“The Dutch Company.”
Arnhem, August 5th.
This is the “last chance” station in Holland. About ten miles more and we cross the line into Germany. This is also the only hilly part of Holland, and it really is a surprise to find that somewhere in this little country there are neither canals nor dikes. The river Rhine flows here with some current, and the official documents say that at Arnhem it is 35 feet above the level of the sea. Right sharp little hills, as big as those about Strong City, rise from the river bank, and are covered with woods and handsome homes. Queen Wilhelmina has her summer residence near here, and Dutch colonials, who have made their fortunes and returned to the native land, are fond of this small and elevated piece of Netherland. The Dutch make a great deal of money out of their East India colonies, one of which is Java. They are not so much interested in preparing the Javanese or the Mochans for the work of self-government as our folks are the Filipinos. The Dutch theory is to treat the natives kindly but make them work as the dogs do in Holland. And the Javanese or the Javans, or whatever you call them, are too busy to get dissatisfied and plan revolutions. This question of what to do with the white man’s burden is a hard one to settle offhand. The brown people do not understand the American motives, and the Americans are probably the most detested people in the Orient. And yet the Americans are the only conquering nation which does not regard colonies as personal property and which tries to elevate the citizenship it finds. The English hold India by fear, but some day the English are going to be chased out of that part of Asia by the Indians they try to keep down. The other European nations make no bones of the fact that they own and operate their foreign possessions for what they can get out of them.
A Hollander makes a very strong American when he is caught young. On shipboard I made the acquaintance of a young man about 25 years old who had been in America nine years, and was now going to his birthplace, The Hague, on business for the Chicago firm with which he is connected. I met him in The Hague this week. He wore a western cowboy hat, had a small American flag in his button-hole, and wore no vest. The stories he was telling about the United States to his Dutch friends showed that he would have made a success as a real-estate man if he had settled in western Kansas. And the manner in which he did not take off his hat when he met a doctor or a lawyer or a duke or a notary public was shocking to his family, but was sweet American patriotism to him. He was still loyal to Holland, but he would not trade his new home with its opportunities for all the comforts of canals and clean streets. “You see,” he said, “in Holland every man has to take off his hat to those above him—and there are always those above him.” Of course we have classes, in a way, in our country, but a man never has to take off his hat or pay homage to another man, and the real American, home-grown or imported, can’t get that feeling of equality out of his system. I think the Europeans must grow very tired of us Americans, our blustering ways and bragging talk, but they are kind enough not to mention it so long as our money holds out.
Passenger fares on trains are cheaper in Holland than with us. But of course their railroad business is really like an interurban street-car system. Freight rates are higher than with us. The wages paid railway employés run from 60 cents a day to section hands up to $2 a day for an engineer—just about one-third to one-half our schedule. The service is good, the stations and tracks are better, every little country road-crossing is protected by a flagman or a flagwoman. Of course the canals and rivers do so much of the carrying business, and distances are so small, that comparisons are hard to make. There is no such thing in Holland as a sandwich or a piece of pie, and yet there are very successful and excellent lunch-rooms in every station. The first-and second-class passengers usually have a lunch-room with upholstered furniture, while the third-class travelers are compelled to use wooden benches or stand up, a la Americaner. The first-class railroad cars are fitted out with plush, and there are sometimes toilet accommodations on the cars. The second-class cars are comfortably upholstered; the third-class have plain seats like our street cars. But remember you can go clear across Holland in a couple of hours, and do not need some of the comforts which are considered necessities in America.
The Dutch are great on fixing things comfortably and neatly. If the beautiful Cow Creek which winds its way through Hutchinson were transferred to a Dutch town it would be diked, the banks graded and covered with grass and flowers and trees. The government would do this, and would put seats along the little park, and a band-stand from which music would be heard, and swings for the children, and almost every block there would be a “garden” with tables and all the beer you could drink—if you were Dutch—for two cents. And the Government would make a nice profit out of the restaurant business and go ahead and dike another stream.
The Dutchman is a great business man. He works and saves and then he is not afraid to spend—if he has a sure thing. I have seen a business man smoking a cigarette, take out of his vest pocket a pair of scissors, snip off the burning end and put the unconsumed half of a cigarette back in his case. No Dutchman is afraid to demand cheap prices while traveling at home. The average American who goes through Europe with the theory of spending his money like a sport must fill the Dutchman with disgust. You don’t impress the Hollanders that way. On the other hand, these Dutchmen will investigate and spend barrels of money on dikes, drains, railroads, buildings and large investments in all parts of the world. I suppose the almost penurious saving comes from the fight with the sea, in which everything had to be watched and worked for, while the ability to handle big affairs results from the consciousness of having wrested a lot of land from the ocean and having made good with it.
The Dutch are proverbially honest. Of course I have been over-charged some, but I have never been anywhere on either side of the Atlantic where the rule was not observed, “he was a stranger and I took him in.” They hold a visitor up much more in Kansas City than in Amsterdam, and a man from Kansas who goes to New York is not even given the protection of the game laws. In fact, a stranger who does not know the language is treated much better in Europe than in America. I have often had a man walk half a block to show me the way when I could not understand his words. I say “walk a block,” but there is no such phrase in Dutch. There are no regular sized blocks, so a direction is given as “five minutes” or “two minutes, then to the right three minutes.” That is supposed to mean an average walk; but as legs differ in size and rapidity it is often confusing. I am told in the rural districts a distance is given as so many smokes, meaning the number of pipefuls of tobacco that a Dutchman would consume in going that far. But I have discovered that in Holland a pipe is a rarity. The men smoke cigars and smoke them incessantly. They are cheap. I get a good cigar, equivalent to a Tom Moore, for two cents American money. When I buy cigars I want to stay in Holland. But practically everything except cigars, beer and wooden shoes costs as much here as in the United States. Yes, there is one thing that costs less, and that is labor. Therefore hand-carved wood, hand-crocheted lace, hand-made shoes, tailored clothes, and houses are less expensive than with us. The more I see of a country where everything labor produces is cheap, the more I am in favor of high prices and good wages. Holland is probably the best country in Europe for a laboring man, but I don’t see how one can get ahead, unless he does without meat and wears the same suit for years, and his family economize the same way. Here in the land of cheese and butter, both articles are out of reach and the workingman uses “margarine.”
But now it is goodby to the land of the dikes, the canals, the windmills and the wooden shoes. They are all here as advertised, and they color the lives of the people as they do the landscape of the country. To the eye they are artistic and beautiful, but in practice they are common, plain necessities, and in these signs the Dutch have conquered.