With Poor Immigrants to America

by Stephen Graham

"I suppose the companies want to make the motor car a domestic necessity, a thing no one can do without," I remarked.

"You're right; they do and they will. They'll fix that in time, you betcher, we'll all be having them. Then when we cahn do without 'em they'll raise the prices on us. Already they've started it with the gasoline; there's plenty motor spirit in the world, but the company gets possession of it and regulates the prices. An' you cahn make an oto go without gasoline. They can put it on us every time."

I should say society at Benton was suffering very badly from the influence of depraved commercialism. Some years ago Miss Ida Tarbell exposed what has been called "The Arson Trust," a company formed for setting fire to insured establishments on a basis of 10 per cent profit on the spoil. Benton might have furnished her with some interesting examples. There have been so many fires in the little town of late that tramps are refused the shelter even of barns, as if their match-ends were responsible. On the Fourth of July three years ago half the town was burnt down. Last year in a gale the shirt factory was gutted; the workmen had banked the fire up for the night, and about twenty minutes after the last man had left the works there was an explosion, and the red coals were scattered over the wooden building. Two months ago a large house took fire, and just a week before I reached the settlement the large Presbyterian church was consumed. Indeed, as I came into the town I remarked with some surprise the charred walls and beams of the church, and read the pathetic printing on the stone of foundation, "This stone was laid in 1903."

I had an interesting account of the church from the wife of a farmer at whose house I stayed a night. The church had been insured for seventeen thousand dollars, and it was twelve thousand dollars in debt. The money borrowed was not secured on the church building, but on the personal estates of many people in the town. Consequently, several people were liable to be sold up if the money were not forthcoming. Two days before settling day the fire took place, and there was doubtless rejoicing in some hearts. The villagers had tried hard to make the place pay, they had even let a portion of the church building to be used as a bank! Bazaars had failed. The debt-raiser had tried "to put a revival over on to them," but had failed. The minister, not receiving his salary, had abandoned them, and at last the bare fact remained of the big white church and the big unpaid debt. Then occurred the providential fire.

But the insurance company would not pay the seventeen thousand dollars. The fire had taken place under suspicious circumstances, and it was said there would be a legal fight over it. The conflagration had occurred on the night of a school-opening meeting. Choice flowers had been sent from many houses in the town, and it was beautifully decorated. There was, however, nothing obviously inflammable in the church; it was built largely of brick and stone. But about an hour after the people had gone home the fire broke out. Next day it was found that the big Bible had been soaked in coal oil. Oiled newspaper was found, and it was alleged that the fire brigade would have saved the church, but that as fast as they put it out in front somebody else was lighting it up behind. Anyhow, the insurance company refused to pay the seventeen thousand dollars. But it cannot refuse absolutely; the advertisement of failure to pay would be too damaging—it will put up a new church instead! The Presbyterian church will be resurrected.

"I put Benton up against the world for fires," said my hostess. "For a small place, only a thousand people, I reckon there isn't its like."

For my part I felt sorry for the Bentonians, even for those who set the fire alight, supposing it was deliberately lighted. When commercial interest is the greatest thing in the world there are opportunities for a few men to feel themselves great and powerful, but that glory of mankind is far overbalanced by the occasions on which it causes man to be mean. Commercial tricks bring the holy spirit of man into disrepute. To find oneself mixed up in certain machinations is poignantly humiliating. We have all of us been wounded in that way ere now. The just pride of the soul has been offended, and we have thought how shameful a thing it was to have become mixed up in it at all, by it meaning the world, the whole shady business, call it what you will.

As I went along from village to village in New York and Pennsylvania I was struck by the uniformity of the architecture. Every church and school and store and farmstead seemed standard size and "as supplied." There seemed to be a passion for having known units. Not only in architecture was this evident, but in every utensil, machine, carriage, dress of the people. It was evident in the people themselves. Americans have the name of being extremely conventional. I think that is because, under the present domination of the commercial machine, American boys and girls and men and women are all turned into standard sizes. If Americans have rigid principles of ethics it is because they believe all the parts of the great machine are standardised, and that when any one part wears out there must always be an accurately fitting other part ready to be fixed where the old one has fallen out. Personality itself is standardised; thus the tailor-priest advertises his wear, "Preserve your Personality in Clothes. Occasionally you have observed some article of wear that has led you to the mental conclusion—'That's my style—that's me.'"