Not all stated their opinions so strongly as this, and there were some who believed that on paper, at least, we have a democratic form of government, but the prevailing notion seemed to be that it was only on paper. The Republican party is considered as derelict as the Democratic by these critics. Neither organisation, they contend, is trying to live up to what a republic ought to stand for, and they see no hope, either for themselves or anybody else, in any of the existing political parties. When quizzed about our Constitution and the functions of the various departments of the government, they all show deplorable ignorance, but it avails nothing to take them to task on this ground. "They guessed they knew the facts just about as well as anybody else," and that was supposed to end the matter.
Religion, which the majority of the men with whom I talked took to be synonymous with the word church, was another favourite topic of discussion. Indeed, as I look back now over my conversations with the "gay-cats," it seems to me that there was more said on this subject than any other, and I have observed its popularity as a topic of conversation among unemployed men in other countries as well. There is something about it which is very attractive to men who are vagrants, as they think, because of circumstances over which they had no control, and they sit and talk by the hour about what they think the church ought to do, and wherein it fails to accomplish that which it is supposed to have for a purpose. The men that I met think that the reason that the church in this country is not more successful in getting hold of people is because it neglects its duties to the poor.
"Here you and I are," a young mechanic remarked to me, as we sat in the cold at a railroad watering-tank, "and what does any church in this town care about us? Ten chances to one that, excepting the Catholic priest, every clergyman we might go to for assistance would turn us down. Is that Christianity? Is that the way religion is going to make you and me any better? Not on your life. I tell you, the church has got to take more interest in me before I am going to go out of my way to take much interest in it."
"But the church is not a public poor-house," I remonstrated. "You and I are no more excused than other people from earning our living. If the church had to take care of all the people who think they're poor, it would go bankrupt in a day."
"It's bankrupt already, so far as having any influence over the men that you and I meet," he replied. "I don't see a man more than once in six months who goes near a church, and he's generally a Catholic. There's something wrong, you can bet, when things have got to that pass. If the church can't interest fellows like us, it's going to have its troubles interesting anybody."
There were others who expressed themselves equally strongly, but I was unable to get any satisfactory suggestion from any of them as to how the church may be made either more religious or effective. They all had their notions concerning its defects and shortcomings, but they seemed unable to tell how these were to be supplanted by merits and virtues. Many of them impressed me as men who would be capable, under different conditions, of religious feeling, and there was something pathetic, I thought, in the way they loved to linger in conversation on the subject of religion, but in their present circumstances the most inspired church in the world could not do much with them. They are victims of the passion for indiscriminate criticism, and I doubt whether they would know whether a church was doing its duty or not.
Naturally a never-failing subject for talk was the labour question, and, under this general head, in particular the importation of foreign labour by the big corporations. I cannot recall an allusion to their present circumstances that did not bring this point prominently to the fore, and on occasions the mere mention of the word "foreigner" was sufficient to bring out the most violent invectives. In a number of instances they claimed that they knew absolutely that they had been forced out of positions to make room for aliens who would work for less money.
"An American don't count for what he used to in this country," an old man said to me in Chicago. "The corporations don't care who a man is, so long as he'll work cheap. 'Course a Dago can live cheaper'n I can, 'n' so he beats me. I don't blame the Dago, 'cause he's doin' better'n he did in Italy, anyhow, but I do blame them corporations, 'n' they're goin' to get it in the neck some day, too. I won't live to see it, perhaps, but you will. I tell you, Jack, there's goin' to be a revolution in this country just as sure as this city is Chicago. It's comin' nearer every day. Just wait till there's about a million more men on the road, 'n' then you'll see somethin'. It'll beat that French revolution bang up, take my tip for that."
This same man, if his companions told the truth, had had a number of opportunities to succeed, and had let them slip through his hands. Like hundreds of others, however, he could not bear to admit that he was to blame for his own defeat in life, and he made the foreigner his scapegoat. It is, perhaps, true that some foreigners in this country have ousted some Americans from their positions, but one needs but to make a journey on any one of the railroads frequented by "gay-cats" to realise how small a minority of them are tramping because foreigners have got their jobs. Corporations and trusts may or may not be beneficial, according to the way one considers them, but, in my opinion, they are innocent of dealing unfairly by the thousand "gay-cats" that I have recently interviewed.