It was well to go to New York, if only to refresh one's memory as to where the power all comes from. The cranes swing round the great crates from the ships to the docks at Porto Rico. Or it may be, at Colon, or Puerto Plata, or Habana, or Vera Cruz. American agents tick them off. They go to the warehouses, thence to the shops, to the houses. The gold that buys them goes to the banks and the banks send it on to New York—golden New York, golden America, one may say.
To New York, the gold, and above the gold, the power. Some one may whisper—What of Washington? Washington is New York's stenographer. Or what of Chicago? Chicago is New York's young brother. Or San Francisco? San Francisco is the reflection of New York's skyscrapers in the Pacific.
With this the poet both agrees and disagrees. New York is the crown of the America of this age. It is Babbitt's work. The bankers are the big men now. But they have not all the power they think. A turn in political history, and the bankers' influence might be gone. Lindsay will demonstrate this to me if I will spend a summer harvesting westward from Texas to Alaska. Ewart is ready to accept the idea. In the deserts of the Southwest we shall see more of America than in New York. That I doubt, but Ewart and I will go. My wife is at Santa Fe and awaits us. To Santa Fe then, spiritual lodestone of artists and poets! To the capital of the new state of New Mexico, merely a conquered territory until 1912, now capable of being thought the spiritual hope of the United States.
CHAPTER XVI AMERICA OF TO-DAY VIEWED FROM NEW YORK
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"We don't know where we are going, but we're on the way," runs a light-hearted, popular saying. "Heaven or Hell—which?" the evangelists ask in one breath. No national answer will be given to the query, but if some one replies "Hell," no one will be greatly shocked, whereas, if some one replies "Heaven," his neighbor will turn upon him with a smile and a rude handshake and a "I'm with you, so glad that you're on our side."
If you say, "Roses spring up in the footsteps of America," Americans will believe you. But if you say, "Curses follow the Gringo in his march of destiny," the American interest in your opinion will rapidly grow less. America's faith in that America is doing right, that she has a divinely appointed mission, is short of nothing save the faith of the Catholic Church. Naturally such a faith is the main vital current of her existence. The saying, "I believe, therefore I am," may be changed for America into "I believe, therefore I do."
This faith, however, reacts badly upon critical literature. Many books on America are written for an American public which demands praise. The rest of the world is profoundly affected by what America does, and will be even more so by what she will do. For as she plunges forward along her way of destiny, be it blindly or with open eyes, she not only achieves for herself but makes way and changes the way of other peoples and other nations.