The Spirit of America Part 9

But then I began to remember that those farms of New England and New York and New Jersey were won only a few generations ago from a trackless and savage wilderness; that the breadth of their acres had naturally tempted the farmer to neglect the less fruitful for the more productive; that Nature herself had put a larger premium upon energy than upon parsimony in these first efforts to utilize her resources; and that, after all, what I wished to describe and prove was not an outward triumph of universal orderliness in material things, but an inward desire of order, the wish to have a common life well arranged and regulated, tranquil and steady.

Here I began to see my way more clear. Those farms of eastern America, which would look to a foreigner so rude and ill-kept, have nourished a race of men and women in whom regularity and moral steadiness and consideration of the common welfare have been characteristic traits.

Their villages and towns, with few exceptions, are well cared for physically; and socially, to use a phrase which I heard from one of my guides in Maine, they are "as calm as a clock." They have their Village Improvement Societies, their Lyceum Lecture Courses, their Public Libraries, their churches (often more than they need), and their schoolhouses, usually the finest of all their buildings. They have poured into the great cities, year after year, an infusion of strong and pure American blood which has been of the highest value, not only in filling the arteries of industry and trade and the professions with a fresh current of vigorous life, but also in promoting the rapid a.s.similation of the ma.s.s of foreign immigrants. They have sent out a steady flood of westward-moving population which has carried with it the ideals and inst.i.tutions, the customs and the habits, of common order and social cooperation.

On the crest of the advancing wave, to be sure, there is a picturesque touch of foam and fury. The first comers, the prospectors, miners, ranchers, land-grabbers, lumbermen, adventurers, are often rough and turbulent, careless of the amenities, and much given to the profanities.

But they are the men who break the way and open the path. Behind them come the settlers bringing the steady life.

I could wish the intelligent foreigner to see the immense corn-fields of Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas, the vast wheat-fields of the Northwest, miles and miles of green and golden harvest, cultivated, reaped, and garnered with a skill and accuracy which resembles the movements of a mighty army. I could wish him to see the gardens and orchards of the Pacific slope, miles and miles of opulent bloom and fruitage, watered by a million streams, more fertile than the paradise of Damascus. I could wish him to see the towns and little cities which have grown up as if by magic everywhere, each one developing an industry, a social life, a civic consciousness of its own, in forms which, though often bare and simple, are almost always regular and respectable even to the point of monotony. Then perhaps he would believe that the race which has done these things in a hundred years has a real and deep instinct of common order.

But the peculiarly American quality in this instinct is its individualism. It does not wish to be organized. It wishes to organize itself. It craves form, but it dislikes formality. It prizes and cherishes the sense of voluntary effort more than the sense of obedience. It has its eye fixed on the end which it desires, a peaceable and steady life, a tranquil and prosperous community. It sometimes overlooks the means which are indirectly and obscurely serviceable to that end. It is inclined to be suspicious of any routine or convention whose direct practical benefit is not self-evident. It has a slight contempt for etiquette and manners as superficial things. Its ideal is not elegance, but utility; not a dress-parade, but a march in comradeship toward a common goal. It is reluctant to admit the value of the parade even as a discipline and preparation for the march. Often it demands so much liberty for the individual that the smooth interaction of the different parts of the community is disturbed or broken.

The fabric of common order in America is sound and strong at the centre.

The pattern is well-marked, and the threads are firmly woven. But the edges are ragged and unfinished. Many of our best cities have a fringe of ugliness and filth around them which is like a torn and bedraggled petticoat on a woman otherwise well dressed.

Approaching New York, or Cincinnati, or Pittsburg, or Chicago, you pa.s.s first through a delightful region, where the homes of the prosperous are spread upon the hills, reminding you of a circle of Paradise; and then through a region of hideous disorder and new ruins, which has the aspect of a circle of Purgatory, and makes you doubt whether it is safe to go any farther for fear you may come to a worse place. This neglected belt of hideous suburbs around some of the richest cities in the world is typical and symbolical. It speaks of the haste with which things have been done; of the tendency to overlook detail, provided the main purpose is accomplished; of the lack of thoroughness, and the indifference to appearance, which are common American faults. It suggests, also, the resistance which a strong spirit of individualism offers to civic supervision and control; the tenacity with which men cling to their supposed right to keep their houses in dirt and disorder; the difficulty of making them comply with general laws of sanitation and public improvement; and the selfishness with which land-owners will leave their neglected property to disfigure the city from whose growth they expect in ten or twenty years to reap a large profit.

Yet, as a matter of fact, this very typical mark of an imperfect sense of the value of physical neatness and orderliness in American life is not growing, but diminishing. The fringes of the cities are not nearly as bad as they were thirty or forty years ago. In many of them,--notably in Philadelphia and Boston and some of the western cities,--beauty has taken the place of ugliness. Parks and playgrounds have been created where formerly there were only waste places filled with rubbish.

Tumble-down shanties give way to long rows of trim little houses. Even the factories cease to look like dingy prisons and put on an air of self-respect. Nuisances are abolished. The country can draw near to the city without holding its nose.

This gradual improvement, also, is symbolical. It speaks of individualism becoming conscious of its own defects and dangers. It speaks of an effort on the part of the more intelligent and public-spirited citizens to better the conditions of life for all. It speaks of a deep instinct in the people which responds to these efforts and supports them with the necessary laws and enactments. It speaks most of all, I hope, of that underlying sense of common order which is one of the qualities of the Spirit of America.

Let me ill.u.s.trate this, first, by some observations on the average American crowd.

The obvious thing about it which the foreigner is likely to notice is its good humour. It is largely made up of native optimists, who think the world is not a bad place to live in, and who have a cheerful expectation that they are going to get along in it. Although it is composed of rather excitable individuals, as a ma.s.s it is not easily thrown into pa.s.sion or confusion. The emotion to which it responds most quickly is neither anger nor fear, but laughter.

But it has another trait still more striking, and that is its capacity for self-organization. Watch it in front of a ticket-office, and see how quickly and instinctively it forms "the line." No police are needed. The crowd takes care of itself. Every man finds his place, and the order once established is strictly maintained by the whole crowd. The man who tries to break it is laughed at and hustled out.

When an accident happens in the street, the throng gathers in a moment.

But it is not merely curious. It is promptly helpful. There is some one to sit on the head of the fallen horse,--a dozen hands to unbuckle the harness; if a litter is needed for the wounded man, it is quickly improvised, and he is carried into the nearest shop, while some one sends a "hurry call" for the doctor and the ambulance.

Until about forty years ago, the whole work of fighting fire in the cities was left to voluntary effort. Companies of citizens were formed, like social or political clubs, which purchased fire-engines, and organized themselves into a brigade ready to come at the first alarm of a conflagration. The crowd came with them and helped. I have seen a church on Sunday morning emptied of all its able-bodied young men by the ringing of the fire-bell. It is true that there was a keen rivalry among these voluntary fire-fighters which sometimes led them to fight one another on their way to a conflagration. But out of these free a.s.sociations have grown the paid fire-departments of the large cities, with their fine tradition of courage and increased efficiency.

If you wish to see an American crowd in its most extraordinary aspect, you should go to a political convention for the nomination of a President. The streets swarming with people, all hurrying in one direction, talking loudly, laughing, cheering; the vast, barn-like hall draped with red, white, and blue bunting, and packed with 12,000 of the 200,000 folks who have tried to get into it; the thousand delegates sitting together in solid cohorts according to the States which they represent, each cohort ready to shout and cheer and vote as one man for its "favourite son"; the officers on the far-away platform, Lilliputian figures facing, directing, dominating this Brobdignagian ma.s.s of humanity; the buzzing of the audience in the intervals of business; the alternate waves of excitement and uneasiness that sweep over it; the long speeches, the dull speeches, the fiery speeches, the outbreaks of laughter and applause, the coming and going of messengers, the waving of flags and banners,--what does it all mean? What reason or order is there in it? What motives guide and control this big, good-natured crowd?

Wait. You are at the Republican Convention in Chicago. The leadership of Mr. Roosevelt in the party is really the point in dispute, though not a word has been said about it. A lean, clean-cut, incisive man is speaking, the Chairman of the convention. Presently he shoots out a sentence referring to "the best abused and the most popular man in America." As if it were a signal given by a gun, that phrase lets loose a storm, a tempest of applause for Roosevelt,--cheers, yells, bursts of song, the blowing of bra.s.s-bands, the roaring of megaphones, the waving of flags; more cheers like volleys of musketry; a hurricane of vocal enthusiasm, dying down for a moment to break out in a new place, redoubling itself in vigour as if it had just begun, shaking the rafters and making the bunting flutter in the wind. For forty-seven minutes by the clock that American crowd pours out its concerted enthusiasm, and makes a new "record" for the length of a political demonstration.

Now change the scene to Denver, a couple of weeks later. The Democrats are holding their convention. You are in the same kind of a hall, only a little larger, filled with the same kind of a crowd, only more of it.

The leadership of Mr. Bryan is the point in dispute, and everybody knows it. Presently a speaker on the platform mentions "the peerless son of Nebraska" and pauses as if he expected a reply. It comes like an earthquake. The crowd breaks into a long, indescribable, incredible tumult of applause, just like the other one, but lasting now for more than eighty minutes,--a new "record" of demonstration.

What are these scenes at which you have a.s.sisted? The meetings of two entirely voluntary a.s.sociations of American citizens, who have agreed to work together for political purposes. And what are these ma.s.ses of people who are capable of cheering in unison for three-quarters of an hour, or an hour and a quarter? Just two American crowds showing their enthusiasm for their favourites.

What does it all prove?

Nothing,--I think,--except an extraordinary capacity for self-organization.

But the Spirit of America shows the sense of common order in much deeper and more significant things than the physical smoothing and polishing of town and country, or than the behaviour of an average crowd. It is of these more important things that I wish to give some idea.

It has been said that the first instinct of the Americans, confronted by a serious difficulty or problem, is to appoint a committee and form a society. Whether this be true or not, I am sure that many, if not most, of the advances in moral and social order in the United States during the last thirty or forty years have been begun and promoted in this way.

It is, in fact, the natural way in a conservative republic.

Where public opinion rules, expressing itself more or less correctly in popular suffrage, no real reform can be accomplished without first winning the opinion of the public in its favour. Those who believe in the reform must get together in order to do this. They must gather their evidence, present their arguments, show why and how certain things ought to be done, and urge the point until the public sees it.

Then, in some cases, legislation follows. The moral sense, or it may be merely the practical common sense, _le gros bon sens de menage_, of the community, takes shape in some formal statute or enactment. A State or munic.i.p.al board or commission is appointed, and the reform pa.s.ses from the voluntary to the organic stage. The a.s.sociation or committee which promoted it disappears in a blaze of congratulation, or perhaps continues its existence to watch the enforcement of the new laws.

But there is another cla.s.s of cases in which no formal legislation seems to be adequate to meet the evils, or in which the process of law-making is impeded or perhaps altogether prevented by the American system of dividing the power between the national, State, and local governments.

Here the private a.s.sociation of public-spirited citizens must act as a compensating force in the body politic. It must take what it can get in the way of partial organic reform, and supply what is lacking by voluntary cooperation.

There is still a third cla.s.s of evils which seem to have their roots not in the structure of society, but in human nature itself, and for these the typical American believes that the only amelioration is a steady and friendly effort by men of good-will. He does not look for the establishment of the millennium by statute. He does not think that the impersonal State can strengthen character, bind up broken hearts, or be a nursing mother to the ignorant, the wounded, and the helpless. For this work there must always be a personal service, a volunteer service, a service to which men and women are bound, not by authority, but by the inward ties of philanthropy and religion.

Now these three kinds of voluntary cooperation for the bettering of the common order are not peculiar to America. One finds them in every nation that has the seed of progress in its mind or the vision of the _civitas Dei_ in its soul,--and nowhere more than in France. The French have a genius for society and a pa.s.sion for societies. But I am not sure that they understand how much the Americans resemble them in the latter respect, and how much has been accomplished in the United States by way of voluntary social cooperation under an individualistic system.

Take the subject of hospitals. I was reading the other day a statement by M. Jules Huret:--

"At Pittsburg, the industrial h.e.l.l, which contains 60,000 Italians, and 300,000 Slavs, Croats, Hungarians, etc., in the city and its suburbs,--at Pittsburg, capital of the Steel Trust, which distributes 700 millions of interest and dividends every year,--there is no free hospital!"

This is wonderfully incorrect. There are thirty-three hospitals at Pittsburgh, fifteen public and eighteen private. In 1908, thirteen of these hospitals treated over ten thousand free patients, at a cost of more than three hundred thousand dollars.

In New York there are more than forty hospitals, of which six are munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, while the others are incorporated by a.s.sociations of citizens and supported largely by benevolent gifts; and more than forty free dispensaries for the treatment of patients and the distribution of medicines. In fact, the dispensaries increased so rapidly, a few years ago, that the regular physicians complained that their business was unfairly reduced. They said that prosperous people went to the dispensary to save expense; and they humbly suggested that no patient who wore diamonds should be received for free treatment.

In the United States in 1903 there were 1500 hospitals costing about $29,000,000 a year for maintenance: $9,000,000 of this came from public funds, and the remaining $20,000,000 from charitable gifts and from paying patients. One-third of the patients were in public inst.i.tutions, the other two-thirds in hospitals under private or religious control.

There is not a city of any consequence in America which is without good hospital accommodations; and there are few countries in the world where it is more comfortable for a stranger to break a leg or have a mild attack of appendicitis. All this goes to show that the Americans recognize the care of the sick and wounded as a part of the common order. They perceive that the State never has been, and probably never will be, able to do all that is needed without the help of benevolent individuals, religious bodies, and philanthropic societies.

How generously this help is given in America, not only for hospitals, but for all other objects of benevolence, may be seen from the fact that the public gifts and bequests of private citizens for the year 1907 amounted to more than $100,000,000.

Let me give another ill.u.s.tration of voluntary social cooperation in this sphere of action which lies at least in part beyond the reach of the State. In all the American cities of large size, you will find inst.i.tutions which are called "Settlements,"--a vague word which has been defined to mean "homes in the poorer quarters of a city where educated men and women may live in daily contact with the working people." The first house of this kind to be established was Toynbee Hall in London, in 1885. Two years later the Neighbourhood Guild was founded in New York, and in 1889 the College Settlement in the same city, and Hull House in Chicago, were established. There are now reported some three hundred of such settlement houses in the world, of which England has 56, Holland 11, Scotland 10, France 4, Germany 2, and the United States 207. I will take, as examples, Hull House in Chicago, and the Henry Street Settlement in New York.

Hull House was started by two ladies who went into one of the worst districts of Chicago and took a house with the idea of making it a radiating centre of orderly and happy life. Their friends backed them up with money and help. After five years the enterprise was incorporated.

The buildings, which are of the most substantial kind, now cover a whole city block, some forty or fifty thousand square feet, and, include an apartment house, a boys' club, a girls' club, a theatre, a gymnasium, a day nursery, workshops, cla.s.s rooms, a coffee-house, and so on. There are forty-four educated men and women in residence who are engaged in self-supporting occupations, and who give their free time to the work of the settlement. A hundred and fifty outside helpers come every week to serve as teachers, friendly visitors, or directors of clubs: 9000 people a week come to the house as members of some one of its organizations or as parts of an audience. There are free concerts, and lectures, and cla.s.ses of various kinds in study and in handicraft. Investigations of the social and industrial conditions of the neighbourhood are carried on, not officially, but informally; and the knowledge thus obtained has been used not only for the visible transformation of the region around Hull House, but also to throw light upon the larger needs and possibilities of improvement in Chicago and other American cities. Hull House, in fact, is an example of ethical and humane housekeeping on a big scale in a big town.

The Henry Street Settlement in New York is quite different in its specific quality. It was begun in 1893 by two trained nurses, who went down into the tenement-house district, to find the sick and to nurse them in their homes. At first they lived in a tenement house themselves; then the growth of their work and the coming of other helpers forced them to get a little house, then another, and another, a cottage in the country, a convalescent home. The idea of the settlement was single and simple. It was to meet the need of intelligent and skilful nursing in the very places where dirt and ignorance, carelessness and superst.i.tion, were doing the most harm,--

"in the crowded warrens of the poor."

This little company of women, some twenty or thirty of them, go about from tenement to tenement, bringing cleanliness and order with them. In the presence of disease and pain they teach lessons which could be taught in no other way. They nurse five or six thousand patients every year, and make forty or fifty thousand visits. In addition to this, largely through their influence and example, the Board of Education has adopted a trained nursing service in the public schools, and has appointed a special corps of nurses to take prompt charge of cases of contagious disease among the school children. The Nurses' Settlement, in fact, is a repet.i.tion of the parable of the Good Samaritan in a crowded city instead of on a lonely road.

These two examples ill.u.s.trate the kind of work that is going on all over the United States. Every religious body, Jewish or Christian, has some part in it. It touches many sides of life,--this effort to do for the common order what the State has never been able to accomplish fully,--to sweeten and humanize it. I wish that there were time to speak of some particularly interesting features, like the Children's Aid Society, the George Junior Republic, the a.s.sociation for Improving the Condition of the Poor, the Kindergarten a.s.sociation. But now I must pa.s.s at once to the second kind of social effort, that in which the voluntary cooperation of the citizen enlightens and guides and supplements the action of the State.

Here I might speak of the great question of the housing of the poor, and of the relation of private building and loan a.s.sociations to governmental regulation of tenements and dwelling-houses. This is one of the points on which America has lagged behind the rest of the civilized world. Our excessive spirit of _laissez-faire_, and our cheerful optimism,--which in this case justifies the cynical definition of optimism as "an indifference to the sufferings of others,"--permitted the development in New York of the most congested and rottenly overcrowded ten acres on the face of the habitable globe. But the Tenement House Commission of 1894, and the other commissions which followed it, did much to improve conditions. A fairly good Tenement House Act was pa.s.sed. A special Department of the munic.i.p.ality was created to enforce it. The dark interior rooms, the vile and unsanitary holes, the lodgings without water or air or fire-escapes, are being slowly but surely broken up and extirpated, and a half-dozen private societies, combining philanthropy with business, are building decent houses for working people, which return from 3 per cent to 5 per cent on the capital invested.

For our present purpose, however, it will be better to take an example which is less complicated, and in which the cooperation of the State and the good-will of the private citizen can be more closely and simply traced. I mean the restriction and the regulation of child labour.

Every intelligent nation sees in its children its most valuable a.s.set.

That their physical and moral development should be dwarfed or paralyzed by bondage to exhausting and unwholesome labour, or by a premature absorption in toil of any kind, would be at once a national disgrace and a national calamity.

Three kinds of societies have been and still are at work in America to prevent this shame and disaster. First, there are the societies which are devoted to the general protection of all the interests of the young, like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Then there are the societies which make their appeal to the moral sense of the community to condemn and suppress all kinds of inhumanity in the conduct of industry and trade. Of these the Consumers' League is an example. Founded in New York in 1890, by a few ladies of public spirit, it has spread to twenty other States, with sixty-four distinct societies and a national organization for the whole country. Its central idea is to persuade people, rich and poor, to buy only those things which are made and sold under fair and humane conditions. The responsibility of men and women for the way in which they spend their money is recognized.

They are asked to remember that the cheapness of a bargain is not the only thing for them to consider. They ought to think whether it has been made cheap at the cost of human sorrow and degradation, whether the distress and pain and exhaustion of overtasked childhood and ill-treated womanhood have made their cheap bargain a shameful and poisonous thing.