The Twentieth Century American Part 21

The same is true on a smaller scale of members of the State legislatures. Congress and the legislatures of the several States alike are moreover limited by the restrictions of written const.i.tutions. The British Parliament is paramount; but the United States legislatures are always operating under fear of conflict with the Const.i.tution. Their spheres are limited, so that they can only legislate on certain subjects and within certain lines; while finally the country has grown so fast, the conditions of society have changed with such rapidity, that it has been inherently difficult for lawmaking bodies to keep pace with the increasing complexity of the social and industrial fabric.

If the limitations of s.p.a.ce did not forbid, it would be interesting to show how this fact, more than any other (and not any willingness to leave loopholes for dishonesty) makes possible such offences as those which, committed by certain financial inst.i.tutions in New York, were the immediate precipitating cause of the recent panic. Growth has been so rapid that, with the best will in the world to erect safeguards against malfeasance, weak spots in the barricades are, as it were, only discovered after they have been taken advantage of. With the preoccupation of the legislators stable doors are only found to be open by the fact that the horses are already in the street.

But, after all has been said in extenuation, there remain many things in American State laws for which one may find explanation but not much excuse.

Reference has already been made to the entirely immoral att.i.tude of many of the State legislatures towards corporations, especially towards railway companies; and in some of the Western States prejudice against acc.u.mulated wealth is so strong that it is practically impossible for a rich man or corporation to get a verdict against a poor man. It would be easy to cite cases from one's personal experience wherein jurors have frankly explained their rendering of a verdict in obvious contradiction of the weight of evidence, by the mere statement that the losing party "could stand it" while the other could not. Of a piece with this is a cla.s.s of legislation which has been abundant in Western States, where the legislators as well as most of the residents of the States have been poor, giving extraordinary advantages to debtors and making the collection of debts practically impossible. In some cases such legislation has defeated itself by compelling capitalists to refuse to invest, and wholesale traders to refuse to give credit, inside the State.

Yet another source of corruption in legislation is to be found in the mere numerousness of the States themselves. It may obviously inure to the advantage of the revenues of a particular State to be especially lenient in matters which involve the payment of fees. It is evidently desirable that a check should be put on the reckless incorporation of companies with unlimited share capital, the usual form of such a check being, of course, the graduation of the fee for incorporation in proportion to such capital. One State which has laws more generous than any of its neighbours in this particular is likely to attract to it the incorporation of all the companies of any magnitude from those States, the formal compliance with the requirements of having a statutory office, and of holding an annual meeting, in that State being a matter of small moment. Similar considerations may govern one State in enacting laws facilitating the obtaining of divorce.

There are, then, obviously many causes which make the attainment of either an uniform or a satisfactory code of jurisprudence in all States alike extremely difficult of attainment. It will only be arrived at by, on the one hand, the extension of the Federal authority and, on the other the increase in population and wealth (and, consequently, a sense of responsibility) in those States which at present are less forward than their neighbours. But, again, it is worth insisting on the fact that the faults are faults of the several States and not of the United States. They do not imply either a lack of a sense of justice in the people as a whole or any willingness to make wrong-doing easy. But it is extremely difficult for the public opinion of the rest of the country to bring any pressure to bear on the legislature of one recalcitrant State.

The desire to insist on its own independence is indeed so strong in every State that any attempt at outside interference must almost inevitably result only in developing resistance.

And again I find myself regretfully in direct conflict with Mr. Wells.

But it is not easy to take his meditations on American commercial morality in entire seriousness.

"In the highly imaginative theory that underlies the reality of an individualistic society," he says (_The Future in America_, p. 168), "there is such a thing as honest trading. In practice I don't believe there is. Exchangeable things are supposed to have a fixed quality called their value, and honest trading is I am told the exchange of things of equal value. n.o.body gains or loses by honest trading and therefore n.o.body can grow rich by it." And more to the same effect.

A trader buys one thousand of a given article per month from the manufacturer at ninepence an article and sells them to his customers at tenpence. The extra penny is his payment for acting as purveyor, and the customers recognise that it is an equitable charge which they pay contentedly. That is honest trading; and the trader makes a profit of a trifle over four pounds a month, or fifty pounds a year.

Another trader purveys the same article, buying it from the same manufacturer, but owing to the possession of larger capital, better talent for organisation, and more enterprise, he sells, not one thousand, but one million per month. Instead of selling them at tenpence, however, he sells them at ninepence half-penny; thereby making his customers a present of one half-penny, taking to himself only one half of the sum to which they have already consented as a just charge for the services which he renders. Supposing that he pays the same price as the other trader for his goods (which, buying by the million, he would not do), he makes a profit of some 2083 a month, or 25,000 a year. Evidently he grows rich.

This is the rudimentary principle of modern business; but because one man becomes rich, though he gives the public the same service for less charge than honest men, Mr. Wells says that he cannot be honest.

If two men discover simultaneously gold mines of equal value, and one, being timid and conservative, puts twenty men to work while the other puts a thousand, and each makes a profit of one s.h.i.+lling a day on each man's labour, it is evident that while one enjoys an income of a pound a day for himself the other makes fifty times as much. It is not only obvious that the latter is just as honest as the former, but he can well afford to pay his men a s.h.i.+lling or two a week more in wages. He can afford to build them model homes and give them reading-rooms and recreation grounds, which the other cannot.

Others, besides Mr. Wells, lose their heads when they contemplate large fortunes made in business; but the elementary lesson to be learned is not merely that such large fortunes are likely to be as "honestly"

acquired as the smaller ones, but also that the man who trades on the larger scale is--or has the potentiality of being--the greater benefactor to the community, not merely by being able to furnish the people with goods at a lower price but also by his ability to employ more labour and to surround his workmen with better material conditions.

The tendency of modern business industry to agglutinate into large units is, as has been said, inevitable; but, what is better worth noting, like all natural developments from healthy conditions, it is a thing inherently beneficent. That the larger power is capable of greater abuse than the smaller is also evident; and against that abuse it is that the American people is now struggling to safeguard itself. But to a.s.sail all trading on a scale which produces great wealth as "dishonest" is both impertinent (it is Mr. Wells's own word, applied to himself) and absurd.

The aggregate effect of the great consolidations in America and in England alike (of the "trusts" in fact) has so far been to cheapen immensely the price of most of the staples of life to the people; and that will always be the tendency of all consolidations which stop at any point short of monopoly. And that an artificial monopoly (not based on a natural monopoly) can ever be made effective in any staple for more than the briefest s.p.a.ce of time has yet to be demonstrated.

The other consideration, of the destruction of the independence of the individual, remains; but that lies outside Mr. Wells' range.

FOOTNOTES:

[378:1] Preface to the _Encyclopaedia of Trade between the United States and France_, prepared by the Societe du Repertoire General du Commerce.

[384:1] I do not know whether the story is true or not that Signor Caruso was compelled, in default of other means of identification in a New York bank, to lift up his voice and sing to the satisfaction of the bank officials. As has been remarked, this is not the first time that gold has been given in exchange for notes.

CHAPTER XV

THE PEOPLES AT PLAY

American Sport Twenty-five Years Ago--The Power of Golf--A Look Ahead--Britain, Mother of Sports--Buffalo in New York--And Pheasants on Clapham Common--Shooting Foxes and the "Sport" of Wild-fowling--The Amateur in American Sport--At Henley--And at Large--Teutonic Poppyc.o.c.k.

In "An Error in the Fourth Dimension," Kipling tells how one Wilton Sargent, an American, came to live in England and earnestly laboured to make himself more English than the English. He learned diligently to do many things most un-American:--"Last mystery of all he learned to golf--well; and when an American knows the innermost meaning of '_Don't press, slow back and keep your eye on the ball_,' he is, for practical purposes, de-nationalised." Some six years after that was written an American golfer became Amateur Champion of Great Britain. Yes; I know that Mr. Travis was not born in the United States, but _qua_ golfer he is American pure and simple. Which shows the danger of too hasty generalisation, even on the part of a genius. And it shows more. When he wrote those words Kipling was fully justified by the facts as they stood. It is the fault of the character of the American people, which frustrates prophecy.

Twenty-five years ago there was no amateur sport in America--none. Men, it is true, went off and shot ("hunted" as Americans call it) and fished and yachted for a few days, or weeks, in summer or autumn, in a rather rough-and-ready sort of way. Also, when at college they played baseball and football and, perhaps, they rowed. After leaving college there was probably not one young American in a hundred who entered a boat or played a game of either football or baseball on an average of once in a year. The people as a whole had no open-air games. Baseball was chiefly professional. Cricket had a certain foothold in Philadelphia and on Staten Island, but it was an exotic sport, as it remains to-day, failing entirely to enlist the sympathies of the mult.i.tude. Polo was not played.

Lawn tennis had been introduced, but had made little headway. In all America there were, I think, three racquet courts, which were used chiefly by visiting Englishmen, and not one tennis court. Lacrosse was quite unknown, and as for the "winter sports" of snow-shoeing, ski-ing, ice-boating, curling, and tobogganing, they were practised only here and there by a few (except for the "coasting" of children) as rather a curious fad.

It was a strange experience for an Englishman in those days, fond of his games, to go from his clubs and the society of his fellows at home, to mix in the same cla.s.s of society in America. As in the circles that he had left behind him, so there, the conversation was still largely on sporting topics, but while in England men talked of the games in which they played themselves and of the feats and experiences of their friends, in the leading young men's clubs of New York--the Union, the Knickerbocker, and the Calumet--the talk was solely of professional sport: of the paid baseball nines, of prize fighters (Sullivan was then just rising to his glory), and professional scullers (those were the days of Hanlan), and the like. No man talked of his own doings or of those of his friends, for he and his friends did nothing, except perhaps to spar for an hour or so once or twice a week, or go through perfunctory gymnastics for their figures' sakes.

Until a dozen years ago the situation had not materially changed. Lawn tennis had made some headway, but the thing that wrought the revolution was the coming of golf. It may be doubted if ever in history has any single sport, pastime, or pursuit so modified the habits, and even the character, of a people in an equal s.p.a.ce of time as golf has modified those of the people of the United States.

Enough has already been written of the enthusiasm with which the Americans took up the game itself, of the social prestige which it at once obtained, of the colossal sums of money that have been lavished on the making of courses, of the sumptuousness of the club-houses that have sprung up all over the land. That golf is in itself a fascinating game, is sufficiently proved in England, where it has drawn so many thousands of devotees away from cricket, football, lawn tennis, and other sports.

But can we imagine what the result might have been if there had been in Great Britain no cricket, or football, or other sports, so that all the game-loving enthusiasm of the nation had been free to turn itself loose into that one channel? And this is just what did happen in America. Golf had a clear field and a strenuous sport-loving nation, devoid of open-air games, at its mercy.

The result was not merely that people took to playing golf and that young men neglected their offices and millionaires stretched unwonted muscles in scrambling over bunkers. Golf taught the American people to play games. It took them out from their great office-buildings and from their five-o'clock c.o.c.ktails at the club, into the open air; and they found that the open air was good. So around nearly every golf club other sports grew up. Polo grounds were laid out by the side of the links, croquet lawns appeared on one side of the club-house and lawn-tennis nets arose on the other, while traps for the clay-pigeon shooters were placed safely off in a corner.

Golf came precisely at the moment when the people were ready for it.

Just as America, having in a measure completed the exploitation of her own continent and developed a manufacturing power beyond the resources of consumption in her people, was commercially ripe for the invasion of the markets of the world; just as she came, in her overflowing wealth and power, to a recognition of her greatness as a nation, and was politically ripe for an Imperial policy of colonial expansion; just as, tired of the loose code of ethics of the scrambling days, when the country was still one half wilderness and none had time to care for the public conscience, she was morally ripe for the wonderful revival which has set in in the ethics of politics and commerce and of which Mr.

Roosevelt has been and is the chief apostle: so, by the individual richness of her citizens, giving larger leisure in which to cultivate other pleasures than those which their offices or homes could afford, she was ripe for the coming of the day of open-air games. And having turned to them, she threw herself into their pursuit with the ardour and singleness of purpose which are characteristic of the people and which, as applied to games, seem to English eyes to savour almost of professionalism. As a matter of fact they are only the manifestations of an essential trait of the American character.

The result was that almost at the same time as an American player was winning the British Amateur Golf Champions.h.i.+p, an American polo team was putting All England on her mettle at Hurlingham, and it was not with any wider margin than was necessary for comfort that Great Britain retained the honours in lawn tennis, which she has since lost to one of her own colonies.

It is curious that this awakening of the amateur sporting spirit in the United States should have come just at the time when many excellent judges were bewailing the growing popularity of professional sport in England. Any day now, one may hear complaints that the British youth is giving up playing games himself for the purpose of watching professional wrestlers or football games or county cricket matches. My personal opinion is that there is no need to worry. The growing interest in exhibition games reacts in producing a larger number of youths who strive to become players. Not only in spite of, but largely because of, the greater spectacular attraction of both football and cricket than in years gone by, there is an immensely larger number of players of both--and of all other--games than there ever was before. It is little more than a score of years since a.s.sociation football, at least, was practically the monopoly of a few public schools and of the members of the two Universities--of "gentlemen" in fact. Any loss which the nation can have suffered from the tendency to sit on benches and applaud professional players must have been made up a thousand times over in the benefit to the national physique from the spreading of the game into wide cla.s.ses which formerly regarded it, much as they might fox-hunting, as a pastime reserved only for their "betters."

It is none the less interesting and instructive that in this field as in so many others the directly opposite tendencies should be at work in the two countries: that just when America is beginning to learn the delight of being a game-loving nation and amateur sport is thriving, not yet to the detriment of, but in proportions at least which stand fair comparison with, professional, the cry should be raised in England that Englishmen are forgetting to play games themselves in their eagerness to watch others do them better. Here, as in other things, the gap between the habits of the two peoples is narrowing rapidly. They have not yet met; for in England the time and attention given to games and sports by amateurs is still incomparably greater than on the other side. But that the advancing lines will meet--and even cross--seems probable. And when they have crossed, what then? Will America ever oust Great Britain from the position which she holds as the Mother of Sports and the athletic centre of the world?

Some things, it appears, one can predict with certainty. America has already taken to herself a disagreeable number of the records in track athletics; and she will take more. On the links the performance of Mr.

Travis, isolated as yet, is only a warning of many similar experiences in the future. In a few years it will be very hard for any visiting golf team of less than All England or All Scotland strength to win many matches against American clubs on their home courses; and the United States will be able to send a team over here that will be beaten only by All England--or perhaps will not be beaten by All Britain. At polo the Americans will go on hammering away till they produce a team that can stand unconquered at Hurlingham. It will be very long before they can turn out a dozen teams to match the best English dozen; but by mere force of concentration and by the practice of that quality which, as has already been said, looks so like professionalism to English eyes, one team to rival the English best they will send over. In lawn tennis it cannot be long before a pair of Americans will do what an Australian pair did in 1907, just as the United States already holds the Ladies'

Champions.h.i.+p; and England is going to have some difficulty in recovering her honours at court tennis. In rifle shooting America must be expected to beat England oftener than England beats America; but the edge will be taken off any humiliation that there might be by the fact that Britain will have Colonial teams as good as either.

And when all this has happened, will England's position be shaken? Not one whit! Not though the _America's_ cup never crosses the Atlantic and though sooner or later an American college crew succeeds--as surely, for their pluck, they deserve to succeed--in imitating the Belgians and carrying off the Grand at Henley. There remain games and sports enough which the United States will never take up seriously, at which if she did she would be debarred by climatic conditions or other causes from ever threatening British supremacy.

The glory of England lies in the fact that she "takes on" the best of all the nations of the world at their own games. It is not the United States only, but all her Colonies and every country of Europe that turn to Great Britain as to their best antagonist in whatever sport they find themselves proficient. Just now England's brow is somewhat bare of laurels, but year in and year out Britain will continue to win the majority of contests in her meetings with all the world; and if she lose at times, is it not better to have rivals good enough to make her extend herself? And is it not sufficient for her pride that she, one people, should win--if it be only--half of all the world's honours?

Meanwhile Englishmen can afford to rejoice ungrudgingly at the new spirit which has been born in the United States. Each year the number of "events" in which an international contest is possible increases. The time may not be far away when there will be almost as long a list of Anglo-American annual contests as there is now between Oxford and Cambridge. But it will be a very long time before the United States can displace Great Britain from the pre-eminence which she holds--and the wonderful character of which, I think, few Englishmen appreciate. Before that time comes such other sweeping changes will probably have come over the map of the world and the relations of the peoples that Britain's displacement will have lost all significance.

And Englishmen can always remember that, whatever triumphs the Americans may win in the domain of sport, they win them by virtue of the English blood that is in them.

It is, of course, inevitable that in many particulars the American and English ideas of sport should be widely different. There is an old, old story in America of the Englishman who arrived in New York and, on the day after his arrival, got out his rifle and proceeded to make enquiries of the hotel people as to the best direction in which to start out to find buffalo--the nearest buffalo at the time being, perhaps, two thousand miles away. It is a story which has contributed not a little to contempt of the Britisher in many an innocent American mind. It happens that in my own experience I have known precisely that same blunder made by an American in England.

I had met an American friend, with whom I have shot in America, at his hotel on the evening of his arrival in London one day in November. In the course of conversation I mentioned that the shooting season was in full swing.

"Good," he said. "Let me hire a gun somewhere to-morrow and let's go out, if you've nothing to do, and have some shooting."

Nothing, he opined, would be simpler, or more agreeable, than to drive out--or possibly take a train--to some wild spot in the vicinity of London--Clapham Common perhaps--and spend a day among the pheasants. It was precisely the Englishman and his buffalo--the prehistoric instinct of the race ("What a beautiful day! Let us go and kill something!") blossoming amid unfamiliar conditions. My American friend wanted to kill an English pheasant. He had heard much of them as the best of game-birds. He had eaten them, much refrigerated, in New York and found them good. And he knew nothing of preserving and of a land that is all parcelled out into parks and gardens and spinneys. Why not then go out and enjoy ourselves? Before he left England he had some pheasant shooting, and it is rarely that a man on his first day at those conspicuous but evasive fowl renders as good an account of himself as did he. Similarly every American with a sound sporting instinct must hope that that traditional Englishman ultimately got his buffalo.