"Call it what you will."
"But," said I, "does not this merely result in a town full of a hustling, mannerless crowd; trolley-cars dashing along at life-careless speed; a nation at work with loosely constructed machinery; callous indifference on the part of the living towards those whom they kill in their rush to the goal?"
My new acquaintance looked at me in a way that seemed to say "You—Britisher." He was a great enthusiast for his country, and I had been sent to him by friends in London who wanted me to get to the heart of America, and not simply have my teeth set on edge by the bitter rind.
"You think the end will justify the proceedings?" I added.
"Oh yes," he said. "You know we've only been fifty years on this job; there's nothing in modern America more than fifty years old. Think of what we've done in the time—clearing, building, engineering; think of the bridges we've built, the harbours, the canals, the great factories, the schools. We've been taxed to the last limit of physical strength, and only to put down the pavement and the gas-pipes so to speak, the things you found ready made for you when you were born, but which we had to lay on the prairie. We are only now beginning to look round and survey the foundations of civilisation. Still most of us are hurrying on, but the end will be worth the trials by the way; we
"Are whirling from heaven to heaven
And less will be lost than won."
"But is it not a miserable, heartless struggle for the individual?" said I. "For instance, to judge by the story of The Jungle I should gather that the lot of a Russian family come fresh to Chicago was terrible."
"Oh, you mustn't take Sinclair literally. He is a Socialist who wants to show that society, as it is at present constituted, is so bad that there is no hope except in revolution. There is heartbreak often, but the struggle is not heartless. It is amazingly full of hope. If you go into the worst of our slums you'll find the people hopeful, even in extremity. I've been across to London, and I never saw such hopeless-looking people as those who live in your East Ham and West Ham and Poplar and the rest of them."
"There is hope with us too," I protested. "The people in our slums are very rebellious, they look forward to the dictatorship of Will Thorne or George Lansbury."