As A Chinaman Saw Us Part 6

American merchants would then demand an explanation from the Department of State, and finally we could announce that we preferred to buy from our friends, American treatment of the Chinese being inimical to good feeling. Knowing the American business men as I do, you could count on a wail coming up from them. An appeal would be made to Congress through representatives and senators, the American business men demanding that the "Chinese matter" be arranged upon a "more liberal basis." When you touch the pocketbook of "Uncle Sam" you reach his earthquake center; yet for defense, for the preservation of the national honor, this people will spend untold sums. The American Government bond is the best security in the world. It is founded on the rock of honor and patriotism. And there is no repudiation like that of ----, and none like the pretended one of ----.[12] We have our faults, and it is well to recognize them; but I never saw them until I mingled with the English and Americans.

There is of course a large foreign element in the American army--thousands of Irish and Germans; but this does not signify, as I learn that in the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, the stronghold of Americans, the Irish hold a third of the official positions, the native-born Yankees about one-fourth. This is particularly exasperating to old families in New England, as it is notorious that the Irish come directly from the very dregs of the poverty-stricken peasantry--the "bog-trotters." I was much impressed by the high standard of honor in the army and navy, and am told that it is the rarest of occurrences for a regular army officer to commit a crime or to default. This is due to the training received at the military and naval schools, where young men are placed on their honor.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] China has twice repudiated its Government bonds within four centuries.

CHAPTER XIV

ART IN AMERICA

It is seldom that I have been complimented in America, but a lady has told me that she envied our "art sense." She said the Chinese are essentially artistic, that the cheapest thing, the most ordinary article, is artistic or beautiful. I wished that I could return the compliment, but a strict observance of the truth compels me to say that the reverse is true in America. If one go into a Chinese shop and ask for any ordinary article, it will be found artistic. If one go into an American shop, say a hardware "store," there will not be found an article that would be considered decorative, while everything in a Chinese shop of like character would fall under this head. The conclusion is that the Chinese are artistic, while the Americans are not.

The reason lies in the fact that the Chinese are h.o.m.ogeneous, while the Americans are a mixed race, that is injured by the continual introduction of baser elements. If immigration could be stopped for fifty years, and the people have a chance to acquire "oneness," they might become artistic. The middle cla.s.s, however, is, from an artistic standpoint, a horror; they have absolutely no art sense, and the _nouveaux riches_ are often as bad. The latter sometimes place their money in the hands of an agent, who buys for them; but all at once a man may break out and insist upon buying something himself, so that in a splendid collection of European names will appear some artistic horror to stamp the owner as a parvenu.

The Americans have not produced a great painter. By this I mean a really great artist, nor have they a great sculptor, one who is or has been an inspiration. But they have thousands of artists, and many poor ones thrive in selling their wares. You may see a man with an income of thirty thousand dollars having paintings on his walls that give one the vertigo. The poor artist has taken him in, or "pulled his leg," to use the latest American slang. There are some fine paintings in America. I have visited the great collections in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Was.h.i.+ngton, Chicago, and those in many private galleries, but the best of the pictures are always from England, France, Germany, and other European countries. Old masters are particularly revered. Americans pay enormous sums for them, but sometimes are deceived.

They have art schools by the hundred, where they study from the nude and from models of all kinds. There are splendid museums of art, especially in Boston and New York. The art interests are particularly active, but not the people; there are a few art lovers only, the people in the ma.s.s being hopeless. Cheap prints, chromos, and other deadly things are ground out by the million and sold, to clog still deeper the art sense of an inartistic people. They laugh at our conventional Chinese art, but the extreme of conventionality is certainly better than some of the daubs I have seen in American homes. Americans have peculiar fancies in art. One is called Impressionist Art. As near as I can understand it, painters claim that while you are looking at an object you do not really see it all, you merely gain an impression; so they paint only the impression. In a museum of art I was shown several rooms full of daubs, having absolutely nothing to commend them, weird colors being thrown together in the strangest manner, without rhyme or reason, but over which people went mad. The great masters of Europe appeal to me strongly. In America, marine painters attract me the most, for example, Edward Moran, who is a splendid delineator of the sea. Bierstadt is a n.o.ble painter, and so is Thomas Moran. There are half a hundred men who are fine painters, but half a thousand men and women who think they are artistic but who are not.

Americans have developed no individual architecture. You see semipaG.o.da-like effects in the East, and old English houses in the South. They steal the latter and call them Colonial. They steal the architecture of the Moors and call it Mexican. They borrow Roman and Grecian effects for great public buildings. At one time they went mad over the French roof, or mansard. Nowhere have I seen purely American architecture. The race is not possessed of sufficient unity. So all their art is from abroad, and notably is French and English. They make broad effects, and give them an American name; but they are copied from the Dutch or Germans. All the furniture designers in America are Europeans. You will find a splendid house with a Chinese room, having teak inlaid with ivory, etc.; a j.a.panese room, a Moorish room, and an Italian room, all splendidly decorated; but the family lives in an "American room," that is commonplace and subversive of all art digestion and a.s.similation. The average middle-cla.s.s American knows absolutely nothing about art; the lower cla.s.ses so little that their homes are hopeless. Knowing this, they are preyed upon by thousands of foreign swindlers. There are hundreds of articles manufactured in Europe to sell to the American tourist. I have seen Napoleonic furniture enough to load a fleet. I can only compare it to the pieces of the true cross and the holy relics of the Catholics, of which there are enough to fill the original ark which the Bible tells the Americans landed on Mount Ararat in a great flood.

The houses of the best people I have told you about are as far removed from the commonplace as the equator from the poles. They are rich in conception, sumptuous in detail, artistic in every way, and filled with the art gems of the world. But these people have descended from refined people for several generations. They are the true Americans, but make up a small number compared to the inartistic whole. I believe America recognizes this, and with her stupendous energy is doing everything to educate the ma.s.ses in art. They are building splendid museums; rich men give away millions. There are hundreds of art schools, free to all, and art is taught in all the schools. Fine monuments are placed in public squares and parks, and beautiful fountains and memorials in these and other public places. Their buildings, though foreign in design, are beautiful. In Boston one may see marvelous work in frescoes, etc., and in the Government buildings at Was.h.i.+ngton. The Capitol, while not American in design, is a pile worthy of the great people who erected it.

CHAPTER XV

THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM

The questions I know you will wish answered are, Whether this stupendous aggregation of States is a success? Does it possess advantages beyond those of the Chinese Empire? Does it fulfil the expectations of its own people? Frankly, I do not consider myself competent to answer. I have studied America and the Americans for many years during my visits to this country and Europe, and while I have seen many accounts of the country, written after several months of observation, I believe that no just estimate of the republican form of government can be formed after such experience. My private impression, however, is that the republic falls far short of what the men in Was.h.i.+ngton's time expected, and it is also my private opinion that it has not so many advantages as a government like that of England.

It is too splendid an organization to be lightly denounced. The idea of the equality of men is n.o.ble, and I would not wish to be arraigned among its critics. There is too much good to offset the bad. I have been attempting to amuse you by a.n.a.lyzing the Americans, pointing out their frailties as well as their good qualities. I tell you what I see as I run, always, I hope, remembering what is good in this spontaneous and open-hearted people. The characteristic claim of the people is that the Government offers freedom to its citizens; yet every man is quite as free in China if he behaves himself, and he can rise if he possesses brains.

Any native-born citizen in the United States may become the head of the nation has he the courage of his convictions, the many accomplishments which equip the great leader, and should the hour and the man meet opportunity. This is the one prize which distinguishes America from England. The latter in other respects offers exactly as much freedom with half the wear and tear; in fact, to me the freedom of America is one of her disadvantages. Every one knows, and the American best of all, that all men are _not equal_, never were and never can be. Yet this false doctrine is their standard, and they swear by it, though some will explain that what is meant is political freedom. Freedom accounts for the gross impertinence of the ignorant and lower cla.s.ses, the laughable a.s.sumptions of servants, and the illogical pretenses of the _nouveau riche_, which make America impossible to some people. Cultivated Americans are as thoroughly aristocratic as the n.o.bility of England.

There are the same cla.s.ses here as there. A grocer becomes rich and retires or dies; his children refuse to a.s.sociate with the families of other grocers; in a word, the Americans have the aristocratic feeling, but they have no peasant cla.s.s; the latter would be, in their own estimation, as good as any one. One cla.s.s, the lower and poorer, is arraigned against the upper and richer, and the gap is growing daily.

But this would not prove that the republic is a failure. What then? It is, in the opinion of many of its clergymen, a great moral failure. No nation in history has lasted many centuries after having developed the "symptoms" now shown in the United States. I quote their own press, "the States are morally rotten," and you have but to turn to these organs and the magazines of the past decade, which make a feature of holding up the shortcomings of cities and millionaires, to read the details of the tragedy. Thieves--grafters--have seized upon the vitals of the country.

St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, great representative cities--what is their history? The story of dishonesty among officials, of bribery, stealing, and every possible crime that a man can devise to wring money from the people. This is no secret. It has all been exposed by the friends of morality. City governments are overthrown, the rascals are turned out, but in a few months the new officers are caught devising some new "grafting" operation.

I have it from a prominent official that there is not an honest State or city administration in America. What can a nation say when for years it has known that a large and influential lobby has been maintained to influence statesmen, a lobby comprising a corps of "persuaders" in the pay of business men? How do they influence them? The great fights waged to defeat certain measures are well known, and it is known that money was used. Certain congressmen have been notoriously receptive. I have seen the following story in print in many forms. I took the trouble to ask a well-known man if it was possible that it could be founded on fact; his reply was, "Certainly it is a fact." A briber entered the private room of a congressman. "Mr. ----, to come right to the point, I want the ---- bill to pa.s.s, and I will give you five hundred dollars for the vote and your interest." The congressman rose to his feet, purple with rage. "You dare to offer me this insulting bribe? You infernal scoundrel, I will throw you out." "Well, suppose we make it one thousand," said the imperturbable visitor. "Well," replied the congressman, cooling down, "that is a little better put. We will talk it over."

The American Government had been attempting, since 1859, to build a ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus. I believe surveys were made earlier than that, but bribery and corruption and "graft" enabled the friends of transcontinental railroads to stop the ca.n.a.ls. It would be a disadvantage to the railroads to have a ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus. So in some mysterious way the ca.n.a.l, which the people wished, has not been built, and will not be until the people rise and demand it. Corruption has stood on the Isthmus with a flaming sword and struck down every attempt to build the ca.n.a.l. The morality of the people is low. Divorce is rampant, the daily journals are filled with accounts of divorces, and daily lists of crimes are printed that would seem impossible to a nation that can raise millions to send to China to convert the "heathen." If they would only divert these Chinese missionaries from China to their own heathen and grafters, but they will not. The peculiar freedom of the country, which is nothing less than the most atrocious license, tends to drag it down.

The papers have absolutely no check on their freedom. Men and women are attacked by them, ruined, held up to scorn and ridicule, and the victim has no recourse but to shoot the editor and thus embroil himself. That it is a crime to ridicule a man and make him the b.u.t.t of a nation or the world seems never to occur to these men. Certain statesmen have been so lampooned by the "hired" libelers that they have been ruined. The press hires a cla.s.s of men, called cartoonists, usually ill-bred fellows of no standing, yet clever, in their business, whose duty it is to hold up public men to ridicule in every possible way and make them infamous before the people. This is called the freedom of the press, and its att.i.tude, or the sensational part of it, in presenting crime in an alluring manner, is having its effect upon the youth of the country.

Young girls and boys become familiar with every feature of b.e.s.t.i.a.l crime through the "yellow journals," so called, and that the republic will reap sorely from this sowing I venture to prophesy.

I asked one of the great insurance men why it was that great financial inst.i.tutions took so strong an interest in politics. He laughed, and said, "If I am not mistaken, not long since your country repudiated its Government bonds, and they are not negotiable to any great extent among your people." Hearing this I a.s.sumed the American att.i.tude and "sawed wood." "We take an interest in politics," he continued, "to offset the professional blackmailer and thief. Now in the case of your repudiation I understand all about it. The Chinese Government was in straits, and suddenly some seemingly patriotic citizen started a pet.i.tion, stating to the Government that the subscribers offered their Government securities to the Government as a gift. By no means all the bondholders signed, but enough, I understand, to have justified your Government in repudiating the bonds--'at the request of the people'--thus destroying the national credit at home and abroad. Now in America that would be called 'graft.'

The act would be done by a few grafters in the hope of reward, or by some unscrupulous statesmen to save the Government from bankruptcy during their term of office. I conceive this to be what was done in China. If we do not keep eternal watch we shall be bled every day. It is done in this way: a grafter becomes an a.s.semblyman, and with others lays a plan of graft. It is to get up a bill, so offensive to our corporation that it would mean ruin if pa.s.sed. The grafter has no idea that it will pa.s.s, but it is made much of, and of course reaches our ears, and the question is how to stop it. We are finally told that we had better see Mr. ----, in our own city. He is accordingly looked up and found to be a cheap and ignorant politician, who, if there are no witnesses, tells our agent plainly that it can be stopped for ten thousand dollars. Perhaps we beat him down to eight thousand, but we pay it. Hundreds of firms have been blackmailed in this way. Now we keep an agent in the State Capitol to attend to our interests, and we take an interest in politics to head off the election of professional grafters."

One of the most serious things in this phase of national immorality is showing itself in what are termed "lynchings"; that is, a negro commits a crime against a white woman, and instead of permitting the law to run its course, the people rise, seized with a savage craze for revenge, batter in the jails, take the criminal, and burn him at the stake. This burning is sometimes attended by thousands, who display the most remarkable _abandon_ and savagery. Some African chiefs have sacrificed more people at one time, but no savage has ever displayed greater b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, gloated over his victim with more real satisfaction, than these free Americans in numerous instances when shouting and yelling about the burning body of some unfortunate whose crime has aroused their ferocity to the point of madness.

Not one but many clergymen have denounced this. They compare it to the most brutal acts of savagery, and we have the picture of a country posing as civilized, with the temerity to point out the sins of others, giving themselves over to orgies that would disgrace the lowest of races. I have it from the lips of a clergyman that during the past twelve years over twenty-five hundred men have been lynched in the United States. In a single year two hundred and forty men were killed by mobs in this way, many being burned at the stake. If any excuse is offered, it is said that most of these were negroes, and the crime was rape, and the victims white women; but of the number mentioned only forty-six were charged with this crime and but two-thirds were black.

Many confessed as the torch was applied, many died protesting their innocence, and in no case was the offense legally proved. This lynching seems to be a mania with the people. It began with the attack of negroes on white women. The repet.i.tion of similar cases so enraged the whites that they have become mad upon the subject. The feeling is well ill.u.s.trated by the remark of a Southerner to me. "If a woman of my family was attacked by a negro I must be his executioner. I could not wait for the law." This man told me that no lynching would ever have taken place had it not been for the uncertainty of the law. Men who were known to be guilty of the grossest of crimes had been virtually protected by the law, and their cases dragged along at great expense to the State, this occurring so many times that the patience of the people became exhausted. This man forgot that the law was instigated for the purpose of justice.

The negro is an issue in America and a cause of much crime, a vengeance on the people who held them as slaves. The negro has increased so rapidly that in forty years he has doubled in number, there now being over nine millions in the country. At the present rate there will be twenty-five millions in 1930--a black menace to the white American.

The negro is a factor in the national unrest. They outnumber the whites in some localities, and hence vote themselves many offices, while the few whites pay eighty or eighty-five per cent of the taxes and the negroes supply from eighty to ninety per cent of the criminals. While this is going on in the South and the whites are rising and preparing to disfranchise the blacks in many States, the people of Boston and Cambridge are discussing the propriety of the whites and blacks marrying to settle the question of social equality. Such proposals I have read. Reprinted in the South, they added fuel to the flame.

Another element of distress in America is the att.i.tude of labor, the policy of the Government of letting in the lowest of the low from every nation except the Chinese, against whom the only charge has been that they are too industrious and thus a menace to the whites. The swarms of people from the low and criminal cla.s.ses of Europe have enabled the anarchists to obtain such a foothold that in this free country the President of the United States is almost as closely guarded as the Emperor of Russia. The White House is surrounded and guarded by detectives of various kinds. The secret-service department is equal in its equipment to that of many European nations, and millions are spent in watching criminals and putting down their strikes and riots. The doctrine of freedom to all appeals so well to the ignorant laborer that he has decided to control the entire situation, and to this end labor is divided into "unions," and in many sections business has been ruined.

The demands of these ignorant men are so preposterous that they can scarcely be credited. The merchant no longer owns his business or directs it. The laborer tells him what to pay, how to pay it, when and how long the hours shall be--in fact, undertakes to usurp entire control. If the owner protests, the laborers all stop work, strike, appoint guards, who attack, kill, or intimidate any one who attempts to take their place. In this way it is said that one billion dollars have been lost in the last few years. Contracts have been broken, men ruined, localities and cities placed in the greatest jeopardy, and hundreds of lives lost. Every branch of trade has its "union," and in so many cases have the laborers been successful that a national panic comes almost in sight. Never was there a more farcical ill.u.s.tration of freedom. Irrational, ignorant Irishmen, who had not the mental capacity to earn more than a dollar a day, dictated to merchant princes and millionaire contractors. In New York it was proved that the leaders of the strikers sold out to employers, and accepted bribes to call off strikes.

The question before the American people is, Has an American citizen the right to conduct his own business to suit himself and employ whom he wishes? Has the laborer the right to work for whom and what rate he pleases? The imported socialists, anarchists, and their converts among Americans say no, and it will require but little to precipitate a b.l.o.o.d.y war, when labor, led by red-handed murderers, will enact in New York and all over the United States the horrors of the French Commune.

The republic for a great and enlightened country has too many criminals.

I am told by a prohibition clergyman that the curse of drink and license has its fangs in the heart of the land. He tells me that the Americans pay yearly $1,172,000,000 for their alcoholic drink; for bread, $600,000,000; for tobacco, $625,000,000; for education, $197,000,000; for ministers' salaries, $14,000,000. It has been found that the downfall of eighty-one per cent of criminals is traceable to drink. He said: "Our republic is a failure morally, as we have 2,550,000 drunkards and people addicted to drink. We have 600,000 prost.i.tutes, and many more doubtless that are not known, and in nine cases out of ten their downfall can be traced to drink."

I listen to this side of the story, and then I see wonderful philanthropy, inst.i.tutions for the prevention of crime, good men at work according to their light, millions employed to educate the young, thousands of churches and societies to aid man in making man better.

When I listen to these men, and see tens of thousands of Christian men and women living pure lives, building up vast cities, great monuments for the future, I feel that I can not judge the Americans. They perhaps expect too much from their freedom and their republican ideas. I shall never be a republican. I believe that we all have all the freedom we deserve. It is well to remember that man is an animal. After all his polish and refinement, he has animal tastes and desires, and if he makes laws that are in direct opposition to the indulgence which his animal nature suggests, he certainly must have some method of enforcing the laws. Like all animals, some men are easily influenced and others not, and the human animal has not made progress so far but that he needs watching in order to make him conform to what he has decided or elected to call right.

You will expect me to compare the American to the Chinaman, but it is impossible. Some things which we look upon as right, the American considers grievous sins. The point of view is entirely at variance, but I have boundless faith in the brilliant and good men and women I have met in America. I say this despite my other impressions, which also hold.

The great political scheme of the people is poorly devised and crude. It is so arranged that in some States governors are elected every year or two and other officers every year, representatives of the people in Congress every two years, senators every six, Presidents every four years. Thus the country is constantly in a whirl, and as soon as the rancor of one national election is over begins the scheming for another.

The people have really little to do with the selection of a President. A small band of rich and influential schemers generally have the entire plan or "slate" laid out. A plan, natural in appearance, is _arranged_ for the public, and at the right time the slated program is sprung.

Senators should be elected by the people, congressmen should be elected for a longer period, and Presidents should have twice the terms they do.

But it is easy to suggest, and I confess that my suggestions are those of many American people themselves which I hear reformers cry abroad.

The vital trouble with America to-day is that she can not a.s.similate the 600,000 debased, ignorant, poverty-stricken foreigners who are coming in every year. They keep out the one peaceful nation. They exclude the Chinese and take to the national heart the Jew, the Socialist, the Italian, the Roumanian and others who const.i.tute a nation of unrest. What America needs is the "rest cure" that you hear so much about here. She should close her seaports to these aliens for ten years, allow the people here to a.s.similate; but they can not do it. The foreign transportation lines under foreign flags are in the business to load up America with the dregs of Europe. I know of one family of Jews, four brothers, who wished to come to America, but found that they would have to show that they were not paupers. They mustered about one thousand dollars. One came over, and sent back the money by draft. The second brought it back as his fortune, then immediately sent it back for another brother to bring over, and so on until they all arrived, each proving that he was not a pauper. Yet these same brothers, each with several children, became an expense to the Government before they were earners. The children were sent to industrial homes, and later entered the sweat-shops. In America there is not a Chinaman to-day in a workhouse, or a pauper[13] at the expense of the Government; yet the Chinese are not wanted here.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] This is doubtful.--EDITOR.

CHAPTER XVI

SPORTS AND PASTIMES

I had not been in Was.h.i.+ngton a month before I received invitations to a "country club golf" tournament, to a "rowing club," to a "pink tea," to a "polo game," to a private "boxing" bout between two light-weight professionals, given in Senator ----'s stable, to a private "c.o.c.k-fight"

by the brother of ----'s wife, to a gun club "shoot," not to speak of invitations to several "poker games." From this you may infer that Americans are fond of sport. The official sport--that is, the game I heard of most among Government officials, senators, and others--was "poker," and the sums played for at times I am a.s.sured are beyond belief. There are rules and etiquette for poker, and one of the most distinguished of American diplomatists of a past generation, General Schenck, emulated the Marquis of Queensberry in boxing by writing a book on the national game, that has all the charm claimed for it. It is seductive, and doubtless has had its influence on the people who employ the "bluff" in diplomacy, war, business, or poker, with equal tact and cleverness.