Jonathan and His Continent Part 38

If expenses are enormous in the United States, I must hasten to add that it is chiefly the foreign visitor who suffers in purse. The American can afford to pay high prices, because his receipts are far larger than they would be in Europe. Situations bringing in forty or fifty pounds are unknown in America. Bank clerks and shopmen command salaries of from 200 to 400 a year. A railway-car conductor gets 160 as wages.

In the grades above, in the professions, the fees, compared with those earned in Europe, are also in the proportion of the dollar to the s.h.i.+lling or franc. A newspaper article, which would be paid in France 250 francs (and no French paper, except the _Figaro_, pays so much for an article) is often paid 250 dollars in America. A doctor is paid from five to ten dollars a visit. I am, of course, not speaking of specialists and fas.h.i.+onable doctors; their charges are fabulous. I know barristers who make from twenty to thirty and forty thousand pounds.

Everyone is well paid in the United States, except the Vice-President.

If I have spoken of the high cost of living, it is to state a fact, and not to make a complaint. I went to America as a lecturer, not as a tourist. Jonathan paid me well; and when Cabby asked me for a dollar and a half to take me to a lecture-hall, I said, like M. Joseph Prudhomme, "It is expensive, but I can afford it," and I paid without grumbling.

CHAPTER XLI.

_Conclusion.--Reply to the American Question.--Social Condition of Europe and America.--European Debt and American Surplus.--The Americans are not so Happy as the French.--What Jonathan has Accomplished.--A Wish._

"Well, sir, and what do you think of America?"

Without pretending to judge America _ex cathedra_, I will sum up the impressions jotted down in this little volume, and reply to the traditional question of the Americans.

When one thinks of what the Americans have done in a hundred years of independent life, it looks as if nothing should be impossible to them in the future, considering the inexhaustible resources at their disposition.

America has been doubling its population every twenty-five years. If emigration continues at the same rate as it has. .h.i.therto, in fifty years she will have more than two hundred millions of inhabitants. If, during that time, continental Europe makes progress only in arts and sciences, while the social condition of its nations does not improve, she will be to America what barbarism is to civilisation.

While the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, and the _Firebrandenburgs_ review their troops; while her standing armies cost Europe more than 200,000,000 a year in peace time; whilst the European debt is 5,000,000,000, the American treasury at Was.h.i.+ngton, in spite of corruption, which it is well known does exist, has a surplus of sixty million dollars. Whilst European Governments cudgel their wits to devise means for meeting the expenses of absolute Monarchies, the Was.h.i.+ngton Government is at a loss to know what to do with the money it has in hand. Whilst the European telegrams in the daily papers give accounts of reviews, mobilisations, and military manoeuvres; of speeches in which the people are reminded that their duty is to serve their Emperor first, and their country afterwards; of blasphemous prayers in which G.o.d is asked to bless soldiers, swords, and gunpowder; the American telegrams announce the price of wheat and cattle and the quotations on the American Stock Exchange.

Happy country that can get into a state of ebullition over a Presidential Election, or the doings of John Sullivan while Europe in trembling asks herself, with the return of each new spring, whether two or three millions of her sons will not be called upon to cut each other's throats, for the great glory of three Emperors in search of a little excitement!

America is not only a great nation, geographically speaking. The Americans are a great people, holding in their hands their own destiny; learning day by day, with the help of their liberty, to govern themselves more and more wisely; and able, thanks to the profound security in which they live, to consecrate all their talents and all their energy to the arts of peace.

The well-read, well-bred American is the most delightful of men; good society in America is the wittiest, most genial, and most hospitable I have met with.

But the more I travel, and the more I look at other nations, the more confirmed am I in my opinion that the French are the happiest people on earth.

The American is certainly on the road to the possession of all that can contribute to the well-being and success of a nation; but he seems to me to have missed the path that leads to real happiness. His domestic joys, I am inclined to think, are more shadowy than real. To live in a whirl is not to live well.

America suffers from a general plethora.

Jonathan himself sometimes has his regrets at finding himself drawn into such a frantic race, but declares that it is out of his power to hang back. If it were given to man to live twice on this planet, I should understand his living his first term _a l'Americaine_, so as to be able to enjoy quietly, in his second existence, the fruits of his toil in the first. Seeing that only one sojourn here is permitted us, I think the French are right in their study to make it a long and happy one.

If the French could arrive at a steady form of government and live in security, they would be the most enviably happy people on earth.

It is often charged against Americans that they are given to bragging.

May not men who have done marvels be permitted a certain amount of self-glorification?

It is said, too, that their eccentricity constantly leads them into folly and licence. Is it not better to have the liberty to err than to be obliged to run straight in leash? If they occasionally vote like children, like children they will learn. It is by voting that people learn to vote.

Is there any country of Europe in which morals are better regulated, work better paid, or education widerspread? Is there a country in Europe where you can find such natural riches, and such energy to employ them; so many people with a consciousness of their own intellectual and moral force; so many free schools where the child of the millionaire and the child of the poor man study side by side; so many free libraries where the boy in rags may enter and read the history of his country, and be fired with the exploits of its heroes? Can you name a country with so many learned societies, so many newspapers, so many charitable inst.i.tutions, or so much widespread comfort?

M. Renan, one day wis.h.i.+ng to turn himself into a prophet of ill omen, predicted that, if France continued Republican, she would become a second America.

May nothing worse befall her!

THE END.