WEBVTT NOTE I. Phantasma 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents, The Driver, by Garrett Garrett. Read by Jeff Rigenbach. 2 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:14.000 Chapter 1. Phantasma. 3 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:29.000 1. It is Easter Sunday in the village of Masslin, Stark County, Ohio, fifty miles south by east from Cleveland, fourth year of the soft money plague, 1894. 4 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:50.000 The sky is low and brooding with an untimely thought of snow. Church bells are ringing. They sound remote and disapproving. Almost nobody is mindful of their call. The soul may miss its feast. The eye of wonder shall not be cheated. 5 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:54.480 The comic God has published a decree. 6 00:00:54.480 --> 00:01:01.700 Here once more the sad biped, solemn, ludicrous and romantic, shall mount the gilded ass. 7 00:01:01.700 --> 00:01:04.420 It is a spectacle that will not wait. 8 00:01:04.420 --> 00:01:09.560 For weeks, in all the newspapers of the country, the fact has been advertised in a spirit of 9 00:01:09.560 --> 00:01:10.560 waggery. 10 00:01:10.560 --> 00:01:16.400 At this hour, and from this place, the army of the common wheel of Christ will set forth 11 00:01:16.400 --> 00:01:25.840 The Village is a gog with people congregating to witness the fantasied event. 12 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:31.080 In the main street, natives and strangers mingle their feet gregariously. 13 00:01:31.080 --> 00:01:37.360 There are spasmodic sounds of laughter, retort, argument and ribaldry, and continually the 14 00:01:37.360 --> 00:01:41.040 shrill cries of youth in a frenzy of expectation. 15 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:47.920 Buggies, two-wheelers, open carts and spring wagons line both sides of the street. 16 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:49.560 The horses are blanketed. 17 00:01:49.560 --> 00:01:52.680 A damp, chill wind is blowing. 18 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:58.120 Vendors from Chicago, lewd-looking men, working a hundred feet apart, are yelling, 19 00:01:58.120 --> 00:02:02.080 Get a Christ Army button here for a nickel! 20 00:02:02.080 --> 00:02:08.440 There is a composite smell of ham sandwiches, peanuts, oranges and cigars. 21 00:02:08.440 --> 00:02:14.240 A shout rises at the far end of the street. The crowd that has been so thick there, filling 22 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:21.240 the whole space, bursts open. A band begins playing Onward Christian Soldiers, and the 23 00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:24.120 spectacle is present. 24 00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:31.480 First comes a negro bearing the American flag. Next, on a white horse, is a thick, close-bearded, 25 00:02:31.480 --> 00:02:37.880 self-regarding man with powerful darting eyes and an air of fantastic vanity. He wears a 26 00:02:37.880 --> 00:02:43.880 He wears a buckskin coat with fringed sleeves. The breast is covered with gaudy metals. 27 00:02:43.880 --> 00:02:50.880 On his head is a large white sombrero. Around his neck swings a string of amber beads. 28 00:02:50.880 --> 00:02:55.880 He is cheered and rallied as he passes, and bows continually. 29 00:02:55.880 --> 00:03:00.880 Behind him walks a trumpeter, saluted as Windy Oliver. 30 00:03:00.880 --> 00:03:06.880 After the trumpeter walks the astrologer, bearing the wand of his mysterious office. 31 00:03:06.880 --> 00:03:11.960 In a band of seven pieces, very willing and enterprising. 32 00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:17.640 And now, by the timbre and volume of the cheering, you recognize the commander. 33 00:03:17.640 --> 00:03:19.560 He rides. 34 00:03:19.560 --> 00:03:25.400 Sitting so still and distant beside a negro driver in a buggy drawn by two mares, he is 35 00:03:25.400 --> 00:03:27.560 disappointing to the eye. 36 00:03:27.560 --> 00:03:30.560 There is nothing obviously heroic about him. 37 00:03:30.560 --> 00:03:31.560 He wears spectacles. 38 00:03:31.560 --> 00:03:38.760 Above a thin, down-growing mustache, the face is that of a man of ideas and action. 39 00:03:38.760 --> 00:03:44.560 The lower features, especially the mouth, denote a shy, secretive, sentimental, credulous 40 00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:47.800 man of mystical preoccupations. 41 00:03:47.800 --> 00:03:50.960 None of these qualities is more than commonplace. 42 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:54.160 The type is well known to inland communities. 43 00:03:54.160 --> 00:03:59.120 The man who believes in perpetual motion, in the perfectibility of human nature, in 44 00:03:59.120 --> 00:04:04.600 and miraculous interventions of deity and makes a small living shrewdly. 45 00:04:04.600 --> 00:04:07.440 He might be the inventor of a washing machine. 46 00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:12.980 He is in fact the owner of a sandstone quarry and a breeder of horses. 47 00:04:12.980 --> 00:04:17.980 But mark you, the ego may achieve grandeur in any habitat. 48 00:04:17.980 --> 00:04:20.560 It is not in the least particular. 49 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:26.600 This inconsiderable man, ludicrously setting forth on Easter Sunday in command of a modern 50 00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:30.900 and Crusade has one startling obsession. 51 00:04:30.900 --> 00:04:36.920 He believes that with the bandit-looking person on the white horse, he shares the reincarnation 52 00:04:36.920 --> 00:04:39.520 of Christ. 53 00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:45.040 In a buggy following, with what thoughts we shall never know, rides the wife of this half 54 00:04:45.040 --> 00:04:48.660 of Christ reincarnated. 55 00:04:48.660 --> 00:04:53.480 Next comes another negro bearing the banner of the common wheel of Christ. 56 00:04:53.480 --> 00:04:56.740 In the center of it is a painted Christ head. 57 00:04:56.740 --> 00:05:01.160 The lettering, divided above and below the head, reads, 58 00:05:01.160 --> 00:05:09.440 Peace on earth, goodwill to men, but death to interest-bearing bonds. 59 00:05:09.440 --> 00:05:12.260 Then comes the army of the common-wheelers. 60 00:05:12.260 --> 00:05:14.520 They are counted derisively. 61 00:05:14.520 --> 00:05:19.600 The commander said there would be a hundred thousand, or at least ten thousand, or, at 62 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:22.560 the start, not fewer than one thousand. 63 00:05:22.560 --> 00:05:26.240 Well, the number is one hundred scant. 64 00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:27.800 They are a weird lot. 65 00:05:27.800 --> 00:05:34.360 A grim, one-eyed miner from Ottumwa, a jockey from Lexington, a fanatical preacher of the 66 00:05:34.360 --> 00:05:41.060 raw gospel from Detroit, a heavy steel mill worker from Youngstown, a sinewy young farmer 67 00:05:41.060 --> 00:05:49.320 from near Sandusky, a Swede laborer from everywhere, one doctor, one lawyer, clerks, actors, paper 68 00:05:49.320 --> 00:06:06.280 A man in a blue overcoat and white trousers, riding a horse with a red saddle, moves up 69 00:06:06.280 --> 00:06:09.880 and down the line, eyeing it importantly. 70 00:06:09.880 --> 00:06:14.040 At the end of this strange procession are two wagons. 71 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:16.720 One is called the commissariat wagon. 72 00:06:16.720 --> 00:06:23.000 It is loaded with a circus tent, some bales of hay for the horses, and a few bags of provisions, 73 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:25.400 hardly enough for one day. 74 00:06:25.400 --> 00:06:28.600 The other is a covered wagon painted blue. 75 00:06:28.600 --> 00:06:34.180 The sides are decorated with geometrical figures of incomprehensible meaning. 76 00:06:34.180 --> 00:06:39.380 This vehicle of mystery belongs to the precious being on the white horse ahead. 77 00:06:39.380 --> 00:06:41.460 He created it. 78 00:06:41.460 --> 00:06:45.680 Inside are sliding panoramas, which he has painted. 79 00:06:45.680 --> 00:06:51.080 As these wagons pass, people on foot and in buggies and wagons to the number of more than 80 00:06:51.080 --> 00:06:54.720 a thousand fall into line and follow. 81 00:06:54.720 --> 00:06:57.220 Their curiosity is not yet sated. 82 00:06:57.220 --> 00:07:00.600 They cannot abandon the spectacle. 83 00:07:00.600 --> 00:07:05.880 Among these followers are forty-three correspondents representing newspapers from New York to 84 00:07:05.880 --> 00:07:12.380 San Francisco, four Western Union telegraph operators and two linemen. 85 00:07:12.380 --> 00:07:15.500 The route to Jerusalem is uncertain. 86 00:07:15.500 --> 00:07:21.380 Something may happen on the open road miles from a telegraph office, hence the linemen, 87 00:07:21.380 --> 00:07:26.720 anywhere to climb a pole and tap the wires and special operators to dispatch the news 88 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:28.820 emergently. 89 00:07:28.820 --> 00:07:34.300 The reporters are to hoop the story up and be in on the crucifixion. 90 00:07:34.300 --> 00:07:39.300 Could anything less seeming of reality be invented by the imagination? 91 00:07:39.300 --> 00:07:44.320 It has the pattern of a dream, yet it is history. 92 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:50.960 This is how two fatuous spirits, charlatans maybe, visionaries certainly, Carl Brown on 93 00:07:50.960 --> 00:07:56.800 the white horse and Jacob S. Coxey in the buggy, led the Army of the Common Wheel of 94 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:03.840 Christ, Coxey's Army for short, out of Massillon, past the blacksmith's shop, past the sandstone 95 00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:09.320 quarry, past the little house where the woman was who waved her apron with one hand and 96 00:08:09.320 --> 00:08:37.520 I, who am telling it, was one of the 43 correspondents. 97 00:08:37.520 --> 00:08:44.200 The road was ankle-deep with that unguent kind of mud which lies on top of frost. Snow 98 00:08:44.200 --> 00:08:51.120 began to fall. Curiosity waned in the rear. The followers began to slough off, shouting 99 00:08:51.120 --> 00:08:57.720 words of encouragement as they turned back. Brown on his white horse, Coxie in his buggy, 100 00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:03.080 and the man in the red saddle were immersed in vanity. But the marchers were extremely 101 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:10.080 At one o'clock there was a stop for coffee and dry bread, served on the table, and the 102 00:09:33.080 --> 00:09:35.840 Out of the Commissariat Wagon 103 00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:40.360 It was understood that the Army would live on the country as it went along, trusting 104 00:09:40.360 --> 00:09:42.760 to charity and providence. 105 00:09:42.760 --> 00:09:48.240 But the shrewdness of the commander had foreseen that the art of begging would have to be learned, 106 00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:54.040 and that in any case it could not begin successfully on the first few miles out. 107 00:09:54.040 --> 00:09:59.480 The common-wheelers watched us curiously as we tapped the telegraph wires by the roadside 108 00:09:59.480 --> 00:10:05.860 to send off flash bulletins of progress. Both Brown and Coxie exhorted their followers to 109 00:10:05.860 --> 00:10:11.640 courage, challenged the weaklings to drop out, and the march was resumed with only two 110 00:10:11.640 --> 00:10:17.300 desertions. These were made good by excessions further on. 111 00:10:17.300 --> 00:10:23.020 At four o'clock a halt was called near a village, the inhabitants of which made friendly gestures 112 00:10:23.020 --> 00:10:27.980 and brought forth bacons and hams which were gratefully added to the boiled potatoes and 113 00:10:27.980 --> 00:10:30.900 and Bread Served Out of the Wagon. 114 00:10:30.900 --> 00:10:32.300 The tent was raised. 115 00:10:32.300 --> 00:10:37.620 Brown, astride his bespattered white horse, made a speech. 116 00:10:37.620 --> 00:10:40.860 He was the more aggressive half of the reincarnation. 117 00:10:40.860 --> 00:10:46.520 Indeed, it came presently to be the opinion of the correspondents that he was the activating 118 00:10:46.520 --> 00:10:51.680 principle of the whole infatuation and held the other in a spell. 119 00:10:51.680 --> 00:10:57.900 He was full of sound and rhetoric and moved himself to ecstasy with sonorous sayings. 120 00:10:57.900 --> 00:11:03.660 His talk was a wild compound of scripture, theosophy and populism. 121 00:11:03.660 --> 00:11:06.940 The kingdom of heaven on earth was at hand, he said. 122 00:11:06.940 --> 00:11:10.560 The conditions foretold in revelations were fulfilled. 123 00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:15.780 The seven heads of the beast were the seven conspiracies against the money of the people. 124 00:11:15.780 --> 00:11:20.600 The ten horns of the beast were the ten monopolies nourished in Wall Street. 125 00:11:20.600 --> 00:11:24.740 The sugar trust, the oil trust, and so on. 126 00:11:24.740 --> 00:11:30.340 We are fast undermining the structure of monopoly in the hearts of the people, he declaimed, 127 00:11:30.340 --> 00:11:32.460 reaching his proration. 128 00:11:32.460 --> 00:11:38.000 Like Cyrus of old, we are fast tunneling under the Boettler's Euphrates and will soon be 129 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:43.500 able to march under the walls of the Second Babylon and its mysteries, too. 130 00:11:43.500 --> 00:11:48.860 The infernal, blood-sucking bank system will be overthrown, for the handwriting is on the 131 00:11:48.860 --> 00:11:51.320 wall. 132 00:11:51.320 --> 00:11:55.540 The listeners, though they growled at the mention of Wall Street and cheered the fall 133 00:11:55.540 --> 00:12:01.440 of Babylon, received his interpretation of their role and errand with an uneasy, bothered 134 00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:03.240 air. 135 00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:05.300 Voices asked for coxie. 136 00:12:05.300 --> 00:12:10.880 He spoke to them in a gentle manner, praised them for their courage and fortitude, emphasized 137 00:12:10.880 --> 00:12:16.300 the hardships yet to be endured, proposed a hymn to be sung, and then dismissed them 138 00:12:16.300 --> 00:12:34.440 3. 139 00:12:34.440 --> 00:12:39.480 In the village railroad station was a telegraph office, where our special operators cut in 140 00:12:39.480 --> 00:12:42.700 their instruments and received our copy. 141 00:12:42.700 --> 00:12:50.500 Among us, we filed more than 40,000 words of narrative, incident, pathos and ridicule. 142 00:12:50.500 --> 00:12:56.080 News is stranger than fiction, not in what it tells, but in how it happens. 143 00:12:56.080 --> 00:13:03.100 In a room 20 feet square, lighted by one kerosene lamp, we wrote our copy on our knees, against 144 00:13:03.100 --> 00:13:09.200 the wall, on each other's backs, standing up and lying down, matching notes and exchanging 145 00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:12.100 information as we went along. 146 00:13:12.100 --> 00:13:19.420 What's the name of this town? Louisville. Kentucky? Kentucky? No. Hear him. Ohio. Didn't 147 00:13:19.420 --> 00:13:23.660 know there was a Louisville, Ohio. Write it anyway. It isn't the first time you've written 148 00:13:23.660 --> 00:13:29.940 what you don't know. Then silence, save for the clicking of the telegraph instruments 149 00:13:29.940 --> 00:13:36.860 and the crackling of copy paper. Who was that man in the red saddle? No answer. Again, who 150 00:13:36.860 --> 00:13:39.220 Who was the guy in the red saddle? 151 00:13:39.220 --> 00:13:40.940 No answer. 152 00:13:40.940 --> 00:13:47.380 Another voice, in the same difficulty, roaring, Who in hell was the man in the red saddle? 153 00:13:47.380 --> 00:13:50.700 Now everybody for a minute stops writing. 154 00:13:50.700 --> 00:13:51.940 Nobody knows. 155 00:13:51.940 --> 00:13:57.120 Voice, call him Smith, the man of mystery, the great unknown. 156 00:13:57.120 --> 00:13:58.380 We did. 157 00:13:58.380 --> 00:14:04.640 The man in the red saddle was Smith, the great unknown, to the end of his silly part. 158 00:14:04.640 --> 00:14:09.300 There was a small hotel in the place with only two bedrooms available, and these had 159 00:14:09.300 --> 00:14:15.140 been selfishly seized by three magazine writers who had no telegraph stuff to file. 160 00:14:15.140 --> 00:14:16.920 They had retired. 161 00:14:16.920 --> 00:14:21.580 The rest of us took possession of a fairly large lounging room and settled ourselves 162 00:14:21.580 --> 00:14:25.860 for the night on cots, pallets and chairs. 163 00:14:25.860 --> 00:14:30.940 The lean-minded man from Cleveland, reclining on the hotel desk with his feet on the cigar 164 00:14:30.940 --> 00:14:35.940 We've set off a lot of guff about this thing, he said, and not a word of what it means. 165 00:14:35.940 --> 00:14:39.940 Not a man here has tried to tell what it means. 166 00:14:39.940 --> 00:14:44.940 Leave that to the editorial writers and go to sleep, said St. Louis from under his hat. 167 00:14:44.940 --> 00:14:47.940 He had made his bed in the swivel chair. 168 00:14:47.940 --> 00:14:51.940 It means something, it means something, said Cleveland. 169 00:14:51.940 --> 00:14:54.940 Well, what? asked a petulant voice. 170 00:14:54.940 --> 00:14:57.940 It's a joke, said St. Louis, not moving. 171 00:14:57.940 --> 00:15:05.940 It's a joke, said St. Louis, not moving. People have to laugh, he added. Go to sleep or be still. 172 00:15:05.940 --> 00:15:12.940 Another voice. What does it mean, you Cleveland? I saw you reading Plutarch. What does it mean? 173 00:15:12.940 --> 00:15:19.940 These people are asking questions to which there is no answer, said the Cleveland man, lifting on his elbow. 174 00:15:19.940 --> 00:15:25.940 Why is anybody hungry in a land of surplus food? Why are able-bodied men out of work 175 00:15:25.940 --> 00:15:42.940 A man whom we had hardly noticed before, anemic, shrill, and hairy, sat up on his mattress and thrust a naked bent arm out of his blanket. 176 00:15:42.940 --> 00:15:52.940 I'll tell you what it means, he shouted. Wall Street has sucked the country dry. People may perish, but Wall Street will have its profit and interest. 177 00:15:52.940 --> 00:15:57.540 Labor may starve, but the banking power will keep money sound. 178 00:15:57.540 --> 00:16:05.060 Money in itself is nothing, merely a convenience, a token by means of which useful things are exchanged. 179 00:16:05.060 --> 00:16:07.660 Is that so? Not at all. 180 00:16:07.660 --> 00:16:13.780 Money no longer exists for the use of people. We exist for the sake of money. 181 00:16:13.780 --> 00:16:20.020 There is plenty everywhere, but people cannot buy because they are unemployed and have no money. 182 00:16:20.020 --> 00:16:27.420 Coxie says, create the money, make it abundant. Then people may work and be prosperous. Well, 183 00:16:27.420 --> 00:16:33.100 why not? Wall Street says, if you make money abundant, you will ruin the country. Hell, 184 00:16:33.100 --> 00:16:40.300 the country is already ruined. We laugh. Yet what we have seen today is the beginning of revolution. 185 00:16:40.300 --> 00:16:45.500 As people have freed themselves from other tyrannies, so they will free themselves from 186 00:16:45.500 --> 00:16:48.180 from this money tyranny. 187 00:16:48.180 --> 00:16:53.940 He stopped, out of breath and choking, and a singular hubbub arose. 188 00:16:53.940 --> 00:16:59.580 Everyone awake had been listening attentively, and now, just as they lay, not an arm or a 189 00:16:59.580 --> 00:17:07.340 leg stirring, all those huddled inert forms became vocal, shouting, Populist, righto, 190 00:17:07.340 --> 00:17:10.540 put him out, douse him! 191 00:17:10.540 --> 00:17:15.620 Points of weariness, irritation and raillery were inseparably mingled. 192 00:17:15.620 --> 00:17:18.380 Yet the overtone was not unfriendly. 193 00:17:18.380 --> 00:17:22.900 We could be light and cruel with the army of the common-wheel of Christ because its 194 00:17:22.900 --> 00:17:25.060 whole figure was ludicrous. 195 00:17:25.060 --> 00:17:29.180 But there was no love among us for Wall Street or the money power. 196 00:17:29.180 --> 00:17:34.920 Those names stood for ideas of things which were commonly feared and hated and blamed 197 00:17:34.920 --> 00:17:38.420 for all the economic distress of the time. 198 00:17:38.420 --> 00:17:45.300 Above, the plutocratic magazine writers were pounding on the floor. The hairy agitator, 199 00:17:45.300 --> 00:17:50.500 breathing heavily, melted back into his mattress, heavy in his conscience, no doubt, for having 200 00:17:50.500 --> 00:17:56.300 written a very sarcastic piece about that Easter Day event. We saw it afterward in his 201 00:17:56.300 --> 00:18:02.340 Chicago paper. The fat reporter from Cincinnati began to snore. 202 00:18:02.340 --> 00:18:09.540 For a long time, I lay awake, thinking. What were we doing here? Reporting the news. News 203 00:18:09.540 --> 00:18:18.340 of what? One hundred inconsequent men dreaming in the mud. Was that news? No, not intrinsically. 204 00:18:18.340 --> 00:18:23.020 As a manifestation of the frustrate human spirit, it might serve as material for the 205 00:18:23.020 --> 00:18:29.460 reflective fictionist, or text for some Olympian humorist. But why was it news, to be written 206 00:18:29.460 --> 00:18:58.460 In their acts of faith, folly, wisdom and curiosity, men are moved by ideas. Perhaps therefore the discrepancy between the unimportance of this incongruous Easter Day spectacle itself and the interest we bestowed upon it was explained by what it signified, that is, by the motivating idea. This thought I examined carefully. 207 00:18:58.460 --> 00:19:16.460 Two years before this, Jacob S. Coxie, horse breeder, quarry owner, crank, whom no one had heard of until then, proposed to cure the economic disease then afflicting the country by the simple expedient of hiring all the unemployed on public works. 208 00:19:16.460 --> 00:19:24.460 Congress should raise half a billion dollars from non-interest-bearing bonds and spend the money on national roads. 209 00:19:24.460 --> 00:19:31.180 codes. This plan received some publicity as a freak idea. Nobody had been really serious 210 00:19:31.180 --> 00:19:39.620 about it. What then happens? One Carl Brown, theosophist, demagogue and noise breaker, 211 00:19:39.620 --> 00:19:44.420 seeks out this money crank at Masslin, and together they incubate the thought of calling 212 00:19:44.420 --> 00:19:51.220 upon the people to take the plan in the form of a petition and walk with it to Congress. 213 00:19:51.220 --> 00:19:57.160 The thing is Russian, a petition in boots, a prayer to the government carried great distances 214 00:19:57.160 --> 00:19:59.580 by peasants on foot. 215 00:19:59.580 --> 00:20:02.940 The newspapers print it as a piece of light news. 216 00:20:02.940 --> 00:20:07.860 Then everybody begins to talk about it, and the response is amazing. 217 00:20:07.860 --> 00:20:12.420 People laugh openly and are secretly serious. 218 00:20:12.420 --> 00:20:18.020 A day is set for the march to begin, a form of organization is announced, and Coxie Army 219 00:20:18.020 --> 00:20:22.980 Many contingents begin to appear spontaneously all over the country. 220 00:20:22.980 --> 00:20:29.100 This also is news, to be treated in the same light spirit, and no doubt it is much exaggerated 221 00:20:29.100 --> 00:20:31.460 for sportive reasons. 222 00:20:31.460 --> 00:20:36.600 As the day approaches, little groups of men calling themselves units of the Christ Army 223 00:20:36.600 --> 00:20:43.100 of the Common Wheel set out from Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Michigan, 224 00:20:43.100 --> 00:20:49.140 from anywhere east of the Missouri River, footing it to Massillon to merge their numbers. 225 00:20:49.140 --> 00:20:51.500 Then it rains. 226 00:20:51.500 --> 00:20:56.540 For three weeks there is nothing but rain, and the flesh fails. 227 00:20:56.540 --> 00:21:01.340 That is why there is but a scant 100 to make the start. 228 00:21:01.340 --> 00:21:06.500 Coxie believes the bemired and tardy units will survive and catch up. 229 00:21:06.500 --> 00:21:11.260 He still hopes to have tens of thousands with him when he reaches Washington. 230 00:21:11.260 --> 00:21:18.260 Man is unmistakably emotional. That is a fact to be accounted for. When did it become possible 231 00:21:18.260 --> 00:21:26.900 to emotionalize the human animal with a financial idea? Specifically, a plan to convert non-interest-bearing 232 00:21:26.900 --> 00:21:34.540 bonds into an unlimited amount of legal tender money? Never. The money theory is merely the 233 00:21:34.540 --> 00:21:40.980 ostensible aspect, the outwardness of the matter. Something else is signified. What 234 00:21:40.980 --> 00:21:42.660 What is it? 235 00:21:42.660 --> 00:21:45.660 I come back to what the Cleveland man said. 236 00:21:45.660 --> 00:21:49.660 Why are people hungry in a land of surplus food? 237 00:21:49.660 --> 00:21:52.060 Why is labor idle? 238 00:21:52.060 --> 00:21:55.700 Labor applied to materials is the source of all wealth. 239 00:21:55.700 --> 00:21:57.620 There is no lack of materials. 240 00:21:57.620 --> 00:22:00.340 The desire for wealth is without limit. 241 00:22:00.340 --> 00:22:07.580 Why are men unemployed instead of acting on their unfinished environment to improve it? 242 00:22:07.580 --> 00:22:13.100 And now, though I had thought my way around a circle, I began to glimpse some understanding 243 00:22:13.100 --> 00:22:18.660 of what was taking place in a manner nominally so preposterous. 244 00:22:18.660 --> 00:22:23.740 People had tormented themselves with these questions until they were weary, callous, 245 00:22:23.740 --> 00:22:25.660 and bitterly ironic. 246 00:22:25.660 --> 00:22:30.900 The country was in the toils of an invisible monster that devoured its heart and wasted 247 00:22:30.900 --> 00:22:32.520 its substance. 248 00:22:32.520 --> 00:22:36.640 The name of this monster was Hard Times. 249 00:22:36.640 --> 00:22:41.840 The problem of unemployment was chronic, desperate and apparently hopeless. 250 00:22:41.840 --> 00:22:44.440 The cause of it was unknown. 251 00:22:44.440 --> 00:22:49.360 People were sick of thinking and talking about something for which there was no help. 252 00:22:49.360 --> 00:22:52.920 They had either to despair or laugh. 253 00:22:52.920 --> 00:22:59.040 Then came Coxie, fanatic, mount-a-bank or rare comedian, so solemn in his egregious 254 00:22:59.040 --> 00:23:03.420 pretensions that no one knew which, and they laughed. 255 00:23:03.420 --> 00:23:05.640 It might become serious. 256 00:23:05.640 --> 00:23:24.640 Last psychology was in a highly inflammable condition. There was always that thought in reserve to tinge the laughter with foreboding. But if there came a conflagration, then perhaps the questions would be unexpectedly answered. Nobody cared much what else happened. 257 00:23:24.640 --> 00:23:33.640 Cincinnati turned over with a frightful snort and was suddenly quiet. I prayed that he might be dead and went to sleep. 258 00:23:33.640 --> 00:23:36.880 The next morning the New York Herald man took me aside. 259 00:23:36.880 --> 00:23:40.880 I've been recalled from this assignment to go to Europe, he said. 260 00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:42.960 I'm waiting for a man to relieve me. 261 00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:45.720 He will pick us up some time today. 262 00:23:45.720 --> 00:23:50.440 I said I was sorry, and I was, for we were made to each other's liking. 263 00:23:50.440 --> 00:23:53.800 I don't care for the man who is relieving me, he continued. 264 00:23:53.800 --> 00:23:59.360 Besides, he isn't competent to do what I'm about to ask you to undertake in my place. 265 00:23:59.360 --> 00:24:01.640 Anything I can, I said. 266 00:24:01.640 --> 00:24:06.640 You are from the West, he continued, and therefore you're not likely to know how jumpy the Wall 267 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:09.780 Street people are about what's going on. 268 00:24:09.780 --> 00:24:13.680 They are afraid of this coxie movement, of what it may lead to. 269 00:24:13.680 --> 00:24:18.560 They want to know a lot about it, more than they can get from the newspaper stories. 270 00:24:18.560 --> 00:24:24.680 I've been sending a confidential letter on it daily to Valentine, you know, John Jay, 271 00:24:24.680 --> 00:24:27.040 President of the Great Midwestern Railroad. 272 00:24:27.040 --> 00:24:31.840 He wants the tale unvarnished, and what you think of it, and what others think of it. 273 00:24:31.840 --> 00:24:37.080 He particularly wants to know, in the fullest way, how the Coxieites are received along 274 00:24:37.080 --> 00:24:41.640 the way, for therein is disclosed the state of public feeling. 275 00:24:41.640 --> 00:24:45.400 Well, I wish you to take this commission off my hands. 276 00:24:45.400 --> 00:24:48.200 It pays fifty a week for the life of the circus. 277 00:24:48.200 --> 00:24:53.280 I'll see him in New York, tell him who you are and why I left it for you to do. 278 00:24:53.280 --> 00:24:58.560 Then when the thing is over, you can run up to New York from Washington and get your money. 279 00:24:58.560 --> 00:24:59.560 I hesitated. 280 00:24:59.560 --> 00:25:02.440 It's Wall Street money, I said. 281 00:25:02.440 --> 00:25:05.280 It's railroad money, he replied. 282 00:25:05.280 --> 00:25:08.960 That may be all the same thing, but there's no difficulty, really. 283 00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:11.560 It's quite all right for anyone to do this. 284 00:25:11.560 --> 00:25:13.680 What's wanted is the truth. 285 00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:16.440 Put in your own opinions of Wall Street if you like. 286 00:25:16.440 --> 00:25:18.120 Indeed, do that. 287 00:25:18.120 --> 00:25:20.680 Wall Street people are not as you think they are. 288 00:25:20.680 --> 00:25:26.680 Valentine is a particularly good sort, and honest in his point of view. I vouch for the whole thing. 289 00:25:26.680 --> 00:25:40.680 So I took it, and thereafter posted to John J. Valentine, 130 Broadway, Room 607, Personal, a daily confidential report on the march of the common-wheelers. 290 00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:46.680 I would not say that the fact of having a retainer in railroad money changed my point of view. 291 00:25:46.680 --> 00:25:52.680 It did somewhat affect my sense of values, and my curiosity was extended. 292 00:25:52.680 --> 00:25:58.680 For the purpose of the Valentine reports, I made an intensive personal study of the common-wheelers. 293 00:25:58.680 --> 00:26:00.680 I asked them why they were doing it. 294 00:26:00.680 --> 00:26:07.680 Some took it as a sporting adventure, with no thought of the consequences, and enjoyed the mob spirit. 295 00:26:07.680 --> 00:26:12.680 Some were tramps, who, for the first time in their lives, found begging respectable. 296 00:26:12.680 --> 00:26:24.680 But a great majority of them were earnest, wistful men, fairly aching with convictions, without being able to say what it was they had a conviction of, or what was wrong with the world. 297 00:26:24.680 --> 00:26:32.680 Their notions were incoherent. Nobody seemed very sanguine about the Coxie Plan, nobody understood it, in fact. 298 00:26:32.680 --> 00:26:37.680 Yet something would have to be done. People couldn't live without work. 299 00:26:37.680 --> 00:26:52.680 Unemployment was the basic grievance. I took a group of twenty, all skilled workmen, sixteen of them married, and found that for each of them the average number of wage-earning days in a year had been twelve. 300 00:26:52.680 --> 00:27:06.680 They blamed the money power in Wall Street. When they were asked how the money power could profit by their unemployment, what motive it could have in creating hard times, they took refuge in meaningless phrases. 301 00:27:06.680 --> 00:27:13.680 Most of them believed in peaceable measures. Only three or four harbored destructive thoughts. 302 00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:22.680 The manner of the Army's reception by farmers, villagers and townspeople was variable and hard at first to understand. 303 00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:29.680 Generally there was plenty of plain food. Sometimes it was provided in a generous, sympathetic spirit. 304 00:27:29.680 --> 00:27:36.680 Then again, it would be forthcoming as a bid for immunity, the givers at heart being fearful and hostile. 305 00:27:36.680 --> 00:27:43.680 The army was much maligned by rumor as a body of tramps obtaining sustenance by blackmail. 306 00:27:43.680 --> 00:27:51.680 It wasn't true. There was no theft, very little disorder, no taking without leave, even when the stomach gnawed. 307 00:27:51.680 --> 00:27:56.680 One learned to anticipate the character of reception by the look of the plays. 308 00:27:56.680 --> 00:28:02.400 of the Place. In poor, dilapidated communities there was always a hearty welcome with what 309 00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:09.120 food the people could spare, cheerfully bestowed. The better and more prosperous the community, 310 00:28:09.120 --> 00:28:12.000 the worse for the common-wheelers. 311 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:17.120 I spoke of this to some of the more thoughtful men. They had noted the fact and made nothing 312 00:28:17.120 --> 00:28:23.760 of it. Then I spoke of it to one of the tramps who knew the technique of begging. He said, 313 00:28:23.760 --> 00:28:47.760 In those industrial communities where class distinctions had arisen, that is to say, where poverty and affluence were separately self-conscious, the police invariably were disagreeable, and the poor were enthusiastic over the common-wheelers. 314 00:28:47.760 --> 00:28:53.560 At Allegheny, where the steel mill workers had long suffered from unemployment, the army 315 00:28:53.560 --> 00:29:02.680 received a large white silk banner, lettered, Laws for Americans, More Money, Less Misery. 316 00:29:02.680 --> 00:29:07.560 Here there were several collisions between, on one side, the common-wheelers and their 317 00:29:07.560 --> 00:29:11.200 welcomeers, and, on the other, the police. 318 00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:14.960 At some towns, the army was not permitted to stop at all. 319 00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:20.300 and others, it was officially received with music, speeches and rejoicings. 320 00:29:20.300 --> 00:29:24.320 As these incidents became repetitious, they ceased to be news. 321 00:29:24.320 --> 00:29:29.560 Yet they were more important, merely by reason of recurring, than the bizarre happenings 322 00:29:29.560 --> 00:29:36.580 within the army, which, as newspaper correspondents, we were obliged competitively to emphasize. 323 00:29:36.580 --> 00:29:42.440 As for example, the quarrel between Brown and the bandmaster, the mutiny led by Smith 324 00:29:42.440 --> 00:29:48.280 the Great Unknown, the development of the reincarnation myth, and the increasing distaste 325 00:29:48.280 --> 00:29:51.280 for it among the disciples. 326 00:29:51.280 --> 00:29:55.300 The size of the army fluctuated with the state of the weather. 327 00:29:55.300 --> 00:30:00.680 Crossing the Blue Mountains by the icy Cumberland Road in a snowstorm was an act of fortitude 328 00:30:00.680 --> 00:30:03.320 almost heroic. 329 00:30:03.320 --> 00:30:05.880 Confidence in the leaders declined. 330 00:30:05.880 --> 00:30:09.240 Brown came to be treated with mild contempt. 331 00:30:09.240 --> 00:30:14.840 The line Christ and Coxie, which had been painted on the Commissariat Wagon, was almost 332 00:30:14.840 --> 00:30:16.320 too much. 333 00:30:16.320 --> 00:30:18.800 There was grumbling in the ranks. 334 00:30:18.800 --> 00:30:24.860 Everybody was discouraged when the expectation of great numbers had finally to be abandoned. 335 00:30:24.860 --> 00:30:30.780 Never did the roll exceed 500 men, not even after the memorable junction in Maryland with 336 00:30:30.780 --> 00:30:37.360 Christopher Columbus Jones, 48 men and a bulldog, from Philadelphia. 337 00:30:37.360 --> 00:30:43.360 But there was a cohesive principle somewhere. Nearly all of those who started from Masslin 338 00:30:43.360 --> 00:30:51.040 stuck to the very end. What held them together? Possibly a vague, heard sense of moving against 339 00:30:51.040 --> 00:30:57.760 something and a dogged reaction to ridicule. This feeling of againstness is sometimes stronger 340 00:30:57.760 --> 00:31:04.280 to unite men, especially unhappy men, than a feeling of forness. The thing that they 341 00:31:04.280 --> 00:31:23.560 The climax was pitiably futile. 342 00:31:23.560 --> 00:31:30.320 Two self-mongering reincarnations of Christ, both fresh and clean, having knighted in decent 343 00:31:30.320 --> 00:31:38.320 Hotel, led 400 Draggletail men into Washington and up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol grounds. 344 00:31:38.320 --> 00:31:46.320 Enormous, humiliated crowds looking on. Brown dismounted and leaped over the low stone wall. 345 00:31:46.320 --> 00:31:56.320 Coxie tried to make a speech. Both were good-naturedly arrested for trespassing on the public grass and violating a police ordinance. 346 00:31:56.320 --> 00:32:01.920 The leaderless men wandered back to a campsite that had been mercifully loaned. 347 00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:12.320 For a time they dully subsisted upon charity, ceased altogether to be news, and gradually vanished away. 348 00:32:12.320 --> 00:32:14.120 4. 349 00:32:14.120 --> 00:32:21.320 Though the army of the common-wheel of Christ was dead, and Coxie himself was now a pusillanimous figure, 350 00:32:21.320 --> 00:32:24.880 Coccyism survived in a formidable manner. 351 00:32:24.880 --> 00:32:29.340 The term was current in newspaper language, and the country seemed to be full of those 352 00:32:29.340 --> 00:32:34.420 forms of social insubordination which it was meant to signify. 353 00:32:34.420 --> 00:32:39.900 In the West, rudely organized bands, some of them armed and strong enough to overwhelm 354 00:32:39.900 --> 00:32:44.540 the police of the cities through which they passed, were running amok. 355 00:32:44.540 --> 00:32:46.740 They bore no petition in boots. 356 00:32:46.740 --> 00:32:49.180 They were impatient and headlong. 357 00:32:49.180 --> 00:32:52.140 One of their pastimes was train stealing. 358 00:32:52.140 --> 00:32:59.260 They would seize a railroad train, overpower the crew and oblige themselves to outlaw transportation, 359 00:32:59.260 --> 00:33:04.700 and the railroad people, fearful of accidents, would clear the way to let them through. 360 00:33:04.700 --> 00:33:09.940 It was very exciting for men who had nothing else to do, and rather terrifying to the forces 361 00:33:09.940 --> 00:33:12.180 of law and order. 362 00:33:12.180 --> 00:33:15.340 Public opinion was distracted and outraged. 363 00:33:15.340 --> 00:33:19.980 Some said, put down coxiaism, put it down with a strong hand. 364 00:33:19.980 --> 00:33:24.380 To treat it tenderly is to encourage lawlessness. 365 00:33:24.380 --> 00:33:30.180 Others said, you may be able to put down coxiaism by force, but you will sometime have to answer 366 00:33:30.180 --> 00:33:35.320 the questions it has raised, better now than later. 367 00:33:35.320 --> 00:33:38.780 There was a great swell of radical thought in the country. 368 00:33:38.780 --> 00:33:44.680 The populist party, representing a blind sense of revolt, had elected four men to the Senate 369 00:33:44.680 --> 00:33:50.120 and Eleven to the House of Representatives. Many newspapers and magazines were aligned 370 00:33:50.120 --> 00:33:59.200 with the agitators, all asking the same questions. Why hunger in a land of plenty? Why unemployment? 371 00:33:59.200 --> 00:34:04.180 Why was the economic machine making this frightful noise? 372 00:34:04.180 --> 00:34:09.420 The federal and state governments were afraid to act effectively against coxiaism because 373 00:34:09.420 --> 00:34:13.960 was too many people sympathized with it, secretly or openly. 374 00:34:13.960 --> 00:34:16.780 It was partly a state of nerves. 375 00:34:16.780 --> 00:34:22.580 Writers in the popular periodicals and in some of the solemn reviews laid it on red. 376 00:34:22.580 --> 00:34:26.300 In Coxie's march they saw an historic parallel. 377 00:34:26.300 --> 00:34:32.540 In almost the same way, five hundred volunteers, knowing how to die, had marched from Marseille 378 00:34:32.540 --> 00:34:37.940 to Paris with questions that could not be answered and gave the French Revolution a 379 00:34:37.940 --> 00:34:41.100 A Hymn that Shook the World 380 00:34:41.100 --> 00:34:44.140 Human distress was first-page news. 381 00:34:44.140 --> 00:34:50.340 The New York world gave away a million loaves of bread and whooped up its circulation. 382 00:34:50.340 --> 00:34:55.560 The New York Herald solicited donations of clothing, which it distributed in large quantities 383 00:34:55.560 --> 00:34:58.020 to the ragged. 384 00:34:58.020 --> 00:35:03.220 On the train from Washington to New York, I found men continually wrangling in fierce 385 00:35:03.220 --> 00:35:07.460 heat about money, tariffs and coxiaism. 386 00:35:07.460 --> 00:35:13.180 I was surprised to hear Wall Street attacked by well-dressed, apparently prosperous men 387 00:35:13.180 --> 00:35:18.180 in the very phrases with which the Coxieites had filled my ears. 388 00:35:18.180 --> 00:35:22.580 Nobody by any chance ever stood in defense of Wall Street. 389 00:35:22.580 --> 00:35:28.340 But there were those who denounced the Coxieites and populists intemperately. 390 00:35:28.340 --> 00:35:30.600 Everybody denounced something. 391 00:35:30.600 --> 00:35:33.540 Nobody was for anything. 392 00:35:33.540 --> 00:35:37.340 National morale was in a very low state. 393 00:35:37.340 --> 00:35:43.000 In the smoking compartment, two men, behaving as old acquaintances, quarreled interminably 394 00:35:43.000 --> 00:35:49.600 and with so much dialectical skill that an audience gathered to listen in respectful silence. 395 00:35:49.600 --> 00:35:55.200 One was a neat clerical-looking person whose anxieties were unrelieved by any glimpse of 396 00:35:55.200 --> 00:35:57.520 humor or fancy. 397 00:35:57.520 --> 00:36:03.140 The other was carelessly dressed, spilt cigar ashes over his clothes unawares, and had a 398 00:36:03.140 --> 00:36:14.140 He had a way of putting out his tongue and laughing at himself dryly if the argument went momentarily against him or when he had adroitly delivered himself from a tight place. 399 00:36:14.140 --> 00:36:18.140 He was the elder of the two. He was saying, 400 00:36:18.140 --> 00:36:26.140 Because men are out of work, they do not lose their rights as citizens to petition Congress in any peaceable manner. 401 00:36:26.140 --> 00:36:32.140 Your low tariff is the cause of unemployment. There is the evidence, those cold smokestacks. 402 00:36:32.140 --> 00:36:36.140 He pointed to them. We were passing through Wilmington. 403 00:36:36.140 --> 00:36:41.140 The importation of cheap foreign goods has shut our factories up. 404 00:36:41.140 --> 00:36:45.140 You retort by calling the unemployed tramps. 405 00:36:45.140 --> 00:36:51.140 It was the high Republican tariff that made the people soft and helpless, said the other. 406 00:36:51.140 --> 00:36:58.140 For years you taught them that good times resulted not from industry and self-reliance, but from laws. 407 00:36:58.140 --> 00:37:01.140 That prosperity was created by law. 408 00:37:01.140 --> 00:37:23.140 Now you reap the fruit. You put money into the pockets of the manufacturers by high tariffs. The people know this. Now they say, fill our pockets, too. It's quite consistent. But it's socialism. That's what all this coxiaism is, a filthy eruption of socialism, and the Republican Party is responsible. 409 00:37:23.140 --> 00:37:31.140 You forget to tell what has become of the jobs, the other said. All they want is work to do. Where is the work? 410 00:37:31.140 --> 00:37:47.140 These coxeyites, the other retorted, are a lot of strolling beggars. They refuse work. They enjoy marching through the country in mobs, living without work, doing in groups what as individuals they would not dare to do for fear of police and dogs. 411 00:37:47.140 --> 00:37:55.140 and the Republican Party encourages them in this criminality because it needs a high-tariff argument. 412 00:37:55.140 --> 00:38:00.140 At this point, an impulse injected me into the discussion. 413 00:38:00.140 --> 00:38:05.140 You are wrong about the Coxieites, I said. At least as to those from Masslin. 414 00:38:05.140 --> 00:38:13.140 I marched with them all the way. A few were tramps. There were no criminals. A great majority of them cloyed. 415 00:38:13.140 --> 00:38:21.140 Both of them stared at me, and I went on for a long time, not knowing how to stop and wishing I hadn't begun. 416 00:38:21.140 --> 00:38:29.140 The younger man heard me through with a bored air and turned away, but the other asked me some questions and thanked me for my information. 417 00:38:29.140 --> 00:38:37.140 The episode closed suddenly. We were running into the Jersey City Railroad terminal on the west bank of the Hudson River, 418 00:38:37.140 --> 00:38:42.260 and all fellow traveller contacts began to break up without ceremony in the commotion 419 00:38:42.260 --> 00:38:43.940 of arrival. 420 00:38:43.940 --> 00:38:48.620 I saw no more of the disputants and forgot them entirely in the thrill of approaching 421 00:38:48.620 --> 00:38:51.240 New York for the first time. 422 00:38:51.240 --> 00:38:53.360 It was early evening. 423 00:38:53.360 --> 00:38:58.260 Slowly I made headway up the platform against the tide of New Jersey commuters returning 424 00:38:58.260 --> 00:38:59.800 from work. 425 00:38:59.800 --> 00:39:05.100 With a scuffling roar of feet and no vocal sound whatever, they came racing through the 426 00:39:05.100 --> 00:39:11.740 The terminal in one buffalo mass, then divided into hasty streams, flowed along the platforms 427 00:39:11.740 --> 00:39:17.300 and boarded the westbound trains, strangely at ease with extraordinary burdens, such as 428 00:39:17.300 --> 00:39:24.860 reels of hoes, boxes of tomato plants, rakes, scythes, hand cultivators, bags of bulbs, 429 00:39:24.860 --> 00:39:28.340 carpentering tools and bits of lumber. 430 00:39:28.340 --> 00:39:33.780 Beating my way up the current, wondering how so many people came, by what means they could 431 00:39:33.780 --> 00:39:40.620 be delivered in such numbers continuously, I came presently into view of the cataract. 432 00:39:40.620 --> 00:39:45.580 Great double-decked ferry boats packed to the rails with self-loading and unloading 433 00:39:45.580 --> 00:39:52.440 cargoes were arriving two or three at a time and berthing in slips which lay side by side 434 00:39:52.440 --> 00:39:56.200 in a long row like horse stalls. 435 00:39:56.200 --> 00:40:02.580 We the eastbound passengers from the Washington train gathered at one of the empty slips. 436 00:40:02.580 --> 00:40:09.460 Through the gates I saw a patch of water. Suddenly a stealthy mass upheaved, hesitated, 437 00:40:09.460 --> 00:40:15.460 then made up its mind and came ahead on with terrific momentum. At the breathless moment 438 00:40:15.460 --> 00:40:21.020 the engines were reversed, there was a gnashing of waters and the boat came fast with a soft 439 00:40:21.020 --> 00:40:28.080 bump. The gates burst open and the people decanted themselves with a headlong rush. 440 00:40:28.080 --> 00:40:34.080 We stood tight against the wall to let them pass. As the tail of the spill filed by we 441 00:40:34.080 --> 00:40:39.060 were sent aboard, the gates banged too behind us, and the boat was off toward the other 442 00:40:39.060 --> 00:40:46.800 shore for another load. This was before the unromantic convenience of Hudson River tunnels. 443 00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:53.280 I stood on the bow to have my first look at New York. One's inner sense does not perceive 444 00:40:53.280 --> 00:41:11.280 A wide mile of opal water, pulsatile, thrilling to itself in a languorous ancient way, and 445 00:41:11.280 --> 00:41:13.600 so indifferent. 446 00:41:13.600 --> 00:41:16.280 Indifference was its immemorial character. 447 00:41:16.280 --> 00:41:21.320 I watched the things that walked upon it, four-eyed, double-ended ferry boats with no 448 00:41:21.320 --> 00:41:27.840 No fore or aft, like those monsters of the myth that never turned around. Tugs like mighty 449 00:41:27.840 --> 00:41:35.080 percherons dragging sledges in a string. A loitering hyena marked dynamite, much to be 450 00:41:35.080 --> 00:41:42.640 avoided. Behemoths of the deep, helpless in this thoroughfare led by hosers from the nose. 451 00:41:42.640 --> 00:41:49.460 Sore-footed scows with one-pole rigs and dressy high-heeled pleasure craft. The river was 452 00:41:49.460 --> 00:41:55.880 Was as unregardful of all these tooting, hooting, hissing improvisations as of the natural fish, 453 00:41:55.880 --> 00:42:01.460 the creaking gulls, or those swift and ceaseless patterns woven of the light which seem to 454 00:42:01.460 --> 00:42:06.420 play upon its surface and are not really there. 455 00:42:06.420 --> 00:42:14.420 Beyond was that to which all this hubbub appertained, the city, sudden epic, man's forethought of 456 00:42:14.420 --> 00:42:19.500 escape, his refuge, his self-overwhelming integration. 457 00:42:19.500 --> 00:42:22.500 Anything may happen in a city. 458 00:42:22.500 --> 00:42:29.900 Career is there, success is there, failure, anguish, horror, women, hell and heaven. 459 00:42:29.900 --> 00:42:33.340 One has the sense of moral fibers loosening. 460 00:42:33.340 --> 00:42:37.780 Lust of conquest stirs, the spirit of adventure flames. 461 00:42:37.780 --> 00:42:45.020 A city is a tilting field, unknown, self-named, anyone may enter, cast his challenge where 462 00:42:45.020 --> 00:42:47.900 he will and take the consequences. 463 00:42:47.900 --> 00:42:54.300 The penalties are worse than fatal, the rewards are what you will. 464 00:42:54.300 --> 00:42:57.320 New York, I said. 465 00:42:57.320 --> 00:43:03.860 It stood against the eastern sky, a pure illusion, a rhythmic mass without weight or substance 466 00:43:03.860 --> 00:43:06.700 in the haze of a Mayday evening. 467 00:43:06.700 --> 00:43:12.060 The shadows of twilight were rising like a mist. Everything of average height already 468 00:43:12.060 --> 00:43:17.540 was submerged. Some of the very tall buildings still had the light above, and their upper 469 00:43:17.540 --> 00:43:22.460 windows were a gleam with reflections of the sunset. 470 00:43:22.460 --> 00:43:29.460 Seething city, so full of life, transacting potently and yet so still. A thin grey shell, 471 00:43:29.840 --> 00:43:36.680 a fragile show, a profile raised in time and space, a challenge to the elements. They take 472 00:43:36.680 --> 00:43:51.600 New York, I said again, out loud. 473 00:43:51.600 --> 00:43:57.600 A man who must have been standing close beside me for some time spoke suddenly, without salutation 474 00:43:57.600 --> 00:43:59.840 or word of prelude. 475 00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:01.840 You were with Coxie's army? 476 00:44:01.840 --> 00:44:13.840 Yes, I said, turning to look at him. I recognized him as a man who sat in one corner of the smoking compartment, listening in an attentive, though supercilious manner, and never spoke. 477 00:44:13.840 --> 00:44:20.840 Wasn't there plenty to eat? he asked in a truculent tone. People were very generous along the way. 478 00:44:20.840 --> 00:44:25.840 Wasn't there plenty to eat? he asked, repeating the question aggressively. 479 00:44:25.840 --> 00:44:28.840 There was generally enough, and sometimes plenty, I replied. 480 00:44:28.840 --> 00:44:34.240 said, then I added, rather sharply, I have no case to prove for the coxiites, if that's 481 00:44:34.240 --> 00:44:39.640 what you think. I know you haven't, he said. I have no case to make against them, either. 482 00:44:39.640 --> 00:44:45.560 They are out of work. That's bad. But people who will ask need not be hungry. You can cut 483 00:44:45.560 --> 00:44:51.300 that out. The unemployed eat. You've seen it. Do the ravens feed them? 484 00:44:51.300 --> 00:44:57.720 What are you driving at? I asked. They all eat, he repeated. Ain't that extraordinary? 485 00:44:57.720 --> 00:45:03.320 doesn't seem so to me, I said, they have to eat. Oh, do they? he said. You can eat 486 00:45:03.320 --> 00:45:09.560 merely because you have to, can you? Suppose there wasn't anything to eat. 487 00:45:09.560 --> 00:45:14.440 He was turning away with his feathers up, as if he had carried the argument, but I detained 488 00:45:14.440 --> 00:45:20.680 him. All right, I said, there is not enough work, but plenty to eat. We'll suppose it. 489 00:45:20.680 --> 00:45:23.080 What does that prove? 490 00:45:23.080 --> 00:45:28.520 Seeing me intently, with some new interest, he hesitated, not as to what he would say, 491 00:45:28.520 --> 00:45:31.400 but as to whether he should bother to say it. 492 00:45:31.400 --> 00:45:35.640 It proves, he said, that the country is rich. 493 00:45:35.640 --> 00:45:36.780 Nobody knows it. 494 00:45:36.780 --> 00:45:38.240 Nobody will believe it. 495 00:45:38.240 --> 00:45:43.200 The country is so rich that people may actually live without work. 496 00:45:43.200 --> 00:45:46.680 That's an interesting point of view, I said. 497 00:45:46.680 --> 00:45:48.040 Who are you? 498 00:45:48.040 --> 00:45:52.440 Nobody, he replied with an oblique sneer, a member of the stock exchange. 499 00:45:53.400 --> 00:45:59.480 Oh, I said, before I could catch it. And not to leave the conversation in that lurch, I asked, 500 00:46:00.040 --> 00:46:03.800 Do you know who those two men were who wrangled in the smoking compartment? 501 00:46:04.760 --> 00:46:09.880 Editors, he replied cynically. The younger one was Godkin of the Post. 502 00:46:09.880 --> 00:46:14.360 I've forgotten the other one's name. Silly magpies. Politics hell. 503 00:46:14.360 --> 00:46:20.880 At that instant the ferry boat bumped into her slip. The petulant man screwed his head 504 00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:26.920 half round, jerked a come-along nod to a girl who had been standing just behind us and stalked 505 00:46:26.920 --> 00:46:29.920 off in a mild brain fit. 506 00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:35.320 I had not noticed the girl before. She passed me to overtake her father, I supposed it was 507 00:46:35.320 --> 00:46:41.760 her father, and in passing she gave me a look which made me both hot and cold at once. It 508 00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:48.480 left me astonished, humiliated and angry. It was a full, open, estimating look, too 509 00:46:48.480 --> 00:46:54.160 impervious to be returned as it deserved, and much too impersonal to be rude. It was 510 00:46:54.160 --> 00:47:00.680 worse than rude. I was an object and not a person. It occurred to me that either or both 511 00:47:00.680 --> 00:47:06.440 of us might have been stark nude and it would not have made the slightest difference. 512 00:47:06.440 --> 00:47:11.480 For a moment I thought I must have been mistaken, that she was not a girl but a man-hardened 513 00:47:11.480 --> 00:47:17.320 and Women. I followed them for some distance, and she was unmistakably a girl, probably 514 00:47:17.320 --> 00:47:23.720 under twenty, audaciously lithe and flexible. She walked without touching her father, if 515 00:47:23.720 --> 00:47:29.960 he were that. He was a small man, wearing a soft hat a little down on one side, and 516 00:47:29.960 --> 00:47:36.320 moved with a bantam egregious stride. One hand he carried deep in his trouser's pocket, 517 00:47:36.320 --> 00:47:41.440 which gave him a slight lift to the right, for his arms were short. The skirts of his 518 00:47:41.440 --> 00:47:47.320 His overcoat fluttered in the wind, and his left arm swung in an arc. 519 00:47:47.320 --> 00:47:53.280 Presently I lost them, and that was all of it. But this experience, apparently so trivial, 520 00:47:53.280 --> 00:47:59.320 cost me all other sensations of first contact with New York. I wandered about for several 521 00:47:59.320 --> 00:48:05.160 hours complaining that all cities are alike. I had dinner, and the food was like food anywhere 522 00:48:05.160 --> 00:48:12.160 My last thought was, why did she look at me at all? Her eyes were dark carnelian.