American Adventures Part 35

"When a man is young," he said, "he can be lively and enjoy himself without drinking, because he is full of animal spirits. But we older men aren't bubbling over with liveliness. We can't dance, or don't want to, and we lack the stimulus which comes of falling continually in love. My great pleasure is to sit of an evening, here at a table in the cafe of this club, conversing with my friends. That is where prohibition is going to hurt me. I shall not see my old friends any more."

The others protested at this somber view, but the judge gravely shook his head, saying: "You don't believe me, but I know whereof I speak, for I have been through something like this, in a minor way, before. A good many years ago I was one of a little group of congenial men to organize a small club. We had comfortable quarters, and we used to drop in at night, much as we have been doing of late years here, and have the kind of talks that are tonic to the soul. Of course we had liquor in the club, but there came a time when, for some reason or other--I think it was some trouble over a license--we closed our bar. We didn't think it was going to make a great difference, but it did. The men began to stop coming in, and before long the club ceased to exist.

"It won't be like that here. This club will go on. But we won't come here. We won't want to sit around a table, like this, and drink ginger ale and sarsaparilla; and even if we do, the talk won't be so good. The thing that makes me downcast is not that liquor is going, but that we are really parting this week.

"Every one knows that the abuse of drink does harm in the world, but these pious prohibitionists are not of the temperament to understand how alcohol ministers to the esthetic side of certain natures. It gives us better companions and makes us better companions for others. It stimulates our minds, enhances our appreciations, sharpens our wit, loosens our tongues, and saves brilliant conversation from becoming a lost art."

My sympathies went out to the judge. It has always seemed to me a pity that the liquor question has resolved itself into a fight between extremists--for I think the wine and beer people might survive if they were not tied up with the distillers, and I do not believe that any considerable evil comes of drinking wine or beer.

Nevertheless it must be apparent to every one who troubles to investigate, that prohibition invariably works great good wherever it is made effective. Take, for example, Birmingham.

There was one year--I believe it was 1912--when there was an average of more than one murder a day, for every working day in the year, in the county in which Birmingham is located. On one famous Sat.u.r.day night there were nineteen felonious a.s.saults (sixteen by negroes and three by whites), from which about a dozen deaths resulted, two of those killed having been policemen.

All this has changed with prohibition. Killings are now comparatively rare, arrests have diminished to less than a third of the former average, whether for grave or petty offenses, and the receiving jail, which was formerly packed like a pigpen every Sat.u.r.day night, now stands almost empty, while the city jail, which used continually to house from 120 to 150 offenders, has diminished its average population to 30 or 35.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

BUSY BIRMINGHAM

The fact that a man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to personify the place, it would be in the likeness of a man I know--a big, powerful fellow with an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition, and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than forty years of age. Like Birmingham, he has built up a large business of his own. And, like Birmingham, he is a little bit nave in his pride of success. His life is divided between his office and his home, and it would be difficult to say for which his devotion is the greater. He talks business with his wife at breakfast and dinner, and on their Sunday walks. He brings his papers home at night and goes over them with her, for, though her specialty is bringing up the children, she is deeply interested in his business and often makes suggestions which he follows. This causes him to admire her intensely, which he would not necessarily do were she merely a good wife and mother.

He has no hobbies or pastimes. True, he plays golf, but with him golf is not a diversion. He plays because he finds the exercise increases his efficiency ("efficiency" is perhaps his favorite word), and because many of his commercial a.s.sociates are golfers, and he can talk business with them on the links.

His house is pleasant and stands upon a good-sized city lot. It is filled with very shiny mahogany furniture and strong-colored portieres and sofa cushions. It is rather more of a house than he requires, for his tastes are simple, but he has a feeling that he ought to have a large house, for the same reason that he and his wife ought to dress expensively--that is, out of respect, as it were, to his business.

One of his chief treasures is an automatic piano, upon which he rolls off selections from Wagner's operas. He likes the music of the great German because, as he has often told me, it stirs his imagination, thereby helping him to solve business problems and make business plans.

The thing he most abhors is general conversation, and he is never so amusing--so pathetically and unconsciously amusing--as when trying to take part in general conversation and at the same time to conceal the writhings of his tortured spirit. There is but one thing which will drive him to attempt the feat, and that is the necessity of making himself agreeable to some man, or the wife of some man, from whom he wishes to get business.

The census of 1910 gave Birmingham a population of 132,000, and it is estimated that since that time the population has increased by 50,000.

Birmingham not only knows that it is growing, but believes in trying to make ready in advance for future growth. It gives one the impression that it is rather ahead of its housing problems than behind them. Its area, for instance, is about as great as that of Boston or Cleveland, and its hotels may be compared with the hotels of those cities. If it has not so many clubs as Atlanta, it has, at least, all the clubs it needs; and if it has not so many skysc.r.a.pers as New York, it has several which would fit nicely into the Wall Street district. Moreover, the tall buildings of Birmingham lose nothing in height by contrast with the older buildings, three or four stories high, which surround them, giving the business district something of that look which hangs about a boy who has outgrown his clothing. Nor are the vehicles and street crowds, altogether in consonance, as yet, with the fine office buildings of the city, for many of the motors standing at the curb have about them that gray, rural look which comes of much mud and infrequent washing, and the idlers who lean against the rich facades of granite and marble are entirely out of the picture, for they look precisely like the idlers who lean against the wooden posts of country railroad station platforms.

Such curious contrasts as these may be noted everywhere. For instance, Birmingham has been so busy paving the streets that it seems quite to have forgotten to put up street signs. Also, not far from the majestic Tutwiler Hotel, and the imposing apartment building called the Ridgely, the front of which occupies a full block, is a park so ill kept that it would be a disgrace to the city but for the obvious fact that the city is growing and wide-awake, and will, of course, attend to the park when it can find the time. Here are, I believe, the only public monuments Birmingham contains. One is a Confederate monument in the form of an obelisk, and the other two are statues erected in memory of Mary A.

Cahalan, for many years princ.i.p.al of the Powell School, and of William Elias B. Davis, a distinguished surgeon. Workers in these fields are too seldom honored in this way, and the spirit which prompted the erection of these monuments is particularly creditable; sad to say, however, both effigies are wretchedly placed and are in themselves exceedingly poor things. Art is something, indeed, about which Birmingham has much to learn. So far as I could discover, no such thing as an art museum has been contemplated. But here again the critic should remember that, whereas art is old, Birmingham is young. She is as yet in the stage of development at which cities think not of art museums, but of munic.i.p.al auditoriums; and with the latter subject, at least, she is now concerning herself.

Even in the city's political life contrasts are not wanting, for though the town is Republican in sentiment, it proves itself southern by voting the Democratic ticket, and it is interesting to note further that the commission by which it is governed had as one of its five members, when we were there, a Socialist.

Another curious and individual touch is contributed by the soda-fountain lunch rooms which abound in the city, and which, I judge, arrived with the disappearance of barroom lunch counters. In connection with many of the downtown soda fountains there are cooking arrangements, and business lunches are served.

The roads leading out of the city in various directions have many dangerous grade crossings, and accidents must be of common occurrence.

At all events, I have never known a city in which cemeteries and undertaking establishments were so widely advertised. In the street cars, for instance, I observed the cheerful placards of one Wallace Johns, undertaker, who promises "all the attention you would expect from a friend," and I was informed that Mr. Johns possesses business cards (for restricted use only) bearing the gay legend: "I'll get you yet!"

As to schools the city is well off. Dr. J.H. Phillips, superintendent of public schools, has occupied his post probably as long as any school superintendent in the country. He organized the city school system in 1883, beginning with seven teachers, as against 750 now employed. The colored schools are reported to be better than in most southern cities.

Of the general status of the negro in Birmingham I cannot speak with authority. As in Atlanta, negroes are sometimes required to use separate elevators in office buildings, and, as everywhere south of Washington, the Birmingham street cars give one end to whites and the other to negroes. But whereas negroes use the back of the car in Atlanta, they use the front in Birmingham. It was attempted, at one time, to reverse this order, for reasons having to do with draft and ventilation, but the people of Birmingham had become accustomed to the existing arrangement and objected to the change. "After all," one gentleman said to me, in speaking of this matter, "it is not important which end of the car is given to the n.i.g.g.e.r. The main point is that he must sit where he is told."

The means by which the negro vote is eliminated in various Southern States are generally similar, though Alabama has, perhaps, been more thorough in the matter than some other States. The importance of this issue to the southern white man is very great, for if all negroes were allowed to vote the control of certain States would be in negro hands.

To the Southerner such an idea is intolerable, and it is my confident belief that if the State of Alabama were resettled by men from Ma.s.sachusetts, and the same problems were presented to those men, they would be just as quick as the white Alabamans of to-day to find means to suppress the negro vote. With all my heart I wish that such an exchange of citizens might temporarily be effected, for when the immigrants from Ma.s.sachusetts moved back to their native New England, after an experience of the black belt, they would take with them an understanding of certain aspects of the negro problem which they have never understood; an understanding which, had they possessed it sixty or seventy years ago, might have brought about the freeing of slaves by government purchase--a course which Lincoln advocated and which would probably have prevented the Civil War, and thereby saved millions upon millions of money, to say nothing of countless lives. Had they even understood the problems of the South at the end of the Civil War, the horrors of Reconstruction might have been avoided, and I cannot too often reiterate that, but for Reconstruction we should not be perplexed, to-day, by the unhappy, soggy ma.s.s of political inertia known as the Solid South.

I asked a former State official how the negro vote had been eliminated in Alabama. "At first," he said, "we used to kill them to keep them from voting; when we got sick of doing that we began to steal their ballots; and when stealing their ballots got to troubling our consciences we decided to handle the matter legally, fixing it so they couldn't vote."

I inquired as to details. He explained.

It seems that in 1901 a const.i.tutional convention was held, at which it was enacted that, in order to be eligible for life to vote, citizens must register during the next two years. There were, however, certain qualifications prescribed for registration. A man must be of good character, and must have fought in a war, or be the descendant of a person who had fought. This enactment, known as the "grandfather clause," went far toward the elimination of the negro. As an additional safeguard, however, an educational clause was added, but the educational requirement did not become effective at once, as that would have made illiterate whites ineligible as voters. Not until the latter were safely registered under the "grandfather clause," was the educational clause applied, and as, under this clause, the would-be voter must read and write _to the satisfaction of his examiner_, the negro's chance to get suffrage was still more reduced.

The United States Supreme Court has, I believe, held that the educational clause does not const.i.tute race discrimination.

As though the above measures were not sufficient, it is further required that, in order to vote at November elections in Alabama, voters must pay a small voluntary poll tax. This tax, however, must be paid each year before February first--that is, about nine months before elections actually take place. The negro has never been distinguished for his foresightedness with a dollar, and, to make matters harder for him, this tax is c.u.mulative from the year 1901, so that a man who wishes to begin to vote this year, and can qualify in other respects, must pay a tax amounting to nearly twenty dollars.

These measures give Alabama, as my informant put it, a "very exclusive electorate." With a population of approximately two millions, the greatest number of votes ever cast by the State was 125,000. Of this number, 531 votes were those of negroes, "representing" a colored population of 840,000!

The gentleman who explained these matters also told me a story ill.u.s.trative of the old-time Southerner's att.i.tude toward the negro in politics.

During Reconstruction, when Alabama's Legislature was about one-third white and two-thirds negro, a fine old gentleman who had been a slaveholder and was an experienced parliamentarian, was attempting to preside over the Legislature. In this he experienced much difficulty, his greatest _bete noir_ being a negro member, full of oratory, who continually interrupted other speakers.

Realizing that this was a part of the new order of things, the presiding officer tried not to allow his irritation to get the better of him, and to silence the objectionable man in parliamentary fashion. "The member will kindly come to order!" he repeated over and over, rapping with his gavel. "The member will kindly come to order!"

After this had gone on for some time without effect, the old gentleman's patience became exhausted. He laid down his gavel, arose to his feet, glared at the irrepressible member, and, shaking his finger savagely, shouted: "Sit down, you blankety-blank black blankety-blank!"

Whereupon the negro dropped instantly to his seat and was no more heard from.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

AN ALLEGORY OF ACHIEVEMENT

To visit Birmingham without seeing an iron and steel plant would be like visiting Rome without seeing the Forum. Consequently my companion and I made application for permission to go through the Tennessee Coal, Iron, & Railroad Company's plant, at Ensley, on the outskirts of the city.

When the permission was refused us we attacked from another angle--using influence--and were refused again. Next we called upon a high official of the company, and (as we had, of course, done in making our previous requests for admission to the plant) explained our errand.

Though this gentleman received us with the utmost courtesy, he declared that the company desired no publicity, and plainly indicated that he was not disposed to let us into the plant.

"I'll tell you what the trouble is," said my companion to me. "This company is a part of the United States Steel Corporation, and in the old muckraking days it was thoroughly raked. They think that we have come down here full of pa.s.sionate feeling over the poor, downtrodden workingman and the great, greedy octopus."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, we are a writer and an artist. Lots of writers and artists have made good livings by teaching magazine readers that it is dishonest for a corporation, or a corporation official, to prosper; that the way to integrity is through insolvency; that the word 'company' is a term of reproach, while 'corporation' is a foul epithet, and 'trust' blasphemy."

"What shall we do?"

"We must make it clear to these people," he said, "that we have no mission. We must satisfy them that we are not reformers--that we didn't come to dig out a red-hot story, but to see red-hot rails rolled out."