I know a good many Americans whose pedigrees run back close to Plymouth Rock. If some of them had let that check go in this way I should have loaded old Spot right on the truck and carried her home. Thomas knew this man and his reputation, and his way of doing business. He will pay, and in a few days of peddling he will pad out his bank account and then the check will go through. So we shook hands with him and came home. But that is the way “the other half liveth.” This man and woman came to a strange land too late in life to acquire a business education. They can work and plan, but must depend upon those little boys to do business which requires bookkeeping or banking. All the boys know about American business is what they learn at the public schools. I wish you could have seen the way that check was made out—yet any old piece of paper may be worth more than a gold-plated certificate if there is genuine character back of it. I am told that in most mill towns the banks carry a good many accounts just like this one; in fact, a good proportion of the business is conducted in about that way. It is said that some of the smaller manufacturers do not keep any set of books which enable them to figure their income tax! There are some men who could not buy a cow or a cat from us on credit, while others could have what credit they need right on their face and reputation.
There is another thing about this trade that will interest dairymen. We found old Spot giving about 18 quarts of milk per day, on a feed of green cornstalks and a little grain. This milk will sell for 18 cents, at least. The cow can live in that little shed until the middle of December, or about 120 days. In that time she will give 1,500 quarts or more, which, at 18 cents, means $270, and she can then be sold for at least $90 for beef! That makes $360 gross income for one cow in four months. Her feed will be mostly refuse tops and stalks from vegetables and a small amount of grain. She will be well cared for, carded and brushed every day, and made comfortable. Thus not half the cows know “how the other half liveth.” Someone will take these figures, multiply them by 25, and show what tremendous incomes our dairymen are making. The fact is this man can keep just one cow at a profit. If he kept two the extra cost of food would about eat up his profits. So we went whirling home through the dusk, thinking that we had had a glimpse at a little of the life of the other half, and it made me feel something more of charity for my fellow men. When you come to think of what the American public school means to that family, you realize the immense responsibility that goes with education. We can hardly be too careful about what our schools teach and how they teach it. I wonder how many of us, if we were transplanted to some foreign land, would be willing to turn our business over to our children and let them conduct it as they learned to do it from the schools! I think we would all be more tolerant and reasonable if we would let our children bring to us more of the spirit of youth and more of hope of the future. The rain had stopped, the sky had cleared, the wind had dried the grass, and on the lawn in front of the house our great army of children were dancing and playing as if there were no such thing as tomato rot, wet corn and low prices. I think that these handicaps would have seemed much lighter if we could have gone out and danced with the kids. I wonder where, along the road, we gave up doing that.
THE INDIANS WON
Thanksgiving is a time for physical feasting and mental fasting. By the latter I mean trying to think out some of the problems of life which come as a sort of shade when we remember all our mercies. A bunch of these problems came up to me through a cloud of memories as I sat with my feet on the concrete and my collar turned up.
It was a gray, raw, miserable day—good Indian weather as it turned out. It seemed as if the sun had covered its face with a blanket in one of those fits of depression when the impulse is to hide the face from human eyes. Some 12,000 people were grouped—piled up tier above tier—around a great field marked out with long white stripes. It was a cold crowd, for all had their feet on a concrete floor. At one side a devoted little band of college boys screamed and sang their songs, but for the most part this great crowd sat cold-eyed and impartial. At one side of the field there was a dash of bright color where a group of stolid Indians sat wrapped in big red blankets. Just across from these was another group of men with green blankets. Between them in the center of the field was a tangled mass of 22 husky boys in red or green, all fighting for the possession of a football.
Ah, a football game! What is this so-called farmer doing, wasting part of the price of a barrel of apples when he ought to be at work? Of course it is my privilege to say, “That’s my business if I want to,” but I will answer by saying that I was renewing my youth and studying human nature. You can’t improve on either operation for a man of my age. Up some 250 miles nearer the Canadian line the boy had been one of the 1,000 yelling young maniacs who sent these green-clad boys down to meet the Indians. He could not come, but he wrote me, “Be sure to see the game; it will be a peach.” As a peach grower, I am interested in all new varieties, and this certainly turned out to be one. It must be said that these green-clad boys came down out of their hills with a haughty spirit, wearing pride as conspicuously as they will wear their first high hat. They had not lost a game, but had trampled over two of the greatest colleges in the country. They represented the section where the purest-bred white Americans are to be found. One more victory and no one could deny their boast that they could stand any other football team on its head. So they came marching out on the field, very airy, very confident, and fully convinced of the great superiority of the white man!
I know very little about football. When I played it was more like a game of tag than a human battering ram. Here, however, was a round of the great human game which would make anyone thoughtful. Here were representatives of two races about to grapple. The great majority of the white thousands who watched them were unconcerned—for a New York audience is composed of so many races and tongues that it has little sentiment. All around me, however, there seemed standing up hundreds of swarthy, dark men whose eyes glittered as they watched the game. You could not realize how many there were with Indian and Negro blood until such a test of the white and red races was presented. Then you began to realize what a race question really means when the so-called inferior race gets a chance to test its real manhood on terms of equality.