Part 6 (1/2)
American merchants would then demand an explanation from the Department of State, and finally we could announce that we preferred to buy from our friends, American treatment of the Chinese being inimical to good feeling. Knowing the American business men as I do, you could count on a wail coming up from them. An appeal would be made to Congress through representatives and senators, the American business men demanding that the ”Chinese matter” be arranged upon a ”more liberal basis.” When you touch the pocketbook of ”Uncle Sam” you reach his earthquake center; yet for defense, for the preservation of the national honor, this people will spend untold sums. The American Government bond is the best security in the world. It is founded on the rock of honor and patriotism. And there is no repudiation like that of ----, and none like the pretended one of ----.[12] We have our faults, and it is well to recognize them; but I never saw them until I mingled with the English and Americans.
There is of course a large foreign element in the American army--thousands of Irish and Germans; but this does not signify, as I learn that in the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, the stronghold of Americans, the Irish hold a third of the official positions, the native-born Yankees about one-fourth. This is particularly exasperating to old families in New England, as it is notorious that the Irish come directly from the very dregs of the poverty-stricken peasantry--the ”bog-trotters.” I was much impressed by the high standard of honor in the army and navy, and am told that it is the rarest of occurrences for a regular army officer to commit a crime or to default. This is due to the training received at the military and naval schools, where young men are placed on their honor.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] China has twice repudiated its Government bonds within four centuries.
CHAPTER XIV
ART IN AMERICA
It is seldom that I have been complimented in America, but a lady has told me that she envied our ”art sense.” She said the Chinese are essentially artistic, that the cheapest thing, the most ordinary article, is artistic or beautiful. I wished that I could return the compliment, but a strict observance of the truth compels me to say that the reverse is true in America. If one go into a Chinese shop and ask for any ordinary article, it will be found artistic. If one go into an American shop, say a hardware ”store,” there will not be found an article that would be considered decorative, while everything in a Chinese shop of like character would fall under this head. The conclusion is that the Chinese are artistic, while the Americans are not.
The reason lies in the fact that the Chinese are h.o.m.ogeneous, while the Americans are a mixed race, that is injured by the continual introduction of baser elements. If immigration could be stopped for fifty years, and the people have a chance to acquire ”oneness,” they might become artistic. The middle cla.s.s, however, is, from an artistic standpoint, a horror; they have absolutely no art sense, and the _nouveaux riches_ are often as bad. The latter sometimes place their money in the hands of an agent, who buys for them; but all at once a man may break out and insist upon buying something himself, so that in a splendid collection of European names will appear some artistic horror to stamp the owner as a parvenu.
The Americans have not produced a great painter. By this I mean a really great artist, nor have they a great sculptor, one who is or has been an inspiration. But they have thousands of artists, and many poor ones thrive in selling their wares. You may see a man with an income of thirty thousand dollars having paintings on his walls that give one the vertigo. The poor artist has taken him in, or ”pulled his leg,” to use the latest American slang. There are some fine paintings in America. I have visited the great collections in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Was.h.i.+ngton, Chicago, and those in many private galleries, but the best of the pictures are always from England, France, Germany, and other European countries. Old masters are particularly revered. Americans pay enormous sums for them, but sometimes are deceived.
They have art schools by the hundred, where they study from the nude and from models of all kinds. There are splendid museums of art, especially in Boston and New York. The art interests are particularly active, but not the people; there are a few art lovers only, the people in the ma.s.s being hopeless. Cheap prints, chromos, and other deadly things are ground out by the million and sold, to clog still deeper the art sense of an inartistic people. They laugh at our conventional Chinese art, but the extreme of conventionality is certainly better than some of the daubs I have seen in American homes. Americans have peculiar fancies in art. One is called Impressionist Art. As near as I can understand it, painters claim that while you are looking at an object you do not really see it all, you merely gain an impression; so they paint only the impression. In a museum of art I was shown several rooms full of daubs, having absolutely nothing to commend them, weird colors being thrown together in the strangest manner, without rhyme or reason, but over which people went mad. The great masters of Europe appeal to me strongly. In America, marine painters attract me the most, for example, Edward Moran, who is a splendid delineator of the sea. Bierstadt is a n.o.ble painter, and so is Thomas Moran. There are half a hundred men who are fine painters, but half a thousand men and women who think they are artistic but who are not.
Americans have developed no individual architecture. You see semipaG.o.da-like effects in the East, and old English houses in the South. They steal the latter and call them Colonial. They steal the architecture of the Moors and call it Mexican. They borrow Roman and Grecian effects for great public buildings. At one time they went mad over the French roof, or mansard. Nowhere have I seen purely American architecture. The race is not possessed of sufficient unity. So all their art is from abroad, and notably is French and English. They make broad effects, and give them an American name; but they are copied from the Dutch or Germans. All the furniture designers in America are Europeans. You will find a splendid house with a Chinese room, having teak inlaid with ivory, etc.; a j.a.panese room, a Moorish room, and an Italian room, all splendidly decorated; but the family lives in an ”American room,” that is commonplace and subversive of all art digestion and a.s.similation. The average middle-cla.s.s American knows absolutely nothing about art; the lower cla.s.ses so little that their homes are hopeless. Knowing this, they are preyed upon by thousands of foreign swindlers. There are hundreds of articles manufactured in Europe to sell to the American tourist. I have seen Napoleonic furniture enough to load a fleet. I can only compare it to the pieces of the true cross and the holy relics of the Catholics, of which there are enough to fill the original ark which the Bible tells the Americans landed on Mount Ararat in a great flood.
The houses of the best people I have told you about are as far removed from the commonplace as the equator from the poles. They are rich in conception, sumptuous in detail, artistic in every way, and filled with the art gems of the world. But these people have descended from refined people for several generations. They are the true Americans, but make up a small number compared to the inartistic whole. I believe America recognizes this, and with her stupendous energy is doing everything to educate the ma.s.ses in art. They are building splendid museums; rich men give away millions. There are hundreds of art schools, free to all, and art is taught in all the schools. Fine monuments are placed in public squares and parks, and beautiful fountains and memorials in these and other public places. Their buildings, though foreign in design, are beautiful. In Boston one may see marvelous work in frescoes, etc., and in the Government buildings at Was.h.i.+ngton. The Capitol, while not American in design, is a pile worthy of the great people who erected it.
CHAPTER XV
THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM
The questions I know you will wish answered are, Whether this stupendous aggregation of States is a success? Does it possess advantages beyond those of the Chinese Empire? Does it fulfil the expectations of its own people? Frankly, I do not consider myself competent to answer. I have studied America and the Americans for many years during my visits to this country and Europe, and while I have seen many accounts of the country, written after several months of observation, I believe that no just estimate of the republican form of government can be formed after such experience. My private impression, however, is that the republic falls far short of what the men in Was.h.i.+ngton's time expected, and it is also my private opinion that it has not so many advantages as a government like that of England.
It is too splendid an organization to be lightly denounced. The idea of the equality of men is n.o.ble, and I would not wish to be arraigned among its critics. There is too much good to offset the bad. I have been attempting to amuse you by a.n.a.lyzing the Americans, pointing out their frailties as well as their good qualities. I tell you what I see as I run, always, I hope, remembering what is good in this spontaneous and open-hearted people. The characteristic claim of the people is that the Government offers freedom to its citizens; yet every man is quite as free in China if he behaves himself, and he can rise if he possesses brains.
Any native-born citizen in the United States may become the head of the nation has he the courage of his convictions, the many accomplishments which equip the great leader, and should the hour and the man meet opportunity. This is the one prize which distinguishes America from England. The latter in other respects offers exactly as much freedom with half the wear and tear; in fact, to me the freedom of America is one of her disadvantages. Every one knows, and the American best of all, that all men are _not equal_, never were and never can be. Yet this false doctrine is their standard, and they swear by it, though some will explain that what is meant is political freedom. Freedom accounts for the gross impertinence of the ignorant and lower cla.s.ses, the laughable a.s.sumptions of servants, and the illogical pretenses of the _nouveau riche_, which make America impossible to some people. Cultivated Americans are as thoroughly aristocratic as the n.o.bility of England.
There are the same cla.s.ses here as there. A grocer becomes rich and retires or dies; his children refuse to a.s.sociate with the families of other grocers; in a word, the Americans have the aristocratic feeling, but they have no peasant cla.s.s; the latter would be, in their own estimation, as good as any one. One cla.s.s, the lower and poorer, is arraigned against the upper and richer, and the gap is growing daily.
But this would not prove that the republic is a failure. What then? It is, in the opinion of many of its clergymen, a great moral failure. No nation in history has lasted many centuries after having developed the ”symptoms” now shown in the United States. I quote their own press, ”the States are morally rotten,” and you have but to turn to these organs and the magazines of the past decade, which make a feature of holding up the shortcomings of cities and millionaires, to read the details of the tragedy. Thieves--grafters--have seized upon the vitals of the country.
St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, great representative cities--what is their history? The story of dishonesty among officials, of bribery, stealing, and every possible crime that a man can devise to wring money from the people. This is no secret. It has all been exposed by the friends of morality. City governments are overthrown, the rascals are turned out, but in a few months the new officers are caught devising some new ”grafting” operation.
I have it from a prominent official that there is not an honest State or city administration in America. What can a nation say when for years it has known that a large and influential lobby has been maintained to influence statesmen, a lobby comprising a corps of ”persuaders” in the pay of business men? How do they influence them? The great fights waged to defeat certain measures are well known, and it is known that money was used. Certain congressmen have been notoriously receptive. I have seen the following story in print in many forms. I took the trouble to ask a well-known man if it was possible that it could be founded on fact; his reply was, ”Certainly it is a fact.” A briber entered the private room of a congressman. ”Mr. ----, to come right to the point, I want the ---- bill to pa.s.s, and I will give you five hundred dollars for the vote and your interest.” The congressman rose to his feet, purple with rage. ”You dare to offer me this insulting bribe? You infernal scoundrel, I will throw you out.” ”Well, suppose we make it one thousand,” said the imperturbable visitor. ”Well,” replied the congressman, cooling down, ”that is a little better put. We will talk it over.”
The American Government had been attempting, since 1859, to build a ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus. I believe surveys were made earlier than that, but bribery and corruption and ”graft” enabled the friends of transcontinental railroads to stop the ca.n.a.ls. It would be a disadvantage to the railroads to have a ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus. So in some mysterious way the ca.n.a.l, which the people wished, has not been built, and will not be until the people rise and demand it. Corruption has stood on the Isthmus with a flaming sword and struck down every attempt to build the ca.n.a.l. The morality of the people is low. Divorce is rampant, the daily journals are filled with accounts of divorces, and daily lists of crimes are printed that would seem impossible to a nation that can raise millions to send to China to convert the ”heathen.” If they would only divert these Chinese missionaries from China to their own heathen and grafters, but they will not. The peculiar freedom of the country, which is nothing less than the most atrocious license, tends to drag it down.
The papers have absolutely no check on their freedom. Men and women are attacked by them, ruined, held up to scorn and ridicule, and the victim has no recourse but to shoot the editor and thus embroil himself. That it is a crime to ridicule a man and make him the b.u.t.t of a nation or the world seems never to occur to these men. Certain statesmen have been so lampooned by the ”hired” libelers that they have been ruined. The press hires a cla.s.s of men, called cartoonists, usually ill-bred fellows of no standing, yet clever, in their business, whose duty it is to hold up public men to ridicule in every possible way and make them infamous before the people. This is called the freedom of the press, and its att.i.tude, or the sensational part of it, in presenting crime in an alluring manner, is having its effect upon the youth of the country.
Young girls and boys become familiar with every feature of b.e.s.t.i.a.l crime through the ”yellow journals,” so called, and that the republic will reap sorely from this sowing I venture to prophesy.
I asked one of the great insurance men why it was that great financial inst.i.tutions took so strong an interest in politics. He laughed, and said, ”If I am not mistaken, not long since your country repudiated its Government bonds, and they are not negotiable to any great extent among your people.” Hearing this I a.s.sumed the American att.i.tude and ”sawed wood.” ”We take an interest in politics,” he continued, ”to offset the professional blackmailer and thief. Now in the case of your repudiation I understand all about it. The Chinese Government was in straits, and suddenly some seemingly patriotic citizen started a pet.i.tion, stating to the Government that the subscribers offered their Government securities to the Government as a gift. By no means all the bondholders signed, but enough, I understand, to have justified your Government in repudiating the bonds--'at the request of the people'--thus destroying the national credit at home and abroad. Now in America that would be called 'graft.'
The act would be done by a few grafters in the hope of reward, or by some unscrupulous statesmen to save the Government from bankruptcy during their term of office. I conceive this to be what was done in China. If we do not keep eternal watch we shall be bled every day. It is done in this way: a grafter becomes an a.s.semblyman, and with others lays a plan of graft. It is to get up a bill, so offensive to our corporation that it would mean ruin if pa.s.sed. The grafter has no idea that it will pa.s.s, but it is made much of, and of course reaches our ears, and the question is how to stop it. We are finally told that we had better see Mr. ----, in our own city. He is accordingly looked up and found to be a cheap and ignorant politician, who, if there are no witnesses, tells our agent plainly that it can be stopped for ten thousand dollars. Perhaps we beat him down to eight thousand, but we pay it. Hundreds of firms have been blackmailed in this way. Now we keep an agent in the State Capitol to attend to our interests, and we take an interest in politics to head off the election of professional grafters.”