Introducing the American Spirit Part 10

Knowing that money can buy both Old and New Masters, he expected to find them; but he had not expected to see such discrimination as was shown in choosing and hanging them. He was entirely unprepared for the excellent work of our native artists, outside of that small but exalted sphere occupied by Whistler, Sargent, Innes, etc.

My joy was complete when we were taken into the Art School by the Director, Dr. French, whose death not long ago must always be deplored.

The rooms of the Art School were crowded by boys and girls of all ages and varied nationalities and races, learning to develop their G.o.d-given talents under the guidance of competent and sympathetic teachers. The picture they made delighted me more than those they drew or painted; for it seemed so thoroughly, generously, democratically and artistically American.

I scored another victory for the American Spirit when I introduced my guests to Lorado Taft, sculptor, and the guiding star in Chicago's artistic firmament. In his rare personality, strength and purity, idealism and practical good sense blend, and his art reflects the man.

He showed us some of his work and that of his pupils, and both elicited unstinted praise from my guests.

The climax of our visit came when we returned to the entrance hall which we found crowded by public school children, all listening to an orchestra composed of certain of their number, and led by a young girl about fourteen years of age. It seemed to me a remarkable and beautiful combination. The marbles and pictures, the music, and, best of all, the children happily wandering about the place. When the program ended there was ice-cream for everybody, served by the teachers who accompanied the children. It was a real party, an American party, and we might have travelled long and far before I could have found anything which would have better reflected for my guests the American Spirit at its best.

If I were an artist and a sculptor I should like to portray the spirit of Chicago as one feels it in this museum. I would model a group, with its central figure that same sculptor, the finely bred American, clean and wholesome, who longs to create, not only the city beautiful, but the city human. He should be surrounded by the children, happily looking at pictures and listening to music as we saw them in the Art Inst.i.tute that day.

But there must be another prominent figure in my group: the heartless, ruthless, twentieth century American, with clean-shaven face, jaws strong as a vise, and a chin like the base of an anvil. He is the man who "makes a good husband," and partly obeys the Scriptural injunction: because he provides for his own. He too should be surrounded by children; not his, but the children who work in his factories and have to live in his rickety tenements. The two men would struggle mightily for supremacy in the city's life; and I would set up my sculptured group in the busiest place, where all who pa.s.sed it by might see, and seeing, help him who was struggling for beauty and for happiness.

Dr. French, the Herr Director and I had a long discussion about my conception of the two natures contending within the city. The Herr Director argued that the merchant spirit, so prevalent here, when uncontrolled and uncurbed, is more dangerous to civilization and to our democracy than the military spirit of Germany, and that it needs to be overcome by a force greater and stronger than itself. The corrupting element he said has always been this same merchant spirit, and where ancient civilizations decayed, it was due to the fact that it debased kings and enslaved them by luxuries.

"Business should not control, but be controlled, because business is based entirely upon selfishness." When the Herr Director stopped for breath, Dr. French, who was an ardent Christian and knew his Bible, took from his pocket a New Testament, and pointed out a remarkable chapter in the Book of Revelation (a chapter I was compelled to confess I had not read) that bore out the Herr Director's statement.

"The kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth waxed rich by the power of her wantonness.... And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more; merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; and all thyine wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of most precious wood, and of bra.s.s, and iron, and marble; and cinnamon, and spice, and incense, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and cattle, and sheep; and merchandise of horses and chariots and slaves; and souls of men."

We urged Dr. French to read the rest of the chapter, which he did.

"And they cast dust upon their heads, and cried, weeping and mourning, saying: Woe, woe, the great city, wherein were made rich all that had their s.h.i.+ps in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate," and then the voice of the angel crying into the thick of their lament, "Rejoice over her, thou Heaven and ye saints, and ye apostles, and ye prophets; for G.o.d hath judged your judgment on her."

It seemed as though the prophet had written the epitaph of all cities in which the merchant was master and not servant.

When he had finished I knew the inscription for my sculptured group: the twentieth verse of the eighteenth chapter of Revelation.

Altogether it was a remarkable day to be experienced only in America, perhaps only in Chicago. To shop in the largest store in the world, visit a picture gallery well worth while, and see art students at work; hear cla.s.sical music played by a children's orchestra, and watch the same children enjoying the party which followed; to meet one of the leading sculptors of America who shared with us his plans and hopes, and to have as our guide the Director of the Art Inst.i.tute, was a colossal experience worthy of the city in which it happened.

The next day was given to the Juvenile Court, Public Play Grounds, the University, and, finally, Hull House. The one great disappointment of the Chicago visit for me and my guests was Miss Jane Addams' absence in Europe. But the House was there--big, neighborly, homelike, hospitable--and the residents were there, those who do the neighboring, the healing and the helping, who are friends of the friendless, and know no creed or race--except humanity.

My faith in Chicago springs largely from my contact with Hull House, The Commons and like places with their defiant spirit towards evil, their broad-mindedness and their brave attempt at remedying the wrongs of our commercialized civilization.

After dinner I "toted" my guests all over the House, from the reading-room on the first floor to the Boys' Club on the third, and back again. I have done it frequently, and always with zest and pride, in spite of the fact that I have had no active share in the work.

In Bowen Hall we came upon a dancing party. Some one of the social clubs had been gracious enough to invite its parents to come. We were introduced to Mrs. Frankelstein from Roumania, and Mrs. Flynn from Ireland, Mrs. Ragovsky from Russia, Mr. and Mrs. Feketey from Hungary, Mr. and Mrs. Rocco from Italy, and many others whose picturesque names I do not remember.

We also met a young business man, the son of a millionaire, with sundry other young men and women of the type one likes to meet and introduce, whom one would be proud to know anywhere. They had charge of the affair. The Herr Director and the Frau Directorin caught the spirit of the occasion and entered into it with zest. When the orchestra began to play, he led the Grand March with Mrs. Rocco and she followed with the young millionaire. At the close of the festivities, as we were leaving, they vowed they had had the best time since they left home.

Chicago, big, blundering, materialistic Chicago had a new meaning to the Herr Director. He praised everything and everybody, and as we parted for the night, he said: "'Almost thou persuadest me to' believe in the 'American Spirit.'"

X

_Where the Spirit is Young_

To the average European there are two things American which have not yet lost their romantic quality: The prairies and the West.

Antic.i.p.ations of seeing both, filled the breast of the Frau Directorin with mingled feelings of fear and pleasure, as she discussed with her husband the fate of the children they had left behind them--in the event of our being captured by the Indians. However, the probability of our safe return and her consequent opportunity to tell envious friends her experiences in the prairies and the West outweighed all fears.

Among her friends were those who had braved the perils of the ocean and gone as far as New York; some of them had even been in Chicago--but beyond, still hidden in the romance woven about them by Bret Harte (her favorite American author), were those two things she was about to see, and of which they had only dreamed.

The Herr Director, as he repeatedly reminded me, had crossed the plains when I had known them only through Cooper's fascinating Indian stories, and he was eager to throw off the leaders.h.i.+p I had a.s.sumed, which, to a dominant nature like his, proved exceedingly irksome.

He soon discovered that he was travelling through territory entirely new to him. The little towns he had known had grown into cities, and the further west we travelled, the greater and more impressive were the changes.

Omaha and Kansas City he did not recognize at all. Not only was there this new growth, "rank growth," he called it, of sky-sc.r.a.pers, post-offices and railroad stations with Doric pillars--the men and women he met had a new outlook upon life. While they still boasted of this and that thing in which their city was like Chicago or was unlike some lesser city than their own, they were critical of themselves and eager to learn; they had grown more masterful and at the same time were more refined.

The prairies were not at all what the Frau Directorin had imagined them to be. She was chagrined to find nothing but farm lands and great fields, not so well groomed as those we had seen in the East, but with no Indians or buffaloes, no wild horses or wilder looking men.

She saw no trace of the toil, the struggle and the brave resistance through which these farms had been rescued from the prairies. She could not know of the loneliness of women and the hardihood of men, of the season's drought and famine, of bitter disappointment, the pangs of bearing and rearing children in utter isolation, and the struggle for education.

No trace of all this was apparent in the sort of settled, middle cla.s.s prosperity which stretched out in the unvaried, thousand mile panorama through which we journeyed.

In a town of about four thousand inhabitants we stopped; the name of the place is of no significance, for there are hundreds of just such towns in the West. We were met by the superintendent of schools, himself a product of the prairies. Having grown up among the cattle, he is consequently shy of men. He drove his automobile as if it were a broncho, and we all uttered a prayer of thanksgiving when he deposited us, with no bones broken, at the hotel. In a short time we were ready to go with him to his school, which was the objective point of our visit.

It goes without saying that the superintendent boasted of the youth of the town, even as under like circ.u.mstances in the East, he would have boasted of its age.

Ten years before it was nothing except a railroad station, miles of sage-brush, rattlesnakes and prairie dogs. Now there are business blocks, embryonic sky-sc.r.a.pers, a pillared post-office, a hundred-thousand-dollar hotel, a Grand Opera House, neither big enough nor good enough to boast of, numerous churches and this schoolhouse. It is not only a place in which boys and girls learn the "three R's," but has a finely equipped gymnasium, a chemical laboratory and a Domestic Science department. It is a center of education and recreation, not only for that town, but for the surrounding country.

I had never seen the Herr Director as enthusiastic over anything as he was over this cowboy school superintendent, with his program of reaching every man, woman and child in the county through his educational and recreational program, his annual budget of some seventy-five thousand dollars, and a faculty of men and women college bred, and citizens of the town. They are not merely educated tramps, but are there to stay, and they take pride in the town in which they make their home.

The Herr Director was no less amused than I was when we were told by one of the teachers that the superintendent, at one of the school board meetings had pulled off his coat and threatened to thrash one of the members who refused his vote on an important measure. As we looked at this six foot three, erstwhile cowboy, his broad shoulders and strong arms which seemed reluctantly confined in a coat, and as we saw his square, determined jaw,--we knew that the unruly member voted _aye_.

Both the Herr Director and I were asked to speak to the boys and girls.

As soon as they entered the room the air became electric with their high school yell; they "rah rahed" us individually and collectively, and "what's the matter withed" everybody, and indulged in all those academic and cla.s.sical performances which every high school now seems to consider an essential part of preparation for college.

The Herr Director told them that among all the things he had seen thus far in America he liked their high school the best; which remark of course elicited thunderous applause. This was most gratifying to him, and all day he was in high spirits. He thought the most hopeful characteristic of the American is this faith in education, the practical, far-reaching methods employed, and the daring all sorts of educational experiments. At the same time he severely criticized our lack of unanimity, and the evident disadvantages of such communities as have no cowboy superintendent to lick a conservative or stingy school board member into conformity with his plans.

We visited an agricultural college where we were told of farmers who came to study soil fertility, and farmers' wives who studied kitchen chemistry, farmers' children who tested seeds, and to whom these prairies, to which they were being bound by an intelligent knowledge of their environment, were beginning to speak a new language.

We saw a teacher's college which one with the prophet's vision had planted in the desert. The sage-brush ridden prairie had been transformed into a glorious campus, and uncultured boys and girls into enthusiastic teachers. More than twelve hundred of them come back each year to get better equipment for their difficult task.

The cities in which we stopped interested the Herr Director less than the towns, and we did not tarry long except in one of them, where we had to stay because of an engagement I had made to address a certain club.

I did this because it gave me a fine chance to introduce that particular American inst.i.tution, a combination of eating and speaking club, which meets once a month and whose program is as ambitious as are most things Western.

We were met at the station by a committee of men and women in automobiles of course, and found the finest rooms in the hotel reserved for us. Big, high, generous rooms, in which the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin openly rejoiced.

The committee awaited us in a private dining-room where luncheon was served. There were three other guests who were to speak during the evening. One of them, a most brilliant woman, a well-known social worker. The second a United States Senator, and the third an explorer who had just returned from a voyage into some less known parts of South America.

The luncheon was sufficiently elaborate and artistically served to satisfy both the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin, but he protested when after the meal, without even a chance at a nap, we were escorted to waiting motor cars, and a long cavalcade of us started on a sight-seeing expedition.

The city was worth seeing, with its boulevards, parks and playgrounds; its schoolhouse, churches, and clubs. We heard much of its prospects, always so great an a.s.set in the life of our Western cities.

Amusing and remarkable to the strangers was the evident pride of this committee in the city, to which they had come from all parts of the country if not of the world; yet they spoke of it with a lover's affection.

The one thing underneath all this civic pride, and finer than anything visible to us, was the fight for decency, law and order, and the health and happiness of children, which has been waged there and is not yet won. It is as exciting as, and more valorous than, many a battle in which men fight with powder and bullets.