That Both Men And Women Need Rest Very Badly A Glance At The Crowded
Hotel Tables Makes Plain - So Plain,
Indeed, that the foreigner who has
not been taught that fuss and worry are in themselves honourable wishes
sometimes he
Could put the whole unrestful crowd to sleep for seventeen
hours a day. I have inquired of not less than five hundred men and women
in various parts of the States why they broke down and looked so gash.
And the men said: 'If you don't keep up with the procession in America
you are left'; and the women smiled an evil smile and answered that no
outsider yet had discovered the real cause of their worry and strain, or
why their lives were arranged to work with the largest amount of
friction in the shortest given time. Now, the men can be left to their
own folly, but the cause of the women's trouble has been revealed to me.
It is the thing called 'Help' which is no help. In the multitude of
presents that the American man has given to the American woman (for
details see daily papers) he has forgotten or is unable to give her good
servants, and that sordid trouble runs equally through the household of
the millionaire or the flat of the small city man. 'Yes, it's easy
enough to laugh,' said one woman passionately, 'we are worn out, and our
children are worn out too, and we're always worrying, I know it. What
can we do? If you stay here you'll know that this is the land of all
the luxuries and none of the necessities. You'll know and then you won't
laugh. You'll know why women are said to take their husbands to
boarding-houses and never have homes. You'll know what an Irish Catholic
means. The men won't get up and attend to these things, but we would.
If we had female suffrage, we'd shut the door to all the Irish and
throw it open to all the Chinese, and let the women have a little
protection.' It was the cry of a soul worn thin with exasperation, but
it was truth. To-day I do not laugh any more at the race that depends on
inefficient helot races for its inefficient service. When next you,
housekeeping in England, differ with the respectable, amiable,
industrious sixteen-pound maid, who wears a cap and says 'Ma'am,'
remember the pauper labour of America - the wives of the sixty million
kings who have no subjects. No man could get a thorough knowledge of the
problem in one lifetime, but he could guess at the size and the import
of it after he has descended into the arena and wrestled with the Swede
and the Dane and the German and the unspeakable Celt. Then he perceives
how good for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself to
pieces in naked competition with his neighbour while his wife struggles
unceasingly over primitive savagery in the kitchen. In India sometimes
when a famine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your eyes
in all its bareness and bitter stress. Here, in spite of the trimmings
and the frillings, it refuses to be subdued and the clamour and the
clatter of it are loud above all other sounds - as sometimes the thunder
of disorganised engines stops conversations along the decks of a liner,
and in the inquiring eyes of the passengers you read the question - 'This
thing is made and paid to bear us to port quietly. Why does it not do
so?' Only here, the rattle of the badly-put-together machine is always
in the ears, though men and women run about with labour-saving
appliances and gospels of 'power through repose,' tinkering and oiling
and making more noise. The machine is new. Some day it is going to be
the finest machine in the world. To the ranks of the amateur artificers,
therefore, are added men with notebooks tapping at every nut and
bolthead, fiddling with the glands, registering revolutions, and crying
out from time to time that this or that is or is not 'distinctively
American.' Meantime, men and women die unnecessarily in the wheels, and
they are said to have fallen 'in the battle of life.'
The God Who sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that
battle, but we do not, and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts
and the wheel that breaks us, as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships
Lal-Beg the Glorified Broom that is the incarnation of his craft. But
the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself, and to be proud of it,
with sweeping.
A foreigner can do little good by talking of these things; for the same
lean dry blood that breeds the fever of unrest breeds also the savage
parochial pride that squeals under a steady stare or a pointed finger.
Among themselves the people of the Eastern cities admit that they and
their womenfolk overwork grievously and go to pieces very readily, and
that the consequences for the young stock are unpleasant indeed; but
before the stranger they prefer to talk about the future of their mighty
continent (which has nothing to do with the case) and to call aloud on
Baal of the Dollars - to catalogue their lines, mines, telephones, banks,
and cities, and all the other shells, buttons, and counters that they
have made their Gods over them. Now a nation does not progress upon its
brain-pan, as some books would have us believe, but upon its belly as
did the Serpent of old; and in the very long run the work of the brain
comes to be gathered in by a slow-footed breed that have unimaginative
stomachs and the nerves that know their place.
All this is very consoling from the alien's point of view. He perceives,
with great comfort, that out of strain is bred impatience in the shape
of a young bundle of nerves, who is about as undisciplined an imp as the
earth can show.
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