Chapter IV: Part 4

That same day we were in a power-house, which looked more like a temple than the utilitarian thing it is, and peered into the depths of a shaft which creates power enough to move the street railways of half a dozen cities, and change the night of a million people into day. As we listened to the engineer's account of almost miraculous achievement, I said triumphantly, "_This is the American Spirit!_" and the Herr Director replied deliberately, and without sarcasm, "This is the one time when you are right."

IX

_Chicago_

What the foreigner thinks of the American Pullman, if he has to spend a night in it, may be found in any volume of the extremely voluminous and interesting literature upon the United States, written by visitors to this country; but more interesting still would be what they have not written about it, and that I have had frequent chances of hearing. The most picturesque and exhaustive comments I ever heard were those made by the Herr Director the evening we left Buffalo, and as he finally determined not to retire at all, we spent the greater part of the night in the smoking-room, much to the dismay of the porter who had no prejudice against sleeping on a Pullman, and whom we cheated out of his irregular but necessary naps.

One of the chief diversions of travellers the world over is to complain against the particular transportation company over whose road they have the ill luck to be going; so it happened that the Herr Director had plenty of company during part of his vigil, and an opportunity to come in touch with one phase of the American Spirit, where it was closely related to his own; for "one 'kicker' makes the whole world 'kick.'"

The small room was so crowded that some of the men were sitting on the wash-stands, and the rest were so close to each other as to make conversation easy and general. This was an extra fare train supposed to be unusually comfortable and speedy; although thus far it had been losing time. It was natural under those conditions that the railroad should come in for its share of blessings, couched in language such as is often heard in smoking compartments of Pullman cars. Had all the pious wishes expressed that night been fulfilled, that railroad and our particular train would have travelled much more swiftly, but to a destination not indicated in the time-tables.

The question under discussion was, which is the worst railroad in the United States, and as some of the men were stock-brokers they knew our roads from their most vulnerable side. The tales they told of the manipulation of stocks and the fleecing of the public, with their consequent effect upon the service, were as startling as they were humiliating; because, in the last analysis, the railroads reflect the general business ethics of the country.

I kept out of the discussion, for not only have I but a hazy notion of economics; my mind was busy classifying the passengers' racial origin, a very diverting exercise and one which always brings me in touch with people on their really human side.

It happened that two of the men were Polish Jews from Cleveland, who had risen from poverty to where they could travel in Pullman cars, and who confessed that they knew as little of railroad stocks as I, although they were engaged in as risky a business as stocks, that of manufacturing women's cloaks. They were not far removed from the Ghetto either in speech or ideals, and so were of little interest to me.

A third fellow traveller, who bore the hallmarks of the average American, both in dress and behavior, told me his business without much urging. "I am not selling stock, nor manufacturing women's cloaks, and I am not a gambler. I have a sure thing; I am a bookie." Forced to confess myself ignorant as to what "a bookie" is, he explained to me the intricacies of his calling, the problems of evading the law, and if it cannot be evaded, how it may be bought; incidentally showing what an inveterate gambler and what an easy mark the average American is.

The Herr Director was all attention, to my great consternation; for the conversation was as different from that which he had heard at Lake Mohonk, or in our rounds of the Eastern colleges, as one could conceive. As one by one the passengers sought their berths, the Herr Director thanked me for arranging this uncomfortable night journey, saying that though he was sure he could not sleep, he was "so glad to have come in contact with the American Spirit as it is," and not as I had tried to make it appear. With that kindly thrust he too retired, and I was at liberty to do likewise.

It was not long before I had auricular evidence that the Herr Director was asleep, so I was very much astonished to hear him say the next morning that he had not slept a wink, and that the engineer must bear him a grudge; for he tried to jerk the berth from under him, and "_Gott sei dank_" that the most uncomfortable night of his life was over. I certainly was as grateful as he. It was with no small satisfaction, though, that upon reaching Chicago two hours late, I collected four dollars from that much abused railroad, and handed the same to the Herr Director, assuring him that even in a railroad office the American Spirit of fairness is operative.

In Chicago as everywhere else the friend who owned an automobile was at my command, and on a glorious May day when wind and sun had cleared the air, and a night's rain had washed the streets, we were taken from South Shore to North Shore and away out where the American city is at her best, and Chicago is striving to excel them all in her wonderful suburbs.

The Herr Director had seen Chicago over thirty-three years ago--a young, thriving, daring, ambitious city in the making; he found her still young, thriving, daring, and in the making. Unchastened by her great disasters, undismayed by her vexing problems, defying the lake, she reaches out into it and into neighboring states, leading and controlling the whole Middle West. Babylon, Capernaum, Rome, her older sisters, her ideal, and perchance her destiny. She is _par excellence_ the merchant city, and the merchant princes rule her, although that rule is not unchallenged.

While the Herr Director saw the city changed in many respects, larger, and in places beautiful, her dirt not so apparent, her wickedness subdued, and her rough corners rubbed off, she is still Chicago, a synonym for boastful bigness and ostentatious wealth.

If it had not been for the Frau Directorin, I would not have taken them where every man, woman and child is taken who visits Chicago, into the largest department store in the world.

She entered with the joyful anticipation of engaging in that most exciting occupation--shopping--aided and abetted by my wife. The Herr Director followed with the martyr's air common to husbands who go along to pay the bill.

That type of store is no longer a novelty to city dwellers anywhere, but this one because of its size, the variety and quality of goods displayed, the courtesy to customers and, above all, the provisions for their comfort and convenience, were remarkable enough to call forth even the Herr Director's commendation. The Frau Directorin was in the seventeenth Heaven, the Biblical seventh not being an elevation high enough to be used as a simile when she was shopping in a Chicago department store.

Obliging clerks showed her plates which cost three hundred dollars apiece, cut and etched glass at more fabulous prices; she walked through miles of costly gowns, coats and millinery, and having made a few purchases to her entire satisfaction--we were about to leave the store with flying colors, figuratively speaking, when pride had a fall. Unluckily remembering that a certain small boy needed summer underwear, my wife led our party to the basement. When we left the elevator a polite floor man directed us to aisle 16, Wabash Building. As we were on the State Street side the cavalcade moved past what seemed like miles of commonplace merchandise and commonplace buyers to aisle 16, Wabash Building. At last we had reached our "Mecca."

"I should like to see boys' union suits," my wife said.

"Certainly. How old?"

"Twelve years."

"We have nothing here over eight years. You will find your size on the sixth floor, Washington Street side."

I think it was the sixth floor; I know we walked (crestfallen) through endless aisles and were shot up floor after floor. Landed finally, the right counter was reached after numerous conflicting directions.

The Herr Director was puffing and panting, the Frau Directorin radiant and happy, for she enjoys exercise, and my wife, her faith in the efficiency of her favorite store not yet shaken, though wavering, asking for "union suits for a twelve-year-old boy."

As the clerk reached for the desired article she asked: "Short sleeves or long sleeves?"

"Short sleeves."

"Randolph Street side, second floor, for short sleeved union suits."

The Herr Director and I did not accompany the ladies on their further voyage of discovery; we went to the rest room to avoid nervous prostration.

My wife and the Frau Directorin, with the determination and endurance which women alone possess, continued the chase to a victorious finish.

Fortunately an altogether satisfying luncheon followed this strenuous experience, after which, rested and refreshed, we repaired to the Art Institute.

The Chicago Art Institute, within a stone's throw of the most congested business section, at the edge of its noise and rush, is by its very being there a sort of triumph.

The Herr Director approached it somewhat condescendingly, expecting to find it and its contents big, bizarre and "_nouveau richessque_." As soon as he entered the building he felt the dignity and good taste of its arrangement, and his manner changed. After he had looked critically at some of the pictures and approved them, I knew myself for once on the way to success; for his praise was as genuine as his criticism.

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 God-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 Institute 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 passed 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 brass, 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 ships 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 God 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 classical 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 Institute, 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.

Anticipations 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 leadership I had assumed, 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-scrapers, 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 class 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 circumstances 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-scrapers, 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 classical 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 institution, 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 asset 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.

It was an exhilarating experience to shake the hand and look into the face of a woman who had defied the monied interests of her state, who had jeopardized her comforts and her position, even her life, to loosen the hold of graft from the schools of the state.

It was inspiring to hear from a mild mannered, unaggressive looking man how he had helped wipe out brothels and evil dance halls, broken up the connivance of the police with the criminal element and put through a positive program of rational, clean amusements for the people.

We visited a business plant, the architecture and equipment of which are as unique as are its owner's business methods. We were told the story (not by himself) of how a brave and good man, single handed, struggled against bosses, political cliques and large financial interests in league with them, and all but freed the city from its most dangerously decent foes.

We were shown hills which the citizens had faith enough to remove and the hollows into which they had cast them; a raging river which they meant to control, and ugly, sickening slums which were doomed to go, and that none too soon; the old things which were to become new, and crooked things which were to be made straight.

Thirty-three years before the Herr Director had heard stories of vanishing buffaloes and the last struggles with the Indians. He had met scouts, hunters and soldiers. This was a new type of fighters, much less picturesque, but fit successors to those valiant pioneers. I rescued my guests from a visit to the stock-yards (why any one should care to show off stock-yards I do not know), and the committee released its hold upon us so that we might make our toilettes for the reception which preceded the banquet.

If there is anything more conducive to creating a barrier to real human contact than a reception, I have not seen it, unless it be a reception with orchestral accompaniment; this was such an one, and its chief function seemed to be to drown conversation.

The ladies of our party were happy because this was one of the few occasions on our trip when they could wear evening gowns.

The Frau Directorin was astonished beyond measure when she heard that some of the women on the reception committee of this club were mothers (to a limited degree, it is true), that they had, at the most, two servants, and that some of them had none; that they were interested in Literary Clubs and civic affairs, served on school boards and church committees, and were doing various other things to help the Creator manage His universe.

The German woman, who has adhered to the program marked out for her by the Emperor, the "three K's," "_Küche, Kirche und Kinder_" stands aghast at the strenuous lives many of our women lead. The Frau Directorin, who has servants for the kitchen and the children, upon whom the third K, the Church, lays no burden in the way of missionary meetings, fairs and suppers, who does not have to reduce her flesh to be in the fashion, and whose social position is determined by her husband's station in life, may well wear an unruffled smile and keep an unfurrowed brow.

At the banquet, the waiters and the orchestra vied with each other in noise making, and it was a relief when, with the bringing of the black coffee, they all disappeared, and the toast-master rose and began unbottling his stock of stories. Nowhere in the world is there such a thirst for stories as in America, and a group of men after a banquet has an unlimited capacity for absorbing and enjoying them.

There were four scheduled speakers and a few who expected to be called upon unexpectedly, among them the Herr Director; a Glee Club was to sing before, between and after the speeches; so the toast-master did not stop telling stories any too soon.

The first speaker of the evening was a woman who well deserved the cheers which greeted her appearance. Her address on Workmen's Compensation was so clear, so aptly put, so well reasoned through and so within the limit of time assigned her, that when she finished, the enthusiastic Herr Director shouted: "Bravo! bravo!" loud enough to be heard above the less euphonious sound of hand clapping, in which form of applause the American audience indulges.

The address was an eloquent but unemotional plea for fair play for the working man, an arraignment of present practices, cruelly sickening in detail, and frightful as a revelation of the attitude of large industrial interests towards labor. It showed the fair-mindedness of the men there, that they listened so approvingly, in spite of the fact that a large number of them was in similar relationship to labor, and that the proposed law for which she pleaded would be against their own interests.

After the lady's address, the Glee Club sang and then the United States Senator was introduced. I have forgotten his subject, but that does not matter, for it had no relation to what he said. It was the kind of address which could be delivered with equal propriety at a Grangers' picnic or a political meeting.

There were two things which the senator did not know: First, that his audience had outgrown that particular kind of address, and second, when to stop. When his final finally was finally spoken, the Glee Club sang again, after which the Herr Director was called upon to speak. He was listened to most attentively as he told how German cities are built, governed, provisioned and lighted.

There were at least four speeches beside my own, and it was long past midnight when the Glee Club sang its last glee, and the club adjourned to meet again the next month, when it would receive other more or less distinguished guests, eat a six course dinner and listen to half a dozen speakers, each one of them eager to right the wrongs of this universe.

When the Herr Director had said good-bye to the hundred or more people who told him how much they enjoyed his address, he retired in a most happy mood. I found him chuckling as he untied his cravat.

"It was lovely, perfectly lovely," he said; "but what children they are."

"Yes," I replied, "they are children; and, like children, are eager to learn."

XI

_The American Spirit Among the Mormons_

Both the Herr Director and his wife had a strange desire to see the Mormons. They explained it by saying that besides the Indians whom they had as yet not seen, and the Negroes whom they had seen everywhere, they always thought of the Mormons as most American, that is most unlike other people.

The Rocky Mountains, as I had expected, did not impress them. From the car window they seemed more like elevated plains, with here and there a restless chain of hills in the distance.

"As restless as the American people," quoth the Herr Director. "Your plains and your mountains seem to be fighting with each other."

I hoped that the plains would win the fight and pointed out another, more visible struggle--that of man with the desert. I admitted that the Rocky Mountains which he had thus far seen were uninteresting from the scenic standpoint, especially as compared with the beauty of the Alps, those snow-capped mountains with meadows to the timber line, their picturesque villages and herders' huts all as trim and neat and finished as the carving one buys in Interlaken or Luzerne.

From the human standpoint, the Rockies are infinitely more interesting, for there the elemental struggle is still going on. A giant race is taming tumultuous rivers, and forcing their waters through flumes and tunnels into mighty reservoirs on the mountainsides and in the valleys. No indolent, unaspiring, uninventive, docile people could survive in the Rockies.

In common with many Americans, my guests believed that this matter of irrigation is as easy as turning water from a faucet into a basin; and that all a man has to do is to drop his seed into the ground and watch it grow. I showed them farms, desolate and forbidding, which men had to level or lift, ditch and plow and harrow; a back-breaking, often a heart-breaking task. In such an environment they built shacks which only accentuated the loneliness--where women lived and children were born, where hopes were cherished and God was worshipped.

It was an Old Testament environment, the wilderness. Compared with these pioneers the Israelites had an easy task. They sent spies into the Promised Land where they found and from which they brought back grapes and pomegranates; but to stay in the wilderness, to drive back the drought inch by inch, to kill coyotes and rattlesnakes one by one, to contend with claim jumpers, real estate agents, water right privileges and unscrupulous lawyers, and then raise grapes and pomegranates, families, churches, schools and colleges--that seems to me the greater and more heroic task. And it was done by men with the courage of soldiers and the vision of prophets, who turned that land of drought, alkali and sage-brush into one "flowing with milk and honey." Because in a certain portion of that desert those who were the pioneers and performed those tasks were Mormons, takes nothing from the glory of the achievement.

As we neared Salt Lake City the Frau Directorin looked into every house, eager to detect the numerous wives whom she expected to see surrounding one man; while the Herr Director marvelled at the beauty of the vast Salt Lake valley which, with its poplars and mountains and its intensively cultivated farms, reminded him of Lombardy, that beautiful stretch of country along the railway from Milan to Boulogna.

Salt Lake City is sufficiently different from other cities we had seen to arouse interest; but as in Rome the Vatican overshadows everything else, so here the Temple and the Tabernacle hold one's attention, and work upon one's imagination.

We had scarcely put ourselves to rights in our rooms at the Hotel Utah, as pretentious and comfortable as any in the country, before we were out on the streets, looking for Mormons. There is a fairly defined type and I thought I knew it, for I have lectured before Mormon audiences; but out upon the busy city streets it was quite impossible for me to gratify the curiosity of the Frau Directorin by pointing them out to her. I did tell her that a third of the population was non-Mormon and she looked curiously at two out of every three persons we met without, however, being able to say definitely that she had seen a real, live specimen.

Not wishing to join the crowd of tourists who were taken in relays through the Tabernacle and other buildings open to the curious among the Gentiles, we walked through the park, and stopping before the monument to Joseph Smith I took the opportunity to enlighten my guests upon the history of that singular personality, and the church of which he was the founder.

Evidently my remarks were overheard, and before I realized it I was in a discussion of Mormon doctrines with a woman, a zealous defender of her faith, whose religious zeal shone out of her face, which was homely enough to need this adornment to save it from repulsive ugliness.

Of course she believed implicitly in the Book of Mormon, the plates of which were found, and translated from a language which the best informed philologists have never known to exist; in a God who has body, parts and passions, in spirits which fill Heaven, and clamor to be born onto the Earth, in the baptism for the dead, and in that strange doctrine, that no woman can be saved without being sealed to a man, upon which the practice of polygamy rested.

The Herr Director did not quite understand, and I had to explain each of these dogmas as well as I could, and then the Frau Directorin, not understanding anything, begged to be told about the one thing in which she was primarily interested, their belief in regard to marriage. I asked the lady to explain this doctrine of the Mormons, to which she replied that they are not Mormons, but Latter Day Saints. She was indeed a saint, for she was not offended by our curiosity, nor the lack of seriousness with which we were discussing the subject.

She addressed the Frau Directorin: "You are married to your husband." The Frau Directorin understood and nodded comprehendingly; "but," the saint continued, "you are married to him only for time."

"No, no, not for a time, not for a time!" the Frau Directorin cried, clinging to her husband, who had jokingly threatened that when they reached Utah he would improve the occasion and double his blessings.

"You could not be married to him any other way unless you are sealed according to our rites; we alone marry for eternity."

"Oh!" said the facetious Herr Director, "you believe in eternal punishment." When I translated that to the Frau Directorin she slapped him playfully.

He asked our guide how many wives he could marry if he became a Latter Day Saint and she said there would be no limit to the wives he could have sealed to him; but according to the latest ruling of the church and in conformity with the laws of the United States, only one to live with here upon the earth; so he decided to "bear the ills he had," and not "fly to others that he knew not of."

The saint could not have expected her teaching to take root in soil so shallow, but she determined to sow a few more seeds, and showed us the interior of the Tabernacle with its "largest organ in the world and its perfect acoustics." The Frau Directorin tried her charming voice and sang, much to the delight of the saint, who confessed to three consuming passions. She loved to sing better than to eat, next in order came dancing, which seems to be a specialty among Mormons, and evidently does not interfere with their piety, and third, that of saving feminine souls from destruction, on account of their unmarried state. To satisfy this last passion she has had ten thousand of her female ancestors married to well-known Mormons. To accomplish this, she had her genealogical tree traced back to prehistoric times, and had spent her fortune upon that pious extravagance. She told us that she was a plural wife, and living with her husband merely in the celestial relationship: but she believed polygamy to be in harmony with the will of God, and that the women as a whole favor it.

As we returned to our hotel, the Frau Directorin amused herself by asking each child she met: "How much brothers and sisters you are?" I was profoundly thankful she did not stop the men to ask them about the number of their wives.

Having promised her that I would introduce her to a real, live Mormon who as yet had only one wife, she could hardly wait until dinner, to which I had invited my Mormon acquaintance. He proved to be a very normal sort of man whose face betrayed his European peasant ancestry, his father and mother having emigrated from Switzerland, lured across by the promise of land, and an all but perfect Zion. They had passed through every hardship of the early persecutions, and the march across the plains and mountains. He himself had grown up in the martyrs' faith, which remained unshaken until he was sent to college.

Although his teachers were Mormons they could not explain away all the inconsistencies of Mormon history and belief; doubts assailed him, and when in due course he became a missionary and it fell to his lot to go to Europe, instead of making converts, he became one. The six years abroad were spent in the study of history, and, applying the methods to his own church and its Book of Mormon, he began to doubt, and is a doubter still. Yet so strong were the ties that bound him that he did not formally sever his connection with the church, and unless he is ejected from that communion he will doubtless remain within its fold.

He belongs to an increasingly large group of young Mormons who, while they themselves have lost faith in the church and its doctrines, believe that they must remain loyal to those whose belief is still unshaken, help them to discard the crudest elements of their doctrine and so gradually democratize the whole institution.

The growth of the church has been checked and the accession of foreign converts has almost ceased, due to the prohibition of polygamy which was a lure to the evil minded, and due also to the fact that immigration is not being encouraged.

Mormonism would have continued to grow in alarming proportions if the missionaries were still offering a husband, or a part of one, to every woman, and to every man as many wives as he cared to take unto himself.

Within the church two forces are working towards its liberalization. The influence of a strong, Gentile population, and the school; while neither of them will destroy Mormonism, our informant believed that ultimately it will prove no more formidable or dangerous to the nation than any other religious denomination, whose government is strongly centralized.

After dinner he took us to his own home, and either from a recently acquired habit, or from renewed curiosity, the Frau Directorin asked the little son of the house, "How much brothers and sisters you are?" and I am not sure she was convinced that his wife whom he introduced to us was the only wife he had.

He was good enough to insist upon taking us into the country in his machine to call on his father, his mother having died some years before; which, however, according to Mormon usage of bygone days did not leave the old man a widower.

His gnarled, wrinkled face shone when we greeted him in his native tongue, and it was as pleasant as it was instructive to hear him tell of the emigration of his people from Switzerland to Missouri, of the stormy days there, the struggles against infuriated mobs, the long, dangerous journey across the desert, and the pioneer days in Utah where he had acquired lands, sheep and oxen, wives and children, in true Old Testament fashion.

The Frau Directorin asked: "How much wives you are?"

When he told her that he had gone beyond the apostolic twelve, although he lived with only a few of the number, she exclaimed: "_Um Gottes Himmels Willen!_"

The Herr Director wanted to know how he managed so many of them when he had difficulty in managing one.

"_Ach!_ in those days," he said, "the wives were subject to their husband, knowing that without him they could not live comfortably here, nor safely hereafter. They were docile enough, and it did not cost so much to keep them as it does now."

With a shrewd smile playing around his almost toothless mouth he added: "You know if polygamy had not been prohibited it would have died out gradually, because these are different times. We couldn't afford it now."

The old man said he had known Joseph Smith and, of course, Brigham Young. He spoke of them with reverence and awe, as men of God who received revelations and could work wonders. There seemed to be little or nothing of the mystic in his makeup; his religion was of a hard, materialistic, matter-of-fact kind to which he clung most tenaciously. There was an unmistakable coarseness about him which revealed itself in his conversation. It may have been due to his peasant origin, but during all the years, a really ethical religion would have refined him. In a sense he still did not belong to the United States--he was a Mormon first and last, and the government in Washington was to him as Pharaoh's rule was to the Jews.

His religion evidently had taught him submission. He paid his tithes ungrudgingly, and had gone on a mission uncomplainingly. He was a cog in a great wheel whose resistless force he did not question.

From his farm we were taken to others, and to neighboring towns. The whole system in all its minute details was explained to us, and the Herr Director was quite fascinated by its efficiency, although I am sure he would not care to be governed by it. Everywhere we found prosperous conditions and outward contentment, but underneath, especially among the young people, a brooding discontent and smouldering rebellion; yet at the same time much stolid ignorance and fanaticism.

Our final visit was to the University, built solidly against the rocks, its great U in purest white marked upon the mountainside, its very existence seeming a menace to the system which supports it.

There was a fine group of students, both Mormons and Gentiles. The library in which I spent some time astonished me. I wondered, as I looked at some of the books, if the church authorities knew what was between the covers. Dynamite under the Temple walls could not be as dangerous as those volumes.

Possibly the students are as ignorant of their contents as the leaders are. There are books on Philosophy and Psychology which do not seem to me so menacing as those on Economics and Sociology; for it is upon these subjects that the questioning will come first, and also the discontent.

After long and confidential conferences with some of the professors who told me their views, and how they are struggling to maintain their academic freedom, and after long talks with bright, energetic boys and girls who expressed themselves freely, I could assure the Herr Director that some problems, which have so long vexed the United States and have threatened certain ideals of the American Spirit, are in process of solution.

They are being solved by virtue of the broad tolerance of that spirit, than which nothing is so feared by the reactionary forces in the Mormon Church.

One thing which that institution desires more than anything else is renewed persecution; not too much of it, but enough to rally the children of the martyrs to face new martyrdom and so perpetuate the waning power of the church.

One must remember that Mormonism is not only a sect, but a strongly knitted society, and that men who have long ago ceased to believe in its doctrines still hold to it with a loyalty born of past suffering, which will be fostered by any future injustice or persecution.

When we left Salt Lake City and were safe in the Pullman on our way to the Pacific Coast, the Frau Directorin put her stock question to the colored porter when he came to make up the berths.

"How much wives you are?"

When I interpreted the question for him he smiled his broadest smile, but looked puzzled. I told him that the lady thought him a Mormon.

"_No, ma'am._ I's a Baptist. But I sho'd like to be one. I likes de ladies poheful."

He was not a Mormon, certainly not a saint, but he rendered us loyal service on that long, dusty journey to the Coast. Perhaps because he "likes de ladies poheful," or it may have been because I gave him half of a generous tip in advance.

XII

_The California Confession of Faith_

Since landing in New York the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin had endured many a formal reception; she with angelic patience, and he with the usual masculine aversion to formal social amenities.

When I announced that a reception was to be tendered us in San Francisco, he cried with uplifted hands, "_Um Gottes Willen!_" He did not object to really meeting people; but to stand in line an hour or two shaking hundreds of outstretched hands, not knowing nor caring much to whom they belonged, seemed to him a profitless exercise; while our wafers and tea, or our punch--without those ingredients which give the "punch" to punch--were gastronomic delusions to one accustomed to the abundant meat and drink attendant upon social occasions in Germany.

This particular reception was to be given us by the Chinese, and a committee of stately, solemn looking gentlemen called for us in carriages; despite the Herr Director's reluctance, I am sure he was delighted to have this chance of giving his jaded social appetite a new sensation.

Chinatown, with its gay coloring, its tempting shops, its stolid-looking men, its quaint women and cunning babies, was made doubly fascinating to us, entering it officially conducted and riding in state.

I do not know to this day to just what facts or virtues or position in life we owe the attentions we received; but it was all recorded upon posters and handbills liberally distributed through Chinatown, announcing our advent. Recorded upon them in those picturesque characters with which the Chinese language puzzles its readers, were the names and eulogies of certain members of our party. The character which stood for the Herr Director looked like a top, a tree and a barrel, while his nativity and manifold virtues were made known in other artistic symbols.