at first put Clough on third, from whence he tallied on Cuming's single. Cuming got to second, when Wiley grounded out along the first base line and scored on Reinmund's single. Every other time Reinmund came to the bat he struck out."

I pass to the Magazine Section.

On the first page is the mysterious heading "E. of K. and E." Several huge portraits of a bald clean-shaven man in shirt sleeves partially explain. E. is Mr. Erlanger, a theatrical impresario, and K. and E. presumably is his firm. The article describes "the accomplishment of a busy man on one of his ordinary days," and makes one hope no day is ever extraordinary. The interviewer who tells about him is almost speechless with emotion. He searches for a phrase to express his feelings, finds it at last, and comes triumphantly to his close – Mr. Erlanger is a man "with trained arms, trained legs, a trained body and a trained mind." There follows: "The Story of a Society Girl," in which we are told "there is a confession of love and the startling discovery that Dolly was a professional model"; "The Doctor's Story," with a picture of a corpse, "whose white shapely hands were clasped one over the other"; and "Would you Convict on Circumstantial Evidence? – A Scaffold Confession. A True Story." I glance at this, and read, "While the crowd watched in strained, breathless silence there came a sharp agonised voice and a commotion near the steps of the scaffold. 'Stop! Stop! The man is not guilty. I mean it. It is I who should stand there. Let me speak.'" You can now reconstruct the story for yourself. Next comes "Get the Man! Craft and courage of old-time and modern express robbers matched by organised secret service and the mandate that makes capture alone the end of an unflagging man-hunt." This is accompanied by portraits of famous detectives and train-robbers.

There follows "Thrilling Lines," with a picture of a man who seems to be looping the loop on a bicycle.

And the conclusion of the section is a poem, entitled "Cynthianna Blythe," with coloured illustrations apparently intended for children, and certainly successful in not appealing to adults.

Comment, I suppose, is superfluous. But it is only fair to say that the whole of the press of America is not of this character. Among the thousands of papers daily produced on that continent, it would be possible, I believe, to name ten – I myself could mention five – which contain in almost every issue some piece of information or comment which an intelligent man might care to peruse. There are to be found, now and again, passing references to European and even to Asiatic politics; for it cannot be said that the press of America wholly ignored the recent revolutions in Persia and in Turkey. I myself saw a reference to the new Sultan as a man "fat, but not fleshy." England looms big enough on the American horizon to be treated to an occasional gibe; and the doings of fashionable Americans in London are reported somewhat fully. Still, on the whole, the American daily press is typified by the specimen I have analysed. Sensations, personalities and fiction are its stock-in-trade. Why? The causes are well known, but are worth recapitulating, for they are part of the system of modern civilisation.

The newspaper press is a business intended to make money. This is its primary aim, which may, or may not, include the subordinate purpose of advocating some line of public policy. Now, to make money, it is essential to secure advertisements; and to secure advertisements it is essential to have a large circulation. But a large circulation can only be obtained by lowering the price of the paper, and adapting it to the leisure mood of the mass of people. But this leisure mood is usually one of sheer vacuity, incapable of intellectual effort or imaginative response. The man is there, waiting to be filled, and to be filled with the stuff easiest to digest. The rest follows. The newspapers supply the demand and by supplying extend and perpetuate it. Among the possible appeals open to them they deliberately choose the lowest. For people are capable of Good as well as of Bad; and if they cannot get the Bad they will sometimes take the Good. Newspapers, probably, could exist, even under democratic conditions, by maintaining a certain standard of intelligence and morals. But it is easier to exist on melodrama, fatuity and sport. And one or two papers adopting that course force the others into line; for here, as in so many departments of modern life, "The Bad drives out the Good." This process of deterioration of the press is proceeding rapidly in England, with the advent of the halfpenny newspaper. It has not gone so far as in America; but there is no reason why it should not, and every reason why it should; for the same causes are at work.

I have called the process "deterioration," but that, of course, is matter of opinion. A Cabinet Minister, at a recent Conference in London, is reported to have congratulated the press on its progressive improvement during recent years. And Lord Northcliffe is a peer. The more the English press approximates to the American, the more, it would seem, it may hope for public esteem and honour. And that is natural, for the American method pays.

Well, the sun still shines and the sky is still blue. But between it and the American people stretches a veil of printed paper. Curious! the fathers of this nation read nothing but the Bible. That too, it may be said, was a veil; but a veil woven of apocalyptic visions, of lightning and storm, of Leviathan, and the wrath of Jehovah. What is the stuff of the modern veil, we have seen. And surely the contrast is calculated to evoke curious reflections.

V

IN THE ROCKIES

Walking alone in the mountains to-day I came suddenly upon the railway. There was a little shanty of a station 8000 feet above the sea; and, beyond, the great expanse of the plains. It was beginning to sleet, and I determined to take shelter. The click of a telegraph operator told me there was some one inside the shed. I knocked and knocked again, in vain; and it was a quarter of an hour before the door was opened by a thin, yellow-faced youth chewing gum, who looked at me without a sign of recognition or a word of greeting. I have learnt by this time that absence of manners in an American is intended to signify not surliness but independence, so I asked to be allowed to enter. He admitted me, and resumed his operations. I listened to the clicking, while the sleet fell faster and the evening began to close in. What messages were they, I wondered, that were passing across the mountains? I connected them, idly enough, with the corner in wheat a famous speculator was endeavouring to establish in Chicago; and reflected upon the disproportion between the achievements of Man and the use he puts them to. He invents wireless telegraphy, and the ships call to one another day and night, to tell the name of the latest winner. He is inventing the flying-machine, and he will use it to advertise pills and drop bombs. And here, he has exterminated the Indians, and carried his lines and his poles across the mountains, that a gambler may fill his pockets by starving a continent. "Click – click – click – Pick – pick – pick – Pock – pock – pockets." So the west called to the east, and the east to the west, while the winds roared, and the sleet fell, over the solitary mountains and the desolate iron road.