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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Abounding American, by 
-Thomas William Hodgson Crosland
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: The Abounding American
-
-Author: Thomas William Hodgson Crosland
-
-Release Date: December 16, 2017 [EBook #56185]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABOUNDING AMERICAN ***
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-Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
-http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
-generously made available by The Internet Archive)
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-
-                                   THE
-                                ABOUNDING
-                                AMERICAN
-
-                                   BY
-                            T. W. H. CROSLAND
-
-                                Author of
-                “Lovely Woman” and “The Unspeakable Scot”
-
-                                 London:
-                          A. F. THOMPSON & CO.
-                          92 Fleet Street, E.C.
-                                  1907
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS.
-
-
-                            PAGE
-
-    THE PROPOSITION            7
-
-    MILLIONAIRES              19
-
-    HUMOURISTS                29
-
-    THE AMERICAN WOMAN        37
-
-    LITERATURE                45
-
-    THE PRESIDENT             55
-
-    ADVERTISEMENT             61
-
-    THE PEA-NUT MIND          71
-
-    THE DRAMA                 81
-
-    SPORT                     91
-
-    HOGS                     101
-
-    VERDICT                  109
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-                             COPYRIGHT 1907
-                                   BY
-                             A. F. THOMPSON
-                                   IN
-                      THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
-                                 AND IN
-                        GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
-
-                           All Rights Reserved
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE PROPOSITION
-
-
-“And what, prithee, hath overtaken Guy?”
-
-“Guy—why Guy diced and drabbed and ruffled away his inheritance, and to
-save his neck took shipping for the tobacco plantations where, they say,
-he married a daughter of Lo, the poor Indian, and none hath since heard
-of him.”
-
-This is the kind of talk that one could hear in the clubs of London a
-matter of, say, two hundred and fifty years ago. In plain terms, Guy,
-poor devil, being a wastrel,—and a broken wastrel at that—had betaken
-himself to America, there probably to found one of the “fine old Virginia
-families” of which American writers, and particularly American fictional
-writers, are so prone to babble.
-
-America, of course, was really started not by the Indians or Columbus,
-but by the Pilgrim Fathers, assisted and backed up by several cargoes
-of blue-brained and cleverblooded spirits from the British Isles, whose
-minds were full of theology and whose souls were full of tea. I shall be
-told that it is unkind of me to make such remarks.
-
-But, quite apart from all questions of kindness, it is desirable that
-you know something of the antecedents of a man before you set about
-a proper estimate of him. If you wish to understand him thoroughly,
-you must never let sleeping dogs lie nor allow bygones to be bygones.
-It is notorious that the average frantic Fourth of July American is
-an adept at showing the best side of himself and his institutions to
-an admiring world. If you are to believe him the first American was
-Christopher Columbus, whose name in this connection I had hoped not to
-mention. But Don Columbus made the mistake of “discovering America.” For
-the accomplishment of this feat the Americans bestow upon his memory
-unqualified pæans. Really, of course, the fact that Columbus steered
-his leaky lugger desperately for Coney Island and Long Branch, when he
-had the rest of the world—including China and Gozo—before him where to
-choose, proves that so far from being a hero and a man of genius, he was
-a dull and evilly disposed person.
-
-According to the bumptious, khaki-tinted gentleman from Indiana too,
-the Pilgrim Fathers already referred to were high-minded, blameless,
-and entirely disinterested saints, incapable of hurting a fly or
-causing butter to melt north of the colour line. They “inaugurated
-America for conscience sake, sir, and you can bet your pile that I am
-proud to have them for ancestors.” In which connection I shall pass
-no rude observation, contenting myself rather with the hint that the
-reader who wishes to acquaint himself with the true inwardness of the
-Pilgrim Fathers and their doings in America should look up some of the
-serious literature on the subject. The Americans, be it noted, read that
-literature very privately, and neither in the basket nor in the store.
-
-I might proceed indefinitely on these lines of disillusion for Master
-Phineas B. Flubdub; but as it is not my particular business to amuse him
-inordinately, I shall desist.
-
-In Europe, or at any rate in England, there is a disposition on the part
-of the sandblind to look upon the United States and the people who dwell
-in them with an eye of amused wonderment, as well as admiration. For
-reasons that are not difficult to appreciate America has never been taken
-quite seriously by the superior European. In spite of all her boasting
-and shouting, in spite of her e-normous population and her equally
-e-normous wealth, in spite of the fact that there is a U.S. Army and a
-U.S. Navy that can lick creation, and that the U.S. also boasts of a
-reeking, shrieking press, together with the most gaudy and scintillating
-“Courts of Justice” that ever delighted civilisation, no person in Europe
-believes in the back of his mind that the land of hustle and bluff is
-a nation of any weight where nations count, or that she is capable of
-exercising the smallest direct or indirect influence upon the manners,
-customs, tendencies, or destiny of haughty feudal Europe.
-
-The Americans are hot stuff. They go in for cut-throat finance and
-lime-light lynchings, their swindles are beautiful, their fortunes
-colossal, and their corruption is picturesque. They have a wonderful
-country. It is theirs and not ours, and they are welcome to do as they
-like in it. They can never hurt us. Knowing this, the Englishman sleeps
-snugly of nights, and when he meets a “Yank” in London or on the Riviera
-or in Paris, he smiles to himself, professes to be tickled, tolerates
-him if there be occasion for it, grapples him to his bosom with hooks of
-steel if there is money in it, and parts from him pretty much in the mood
-of a man who has been inspecting a new motor car.
-
-And, truth to tell, in the guileless, sight-seeing, rush-about American
-whom the Englishman encounters on his own midden, there does not appear
-to be anything which is either very outrageous or very formidable. All
-you see of him is a somewhat undersized, loosely built human biped, with
-a fat jowl, straight hair, a nobby suit, a little round white or brown
-felt hat—and a guide-book. Of course, there is also the smart swagger
-American, accompanied by a feminine entourage of peaches and dreams. But
-usually your man from Yankeeland has with him a plain, up-and-down, sad
-sort of woman who might have stepped out of Noah’s ark—and that is the
-end of it. When he engages you in conversation, which he commonly insists
-upon doing, he blows foolishly about his own Country, admits that yours
-“hez the bulge in antiques,” says that he is glad that he came over, and
-sticking out his finger in the direction of the woman, remarks: “This
-is Mrs. Sarah B. Gazabo, my wife.” The real “insides” of the man never
-strike you, partly because you are busy loathing his accent and admiring
-his ginger, and partly because he has left his vital concerns, his
-private essence and sheer Americanisms “way back to hum.” All Americans
-imported for us by Thos. Cook & Son and his imitators are of this order.
-For them England is a place in which to tread softly and speak low, or
-at any rate as low as possible. They visit us in the same spirit that a
-prize-fighter might visit a cemetery, and though the casual observer
-would scarcely suspect it, their intention is to be subdued, sober,
-decorous, and civil.
-
-Eight times out of nine the American is a fine specimen of a manly
-man, but it is the ninth that is such a wonder. We, the obtuse and
-effete people of Great Britain, now and again wake up suddenly to the
-circumstance that we have been the victims of an American invasion.
-Such a ghastly conviction may at any moment overtake the best of us,
-for no class of society knows whose turn is likely to be next. There
-was an American invasion of the turf a year or two back, and English
-sport is sore and poor about it to this day. There have been sundry
-social invasions which those most directly concerned find it difficult
-to forget, and at the present moment we are in the thick of a theatrical
-invasion which is not doing us an appreciable amount of good. The fact
-of these invasions and of their always unpleasant consequences so far as
-the invaded are involved is, in my judgment, a fact of the most serious
-import to Englishmen.
-
-I shall for a moment drop the American as he seems to be, and regard him
-as he actually is. What can one record of him that is to his credit?
-Imprimus: He has devoted three hundred years more or less to the frantic
-and bloodthirsty pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. Item: During those three
-hundred years more or less he has done absolutely nothing but pursue
-dollars. Item: He is still pursuing them. Item: But he makes the best
-husband in the world, and places woman in the high place to which she is
-so amply entitled. I will put so much to the credit side, though I make
-no doubt that there are people in the world who will find themselves
-unable to commend me for doing it.
-
-Now for the obverse or discredit side. I shall ask you to note:
-
-(1) That the Americans are the only nation who are ruled by a bureaucracy
-of millionaires and at the same time croon themselves into a state of
-vacuous coma to the touching strains of “vox populi, vox dei!”
-
-(2) That they are the originators of the yelling yellow press, the
-pioneers of the New Humour and the apostles of the New Pathos.
-
-(3) That they are the only civilised people who make a point of exporting
-the finest specimens of their womankind to foreign countries, included
-in a consignment of cold dollars calculated pro rata with the antiquity,
-decay and general worthlessness of the name which the former take in
-exchange.
-
-(4) That having inherited, borrowed or stolen a beautiful language, they
-wilfully and of set purpose degrade, distort and misspell it apparently
-for the sole purpose of saving money in type-setting.
-
-(5) That out of twenty-six Presidents of the United States, three have
-met death at the hands of the assassin.[1]
-
-(6) That having by sheer accident or because of the care and forethought,
-which Providence has for fools, become possessed of a President who is
-a man among men and a ninety horse-power statesman with direct drive on
-all speeds, they allow him to be handicapped by a spectacular gang of
-undesirable citizens.
-
-(7) That they consider no function, public or private, sacred or
-profane, to be complete without a newspaper correspondent, a lime-light
-photographer, and a sky-sign contractor.
-
-(8) That willingly and of their own unfettered volition they have
-thrown back to the customs of their aboriginal ancestors in the matter
-of diet, which diet is rapidly reducing them morally, physically and
-intellectually to the level of primordial protoplasms.
-
-(9) That they are the only nation who in civilised times rate noise above
-all else, save dollars, and who in their theatres acclaim as the greatest
-actor or play the one that in the shortest time makes the greatest uproar
-for the smallest reason.
-
-(10) That they have resolved their sports and pastimes into business
-propositions in which the avowed aim and object of every competitor is
-the utter destruction of his opponent by any means that can be found,
-devised or conceived.
-
-(11) That they are the only nation who in civilised times have been happy
-and content to sink their individuality in an all pervading and evil
-smelling atmosphere of hog and by-products.
-
-The foregoing are merely a few of the main counts in the indictment.
-Behind every one of them lies a history of gaiety, graft, dyspepsia,
-bossism, fakery, flamboyancy, hysteria, vociferation brain storms
-and dementia Americana of the most disconcerting and entertaining
-kind. The details are on record, and I do not propose to harrow the
-reader’s feelings with examples of them. I shall suggest simply that it
-is questionable whether any other known race of men, white or black,
-has managed to pack into three centuries such a volume of unthinkable
-excitement and picturesque iniquity as can be rightfully and without
-exaggeration laid at the door of these abounding Americans.
-
-A certain Western city has been described by a friendly visitor as “hell
-with the lid off.” For the greater part of her existence as a nation that
-description might with justice have been applied to all America, and I
-am by no means sure that it is not still applicable. It would seem that
-under the inspiring ægis of the much-vaunted American constitution the
-whole of the vices of civilised man have become grossly and incredibly
-intensified. For unscrupulousness, insincerity, cynicism, and the pure
-worship of mammon the United States stands without rival among the
-nations to-day.
-
-I believe the man lied who said there is not an institution in the
-country—political, social, economic or even religious—that is not based
-on a species of ingrained rottenness and not infested with the worm of
-corruption and the scrawl of scandal. But there is no national aspiration
-that does not have at the back of it the root idea that the sole duty
-of an American man is to get rich and to get rich quick. There are few
-standards of American life that are not gold standards and few kinds of
-American effort that are not directed towards the rapid acquisition of
-other people’s money.
-
-It can be proved out of the history books that, broadly speaking, your
-average American is a nondescript and nefarious hybrid composed of
-three parts promoter, three parts missionary, three parts slave-driver,
-and one part Indian. On this unsavoury soil the worst passions of the
-soaring human animal have grown and run hoggishly to seed. Out of such
-blood nothing that is honest or of good report could be expected to
-rise. And when we in England, as has been the tendency in the past few
-years, condescend to the adoption of American methods and American
-notions, and applaud rather than rebuke American smartness and American
-impudence, there can be no question whatever that we are on the
-toboggan. The gradual Americanisation of this grand old country is not
-only flattering to American vanity, but gratifying to American greed. As
-I shall presently show, America has no more love for England than would
-easily cover a threepenny-bit, and her insatiable cry is for markets,
-markets, markets—a howl in which she is dulcetly supported by her dear
-friend Germany. The causes for alarm in so far as they affect the larger
-concrete issues are as yet comparatively slight. But it behoves every
-Englishman to meditate on the possibility that Macaulay’s New Zealander
-may in the long run turn out to be an American.
-
-[1] This is a greater percentage than has obtained in the case of the
-Czars of Russia, and in America there are no Nihilists or at any rate
-none who are actively opposed to the American Presidency.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-MILLIONAIRES
-
-
-The population of the United States, according to the last census
-returns, is about a hundred millions. Names in American directories
-invariably begin with Aarons and end with Zaccharia, and millionaires are
-marked with a star—thus *. In a town, or—as the puffed up merchant in
-stars and stripes would call it a city—of fifty thousand inhabitants you
-will find that the local directory stars quite twenty-five thousand as
-millionaires.
-
-It is pretty certain that fully ninety-nine per cent. of these bloated
-plutocrats do not know where the next dollar is coming from. I have it on
-the authority of an American that “in introducing a man in high American
-society the introducer thinks it proper to say, ‘This is Obadiah S.
-Bluggs of Squedunk, Wis.—one of the richest men in the city. He’s worth
-his million dollars—ain’t you, Obadiah? And he’s president of a National
-Bank and owns a block of buildings on the main street. His wife has the
-largest diamonds in the northern part of the State, and his daughter,
-Miss Mamie Bluggs, gets her gowns in Paris, and uses lorgnettes.’
-Such words of recommendation, I am told, move Mr. Bluggs to a profound
-delight. Within five minutes half the men present—this is true even of
-the most exclusive circles—will cluster around Mr. Bluggs to sell things
-to him; champagne, a horse, shares in a bogus mining company, or to ask
-him if Miss Bluggs is engaged, whether she is a blonde or a brunette, and
-whether he, Bluggs, thinks it is worth the questioner’s while to run up
-to Squedunk, Wis., take Miss Bluggs out buggy riding and size her up one
-afternoon.”
-
-It is highly probable that Mr. Millionaire Bluggs possesses no ready
-cash whatever, though he is prepared to discuss five-million dollar
-propositions in the loudest tones and in any quantity, and it is
-probable, too, that Miss Bluggs is neither a blonde nor a brunette that
-matters, but an ordinary good strong country girl whose principal diet is
-pumpkin pie and chewing gum, and whose single go-to-party gown was bought
-in Paris truly but fell to the lot of Miss Mamie Bluggs at third hand and
-at bed-rock bargain-day price, at the corner store in Squedunk, Wis.
-
-I have no desire to suggest that the millionaires of America as a body
-are in straitened or difficult circumstances, or that an American here
-and there has not succeeded in amassing vast sums of money. But I assert
-flatly that the great majority of them are not within a mile of being
-anything like so rich as they pretend to be, and that, taking millionaire
-for millionaire, they are an entirely Brummagem and specious company.
-They maintain all the appearances of riches, not on solid bullion or
-property, but on a little paper. They come like water and like wind they
-go. Since millionairedom became fashionable, New York State alone must
-have produced, literally, thousands of them.
-
-Of the real authentic untraversable American millionaire, one is inclined
-to speak with bated breath and whispered humbleness. There are three
-men of means in America at the time of writing who will probably be
-remembered for the wealth they possess as long as this weary world holds
-together. The virginal chaste names of them, need one say, are John D.
-Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie. No doubt there are
-others, such as the Vanderbilts and the Goulds, and Mr. Astor and Mr.
-Harriman, and that great patron of the drama, Mr. John Cory, whose wealth
-transcends the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind coming in together. But it is
-on Messrs. Rockefeller, Morgan and Carnegie that the brunt and burden
-and glitter and glory of real unlimited and omnipotent millionairedom
-has fallen. Mr. Rockefeller, indeed, is commonly credited with being the
-richest and most powerful capitalist in the world. So rich is he, and so
-enormous are his accumulations of earned and unearned increment, that
-he is rapidly becoming the overlord of all the other millionaires, who
-even now are, to a great extent, playing with his money and must, to a
-corresponding extent, do his bidding.
-
-Of Mr. Rockefeller the world knows next to nothing, excepting that he
-is fabulously and pitifully rich, that he has absolutely no hirsute
-covering for his stupendous brains, that he suffers from indigestion, and
-that he plays golf and teaches a Sunday school in a Nonconformist place
-of worship. Every other morning he appears to present to this or that
-American city a few odd millions “for educational purposes,” the which
-millions are promptly spurned by the local authority as “tainted money,”
-but ultimately accepted “in the interests of the industrial class.”
-
-Probably Mr. Rockefeller is the best abused man on this footstool. He has
-been variously described as a thief, a ghoul, a bloodsucker, a murderer,
-a miser, a cannibal, a wrecker, a tiger, a devastator, a jackal, and a
-wolf. All the notice he takes is blandly to play golf and unobtrusively
-to dodge the lawyers and officers of the law who desire to bring him to
-book for the alleged malpractices of the Standard Oil Trust. Yet you
-have to remember that this placid, smiling, hairless old gentleman of
-sixty-five, “with a glad hand for everyone,” takes out of the United
-States an income greater than the incomes of all the Royal Families of
-all Europe, and that, in addition to his controlling interest in the
-Standard Oil Trust, which last year paid dividends to the tune of fifty
-million dollars, he owns the entire Electric Light and Gas Plants of
-New York City, controls the American iron industry, has almost complete
-control of the railways and copper mines, and of the largest banks in New
-York and throughout the country. The which sad data go to show that he
-is at once a wicked man and a foolish, and that the American people are
-even wickeder and more foolish. You can never bring an American to see
-that there is no conceivable advantage in possessing too much money; and
-in spite of his “shattered nerves,” “enfeebled mind,” and “unenviable
-reputation,” there is not a man in America who would not jump at the
-chance of standing in the shoes of Jawn D.
-
-As for Mr. Pierpont Morgan, he is chiefly noted as the head and front of
-a Steel Trust that is making money at the rate of one hundred and forty
-million dollars per year, and as a gentleman who has a pretty taste in
-pictures and objects of art. Mr. Morgan is a man with a large and poetic
-imagination. It was he who conceived the noble idea of Americanising the
-British Transatlantic carrying trade by buying up the principal fleets
-engaged in it. In this deal, as in most other American-English deals,
-the American came forth to shear and got shorn. The woolly, bleating,
-unsuspicious Britisher sold his vessels at inflated figures, snickered
-in his sleeve, and built new ones with some of the money. Mr. Morgan is
-a frequent and welcome visitor to these shores, and the London picture
-dealers and their touts no doubt do very well out of him. But if you say
-“Liverpool” to him he goes hot all over.
-
-For a bonne-bouche I have kept Mr. Andrew Carnegie, of Skibo Castle
-and sundry other addresses. Mr. Carnegie has the misfortune to be a
-Scotch American—surely the least admirable of the less admirable types
-of humanity. He will live in men’s memories as the sturdy, forthright
-Scot who managed one of the most desperate strikes that ever took place
-in America from the safe vantage ground of his native heath. It must be
-remembered that in spite of his ridiculous possessions Mr. Carnegie is
-an avowed democrat, and the author of a book that makes him out to be
-quite a benevolently minded philosopher. But during all the terrors of
-the Homestead lock-out, he lay snug at his shooting box of Rannoch, N.B.,
-and refused to say a word that would tend to still the storm, although he
-knew that blood was being shed at Homestead, and that his own partner,
-Mr. Frick, had been seriously wounded.
-
-Being a Scotchman it is impossible that Mr. Carnegie should have been a
-coward. Let me say rather that he was cautious and canny, and indisposed
-to take unnecessary risks. When the row was more or less over he told a
-representative of the Associated Press that “the deplorable events at
-Homestead had burst upon him like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. They
-had such a depressing effect upon him that he had to lay his book aside
-and resort to the lochs and moors, fishing from morning to night.” Which,
-on the face of it, is pawky Scots, and as who should say “the deplorable
-news of the death of my wife had such a depressing effect upon me that I
-had to go to a fancy dress ball and dance and dance till cock-crow.”
-
-It will be seen, therefore, that in the main the American millionaires
-do not shine with any startling or blinding effulgence. With here and
-there an exception, they are common, vulgar, snobbish, undistinguished
-men who happen to have come out top-dog in a series of financial bruising
-matches in which few persons above the quality of a savage would have
-cared to engage. For the possession and administration of even reasonable
-wealth their qualification would seem to be of the meagrest. Outside the
-dull mechanical reduplication of their mammoth fortunes, their stunted
-intellects permit them only two very doubtful joys, namely, sensational
-house building and sensational charity. Mr. Morgan may be taken as
-the type of the house-proud money-snatcher. Mr. Rockefeller and Mr.
-Carnegie are the charity-proud; and they have reaped the reward of the
-charity-proud—the colleges of the one being a by-word and a mockery in
-America, just as the “Free Libraries” of the other are a by-word and a
-nuisance in England.
-
-I do not believe that in their heart of hearts the Americans
-themselves—that is, the great mass of the people—have any feeling
-of admiration for the gigantic money-grabbers who rule them. The
-American has just perception enough to discern that millionaires are
-not altogether the best possible kind of man. On the other hand, if you
-take away the country’s millionaires you have robbed her male population
-of one of its chief objects of envy and its chief subject of blurring
-conversation.
-
-The shadow of each of the fascinating trinity that I have mentioned
-is as the shadow of a Colossus, and is so enormous that it is almost
-impossible to pick up an American newspaper or other publication in which
-they do not figure and figure prominently. Especially is this the case
-with respect to Mr. Rockefeller, upon whose doings or misdoings every
-scribbler in America has some comment to offer or some theory to base.
-The other day I came across a book of essays published in Boston, which
-contained a review of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace’s “Man’s Place in the
-Universe.” And right in the middle of it I found this passage: “When a
-little child looks out on the Earth he at first thinks it infinite. He
-looks upon it as unorganised and unrelated. Only with increasing age and
-understanding can he realise that it is finite and organised. So when
-Rockefeller as a lad went into the oil business it seemed to him that
-there was infinite scope for the extension of the oil business,” and so
-on and so forth. Clearly it is a mighty business to be Rockefeller!
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-HUMOURISTS
-
-
-American humour has come to be a bugbear in England, pretty much like
-American canned meats.
-
-Twenty years ago, when anybody on this side of the Atlantic wished to
-be rather crudely and shockingly amused, he sent to the libraries for
-something American. In that day and generation Mark Twain was at the
-zenith of his fame and powers, and the names of Artemus Ward and Josh
-Billings were names to conjure with. Autres temps autres moeurs. The
-popularity of Mark Twain has suffered woeful eclipse, and Artemus Ward
-and Mr. Billings have gone clean out of vogue, and are remembered only
-as the originators of a very tiresome kind of humour which depends on
-phonetic spelling for its more excruciating effects.
-
-The fact is that America and England alike have been dosed to death
-with the lucubrations of handy scribblers who caught something of Mark
-Twain’s trick and pretended to something of his gift, and the label
-“American humourist” nowadays repels with an even greater insistence than
-it formerly attracted. Mr. Twain made desperate and valiant efforts to
-retrieve his waning popularity with a book called “A Yankee at the Court
-of King Arthur.” If ever there was a piece of writing nicely calculated
-to tickle and make purr the fat-necked American here was the article. But
-it fizzled in the pan, failed in short to bring ’em on again. And it now
-belongs to the category of books that people have forgotten. So much for
-Mr. Twain, whom I admire, but of whom, nevertheless, I have taken leave
-to speak the truth.
-
-Artemus Ward and Josh Billings are dead, and their souls, I trust, are
-with the saints; so that they will pardon me when I venture on the
-opinion that the humour they gave us was of the thinnest sort, and,
-taking into account the furore it created, extraordinarily ephemeral.
-However any person of sense came to accept the following for humour
-passes my comprehension:—
-
-
-EXPERIENCES AS AN EDITOR
-
-“In the Ortum of 18— my friend, the editor of the Baldissville Bugle, was
-obleged to leave perfeshernal dooties & go & dig his taters, & he axed me
-to edit for him doorin his absence. Accordinly I ground up his Shears and
-commenced. It didn’t take me a grate while to slash out copy enuff from
-the xchanges for one issoo, and I thawt I’d ride up to the next town
-on a little Jaunt, to rest my Branes which had bin severely rackt by my
-mental efforts (This is sorter Ironical) So I went over to the Rale Rood
-offiss and axed the Sooprintendent for a pars.
-
-‘You a editer,’ he axed, evinebtly on the point of snickerin.
-
-‘Yes, Sir,’ sez I, ‘Don’t I look poor enuff?’
-
-‘Just about,’ sed he, ‘but our Road can’t pars you.’
-
-‘Can’t hay.’
-
-‘No Sir—it can’t.’
-
-‘Becauz,’ sez I, looking him full in the face with a Eagle eye, ‘it goes
-so darned slow it can’t pars anybody!’ Methink I had him thar. It is the
-slowest Rale Road in the West. With a mortified air, he tole me to get
-out of his offiss. I pittid him and went.”
-
-The essence of this excursion into the realms of the Comic Spirit is
-about as cheap and small a thing in essences as one is likely to come
-across. Mr. Ward had made or heard somebody make a punning retort of
-an ultra-feeble quality, and straightway he rushes off to turn it into
-humourous lucubration. The Americans believed it was “darned funny,”
-it raised “gales of laughter” among them, and they shouted about its
-excellences till the English also began to recognise them. At best
-Artemus Ward is humour of the “Wot-the-orfis-boy-finks” order, and as
-such it has always been eschewed by persons blessed with a trifle more
-than the milk-maid order of intellect.
-
-And lest I be accused of raking up what the Americans themselves choicely
-term “dead dog” I will ask your attention for the space of a paragraph or
-two to the brand of the New Humour generally consumed by the inhabitants
-of the United States in the present era of grace. In this connection
-it would be easy for one to take a distinctly bitter line; inasmuch as
-the books of humour as distinguished from the humourous periodicals,
-nowadays published in America are not really books of humour at all, but
-aggregations of acrid and wicked cynicism. The authors of them either
-do not intend to be funny or have no conception of the meaning of fun.
-Sourness of spirit, meanness of thought, and savageness of expression
-are their principal standby. In the humourous periodicals, however, you
-discover a well-defined intention to be funny—though the cynicism and the
-vitriol are not of course forgotten.
-
-I believe that these periodicals are nicely adjusted to the public
-requirements, for the American is not out to produce even comic papers
-“for his health,” and being nothing if not practical, he gives his public
-exactly “what they want.” Here are some samples of “exactly what they
-want,” published so recently as May of the present year. First as to
-verse:
-
-
-IF
-
-    If all the trips I’ve had at sea
-    Should take effect at once on me,
-    In one huge, nauseated spell
-    Gee! wouldn’t I be sick! Well, well!
-
-But possibly the fault is mine. You see I’m English. Perhaps the above
-example of the New Humour is really a choice sample of the New Pathos.
-
-Again; and this smacks of genius:
-
-
-NOW BIRDIE GETS HIS
-
-    Of all the things that swim or run,
-      Man beats in easy pace;
-    He gives big odds to fin and fur,
-      And wins in every race.
-
-    He hops into his auto-car
-      And handicaps the horse;
-    Or takes the greyhound for a try
-      And licks him even worse.
-
-    Perhaps the whale or shark get gay
-      And want a little go.
-    Man dives into his submarine
-      And does them down below.
-
-    And now the chesty feathered chap
-      Must close his gay bazoo,
-    For man puts on his flying gear
-      And wallops birdie, too.
-
-As to prose, here you are:
-
-
-WANT TOO MUCH
-
-    “Some time ago two surgeons took a ten-pound tumor out of
-    Dave Saunders, an’ to-day he got a terrible big bill for the
-    operation.”
-
-    “Is Dave goin’ to pay it?”
-
-    “No; he sez, ‘they’ve got enough out of him already.’”
-
-
-MONKISH
-
-    Behold the tippler and mark how he tippeth in the streets.
-    Whoso hath discolouration of the optic? Is it not the
-    meddler? Yea. He that is a lunkhead condemneth that which he
-    comprehendeth not.
-
-    Be thou not envious of them that have vacation in time of
-    influenza.
-
-I have not gone out of my way to search for these excerpts in the cheaper
-class of American comic publication. Nor have I been at special pains
-to search for blemishes through the files of the ten cent “high class
-journal” which is laid under contribution. In point of fact, I find them
-in the first number of that journal which came to my hands, namely, its
-latest issue obtainable in London. How really foolish and vulgar these
-samples are! The first set of verses is about being sick; the second set
-is slangy, ill-expressed and contains a childish mistake in grammar; the
-first piece of prose is objectionable because of its reference to “a
-ten-pound tumor,” and the second piece is sheer banality, meaning nothing
-that is worth a smile.
-
-The plain fact is that humour in America is the humour of fatty
-degeneration of the intellect. America’s funny man was at one time a
-fairly clean, healthy creature, with a droll outlook on the facts of
-life. That he was a trifle over-devoted to rye whiskey and effusive
-practical jokes, and had a tendency to rank irreverence, were among the
-defects of his qualities. The great American people speedily learnt
-to vote him slow, and into his shoes they hurried the hard-faced,
-terrier-toothed, cigarette-smoking, anæmic, fleering decadent. And at
-long and last they have set up for their humourous god the sheer hoodlum
-or larrikin, whose sense of what is comic is even more degraded than
-that of a Chinaman, and whose view of morality is the view of a naughty
-parrot. There can be no possible hope for a country whose risible
-faculties are exercised only at squalid moments or excited only by
-squalid writing.
-
-No matter how wealthy and hard-headed your man, and no matter how
-beautiful or accomplished your woman, they are spiritually and morally
-topsy-turvy if they laugh at the wrong things, and I maintain that the
-twentieth-century American is consistently laughing at the wrong things,
-and quite incapable of appreciating the right and proper humour even when
-you have explained it to him. The Scotch cannot see a joke, the Americans
-can see only bad jokes.
-
-Nearly all the vilest and most offensive jokes that creep into the
-third-rate English comics are of American origin. The Weary Willie
-and Tired Tim business is purely American, so are the Buster Brown
-and grinning Pup futilities, so are the idiotcies associated with the
-patronymic Newlywed; so are the disgusting buffooneries about whiskers.
-The English have learnt that American canned meat is a dubious viand. The
-sooner they learn that the current American humour is even more noxious
-the better it will be for the English.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-THE AMERICAN WOMAN
-
-
-The abounding gentleman from Idaho, or Cincinnati, or Nahant, will tell
-you that the American woman is a dream of beauty and goodness. If I am
-to credit the American he would not take eighty thousand dollars for
-her—no, sir! At least, he doesn’t calculate that he would. The American
-woman, sir, is a peach. The American man believes in her down to the
-soles of his store boots, and has been educated to regard her as a being
-of angelic antecedents and destiny. Far be it from a simple scribbler
-to pluck from her, unless it were by way of a memento, one single angel
-feather. But at time and time I have seen a considerable deal of her, and
-I shall venture to put her down here as she seems to me, who am no judge
-and do not matter anyway.
-
-In the first place I shall assert, though it were at the risk of my
-life, that the American woman is not always beautiful, and that even the
-beautiful American woman is not always beautiful. I shall go further and
-say that for one beautiful woman per thousand head of the population in
-America we can produce at least three in England and four or five in
-Ireland. Furthermore, the English or the Irish beauty will last you three
-times as long as the American variety, and in point of fact it seldom
-really wanes, whereas, in America, feminine beauty nearly always passes,
-and passes quickly.
-
-It should be clearly understood—and I say it with my hand on my
-heart—that this is not the fault of the American woman, with whom I have
-no quarrel, and upon whom I desire to pass no aspersion. The vulgar
-commentators on the American woman’s physical blemishes and shortcomings
-have assured us that they are the direct result of her diet, which
-is said to consist of pea-nuts, griddle cakes, oysters, pie, turkey,
-stewed terrapin, tinned mushrooms, fat ham, cheese, chocolates, and ice
-cream. As is usually the case, however, the vulgar commentators are
-entirely wrong. The real enemy of the American woman’s beauty is the
-American climate. In the process of time it is climate that makes and
-mars everything. It is climate that has made the African black and the
-European white. It is climate that is rapidly transforming the American
-man into a sort of ignoble red man or Kickapoo Indian, and it is climate
-that may eventually make the American woman resemble a squaw. The
-American climate produced the American Indian. The American climate is
-modifying the physique of the American man and marring and obliterating
-the great and undeniable beauty of the American woman.
-
-Most male Americans that one meets nowadays have a curiously Indianised
-cast of figure and countenance. Their blood as we know is hybrid blood,
-but somehow you never find an American that looks like an Italian or a
-Spaniard or an Englishman. Always and inevitably there is that about
-him which reminds you of the Indian. Climate is stronger than blood, or
-at any rate, the American climate has proved stronger so far. Roughly
-speaking, it may be said to induce in the human male black straight hair,
-horse features, a swarthy complexion, inclining to a coppery redness, a
-thick neck, large hands and flat feet. Its effects upon women I shall
-refrain from rehearsing, but you will not fail to discern them if you
-look carefully at the next American woman you happen to come across, that
-is if she happens to be anything other than one of those splendid and
-alluring peaches for the production of which in such charming numbers all
-men should be eternally grateful.
-
-I have further to reflect that the American woman’s beauty and charm are,
-as a rule, very seriously discounted by the circumstance that she talks
-through her nose, with that atrocious intonation that is commonly called
-the American accent. I should defy Venus herself to impress with her
-beauty anybody above the quality of a dollar hunter or a pork-packer if
-she could be imagined to speak in the average American way.
-
-Coming now to the question of goodness, which is a delicate question, it
-seems to me more than probable that the American woman is just as good,
-and no better, than the rest of womankind. She has been accused of all
-sorts of frightfulness—mainly on account of her unfortunate accent and
-her free and easy methods of talk. It is certain that she is capable of
-the higher forms of devotion and self-sacrifice, even if her views on
-divorce are entirely airy and liberal.
-
-But I do not believe that her heart is wicked, and as women go in the
-virtue way, she is unsurpassed. In some other respects I must confess
-she is to be forgiven, although she is, so far as mind, disposition, and
-outlook are concerned, a great deal too much like her half-civilised
-Poppa, and affects a great deal too much of the cheap smartness and
-abounding audacity that are the stock-in-trade of her still less
-civilised brother.
-
-If you talk with an American girl for any length of time you will
-discover that among other defects she is troubled with what one may term
-a statistical, or, perhaps, more correctly, an arithmetical mind. Her
-male folk talk dollars and put everything into the terms of dollars.
-She, cute little bon-bon head, talks figures. She is as full of dates
-as a Scotchman, and as full of heights, depths, widths, dimensions,
-aggregations, and general computations as a guide-book. She will pour
-into your willing ear particulars as to the population of the city in
-which she was “raised,” and the next city to that, and the next. She is
-sure to tell you that she came over on such and such a liner, that they
-had exactly one thousand three hundred and forty-nine persons aboard,
-including three hundred officers and crew, two hundred and seventeen
-saloon passengers, and a precise number of second class and steerage
-people. “That ship has got eight thousand electric lights, five hundred
-portholes, eight thousand seven hundred and twenty-five tons of coal
-in her bunkers, when she leaves port; her stores include four thousand
-knives, forks, and spoons, and ten thousand bottles of old rye whiskey;
-she is an American boat, and there are twenty performers in the band,
-and her captain has made the return trip two hundred and seventy-three
-times,” and so on, until you begin to feel as if you had fallen into
-a ready reckoner, and to wonder whether in some occult way the young
-lady receives a commission from the steamship company. Like every other
-American man, woman or child, Mark Twain included, she is plagued also
-with the “pass-a-given-point” mania. The Americans are literally eaten up
-with processions, and the glory of every one of them is determined by the
-circumstance that it took so many minutes to pass a given point. Of the
-latest records in this connection, the American girl is sure to prattle
-to you with amazing zest. In brief, her mind, besides containing much
-that is really valuable and certainly interesting, is a storehouse of
-unimportant and altogether gratuitous and unnecessary facts. Summed up,
-she is pert, provoking, chock full of information, moderately pretty, a
-good deal of a bore, and—an obvious peach.
-
-Then there is the American married woman, who may or who may not have
-been married in several different places. If you meet this lady casually
-in London or on the Continent, it will take you quite a week to discover
-which of the numerous men by whom she is always squired, happens to be
-her husband.
-
-Of course, the Americans consider their women the pink of propriety.
-“The ladies of this State, sir,—and I am proud to say of every other
-State in the Union—are h—l upon propriety!” I do not doubt it, and I
-should not say so if I did. The American woman has her good points and
-her good qualities, otherwise American man, dazzler as he is, could not
-be so idiotically contented with her, or, as he himself phrases it, “sot
-on her.” At the same time she has, on the average, omelettes soufflées
-for brains and tenderloin steaks for hearts—and in spite of her charming
-curves she exhibits defects of mind, emotions, person, and breeding alike
-which, in my opinion, condemn her to obscure, or exalt her to take the
-highest, rank in the table of civilised feminine precedence according
-to the way you look at her. Always excepting, of course, the obvious
-peaches.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-LITERATURE
-
-
-Mr. William Dean Howells, who is one of the leaders of that small band of
-American authors who have a right to literary consideration in England,
-has lately published an entertaining romance which he calls “Through the
-Eye of the Needle.” With Mr. Howells’s story as a story I have nothing
-to do. In the process of relating it Mr. Howells offers us some candid
-criticisms of his countrymen which will serve to illustrate the real
-opinion of the cultivated American as to himself, and all that to him
-appertains.
-
-“My hero,” writes Mr. Howells, “visited this country when it was on the
-verge of great economic depression extending from 1894 to 1898, but,
-after the Spanish War, Providence marked the Divine approval of our
-victory in that contest by renewing in unexampled measure the prosperity
-of the Republic. With the downfall of the Trusts, and the release of our
-industrial and commercial forces to unrestricted activity, the condition
-of every form of Labour has been immeasurably improved, and it is now
-united with Capital in bonds of the closest affection.”
-
-Mr. Howells does not mean this passage satirically. He is really of
-opinion that Providence marked the Divine approval of America’s victory
-over Spain “by renewing in unexampled measure the prosperity of the
-Republic.” He believes, good easy man, that the Trusts have been humbled,
-and that “Labour is now united with Capital in bonds of the closest
-affection.” Isn’t it delicious? Mr. Howells further informs us that the
-servant problem in America has been “solved once for all by humanity,”
-and that New York is no longer a city of violent and unthinkable noises.
-
-“The flattened wheel of the trolley,” he says, “banging the track day and
-night, and tormenting the waking and sleeping ear, was, oddly enough,
-the inspiration of Reforms which have made our city the quietest in
-the world. The trolleys now pass unheard; the elevated train glides by
-overhead with only a modulated murmur, the subway is a retreat fit for
-meditation and prayer, where the passenger can possess his soul in a
-peace to be found nowhere else; the automobile whirrs softly through the
-most crowded thoroughfare, far below the speed limit, with a sigh of
-gentle satisfaction in its own harmlessness, and, ‘like the sweet South,
-taking and giving odor.’” It is beside the mark to note that Shakespeare
-did not write “taking” but “stealing,” and he certainly did not spell
-odour Mr. Howells’s way.
-
-Our author proceeds to assure us that American men are not now the
-intellectual inferiors of American women, “or at least not so much the
-inferiors”; that American men have made “a vast advance in the knowledge
-and love of literature,” and that “with the multitude of our periodicals,
-and the swarm of our fictions selling from a hundred thousand to half a
-million each, even our business men cannot wholly escape culture, and
-they have become more and more cultured, so that now you frequently hear
-them asking what this or that book is all about.”
-
-Later he says of the New Yorkers: “They are purely commercial, and the
-thing that cannot be bought and sold has logically no place in their
-life. They applaud one another for their charities, which they measure
-by the amount given, rather than by the love which goes with the giving.
-The widow’s mite has little credit with them, but the rich man’s million
-has an acclaim that reverberates through their newspapers long after his
-gift is made. It is only the poor in America who do charity—by giving
-help where it is needed; the Americans are mostly too busy, if they are
-at all prosperous, to give anything but money; and the more money they
-give, the more charitable they esteem themselves. From time to time some
-man with twenty or thirty millions gives one of them away, usually to
-a public institution of some sort, where it will have no effect with
-the people who are under-paid for their work, or cannot get work; and
-then his deed is famed throughout the Country as a thing really beyond
-praise. Yet anyone who thinks about it must know that he never earned the
-millions he kept, or the millions he gave, but somehow made them from the
-labours of others; that with all the wealth left him he cannot miss the
-fortune that he lavishes, any more than if the check (English, cheque)
-which conveyed it were a withered leaf, and not in any wise so much as an
-ordinary working man might feel the bestowal of a postage stamp.”
-
-We have here, as I have said, views on America not by a shouting American
-bluffer or dealer in hyperbole, but by a man of recognised literary
-parts and judgment. Furthermore, Mr. Howells is plainly not one of those
-Americans who affect a contempt for their country. When he speaks
-of American success he attributes it to the favour of Providence; he
-can perceive a “vast advance” in the American’s knowledge and love of
-literature, and while he reproves the American millionaire, he does so
-more in sorrow than in anger. So that on the whole his testimony cannot
-fairly be traversed.
-
-And reading between the lines of it, the intelligent observer will not be
-slow to discern that it amounts practically to a pretty severe indictment
-of the Americans. A man who has no place in his life for a thing that
-cannot be bought and sold, is not, after all, the kind of man one can be
-expected to admire, even though Providence may appear to smile upon him.
-Neither can I express myself violently taken with the man who is “not so
-much the intellectual inferior of our women”—and such women—even if you
-do frequently hear him asking what this or that book is all about. And
-Mr. Howells’s opinion of millionaires and their charity coincides pretty
-well with the opinion of Europe.
-
-Mr. Howells, of course, is a well bred, well mannered and entirely
-discreet author; he sets down naught in malice, his tendency being
-rather in the direction of a little gentle extenuation. Irony, sarcasm,
-reproach, and, least of all, flouts and jeers are not among his literary
-weapons.
-
-It goes without saying, however, that America has been written about
-in much harsher tones than those of Mr. Howells. From an American book
-published pseudonymously two or three years back, a book that does not
-appear to have received anything like its due share of recognition either
-in England or America, I cull the following picturesque details:—
-
-    “From the moment he takes his seat in his office, until he
-    goes home, an American’s business consists of a succession of
-    swindles. He either picks the pocket of each man he interviews,
-    or the men pick his.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-    “The American gloats over his ability as a liar. He prides
-    himself upon the fact that his lie is a plausible one and
-    likely to deceive. If it does not come up to the specifications
-    he regards it and himself as failures, and a shadow is cast
-    upon his life.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-    “The American who has just borrowed a dollar immediately rushes
-    into the nearest bar room and announces that he has raised
-    500,000 dollars from a prominent millionaire who has become his
-    partner, and will back him to any amount in any enterprise,
-    sane or insane, in which he may agree to embark. Then for the
-    succeeding three hours he talks about himself so loudly that
-    the entire neighbourhood throngs around him to join in the
-    debate.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-    “The American trader in Europe has created the same feeling
-    that prevails among a party of honest cardplayers when the
-    card-sharper appears at the table.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-    “The American politician never speaks but always ‘orates.’
-    If the matter under discussion in the legislative body is a
-    question whether five cents shall be expended on pencils, or
-    whether Mrs. Bridget O’Neill, or Mrs. Patrick O’Reilly shall
-    be appointed scrubwoman of the Senate House, he considers it
-    beneath his dignity to say anything that will not recall the
-    diction of Cicero or Demosthenes. If the ceiling is to be
-    cleaned and a three-and-elevenpenny contract is to be given
-    out, he takes the floor and with a loud preliminary bellow
-    announces that he is an American citizen, and anyone who says
-    that he is not is a confirmed and hereditary liar.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-    “If an American learns that a man has been bribed he does not
-    hate him—he envies him.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-    “In New York society no man is ever referred to as ‘Mr. Jones’
-    or ‘Mr. Smith.’ He is always referred to as ‘Mr. Jones, who is
-    worth two million dollars,’ or ‘Mr. Smith, who is worth four
-    million dollars and stole every cent of it.’”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-    “The average Chicagoan has not the faintest conception of the
-    true meaning of right and wrong. Right is the method that
-    succeeds in getting money. Wrong is the method that does not.”
-
-I shall beg the reader to observe particularly that I do not myself make
-these stinging assertions. In the words of the late Sir William Harcourt,
-“I merely quote them.” In a sense, perhaps, they may be most correctly
-described as exaggerations. But they are exaggerations of a kind which
-have more than a substratum of truth in them. I commend them to the
-swaggering rubber-jawed American for what they are worth.
-
-Did the scope of this book allow, it would be possible to cite numerous
-other animadversions upon American manners and customs by other pens.
-
-No British author of standing has visited the United States and come
-back in love with the American people. Dickens loathed them, Thackeray
-could not put up with them, Mathew Arnold despised them, and Browning
-laughed at them, while as for Tennyson he absolutely refused to go near
-them. Even the sensational litterateurs of our own generation, such as
-Hall Caine or Bernard Shaw, have failed to find much or anything to
-shriek about. The Bishop of London and Father Vaughan are not authors
-but diplomats. Rudyard Kipling has been in America more than once, and
-remains dumb as to the whole concern. Mr. Zangwill is equally travelled
-and equally silent. Mr. Wells, who went out for the purpose, has written
-his book and said practically nothing. All of them, and others who
-might be named, recognise that what ought to be said would be better
-unsaid—unpleasant for the Americans, and consequently likely to provoke
-bad feeling. It is gentlest to the Americans to write of them without
-paying a preliminary visit to their native air. What would happen if a
-person who wields a plain blunt pen were to make a call upon them and set
-forth his impressions in good cold type and without fear or pity, no man
-may tell. Probably the Americans would shoot him.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-THE PRESIDENT
-
-
-It is said that killing a man will not prevent him from going to Chicago,
-and you may be certain that nothing will prevent an American from getting
-himself elected President of the United States if he can possibly manage
-it.
-
-The United States Presidency is believed by the patriotic American to be
-the very finest position that mortal man could possibly desire to occupy,
-outshining in glory and honour, if not exactly in importance, all “the
-effete thrones of Yurrup” rolled into one paroxysm of purple. Tremendous
-and almighty as the United States Presidency may be, however, its real
-lustre and attraction for the American imagination lies in the fact that
-it is within the possible attainment of any and every United States
-citizen who does not happen to be a nigger. Of course, your United States
-President has sometimes been a very different affair from the United
-States Presidency. But that is neither here nor there; because a man who
-can write “President U.S.” after his name is, on the face of it, clearly
-entitled to think that he casts a large shadow. And he does.
-
-Though the history books will tell you otherwise, astute people—which
-phrase includes a fair handful of Americans—are of opinion that the
-Republic of the United States has had only a matter of three Presidents.
-The first of them was George Washington, who, let it be said, set the
-fashion of not relishing the job; the second of them was Abraham Lincoln,
-rail splitter, lawyer, statesman and martyr; and the third American
-President—one blushes with pride to name him—is none other than Theodore
-Roosevelt, now more or less happily reigning.
-
-I am no great hand at either history or biography, so that the reader of
-these pages will be spared the usual entertaining biographical details. I
-am not even aware if Mr. Roosevelt arrived at the White House by way of
-the traditional Log Cabin, or whether he took a pleasanter, less stony
-and less circuitous route. It is sufficient for me to have reasonable
-hearsay evidence that he is there, and that he has filled up frantically
-every hour of his time since he got there.
-
-For the ruler of a great state Mr. Roosevelt is, to say the least, an
-appealing and exciting figure. He may be said fairly to out-rival
-anything of the kind that has hitherto been offered us this side of the
-Atlantic—with one diverting and rhetorical Teutonic exception.
-
-In Mr. Roosevelt you have the following popular and captivating elements:
-
-He is:—
-
-    A Dutchman.
-    An American.
-    A Diplomat.
-    A Soldier.
-    A Lawn-Tennis Champion.
-    A Cow-boy.
-    A Big Game Shooter.
-    A Strong Man.
-    An Anti-Malthusian.
-    A Hand-Shaker-of-All-Comers.
-    A Stump Orator.
-    A Spelling Reformer.
-    An Apostle of the Strenuous Life.
-    A Husband.
-    A Father.
-    A Family Man.
-    A Deacon.
-    A Humourist.
-    A Pugilist.
-    A Harriman-hunter.
-    A Hardy Horseman.
-    A Dog Fancier.
-    An Author.
-    A Judge of White Mice.
-    A San Juan Hero.
-    A Nobel Prize Winner.
-    A Statesman of the First Order.
-    A Hustler;
-    and
-    President of the United States of America.
-
-Probably it has never been possible to compile such an inventory in
-favour of any other example of the human species, and when one looks down
-its massive proportions one is at no loss to understand why the American
-people consider themselves to be the very finest people on earth and
-entirely denuded of flies.
-
-In a comparatively short if variegated career President Roosevelt has
-accomplished so much that is extraordinary that one never knows where
-he is likely to break out afresh. Before his term of office is out he
-may conceivably become many other things besides those I have listed.
-It would not surprise me if he turned Vegetarian or King. Nothing
-is too high for him, nothing too humble, nothing too exceptional or
-unconventional, nothing too imperial. And withal there is a rugged and
-stern and solid dignity about him. He wields the big stick throughout
-his vast dominions, and spanks down evildoers as a housewife spanks down
-wasps. At home he stands no nonsense; abroad he wants peace, perfect
-peace, but equally stands no foolery. People of all nations admire him
-and wave banners over his head and cheer him to the echo. He is a sort
-of quick-firer, strong in the arm and lively in the head, and built by
-heaven to rule over the people of the United States.
-
-In many respects President Roosevelt appears to be a sort of republican
-replica of no less a personage than Wilhelm II. of Germany. The parallel
-between the two potentates is interesting and diverting and to some
-extent disconcerting. That they are friends, that they think together on
-certain big subjects, that they have exchanged telegrams, that they love
-each other, and that they have both been a trifle flighty at times cannot
-be doubted.
-
-The really interesting point about Mr. Roosevelt is that he may be
-reckoned to stand for the finest expression and exemplar of the American
-people. A nation that can manufacture such a President must be possessed
-of national characteristics altogether out of the common. He is the
-absolute personification of the United States. He is absolutely fearless,
-he is absolutely honest, he is absolutely magnificent. Someday he may be
-absolutely absolute.
-
-You may be sure that President Roosevelt will go down to posterity as
-the beau ideal of American Presidents. In the eye of the Americans he
-has made few if any mistakes, and though there is a party in the States
-that can be very bitter about him and very rude to him, their bark is
-considerably worse than their bite, and secretly they glory in him.
-By dint of a good deal of adroitness he has succeeded in keeping his
-diplomatic end up in Europe and particularly in England, and nobody
-between Tipperary and the Great Wall of China has hard words for him. The
-world recognises in him a great genius—unparalleled in modern times.
-
-If ever an American had sound reason to look back with satisfaction on a
-well-spent life, Mr. Roosevelt is the man. And if ever republic had just
-cause to thank Providence for its luck in the matter of a President, the
-United States is that Republic.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-ADVERTISEMENT
-
-
-“The man who would in business rise must either bust or advertise” is
-the American’s article of faith. In civilised countries advertising is
-confined to its proper limits, that is to say, it is part of the business
-of a tradesman. In America everybody advertises, and advertises through a
-megaphone.
-
-The United States appears to have been created for the pure purpose of
-advertising itself and everything that occurs in it. In England of late
-we have been a little overtroubled with the persistent and flamboyant
-advertiser. His flaring posters, his disconcerting circulars, and
-particularly his promises of fabulous prizes if one will but buy his soap
-or his half-penny paper or his gaspipe bicycles have jarred upon most of
-us. The London hoardings blaze with all sorts of invitations to drink
-cocoa, swallow pills, go to the theatre, and demand bottled trouble of
-one label or another.
-
-The plague is upon England, and probably we shall not get rid of it for
-a couple of generations or so. In the meantime, however, we may console
-ourselves with the knowledge that gaudy and excruciating as London
-advertising may be, it is a mere tea-party compared to the orgie of
-announcement that is always in progress in every bright American city.
-Furthermore, while the English advertiser has admittedly done his best
-to destroy for us the mild delights of a railway journey by erecting in
-every second meadow funereal signs with the names of liver pills and
-cattle foods upon them he has not yet attained to the audacities of his
-American confrère who, in his delirium of publicity, paints the names
-of nostrums on the sides of innocuous cows and adorns the scenery with
-purple and yellow posters that are positively zoo-like in their noise.
-
-The rocks and hills of America are daubed over with wild entreaties to
-the passer-by to fix up his liver with some newly invented mixture, or to
-sow someone’s invaluable hair seed on his bald head. Each country barn is
-decorated with huge signs bearing disinterested advice as to what sort of
-medicine a wayfarer should use in the spring. In no part of any State can
-one escape the huge advertisement. If you penetrate into the recesses of
-the highest mountain and find there the hut of a bewhiskered hermit, the
-chances are that when you approach him he will give you some handbills
-containing details of the marvellous cures effected by So-and-So’s
-sarsaparilla. The sails of yachts are adorned with statements as to
-medicines. Landscapes serve but to promulgate the claims of the quack.
-If a man plants a bed of geraniums the chances are that the flowers are
-arranged in such a way that they immortalise the fame of somebody’s
-ipecachuana. The gardener is induced to do this by a present of free
-seeds.
-
-In the trolley cars of New York one is always in danger of finding a
-seat under some such notice as, “The gentleman sitting beneath this sign
-is wearing a pair of our inimitable three dollar pants. They fit him
-beautifully. Don’t you think they do?” Or, “The gentleman sitting below
-has a very yellow complexion this morning. He looks as if he had drunk
-too much last night. If he had had proper advice he would have taken a
-dose of Green Jackdaw Effervescent before breakfast, then he would feel
-very much better than he does now.”
-
-Pills, potions, pick-me-ups, blood purifiers, liver mixtures, lung
-tonics, corn cures, and preparations for tender feet appear to be the
-only articles of commerce that half the population of the United States
-trade in and manufacture. You cannot move in America without having
-these nostrums cast violently into your teeth and shoved down your throat
-by every species of reminder that printers’ ink and the ingenuity of the
-devil are capable of compassing.
-
-With a view to the maintenance and upkeep of this extraordinary jumble
-of publicity the country is patrolled year in and year out by thousands
-of advertising vans, each accompanied by a considerable staff of “old
-hands.” American papers commonly contain paragraphs like the following:
-“Advertising car No 2 of Pawnee Bill’s Wild West has the following
-people: Al Osborn, manager; Doc Ingram, boss billposter; A. Clarkson,
-lithographer; J. Dees, banners; N. C. Murray, J. Judge and twelve other
-billposters; B. Balke, paste-maker; and R. Richardson, chef.” That the
-boss billposter should rank after the manager and the chef after the
-paste-maker is a choice American touch.
-
-When you turn to the question of newspaper advertising you encounter
-pretty much the same characteristics, supplemented by a great deal of
-top-speed bellowing. In a high-class paper that lies before me as I
-write, a gentleman in the wholesale way announces in indecently tall
-black type that he is the “only live hardware man on earth,” and that he
-has “figured out a way to boost the business of his customers as well
-as build a good foundation.” Another dweller in the land of brotherly
-love—an artiste this time, if you please—announces himself as “The Death
-Defying Daredevil King of the High Wire” and assures us not only that he
-has been “the Feature Attraction for Three Seasons in Succession at Luna
-Park, Coney Island,” but that his “Reputation Talks for Itself.”
-
-The tone of these announcements is typical. Every American advertiser
-insists that he is the greatest man of business alive, and that the
-article he is so anxious to get rid of is the only fine thing in the
-world. You note, too, with a certain restrained joy, that every second
-advertisement appearing in an American paper or magazine starts off with
-the magical words: “It Will Pay You.” Thus if we are to believe the
-veracious publicity-monger it will pay you to wear So and So’s Collegian
-clothes which “are the only garments made in this entire country with
-real dash to them”; it will pay you to buy Thingamy Suspenders because
-they will make your boy “comfortable and good-natured”; it will pay you
-to go about in Thingamy Shoes because when you pay three dollars for the
-Thingamy Shoe “you can know that all of your money goes to the purchase
-of protection for your feet”; and it will pay you “to keep step with
-nature and tempt the fussy appetite with ‘Ten Liberal Breakfasts for Ten
-Cents.’” The authors of these touching suggestions evidently understand
-the public with whom they have to deal. They have learnt the sublime
-lesson that the American has but a single inducement in his nightmare of
-a life, namely—the inducement of money or noise.
-
-I shall now consider the advertising feats of that class of American
-persons who advertise not for financial gain, but for the sweet sake
-of notoriety. A great lady of American birth is said to have advised
-her sons that if they were to succeed in life they must make a point of
-getting their names into the papers at least once a day. The sons of the
-lady appear to have taken the hint, with the result that they have made
-themselves fairly snug out of very small beginnings.
-
-In the United States the bare getting of one’s name into the papers is a
-comparatively easy matter. Pretty well any American reporter will arrange
-that much for you in return for a ten cent drink, while for two such
-drinks he will run to a photo-block and a description of yourself as “a
-prominent society and club man who made his pile in Wall Street.”
-
-You must always remember, however, that the accomplished American private
-advertiser has a soul vastly above the mere elements of the game. Usually
-he is rich and often his life has contained episodes which an ingenious
-press can work up into scandals with half a column of sensational
-headlines—pin new and piping hot—on the shortest notice. Most wealthy
-advertising Americans, and indeed many of those who do not advertise,
-have been treated to this beautiful brand of publicity.
-
-As a matter of fact it is an ancient and over-worn fetich, and as the
-newspaper-reading American is no longer to be excited by it, there is
-little or nothing in it for anybody. Consequently the American who is
-thirsty for advertisement is compelled to have resource to what are
-called “stunts.” So far as one is able to make out you are considered by
-American society to achieve a “stunt” when you do something that nobody
-but a lunatic could possibly have thought of doing. For example, if you
-give a dinner party at a big New York hotel and let it be known that
-the guests were all of them chimpanzees you have done a “stunt.” And
-the reporters of every paper in the city will rush to you as one man to
-find out the facts. They will describe you as a multi-millionaire and a
-high-life club man whose existence is a sort of perennial grand slam.
-They will assert that your notion of bringing together a company of
-chimpanzees for dinner is wildly and unprecedentedly clever. They will
-go on to explain that the number of chimpanzees present was 47, that
-they turned up in the very smartest evening dress, that they ate and
-drank off plate of solid gold and that the champagne bottles were studded
-with rubies. And they will wind up by announcing that one of the most
-distinguished of the chimpanzees, who made his entrance to the dinner
-party out of a balloon made of fifty dollar bills, has just found a
-$500,000,000 gold-brick mine in a remote district of Omaha, where he was
-“raised,” and is as a consequence about to be elected President of the
-National Bank.
-
-Result: your dinner becomes the talk of America for at least a few hours,
-and you consider yourself a fortunate and public man. That is, if you
-are an ambitious American. Of course, this sort of advertising requires
-a good deal of coin to keep up the pace. And while there is not an hotel
-keeper in the Union who cannot supply you with a steady succession of
-idiotic freak ideas, the cost is a trifle heavy, and you soon find
-yourself growing rather tired.
-
-But the American is nothing if not clever. For a change, perhaps, he
-acquires an affinity or elopes with another man’s wife in a series of
-gorgeous motor cars and specially reserved steamships. He writes letters
-to his own wife explaining in ecstatic language what he has done; and
-she, good soul, serves them out to the reporters like so many doughnuts.
-Again, he gets his boosting—his roaring, rolling advertisement. Two
-months later the whole affair may turn out to have been a merry little
-“plant”; but your bright American has had his glad columns in the papers,
-and nothing in the world can take them from him.
-
-Of course, the “stunts” I have here indicated are really of a rather
-out-of-the-way sort. The common or garden “stunt” usually takes the shape
-of an appendicitis dinner, pies with girls in them, fountains running
-champagne, or Adam and Eve suppers.
-
-American women’s “stunts” are generally giddier still. One lady compassed
-social distinction by having her sunshade heavily embroidered with
-diamonds, another has tiny musical boxes fitted into the heels of her
-shoes that play when ever she puts her feet up—which is often—and a third
-wears a live newt in her hair, and has a boudoir full of snakes and lucky
-bears.
-
-But the soul and essence of it all is advertisement. “Be singular and
-you will get talked about; get talked about and you will be happy” is
-America’s golden rule.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-THE PEA-NUT MIND
-
-
-I am in the happy position of never having gazed upon a pea-nut in my
-life. Therefore my notions of what the pea-nut may be are of the haziest.
-
-But I gather as the result of some research that it is a species of
-provender, and that it is purchased and consumed by the American masses
-in pretty much the same spirit and on pretty well the same occasions
-that the common Cockney of our own happy British Islands purchases and
-devours barcelonas and whelks. In other words, a pea-nut is an inevitable
-concomitant of a lower-class American holiday. It is always with them. It
-is the one article that you may depend upon obtaining not only at every
-American dry goods store, but at every street-fair, park, beach, and
-entertainment ground throughout the country. It is a comestible beloved
-of old and young alike, and when the American boy or girl’s mouth is not
-at work on chewing gum it is working overtime on pea-nuts.
-
-When a working-class American wants a holiday—and sometimes when he would
-rather stay at home—he sets out with his wife and family for the nearest
-park. In England, of course, a park means, for the working classes
-at any rate, a somewhat decorous and over-laid-out open space where
-there is a band-stand, a range of concrete promenades, a Swiss châlet
-where bad tea is provided, a policeman, and a number of hard seats. In
-America, however, the park is an entirely different affair. It is always
-a place in which you can buy pea-nuts. Not only so; it is a place in
-which the benevolent American entrepreneurs throw together aggregations
-of “attractions” such as are to be seen nowhere else on sea or land. I
-find, for example, that for Cream City Park, Lyons, Ill., the following
-amusement devices are to be provided during this present summer:—
-
-“Old Mill, Merry-Go-Rounds, Penny Arcade, Circular Swing, Cave of the
-Winds, Billiard and Pool Parlours, Jap Ping-Pong Parlour, Cane Rack, Baby
-Rack, Illusion Shows, Baby Incubator, Pony Track, Razzle-Dazzle, and
-‘other novelties.’ There are also to be Japanese Tea Gardens, Ice Cream
-Stands, Soft Drink Stands, Candy and Pop Corn Stands, and facilities for
-the sale of pea-nuts.”
-
-Another of these parks at Aldoc Beach, near Buffalo, is described as
-“running seven days a week” and as possessing “the most magnificent
-Pine Grove and Great Lake,” together with “a $100,000 Summer Hotel, a
-$15,000 Figure Eight, a $5,000 Rustic Vaudeville Theatre, and a $5,000
-Dance Pavilion,” in addition to a Blinding Array of Restaurants, Chubbuck
-Wheels, Houses of Mirth, Box-Ball Alleys, Shooting Galleries, Circle
-Swings, and Stands for the sale of Soft Drinks, Tobaccos, Sandwiches, Ice
-Creams, Frankfurters—and pea-nuts.
-
-There are literally thousands of these parks scattered throughout the
-United States, and at all and each of them roaring provision is made for
-the people’s enjoyment. Compared with our English parks, with their sad,
-uncertain County Council bands, they fire the imagination. Practically
-they represent the old English fair—which the drab English authorities
-have so ruthlessly stamped out—very much modernised, Americanised,
-and “notionised.” Here the pea-nut reigns supreme. You chew it on the
-Razzle-Dazzle and in the Baby Rack and the Old Mill and the House of
-Mirth and the Chubbuck Wheel, and even in the $15,000 Figure Eight and
-the $5,000 Rustic Vaudeville. It is pea-nuts, pea-nuts, pea-nuts all the
-time, and nobody hopes, and nobody has the least desire to get away from
-them—from pea-nuts.
-
-Now, as the parks are open throughout the year and run seven days a week,
-and are all situated within easy distance of large centres of population,
-it follows that the consumption of pea-nuts in America is something
-enormous. If the yearly supply were to be put into trucks and looped up
-into a procession, it would probably take that procession 368 days to
-pass a given point.
-
-The big fact that I wish to bring out is that the Americans are a
-pea-nut-fed nation. With this simple statement it is possible to account
-for a great deal that is otherwise inexplicable in the American genius
-and character.
-
-Nut-chewing is a habit which has been in vogue on the earth for an
-incredible period. Originally developed by the Simian races, it was at
-one time the only known dietetic habit that did not involve bloodshed.
-It fell into neglect in Europe with the coming of the white man, and
-throughout the dark ages which ensued nobody appears to have given it
-a thought. It remained for the genius of America to revive it, and
-there can be no doubt that the renascence has been brought about in a
-thoroughly adequate and successful manner.
-
-For, as I have shown, all America now chews pea-nuts. As the result,
-they are a square-jawed, massy-faced race, martyrs to dyspepsia, fussy in
-the matter of appetite, and indiscriminate in the general selection of
-viands, their staples under this head consisting of fat pork and beans,
-corn mush and jungle-canned beef. Moreover, by dint of the assiduous and
-long-continued absorption of pea-nuts, they have acquired what may be
-reasonably termed a pea-nut mind.
-
-If you can imagine the vast hordes of the original nut-chewers of
-antiquity suddenly set down in the midst of the machinery and advantages
-of twentieth-century civilisation, and imagine what they would proceed
-to do in the circumstances, you have gone a great way towards a true
-conception of the American people as they really are. Their habits and
-manners and aspirations and desires appear in effect to be based entirely
-on nut-chewing, which, as every naturalist is aware, tends to render the
-chewer acquisitive, cute, tricksome, not given to reflection, tough and
-nimble of body, and reasonably devoid of soul. The habit carries with
-it, also, an innate love of what is noisy and showy, and a vanity which
-passes ordinary human understanding. It is all based on the desire to
-dazzle.
-
-So long as America has parks, so long will she chew pea-nuts, and
-so long as she chews pea-nuts, so long will she continue to remain
-as artlessly, amazingly and convincingly American as she is at the
-present moment. To take a few pertinent instances, you will find that
-all American oratory is simply and solely pea-nut oratory. I append an
-extract from a speech delivered at the New York Board of Aldermen by a
-representative from the Borough of Brooklyn, as reported in an American
-paper:—
-
-    “I demand this ordinance to your attention fer the sake of
-    humanity and fer the cause of freedom. Has introduced two
-    ordinances on this subject before, and now I am submittin’ this
-    Bill instead of them two. Maybe I don’t know nuthin’ about how
-    things is over here on this side of the bridge, but I know just
-    how it is in Brooklyn. An’ I wanter tell you that them motormen
-    over in Brooklyn is grinded under the heels of their masters
-    just as the slaves was drove in the olden times by his masters,
-    an’ it’s time fer us to interfere in this here matter now.
-
-    “Now you may want to know why them motormen don’t come over
-    here and speak up to you for their rights. If the is suffering
-    such outrages as this, you asks, why don’t they come here and
-    tell us that they is sufferin’ and ast us to life the yoke from
-    offen them?
-
-    “I’ll tell yer why they don’t come. They dasn’t. That’s why.
-
-    “They’re afraid, because they’re slaves and dasn’t speak up
-    fer themselves. If they was to come over here and say to this
-    committee, ‘We want you to protect us in our rights for the
-    reason that we’re sufferin’ and frozing in the winter,’ what
-    would happen?
-
-    “Why, before them men got through speakin’ their names would be
-    taken and telegraphed to their masters, and when they got back
-    to their cars them masters would tell them they hadn’t no more
-    use for ’em no more furever.”
-
-Herein surely one may trace the effects of pea-nuts as easily as white
-paint can be seen on a negro.
-
-Now let us turn to a sample of English “as she is wrote” and apparently
-spoken by the American who can read:—
-
-    The story about that fisherman wasn’t so bad. He was an old
-    guy, and so poor he had a hard time getting three squares a
-    day, and he had a wife and three kids to support. For some
-    reason too deep for your uncle, he had a rule to pitch his
-    nets in the sea only four times a day. One morning he went out
-    fishing before daylight, and the first drag he made, he copped
-    out a dead donkey. That made him pretty sore. Dead donks were a
-    frost, and he was out one throw. He win out a lot of mud, the
-    next throw, and he was sick, and he makes a howl about fortune.
-
-    “Here I am,” says he, “hustling all day long and every day in
-    the week; I got no other graft but this; and yet as hard as I
-    wrestle I can’t pay rent. A poor man has no chance. The smooth
-    guys get all the tapioca, and the honest citizen nit.”
-
-    Then he throws again, and finds another gold brick—stones,
-    shells, and stuff. I guess he was pretty wild when he sees
-    that. Three throws to the bad and nairy fish.
-
-    When the sun came over the hill, he flopped down on his knees
-    and prayed like all good Mussulmens, and after that gave the
-    Lord another song.
-
-English of this description runs very badly to pea-nut. It is distorted
-and degraded and entirely ungrammatical. Yet no one will deny that, if
-it is not commonly written, it is at least commonly spoken, even in
-such centres as New York and Boston. To American ears and eyes there is
-nothing about it that can be quarrelled with. Every American knows what
-is meant by “guys,” “tapioca,” “nit,” “gold-brick,” “nairy,” “squares,”
-“hot-air,” and so forth; and he uses these and similarly squalid words
-and phrases in his daily speech and conversation. If you were to tell him
-that such a sentence as “he win out a lot of mud, the next throw” was
-grammatically unsound and impossible, he would ask you please to be so
-kind “as not to pull his leg.” He is mentally incapable of distinguishing
-the kind of muss I have quoted from writing of a correct order, and when
-it creeps into his newspapers, and fictional publications, as it is
-continually doing, he never as much as suspects that there is anything
-wrong.
-
-Such a pea-nutty view of language points its own moral. It is a view that
-is universal among Americans, and it can be proved to obtain even among
-the best of American authors, who habitually use some of the crudest
-Americanisms without knowing it.
-
-I need scarcely add that the pea-nut flavour predominates in most
-American affairs. The advertising of the country is done wholly on
-pea-nut principles, its politics are run on pea-nut lines, and its
-professional men and financiers indulge in every species of pea-nut
-methods. No doubt one should be charitable enough to refrain from blaming
-them for it. They are to the manner born, and the pea-nut idiosyncracy
-is so firmly implanted in their natures that it would be impossible for
-them to shake it out, even if they tried. So that they go on pea-nutting
-and pea-nutting from generation to generation, and in spite of the
-extraordinary number of colleges, free schools, reading clubs, and
-general facilities for culture, they remain clear pea-nut right through.
-
-As I do not happen to wish them any particular harm, I shall express the
-pious hope that they will long continue to pea-nut.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-THE DRAMA
-
-
-The Americans are nothing if not fiercely and incorrigibly theatrical.
-It is true that they have only one pose, namely, the pose of being
-gloriously and unaffectedly American. Yet in all the large issues of life
-they display a strong sense of the stage, they revel in the more obvious
-situations, and they have an innate love of a good curtain.
-
-These facts are strikingly illustrated in the American law courts,
-where all small matters are managed on the lines of comedy, and all
-large matters on the lines of hot and lurid melodrama. The recent Thaw
-trial may be taken as a typical case in point, so far as melodrama is
-concerned. The speeches of counsel on both sides might have been written
-specially for the Adelphi Theatre, and every gesture of the rival
-declaimers would seem to have been modelled on the style of the adipose
-itinerant actor who plays “Othello” in penny gaffs.
-
-So far as the real stage is concerned, the Americans are to be credited
-with quite a number of startling innovations. They were the sole
-inventors of the Deadwood Dick kind of play, which involves the tooling
-on to the stage of an ancient and battered mail coach, accompanied by
-feats of unthinkable skill with the shooting irons. I believe, too,
-that they were the only begetters of the drama that has for its central
-attraction a real set-to between bona-fide bruisers, who fight with the
-gloves off and punish one another for all they are worth under American
-rules.
-
-Then, of course, I must not forget to mention the world-renowned “Tank
-Drama.” It appears that an American manager happened once upon a time to
-find himself in a second-hand galvanised iron store. Here he discovered
-an enormous iron tank which he found could be purchased for a song.
-In a fit of abstraction, and in pursuance of the American tendency to
-buy anything and everything that can be had dirt cheap, he purchased
-the tank. And having it on his hands and no particular use for it, he
-hired a dramatist to write a play around it. To this woolly genius a
-tank of course suggested water and high dives and swimmers, and before
-you could say hey, presto! Mr. Manager found himself in possession of a
-sensational, if somewhat humid, melodrama, the like of which had never
-before been seen on any road.
-
-The Tank Drama toured the States for years on end, to the approval and
-delight of American audiences, and for anything I know to the contrary,
-it is still running, the tank itself having by this time, no doubt, grown
-a little leaky.
-
-In England the public is familiar with melodramas in which the principal
-part is taken by steam-rollers, circular saws, fire-engines, and other
-pieces of mechanism. The Tank Drama, however, was the progenitor of
-them all. It was from the Americans, also, that we learnt to grace our
-melodramas with the presence on the stage of real live cows, racehorses,
-ducks and geese, faithful dogs, dancing bears, blue monkeys, and educated
-asses.
-
-The American public prides itself upon the rapidity with which the
-national dramatists, from Clyde Fitch or Augustus Thomas to David Belasco
-or Theodore Kremer, can turn out almost any species of dramatic work to
-order. On the production of a five-act tragedy recently in New York,
-it was announced that the author had written “the whole contraption”
-in under the twenty-four hours. I can well believe it. The majority of
-American plays that come to us on this side bear unmistakable indications
-of having been written in haste, and with a single eye to getting through
-with the labour. This is no doubt due to the circumstance that American
-managers have a mania for producing new pieces, and that the average run
-of such pieces is exceedingly short. Authors do not feel it to be worth
-their while to take pains, particularly as the majority of them have to
-subsist by dressing up in dramatic guise some new and big mechanical
-invention or some cause célèbre or tragedy in real life or some stupid
-story, which happens to have caught on, but which they know cannot in the
-nature of things keep the stage for more than a few weeks.
-
-Although one is continually hearing of the triumphs of this or that
-American actor or actress in Shakespearean parts, it is a solemn fact
-that the average of Shakespearean acting in America is very much below
-that of any other country in which Shakespeare is consistently played. I
-cannot, of course, forget that America produced the late Mr. Phelps and
-gave us Miss Mary Anderson, whom all the world admired. But these are the
-exceptions. The rule is that the American actor who plays Shakespeare is
-a bull-necked, unlettered mummer who has served his apprenticeship to the
-circus business or to the plumbing, and roars out Shakespeare’s lines
-with a nasal intonation and an absolute lack of understanding. Nine out
-of ten American actors ought to carry a net with them.
-
-I am aware that it may be contended that the foregoing aspects of the
-American drama are things of the past, and that in all essential respects
-the theatre in America is nowadays on an equal footing with the theatre
-in England. In a considerable measure, this may be so, due, no doubt,
-to the mixed beneficence of the blessed brotherhood: Frohman, Klaw and
-Erlanger.
-
-Yet there can be no getting away from the fact that the American plays
-and American companies that are from time to time brought to London for
-our edification fail woefully to interest us.
-
-In London, quite lately we have been presented with two plays of American
-extraction and rendered by American companies. One of them “Mrs. Wiggs
-of the Cabbage Patch” to wit, at Terry’s Theatre, appears to have been
-a success, from a monetary point of view, and nobody can witness it
-without entertainment. On the other hand, it suffers from that pea-nutty
-exuberance and thinness of interest which are so characteristically
-American. The sentiment in it is of the floweriest and slobberiest sort,
-the comedy forced and jerky, and the setting squalid and depressing to a
-degree. It is said to be a transcript of life among the American poorer
-classes, and herein conceivably it is instructive if not altogether
-uplifting; for it indicates only too plainly that the hackneyed American
-talk about “the full dinner-pail” and the general snugness and decency
-of the existence of the American poor has precious little foundation in
-fact. Of course, Mrs. Wiggs herself is made to exhibit singularly good
-qualities of heart, and a certain shrewd and humorous wisdom. But the
-rest of the characters—not even excluding the weepily-named Lovey-Mary
-and Mrs. Wiggs’s troops of wild-cat children—are the kind of people whom
-it sets one’s teeth on edge to meet. If, as I am told, America is full
-of Cabbage Patches, I can only say that America should hasten to the
-penitent form.
-
-The other play of which London was adjured to expect great things was
-called “Strongheart.” It ran for a couple of weeks or more at the Aldwych
-Theatre, and was then taken off. “Strongheart” purported to give us some
-highly realistic glimpses of American college life. There was a great
-deal of American football in it, and a great deal of ra, ra, ra-ing about
-it. There were also unlimited quantities of ra, ra rant. But the plot
-exhibited the usual thinness, the construction was slack and loose,
-and the characterisation feeble and colourless. If the company which
-supported the handsome Robert Edeson in this particular piece is to be
-taken as a fair sample, I feel free to conclude that in the lump American
-actors and actresses are a reasonably poor crowd. Play as they would,
-the men failed to convince us that they were persons of any particular
-breeding, and the women said their lines as if they were in pain, and
-walked through their parts like so many uninspired clothes horses. Of
-course I know America has many gifted actors and actresses such as
-William Faversham, James K. Hackett, E. H. Sothern, Julia Merlowe,
-Olga Nethersole and Mery Mannering—but, as luck will have it, with the
-exception of the second-named, who is a Canadian, they’re all English.
-And so is even the inimitable Hap Ward. On the whole, I think America
-will have to make some very serious strides in the dramatic art before
-she can fairly hope to show England anything that is worth looking at.
-
-When you turn to the music halls you find the American in equally sad
-case. There is no performer of note on the English music-hall stage whose
-training and experience have been American. From the other side we get a
-few trick bicyclists, wire-walkers, high divers, and comic speech makers
-whose pea-nutty witticisms are obviously culled from the comic papers.
-They help to fill up the programme, without in any sense helping to fill
-up the house.
-
-It is in this connection that the Americans have made a practical avowal
-of their pathetic inferiority; for they are said to have made contracts
-with some of the leading English stars for appearances in America,
-on terms which plainly indicate that the American managers must be
-singularly hard up for talent and quite incapable of finding it in their
-own country.
-
-The fact is, that in this as in a variety of other matters, the
-American’s cock-sureness and unblushing faith in his personal beauty
-and powers have led him considerably astray. The American really
-possesses scarcely any talent. All he can do is to boast and shout and
-advertise. And having little or nothing behind him to boast and shout
-and advertise about, he is bound in the long run to find himself at a
-disadvantage. Half the actresses and female music-hall artists of America
-are successful not because they can do anything, but because they have
-been “boosted” into fame by the pushful, blatant manager. The sole
-accomplishment of many of them is that they can undress prettily in full
-view of their audiences.
-
-For the rest they bolster up their position by extraneous escapades
-rather than by art. They are harum-scarum, feather-brained young women
-who for the most part would find it exceedingly difficult to get a living
-by the exercise of their alleged smartness before an English public. And
-as for American actors and music-hall men, the best that can be said of
-them is that when they are not vulgar they are deadly dull, and the worst
-that their real sphere of life is the American circus. I wish they would
-all take to the Tank.
-
-The average American theatrical man, invariably strikes me as being a
-born circus-man, intended by nature to go around in a gaudy procession
-by day and to fill up his nights showing off wild beasts and freaks and
-Deadwood coaches. Unconsciously he does all his business and manages all
-his affairs on circus principles. He is for ever beating the drum and
-inviting the crowd to walk up and see the finest show on earth. The ideal
-man of his private bosom is the late P. T. Barnum, who was the father of
-advertisement and the originator of the fine art of “boosting.” It was
-P. T. Barnum who said, or who got somebody to say for him, “When you have
-anything good, keep on letting on about it, and you will get rich.”
-
-The American business man has always considered that saying to be the
-extreme height of philosophy.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-SPORT
-
-
-The Americans are all “sports.” But to their credit, they are one and
-all “dead games.” They have a sporting tradition which extends back to
-the time when their great-grandfathers gambled for negresses and went
-trailing for Indians in pretty much the same way that an Englishman goes
-shooting wild duck.
-
-It is said, with what truth I know not, that the Americans hunt
-the fox in red coats and top-hats, and that they are yachtsmen and
-fishermen and big game killers. I have met a considerable number of
-Americans—well-to-do and otherwise—but I never yet came across one whom
-I could conscientiously figure in any of the latter connections. Of
-course, there is the America Cup Race to confound me, and there are the
-redoubtable doings of President Roosevelt on the rolling prairie and
-in the Rockies, and there is young Mr. Jay Gould’s defeat of our Mr.
-Eustace Miles at Rackets or Ping Pong or some such game. All the same,
-I will never believe that the modern American is leisurely enough or
-uncommercial enough to know much about real sport.
-
-That they play games in America even as we play games in England appears
-to be fairly evident. The game of white man’s games, namely, cricket,
-is, however, a game they do not understand. Baseball and football on
-the other hand are exercises which they are alleged to have cultivated
-out of all recognition. Baseball I know nothing about. And when I come
-to consider it closely, I could wish that I knew nothing about American
-football.
-
-Pugilism without the gloves having been forbidden by law in America,
-the free and equal inhabitants thereof must e’en look round for a form
-of sport which would allow of their “lamming the hides off one another”
-without being pulled up short by the police; and they settled on
-football. The essence of American football is not to kick or punch the
-ball, but to kick, punch, break up, deface and destroy the next man. On
-all American football fields a squad of surgeons, bonesetters, and nurses
-have to be in continual attendance. The crushing of a player’s ribs, the
-gouging out of his eye, or the splitting open of his head are regarded as
-trifling matters among American sportsmen, and when the football player
-goes forth to the fray, he makes a point of taking a fond farewell of
-his relations and friends in case of even more serious accident. Here,
-again, you have a distinct instance of the American tendency to outrage
-and excess. They have overdone football to such an extent that they
-themselves consider it in the light of something which approximates
-closely to a murderous affray. So much for games.
-
-As Indians are no longer shootable, and negroes can no longer be
-hunted with dogs, and the buffalo is extinct, and the grizzly a “rare
-proposition” and difficult of access, the modern American sport has to be
-content with smaller deer, such as possum and bobolink and wild turkey.
-And when he goes gunning for these trophies he is a sight to see. Nobody
-can rival him in the magnificence of his outfit. He insists upon donning
-cow-boy attire and proceeding to the field of action on a fiery mustang,
-with a magazine of guns slung all over him, and enough ammunition to take
-Port Arthur. The whole of this equipment has been purchased at store
-prices, and he acquires it not because it is likely to be useful to him
-but because he thinks that it makes him look smart. When it comes to
-yachting or fishing or racing you can depend upon him to display an equal
-gaiety of demeanour and to “dress” and “swank” the part to perfection.
-
-For the fox-hunting I shall say nothing. The indigenous American fox does
-not run straight, the imported fox has lost some of the best qualities of
-his English forbears, and the American variety of foxhound is a romping,
-ill-mannered, and indiscreet quadruped.
-
-The national sport of America is horse racing, qualified with a
-considerable dash of trotting. And here, of course, the American
-temperament in all its aspects is made to shine. The head quarters
-of American horse racing—the Epsom, Ascot and Sandown of the United
-States—is a place called Saratoga, where the trunks come from. Here you
-find the American horse, the American racing man, and the American sport
-in their highest and lowest and most perfect expression. It is said
-that a Saratoga horse is poison-proof; being so accustomed to profound
-potations of laudanum, bromide, and other sedatives that he can quaff
-any quantity of them without turning a hair. The people who live at
-Saratoga are all horsey and dishonest. They speak the most degraded form
-of Anglo-Saxon—a sort of Americo-Negroid flash talk—and what they do
-not know in the way of knavery and brutality has yet to be invented.
-It goes without saying that all American racing men do not necessarily
-dwell in this sublime spot. But a quite considerable contingent of them
-have learnt lessons out of the Saratoga book, and are consequently as
-dangerous to deal with as it is possible to conceive that white men could
-be.
-
-The American sportsmen we are privileged to see in England have, with
-some notable exceptions, failed signally to secure our confidence. There
-are honest men among them—though never by any chance a “jay”—and there
-are sheep of a blackness which would do no discredit to the nether pit.
-On the whole their connection with the English turf has been unfortunate
-for the English turf. We are most of us quite old enough to remember the
-unpleasant things that happened when an organised gang of these gentry
-descended upon our innocent English rings and racecourses some three
-years ago. They got their hands well into the English pockets, depleted
-us of much glittering money, raised what they were pleased to consider
-“general h—l” in the scandal way, and left us outraged and aghast. Up to
-this period in our history the astute English racing-man had regarded
-himself as the last word in craft and wariness; but the Americans
-despoiled him as easily as if he had been a “tenderfoot,” and when he
-discovered it, Mr. Englishman was very shocked. The racing interests of
-these realms is still suffering from the shaking it received during the
-exciting period to which I refer. The only profit the poor Britishers got
-out of the deal was a new-fashioned way of riding, which still remains in
-vogue, and a lesson in caution which will last us a good century.
-
-What the American jockey really means was forcibly borne in upon us by
-the vagaries of a Mr. Tod Sloan. By dint of the usual advertising and
-bluff, coupled indeed with no ordinary gifts as a horseman, Mr. Sloan
-made his early career in England a success at the first blush. He was
-soon in receipt of an income of ridiculous dimensions, and hob-nobbing
-with the best blood of the country. He got found out, as Americans will,
-and ended up feebly by smacking a waiter across the head with a champagne
-bottle. Luck does not appear to have looked his way since. He went back
-to America a disgraced man, even for America; and took to giving tips
-for a New York paper. At the present moment he is said to be engaged
-in the gentle art of billiard-marking at a salary running to at least
-ten dollars a week. I recite the history of Mr. Sloan to encourage the
-others. Our experiences with the American racing-man in this country
-justify us in assuming that he is an exceptionally sad dog at home.
-America is overrun with him, and while she has done everything that lay
-in her power to corral and exterminate him he still continues merrily on
-his wicked way.
-
-It only remains to point out that the Americans as a people are frantic
-gamblers, and that they are infatuated enough to regard gambling as a
-form of sport. Probably more gambling at cards goes on in the United
-States than in the whole of the countries of Europe put together. The
-proper American is everlastingly playing at poker, which is a bluffing
-game, and which he will assure you trains him for his business. The
-American card-sharper has been famous in song and story time out of
-mind. For sheer coolness, audacity, and skill at the job, he has never
-had an equal. Occasionally he lands on these shores, with a picturesque
-entourage, takes a flat in the West End of London, and relieves the
-adolescent gentry of the neighbourhood of their little alls. Then he is
-up and off, on the wings of the morning.
-
-Among themselves, too, the Americans play a great deal of roulette,
-petit chevaux, and kindred fascinations. They count also amongst the
-most enthusiastic patrons of Monte Carlo, where season after season many
-of them turn up with very little money and make a fat thing of it. Last
-season a long-haired gentleman from Kansas City scooped up between two
-and three hundred louis a night for twenty nights running by the simple
-process of walking from table to table and backing 17. He told me that he
-and his wife were there for a little trip, and that he had hit on the 17
-idea because 17 was the number of their cabin on the liner which brought
-them over. Of course 17 can refuse to come up at Monte Carlo for hours at
-a time. But whenever this raw-boned large-handed citizen of Kansas chose
-to put money on it, up it came inside two or three spins.
-
-There are American gamblers at Monte Carlo, however, who are not by any
-means so consistently lucky as my friend. The money some of them get
-through when they are having a bad time would probably astonish the old
-folks at home. But it is only fair to them to say that they take their
-losses with an unruffled, if rather moist, brow and go off solemnly to
-cable for further supplies.
-
-When a certain sort of American millionaire turns up in the
-Mediterranean paradise there are sure to be merry doings. I have seen
-such a one mop his wet face after handing the bank a bundle of notes that
-would have made a tidy year’s income for a man with a large family, and
-remark, a little feebly, “Gee whizz!” Then he was led gently away by a
-number of pretty ladies.
-
-It is in what one may term hard gambles such as he gets at Monte Carlo
-that the American shows his most sportsmanlike qualities. At roulette,
-or trente et quarente, it is almost impossible for him to cheat, and
-consequently he wins or loses more or less calmly and with perfect
-honour. But at poker—tut—tut!
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-HOGS
-
-
-The national peril of the United States is hogs. Of the peculiar and
-subtle influences which have driven most Americans into the pig business
-I find it impossible to formulate any reasonable account. Of course,
-there is the fact that the pig business has large monies in it, and that
-America is a country in which it would seem you have only to tickle a
-little pig with a hoe to turn him into a fine fat porker.
-
-There can be no doubt whatever that a very large percentage of Americans
-think, talk, and raise pig throughout the whole of their natural lives.
-This industry appears to be of such a fascinating character that when
-once you have got into it you cannot possibly get out of it. Even if
-you wax unrighteously rich and get elected to Congress and move your
-family to New York, you still stick to pork and lard as if they were your
-brother. I understand that many of the ball-rooms in the big brown stone
-mansions in Fifth Avenue are waxed with lard.
-
-I do not know whether there were any pigs in America before the Pilgrim
-Fathers landed. But it is certain that there are millions of them there
-now, and that they eat apples and grow wondrous frisky and have a good
-time of it—till killing day comes around. And it is precisely here that
-the frightful Americanism of the hog begins. For the wicked pig, like the
-wicked man, has a knack of finding his way to Chicago—which, as all the
-world now knows, is the most bloodthirsty, sultry, and unregenerate city
-on the face of the earth. In this place they kill pigs by the thousand
-daily. Hoggish shrieks rend all the air, the stores and warehouses groan
-with the pig’s dismembered parts, and the odour of his frizzling adipose
-tissue is in every nostril.
-
-It seems to me more than likely that the pig owes the beginnings of his
-present supremacy in the United States to the Irish, who are pretty thick
-upon the ground there. An Irishman without a pig in one form or another
-would in all likelihood take cold, or die of heart-ache. In his own
-distressful Island, the Irishman and his pig live on terms of freedom
-and fraternity that put the American Constitution to the distinct blush.
-Not only does the pig pay the greater proportion of rent that gets paid
-in Ireland, but he is the friend and playmate of the family, and is
-invariably accorded a cosy corner for himself on the domestic hearth.
-
-It seems only natural, therefore, that in emigrating to the States, the
-Irishman who could manage it would insist on taking with him one or more
-pigs, probably as much for company’s sake as for any other reason. And
-behold the result! What was a simple and very human foible on the part of
-the Irishman, has become, with the American, a raging and soul-consuming
-obsession. Pork, pork, pork, pork, pork! That is the cry that rises daily
-and hourly to heaven from the greater part of the United-States-half
-of North America. Everybody is concerned in it; everybody has money
-in it; everybody wants to get more money out of it. The pig is rushed
-through his feeds, weighed every morning till he has assumed the right
-specific gravity, hurried off by car to his doom, killed and slain on the
-no-waiting-here principle, and turned into hams, sides, lard, brawn, and
-sausages for the delectation of a hungry world before he has a chance to
-say George Washington.
-
-America as a country, and the Americans as a people, depend upon hogs for
-their prosperity to an extent that is appalling. Upon the dead weight
-of him in the warehouses, and upon his firmness, or want of it, in the
-markets, hangs the stability of all sorts of stocks, shares, bonds,
-debentures, and general securities. If pig is “up,” America is a land of
-contented households and smiling faces. If pig is “down,” she is plunged
-forthwith into the deepest woe and the meanest irritability.
-
-All of which affords one further striking evidence that the Americans are
-really a wonderful people, and that they deserve the generous tributes of
-praise that they so consistently and lavishly draw upon themselves.
-
-A nation whose principal diet is pea-nuts, and whose principal profit is
-derived from the sale of pigs, is obviously pretty low down in the scale
-of civilisation. A hog tender cannot by any chance be the finest kind of
-man, neither can a pork butcher or a wholesale ham merchant. And every
-American who is not a member of a trust, or a pastor of a church, or a
-boss billposter, or a missionary, or a comic singer, is either a hog
-tender, a pork butcher, or a wholesale ham merchant. At any rate, so one
-gathers from the authorised reports.
-
-And just as nut-chewing is responsible for certain grave weaknesses in
-the American character, so is pig-dealing. The pig and the potato have
-made the Irishman the idlest man in the world. The pig takes no rearing,
-and the potato is such a lively and prolific tuber that it will grow
-almost without planting. The Irishman has reaped the full disadvantages
-incident to these merits in the pig and the potato. And one feels sure
-that the American is suffering equally from the effects of the pig. I
-have no wish to reopen the box of horrors which was introduced to our
-notice some time back by the author of “The Jungle.” That gentleman
-did his work thoroughly, and the atmosphere is even yet redolent in
-consequence. It does not concern me that Chicago meats, tinned or cured,
-are not always entirely fitted for human consumption, or that the Chicago
-method of treating such meats are uncleanly, or that the Chicago idea of
-industrial efficiency is a perverted one. What does concern me is that
-Chicago is an American city, built by Americans, run by Americans, and
-made lurid by Americans—on pig.
-
-To suggest to the American reformer that he should take steps for the
-immediate extermination of the pigs in America, steps, in fact, such
-as have been taken with a view to the extinction of the rabbit in
-Australia, would be to fill him with horror and amazement. He is all for
-the amelioration and improvement and cleaning up of Chicago; he does not
-see that it is the pig and the great American people who are the root
-trouble. Prohibit the breeding and rearing of pigs throughout the United
-States, and you will have gone much further towards the cleaning up of
-Chicago, and, for that matter, the cleaning up of America, than you are
-ever likely to get by dealing simply with Chicago itself. So long as
-there are pigs, so long will Chicago reek. Abolish pigs, and you have
-abolished the worst features of the world’s foulest city.
-
-The reformer will find that my suggestion is an impracticable one. He may
-even go the length of calling it frivolous and ridiculous. But we shall
-see what we shall see. America will one day either have to forsake pig or
-come to very bitter grief. She is already in considerable straits as to
-the marketing of her porcine staples. She has shoved them down the necks
-of her own people till they can no more. She is pushing them down English
-throats with all the force that in her lies, and the limit is within a
-very little way of being reached. Do as one will, one cannot consume
-more than a certain amount of American pig in the course of the day’s
-deglutition. Europe is taking far more than is good for her even now,
-and yet the American demand is for bigger sales and extended markets, to
-prevent the stuff from rotting at home. The position is unfortunate in
-quite a number of senses; but it is precisely what any prescient American
-ought to have expected. America is overdoing it in the matter of pig,
-just as she is overdoing it in most other matters. When you have got the
-measure of people’s hunger and purchasing capacity you cannot appreciably
-increase them by any amount of advertising or bluff.
-
-The Americans boast that they can sell everything appertaining to a pig
-save and except the squeal. I don’t wish to frighten them, but it would
-not surprise me in the least if within the space of a few years the large
-accumulation of squeals which they must, by this time, have on hand were
-to arise up as it were, and din their ears in a manner which they will
-not relish.
-
-I may remark finally that in spite of everything that Chicago may say
-and publish in their praise, there can be no question that American pig
-products are of a most inferior and unappetising quality as compared
-with the real article. American hog meat exhibits a coarseness of
-grain and a crudeness of flavour which will incline any person of
-gustatory discrimination to the abstention of the Hebrew. Eggs and bacon
-constitute the English national breakfast dish; ham and eggs are the
-sure rock and support of our country inns and cheap restaurants. Both
-these dishes have, however, fallen into sad disrepute during late years,
-and I have no hesitation in attributing this grave and heartrending
-circumstance to the fact that the bacon and ham nowadays served are
-almost exclusively American.
-
-The gentlemen from the other side must excuse me if I appear as he would
-phrase it, “to tread somewhat too severely on his face”; but I really
-mean him no evil. Rather do I wish him all manner of good.
-
-Besides which it is one’s duty to be patriotic; and charity—even in the
-article of pig—should begin at home.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-VERDICT
-
-
-Before I leave the jury of potent, grave and reverend Britishers to their
-own reflections on the subject before them, it may be well to indulge in
-a little summing-up.
-
-I have shown that the fiery, untameable American is a creature of more
-than doubtful antecedents, and that he conceals beneath a veneer of
-smartness and originality several qualities of mind and heart that are
-not greatly to his credit. I have shown that his destiny would seem to
-lie in the direction of a reversion to a condition of pseudo-barbarism
-which will in many respects identify him with the aboriginal possessors
-of his country. Already the face, features and body of him are becoming
-plainly Red-Indianised. Already his talk contains hints and suggestions
-of “war-paint,” the “war-path,” the “tomahawk” and the getting of
-“scalps.” If I mistake not the rest is bound soon to follow.
-
-I have shown also that the American woman, in so far as she is exhibited
-to us in London, and on the Continent of Europe, is a somewhat frivolous
-female, and not always comely; smart, possibly, and lively, possibly,
-but on the whole disposed to be too smart and too lively. I have given
-you a peep at the American millionaire, and found him wanting in
-everything but money, and not invariably too well provided with that. I
-have pointed out that American advertising, whether for the sake of gain
-or of notoriety, is a shameless, blatant and undesirable affair. For the
-first time in history I have set it on record that the Americans eat too
-many pea-nuts. I have run the rule over their painful attempts at the
-dramatic art, and proved that in this important connection they have been
-responsible for many banalities and futilities, and that their average of
-performance is far below that of the rest of the theatre-using world. I
-have demonstrated, also, that their real metier is the giddy tenth-rate
-circus, ablast with drums and the roaring of wild beasts, the snuffling
-of freaks, and the shrieking mirth of the vulgar. I have paid a passing
-tribute to the integrity and blamelessness of their sportsmen. And I have
-warned them solemnly about pork. What more can be expected of me?
-
-It is more than likely that I shall be told that I have chosen for the
-subject of my remarks a rather stodgy type of American, which is rapidly
-giving place to a saner, wholesomer, and pleasanter type, resulting from
-the spread of culture and a modification of manners on the best European
-plans. To this I reply that I have spoken of the American exactly as he
-seems to me to be, and judged him on the numerous samples which have
-hitherto come my way. That there must be some residuum of sound and
-serious people in the United States seems probable, but I have never been
-to the United States.
-
-Can anyone point to anything in the world that America is accomplishing
-which is purely and simply calculated to serve the highest interests of
-the human race? Can you look upon her trusts, her general methods of
-finance, her social and industrial system, her bosses, her political
-parties, the administration of her law, her press, her religious
-mountebanks, her quacks and charlatans of all conditions, and pronounce
-them to be good? Is it not the fact that these, in common with pretty
-well the whole of the remainder of her institutions, are not only
-defective, but a great deal more defective than one’s right to expect in
-view of the exceptional natural resources of the country and her great
-energy and wealth?
-
-You are at liberty to answer these questions in any way you please; but
-the conviction of myself and a by no means inconsiderable number of other
-persons will remain the same.
-
-It is clear that if the Americans are going to take that exalted position
-among the nations to which they are for ever laying claim, they will be
-compelled to get rid of a great many excrescences of temperament which
-they seem now only too busy developing and emphasising by every means in
-their power.
-
-Is it possible for them, in the nature of things, so to disencumber
-themselves?
-
-Will they ever become a really free country, dethrone the millionaire and
-the boss and acknowledge honesty as a political virtue?
-
-Will they ever put silencers on the yellow press and elect a
-congressional committee to examine the gangrenous decay of their wit and
-the dropsical growth of their emotions?
-
-Will they ever make a point of keeping their women at home and give
-practical proof of their pride in the peaches by marrying them themselves?
-
-Will they ever learn the English language which was the best thing
-imported in the “Mayflower”?
-
-Will they ever get rid of the climatic influences that compel them to
-speak and sing through their noses?
-
-Will they ever quote their astounding President at anything but a
-discount or realise that he is their greatest national asset?
-
-Will they ever place a prohibitive tariff on noise and lynch
-sensation-mongers as they do niggers?
-
-Will their playwrights ever learn the difference between a phonograph
-record and a play and will their audiences ever learn to appreciate
-acting when they see it?
-
-Will they ever discover that sport is not merely a business of record
-breaking and that business and football, I class the two together, are
-not the sports of the stone age in which the vanquished was not only
-overthrown but subsequently utterly consumed?
-
-Will they ever give up pea-nuts?
-
-Will they ever cease from the blind cultivation of pork?
-
-I trow not.
-
-And as these chapters are intended a great deal more for the English than
-for the Americans, I may say here and now that it is the Englishman’s
-plain duty to himself and to the race to refrain as far as in him lies
-from the easy sin of imitation. In his admiration and envy for the
-magical and almost uncanny successes of his American brother, let him not
-be carried away with the stupid notion that it is possible for him to go
-forth and do likewise. For one thing, he hasn’t got the climate; and for
-another he hasn’t got either the pea-nuts or the pork.
-
-Let the Englishman, therefore, be content to remain unreservedly and
-unsophisticatedly English. When he sees an American adaptation or
-invasion—whether commercial, social, religious, or otherwise—coming his
-way, let him frown it down, pass by it and flee from it. Such things may
-seem simple and innocuous and desirable enough in themselves, they may
-tickle the imagination, and they may even appear to be for the distinct
-betterment of mankind. But in the aggregate they must of necessity tend
-to the Americanisation of this Country—and that is an evil which every
-Britisher ought to be prepared to make any sacrifice to avoid.
-
-If any profit worth having is to come out of the present welter it will
-come by the Anglicisation of America, and not by the Americanisation of
-England. The Americans themselves recognise the weight and importance
-of this fact. Some of them are already wearing eye-glasses. They smile
-in their sleeves at our readiness to adopt the least admirable of their
-multifarious foolish ways. When an American meets an Englishman who is
-trying to run his business or his household or other of his affairs after
-American models, and particularly when he meets an Englishman who looks
-upon the Americans as his superiors and masters at the game of life, he
-is sheerly, if unavowedly, amazed. He knows what America is, he knows in
-his heart what America means, and if it lay in his power to choose the
-place to which he will go when he dies, that place would not be Chicago,
-nor would it be even Paris, but a clean, free, un-Americanised England.
-
-But with all their usually enormous and often brilliant faults—that
-amaze, even if they do not stagger humanity—the Americans are a nation
-of Cæsars. In every field of activity they have scored many triumphs.
-But they are not satisfied with acquisition and conquest on a colossal
-scale, they want to surpass all previous records in ancient or modern
-times. They are endowed with an inherent genius for arriving at their
-destination, and the destination they have set down for themselves in the
-national time-table is one in keeping with their vast and great country,
-whose mission it seems to be to make Europe and the world sit-up.
-Therefore, within the next decade or two, I should not be surprised to
-see a very much larger splash of purple on the map of the earth—and to
-see it called the American Empire.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-UNWIN BROS., LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND WOKING.
-
-
-
-
-
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