They climb the steps of the elevated railway trains, and crowd them, and cram the cars until they fairly bulge.
They lay siege to the surface cars, which merely crawl through the busy streets, so heavy are they and so closely does one car follow the other.
They descend into the depths of the earth, and breathe the humid, human air of those noisy catacombs. They walk by companies, regiments, and great armies, dodging automobiles which infest the streets with their speed and their stenches.
They accomplish it all with so little friction to each other’s spirit, with such a silent good nature, with such a sense of self-reliance, and with so little official machinery to control them, that even the Herr Director said:
“This is wonderful!” although he declared that he would suffocate in that throng, and the Frau Directorin cried out every few minutes, “Um Gottes Himmels Willen!”
There was an absence of politeness, but we saw little rudeness; there were accidents, but the crowd did not lose its head; there were discomforts, but little display of ill nature; each for himself, and yet no clashing. The American crowd is more wonderful than the American sky-scrapers.
At the Royal Opera in Vienna, the approach to the ticket office is guarded by steel inclosures in which every prospective buyer is separated from the other, and one has to zigzag between these pens until he reaches the official’s window. Crowding is rendered impossible, but, to make the obviously impossible more actually impossible, there is the usual number of uniformed guards.
Watch the American crowd—this group of unlike, self-centered individuals; in a moment it is organized, it obeys itself—or rather, it obeys its spirit, the American spirit of self-direction, with its genius for organization.
To me, the American crowd is so wonderful because it shows this other side of its spirit. It is heterogeneous, like the architecture of its buildings, perhaps even more so—if that be possible.
Here are Jews from Russia’s crowded Pale, where they had to slink along with shuffling gait and dared go so far and no farther—so fast and no faster.