Introducing the American Spirit. Edward Alfred Steiner
There was an absence of politeness, but we saw little rudeness; there were accidents, but the crowd did not lose its head; there were discomforts, but little display of ill nature; each for himself, and yet no clashing. The American crowd is more wonderful than the American sky-scrapers.
At the Royal Opera in Vienna, the approach to the ticket office is guarded by steel inclosures in which every prospective buyer is separated from the other, and one has to zigzag between these pens until he reaches the official’s window. Crowding is rendered impossible, but, to make the obviously impossible more actually impossible, there is the usual number of uniformed guards.
Watch the American crowd—this group of unlike, self-centered individuals; in a moment it is organized, it obeys itself—or rather, it obeys its spirit, the American spirit of self-direction, with its genius for organization.
To me, the American crowd is so wonderful because it shows this other side of its spirit. It is heterogeneous, like the architecture of its buildings, perhaps even more so—if that be possible.
Here are Jews from Russia’s crowded Pale, where they had to slink along with shuffling gait and dared go so far and no farther—so fast and no faster.
There are the Slavic peasants, who on their native soil, prodded by the goad, moved ox-like along an endless furrow, drawing the plow of autocracy.
Next is the Italian, volatile and yet static with his age-long burdens, with his fiery nature cramped into his diminutive frame.
Here is the Negro, the child-man, the shackles of whose slavery are scarcely broken.
The Asiatic, too, comes with hardly courage enough to lift his softly treading feet; while leading them all is this strident, giant child of the Anglo-Saxon race whose wind-swept cradle was rocked by freedom, and who with dominant will has spanned the oceans and crossed the mountains.
Of these myriads whom he leads, some will be a drag upon progress, and detain the strong or perhaps retard the race; yet they are trying to keep up, and by their efforts, by delving in the deep, by feeding with their brute strength our huge enginery, may make the flowering of the American spirit easier.
Yes, the Anglo-Saxon is leading them; but will he continue to lead, now that he no longer travels in the prairie schooner, but in the automobile—now that he wields the golf club and tennis racket, rather than the spade and plow on the prairie?
Will he now lead them from the breakers of Newport as well as once he led them from Plymouth Rock?
Will he lead them from the exclusive club as once he led them into the inclusive home?
These were the doubts which filled my mind, but which I did not share with my guests as I guided them; for we were to spend the evening together, and one needs all one’s faith in New York at night.
We spent the early evening hours travelling around the world. We went to Arabia, where dusky children from the desert play in the gutters of Bleecker Street; to Greece, where Spartan and Athenian youth dream of the golden days of Pericles; to China, with its joss-house, its faint odors of sandalwood, and its stronger odors wafted from the Bowery. We visited Russia, and saw its ghetto-dwellers more numerous than Abraham ever thought his progeny would become; we spent some time in Hungary, with its Gulyas and Czardas. We went to Bohemia, with its Narodni Dom; to Italy, south and north, with its strings of garlic, its festoons of sausages, its hurdy-gurdy, and its rich harvest of children. We had glimpses of France, of its table d’hôte and painted women; travelled through darkest Africa, touched upon India, and then were back again upon Broadway.
As in the sky above us the architectures of the world strive to blend and fuse, making a mighty new impress; so below, these colonies to the right and colonies to the left, like the huge limbs of some ill-shapen monster, try to blend into America.
What is it all to be when blended?
Of course we went to the theater. We saw a German problem play made over to please the American taste. The Herr Director knew the play almost by heart, and he nearly jumped upon the stage in righteous indignation when in the last act, where the author drops all his characters into a bottomless pit and everything ends in confusion, the play ended in the conventional “God-bless-you-my-children,” “happy-ever-after” manner.
We walked the streets of New York until past midnight, and finally looked down upon it from the roof of our hostelry. We could see the moon creeping out and shedding its mellow glow over the gayly lighted city. The noises were almost musical up there—like sustained organ notes—and we talked about the play with its happy ending.
“You are right,” I said; “that happy ending is foolish and childish. Things do not always end happily; but this thing, this experiment in making a nation out of torn fragments, this founding of cities in a day out of second and third hand material, this experiment in man-making and nation-building must end well; for, if it doesn’t, God’s great experiment has failed. Shall I say, God’s last experiment has failed? You see we mustn’t fail—it must end well.”
The streets were all but silent. From the great clock on the Metropolitan tower hanging in mid-air, came the flashes that marked the morning hour. Thick mists floated in from the sea and filled the narrow, chasm-like streets with weird, fantastic shapes.
The Herr Director said good-night. The Frau Directorin did likewise. They said it very solemnly, as behooves those who have looked deep into the heart of a great mystery who have felt the touch of a mighty spirit striving, struggling, agonizing to shape a new nation out of the world’s refuse.
II
Our National Creed
THE Herr Director and the Frau Directorin wished to go to church on Sunday, and after eating a piously late breakfast I spread before them New York City’s religious bill of fare, bewildering in its variety and puzzling in its terminology.
I gave them a choice between four varieties of Catholics: Roman, Greek, Old and Apostolic; more than twice that number of Lutherans, separated one from the other by degrees of orthodoxy and nearness to or farness from their historic confessions.
There were Methodists who were free and those who were Episcopalian, Episcopalians who were not Methodists but were reformed, and those who made no such pretensions; all these invited us to worship with them.
Many varieties of Baptists announced their sermons and services, offering a choice between those who were free and those who were just Baptists, and between those who were Baptists on the Seventh Day and those who did not specify the day on which they were Baptists.
We also had a chance to discriminate between Dutch Reformed, German Reformed or Presbyterian Reformed, and United Presbyterians divided from other Presbyterians (presumably unreformed) for reasons known to the Fathers who died long since.
If we had been radically inclined we might have browsed among Unitarians, Ethical Culturists, and could even have worshipped among those who make a religion out of not having any.
The most interesting column to the Herr Director was that which contained our exotic cults, those we have imported and those which prove that we have not neglected our home industry.
It was disconcerting to me, who was trying to introduce our national spirit, to realize how varied its religious expression is, and the Herr Director got no little amusement out of the story I told him of the student in one of our colleges who, it is said, came to the librarian and asked for a book on “Wild Religions I have Met.” When the librarian suggested it might be Seton Thompson’s book on Wild Animals, he said it was not in the department of Zoölogy, but in Philosophy in which the assignment for the reading was given. The book was then quickly found. It was Prof. William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience.”
When we succeeded