by Mark Twain
CHAPTER X.
The young Lord Berkeley, with the fresh air of freedom in his nostrils,was feeling invincibly strong for his new career; and yet--and yet--ifthe fight should prove a very hard one at first, very discouraging, verytaxing on untoughened moral sinews, he might in some weak moment want toretreat. Not likely, of course, but possibly that might happen. And soon the whole it might be pardonable caution to burn his bridges behindhim. Oh, without doubt. He must not stop with advertising for theowner of that money, but must put it where he could not borrow from ithimself, meantime, under stress of circumstances. So he went down town,and put in his advertisement, then went to a bank and handed in $500 fordeposit.
"What name?"
He hesitated and colored a little; he had forgotten to make a selection.He now brought out the first one that suggested itself:
"Howard Tracy."
When he was gone the clerks, marveling, said:
"The cowboy blushed."
The first step was accomplished. The money was still under his commandand at his disposal, but the next step would dispose of that difficulty.He went to another bank and drew upon the first bank for the $500 bycheck. The money was collected and deposited a second time to the creditof Howard Tracy. He was asked to leave a few samples of his signature,which he did. Then he went away, once more proud and of perfect courage,saying:
"No help for me now, for henceforth I couldn't draw that money withoutidentification, and that is become legally impossible. No resources tofall back on. It is work or starve from now to the end. I am ready--andnot afraid!"
Then he sent this cablegram to his father:
"Escaped unhurt from burning hotel. Have taken fictitious name.Goodbye."
During the evening while he was wandering about in one of the outlyingdistricts of the city, he came across a small brick church, with a billposted there with these words printed on it: "MECHANICS' CLUB DEBATE.ALL INVITED." He saw people, apparently mainly of the working class,entering the place, and he followed and took his seat. It was a humblelittle church, quite bare as to ornamentation. It had painted pewswithout cushions, and no pulpit, properly speaking, but it had aplatform. On the platform sat the chairman, and by his side sat a manwho held a manuscript in his hand and had the waiting look of one who isgoing to perform the principal part. The church was soon filled with aquiet and orderly congregation of decently dressed and modest people.This is what the chairman said:
"The essayist for this evening is an old member of our club whom you allknow, Mr. Parker, assistant editor of the Daily Democrat. The subject ofhis essay is the American Press, and he will use as his text a couple ofparagraphs taken from Mr. Matthew Arnold's new book. He asks me to readthese texts for him. The first is as follows:
"'Goethe says somewhere that "the thrill of awe," that is to say,REVERENCE, is the best thing humanity has."
"Mr. Arnold's other paragraph is as follows:
"'I should say that if one were searching for the best means to effaceand kill in a whole nation the discipline of respect, one could not dobetter than take the American newspapers."
Mr. Parker rose and bowed, and was received with warm applause. He thenbegan to read in a good round resonant voice, with clear enunciation andcareful attention to his pauses and emphases. His points were receivedwith approval as he went on.
The essayist took the position that the most important function of apublic journal in any country was the propagating of national feelingand pride in the national name--the keeping the people "in love withtheir country and its institutions, and shielded from the allurementsof alien and inimical systems." He sketched the manner in which thereverent Turkish or Russian journalist fulfilled this function--the oneassisted by the prevalent "discipline of respect" for the bastinado, theother for Siberia. Continuing, he said:
The chief function of an English journal is that of all other journalsthe world over: it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly uponcertain things, and keep it diligently diverted from certain others. Forinstance, it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon the gloriesof England, a processional splendor stretching its receding line downthe hazy vistas of time, with the mellowed lights of a thousand yearsglinting from its banners; and it must keep it diligently diverted fromthe fact that all these glories were for the enrichment andaggrandizement of the petted and privileged few, at cost of the bloodand sweat and poverty of the unconsidered masses who achieved them butmight not enter in and partake of them. It must keep the public eyefixed in loving and awful reverence upon the throne as a sacred thing,and diligently divert it from the fact that no throne was ever set up bythe unhampered vote of a majority of any nation; and that hence nothrone exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flyingfrom any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but theskull and crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royaltyonly business-wise--merely as retail differs from wholesale. It mustkeep the citizen's eye fixed in reverent docility upon that curiousinvention of machine politics, an Established Church, and upon that baldcontradiction of common justice, a hereditary nobility; and diligentlydivert it from the fact that the one damns him if he doesn't wear itscollar, and robs him under the gentle name of taxation whether he wearsit or not, and the other gets all the honors while he does all the work.The essayist thought that Mr. Arnold, with his trained eye andintelligent observation, ought to have perceived that the very qualitywhich he so regretfully missed from our press--respectfulness, reverence--was exactly the thing which would make our press useless to us if ithad it--rob it of the very thing which differentiates it from allother journalism in the world and makes it distinctively and preciouslyAmerican, its frank and cheerful irreverence being by all odds themost valuable of all its qualities. "For its mission--overlooked by Mr.Arnold--is to stand guard over a nation's liberties, not its humbugs andshams." He thought that if during fifty years the institutions of theold world could be exposed to the fire of a flouting and scoffing presslike ours, "monarchy and its attendant crimes would disappear fromChristendom." Monarchists might doubt this; then "why not persuade theCzar to give it a trial in Russia?" Concluding, he said:
Well, the charge is, that our press has but little of that old worldquality, reverence. Let us be candidly grateful that it is so. With itslimited reverence it at least reveres the things which this nationreveres, as a rule, and that is sufficient: what other people revere isfairly and properly matter of light importance to us. Our press does notreverence kings, it does not reverence so called nobilities, it does notreverence established ecclesiastical slaveries, it does not reverencelaws which rob a younger son to fatten an elder one, it does notreverence any fraud or sham or infamy, howsoever old or rotten or holy,which sets one citizen above his neighbor by accident of birth: it doesnot reverence any law or custom, howsoever old or decayed or sacred,which shuts against the best man in the land the best place in the landand the divine right to prove property and go up and occupy it. In thesense of the poet Goethe--that meek idolater of provincial three caratroyalty and nobility--our press is certainly bankrupt in the "thrill ofawe"--otherwise reverence; reverence for nickel plate and brummagem. Letus sincerely hope that this fact will remain a fact forever: for to mymind a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of humanliberty--even as the other thing is the creator, nurse, and steadfastprotector of all forms of human slavery, bodily and mental.
Tracy said to himself, almost shouted to himself, "I'm glad I came tothis country. I was right. I was right to seek out a land where suchhealthy principles and theories are in men's hearts and minds. Think ofthe innumerable slaveries imposed by misplaced reverence! How well hebrought that out, and how true it is. There's manifestly prodigiousforce in reverence. If you can get a man to reverence your ideals, he'syour slave. Oh, yes, in all the ages the peoples of Europe have beendiligently taught to avoid reasoning about the shams of monarchy andnobility, been taught to avoid examining them, been taught to reverencethem; and now, as a natural result
, to reverence them is second nature.In order to shock them it is sufficient to inject a thought of theopposite kind into their dull minds. For ages, any expression ofso-called irreverence from their lips has been sin and crime. The shamand swindle of all this is apparent the moment one reflects that he ishimself the only legitimately qualified judge of what is entitled toreverence and what is not. Come, I hadn't thought of that before, but itis true, absolutely true. What right has Goethe, what right has Arnold,what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me?What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence my ownideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh attheirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to. It ismy right and my privilege. No man has any right to deny it."
Tracy was expecting to hear the essay debated, but this did not happen.The chairman said, by way of explanation:
"I would say, for the information of the strangers present here, that inaccordance with our custom the subject of this meeting will be debatedat the next meeting of the club. This is in order to enable our membersto prepare what they may wish to say upon the subject with pen andpaper, for we are mainly mechanics and unaccustomed to speaking. We areobliged to write down what we desire to say."
Many brief papers were now read, and several offhand speeches made indiscussion of the essay read at the last meeting of the club, which hadbeen a laudation, by some visiting professor, of college culture, andthe grand results flowing from it to the nation. One of the papers wasread by a man approaching middle age, who said he hadn't had a collegeeducation, that he had got his education in a printing office, and hadgraduated from there into the patent office, where he had been a clerknow for a great many years. Then he continued to this effect:
The essayist contrasted the America of to-day with the America of bygonetimes, and certainly the result is the exhibition of a mighty progress.But I think he a little overrated the college-culture share in theproduction of that result. It can no doubt be easily shown that thecolleges have contributed the intellectual part of this progress, andthat that part is vast; but that the material progress has beenimmeasurably vaster, I think you will concede. Now I have been lookingover a list of inventors--the creators of this amazing materialdevelopment--and I find that they were not college-bred men. Of coursethere are exceptions--like Professor Henry of Princeton, the inventor ofMr. Morse's system of telegraphy--but these exceptions are few. It isnot overstatement to say that the imagination-stunning materialdevelopment of this century, the only century worth living in since timeitself was invented, is the creation of men not college-bred. We thinkwe see what these inventors have done: no, we see only the visible vastfrontage of their work; behind it is their far vaster work, and it isinvisible to the careless glance. They have reconstructed this nation--made it over, that is--and metaphorically speaking, have multiplied itsnumbers almost beyond the power of figures to express. I will explainwhat I mean. What constitutes the population of a land? Merely thenumberable packages of meat and bones in it called by courtesy men andwomen? Shall a million ounces of brass and a million ounces of gold beheld to be of the same value? Take a truer standard: the measure of aman's contributing capacity to his time and his people--the work he cando--and then number the population of this country to-day, as multipliedby what a man can now do, more than his grandfather could do. By thisstandard of measurement, this nation, two or three generations ago,consisted of mere cripples, paralytics, dead men, as compared with themen of to-day. In 1840 our population was 17,000,000. By way of rude butstriking illustration, let us consider, for argument's sake, that fourof these millions consisted of aged people, little children, and otherincapables, and that the remaining 13,000,000 were divided and employedas follows:
2,000,000??? as ginners of cotton. 6,000,000 (women) as stocking-knitters. 2,000,000 (women) as thread-spinners. 500,000 as screw makers. 400,000 as reapers, binders, etc. 1,000,000 as corn-shellers. 40,000 as weavers. 1,000 as stitchers of shoe soles.
Now the deductions which I am going to append to these figures may soundextravagant, but they are not. I take them from Miscellaneous DocumentsNo. 50, second session 45th Congress, and they are official andtrustworthy. To-day, the work of those 2,000,000 cotton-ginners is doneby 2,000 men; that of the 6,000,000 stocking-knitters is done by 3,000boys; that of the 2,000,000 thread-spinners is done by 1,000 girls; thatof the 500,000 screw makers is done by 500 girls; that of the 400,000reapers, binders, etc., is done by 4,000 boys; that of the 1,000,000corn-shellers is done by 7,500 men; that of the 40,000 weavers is doneby 1,200 men; and that of the 1,000 stitchers of shoe soles is done by 6men. To bunch the figures, 17,900 persons to-day do the above-work,whereas fifty years ago it would have taken thirteen millions of personsto do it. Now then, how many of that ignorant race--our fathers andgrandfathers--with their ignorant methods, would it take to do our workto-day? It would take forty thousand millions--a hundred times theswarming population of China--twenty times the present population of theglobe. You look around you and you see a nation of sixty millions--apparently; but secreted in their hands and brains, and invisible toyour eyes, is the true population of this Republic, and it numbers fortybillions! It is the stupendous creation of those humble unlettered, un-college-bred inventors--all honor to their name.
"How grand that is!" said Tracy, as he wended homeward. "What acivilization it is, and what prodigious results these are! and broughtabout almost wholly by common men; not by Oxford-trained aristocrats,but men who stand shoulder to shoulder in the humble ranks of life andearn the bread that they eat. Again, I'm glad I came. I have found acountry at last where one may start fair, and breast to breast with hisfellow man, rise by his own efforts, and be something in the world andbe proud of that something; not be something created by an ancestorthree hundred years ago."
