The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Notes, by Rudyard Kipling This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: American Notes Author: Rudyard Kipling Release Date: July 21, 2008 [EBook #977] Last Updated: March 9, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN NOTES *** Produced by Judith Boss, and David Widger
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“Serene, indifferent to fate,
Thou sittest at the Western Gate;
Thou seest the white seas fold their tents,
Oh, warder of two continents;
Thou drawest all things, small and great,
To thee, beside the Western Gate.”
THIS is what Bret Harte has written of the great city of San Francisco,
and for the past fortnight I have been wondering what made him do it.
There is neither serenity nor indifference to be found in these parts; and
evil would it be for the continents whose wardship were intrusted to so
reckless a guardian.
Behold me pitched neck-and-crop from twenty days of the high seas into the
whirl of California, deprived of any guidance, and left to draw my own
conclusions. Protect me from the wrath of an outraged community if these
letters be ever read by American eyes! San Francisco is a mad city—inhabited
for the most part by perfectly insane people, whose women are of a
remarkable beauty.
When the “City of Pekin” steamed through the Golden Gate, I saw with great
joy that the block-house which guarded the mouth of the “finest harbor in
the world, sir,” could be silenced by two gunboats from Hong Kong with
safety, comfort, and despatch. Also, there was not a single American
vessel of war in the harbor.
This may sound bloodthirsty; but remember, I had come with a grievance
upon me—the grievance of the pirated English books.
Then a reporter leaped aboard, and ere I could gasp held me in his toils.
He pumped me exhaustively while I was getting ashore, demanding of all
things in the world news about Indian journalism. It is an awful thing to
enter a new land with a new lie on your lips. I spoke the truth to the
evil-minded Custom House man who turned my most sacred raiment on a floor
composed of stable refuse and pine splinters; but the reporter overwhelmed
me not so much by his poignant audacity as his beautiful ignorance. I am
sorry now that I did not tell him more lies as I passed into a city of
three hundred thousand white men. Think of it! Three hundred thousand
white men and women gathered in one spot, walking upon real pavements in
front of plate-glass-windowed shops, and talking something that at first
hearing was not very different from English. It was only when I had
tangled myself up in a hopeless maze of small wooden houses, dust, street
refuse, and children who played with empty kerosene tins, that I
discovered the difference of speech.
“You want to go to the Palace Hotel?” said an affable youth on a dray.
“What in hell are you doing here, then? This is about the lowest ward in
the city. Go six blocks north to corner of Geary and Markey, then walk
around till you strike corner of Gutter and Sixteenth, and that brings you
there.”
I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of these directions, quoting but
from a disordered memory.
“Amen,” I said. “But who am I that I should strike the corners of such as
you name? Peradventure they be gentlemen of repute, and might hit back.
Bring it down to dots, my son.”
I thought he would have smitten me, but he didn't. He explained that no
one ever used the word “street,” and that every one was supposed to know
how the streets ran, for sometimes the names were upon the lamps and
sometimes they weren't. Fortified with these directions, I proceeded till
I found a mighty street, full of sumptuous buildings four and five stories
high, but paved with rude cobblestones, after the fashion of the year 1.
Here a tram-car, without any visible means of support, slid stealthily
behind me and nearly struck me in the back. This was the famous cable car
of San Francisco, which runs by gripping an endless wire rope sunk in the
ground, and of which I will tell you more anon. A hundred yards further
there was a slight commotion in the street, a gathering together of three
or four, something that glittered as it moved very swiftly. A ponderous
Irish gentleman, with priest's cords in his hat and a small nickel-plated
badge on his fat bosom, emerged from the knot supporting a Chinaman who
had been stabbed in the eye and was bleeding like a pig. The by-standers
went their ways, and the Chinaman, assisted by the policeman, his own. Of
course this was none of my business, but I rather wanted to know what had
happened to the gentleman who had dealt the stab. It said a great deal for
the excellence of the municipal arrangement of the town that a surging
crowd did not at once block the street to see what was going forward. I
was the sixth man and the last who assisted at the performance, and my
curiosity was six times the greatest. Indeed, I felt ashamed of showing
it.
There were no more incidents till I reached the Palace Hotel, a
seven-storied warren of humanity with a thousand rooms in it. All the
travel books will tell you about hotel arrangements in this country. They
should be seen to be appreciated. Understand clearly—and this letter
is written after a thousand miles of experiences—that money will not
buy you service in the West. When the hotel clerk—the man who awards
your room to you and who is supposed to give you information—when
that resplendent individual stoops to attend to your wants he does so
whistling or humming or picking his teeth, or pauses to converse with some
one he knows. These performances, I gather, are to impress upon you that
he is a free man and your equal. From his general appearance and the size
of his diamonds he ought to be your superior. There is no necessity for
this swaggering self-consciousness of freedom. Business is business, and
the man who is paid to attend to a man might reasonably devote his whole
attention to the job. Out of office hours he can take his coach and four
and pervade society if he pleases.
In a vast marble-paved hall, under the glare of an electric light, sat
forty or fifty men, and for their use and amusement were provided
spittoons of infinite capacity and generous gape. Most of the men wore
frock-coats and top-hats—the things that we in India put on at a
wedding-breakfast, if we possess them—but they all spat. They spat
on principle. The spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom—yea,
and in chambers even more sacred than these. They chased one into
retirement, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor round the bar, and
they were all used, every reeking one of them.
Just before I began to feel deathly sick another reporter grappled me.
What he wanted to know was the precise area of India in square miles. I
referred him to Whittaker. He had never heard of Whittaker. He wanted it
from my own mouth, and I would not tell him. Then he swerved off, just
like the other man, to details of journalism in our own country. I
ventured to suggest that the interior economy of a paper most concerned
the people who worked it.
“That's the very thing that interests us,” he said. “Have you got
reporters anything like our reporters on Indian newspapers?”
“We have not,” I said, and suppressed the “thank God” rising to my lips.
“Why haven't you?” said he.
“Because they would die,” I said.
It was exactly like talking to a child—a very rude little child. He
would begin almost every sentence with, “Now tell me something about
India,” and would turn aimlessly from one question to the other without
the least continuity. I was not angry, but keenly interested. The man was
a revelation to me. To his questions I returned answers mendacious and
evasive. After all, it really did not matter what I said. He could not
understand. I can only hope and pray that none of the readers of the
“Pioneer” will ever see that portentous interview. The man made me out to
be an idiot several sizes more drivelling than my destiny intended, and
the rankness of his ignorance managed to distort the few poor facts with
which I supplied him into large and elaborate lies. Then, thought I, “the
matter of American journalism shall be looked into later on. At present I
will enjoy myself.”
No man rose to tell me what were the lions of the place. No one
volunteered any sort of conveyance. I was absolutely alone in this big
city of white folk. By instinct I sought refreshment, and came upon a
barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of
their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of
the “free lunch” I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you
wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed
himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt.
Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts.
Later I began a vast but unsystematic exploration of the streets. I asked
for no names. It was enough that the pavements were full of white men and
women, the streets clanging with traffic, and that the restful roar of a
great city rang in my ears. The cable cars glided to all points of the
compass at once. I took them one by one till I could go no further. San
Francisco has been pitched down on the sand bunkers of the Bikaneer
desert. About one fourth of it is ground reclaimed from the sea—any
old-timers will tell you all about that. The remainder is just ragged,
unthrifty sand hills, to-day pegged down by houses.
From an English point of view there has not been the least attempt at
grading those hills, and indeed you might as well try to grade the
hillocks of Sind. The cable cars have for all practical purposes made San
Francisco a dead level. They take no count of rise or fall, but slide
equably on their appointed courses from one end to the other of a six-mile
street. They turn corners almost at right angles, cross other lines, and
for aught I know may run up the sides of houses. There is no visible
agency of their flight, but once in awhile you shall pass a five-storied
building humming with machinery that winds up an everlasting wire cable,
and the initiated will tell you that here is the mechanism. I gave up
asking questions. If it pleases Providence to make a car run up and down a
slit in the ground for many miles, and if for twopence halfpenny I can
ride in that car, why shall I seek the reasons of the miracle? Rather let
me look out of the windows till the shops give place to thousands and
thousands of little houses made of wood (to imitate stone), each house
just big enough for a man and his family. Let me watch the people in the
cars and try to find out in what manner they differ from us, their
ancestors.
It grieves me now that I cursed them (in the matter of book piracy),
because I perceived that my curse is working and that their speech is
becoming a horror already. They delude themselves into the belief that
they talk English—the English—and I have already been pitied
for speaking with “an English accent.” The man who pitied me spoke, so far
as I was concerned, the language of thieves. And they all do. Where we put
the accent forward they throw it back, and vice versa where we give the
long “a” they use the short, and words so simple as to be past mistaking
they pronounce somewhere up in the dome of their heads. How do these
things happen?
Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yankee school-marm, the cider and the
salt codfish of the Eastern States, are responsible for what he calls a
nasal accent. I know better. They stole books from across the water
without paying for 'em, and the snort of delight was fixed in their
nostrils forever by a just Providence. That is why they talk a foreign
tongue to-day.
“Cats is dogs, and rabbits is dogs, and so's parrots. But this 'ere
tortoise is an insect, so there ain't no charge,” as the old porter said.
A Hindoo is a Hindoo and a brother to the man who knows his vernacular.
And a Frenchman is French because he speaks his own language. But the
American has no language. He is dialect, slang, provincialism, accent, and
so forth. Now that I have heard their voices, all the beauty of Bret Harte
is being ruined for me, because I find myself catching through the roll of
his rhythmical prose the cadence of his peculiar fatherland. Get an
American lady to read to you “How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar,” and
see how much is, under her tongue, left of the beauty of the original.
But I am sorry for Bret Harte. It happened this way. A reporter asked me
what I thought of the city, and I made answer suavely that it was hallowed
ground to me, because of Bret Harte. That was true.
“Well,” said the reporter, “Bret Harte claims California, but California
don't claim Bret Harte. He's been so long in England that he's quite
English. Have you seen our cracker factories or the new offices of the
'Examiner'?”
He could not understand that to the outside world the city was worth a
great deal less than the man. I never intended to curse the people with a
provincialism so vast as this.
But let us return to our sheep—which means the sea-lions of the
Cliff House. They are the great show of San Francisco. You take a train
which pulls up the middle of the street (it killed two people the day
before yesterday, being unbraked and driven absolutely regardless of
consequences), and you pull up somewhere at the back of the city on the
Pacific beach. Originally the cliffs and their approaches must have been
pretty, but they have been so carefully defiled with advertisements that
they are now one big blistered abomination. A hundred yards from the shore
stood a big rock covered with the carcasses of the sleek sea-beasts, who
roared and rolled and walloped in the spouting surges. No bold man had
painted the creatures sky-blue or advertised newspapers on their backs,
wherefore they did not match the landscape, which was chiefly hoarding.
Some day, perhaps, whatever sort of government may obtain in this country
will make a restoration of the place and keep it clean and neat. At
present the sovereign people, of whom I have heard so much already, are
vending cherries and painting the virtues of “Little Bile Beans” all over
it.
Night fell over the Pacific, and the white sea-fog whipped through the
streets, dimming the splendors of the electric lights. It is the use of
this city, her men and women folk, to parade between the hours of eight
and ten a certain street called Cairn Street, where the finest shops are
situated. Here the click of high heels on the pavement is loudest, here
the lights are brightest, and here the thunder of the traffic is most
overwhelming. I watched Young California, and saw that it was, at least,
expensively dressed, cheerful in manner, and self-asserting in
conversation. Also the women were very fair. Perhaps eighteen days aboard
ship had something to do with my unreserved admiration. The maidens were
of generous build, large, well groomed, and attired in raiment that even
to my inexperienced eyes must have cost much. Cairn Street at nine o'clock
levels all distinctions of rank as impartially as the grave. Again and
again I loitered at the heels of a couple of resplendent beings, only to
overhear, when I expected the level voice of culture, the staccato “Sez
he,” “Sez I” that is the mark of the white servant-girl all the world
over.
This was depressing because, in spite of all that goes to the contrary,
fine feathers ought to make fine birds. There was wealth—unlimited
wealth—in the streets, but not an accent that would not have been
dear at fifty cents. Wherefore, revolving in my mind that these folk were
barbarians, I was presently enlightened and made aware that they also were
the heirs of all the ages, and civilized after all. There appeared before
me an affable stranger of prepossessing appearance, with a blue and an
innocent eye. Addressing me by name, he claimed to have met me in New
York, at the Windsor, and to this claim I gave a qualified assent. I did
not remember the fact, but since he was so certain of it, why, then—I
waited developments.
“And what did you think of Indiana when you came through?” was the next
question.
It revealed the mystery of previous acquaintance and one or two other
things. With reprehensible carelessness my friend of the light-blue eye
had looked up the name of his victim in the hotel register, and read
“Indiana” for India.
The provincialism with which I had cursed his people extended to himself.
He could not imagine an Englishman coming through the States from west to
east instead of by the regularly ordained route. My fear was that in his
delight in finding me so responsive he would make remarks about New York
and the Windsor which I could not understand. And, indeed, he adventured
in this direction once or twice, asking me what I thought of such and such
streets, which from his tone I gathered to be anything but respectable. It
is trying to talk unknown New York in almost unknown San Francisco. But my
friend was merciful. He protested that I was one after his own heart, and
pressed upon me rare and curious drinks at more than one bar. These drinks
I accepted with gratitude, as also the cigars with which his pockets were
stored. He would show me the life of the city. Having no desire to watch a
weary old play again, I evaded the offer and received in lieu of the
devil's instruction much coarse flattery. Curiously constituted is the
soul of man. Knowing how and where this man lied, waiting idly for the
finale, I was distinctly conscious, as he bubbled compliments in my ear,
of soft thrills of gratified pride stealing from hat-rim to boot-heels. I
was wise, quoth he—anybody could see that with half an eye;
sagacious, versed in the ways of the world, an acquaintance to be desired;
one who had tasted the cup of life with discretion.
All this pleased me, and in a measure numbed the suspicion that was
thoroughly aroused. Eventually the blue-eyed one discovered, nay,
insisted, that I had a taste for cards (this was clumsily worked in, but
it was my fault, for in that I met him half-way and allowed him no chance
of good acting). Hereupon I laid my head upon one side and simulated
unholy wisdom, quoting odds and ends of poker talk, all ludicrously
misapplied. My friend kept his countenance admirably, and well he might,
for five minutes later we arrived, always by the purest of chance, at a
place where we could play cards and also frivol with Louisiana State
Lottery tickets. Would I play?
“Nay,” said I, “for to me cards have neither meaning nor continuity; but
let us assume that I am going to play. How would you and your friends get
to work? Would you play a straight game, or make me drunk, or—well,
the fact is, I'm a newspaper man, and I'd be much obliged if you'd let me
know something about bunco steering.”
My blue-eyed friend erected himself into an obelisk of profanity. He
cursed me by his gods—the right and left bower; he even cursed the
very good cigars he had given me. But, the storm over, he quieted down and
explained. I apologized for causing him to waste an evening, and we spent
a very pleasant time together.
Inaccuracy, provincialism, and a too hasty rushing to conclusions, were
the rocks that he had split on, but he got his revenge when he said:—“How
would I play with you? From all the poppycock Anglice bosh you talked
about poker, I'd ha' played a straight game, and skinned you. I wouldn't
have taken the trouble to make you drunk. You never knew anything of the
game, but how I was mistaken in going to work on you, makes me sick.”
He glared at me as though I had done him an injury. To-day I know how it
is that year after year, week after week, the bunco steerer, who is the
confidence trick and the card-sharper man of other climes, secures his
prey. He clavers them over with flattery as the snake clavers the rabbit.
The incident depressed me because it showed I had left the innocent East
far behind and was come to a country where a man must look out for
himself. The very hotels bristled with notices about keeping my door
locked and depositing my valuables in a safe. The white man in a lump is
bad. Weeping softly for O-Toyo (little I knew then that my heart was to be
torn afresh from my bosom) I fell asleep in the clanging hotel.
Next morning I had entered upon the deferred inheritance. There are no
princes in America—at least with crowns on their heads—but a
generous-minded member of some royal family received my letter of
introduction. Ere the day closed I was a member of the two clubs, and
booked for many engagements to dinner and party. Now, this prince, upon
whose financial operations be continual increase, had no reason, nor had
the others, his friends, to put himself out for the sake of one Briton
more or less, but he rested not till he had accomplished all in my behalf
that a mother could think of for her debutante daughter.
Do you know the Bohemian Club of San Francisco? They say its fame extends
over the world. It was created, somewhat on the lines of the Savage, by
men who wrote or drew things, and has blossomed into most unrepublican
luxury. The ruler of the place is an owl—an owl standing upon a
skull and cross-bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the man of
letters and the end of his hopes for immortality. The owl stands on the
staircase, a statue four feet high; is carved in the wood-work, flutters
on the frescoed ceiling, is stamped on the note-paper, and hangs on the
walls. He is an ancient and honorable bird. Under his wing 'twas my
privilege to meet with white men whose lives were not chained down to
routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of reading them
hurriedly in the pauses of office-work, who painted pictures instead of
contenting themselves with cheap etchings picked up at another man's sale
of effects. Mine were all the rights of social intercourse, craft by
craft, that India, stony-hearted step-mother of collectors, has swindled
us out of. Treading soft carpets and breathing the incense of superior
cigars, I wandered from room to room studying the paintings in which the
members of the club had caricatured themselves, their associates, and
their aims. There was a slick French audacity about the workmanship of
these men of toil unbending that went straight to the heart of the
beholder. And yet it was not altogether French. A dry grimness of
treatment, almost Dutch, marked the difference. The men painted as they
spoke—with certainty. The club indulges in revelries which it calls
“jinks”—high and low, at intervals—and each of these
gatherings is faithfully portrayed in oils by hands that know their
business. In this club were no amateurs spoiling canvas, because they
fancied they could handle oils without knowledge of shadows or anatomy—no
gentleman of leisure ruining the temper of publishers and an already
ruined market with attempts to write “because everybody writes something
these days.”
My hosts were working, or had worked for their daily bread with pen or
paint, and their talk for the most part was of the shop—shoppy—that
is to say, delightful. They extended a large hand of welcome, and were as
brethren, and I did homage to the owl and listened to their talk. An
Indian club about Christmas-time will yield, if properly worked, an
abundant harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering of Americans from the
uttermost ends of their own continent, the tales are larger, thicker, more
spinous, and even more azure than any Indian variety. Tales of the war I
heard told by an ex-officer of the South over his evening drink to a
colonel of the Northern army, my introducer, who had served as a trooper
in the Northern Horse, throwing in emendations from time to time. “Tales
of the Law,” which in this country is an amazingly elastic affair,
followed from the lips of a judge. Forgive me for recording one tale that
struck me as new. It may interest the up-country Bar in India.
Once upon a time there was Samuelson, a young lawyer, who feared not God,
neither regarded the Bench. (Name, age, and town of the man were given at
great length.) To him no case had ever come as a client, partly because he
lived in a district where lynch law prevailed, and partly because the most
desperate prisoner shrunk from intrusting himself to the mercies of a
phenomenal stammerer. But in time there happened an aggravated murder—so
bad, indeed, that by common consent the citizens decided, as a prelude to
lynching, to give the real law a chance. They could, in fact, gambol round
that murder. They met—the court in its shirt-sleeves—and
against the raw square of the Court House window a temptingly suggestive
branch of a tree fretted the sky. No one appeared for the prisoner, and,
partly in jest, the court advised young Samuelson to take up the case.
“The prisoner is undefended, Sam,” said the court. “The square thing to do
would be for you to take him aside and do the best you can for him.”
Court, jury, and witness then adjourned to the veranda, while Samuelson
led his client aside to the Court House cells. An hour passed ere the
lawyer returned alone. Mutely the audience questioned.
“May it p-p-please the c-court,” said Samuel-son, “my client's case is a
b-b-b-bad one—a d-d-amn bad one. You told me to do the b-b-best I
c-could for him, judge, so I've jest given him y-your b-b-bay gelding, an'
told him to light out for healthier c-climes, my p-p-professional opinion
being he'd be hanged quicker'n h-h-hades if he dallied here. B-by this
time my client's 'bout fifteen mile out yonder somewheres. That was the
b-b-best I could do for him, may it p-p-please the court.”
The young man, escaping punishment in lieu of the prisoner, made his
fortune ere five years.
Other voices followed, with equally wondrous tales of riata-throwing in
Mexico and Arizona, of gambling at army posts in Texas, of newspaper wars
waged in godless Chicago (I could not help being interested, but they were
not pretty tricks), of deaths sudden and violent in Montana and Dakota, of
the loves of half-breed maidens in the South, and fantastic huntings for
gold in mysterious Alaska. Above all, they told the story of the building
of old San Francisco, when the “finest collection of humanity on God's
earth, sir, started this town, and the water came up to the foot of Market
Street.” Very terrible were some of the tales, grimly humorous the others,
and the men in broadcloth and fine linen who told them had played their
parts in them.
“And now and again when things got too bad they would toll the city bell,
and the Vigilance Committee turned out and hanged the suspicious
characters. A man didn't begin to be suspected in those days till he had
committed at least one unprovoked murder,” said a calm-eyed, portly old
gentleman.
I looked at the pictures around me, the noiseless, neat-uniformed waiter
behind me, the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvet carpet beneath. It was
hard to realize that even twenty years ago you could see a man hanged with
great pomp. Later on I found reason to change my opinion. The tales gave
me a headache and set me thinking. How in the world was it possible to
take in even one thousandth of this huge, roaring, many-sided continent?
In the tobacco-scented silence of the sumptuous library lay Professor
Bryce's book on the American Republic.
“It is an omen,” said I. “He has done all things in all seriousness, and
he may be purchased for half a guinea. Those who desire information of the
most undoubted, must refer to his pages. For me is the daily round of
vagabondage, the recording of the incidents of the hour and intercourse
with the travelling-companion of the day. I will not 'do' this country at
all.”
And I forgot all about India for ten days while I went out to dinners and
watched the social customs of the people, which are entirely different
from our customs, and was introduced to men of many millions. These
persons are harmless in their earlier stages—that is to say, a man
worth three or four million dollars may be a good talker, clever, amusing,
and of the world; a man with twice that amount is to be avoided, and a
twenty million man is—just twenty millions. Take an instance. I was
speaking to a newspaper man about seeing the proprietor of his journal, as
in my innocence I supposed newspaper men occasionally did. My friend
snorted indignantly:—“See him! Great Scott! No. If he happens to
appear in the office, I have to associate with him; but, thank Heaven!
outside of that I move in circles where he cannot come.”
And yet the first thing I have been taught to believe is that money was
everything in America!
“Man is fire and woman is tow,
And the devil he comes and begins to blow.”
In America the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof, in
absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently, accidents do not
exceed the regular percentage arranged by the devil for each class and
climate under the skies.
But the freedom of the young girl has its drawbacks. She is—I say it
with all reluctance—irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to the
buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She talks flippantly to her parents
and men old enough to be her grandfather. She has a prescriptive right to
the society of the man who arrives. The parents admit it.
This is sometimes embarrassing, especially when you call on a man and his
wife for the sake of information—the one being a merchant of varied
knowledge, the other a woman of the world. In five minutes your host has
vanished. In another five his wife has followed him, and you are left
alone with a very charming maiden, doubtless, but certainly not the person
you came to see. She chatters, and you grin, but you leave with the very
strong impression of a wasted morning. This has been my experience once or
twice. I have even said as pointedly as I dared to a man:—“I came to
see you.”
“You'd better see me in my office, then. The house belongs to my women
folk—to my daughter, that is to say.”
He spoke the truth. The American of wealth is owned by his family. They
exploit him for bullion. The women get the ha'pence, the kicks are all his
own. Nothing is too good for an American's daughter (I speak here of the
moneyed classes).
The girls take every gift as a matter of course, and yet they develop
greatly when a catastrophe arrives and the man of many millions goes up or
goes down, and his daughters take to stenography or typewriting. I have
heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted the
principals among their friends. The crash came, Mamie, or Hattie, or
Sadie, gave up their maid, their carriages and candy, and with a No. 2
Remington and a stout heart set about earning their daily bread.
“And did I drop her from the list of my friends? No, sir,” said a
scarlet-lipped vision in white lace; “that might happen to us any day.”
It may be this sense of possible disaster in the air that makes San
Francisco society go with so captivating a rush and whirl. Recklessness is
in the air. I can't explain where it comes from, but there it is. The
roaring winds of the Pacific make you drunk to begin with. The aggressive
luxury on all sides helps out the intoxication, and you spin forever “down
the ringing grooves of change” (there is no small change, by the way, west
of the Rockies) as long as money lasts. They make greatly and they spend
lavishly; not only the rich, but the artisans, who pay nearly five pounds
for a suit of clothes, and for other luxuries in proportion.
The young men rejoice in the days of their youth. They gamble, yacht,
race, enjoy prize-fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the other in
secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves over
horse-flesh and other things, and they are instant in a quarrel. At twenty
they are experienced in business, embark in vast enterprises, take
partners as experienced as themselves, and go to pieces with as much
splendor as their neighbors. Remember that the men who stocked California
in the fifties were physically, and, as far as regards certain tough
virtues, the pick of the earth. The inept and the weakly died en route, or
went under in the days of construction. To this nucleus were added all the
races of the Continent—French, Italian, German, and, of course, the
Jew.
The result you can see in the large-boned, deep-chested, delicate-handed
women, and long, elastic, well-built boys. It needs no little golden badge
swinging from the watch-chain to mark the native son of the golden West,
the country-bred of California.
Him I love because he is devoid of fear, carries himself like a man, and
has a heart as big as his books. I fancy, too, he knows how to enjoy the
blessings of life that his province so abundantly bestows upon him. At
least, I heard a little rat of a creature with hock-bottle shoulders
explaining that a man from Chicago could pull the eye-teeth of a
Californian in business.
Well, if I lived in fairy-land, where cherries were as big as plums, plums
as big as apples, and strawberries of no account, where the procession of
the fruits of the seasons was like a pageant in a Drury Lane pantomime and
the dry air was wine, I should let business slide once in a way and kick
up my heels with my fellows. The tale of the resources of California—vegetable
and mineral—is a fairy-tale. You can read it in books. You would
never believe me.
All manner of nourishing food, from sea-fish to beef, may be bought at the
lowest prices, and the people are consequently well-developed and of a
high stomach. They demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock of a
trunk; they receive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters;
they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars, which the poorest of them
smoke, and they go mad over a prize-fight. When they disagree they do so
fatally, with fire-arms in their hands, and on the public streets. I was
just clear of Mission Street when the trouble began between two gentlemen,
one of whom perforated the other.
When a policeman, whose name I do not recollect, “fatally shot Ed Hearney”
for attempting to escape arrest, I was in the next street. For these
things I am thankful. It is enough to travel with a policeman in a
tram-car, and, while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down, to catch
sight of a loaded revolver. It is enough to know that fifty per cent of
the men in the public saloons carry pistols about them.
The Chinaman waylays his adversary, and methodically chops him to pieces
with his hatchet. Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of the
pagan.
The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. The press complains
of the waywardness of the alien.
The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of discontent use
the revolver, not once, but six times. The press records the fact, and
asks in the next column whether the world can parallel the progress of San
Francisco. The American who loves his country will tell you that this sort
of thing is confined to the lower classes. Just at present an ex-judge who
was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannot tell whether
these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot vengeance against his
enemy. The papers have interviewed both parties, and confidently expect a
fatal issue.
Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through him the
negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen with a vote,
consequently both political parties play with him. But that is neither
here nor there. He will commit in one meal every betise that a senllion
fresh from the plow-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeat
those faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending,
bungle-fisted fool as any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her
establishment. But he is according to law a free and independent citizen—consequently
above reproof or criticism. He, and he alone, in this insane city, will
wait at table (the Chinaman doesn't count).
He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the pay. Now,
God and his father's fate made him intellectually inferior to the
Oriental. He insists on pretending that he serves tables by accident—as
a sort of amusement. He wishes you to understand this little fact. You
wish to eat your meals, and, if possible, to have them properly served. He
is a big, black, vain baby and a man rolled into one.
A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wanted something
else, demanded information about India. I gave him some facts about wages.
“Oh, hell!” said he, cheerfully, “that wouldn't keep me in cigars for a
month.”
Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon himself
to pity the natives of India. “Heathens,” he called them—this woolly
one, whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stage
since the beginning. And I turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders
that he was a Yoruba man, if there be any truth in ethnological castes. He
did his thinking in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race type
had remained the same throughout his generations. And the room was full of
other races—some that looked exactly like Gallas (but the trade was
never recruited from that side of Africa), some duplicates of Cameroon
heads, and some Kroomen, if ever Kroomen wore evening dress.
The American does not consider little matters of descent, though by this
time he ought to know all about “damnable heredity.” As a general rule he
keeps himself very far from the negro, and says things about him that are
not pretty. There are six million negroes, more or less, in the States,
and they are increasing. The American, once having made them citizens,
cannot unmake them. He says, in his newspapers, they ought to be elevated
by education. He is trying this, but it is likely to be a long job,
because black blood is much more adhesive than white, and throws back with
annoying persistence. When the negro gets religion he returns directly as
a hiving bee to the first instincts of his people. Just now a wave of
religion is sweeping over some of the Southern States.
Up to the present two Messiahs and a Daniel have appeared, and several
human sacrifices have been offered up to these incarnations. The Daniel
managed to get three young men, who he insisted were Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, to walk into a blast furnace, guaranteeing non-combustion.
They did not return. I have seen nothing of this kind, but I have attended
a negro church. They pray, or are caused to pray by themselves in this
country. The congregation were moved by the spirit to groans and tears,
and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners' bench. The motive may
have been genuine. The movements of the shaken body were those of a
Zanzibar stick dance, such as you see at Aden on the coal-boats, and even
as I watched the people, the links that bound them to the white man
snapped one by one, and I saw before me the hubshi (woolly hair) praying
to a God he did not understand. Those neatly dressed folk on the benches,
and the gray-headed elder by the window, were savages, neither more nor
less.
What will the American do with the negro? The South will not consort with
him. In some States miscegenation is a penal offence. The North is every
year less and less in need of his services.
And he will not disappear. He will continue as a problem. His friends will
urge that he is as good as the white man. His enemies—well, you can
guess what his enemies will do from a little incident that followed on a
recent appointment by the President. He made a negro an assistant in a
post-office where—think of it!—he had to work at the next desk
to a white girl, the daughter of a colonel, one of the first families of
Georgia's modern chivalry, and all the weary, weary rest of it. The
Southern chivalry howled, and hanged or burned some one in effigy. Perhaps
it was the President, and perhaps it was the negro—but the principle
remains the same. They said it was an insult. It is not good to be a negro
in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
But this is nothing to do with San Francisco and her merry maidens, her
strong, swaggering men, and her wealth of gold and pride. They bore me to
a banquet in honor of a brave lieutenant—Carlin, of the “Vandalia”—who
stuck by his ship in the great cyclone at Apia and comported himself as an
officer should. On that occasion—'twas at the Bohemian Club—I
heard oratory with the roundest of o's, and devoured a dinner the memory
of which will descend with me into the hungry grave.
There were about forty speeches delivered, and not one of them was average
or ordinary. It was my first introduction to the American eagle screaming
for all it was worth. The lieutenant's heroism served as a peg from which
the silver-tongued ones turned themselves loose and kicked.
They ransacked the clouds of sunset, the thunderbolts of heaven, the deeps
of hell, and the splendor of the resurrection for tropes and metaphors,
and hurled the result at the head of the guest of the evening.
Never since the morning stars sung together for joy, I learned, had an
amazed creation witnessed such superhuman bravery as that displayed by the
American navy in the Samoa cyclone. Till earth rotted in the
phosphorescent star-and-stripe slime of a decayed universe, that god-like
gallantry would not be forgotten. I grieve that I cannot give the exact
words. My attempt at reproducing their spirit is pale and inadequate. I
sat bewildered on a coruscating Niagara of blatherum-skite. It was
magnificent—it was stupendous—and I was conscious of a wicked
desire to hide my face in a napkin and grin. Then, according to rule, they
produced their dead, and across the snowy tablecloths dragged the corpse
of every man slain in the Civil War, and hurled defiance at “our natural
enemy” (England, so please you), “with her chain of fortresses across the
world.” Thereafter they glorified their nation afresh from the beginning,
in case any detail should have been overlooked, and that made me
uncomfortable for their sakes. How in the world can a white man, a sahib,
of our blood, stand up and plaster praise on his own country? He can think
as highly as he likes, but this open-mouthed vehemence of adoration struck
me almost as indelicate. My hosts talked for rather more than three hours,
and at the end seemed ready for three hours more.
But when the lieutenant—such a big, brave, gentle giant—rose
to his feet, he delivered what seemed to me as the speech of the evening.
I remember nearly the whole of it, and it ran something in this way:—“Gentlemen—It's
very good of you to give me this dinner and to tell me all these
pretty-things, but what I want you to understand—the fact is, what
we want and what we ought to get at once, is a navy—more ships—lots
of 'em—”
Then we howled the top of the roof off, and I for one fell in love with
Carlin on the spot. Wallah! He was a man.
The prince among merchants bid me take no heed to the warlike sentiments
of some of the old generals.
“The sky-rockets are thrown in for effect,” quoth he, “and whenever we get
on our hind legs we always express a desire to chaw up England. It's a
sort of family affair.”
And, indeed, when you come to think of it, there is no other country for
the American public speaker to trample upon.
France has Germany; we have Russia; for Italy Austria is provided; and the
humblest Pathan possesses an ancestral enemy.
Only America stands out of the racket, and therefore to be in fashion
makes a sand-bag of the mother country, and hangs her when occasion
requires.
“The chain of fortresses” man, a fascinating talker, explained to me after
the affair that he was compelled to blow off steam. Everybody expected it.
When we had chanted “The Star Spangled Banner” not more than eight times,
we adjourned. America is a very great country, but it is not yet heaven,
with electric lights and plush fittings, as the speakers professed to
believe. My listening mind went back to the politicians in the saloon, who
wasted no time in talking about freedom, but quietly made arrangements to
impose their will on the citizens.
“The judge is a great man, but give thy presents to the clerk,” as the
proverb saith.
And what more remains to tell? I cannot write connectedly, because I am in
love with all those girls aforesaid, and some others who do not appear in
the invoice. The typewriter is an institution of which the comic papers
make much capital, but she is vastly convenient. She and a companion rent
a room in a business quarter, and, aided by a typewriting machine, copy
MSS. at the rate of six annas a page. Only a woman can operate a
typewriting machine, because she has served apprenticeship to the sewing
machine. She can earn as much as one hundred dollars a month, and
professes to regard this form of bread-winning as her natural destiny.
But, oh! how she hates it in her heart of hearts! When I had got over the
surprise of doing business with and trying to give orders to a young woman
of coldly, clerkly aspect intrenched behind gold-rimmed spectacles, I made
inquiries concerning the pleasures of this independence. They liked it—indeed
they did. 'Twas the natural fate of almost all girls—the recognized
custom in America—and I was a barbarian not to see it in that light.
“Well, and after?” said I. “What happens?”
“We work for our bread.”
“And then what do you expect?”
“Then we shall work for our bread.”
“Till you die?”
“Ye-es—unless—”
“Unless what? This is your business, you know. A man works until he dies.”
“So shall we”—this without enthusiasm—“I suppose.”
Said the partner in the firm, audaciously:—“Sometimes we marry our
employees—at least, that's what the newspapers say.”
The hand banged on half a dozen of the keys of the machine at once. “Yet I
don't care. I hate it—I hate it—I hate it—and you
needn't look so!”
The senior partner was regarding the rebel with grave-eyed reproach.
“I thought you did,” said I. “I don't suppose American girls are much
different from English ones in instinct.”
“Isn't it Theophile Gautier who says that the only difference between
country and country lie in the slang and the uniform of the police?”
Now, in the name of all the gods at once, what is one to say to a young
lady (who in England would be a person) who earns her own bread, and very
naturally hates the employ, and slings out-of-the-way quotations at your
head? That one falls in love with her goes without saying, but that is not
enough.
A mission should be established.
. . . . . .Then out and away to Livingstone once more. The maiden from New Hampshire disappeared, papa and mamma with her. Disappeared, too, the old lady from Chicago, and the others.
“I know thy cunning and thy greed,
Thy hard high lust and wilful deed,
And all thy glory loves to tell
Of specious gifts material.”
I HAVE struck a city—a real city—and they call it Chicago.
The other places do not count. San Francisco was a pleasure-resort as well
as a city, and Salt Lake was a phenomenon.
This place is the first American city I have encountered. It holds rather
more than a million of people with bodies, and stands on the same sort of
soil as Calcutta. Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again.
It is inhabited by savages. Its water is the water of the Hooghly, and its
air is dirt. Also it says that it is the “boss” town of America.
I do not believe that it has anything to do with this country. They told
me to go to the Palmer House, which is overmuch gilded and mirrored, and
there I found a huge hall of tessellated marble crammed with people
talking about money, and spitting about everywhere. Other barbarians
charged in and out of this inferno with letters and telegrams in their
hands, and yet others shouted at each other. A man who had drunk quite as
much as was good for him told me that this was “the finest hotel in the
finest city on God Almighty's earth.” By the way, when an American wishes
to indicate the next country or state, he says, “God A'mighty's earth.”
This prevents discussion and flatters his vanity.
Then I went out into the streets, which are long and flat and without end.
And verily it is not a good thing to live in the East for any length of
time. Your ideas grow to clash with those held by every right-thinking
man. I looked down interminable vistas flanked with nine, ten, and
fifteen-storied houses, and crowded with men and women, and the show
impressed me with a great horror.
Except in London—and I have forgotten what London was like—I
had never seen so many white people together, and never such a collection
of miserables. There was no color in the street and no beauty—only a
maze of wire ropes overhead and dirty stone flagging under foot.
A cab-driver volunteered to show me the glory of the town for so much an
hour, and with him I wandered far. He conceived that all this turmoil and
squash was a thing to be reverently admired, that it was good to huddle
men together in fifteen layers, one atop of the other, and to dig holes in
the ground for offices.
He said that Chicago was a live town, and that all the creatures hurrying
by me were engaged in business. That is to say they were trying to make
some money that they might not die through lack of food to put into their
bellies. He took me to canals as black as ink, and filled with un-told
abominations, and bid me watch the stream of traffic across the bridges.
He then took me into a saloon, and while I drank made me note that the
floor was covered with coins sunk in cement. A Hottentot would not have
been guilty of this sort of barbarism. The coins made an effect pretty
enough, but the man who put them there had no thought of beauty, and,
therefore, he was a savage.
Then my cab-driver showed me business blocks gay with signs and studded
with fantastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and looking down the
long street so adorned, it was as though each vender stood at his door
howling:—“For the sake of my money, employ or buy of me, and me
only!”
Have you ever seen a crowd at a famine-relief distribution? You know then
how the men leap into the air, stretching out their arms above the crowd
in the hope of being seen, while the women dolorously slap the stomachs of
their children and whimper. I had sooner watch famine relief than the
white man engaged in what he calls legitimate competition. The one I
understand. The other makes me ill.
And the cabman said that these things were the proof of progress, and by
that I knew he had been reading his newspaper, as every intelligent
American should. The papers tell their clientele in language fitted to
their comprehension that the snarling together of telegraph-wires, the
heaving up of houses, and the making of money is progress.
I spent ten hours in that huge wilderness, wandering through scores of
miles of these terrible streets and jostling some few hundred thousand of
these terrible people who talked paisa bat through their noses.
The cabman left me; but after awhile I picked up another man, who was full
of figures, and into my ears he poured them as occasion required or the
big blank factories suggested. Here they turned out so many hundred
thousand dollars' worth of such and such an article; there so many million
other things; this house was worth so many million dollars; that one so
many million, more or less. It was like listening to a child babbling of
its hoard of shells. It was like watching a fool playing with buttons. But
I was expected to do more than listen or watch. He demanded that I should
admire; and the utmost that I could say was:—“Are these things so?
Then I am very sorry for you.”
That made him angry, and he said that insular envy made me unresponsive.
So, you see, I could not make him understand.
About four and a half hours after Adam was turned out of the Garden of
Eden he felt hungry, and so, bidding Eve take care that her head was not
broken by the descending fruit, shinned up a cocoanut-palm. That hurt his
legs, cut his breast, and made him breathe heavily, and Eve was tormented
with fear lest her lord should miss his footing, and so bring the tragedy
of this world to an end ere the curtain had fairly risen. Had I met Adam
then, I should have been sorry for him. To-day I find eleven hundred
thousand of his sons just as far advanced as their father in the art of
getting food, and immeasurably inferior to him in that they think that
their palm-trees lead straight to the skies. Consequently, I am sorry in
rather more than a million different ways.
In the East bread comes naturally, even to the poorest, by a little
scratching or the gift of a friend not quite so poor. In less favored
countries one is apt to forget. Then I went to bed. And that was on a
Saturday night.
Sunday brought me the queerest experiences of all—a revelation of
barbarism complete. I found a place that was officially described as a
church. It was a circus really, but that the worshippers did not know.
There were flowers all about the building, which was fitted up with plush
and stained oak and much luxury, including twisted brass candlesticks of
severest Gothic design.
To these things and a congregation of savages entered suddenly a wonderful
man, completely in the confidence of their God, whom he treated
colloquially and exploited very much as a newspaper reporter would exploit
a foreign potentate. But, unlike the newspaper reporter, he never allowed
his listeners to forget that he, and not He, was the centre of attraction.
With a voice of silver and with imagery borrowed from the auction-room, he
built up for his hearers a heaven on the lines of the Palmer House (but
with all the gilding real gold, and all the plate-glass diamond), and set
in the centre of it a loud-voiced, argumentative, very shrewd creation
that he called God. One sentence at this point caught my delighted ear. It
was apropos of some question of the Judgment, and ran:—“No! I tell
you God doesn't do business that way.”
He was giving them a deity whom they could comprehend, and a gold and
jewelled heaven in which they could take a natural interest. He
interlarded his performance with the slang of the streets, the counter,
and the exchange, and he said that religion ought to enter into daily
life. Consequently, I presume he introduced it as daily life—his own
and the life of his friends.
Then I escaped before the blessing, desiring no benediction at such hands.
But the persons who listened seemed to enjoy themselves, and I understood
that I had met with a popular preacher.
Later on, when I had perused the sermons of a gentleman called Talmage and
some others, I perceived that I had been listening to a very mild
specimen. Yet that man, with his brutal gold and silver idols, his
hands-in-pocket, cigar-in-mouth, and hat-on-the-back-of-the-head style of
dealing with the sacred vessels, would count himself, spiritually, quite
competent to send a mission to convert the Indians.
All that Sunday I listened to people who said that the mere fact of
spiking down strips of iron to wood, and getting a steam and iron thing to
run along them was progress, that the telephone was progress, and the
net-work of wires overhead was progress. They repeated their statements
again and again.
One of them took me to their City Hall and Board of Trade works, and
pointed it out with pride. It was very ugly, but very big, and the streets
in front of it were narrow and unclean. When I saw the faces of the men
who did business in that building, I felt that there had been a mistake in
their billeting.
By the way, 'tis a consolation to feel that I am not writing to an English
audience. Then I should have to fall into feigned ecstasies over the
marvellous progress of Chicago since the days of the great fire, to allude
casually to the raising of the entire city so many feet above the level of
the lake which it faces, and generally to grovel before the golden calf.
But you, who are desperately poor, and therefore by these standards of no
ac-count, know things, will understand when I write that they have managed
to get a million of men together on flat land, and that the bulk of these
men together appear to be lower than Mahajans and not so companionable as
a Punjabi Jat after harvest.
But I don't think it was the blind hurry of the people, their argot, and
their grand ignorance of things beyond their immediate interests that
displeased me so much as a study of the daily papers of Chicago.
Imprimis, there was some sort of a dispute between New York and Chicago as
to which town should give an exhibition of products to be hereafter
holden, and through the medium of their more dignified journals the two
cities were yahooing and hi-yi-ing at each other like opposition newsboys.
They called it humor, but it sounded like something quite different.
That was only the first trouble. The second lay in the tone of the
productions. Leading articles which include gems such as “Back of such and
such a place,” or, “We noticed, Tuesday, such an event,” or, “don't” for
“does not,” are things to be accepted with thankfulness. All that made me
want to cry was that in these papers were faithfully reproduced all the
war-cries and “back-talk” of the Palmer House bar, the slang of the
barber-shops, the mental elevation and integrity of the Pullman car
porter, the dignity of the dime museum, and the accuracy of the excited
fish-wife. I am sternly forbidden to believe that the paper educates the
public. Then I am compelled to believe that the public educate the paper;
yet suicides on the press are rare.
Just when the sense of unreality and oppression was strongest upon me, and
when I most wanted help, a man sat at my side and began to talk what he
called politics.
I had chanced to pay about six shillings for a travelling-cap worth
eighteen-pence, and he made of the fact a text for a sermon. He said that
this was a rich country, and that the people liked to pay two hundred per
cent, on the value of a thing. They could afford it. He said that the
government imposed a protective duty of from ten to seventy per cent on
foreign-made articles, and that the American manufacturer consequently
could sell his goods for a healthy sum. Thus an imported hat would, with
duty, cost two guineas. The American manufacturer would make a hat for
seventeen shillings, and sell it for one pound fifteen. In these things,
he said, lay the greatness of America and the effeteness of England.
Competition between factory and factory kept the prices down to decent
limits, but I was never to forget that this people were a rich people, not
like the pauper Continentals, and that they enjoyed paying duties.
To my weak intellect this seemed rather like juggling with counters.
Everything that I have yet purchased costs about twice as much as it would
in England, and when native made is of inferior quality.
Moreover, since these lines were first thought of, I have visited a
gentleman who owned a factory which used to produce things. He owned the
factory still. Not a man was in it, but he was drawing a handsome income
from a syndicate of firms for keeping it closed, in order that it might
not produce things. This man said that if protection were abandoned, a
tide of pauper labor would flood the country, and as I looked at his
factory I thought how entirely better it was to have no labor of any kind
whatever rather than face so horrible a future.
Meantime, do you remember that this peculiar country enjoys paying money
for value not received? I am an alien, and for the life of me I cannot see
why six shillings should be paid for eighteen-penny caps, or eight
shillings for half-crown cigar-cases. When the country fills up to a
decently populated level a few million people who are not aliens will be
smitten with the same sort of blindness.
But my friend's assertion somehow thoroughly suited the grotesque ferocity
of Chicago.
See now and judge! In the village of Isser Jang, on the road to
Montgomery, there be four Changar women who winnow corn—some seventy
bushels a year. Beyond their hut lives Purun Dass, the money-lender, who
on good security lends as much as five thousand rupees in a year. Jowala
Singh, the smith, mends the village plows—some thirty, broken at the
share, in three hundred and sixty-five days; and Hukm Chund, who is
letter-writer and head of the little club under the travellers' tree,
generally keeps the village posted in such gossip as the barber and the
mid-wife have not yet made public property.
Chicago husks and winnows her wheat by the million bushels, a hundred
banks lend hundreds of millions of dollars in the year, and scores of
factories turn out plow-gear and machinery by steam. Scores of daily
papers do work which Hukm Chund and the barber and the midwife perform,
with due regard for public opinion, in the village of Isser Jang. So far
as manufactories go, the difference between Chicago on the lake, and Isser
Jang on the Montgomery road, is one of degree only, and not of kind. As
far as the understanding of the uses of life goes, Isser Jang, for all its
seasonal cholers, has the advantage over Chicago.
Jowala Singh knows and takes care to avoid the three or four ghoul-haunted
fields on the outskirts of the village; but he is not urged by millions of
devils to run about all day in the sun and swear that his plowshares are
the best in the Punjab; nor does Purun Dass fly forth in an ekka more than
once or twice a year, and he knows, on a pinch, how to use the railway and
the telegraph as well as any son of Israel in Chicago. But this is absurd.
The East is not the West, and these men must continue to deal with the
machinery of life, and to call it progress. Their very preachers dare not
rebuke them. They gloss over the hunting for money and the
thrice-sharpened bitterness of Adam's curse, by saying that such things
dower a man with a larger range of thoughts and higher aspirations. They
do not say, “Free yourselves from your own slavery,” but rather, “If you
can possibly manage it, do not set quite so much store on the things of
this world.”
And they do not know what the things of this world are!
I went off to see cattle killed, by way of clearing my head, which, as you
will perceive, was getting muddled. They say every Englishman goes to the
Chicago stock-yards. You shall find them about six miles from the city;
and once having seen them, you will never forget the sight.
As far as the eye can reach stretches a town-ship of cattle-pens,
cunningly divided into blocks, so that the animals of any pen can be
speedily driven out close to an inclined timber path which leads to an
elevated covered way straddling high above the pens. These viaducts are
two-storied. On the upper story tramp the doomed cattle, stolidly for the
most part. On the lower, with a scuffling of sharp hoofs and multitudinous
yells, run the pigs, the same end being appointed for each. Thus you will
see the gangs of cattle waiting their turn—as they wait sometimes
for days; and they need not be distressed by the sight of their fellows
running about in the fear of death. All they know is that a man on
horseback causes their next-door neighbors to move by means of a whip.
Certain bars and fences are unshipped, and behold! that crowd have gone up
the mouth of a sloping tunnel and return no more.
It is different with the pigs. They shriek back the news of the exodus to
their friends, and a hundred pens skirl responsive.
It was to the pigs I first addressed myself. Selecting a viaduct which was
full of them, as I could hear, though I could not see, I marked a sombre
building whereto it ran, and went there, not unalarmed by stray cattle who
had managed to escape from their proper quarters. A pleasant smell of
brine warned me of what was coming. I entered the factory and found it
full of pork in barrels, and on another story more pork un-barrelled, and
in a huge room the halves of swine, for whose behoof great lumps of ice
were being pitched in at the window. That room was the mortuary chamber
where the pigs lay for a little while in state ere they began their
progress through such passages as kings may sometimes travel.
Turning a corner, and not noting an overhead arrangement of greased rail,
wheel, and pulley, I ran into the arms of four eviscerated carcasses, all
pure white and of a human aspect, pushed by a man clad in vehement red.
When I leaped aside, the floor was slippery under me. Also there was a
flavor of farm-yard in my nostrils and the shouting of a multitude in my
ears. But there was no joy in that shouting. Twelve men stood in two lines
six a side. Between them and overhead ran the railway of death that had
nearly shunted me through the window. Each man carried a knife, the
sleeves of his shirt were cut off at the elbows, and from bosom to heel he
was blood-red.
Beyond this perspective was a column of steam, and beyond that was where I
worked my awe-struck way, unwilling to touch beam or wall. The atmosphere
was stifling as a night in the rains by reason of the steam and the crowd.
I climbed to the beginning of things and, perched upon a narrow beam,
overlooked very nearly all the pigs ever bred in Wisconsin. They had just
been shot out of the mouth of the viaduct and huddled together in a large
pen. Thence they were flicked persuasively, a few at a time, into a
smaller chamber, and there a man fixed tackle on their hinder legs, so
that they rose in the air, suspended from the railway of death.
Oh! it was then they shrieked and called on their mothers, and made
promises of amendment, till the tackle-man punted them in their backs and
they slid head down into a brick-floored passage, very like a big kitchen
sink, that was blood-red. There awaited them a red man with a knife, which
he passed jauntily through their throats, and the full-voiced shriek
became a splutter, and then a fall as of heavy tropical rain, and the red
man, who was backed against the passage-wall, you will understand, stood
clear of the wildly kicking hoofs and passed his hand over his eyes, not
from any feeling of compassion, but because the spurted blood was in his
eyes, and he had barely time to stick the next arrival. Then that first
stuck swine dropped, still kicking, into a great vat of boiling water, and
spoke no more words, but wallowed in obedience to some unseen machinery,
and presently came forth at the lower end of the vat, and was heaved on
the blades of a blunt paddle-wheel, things which said “Hough, hough,
hough!” and skelped all the hair off him, except what little a couple of
men with knives could remove.
Then he was again hitched by the heels to that said railway, and passed
down the line of the twelve men, each man with a knife—losing with
each man a certain amount of his individuality, which was taken away in a
wheel-barrow, and when he reached the last man he was very beautiful to
behold, but excessively unstuffed and limp. Preponderance of individuality
was ever a bar to foreign travel. That pig could have been in case to
visit you in India had he not parted with some of his most cherished
notions.
The dissecting part impressed me not so much as the slaying. They were so
excessively alive, these pigs. And then, they were so excessively dead,
and the man in the dripping, clammy, not passage did not seem to care, and
ere the blood of such a one had ceased to foam on the floor, such another
and four friends with him had shrieked and died. But a pig is only the
unclean animal—the forbidden of the prophet.
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