BY WHITING WILLIAMS 
 
 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 The Worker's Mind in Western Europe 
 
 FULL UP AND FED UP. The Worker's Mind 
 in Crowded Britain 
 
 WHAT'S ON THE WORKER'S MIND. By One 
 Who Put on Overalls to Find Out 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
HORNY HANDS AND 
 HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
HORNY HANDS AND 
 HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 THE WORKER'S MIND IN WESTERN 
 EUROPE 
 
 BY 
 WHITING WILLIAMS 
 
 WITH ILLUSTKATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1922 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 Published November, 1922 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I WITH THE WORKERS 
 
 CHAPTER PAQB 
 
 I. THE PicTUKE-PuzzLE OF EUROPE .... 3 
 
 II. WITH THE STEELMEN OF DEVASTATED FRANCE 20 
 
 III. " FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" .... 37 
 
 IV. HATE AND HOPE AT HEROIC LENS .... 57 
 
 V. BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS AND 
 
 ABOVE 68 
 
 VI. OTHER VICTIMS OF A NEW KIND OF WAR . 90 
 
 VII. A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF BELGIUM .... 101 
 
 VIII. KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL . . . 109 
 
 IX. THE WORKERS IN GERMANY'S "PITTSBURGH 
 
 DISTRICT" 132 
 
 X. "HAIL COLUMBIA UEBER ALLES!" .... 140 
 
 XI. "MORT POUR LA FRANCE" FRENCH UN- 
 KNOWNS 146 
 
 XII. IN "THE HOT-SPOT OF EUROPE" .... 159 
 
 XIII. POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR . . . 173 
 
 799053 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 XIV. THE "HALL OP THE REFOKMATION" . . . 192 
 
 XV. PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND .... 220 
 
 XVI. READJUSTMENT IN ENGLAND 235 
 
 PART II CONCLUSIONS 
 
 XVII. HORNY HANDS 249 
 
 XVIII. HAMPERED ELBOWS 260 
 
 XIX. THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF EUROPE? . . 272 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "Outside" workers at a mine in St. Etienne in south-central 
 France Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Mr. Williams as he is, and in his "protective colorations" . . 22 
 
 The landlord of the "Tout Va Bien" at Douai was kinder to 
 his two pets than to his wife or little Suzanne 44 
 
 Little gleaners in the fields near Lens 66 
 
 "Certainly it is hard to imagine a city so demoralized in its 
 actuality yet so devoted in its aspiration as Lens" .... 66 
 
 The insertion of timber supports with their "top pieces" at 
 certain distances is definitely prescribed by mining law in all 
 countries . 76 
 
 Fellow-workers in the coal pit near Lens 
 
 Even the young girls in the district appear to form in early 
 years the same "habitude" of hard, horny-handed work . . 86 
 
 Bessemer converter 96 
 
 "The thoroughly attractive cottages furnished the workers worn 
 out in the Krupp service, each group in a colony by itself, 
 married, unmarried, widows, widowers, etc." 118 
 
 Workers inspecting cheap suitings outside one of the scores of 
 gates leading into the huge Krupp establishment .... 130 
 
 A group of war orphans at Elberfeld 130 
 
 At Elberfeld the Zoo and its denizens share the Sunday after- 
 noon crowds with football 134 
 
 vii 
 
viii ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PACING PAGE 
 
 German coal-miners of the Saar leaving town for the shaft of a 
 coal-mine several miles in the country 182 
 
 "The hot-spot of Europe" 182 
 
 The closeness between modern industrial and conservative agri- 
 cultural France is typified in Le Creusot 218 
 
 In Europe generally, as in this suburb of Paris, everybody works, 
 including the dog 218 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 MY "overalls" studies of the American common 
 laborer in 1919, as described in "What's On the Worker's 
 Mind," resulted in a profound conviction, first, of the 
 vital importance to the worker of the possession of the 
 job of the getting and the gripping of the chance to 
 work and, further, of the vast importance to the 
 worker's character and life of the job's physical, mental, 
 and spiritual conditions. 
 
 The experiences of 1920 in Great Britain, as recounted 
 in "Full Up and Fed Up," resulted in the belief that an 
 understanding of these "Big Four Factors," and their 
 part in shaping the careers of a nation's unskilled labor- 
 ers, furnished a useful key for understanding not only 
 that nation's industrial life, but also its social and politi- 
 cal development as well. 
 
 That should not be strange. For without doubt it is 
 true for all of us at all times that: 
 
 We tend to live our way into our thinking infinitely 
 more than we tend to think our way into our living. 
 
 If that is true, then it is bound to carry all the physi- 
 cal, mental, and spiritual conditions of our modern work 
 into the very centre of our modern living and feeling to 
 an extent far beyond anything we have heretofore been 
 
 ix 
 
x INTRODUCTION 
 
 willing to admit. For in this industrial age it is un- 
 deniably true for the great majority of us that: 
 
 The most compelling and the most inescapable forces 
 for determining the conditions of our living and hence 
 of our thinking and feeling are the conditions under 
 which we work to earn our daily bread the conditions 
 of our job. 
 
 Epictetus described a huge factor for explaining na- 
 tions as well as individuals also spiritual, as well as 
 moral or manual achievement, when he wrote: 
 
 "What do you think Hercules would have been if 
 there had not been such a lion, and hydra, and stag, and 
 boar, and certain unjust and bestial men whom Hercules 
 used to drive away and clear out? . . . Why, then, he 
 would not have been Hercules !" 
 
 The summer of '21, herewith reported, represents partly 
 the desire to observe any unusual by-products appearing 
 in the social field as the result of differences in the work- 
 ing conditions of the French and German populations. 
 Partly, also, it represents the bold hope that the worker's 
 mind as affected by these conditions might furnish us 
 some helpful hint regarding the near future of western 
 Europe, and hence of the world, by revealing the mental 
 and emotional forces now at work in its formation. 
 
 It should be remembered that in this approach my 
 primary purpose is neither to prove any thesis nor to 
 propose any particular remedy. So far as possible the 
 aim is to make a camera of myself for recording as faith- 
 fully as feasible the feelings, attitudes, and view-points 
 encountered, together with the individual setting of which 
 they were a part. 
 

 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 It will be noticed that the effort has been to get close 
 to the life and work and so to the mind of the un- 
 skilled, common laborer in the basic industries of iron, 
 steel, and coal. One reason for this is that the field of 
 the skilled artisan is in every country too varied and 
 diverse to cover in one, or even several lifetimes. The 
 chief reason is that the conditions of a nation's unskilled 
 labor represent the lowest common denominator for 
 building up the rest of the nation's entire industrial and 
 social equation. 
 
 Nothing is more certain than that the foundations of 
 our modern House of Industry and Life rest finally upon 
 the brawn and the brain and the heart of our unskilled, 
 common laborer. 
 
 If in these critical days we are to know whether these 
 foundations of our industry and life in America or Eu- 
 rope are stable or unstable, we must somehow contrive 
 to get a better understanding of the thoughts and feel- 
 ings of the great mass of our humblest workers. 
 
 By our thesis the only way to secure such knowledge 
 is to know the worker on his job. 
 
 The reader must judge the extent to which the experi- 
 ences herewith related support my previous deductions, 
 justify my underlying purposes, or fulfil my resultant 
 hopes. In any case I appeal, on behalf of the men and 
 women who will speak from out these pages, for the same 
 sympathetic hearing which it has been my earnest effort 
 and my deep joy to afford them when we were face 
 to face. 
 
PART I 
 WITH THE WORKERS 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUROPE | : ;, ; 
 
 Paris, France, 
 July 20, 1921. 
 
 IN the mornings it's not so bad. But by afternoon 
 the summer's enterprise begins to look all but impossible. 
 Then I get to feeling like a lad before a heaped-up mess 
 of the red, white, and blue pieces of a jig-saw puzzle 
 faced by the necessity of somehow making a picture out 
 of it before the whistle blows for my return. 
 
 But perhaps the blues of this particular afternoon 
 come from getting into the heart of this jig-saw "mess 
 of Europe " too suddenly. For my morning has been 
 spent at a meeting of "the Sub-Committee on the Limi- 
 tation of Armaments of the League of Nations"! The 
 honorable gentlemen of the committee appear to be in 
 much the same picture-puzzle predicament. Still they 
 did not seem particularly depressed at what certainly 
 looked like a slow start at the solution of their colossal 
 problem. A certain strangeness and stiffness of manner 
 at the beginning, evidently the result of different lan- 
 guage and manners, soon wore off and the gentlemen 
 began lowering their voices from the grand-stand pitch 
 of the first hour. A little later the representative of the 
 French working men was smoking the cigarettes of the 
 Italian general, or the Chilean or British statesman. 
 
 And to-morrow will furnish the satisfaction of starting 
 the search for a job in the steel plants and mines up 
 
 3 
 
4 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 north. Yesterday, luckily, permitted a reconnoitring 
 visit to what ought to be called the artisans' rather than 
 the laborers' quarter over by the Vincennes Gate. At 
 a crowded restaurant it was easy to see that the workers 
 were highly skilled men. Some of them wear glasses 
 which make them look almost like the studio artists of 
 the Latin Quarter especially when combined with their 
 long studio-coats of light-colored denim. In fact, the 
 small furniture factories or machine-shops which fill the 
 neighborhood are called " ateliers," our word, exclusively, 
 for studios. The restaurant itself, like most of them in 
 the district, was on a broad and handsome boulevard. 
 A few of the streets encountered are pretty bad as com- 
 pared with the greater part of this amazingly cleanly 
 and comfortable city. But even at that they are far and 
 away better than miles and miles of such streets as are 
 furnished by London, or, say, Chicago. Also they are 
 enormously better than the streets and the homes found 
 just beyond the fortifications and the city gates in St. 
 Ouen and St. Denis. These quarters of the poorer and 
 least skilled workers are filled with great factories, gas 
 plants, chemical establishments and slaughter-houses 
 also with the worst smells encountered outside the chem- 
 ical laboratory at college. 
 
 In this district it is easy to see that drinking is much 
 worse just about as much worse, in fact, as is the sani- 
 tation of the streets or the plumbing of the houses. The 
 summer's first drunken man (outside the celebration of 
 July 14) turned up at the restaurant. Except for him, 
 the drinking of the lunch-time beer and wine appeared 
 wholly without result. Outside the gates, many, many 
 
THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUROPE 5 
 
 faces showed that too much alcohol was a fairly regular 
 affair. After so close so typically close a tie-up of 
 working, living, and thirsting conditions as the quarter 
 furnishes, it is not surprising to read the many notices 
 still left upon the bulletin-boards. These called upon 
 the workers to rise up and put an end to the foolish and 
 footless war and make the start at once into the era of 
 international peace and brotherhood which was promised 
 to follow the moment the " working classes" in all na- 
 tions decided to take matters into their own hands. 
 
 It would be attractive to stay and dig deeper into the 
 bad jobs which are pretty likely to furnish the cause of 
 the unhappiness which expresses itself in these ways of 
 "rum and revolution" also to discover whether these 
 jobs might not be so mastered by the French tempera- 
 ment as to make even coke-plant and slaughter-house 
 laborers happy ! Remembering how every worker wants 
 to believe in the importance of his job and so of himself, 
 exactly that is more nearly conceivable than we are apt 
 to think. But such working conditions are likely to re- 
 main for some tune very different from the clean, com- 
 fortable, and well-lighted though crowded, little machine- 
 shop I visited earlier in the day inside the walls. 
 
 This was run by a young captain who spent two years 
 during the war in America inspecting French war-sup- 
 plies. His twenty-five workers make various sorts and 
 sizes of wooden tanks, some of them giving their entire 
 days to making small useful and artistic wooden bottles. 
 They do not look rushed but manage to get in about fifty 
 hours at two to three francs a week and still have 
 "la semaine Anglaise," that is, the Saturday half -holiday, 
 
6 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 said to be spreading among the city's offices and artistic 
 establishments. 
 
 The captain thinks the high percentage of the popula- 
 tion on French farms or in small French cities and towns 
 is mainly responsible for the remarkable " equilibrium " 
 of the ordinary industrial conditions and relations here. 
 Just lately the increase of industrial unemployment has 
 been, he thinks, a benefit to the country because it has 
 helped to send back to the farms the overplus of workers 
 called into the cities by the war. Similarly, their original 
 departure for the city caused a needed increase of farm 
 wages. As for unions, the captain reports his own and 
 also his workers' indifference to the matter of their mem- 
 bership. 
 
 In that connection the clerk here at the little hotel 
 used a typically neat French phrase for our very violent 
 but expressive verb, "to fire." 
 
 "It is that there are too few to answer," she explained 
 when I finally gave up the effort with the "apparatus," 
 as the telephone is called. "You see, to save money 
 for our government owns the phones and it has no money 
 they have given many employees their 'thanks.' ' 
 
 This morning the newspaper gives an extended com- 
 ment by a former deputy on the heavy loss accompany- 
 ing the telephone service or lack of it. The system 
 was taken over as far back as 1889 when it was making 
 a lot of money for its private owners, and so looked like 
 a proper subject for government operation and profit. 
 This past year it has managed to lose the astonishing 
 sum of 220,000,000 francs! In addition, the equipment 
 is in such bad repair that the prospect is good for both 
 
THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUROPE 7 
 
 higher rates and still smaller circulation. The chances 
 are certainly far from favorable to any early spending 
 of the 1,500,000,000 francs required for the system's 
 renovation. 
 
 "In America," concludes the article, "there is one 
 phone for each 8 inhabitants; in Denmark one for each 
 17; in Sweden, each 27; in Switzerland, each 42; in 
 Germany, 59; Great Britain and Ireland, 64; Belgium, 
 133. In France we have one phone such as it is for 
 each 143 citizens!" 
 
 In spite of these "thanks," there are considerably 
 fewer unemployed workers here than the reported mil- 
 lion and more in Great Britain and the two or three mil- 
 lions in America. 
 
 "France would be the most prosperous country in the 
 world if she could somehow get a signed statement that 
 America and England would help her in case of unwar- 
 ranted attack by Germany," according to a local Amer- 
 ican correspondent. "As it is, her sleep is one long night- 
 mare from the fear of Germany's attacking her again for 
 the final ' third strike and out' the ultimate death-stroke 
 before the rest of the world can come to her protec- 
 tion." 
 
 Industrial conditions here are undoubtedly much more 
 affected by all these international matters than ours 
 would be at home. The morning head-lines are usually 
 so filled with them that you get the feeling that France, 
 at least, just can't get completely down to work until 
 her national fears are somehow lessened. Nevertheless, 
 it is surprising to find so little talk about national sorrows 
 and so much about national resuscitation and salvation. 
 
8 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 This last is said to be the cause of the failure of the 
 great general strike on the railways and elsewhere here a 
 year ago last May. Many of the workers were interested 
 to see what the radicals could do but not willing to pay 
 any very great price for the show. So its main result 
 was the break-up of the "Confederation Generate du Tra- 
 vail" the "C. G. T.," as it is called ordinarily, like our 
 "A. F. of L." Its conservative members they are So- 
 cialists are fighting the radicals or Communists for con- 
 trol without hope of peace or even quarter from either 
 side. As a result, the labor movement here is what might 
 be called "shot to pieces" in spite of the dignity lent it 
 by the organization of the country's editors, journalists, 
 and authors in what is called "The Intellectual Workers' 
 Union/' ordinarily dubbed "The Brain Trust." 
 
 On the job or off, it looks as though the "working 
 class," as it is called by everybody, and the employers 
 and ordinary people who make up the "bourgeoisie " are 
 considerably farther apart here than at home. Here in 
 Paris, at least, it appears, also, that both groups give the 
 rest of their time, after France's security against attack, 
 to matters more or less aesthetic and artistic. The strange 
 thing is that somehow the French and presumably the 
 Latin temperament appears to find it entirely easy to 
 include in the realm of the artistic the matter of sex. 
 
 I don't see how that piece can be fitted into the rest 
 of the puzzle. Is this strange emphasis the result of any 
 development of France's history, for instance? Could 
 it be, for example, one result of the "generation of de- 
 feat," of the men who grew up with the bitterness of 
 1870 in their souls, and who hated anybody that accepted 
 
THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUEOPE 9 
 
 the world as it was and tried, therefore, to make the best 
 of it and still to find room for some sort of achievement 
 in the field of philosophies and ideals, sentiments and 
 emotions ? 
 
 If so, will the commerce and industry of the new post- 
 war France aided by the present "generation of the 
 victory " serve to modify these interests? Or is it less 
 her history and more her years her age that furnishes 
 the matrix in which these national characteristics have 
 developed? In that case, will our American attitudes 
 toward marriage and sex, and government and industry 
 grow more like the French when we have become a settled 
 people after a few more hundreds of years? 
 
 What a puzzle ! . . . But I must get some of the pieces 
 into my hands for a closer look ! Early to-morrow I'll 
 be passing through Amiens in search of a steel plant or 
 a coal-mine and a job. Up there in the midst of such 
 thrilling names as Lens, Arras, Cambrai, Douai, Peronne, 
 it will be odd to see no marching soldiers. But it will 
 also be thrilling to see men spitting on their hands if 
 they do that here and sweating over their shovels and 
 picks in the effort to bring back their world again. 
 
 After all, these people over here must find the whole 
 picture a good deal of a puzzle to themselves ! 
 
 I'll feel better, anyway, if they do. 
 
 Douai, North France, 
 Thursday, July 21, 1921. 
 
 Distance is certainly a matter not so much of miles as 
 of mind more of feelings than of geography. To-day 
 has been "the day of the great removal." 
 
10 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 Oddly enough that "one telephone per 143 inhabi- 
 tants," is very much to blame for this sensation of lone- 
 someness; for part of the feeling, I suspect, is furnished 
 by my feet. The little town in which a possible employer 
 lived furnished no midday train, and only one or two tele- 
 phones ! So there was nothing for it but to walk about 
 twelve kilometres, or seven miles, through the open coun- 
 try. But before that 
 
 It was at Albert, five miles northeast of Amiens, that 
 we first ran into the battle-lines. Both Albert and Arras, 
 five miles farther north, were fearfully shot up, with few 
 buildings of former times left. In the country between 
 them the battered trenches look unspeakably sinister, and 
 the few trees left are nothing but telegraph-poles. But 
 in both these towns signs of the "reconstitution" of things 
 are extremely evident : the staccato of the riveting ham- 
 mers make a joyful sound in the land, or at least in the 
 stations. An amazing amount has been accomplished. 
 Best of all, many of the former battle-fields are now ripe 
 and yellow with great stands of grain, besides red and 
 blue with harvesting machines said to have been made 
 in America. These make a happy combination with the 
 green and yellow of the landscape and the red of the 
 newly tiled roofs of reviving farmhouses, not to mention 
 the white kerchiefs of the men and women helping to 
 stack the golden sheaves. At the edges of many fields, 
 however, are huge and depressing masses of wicked and 
 rusty barbed wire and, in others, almost acres of sheet- 
 iron stretched over low walls still kindly enough to offer 
 a little shelter to some ambitious person. 
 
 At Douai the damage is not so much from bombard- 
 
THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUROPE 11 
 
 ment as at Arras, a few minutes farther south. The 
 reason is that this city it had 30,000 before the war 
 was taken over by the Germans as early as October, 1914, 
 and successfully held up to the moment of the Great Re- 
 treat in October, 1918. Before they left, the invaders 
 burned up a large part of the town bordering on the public 
 square. But, for the most part, the city appears to be 
 getting back to normal with fair rapidity. 
 
 At a near-by mine town a friend was expected to honor 
 a letter of introduction by helping to a job. In the ab- 
 sence of trains and telephones, I started off to "hoof it," 
 in high hopes of a lift from some passing driver of horse 
 or auto. Perhaps I didn't use the right words or signs, 
 or was too uncouth in my worker clothes. Anyway, not 
 one of the autos even hesitated in spite of the fact that 
 almost all of them were of American make. Such re- 
 fusals plus a pair of weary legs are calculated to make 
 a fellow feel a long, long way from Leicester Square and 
 Euclid Avenue ! 
 
 Still it was worth while to have time to get acquainted 
 with a fellow worker and to enjoy the sight of literally 
 dozens of busy coal-mines, each topped by its little roof 
 for the protection of the great " sheaves" or "pulley- 
 wheels" of the tipple. The invaders used the mines little 
 and did them great damage before leaving, but they are 
 reported in immensely better shape than those at Lens, 
 about a dozen miles west and north. The big dumps 
 indicate that a lot of fuel has been taken out in times 
 past, and the neat condition of the houses, many of them 
 new, indicates abundant hope of finding plenty more of 
 the good fuel in the future.^ It gives a fellow a start, 
 
12 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 though, to see an occasional house in which people are 
 living in apparent comfort in spite of a great round shell- 
 hole six feet wide in both walls ! 
 
 The walking gave plenty of tune to read the district's 
 war adventures, written in many languages. "Nach 
 Douhi," with its great white German arrow, was close to 
 "Lorries this way," and " Stragglers' collecting station" 
 evidences of the later pursuit. At every corner the great 
 signs and large names were very evidently planned for men 
 either hi the dark or in a great hurry. In many places 
 the usual roadside trees had been destroyed with new 
 ones often already in evidence. The few cattle have all 
 been brought in lately, for the country's captors over- 
 looked no such detail. One man, limping along and lead- 
 ing a tiny donkey hugely overtopped by a great load 
 of bedding and furniture, suggested the dreadful days 
 of the invasion. The load proved to be mattresses and 
 chairs, all brand-new. It is the sign of the new times 
 here. 
 
 The estaminet or bar-room for the noon lunch in a coal 
 village was, strangely enough, filled with Italian miners. 
 One boy was unhappy about his seventeen francs a day 
 and the short distance it went toward his board and room 
 of nine francs. All the miners of the country are reported 
 very unhappy and more or less extreme: in the letter 
 of introduction and protection which I carry from their 
 chief in Paris, he addresses his associates as " Comrades," 
 a term supposed to indicate friendliness to Bolshevism. 
 But the decent homes and the clean faces of most of the 
 miners encountered show prosperity and contentment. 
 Hundreds of workers seem to live in the comfortable- 
 
THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUROPE 13 
 
 looking villages, and use bicycles on the good cinder paths 
 for getting to their work. Many of them, too, had evi- 
 dently come " outside" for enjoying the usual long noon 
 lunch period of nearly two hours with their families at 
 home. 
 
 But of all this I hope to know more later, for there 
 surely must be a job for me in what is said to be the heart 
 of industrial France, and certainly looks it. No wonder 
 the invaders broke through here and held onto it ! The 
 strange part is that it is only three hours by fast train 
 from Paris. It feels like several days. Supper here the 
 long walk was fruitless! has been eaten over a clean 
 white oil-cloth alongside several workers who mix many 
 Italian words into a language which isn't French or any- 
 thing else I've ever met before. They are employed in 
 certain clothing factories here. That looks friendly to 
 my hope to find work to-morrow in the big steel plant 
 where I mean to try to see the director in the morning. 
 
 Here's hoping to draw as satisfactory a bed as the din- 
 ner. 
 
 Douai, 
 
 Friday, July 22, 1921. 
 
 Well, it took all my letters and a lot of very bad 
 French. But that's a small price to pay for a chance to 
 start work to-morrow morning at six in an attractive, 
 modern, 2,000-man steel plant. For some reason the 
 manager found surprisingly little trouble in understand- 
 ing my idea, perhaps because one of my introductions 
 shown him stated so well my interest in the study of 
 "the mentality of the working class," as the French 
 writer of the letter put it. 
 
14 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 Without these letters from a well-known engineer and 
 manufacturer in Paris, by the way, a job would be an 
 utter impossibility here. Outside one of the mines of 
 the neighborhood, for instance, a notice states that any 
 applicant must have his card of dismissal from the army, 
 his card of identity from his home town, and several 
 other similar certificates. So my passport would be a 
 give-away except for the co-operation of the " higher- 
 ups." 
 
 The letter of introduction thus required also presents 
 fewer complications than the plan suggested by a French 
 adviser last winter hi America. 
 
 "That will arrange itself," he answered when I asked 
 what to say in case my presence in a French town needed 
 explanation. "First you can plan an arrival-stay in, 
 say, a port city where there will be many Americans al- 
 ready. After that you will go to an interior city. When 
 they ask you why you are there, you can merely say: 
 'J'ai une amie' (I have a lady friend.) Then they will 
 understand and they will smile and all will be well." 
 
 When it came to putting me on the job, the super- 
 intendent told my boss that I had been recommended 
 to them as an American who was anxious to better his 
 condition, and so had worked his way across in order to 
 learn more about steel-making and steel-working in 
 France during the period of unemployment at home. 
 Oddly 'enough, also by great good luck, in view of my new- 
 ness to "factory French," this boss is an Englishman! 
 Apparently he's a sign of the general "mix-up" caused 
 by the war as observed in yesterday's walk. "M'sieu' 
 Toam" (Tom), as the others call him, is a bright-looking, 
 
THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUROPE 15 
 
 light-mustached Cockney who has spent years in the 
 factories and the cattle-ranches of "the States," Aus- 
 tralia, South Africa, New Zealand, China, and various 
 other points east, west, and south. After helping drive 
 out the Germans from the town here, he married a French 
 girl and appears to feel happy and settled for life. He 
 says this is the best job run into yet, and that's saying 
 a lot. 
 
 On his advice, my overalls have been secured hi the 
 market stalls of the main square at thirty-one francs. 
 It is to be hoped that they may some day show as good 
 a record of manifold launderings and multitudinous mend- 
 ings as do most of the working clothes of this plant, and, 
 indeed, of the whole region. The big factory is being 
 rebuilt with money paid by the government in view of 
 the complete destruction of the old plant, as accomplished 
 by the invaders who overworked a lot of acetylene torches 
 on its steel columns and stanchions during the last few 
 days before their retreat. As yet the new buildings are 
 only partly filled with machinery, but it's already a very 
 noisy and active place, filled with what look like workers 
 well above ordinary laborers in point of skill and train- 
 ing- 
 
 One of these is to be my landlord. What sort of place 
 his establishment is remains a question, but it is evi- 
 dently the kind of boarding-house which goes with the 
 job, and that's the important thing. At any rate, its 
 name sounds good "Estaminet Tout Va Bien" (All goes 
 well). 
 
 "Not bad, physically," said one storekeeper this after- 
 noon when asked how the town was treated by "les 
 
16 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 boches," as everybody calls their recent captors, " Mor- 
 ally, very bad. Nothing but a great prison, the whole 
 city with thousands of our men who didn't get off to 
 the army in time put to work under armed guards in the 
 trenches or the mines near by." 
 
 The situation should become plainer as the French 
 department of my ears improves. It needed little skill, 
 however, to learn from the verger in the old church 
 that it had been stripped of every piece of metal- 
 bells, chandeliers, railings, lamps, candlesticks every- 
 thing! The great organ appeared shockingly bereaved 
 and forlorn with nothing but gaping spaces where the 
 great pipes had been. A huge hole in the roof has just 
 been repaired. It was made by an English bombing 
 plane in the attempt to "put out the eyes" of the Ger- 
 mans believed to be using the high tower as a point of 
 observation. Throughout the city's lawns, squares, and 
 parks, statues have been despoiled of every inch of metal 
 even down to the lettering. 
 
 The foreigners were in complete control from about 
 October 2, 1914, up to the middle of October, 1918. Local 
 picture postals show many imposing reviews of the troops 
 with their goose-steps and similar doings including a 
 grand celebration during a visit from the Kaiser himself. 
 From all accounts, a good many women are suffering 
 now from the cold shoulders caused by their wearing too 
 many fine clothes and getting their food too easily during 
 those difficult days. The strange thing, on the whole, 
 is that, apparently, a large number were able to save 
 both their lives and their self-respect at the hands of the 
 soldiers and officers billeted all over the place. Condi- 
 
THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUROPE 17 
 
 tions must have been different from those of the early 
 days in Belgium. Just before the final evacuation, how- 
 ever, about a month before Armistice Day all the citi- 
 zens were ordered out, and the town pillaged disgrace- 
 fully. Finally, a fire was set which destroyed most of 
 the buildings around the main square. Most of the ma- 
 chinery had been ruined or taken from the local factories 
 and mines long before. No wonder the British Tommies 
 looked good to the town's daughters and mothers when 
 they marched into the smoke and got to work with then- 
 water buckets ! 
 
 Also no wonder the invaders found it a town worth 
 holding up to the last possible moment. The railway 
 station is, or was, a huge affair. The time-table's map 
 shows why: lines go southwest to Arras, Amiens, and 
 Paris; northwest to Lens, Bethune, Hazebrouck, Calais, 
 and Dunkirk, the third largest port of France; north to 
 Lille, the capital of the industrial north, and on to Bel- 
 gium; east to Valenciennes, Mons, and Germany, etc., 
 etc. A great force of workers is relaying the rails while 
 masons and others are repairing the station's walls and 
 platforms. The numerous great engines of American 
 make have been bought by the government since the 
 war, and undoubtedly help greatly to make up for the 
 wide-spread shortage of rolling-stock and motive power. 
 The deep-voiced whistles of these dignified iron giants 
 from abroad compare so favorably with the shrill ear- 
 splittings of the smaller native variety of engines that 
 they are said to be in great demand. Report has it that 
 our doughboys used to get sore at the "Frenchies," when 
 their own whistles were surreptitiously transplanted so 
 
18 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 that some little French engine could use a large part of 
 its steam in manifesting its newly acquired dignity 
 making the American engineer want to hide for shame 
 every time his own big fellow let out a pitifully tiny toot. 
 
 The first impression at the station is that the district 
 is hard on the job of putting things to rights again, with 
 plenty of traffic and much freight moving, mainly coal 
 and building materials. After that comes the feeling 
 that it requires a great assortment of ordinary workers 
 and of officials in caps of various degrees of importance 
 to keep the freight and passengers going. The state- 
 operated railway from Havre to Paris is said to cost fully 
 a fourth more than the others. "We haven't got the 
 key with us," one of its brakemen answered when asked 
 to open the wash-room on our way down the day of our 
 arrival. At Rouen an official came and with the help 
 of a mechanic succeeded in getting it open. In this dis- 
 trict the government is said to have come into such close 
 relations with all the railways of the country that the 
 railway-man's job is now practically on the basis of civil 
 service. 
 
 Illogically enough, the third impression of the district 
 as a place to live comes in the form of a wish for water, 
 drinkable water, if possible, but in any event, water 
 more water! The lack of drinking water doesn't bother 
 any of the local population: any outsider doubtless 
 becomes accustomed to this in due time. But the lack 
 of the water of ordinary sanitation is more serious. The 
 houses, hotels, and estaminets appear to be built around 
 a glass-covered court in which stairs lead up to the other 
 floors directly past a toilet practically without water 
 
THE PICTURE-PUZZLE OF EUROPE 19 
 
 and furnishing for the washing of hands and face a tiny 
 receptacle holding only a quart or two of the evidently 
 precious H 2 O. 
 
 Here at the very modest tavern last night, the stairs 
 and also the sheets were quite clean, hi fact I envied 
 them their evident "pull " with somebody for connecting 
 up with a larger supply of soap and water than I have 
 yet seen in these parts. Perhaps the reason is that the 
 " elbow-grease" of the one-eyed and very hard-working 
 maid is less expensive or troublesome than ordinary water. 
 The tiny room, with its only window in the roof and its 
 dirty floor, required a good deal of faith, but so far as 
 could be determined this morning, justified it. At any 
 rate, the dinner last night showed that somebody around 
 the place knows how to cook. 
 
 Must move out hi a few minutes. Here's hoping 
 nothing worse awaits me at the next station down the 
 line, the "Estaminet Tout Va Bien." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 WITH THE STEELMEN OF DEVASTATED FRANCE 
 
 Saturday, July 23. 
 
 Thanks be for a job, anyway! Can't imagine any- 
 thing worse than to have no job and still to have to live 
 at "Estaminet Tout Va Bien" I 
 
 At the factory the half day's work went very well. 
 "M'sieu' Toam " makes a first-class boss, anxious to 
 help a fellow to like his work. Thanks to his numerous 
 warnings, my hands got a minimum of cuts on the razor- 
 sharp edges left on the steel beams after they have been 
 cut into proper lengths by the great friction saw our gang 
 operates. My job is to use a chisel and a hammer for 
 cutting away these sharp edges so that the long beams 
 can be neatly joined together at the sawed edges when 
 they are later riveted into the structural work for sup- 
 porting the roofs of buildings now going up in other parts 
 of the factory yard. If chisel or hand slips, a nasty cut 
 is the sure result. When the saw does its work, a stream 
 of water keeps it cool but does not prevent a great shower 
 of sparks and a fearful bombardment of deafening noise. 
 Altogether the chiselling, the lifting, and the assault of 
 noise, make it a real job, even though Tom doesn't try 
 to overwork either himself or my French " buddy/' and 
 myself under him. As I get it from his extremely ob- 
 scure French and his sufficiently difficult Cockney, the 
 plant when completed will employ 10,000 men, and so 
 be one of the biggest establishments in France. 
 
 20 
 
WITH THE STEELMEN OF FRANCE 21 
 
 All the workers appear to keep going very well in spite 
 of a good deal of eating and smoking. About two hours 
 after the start, everybody takes a good look 'round for 
 any high officials and then, with the coast clear, goes to 
 his locker for an assortment of bread and cheese or pickles, 
 washed down with beer or wine. Cigarettes follow and 
 more or less continue throughout the rest of the day. 
 Most of those I can see run machines which require fairly 
 accurate work. Many of these last, by the way, includ- 
 ing the great saw, give me a friendly look bearing as 
 they do the name-plates of various makers in America. 
 
 Altogether the place gives the impression of a brand- 
 new and well-managed establishment in which it will be 
 a pleasure to spend a week or two. The last hour of the 
 Saturday half day spent in cleaning up the machine and 
 putting our working location in good shape with the 
 company supplying strong but agreeable soap for dirty 
 hands is a positive delight. 
 
 If only the same could be said for the " All Goes Well" ! 
 It's hard to know where to begin! These certainly are 
 the worst living conditions I've ever seen unless the 
 "fo'c'stle" of the cattle boat of college days be excepted. 
 Perhaps it's because I'm so close up to it at this moment. 
 At any rate, it all seems like an outrageous combination 
 of multitudinous noisy and hungry flies, dirty beds, stink- 
 ing garbage, squalling babies, promiscuous and untrained 
 puppies and cats, amazingly contiguous filthy toilets, 
 littered kitchen tables, slatternly, half-dressed women, 
 tasteless food, etc., etc. ad nauseum ! 
 
 I've certainly found the common laborer tracked him 
 to his habitat there's no doubt about that. And that's 
 
22 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 what I'm here for. But it's stretching it somewhat to 
 say that finding him brings any great comfort and hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Supper last night couldn't have come closer to my 
 hopes, hi one way, yet it certainly furnished a trial for 
 any white-collared nerves. The first at table was a big 
 fellow with his heavy corduroys held up by a wide red 
 belt. His heavy mustache would do credit to any Bol- 
 shevist that breathes. Presumably his hair is also red, 
 but it's hard to be certain as to that, for he never takes 
 his hat off at table ! He works over at the station "on 
 the rails." Next came a little laborer, his small-featured 
 face unshaven for several days. His short, faded army 
 trousers went down to his old gray-blue puttees. With 
 his long hair hanging over his right eye, he looks and 
 talks in a furtive and guttural fashion that somehow 
 suggests a quick and active and subterranean rat. 
 Next him sits a hod-carrier yes, a handsome hod-car- 
 rier. He wears great wooden sabots. His mustache 
 and clean shave indicate fair contentment with life. He 
 laughs often. When he does, he strikes his leg with either 
 hand that may be free of fork or knife; whereupon a 
 great cloud of dust arises so full of lime that we all 
 cough. The tall musketeer of a fellow on my right, with 
 magnificent red mustaches, is a mason from Dunkirk, 
 where work is scarce. Immediately on my left is a thick- 
 set, black-haired, heavy-mustached laborer with one eye 
 as good a make-up for the heavy villain's part as one 
 could wish to find in a month's search. In between 
 the greasy, bread-strewn, beer-dripping, fly-covered table 
 and the bad smells. 
 
WITH THE STEELMEN OF FRANCE 23 
 
 The way the crowd can fill up their plates out of the 
 huge bowl of boiled potatoes, for instance, is marvellous 
 to see. Such appetites as those unshaven faces and huge 
 mustaches appear to represent ! The meat is too precious 
 to be put up to our self-control; it is served by the land- 
 lord's wife as she passes back and forth from the kitchen. 
 At the proper time, when you have finished with your soup 
 and have filled your soup-plate with potatoes, she appears 
 with the precious meat and her fork. At least we can 
 agree that she plays no favorites. Suzanne, the little 
 daughter of nine, appears to be the drudge. She keeps 
 jumping up continually to fetch the bread or butter from 
 the passageway or to serve the ubiquitous beer. But 
 she gets nothing but the most terrifying of scoldings and 
 shakings for it all from a father who gives the rest of his 
 time to ordering the hard-worked, young and once-pretty 
 wife about or to entertaining his thirteen-months-old 
 baby except when he is trying to feed it such things as 
 hard-boiled eggs! When he passes from this to yelling 
 at Suzanne and banging the table while she whimpers, 
 the mother shouts and a glass, or two, breaks well, I'll 
 confess the whole combination makes me think about 
 the Statue of Liberty and the sky-line of New York Har- 
 bor. 
 
 All this was, of course, calculated to prepare the new 
 guest for the worst in the way of a room. The result 
 was hardly disappointing, though plenty of air came from 
 two windows in the roof. The bed's wires are so antique 
 that it made a dreadful racket every time I turned as 
 I did often at the start, with the thought of the probabili- 
 ties in store. Finally, I made up my mind that my sensa- 
 
24 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 tions of various moving things were the work of imagina- 
 tion, and so resolved to turn once more and then go to 
 sleep without further testings except just once more. 
 Alas and alack! my fingers encountered on my shoul- 
 der something that made, under pressure, a long, soft, 
 smeary squash! Having learned the worst, and hoping 
 for the best, I went to sleep, thanking whichever of my 
 stars had made me a first-class hoper. 
 
 This morning it was a matter of arranging a few very 
 bloody murders, and then trying to dress carefully in 
 the new overalls. So it was a hard blow when Tom 
 greeted me with a kindly word and then flicked some- 
 thing from my lapel with his: 
 
 "You got bugs there at the ' Tout Va Bien? ain't you? 
 Blime, that's nothin' they're all over the bloody place 
 J ereabouts," he was considerate enough to add. 
 
 Still I'm for suggesting to the editors of the next book 
 on etiquette something like: "It is considered polite to 
 mention the weather or other similarly innocuous topic 
 when brushing indecent insects from the lapel of a friend." 
 
 Well, I can stand it for a week, and, for the matter of 
 that, still other weeks if necessary. Tom, however, hands 
 out another jolt when he opines that in his experience 
 the workers here live better and are much cleaner, more 
 self-respecting, than the miners and others of the older 
 St. Etienne region. That's hard luck. 
 
 According to the paper, many people besides myself 
 are unhappy. The day's doings for the city, appearing 
 in the regional paper published up at Lille, give quite 
 a list : 
 
 "One Boitelle, otherwise judged prudent and faultless, 
 
WITH THE STEELMEN OF FRANCE 25 
 
 has stolen a bicycle. Condemned to prison for six 
 months. " 
 
 "At a near by station in Pont-de-la Deule, two miners 
 stole a case which they thought contained vertributh, but 
 which was only shoe-blacking. Given six months and 
 forty days respectively." 
 
 "Louis Jacquemart, without money or work, presented 
 himself at the estaminet of M. Donnay. Saying that he 
 was a new employee at the Mayor's office, he ordered a 
 copious meal. When it came tune to pay he turned his 
 pockets inside out nothing but a piece of tobacco and 
 two pants buttons ! For his joke he was imprisoned three 
 days." 
 
 Nearly every day there is an item or two about the 
 miners, the carpenters, or the textile workers up at Rou- 
 baix-Turcoing, beyond Lille, and their conferences with 
 the managers or "patrons" about the question of reduc- 
 tions in wages or in the cost of living "dearness of 
 the life," it's called here. Verily, two difficult subjects 
 the world over ! 
 
 Having duly washed my well-cut hands with the com- 
 pany's soap, with the aid of dirt as instructed by Tom, 
 changed my clothes and eaten a second dinner with my 
 new comrades, it would seem helpful to keeping the steady 
 keel undoubtedly demanded for the week just ahead if 
 one were to make a petite promenade. 
 
 Sunday evening. 
 
 If only there were some way to reproduce all the 
 sounds that come to me here in my attic from the courts 
 and windows of this crowded corner where the working 
 
26 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 population is taking its Sunday afternoon loaf, and, in 
 the highest temperature France has known in years, 
 taking it hot! 
 
 Except when the babies cry or the dogs get excited, 
 the cornetist and the " accordionist/ ' just opposite, are 
 the prize winners, especially when they are accompanied 
 by the drummer. Occasionally, however, a fearful auto- 
 matic piano in an estaminet filled with foreign laborers, 
 puts even them in the shade. The band at the garrison, 
 luckily or unluckily, is a little too far away to interfere 
 with them. Most of the conversation especially the 
 joking is carried on hi high voice, as though meant to 
 be shared with everybody in the quarter. Unfortunately, 
 the same holds for the frequent and furious scoldings 
 usually addressed to the children. The strange thing is 
 that no one seems to have a talking-machine. The sing- 
 ing, however, is continuous so much so as to suggest 
 a self-starter in the way of alcohol and almost every 
 place near by has the bar of an estaminet down-stairs. 
 Evidently most others do as does mine host work by 
 day and then, by night, help the wife serve meals or 
 drinks. A man's ears tell him that the population is 
 pretty tightly packed together, but, for the day, at least, 
 not particularly unhappy about it and extremely relaxed 
 and leisurely. 
 
 A large part of the town was on hand to see a very 
 agreeable gymnastic exhibition staged in a near-by square 
 with the help of a band early in the afternoon. It seems 
 that every French city has these groups of athletic boys 
 and girls with then* wands, parallel bars, etc. With 
 the help of a few contributions from leading citizens, 
 
WITH THE STEELMEN OF FRANCE 27 
 
 they exhibit their training in other towns much as our 
 baseball and football teams. 
 
 This morning offered quite an impressive ceremony in 
 connection with the interment of the unknown allied 
 soldier. Without music, the straggling line would hardly 
 have been very impressive with its handful of soldiers, 
 more widows and still more orphans, a flag-covered wagon 
 and a general and a bishop or two. But with the help 
 of the slow beats and heavy chords of a funeral march, 
 the irregular steps of the various motley groups were 
 somehow tied together into something calculated to give 
 every onlooker some very serious thoughts about the 
 high cost of warring especially when, as we stood with 
 bowed heads, the coffin passed by the gaping fronts of 
 homes bombed during the operations, or, later, came 
 into the ruined town square. 
 
 While the procession was forming there was an ex- 
 traordinary amount of hat-tipping, hand-shaking, and 
 cheek-kissing by the various dignitaries military, re- 
 ligious, civil, and commercial. An onlooker couldn't help 
 wondering what the general or the bishop, for instance, 
 would do if, by some strange chance, his position were 
 for the future to be cut off from the kowtowing now 
 inseparable from it. A big increase in the pay-envelope 
 or other emoluments would pretty surely have to follow 
 in order to make up for the discrepancy. Not that these 
 men are especially different from the rest of us. Life is 
 pretty much made up of bowers and bowees with prac- 
 tically every one of us performing, at all times, in not 
 one but both roles. Thus everybody here bows to the 
 bishop. Fine ! Who wouldn't be a bishop ! But when 
 
28 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 
 \\ 
 
 he goes to Paris or Rome he bows to the archbishops and 
 the cardinals reflecting, meanwhile, how nice it would be 
 to be bowed to by other bishops ! So Tom at the plant 
 likes the way the French boy and I kowtow to him as 
 the boss of our great, screaming saw. Meanwhile, he 
 bows to the Contre-maitre, or department "super," and 
 nurses his hopes some day to be bowed to by those who 
 are bosses of saws! We all certainly do like the bows 
 that go with this or that position. It wouldn't be so far 
 wrong to hazard that they get more action out of us 
 bowees than does the money paid us. It is these bows 
 that sing to us in the streets and the public places the 
 paean of our personal achievement to date. The same 
 song is sung to us by our white collars or even our canes. 
 It's not a bad song, either, for it helps us to what is one 
 of the most difficult things in the world to believe in 
 ourselves. More harm is probably done, on the whole, 
 by underbelief in ourselves than by overbelief. They 
 are comparatively small in number who need preach- 
 ments against pride. Of these few we are afraid because 
 if they do not care for the opinion of the rest of us, how 
 can we prevent their doing what is harmful to us? This 
 fear it is that makes us forget that the vast majority 
 of us spend entirely too much time screwing up our 
 courage to the point of taking ourselves seriously, and 
 hugging to our soul's hungry heart the gratifying as- 
 surance of every bow we can manage or contrive to get 
 hold of! 
 
 The slenderness of the dividing line between the satis- 
 factions of matters physical and tangible, such as food 
 or money, and of matters mental or spiritual, such as 
 
WITH THE STEELMEN OF FRANCE 29 
 
 bows, impresses me more than ever now that every night 
 I get into that creaking cot of mine. After a few mo- 
 ments the definite testimony of my sense of feeling as to 
 things crawling about upon shoulder or knee becomes 
 entirely untrustworthy. The reason is that my mind gets 
 into the matter too thoroughly so thoroughly that I 
 can't tell at all whether the real movement is on my body 
 or at the other end of the line, hi my brain. Finally I 
 give up, turn over, and fall asleep from sheer disgust at 
 such an unreliable information service as my nerves 
 appear to furnish. In the same way, after a mosquito 
 or two has sung its song into my ear, my ear's soul, as 
 it were its mental or spiritual double gets into the 
 game of mosquito-listening so completely or so acutely 
 that its testimony as to mosquito song and mosquito 
 silence becomes so hair-splitting as to be entirely worth- 
 less. The resultant lack of faith in one's own senses 
 produces, for some reason, a most depressing feeling of 
 both bodily helplessness and spiritual insignificance: the 
 ordinary tools for connecting with the outside, tangible 
 world have shown themselves no good, and in all the 
 width of the universe, tangible or intangible, there are 
 no others! 
 
 Perhaps it is this wish this universal wish to get 
 away from the thoroughly demoralizing uncertainty 
 which thus goes with all narrow margins, that makes us 
 all tend to go too far the moment we can put our physical 
 or spiritual feet down upon the terra firma of definite, 
 wide-margined certainties and assurances. So we build 
 a house much bigger than we need or eat more or drink 
 more than is at all necessary just to get the enjoyable 
 
30 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 relief that comes with the sense of definite, unquestion- 
 able undoubtedness. 
 
 There has been time to ponder on all this, unfor- 
 tunately, in the darkness in between the mosquitoes and 
 other things. For the nights have brought something 
 new a narrow sheet and a narrow blanket. Every time 
 I get under them I have to spend some time trying to 
 " rationalize" myself, as the psycho-analysts would say, 
 to tell myself the cover is enough to cover me just, that 
 more than enough is too much and that a narrow sheet 
 should not bother a college graduate, even though people 
 for years have squandered money on wide, and unneces- 
 sary, edges. But later when the cold wakes me up to 
 find the covers on the floor, I realize that a famous Phila- 
 delphia merchant has learned more about sheets and 
 such things than I. 
 
 "The part of a sheet or blanket that keeps you warm," 
 according to this expert, "is the part that hangs over!" 
 
 Perhaps my thirty-inch sheet is scientifically enough 
 if there is such a thing as "scientifically enough," in such 
 matters. But one thing is sure: it isn't enough to make 
 me feel sure that it is enough. 
 
 Just that difference of margin of the part that hangs 
 over appears to me more and more at the bottom of 
 the difference between, say, the unskilled laborers and us 
 white-collared chaps. Statistics can perhaps demonstrate 
 mathematically that everybody has an economic sheet 
 wide enough to cover him. True enough, perhaps, on 
 the average and under normal circumstances. The 
 trouble is that nobody lives "on the average," least of 
 all the people who have the narrowest sheet. Sometimes 
 
WITH THE STEELMEN OF FRANCE 31 
 
 we figure that we could live the life that goes with the 
 job of the "narrow-sheeters," and manage to get along 
 a lot better than they appear to. The trouble is that we 
 are unconsciously figuring on carrying with us into that 
 job and the life which is pretty inexorably determined 
 by it our own education and foresight. But it is ex- 
 actly the lack of these that makes him a common laborer; 
 that lack is, automatically, a part of his whole situation. 
 That being so, he, of course, does fail to avoid illness as 
 well as we would in his situation, and to protect himself 
 against the accidents of both factory and fate as well as 
 we would. But if he could do as well as we well, then he 
 wouldn't have the common laborer's job that requires the 
 living of a common laborer's life. The important thing 
 is for us to see that it is footless for us to figure how prop- 
 erly to deal with either his body or his soul apart from 
 the narrowness of his sheet, for this at every hour of the 
 day or night is compelling, at this point and at that, some 
 little readjustment of both. 
 
 In the same way, I have been deciding, throughout the 
 length of some of my cold darknesses, that I could sleep 
 fairly well under this sheet if somehow I could contrive 
 a means of lying still. The trouble is that the narrow 
 sheet is tied in to the very nature of the whole situation 
 which grabs me the moment I accept the necessity of 
 accommodating my life to a total earning power of less 
 than twenty francs a day. That same situation which 
 furnishes the narrow sheet as a part of the landlord's 
 poverty, also furnishes automatically the other things 
 the other little, but lively things which make it quite 
 impossible to lie still! 
 
32 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 Yes, these nights put me in a mood to believe that it's 
 the part that hangs over that counts it is not wasteful, 
 it is necessary. The existence or lack of it hi the field of 
 things spiritual and mental, as well as physical and eco- 
 nomic, is driving us every hour and every week of our 
 lives to fit ourselves to our sheet either to lie carefully 
 or to enjoy the luxury of easy movement. Nevertheless, 
 most of us continue to make the mistake of thinking that 
 the hobo, for instance, is different from us, not because 
 of these margins these differences of degree that come 
 to cause differences of kind but because of some differ- 
 ence down at the bottom of his hobo soul. 
 
 Here hi Douai the sheets must be fairly narrow for a 
 lot of people. Pretty much the whole population appears 
 to be hard workers, with only occasionally a person of 
 the careful or chic appearance of the Paris boulevards, 
 and I recall that the Paris boulevards are found in the 
 working quarters, too. To be sure, this part of the world 
 here hi North France has led a mighty hard life for most 
 of the months since October, 1914. But it is easy to be- 
 lieve that for some reason or other the pressure of exist- 
 ence is heavy much heavier here than at Paris. This 
 impression is sure to be gained from every crowd. It 
 is supported by the ordinary conversation at the table 
 down-stairs. Naturally, the high cost of living is felt to 
 be the immediate enemy with the Great War as the 
 cause behind it. Then behind the war and causing it, 
 is seen, by several of my new friends, the arch- villain of 
 the play the capitalist. 
 
 " Capitalism is international, not national/' so runs 
 the conversation often. "It goes wherever it is led by 
 
WITH THE STEELMEN OF FRANCE 33 
 
 its lust for profits." (Note the high voice of our mason 
 as he rubs thumb and finger together in the universal 
 token of money.) "That takes it into any and every 
 country of the world. Enemy or friend that means 
 nothing to 'M'sieu' Money-Bags.' So labor should be 
 similarly international. If capital knows no country, 
 why should l la classe ouvriere"! Here's our country, I 
 tell you, here" tapping his plate of meat and potatoes 
 "here wherever we get our jobs." 
 
 From such words it is easy to pass to the morning 
 paper's news of the big business man or the politician, 
 who has been arrested for stealing millions of francs in 
 connection with the "reconstitution " projects at Lens 
 or elsewhere in the near-by devastated regions. Where- 
 upon the one-eyed day-laborer agrees with the mason as 
 he shakes his head in his personal belief that Jouhaux, 
 the head of the French Federation of Labor, has been 
 bought by the government and that he never was a real 
 laborer anyhow. According to the mason, all present 
 confusion in the ranks of labor one item shows a big 
 miners' conference voting 113 for and 113 against stand- 
 ing with the Moscow Bolshevists ! has thus been brought 
 about by the politicians. 
 
 "A big trouble, too, my friends," says the red-mus- 
 tached railway laborer, "it is that there is too much dif- 
 ference between us manual laborers and skilled workers. 
 Picture yourself! Some skilled workers who sweat less 
 than we do draw as much as four and five francs the hour ! 
 I ask you, is it not so? Yes, and meanwhile, we do well 
 to get from a franc and a half to two francs, or maybe 
 two and a quarter. More than double! For why? . . . 
 
34 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 But then, it's that way in the army, too. Why, I know 
 a man he had no ' protection ' (pull), you know? Well, 
 for twenty years yes, it's quite true he has never 
 moved from being a sergeant, while others of his friends 
 pass him continually! I tell you, ten minutes of l pro- 
 tection' is worth more than ten years of service anywhere 
 in the army or on the job." 
 
 "But it was the French soldier boys at Verdun," adds 
 the mason; "it was they who knew what to do when 
 they ran into too much authority. You know, one day 
 when a crowd of them had a day or two off, they wanted 
 to go into the town which thousands of their friends had 
 died to save. And some gendarmes told them they 
 couldn't enter. Ha! It is to laugh! What did they 
 do? Ha! Nothing except hang them to a few lamp- 
 posts that happened to be overlooked by the bombard- 
 ment ! 
 
 "One night," he goes on; "we had to get into the 
 tombs for protection the dead dead and the living dead, 
 or half -dead living, we were all mixed up together ! Oh, 
 my God, how it was terrible ! Unspeakable ! . . . And 
 at Fort Douamont we were entombed for four whole 
 days and nights. When they finally found us, the hairs 
 of several of my friends were white !" 
 
 It looks as though this pressure of the "H. C. L.," aided 
 by war-weariness and war-disgust this vast weary- 
 disgust were causing a touchiness with regard to every- 
 iking except the Washington Conference for limiting 
 armament and the League of Nations. Though the men 
 appear to have no huge amount of interest in either of 
 these, nevertheless, they feel that anything at all which 
 
WITH THE STEELMEN OF FRANCE 35 
 
 gives a slight fraction of a chance for avoiding war is 
 worth trying. Perhaps that is where President Wilson 
 made a mistake. He found this part of the world deathly 
 weary deathly sick of war especially France, where 
 the forty years of fear of war were finally justified, hor- 
 ribly justified. Then he forgot that the passionate in- 
 tensity of this sickness here has had nothing at all com- 
 parable to it amongst us in America, sick enough of war 
 though we have been. It's this intensity, too, apparently, 
 that makes the " Internationalists " feel as they do about 
 all this nest of neighbors pushed up against them in this 
 crowded continent. 
 
 "What good did we get out of fighting the Saxons, for 
 instance?" demands the mason. " Prussians, yes, they 
 were terrible and are but Saxons, they were better, is 
 it not so? Always our prisoners would say to us, 'Me 
 Saxon not Prussian! Prussians bad people, yes!' It 
 was to laugh to see them with their hands up ! Yet for 
 a while the big statesmen had to work hard to decide 
 whether Italy was our friend. Finally, they decided 
 Italy was not our enemy. If they hadn't so decided, 
 then we should have had to shoot the Italians! Shoot 
 or no shoot? like that." (Business of turning hand 
 palm upward then downward.) "And in any case we 
 should have had to obey or be shot ourselves. Ugh! 
 It is all terrible. It must not happen again ! No never 
 in life!" 
 
 One thing is sure a lot of these things look amazingly 
 plainer when you sit and eat under these dreadful sur- 
 roundings, with the table a smear of beer, bread, and 
 flies, with the cat eating its meat on the desk at the same 
 
36 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 level with and touching the table, and the wriggling puppy 
 or the dirty baby in the landlord's half-sleeved arms, and 
 when you talk with these men who were prisoner-slaves 
 here during the occupation or were at Verdun, or who 
 devoutly thank "the good God that He gave me an awful 
 wound that took me back into the hospital and then to 
 another sector/' 
 
 Yes, it's a pretty war-worn world also, evidently, 
 a peace-puzzled and perplexed one. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 "FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" 
 
 Monday, July 25. 
 
 WELL, to-day brings one discovery, at least. That 
 statement that the Frenchman never drinks to excess 
 is not true; at any rate, not for the French working man 
 and his week-end. Between Saturday noon and Monday 
 night life here looks like just one little drink after an- 
 other. The beer is very light, but after all Well, here's 
 how it's gone: 
 
 Saturday afternoon mine host asked me to go with 
 him for a business call or two. Every few squares we 
 stepped into some little bar for a "Bock," "un shoppe," 
 or "du vin blanc, s'il vous plait." Luckily I was allowed 
 to order smaller and smaller glasses. Otherwise I might 
 have been staggering, too, when his business was finally 
 done. 
 
 Sunday evening many estaminets were a-roar with 
 singing, and many drunken men were on the streets. 
 My mason friend was well seas-over and anxious to show 
 pictures with full details regarding all his children they 
 number seven ! This morning at coffee he was a wreck. 
 With sickening aches in head and stomach, he was anxious 
 to figure just how it happened. 
 
 Monday is apparently taken as a sort of tapering-off 
 day. First as usual came the morning cognac in our 
 glasses or bowls of coffee drunk in the filthy kitchen where 
 
 37 
 
38 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 the boss starts the fire and the flies make a tremendous 
 hum as they begin the day's operations on the kitchen 
 table's unwashed plates, the uncovered garbage pail, the 
 dog's unfinished bones, or in the toilet on the other side 
 of the half-height partition. Next a short walk to the 
 factory. Within a few minutes after starting work, a 
 wink from a friend gets me over among the machinists. 
 Behold another bar! With plenteous precautions, a 
 wreck of a man stops his machine while he pours us out 
 at fifty centimes each our glasses of gin. With ap- 
 propriate thanks I return to my hammer, chisel, and 
 razor edges of steel to note a bit of dizziness a few min- 
 utes later. In spite of extra care taken in realization of 
 the danger, it is nevertheless to be noted that more cuts 
 happened in the next half-hour than in all the rest of the 
 day. One of the other men treated by our friend fell 
 within the succeeding half-hour, and had to go to the 
 plant nurse with a badly skinned leg. During the morn- 
 ing many of the workers drank beer and wine out of their 
 bottles brought hi pockets or knapsacks. 
 
 " Don't you like my brand?" my French buddy asked, 
 almost insulted when I accepted only a few mouthfuls 
 of his proffered beer. 
 
 At noon our bibulous friend had my landlord and my- 
 self in to a bar opposite the factory gate for a couple of 
 glasses of port wine. Later, at "home," of course, beer 
 was served freely, as at every meal. After that as usual 
 at the noon dinner which is permitted by the hour and a 
 half's recess, aided by the bicycles we were served red 
 wine. Then a glass of hot coffee. After that the usual 
 small glass of cognac or whiskey had to be refused. On 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM " 39 
 
 the way to the plant the same old chum asked us to step 
 in to the bar again ! Luckily, we were too close to the 
 whistle, and a minute of tardiness costs a half-hour's 
 pay. During the afternoon another invitation to the 
 secret gin bottles had to be refused. At four, when we 
 got our sandwiches, Tom advised me to be sure to get 
 a bottle and bring my beer hereafter. "The water's un- 
 safe 'ereabouts," and he told the details to prove how it 
 had been fatal to a fellow worker. Every tune the near- 
 by machinists see me drinking water they put hand to 
 stomach and make awful faces, as though expecting my 
 immediate collapse. When the whistle blew at 5.30, 
 we had another stop-in for beer. At supper-time 7.30 
 our friend stopped in for still another drink with our 
 host, and unfortunately showed himself pretty muddled 
 though still extremely friendly. At supper, of course, 
 we had nothing to drink but beer. 
 
 "A joke ! A dream !" one of the laborers snorted when 
 told that in America it was believed that Frenchmen 
 seldom got drunk, now that absinthe had been pro- 
 hibited. 
 
 As a result of all this, unfortunately, the "Tout Va 
 Bien's" keeper also showed himself very well loaded at 
 supper. His shoutings and scoldings and shakings for 
 poor little Suzanne still ring in my ears worse than 
 before, and that's saying a lot, a dreadful lot. With feet 
 sore, fingers cut, hands greasy in spite of the strongest 
 of soap, back tired and ears half numbed by nine hours 
 of the screams of our saw such a combination makes it 
 most pleasant to dream of going home and speaking plea- 
 santly to my daughter and the others of my family the 
 
40 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 rest of my days. It would be good to know whether his 
 scoldings and yellings are the result of the flies and the 
 rest of this situation, or just the day's drinkings, or per- 
 haps a " protective behavior" intended to "save his face" 
 when he feels below par. Anyway, it makes, by all 
 means, the hardest thing to stand in the whole outfit 
 here at the house much harder than the dirt and the 
 bugs. 
 
 Which reminds me alas! that there's just tune for 
 a stroll before getting under the thirty inches of sheet 
 again. ... At any rate, here's hoping that the little 
 laborer in the next room doesn't talk in his sleep as much 
 as he did last night. 
 
 Wednesday. 
 
 Am feeling to-day like a victim of the high cost of liv- 
 ing a bit revolutionary. Find that my pay as a laborer 
 is only a mite more than 13 francs a day for a working 
 week of five days and a half. Meanwhile, board and 
 keep cost 12 francs a day for an eating and sleeping 
 week of seven days. Other workers of much the same 
 sort in the plant get an additional " benefice," or h. c. 1. 
 bonus, of 5 francs a day, and some of the day-laborers 
 on the railway, for instance, get a total of over 20 francs. 
 Some also get small additions for dependent children as 
 the result of a union of employers in the effort to increase 
 the birth-rate. But even at that, board and room at 10 
 or 12 francs say, 75 francs the week make a pretty 
 heavy pull on, say, 120 francs of pay. Back hi the Amer- 
 ican steel towns the bed and board were not over ten 
 dollars or well under half a laborer's income. No won- 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" 41 
 
 der the mason who is seven times father finds the going 
 mighty hard, especially when Dunkirk offers no work, 
 and the contractors give no family "supplement" for the 
 children. 
 
 Apparently, the boarding-house keepers are not mak- 
 ing a fortune, either. The drought has put vegetables of 
 all kinds up to extremely high levels. Meat appears 
 always high, and, so far as our table is concerned at least, 
 both precious and tough. The cheese and pickles for my 
 factory lunch appear expensive, even for one who can 
 buy francs at eight cents apiece. Red and white wine 
 are also high too high to be anything like as common 
 as pre-war. A good pair of half-soles comes high at 16 
 francs three-quarters of a day's work ! A new pair of 
 good shoes requires serious thought at 60 francs as also 
 a suit of made-to-order clothes at 300 to 400 francs. 
 
 All this makes one wonder all the more at the surpris- 
 ing neatness of person and the general intelligence of 
 face of the better class of mechanics comprising most of 
 the workers over at the "usine" or plant. On Monday 
 every pair of overalls hi the place appeared freshly washed 
 evidently that represents an important part of the 
 wife's duties. Altogether, the assorted and assembled 
 patches of various vintages showed more shades of blue 
 than Joseph's coat. Even on the hot afternoons, too, 
 the strict etiquette of neatness apparently forbade the 
 loosening of the double-breasted, semi-military jackets. 
 The heat made me risk shocking them by working in my 
 khaki shirt, coatless. Most of the better-trained hands 
 are getting about 30 francs a day. The 54-hour schedule 
 breaks the national 8-hour law and will be stopped when 
 
42 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 things here in the devastated regions become normal 
 again. Everybody possible is on piece-work, but a rule 
 forbids their making a sum more than 60 per cent above 
 a certain guaranteed minimum. So when they approach 
 that 60 per cent and they use up a lot of chalk figuring 
 it all out they begin to slow down. At all times the 
 crowd keeps a sharp lookout for the higher officials. To- 
 day we were well ahead of our schedule at five, and so 
 started to use up a good half -hour getting ready to "take 
 off," on the instant of the whistle. Suddenly word came 
 down the line by a combined series of low whistles, winks, 
 and nods that the director was approaching. In an 
 instant, Tom, in spite of his street clothes, grabbed his 
 hammer and began pounding a steel beam vigorously 
 to register great activity. I wonder if the bosses are 
 as easily fooled by mere activity as we workers get to 
 thinking. 
 
 On the whole, the machinists and apprentices near us 
 get a lot of work done and, judging by their use of pre- 
 cision tools, work of a high order, too. That doesn't 
 keep some of them from playing an occasional tune with 
 then- hammers while others thrum at a long file held "a 
 la banjo." To-day the excessive heat caused a lot of 
 horse-play. Two apprentices were approached stealthily 
 from behind when no boss was near and full buckets 
 of cold water left upside down upon their heads and shoul- 
 ders! 
 
 "If one did not work for a day he went to prison for 
 a day. A loaf of bread we had once a week. Often 
 yes, many tunes, we saw our friends die of starvation, 
 dropping at their work." So the young Frenchman with 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM"' 43 
 
 us, in between times, tells us of his days when, as pris- 
 oner, he labored in the coal-mines. 
 
 The jolly little humpbacked machinist an artist with 
 his file-banjo was a street-car motorman. Both are 
 sure that much of the food sent hi for them by the Ameri- 
 cans was taken by their captors. Local postals, by the 
 way, show a German bakery operated by the soldiers 
 here in the plant almost exactly where we work. 
 
 It is easy to hear hot arguments between citizens who 
 had different ideas about proper relations with the con- 
 querors. Some that knuckled under too easily are find- 
 ing life unpleasant now men as well as women. Last 
 night my one-eyed table companion had it hot and heavy 
 with a dapper-looking young gentleman who had feath- 
 ered his prison-nest by becoming an overquick* and over- 
 willing interpreter for the invaders. 
 
 "It is necessary to say that our friend, this one-eyed 
 man, is a brave fellow, " the landlord explained when 
 asked the why of the fuss. "You see, when the boches 
 came, they made everybody work. Our friend said: 
 'No, I do not wish to work, thanks.' They put three 
 bayonets against his throat ugh, like that. 'No/ he 
 said, 'no, I will not work/ Then they counted eins, 
 zwei, drei by ten he must decide, you understand? 
 They counted ten. He looked them in the face and said: 
 'No, I will not work for you boches. 7 And they did not 
 fire. No one knows for why not. And he did not work. 
 Always sick, or pretending he was. Yes, it is to be said 
 that he is brave." 
 
 Me, I take off my hat to him besides asking forgive- 
 ness for saying, a few days ago, that he looks like a prize 
 
44 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 villain. Incidentally, he works seventy hours of hard 
 road labor every week at 2.25 francs per. On most things, 
 furthermore, his view-point is remarkably balanced and 
 sane. 
 
 Perhaps somewhat the same war-time differences of 
 opinion, made intense by the fearful strains of the war, 
 are at the bottom of the fierce conflict in the General 
 Labor Federation's annual conference up at Lille. Yes- 
 terday belts, chairs, and even bullets passed between the 
 majority Socialists and the minority Communists, luckily 
 without fatalities. 
 
 Another "hang over" of much the same sort is, doubt- 
 less, the large number of divorces now reported in France. 
 The bibulous friend of Monday, for instance, has just 
 divorced his wife for her overfriendliness with an Aus- 
 tralian soldier. It is easy to imagine that she had had 
 perhaps for a year no idea whether her husband was 
 alive or dead, at the moment the English marched into 
 the town, just after it had been pillaged. History's Great 
 War has also been, evidently, history's great "Mix- 
 up": an enormous number of children of the present 
 French generation are going to represent an amazing 
 mixture of bloods. So far I've seen no Chinese laborers 
 here, but of Algerians, Senegalese, negroes, Italians, Span- 
 iards, Poles, etc., etc., there are many still at work here 
 as during the war, and in many cases they have become 
 illicit husbands. The French appear to hold slight prej- 
 udice against them and to make slight distinction 
 amongst them. Last evening I was introduced to an old 
 fellow as an American: 
 
 "You know, these foreigners aren't so bad," he ex- 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" 45 
 
 pressed himself to our mutual friend. "Why, not long 
 ago I met a Pole yes, from Poland, and he was quite 
 a fine fellow. Yes, it's true, so, I'm pleased to meet you, 
 Mr. American." 
 
 Still, each month is helping the world "back to nor- 
 malcy," more than we are apt to think. To-day, for in- 
 stance, the papers feature the notice that only four days 
 remain in which a citizen can present his claims for war 
 damages. That means that thousands and thousands 
 have put in their claims, received the proper amount and 
 spent it for furniture, etc. That's said to be one cause 
 for the great number of bicycles here in town. Though 
 they were fairly scarce before the war, it somehow hap- 
 pened, so the boys say at the plant, with a wink, that 
 nearly everybody happened to have one on hand when 
 an English bomb fell or when the final pillage took place. 
 With the payment of war damages, a great many people, 
 of course, came into more money than they had ever 
 seen before. In order to stop the wasteful expenditure 
 which often followed, it was shortly required of a person 
 to show receipts indicating his outlay in the proper direc- 
 tions of house-rebuilding or refurnishing before the full 
 sum was turned over. 
 
 The same "reconstitution" is represented by the laying 
 of the corner-stone of the new library at Louvain. Burned 
 by the invaders August 25, 1914, the new building has 
 been made possible by American givers. Last week, also, 
 American givers were represented at the restoration of 
 the cathedral at Rheims. (Around the table here, by 
 the way, they say that after the invaders came into the 
 Rheims country, they pillaged all the large champagne 
 
46 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 cellar-depositories, and as a result got so drunk that the 
 only trouble the French soldiers had was to get them to 
 move themselves back to the prison-camps !) 
 
 There are a good many one-armed and one-legged men 
 about, but not so many as might be expected. All in- 
 dustry appears to be co-operating hi finding them work. 
 There has been no time to visit the local school for the 
 " mutileV': fifty-four hours of work eat quite a hole in 
 a week. 
 
 The surprising freedom with which crowds of young 
 girls from thirteen years up were dancing with the boys 
 at the band concert in the square last Sunday night is 
 also said to be largely the result of the war. It comes 
 partly from the new ideas of feminine liberty brought 
 by the American and other soldiers. Partly also from 
 the unconscious effort to forget the dreadful war in every 
 possible way. It looks certain that things will never 
 get back here or anywhere else in the world to the 
 old " normalcy." " There ain't no such animal " it has 
 died and been buried. But things are surely getting 
 back to, at least, a new normalcy. If anybody could 
 guess just what that will be, he could come close to guess- 
 ing the near future of the nations. 
 
 Now to "wrap the drapery of my couch about me/' 
 except that it isn't wide enough to wrap nor clean enough 
 to suggest pleasant dreams. 
 
 Thursday, the 29th. 
 
 Well, I've just come close to "spilling the beans." 
 And glad of it, too, now that it's over. 
 The day's ten hours of fearful heat, plus the usual ham- 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" 47 
 
 mering, brought me "home" a few hours ago pretty well 
 done up. That is probably the reason the whole outfit 
 down-stairs in the kitchen seemed a few degrees sloppier 
 and nastier than ever. I certainly wanted to saw and 
 quarter the mass of buzzing flies that have to be forced 
 out of the way when you start up the stairs past the open 
 garbage can, the baby's soiled things, and the dog's plat- 
 ter. Luckily, there is never any question about the 
 propriety of any one's stripping to the waist for a cool 
 bath at the kitchen pump in the presence of the landlady 
 and the assortment of other women who come in to help 
 along, and stay for supper. Such remarks and indecen- 
 cies of allusion as are passed out by the men, and 
 enjoyed, apparently, by the women I would never have 
 believed possible in any civilized society. 
 
 When we finally sat down to supper the whole thing 
 seemed worse than ever. With the window of our dining 
 or bar room opening into the kitchen, we all had to chase 
 flies with one hand while we served ourselves with the 
 other. 
 
 In the midst of it all, the landlord doubtless he was 
 "done in," too broke out into the worst abuse yet of 
 poor little Suzanne. It has been a poor day for anybody's 
 brakes including my own. I suddenly "came to" by 
 finding myself shouting out to him hi bad French to stop it. 
 
 The silence that fell on the table ! Their spoons poised 
 in astonishment, the mother and all the boarders stopped 
 gurgling their soup and looked at me and then at him. 
 Of course he got his breath quickly and roared back at 
 me: 
 
 "Here in France, sir, I'd have you know, we believe 
 
48 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 that children must obey! That's the only lesson they 
 need know at her age. Later, perhaps, something else, 
 but obedience now. You're in France now and in my 
 home, and I'll handle her the way I please without any 
 advice from you." 
 
 I could only say that it was none of my affair, of course, 
 but that I had a daughter of thirteen whom I'd give my 
 arm to see and would not talk to in that way. For some 
 reason, perhaps the fatigue and the lonesomeness, it 
 proved hard to keep back the tears. Luckily the mason 
 helped by saying that he got obedience in his large family 
 without speaking so brusquely. To save his face, the 
 landlord, when he had sat down and things had quieted, 
 told us with considerable fervor how: 
 
 "The French girl of fourteen, I assure you of it, is 
 better raised, more polite and polished, better educated, 
 and in every way more developed and more intelligent, 
 than the American girl of twenty." 
 
 From that he went into praising the French soldier in 
 much the same terms of comparison with all others. That 
 luckily gave the one-eyed laborer, bless him, the chance 
 to say with proper tact that with all officers of all 
 armies there must be, of course, no question of obedience. 
 "But the important question, m'sieu', is how best to 
 get it by harshness or by good treatment." 
 
 That, in turn, gave me the chance to relate Tom's ac- 
 counts of various times when officers known for their 
 vicious methods had fallen in battle with bullets from 
 behind ! 
 
 And so the crisis passed without my landing on the 
 street. 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" 49 
 
 One of its greatest tortures was the inability to use 
 plain English. It's awful to have to find an outlet for 
 so much emotional pressure hi so "petite " a channel as 
 my French permits. It would have been worth a small 
 farm to answer his claim about the French girls, for in- 
 stance, with what a boarding-house of the same class in 
 America would have permitted and required: 
 
 "Aw, for the love o' Mike, where d'ya get that stuff, 
 huh?" 
 
 Just now I feel like a wreck, and can think of little but 
 steamers, harbors, Pullman cars, and the like. I wonder, 
 too, what little red-faced Suzanne thinks of her father. 
 After all, he only represents much the same kind of disci- 
 pline that our religious teachers tried to drive into us for a 
 number of centuries. Worst of all, they thought when 
 they did it that they were following the spirit of the 
 founder of Christianity! That same idea of fear the 
 fear of losing the job is still utilized as the only basis of 
 obedience and discipline in most of the world's factories. 
 It looks like a mighty expensive plan because, like little 
 Suzanne, the men don't figure that their good-will is 
 asked for. Over at the shop to-day, for instance. . . . 
 But there's not the gizzard left in me for going into that 
 just now. It takes all there is to get over on to the springs 
 that commence to groan with the travail of my spirit as 
 I commence to feel myself the object of diverse diverse 
 and unwanted attentions. 
 
 "30 Juillet."< 
 
 Some day I must composo a poem or somethin' entitled 
 "Some Towels I Have Met." Only it might not be al- 
 
50 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 lowed the freedom of the mails ! Anyway, here's a pledge 
 to shake hands with the next clean one encountered! 
 Of course, I could import my own. But with everybody 
 performing his toilet or hers here by the kitchen pump, 
 a private towel would make altogether too much differ- 
 ence in caste. 
 
 In the same way I could, presumably, buy plenty of 
 attractive French pastries between meals. But holding 
 up my end requires that my plate be emptied of at least 
 half the huge amount which these laborers eat. Any 
 spoiling of appetite after the day's hard work would make 
 that impossible. As it is, I can almost get pleasure out 
 of my "good form" in putting the skins of my smoked 
 herring, for instance, onto the table and then, when 
 finished, scraping them all off skilfully into my well- 
 emptied plate. 
 
 What is most to the point, it looks as though we have 
 gotten each other's confidence for discussing plenty of 
 things together. To-day, for instance, the ever-hatted, 
 long-mustached railway worker gave, unconsciously, a 
 capital testimony on the psychological string which ties 
 such a bedlam as is our kitchen to booze. 
 
 "This young fellow will be sick before long," he opined 
 to a lady visitor about my comparative temperance. 
 "He doesn't drink enough. If a person drinks plenty of 
 alcohol he protects himself against cholera and all sorts 
 of disease. Me, when I miss my cognac and go out onto 
 the street, then all, the nasty smells along the way begin 
 to make me sick. They give me quickly a headache 
 you know how it is, yes? But let our landlord put 
 plenty of it in my coffee, or maybe give me a good glass 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" 51 
 
 of Genievre (gin) then I can walk past those same 
 smells and never notice them at all." 
 
 Quite so. And rather desirable, this greasing of his 
 senses, not only here in our kitchen but also out on the 
 streets with their sanitary lacks due to the public's pecu- 
 liar thought and habits about certain things. This same 
 situation, due to carelessness, of course, has probably 
 served to make the city's drinking water fairly danger- 
 ous. The result is to make beer and wine the national 
 thirst quenchers children must drink the beer as well 
 as grown-ups, for water is almost never drunk by this 
 group. Similarly, gin and cognac and other things be- 
 come the national health protectives. 
 
 Tom, by the way, confirms last summer's impression 
 in England. He believes that the "rum ration" in the 
 British army is responsible for teaching many boys to 
 drink : he says he refused his up till almost the last. The 
 Frenchmen here tell of huge doses of almost pure alcohol 
 given them before " going over the top." 
 
 One of the franknesses following on the established 
 confidence and good-will gave me a moment's scare. 
 
 "You can't be a regular American, m'sieu'," a chap 
 said to me last night. For an instant it looked as though he 
 were going to start trouble. "You see, as a boy I read 
 much about life there with you. And according to them 
 all, every American has more than you of a red skin." 
 
 He was referring to "Faineemoor Coo-pair" (Feni- 
 more Cooper) ! 
 
 A little later the mason was almost offended because 
 of my difficulty in understanding him when he spoke 
 of "coo-ee boo-ees," as seen in the movies of American 
 
52 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 life. The habitat of these cowboys is variously located 
 in the minds of my friends here as somewhere west of 
 New York City and a little south of Buenos Aires ! 
 
 Here hi this district the residents saw nothing of our 
 dough-boys. They seem to think the English Tommies 
 extremely hard-drinking and drunken. Both the dis- 
 trict and the Paris papers are amazingly meagre, not 
 only with regard to America but about the world in gen- 
 eral, including France itself. None of these including 
 the Matin and the Journal has more than four pages 
 all together, with possibly six on Sunday. Of each of 
 these four, you can take off a page and a half for the total 
 of very modest ads. So far as news is concerned you 
 can subtract at least a column and a half for the daily 
 novel. That leaves a total of, say, fifteen or sixteen 
 columns for all the doings of Douai, the Republic of 
 France, and the rest of the world. 
 
 "You see the Frenchman wants only to see in five 
 lines what the actual event was. Then he looks the next 
 day to see what some well-known deputy or statesman 
 believes the event to mean." 
 
 That is the explanation by a journalist who has lived 
 many years hi both America and Paris. The trouble is 
 that even the five lines are very scarce. That is partic- 
 ularly true when nearly half a page is given, day after 
 day, to the exploits of the bandits who recently held up 
 the Marseilles express " after the manner of the best 
 American movies." 
 
 "They can't get the French business man to take the 
 risk of advertising. So the editors have to save on news 
 service," says an American editor. 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" 53 
 
 "Most of them find their bread buttered best when 
 they make themselves simply the mouthpiece of the gov- 
 ernment. They are paid fairly well for this. So why 
 bother about news? They live not by the news but by 
 propaganda." So a French observer explains it. 
 
 Me, I don't know the cause. But I am sure that it 
 makes a most outstanding and serious lack one calcu- 
 lated to interfere with France's wish to be considered 
 fit to play a much larger part in the future of the world 
 than in the last generation or two. Naturally enough, 
 to my worker friends the biggest international event of 
 recent months is the Dempsey-Carpentier fight. They 
 accept their popular champion's defeat with good grace. 
 
 " Tropfort," they say with a gesture registering bigness 
 of wrist and arm and neck. "Too strong." 
 
 In spite of finishing the week's work to-day, I men- 
 tioned to the landlord that I had noticed some estaminets 
 near by which were charging only nine francs a day. His 
 reply was that such places served only imported that 
 is, frozen meat while he made a point of serving fresh, 
 and, therefore, local "viande." Strange that this prej- 
 udice against South and North American meat should 
 exist here as well as in England in spite of its costing less 
 and being generally better. As the other places are even 
 dirtier than the "Tout Va Bien" I'm perfectly glad to 
 have paid the twelve francs here. 
 
 Douai, 
 
 : Monday A. M ., 
 August 1. 
 
 Was positively sorry Saturday morning to say good- 
 by to my good chums, Tom and my French boy who 
 
54 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 gets married next month. I hope Tom makes good. His 
 pride in his saw is sure to get him somewhere possibly 
 into trouble! Friday a particularly hard beam forced 
 the saw to call for so much "juice" that a fuse was blown 
 out in the main power-station. So the whole plant came 
 to a stop. Tom got an immense amount of delight out 
 of the mishap. "I did it on purpose," he whispered to 
 us, like a tickled schoolboy. Of course he didn't. Still 
 his sense of importance was wondrous to behold. Yester- 
 day he spent practically all afternoon transforming a 
 box into a tool-chest, and was as happy as any girl with 
 a new doll house. I wonder if the psycho-analysts would 
 find a connection between that and the fact that the bane 
 of his childhood days in England was a mother who drank 
 and who made him fear her four-foot cane: 
 
 "Blime, I used ter think she cud use that bleedin' cane 
 like a fair lassoo that expert she was with it, as ye might 
 sye." 
 
 It was a pleasure to compliment the superintendent 
 on the excellent working conditions in his plant. It is 
 to be hoped they will continue so after, for instance, the 
 brand-new roof windows get dirty. Much of the splen- 
 did spirit of self-respecting workmanship doubtless comes 
 from the general feeling that the big bosses are honest 
 and trying to earn their salaries: that's one interpreta- 
 tion made by the men of their frequent appearance in 
 the plant itself. It's a pleasant place to be. When a 
 fellow is busy it's a joy to listen to the hammers of the 
 machinists or to the ascending gamut of the cranes or 
 "rolling bridges," as they're called here, as their revo- 
 lutions ascend the scale from "start" to "full" also to 
 
"FRENCH NIGHTS IN A BARROOM" 55 
 
 *j 
 
 watch while our finished steel beams, careening grace- 
 fully in their chains, are carried down the bay to the big 
 machines where the drillers make all the holes we've 
 chalked for them. When the place is finished I hope the 
 infirmary will have cleaner quarters and a cleaner, smarter 
 man nurse. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon on a final Sunday stroll with the 
 landlord, it was again a series of friendly bars and various 
 "good comrades." The last of these was one who had 
 not got on well. The man's home was a tiny farmlet 
 with a collection of pigs, rabbits, chickens, and pigeons, 
 all under his one roof. His father-in-law was a drunken 
 wreck who earned a little money with his hand-cart and 
 a huge hound. 
 
 "Five hundred kilos a demi ton, that is he can pull, 
 and for twenty kilometres," the old man explained with 
 pride as he kissed the dog's great muzzle. 
 
 "A revolution we'll have and soon," he shouted to 
 us a little later in between his drunken songs. 
 
 "But no," his eighteen-year-old grandson called out 
 to him. "The dearness of living, it is everywhere. Yes, 
 to be sure. But it comes from the war. It grows worse, 
 but it will pass finally." 
 
 "It is the last death-pangs of Capitalism," so says to- 
 day the chief Communist journal regarding the unem- 
 ployment now spreading throughout France and the 
 rest of the world. Up at the big conference at Lille, the 
 Conservatives in the "C. G. T.," had a majority of only 
 about 250 votes out of 3,000 over the radicals. 
 
 "France's 500,000 or 600,000 soldiers yes, perhaps 
 800,000 a huge sum these cost us all, for their beer and 
 
56 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 bread and bed!" protests the mason. "Yes, and that's 
 not all. Think for yourself how much these could earn 
 for France if they could work! Perhaps one milliard 
 (billion) of francs ! And not one of us that wants to fight 
 a living soul surely not one of us who have seen this 
 war. When I was a boy yes, then it was different. You 
 know how it was, my friends? You perhaps did as I. 
 I used to go to our town library and get down the great 
 books with the soldier pictures; then I'd say, 'Aha, some 
 day I shall be like that some day I shall be soldier!' 
 Was it not so? Yes. But now! Well, as I have said, 
 I was at Verdun. And I want no more war. No, it must 
 not be never in life again!" 
 
 Last week a Paris paper recalled that the first railway 
 in the world was put into operation a hundred years ago 
 only a hundred years ago. Doubtless, it is these steel 
 rails and steam giants that have helped us to pull such 
 an enormous load as that of the century's developments, 
 and to travel so fast and so far into the territory of so 
 many new and steel-gray problems. 
 
 In a few minutes I must let one of the big engines land 
 me in the midst of ruined Lens. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 HATE AND HOPE AT HEROIC LENS 
 
 Lens, 
 
 Tuesday A. M., 
 August 2. 
 
 MOST of the twelve miles from Douai was behind the 
 Germans' front lines, and many houses had evidently 
 been bombed or shelled by the English. On all sides 
 masons and builders are busy also the harvesters of 
 the yellow wheat and oats. Part of the way the railway 
 itself had evidently served as near the front line, judging 
 from the tons and tons of tangled barbed wire heaped 
 up every few rods on both sides. 
 
 Lens used to be a city of over 40,000, the leading coal 
 centre of France. But we had to take the word of the 
 conductor when it came tune to get out there was no 
 sign of station shelter other than the merest shed. When 
 the armistice came, one brick upon another there was in 
 Lens, but it was the brick upon another of the deepest 
 ruination only : the whole place was simply a pile of debris 
 traversed by a few straggling paths. The amazing thing 
 is how even in three years and less the laborers could 
 have cleaned it up so well, ready now for starting over 
 again. Amazing, too, to get a very fair lunch hi one of 
 the few new brick buildings before taking the train again 
 to a suburb where a letter had to be presented to a mine 
 official. 
 
 The tale he told of the cold-blooded murder of the dis- 
 
 57 
 
58 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 trict's mines makes a man want alternately to laugh and 
 cry and swear. It must have taken tons and tons of am- 
 munition to put the mine tips and washeries into the con- 
 dition of complete ruin evident from the train on all sides 
 for there are nearly forty shafts in the Lens district 
 proper. Boilers lie prostrate with their torn sheets point- 
 ing in every angle and direction, huge steel beams 
 crumpled and folded and twisted, walls levelled. All and 
 .everywhere the most complete agglomerated chaos of 
 wreck and ruin the mind can conceive. Worse than that, 
 other stores of high explosive were set off below surface 
 in the mine shafts. The whole district, at a certain level, 
 is practically an underground lake. To put the shafts 
 down they have to freeze the ground while they work 
 in caissons almost as if they were digging through the 
 sea. So the explosion of hundreds of pounds of powder 
 at this level in a few pits placed the whole vast series of 
 intercommunicating mine workings under water. 
 
 "One of the new pumps which we have installed lifts 
 to the surface 180,000 cubic metres or tons of water every 
 twenty-four hours. We commenced operating the first 
 pump hi November, 1920. We have reduced the water's 
 height by about 175 yards. We shall be putting others 
 in as rapidly as we can get them. Nevertheless, at the 
 best we cannot hope to get the water out again until well 
 toward the end of 1923 !" 
 
 The company that operated these mines housed its 
 16,000 miners in 8,000 houses at a rental of about $2.00 
 per month. Their output was over 4,000,000 tons or one- 
 tenth that of all France. Of this national total of 40,- 
 000,000 tons, this north country supplied about three- 
 
HATE AND HOPE AT HEROIC LENS 59 
 
 fourths. About three-fourths of this, in turn, was in the 
 hands of the invaders throughout the war. And still 
 France somehow continued to make steel and carry on her 
 fight ! Cut off from more than half her regular supply of 
 coal and much of her steel, she still continued to do busi- 
 ness much as if an invading army were to establish 
 itself within the first two months of its arrival through- 
 out the State of Pennsylvania and much of New Eng- 
 land! 
 
 I take off my hat to a spirit like that. I take it off again 
 to the spirit that comes back to such a mess of bricks and 
 twisted steel, and calmly tackles the job of getting it 
 going again on something like the old basis: of the com- 
 pany^ homes only thirty were standing when the final 
 gun was fired. Everywhere the eye sees the neat new 
 mine pulley- wheels or " sheaves" and housings of the 
 new '"tips," great new washeries and coke ovens rising 
 above the tangled wreckage and the dugouts and cul- 
 vert-like log cabins with inverted U-shaped roofs of gal- 
 vanized iron. Already nearly 3,000 new houses are up 
 again following the efforts of nearly 10,000 laborers 
 from just about all over the world. 
 
 Up till a few months ago the government has been 
 advancing the huge sums needed for all this reconstruc- 
 tion. Since then it has had to stop its treasury ex- 
 hausted pending better arrangements with a certain 
 debtor. But the company has had the faith of its con- 
 victions. (Faith seems to grow around here, and not on 
 trees either, for they were all shot away: perhaps it grew 
 on barbed wire, there are miles and miles of that.) So it 
 has borrowed and now spends, on pumping, cleaning up, 
 
60 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 building, and installing, the huge sum of 800,000 francs 
 a day. They expect again to ship coal all over France, 
 mostly by the system of canals which go from all this 
 country up to the coast at Calais and Dunkirk, up north- 
 east to Lille and its factories, also to Paris and, by a short 
 cut of the Marne and Oise Rivers, down to the great in- 
 dustrial district around Lyon. Besides all the by-products 
 of naphtha, tar, benzol, etc., from their 500 coke furnaces, 
 they expect to generate enough gas to furnish the horse- 
 power needed for the pits, to supply the city and suburbs 
 with free light and sewing-machine service, and, hi ad- 
 dition, to send cheap electric power to points as far away 
 as Paris. 
 
 At the conversation's end I was told that it was too 
 dangerous for me to go to work with the few hundred 
 miners now getting out a little coal, but that I could go 
 below the third visitor to date to have such a privilege, 
 and that only because I was an American. Rather than 
 wait for the evening train, I set off afoot for the eight 
 miles back to Lens. 
 
 It was evident that the canal itself had once been No 
 Man's Land. The wire entanglements made great dreary 
 piles much of it with four-pointed barbs to every inch. 
 It made it easy to recall the pictures seen of dead men 
 hanging almost upright, their clothes caught in so many 
 places at once. The little electric cars which ordinarily 
 pull the canal's boats are not in operation, but otherwise 
 the traffic seems normal enough. One family was rest- 
 ing its horses while mother held by a rope the small 
 daughter taking a cooling dip. 
 
 "I am mayor of the village here and was during the 
 
HATE AND HOPE AT HEROIC LENS 61 
 
 war," the keeper of an estaminet assured me when I 
 stopped in to rest a moment. "My wife here was in the 
 hands of the boche while I was with my regiment. I 
 was the first man into the place after the Germans left. 
 It is not possible to describe it. Terrible, I do assure 
 you. . . . Now? . . . But yes, much progress has 
 been made." 
 
 He sent a crippled boy along as a guide to the next 
 town. At various points we could see the only buildings 
 which had survived the general destruction that had 
 otherwise put every home into its own cellar. These 
 are the low, flat monoliths of concrete and steel which 
 gave the Germans shelter during the worst bombardments. 
 Along the railroad embankment, other enormous masses 
 of steel and concrete continue to shelter parts of the can- 
 non that were pointed west and southwest at the English 
 lines just a few miles away. Out on the road we walked 
 on the lips of the front-line trenches. Under foot were 
 hundreds of the steel casings of British shrapnel, heaps of 
 grenade handles, the torn steel of the gas bombs, etc., etc. 
 
 "Right here, m'sieu'," according to the boy, "the dead 
 soldiers used to lie line upon line, like those sheaves of 
 wheat there. Just like that, m'sieu'. . . . And since 
 long time here, too, very dangerous to farm. Still many 
 'obus' (shells) down underneath, though one seeks for 
 them always and has them exploded carefully." 
 
 In only a few places are the trenches still to be seen. 
 Sprawling and uncertain in direction they are, irregular 
 and much more shallow than I had expected. It appears 
 that the fearful cannonading so ploughs up the place 
 as to force the trench line to follow wherever the shell 
 
62 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 holes and their rims permit. The amazing thing is the 
 vast amount of change that has already been made. Ex- 
 s cept for a low wave of white chalky subsoil running 
 through the harvested fields, it would be all but impos- 
 sible to guess that almost every yard of these pleasant, 
 yellow lands had been drenched in blood. 
 
 Back in Lens the incoming trains were evidently in- 
 creasing the population rapidly. Laborers carried their 
 possessions in their knapsacks. Women had chairs, bath- 
 tubs and wash-stands piled on top of the baby's feet. 
 Undestroyed hopes, fresh plans, abounding faith, every- 
 where. 
 
 Too tired to test the quality of the new and grandiose 
 two-storied cinema, I made for one of the rude single- 
 story barracks boarding-houses. It furnishes a mere 
 cell for bed and wash-stand. But clean. Clean sheets 
 and clean wash-stand with no flies, almost, and no scold- 
 ing of Suzanne. Just before I went to sleep thanking 
 "le bon Dieu" for letting a fellow have a look at such 
 a wondrous combination of the works of hate and of hope 
 as this town gives, I found myself chanting as I got into 
 the clean bed: 
 
 "What perfection what luxury! Blessed are they 
 who are concerned to make clean, for such help also to 
 courage and to charity." 
 
 Lens, 
 
 Tuesday evening. 
 
 It is easy to bear up under the company's unwilling- 
 ness to put me to work after seeing the men getting 
 out coal under the conditions inflicted upon these mines 
 and miners by "les boches." 
 
HATE AND HOPE AT HEROIC LENS 63 
 
 A tiny drum serves to lower the small cars to the only 
 dry seam. When the engineer and I got out about 400 
 feet down we found it wet and nasty enough, especially 
 where the pressure of all the water-filled ground beneath 
 was pushing up the floor. To-day the miners are getting 
 out of the pit about 100 tons a day as compared with a 
 former 3,000. In the early days of the war this shaft's 
 pair of high steel towers made the Tommies hereabouts 
 at Loos call it the Tower Bridge mine. Of all that super- 
 structure every single pound was left a wreck. 
 
 In some rooms men work their picks or their air-drills 
 at a vein hardly two feet and a half thick. Then they 
 shovel the coal into a steel chute where it moves to a 
 waiting car whenever a half-naked worker pulls a great 
 lever back and forth above his head. Altogether it looks 
 like the genuine thing in the way of hard work, and hardly 
 overpaid at the rate of from twenty-two to twenty-five 
 francs per day of eight hours. 
 
 All these conditions, however, are too abnormal to be 
 judged. Even to-day the men were complaining of the 
 air-drills, the engineer assuring them that he understood 
 perfectly but that no others could be obtained as yet. 
 Then he showed me ventilating pipes covered with sol- 
 dered shrapnel holes. We got still closer to the war's 
 greatest deviltry at least its most coolly calculated 
 deviltry when we reached the galleries from which only 
 the water has been pumped out. 
 
 Yesterday I wondered why that could not be used for 
 irrigating or other purposes. To-day told why. Not 
 only is it very sulphurous but, during the occupation, 
 the invaders put the bodies of many horses, and also of 
 
64 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 the enemy dead into the pits besides making them 
 the cess-pool of the army! So the mine captain went 
 ahead into the unopened portion and tested the air care- 
 fully so as to make sure that neither our lamps nor our 
 senses would be put out by the noxious gases. It is hard 
 to think of a more unpleasant job than piling into the 
 cars for the surface all the tons and tons of slimy rock 
 that have fallen from the roof and rilled the passageways. 
 Needless to say, it is dangerous work, too, the timbers 
 having long ago been rotted and destroyed. It certainly 
 does take imagination to hold your safety-lamp upon 
 such piles of evil-smelling refuse, and see again the move- 
 ment of well-filled cars along the roadways or hear the 
 vibrant sound of the shovel as the miner scrapes up the 
 last pound. 
 
 In spite of the darkness, certain things became plainer 
 than ever before. One of these is how the sum asked 
 of the Germans came to be calculated. For, of course, 
 the moving of every pound of that rank debris has to be 
 paid for by the party that planned and executed this 
 awful murder definitely and coolly in the attempt to 
 put industrial France forever out of the running. Losing 
 wars is expensive business, especially when the loser takes 
 so much trouble so much organized trouble to render 
 damage. I saw, to-day, for instance, a piece of board 
 on which some German officer had kept a record, doubt- 
 less with great satisfaction, of the constantly rising water 
 on his different monthly inspections throughout nearly 
 three years, ending finally with a sort of "O. K.," when 
 the water was level with the outside ground ! 
 
 I can believe that one particular bit of this organized 
 
HATE AND HOPE AT HEROIC LENS 65 
 
 meanness will not, perhaps, be paid for this side the Judg- 
 ment Seat. M. Elie Reumaux organized the Lens Mining 
 Company. He was seventy-six years old, or thereabouts 
 when the town was captured, and so was kept a prisoner. 
 Pit No. 13 had been named for him. One day the old 
 gentleman was brought out by his captors for a celebra- 
 tion. Great quantities of explosive had been placed ready 
 in the shaft and throughout the various parts of the splen- 
 did tipple and washery. A wire connected them to a 
 button in the grand stand. In the old gentleman's pres- 
 ence and before his eyes, the ceremonies were concluded 
 with the pressing of that button and the blowing of his 
 beloved mine to smithereens ! 
 
 That explosion suggested itself to-day when I looked 
 down into the huge crater where the British touched off 
 a vast mine under the German lines just outside the near- 
 by village of Loos. The great hole is being preserved as 
 one of the historic spots of the war. From its rim you 
 can see Vimy Ridge and Notre Dame de Lorette, names 
 of determination and death. 
 
 I wonder, too, who will ever make up the loss such as 
 I met this afternoon. A mere shaver of a lad who looked 
 like, say, fourteen insisted that he is eighteen. To my 
 " Unbelievable!" he added sadly his, "Yes, that's what 
 everybody says, but it's true all the same." Finally the 
 explanation came. He was here during the war. He 
 lived in one cellar or another, trying somehow to get 
 shelter from the dreadful shells and enough food to keep 
 his sleepless body and hopeless little soul together. Of 
 course his schooling stopped when he was ten. He is 
 now a day-laborer, poor little tike. He works ten hours 
 
66 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 at the place where the brickbats are ground up, and, 
 with cement, made into building blocks. He earns thir- 
 teen francs with board and keep hardly less than eight. 
 Food is said to be nearly twice as high here as at Paris. 
 
 "We French believe much in helping the little things 
 to do their work. We always use lots of grease. That 
 protected its working parts," said the engineer of a pump 
 down in one of the galleries this morning. It still pulls 
 the cars of coal up an incline after nearly three years 
 under water. 
 
 So the whole district including the youngsters who 
 were gleaning the harvested fields this afternoon seems 
 to have been kept going by the grease of faith or patriot- 
 ism or love of home or something that has saved its work- 
 ing parts from destruction. Anybody who needs just 
 that kind of grease will do well to buy a ticket to Lens 
 quickly, before the dreadful days of its protective virtue 
 are nothing but a memory. Certainly it is hard to imag- 
 ine a city so demoralized in its actuality yet so devoted 
 in its aspiration. No wonder the city was given the Croix 
 de Guerre "as a model of heroism and patriotic faith." 
 Perhaps such nobilities come from such baptisms of fire. 
 
 Listen ! Something like an orchestra is playing classical 
 music on the ruins of Lens outside my barrack window 
 on the undaunted ruins of Lens ! What can it mean ? 
 
 Later. The orchestra proves to be a group of devoted 
 souls practising in a near-by estaminet. The wife of the 
 landlord there says she, with many other Frenchwomen, 
 was here during the war in the hands of the enemy. I 
 take off my hat to her, as well as to Lens, and the 
 pump: 
 
LITTLE GLEANERS IN THE FIELDS NEAR LENS 
 
 They are typical of the thrifty spirit of France also of the hopefulness of the new 
 generation now in possession of a wider-margined France 
 
 "CERTAINLY IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE A CITY SO DEMORALIZED IN 
 ITS ACTUALITY YET SO DEVOTED IN ITS ASPIRATION AS LENS" 
 
 Everywhere the new and modern factory is rising upon the ruins of the old 
 
HATE AND HOPE AT HEROIC LENS 67 
 
 "For six days and nights, m'sieu', there was a dreadful 
 bombardment. Brrr-boom-boom every minute for six 
 days and six nights like that. Dreadful. Still we French- 
 women liked it. Yes, it is as I say, we liked it. For we 
 said each to the other, ' After this will come the silence, 
 and then the attack. After that they will be here our 
 husbands, our sons ! ' Finally it stopped and we waited 
 through several days. But they did not come. No, they 
 did not come. Oh, it was dreadful, m'sieu' ! The attack, 
 so far as we knew, failed, though we learned afterward 
 that they gained Loos and got still nearer. But when 
 they did not come, then we all gave up hope. Up till 
 then, yes, we could hope in spite of everything. After 
 that, no. 'We will never see them again/ we said. . . . 
 And yet, here is my husband again with me he plays 
 the bass viol there. Wonderful, is it not?" 
 
CHAPTER 
 BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS AND ABOVE 
 
 A mine town near Lens, 
 
 Wednesday, 
 
 August 3d. 
 
 AFTER presenting a letter of introduction and a request 
 for work to the head of the local coal concern, there was 
 time to stroll out into the country before learning my 
 fate. The score or more of high pit towers flanked by 
 their huge pyramids of refuse make a picturesque sight 
 when seen across miles of level yellow fields. After a 
 long loaf at the bottom of one of the numerous great 
 stacks of unthreshed wheat, an English sign on a road- 
 side inn proved attractive. It had been left behind, it 
 seems, by some of the Tommies who held the line only a 
 mile or so away hi the direction of La Bassee and Lens. 
 Over their beer a hag of an old woman with a bleary eye 
 and a masculine, bearded face, was telling a hunchbacked 
 but bright-eyed little woman they looked like creatures 
 out of some dreadful book how she had seen a German 
 shell land near a British soldier. 
 
 "But yes !" she answered when I asked if it had killed 
 him. "But yes! Like this!" And she made a move- 
 ment of scraping fragments together. 
 
 "Turn here during the shelling of Monument" (in 
 the main square) so several English signs still direct traffic 
 in the town. Many buildings show that the shells found 
 their mark. Schools practically suspended because it 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 69 
 
 was so dangerous to let the children out. Nevertheless, 
 most of the town's mines, employing 10,000 men, seem 
 to have kept turning out the coal so badly needed by the 
 country. Occasionally it was found wisest to operate 
 them only at night. 
 
 Later at the office, the company kindly offered a job 
 below, though unable to pay me. It seems that any one 
 working "at the face" has to be in a particular gang or 
 chantier which divides up its tonnage earnings among its 
 members. For that reason the men have a right to choose 
 then* own associates after knowing how they work ! 
 
 So I'm settled now in a miner's boarding-house to 
 report for work at five to-morrow morning. It looks 
 a shade worse than the "Tout Va Bien." Six of us sleep 
 in one room, and in three small double beds ! The charge 
 is only nine francs, but from here it looks as though some- 
 body owed an apology to that much-maligned single bed 
 and room there at Douai. This dining-room here is not 
 so bad as last week's, but does give out onto a strong 
 conglomeration of cows, chickens, rabbits, wash-tubs, 
 and manure. The mixture of drizzle with the smoke of 
 the town's coke-ovens makes the whole geography appear 
 a dreary salad. The occasional street hydrants are the 
 most popular social centres a bad sign, especially when 
 added to by open sewers. Even the new and attractive 
 houses, evidently built by the company, are already filled 
 with an aggregation of chicken-coops, rabbit-hutches, 
 and dove-cotes. It looks like a population sleeping under 
 very narrow sheets. 
 
 However, the wife and manageress of the establish- 
 ment looks good-natured and is rather pretty, and neither 
 
70 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 she nor her fat miner-husband raise their voices when 
 they speak to their two little babies. That covers a multi- 
 tude of sins even sanitary sins, which, in a " manner of 
 speaking/ ' are among the hardest in the world to cover. 
 
 I'll know more after a go at supper. Nobody seems in 
 a hurry for that except myself it's already nearly eight- 
 thirty. It will be good to lay down even the weight of a 
 pencil after carrying a heavy bag from the distant station. 
 
 Well, dirt or no dirt, and good bedfellow or bad, it 
 ought to be interesting to-morrow 1,800 feet down " in- 
 side." 
 
 Mine town, 
 Thursday night. 
 
 If all the miners hereabout work even half as ener- 
 getically as our gang did to-day, it's hats off and no mis- 
 take ! Personally I took it a bit easier in between loads 
 in view of the no-pay arrangement as "a student of 
 French mining methods." But even at that I did my 
 full share of loading the thirty half-ton cars which we 
 sent up, and which the group evidently thought a full 
 day's total. My back is willing to agree with them. The 
 others hardly paused a moment. Stripped to the waist, 
 every one of them kept going unceasingly with his back 
 bent over his shovel, his pick, or his car. 
 
 " Always like this, yes. Oh, no, never tired. . . . C'est 
 V habitude, trisieu'. It's habit habit and custom does 
 it," so the gang leader explained. Even our two huge 
 Poles out of the 1,500 here kept going splendidly. 
 Both of them are newly arrived and are having trouble 
 with French. So they were delighted to tell their troubles 
 in German: 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 71 
 
 "Always for six years yes, seven up till now, nothing 
 but war in Poland. And no way to earn bread except 
 come here. And here contract say nineteen francs a 
 day and we get only sixteen/' as they showed me their 
 collections of shrapnel-scars on their muscular backs and 
 hairy chests. 
 
 At nine o'clock we had a half-hour for putting on our 
 shirts and sitting down together with our lamps to eat 
 the huge cheese or pickle sandwiches out of our sacks 
 we had to hang them up carefully away from the rats 
 and drink " coffee- water" out of our glass bottles or tin 
 flasks. We were hardly arrived at our working place 
 before six-fifteen. First we had to get our lamps and 
 wait our turn before getting into the cage where twenty- 
 four of us crowded into the three different half-height 
 stories or divisions. Then klumpety-klump for a third 
 of a mile drop. A walk from the " bottom" through the 
 black passages took us more than a mile and a half. Then, 
 by twelve-fifteen or twelve-twenty after a second go 
 of nearly three hours it was time to start back. Some- 
 how or other that walk back to the bottom always proves 
 about as trying as any part of the day perhaps because 
 it always comes immediately after the strenuous day's 
 work. It is especially hard here because we have to climb 
 up several hundred feet at one of the steep inclines or 
 " descenderies" before we can begin our long walk on the 
 level of the hoist's bottom. 
 
 Most of the day I kept wishing, not to enjoy a " place 
 in the sun" up outside but, oddly enough, just to have 
 in my hands a good American shovel ! Those used here 
 have nothing but one long round handle, with no cross- 
 
72 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 grip at the end. So the beginner has to use much of his grip 
 simply to hold rather than to operate his load. So I'm nurs- 
 ing blisters to-night, including the biggest on the side of my 
 thumb. Except for that the short hours of actual work 
 about five and a half in all are a pleasure to think of. 
 
 As back in America, so also here, it is, unfortunately, 
 the life that goes with these hours that is unpleasant. 
 
 Can't tell much about my bedfellow because I've not 
 yet seen him he came to bed late last night, and was 
 sleeping hi the darkness at four-thirty when a fellow 
 miner called me. But whoever he is, he certainly has 
 an active disposition. During the night he kept con- 
 tinually turning, each tune sticking knees or elbows into 
 my back. It was almost a relief finally to get up and into 
 working clothes. Down-stairs the wife was grinding 
 coffee and from out of the darkness, thanks to the flames 
 of the freshly lighted stove, showed us her attractive 
 eyes and teeth hi a pleasant though somewhat weary 
 smile. I'd like to see the scene painted, for it's the start 
 of the working day here just as the Angelus is the end. 
 Breakfast is evidently a very silent affair everybody 
 sleepy and everywhere darkness except for the black- 
 golden beams from the stove. As before, nothing but a 
 small cup of coffee with a little cognac in it. 
 
 "Yes, I have a wife, but for me and my three sons she 
 is dead yes, quite dead." So, on the way to the tip, 
 a fellow boarder explained how his mate had been too 
 friendly with the Germans during the near-by invasion, 
 and has since had to spend eighteen months in a hospital. 
 
 "And now it's still a secret, but I can tell you, 
 m'sieu'. I have a sweetheart. Yes, over at Bethune. 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 73 
 
 . . . Divorce? Yes, maybe but that costs much 
 money. Perhaps it's not necessary. We shall see." 
 
 Have just now met his boy of nineteen, a mason's 
 helper. He tells of his three years as a civil prisoner in 
 a captured town to the northeast. He was often beaten 
 with a great stick for various failures to salute officers 
 or for his overzealous efforts to secure food. 
 
 "But, you see, we could often perceive the Germans 
 stealing it when they were distributing the food that 
 came from you Americans. Oh, yes, that's true, I assure 
 you. So we did the same from them when we saw 
 a chance. Often and often our supper and dinner were 
 nothing but a pull at our belts yes, like this ! And many 
 died when they were too weak to pull their belts. Then 
 it was to dig to bury them! La, la! ... My mother? 
 . . . Ah, she is dead, too, so far as we care. Imagine 
 it ! She liked these beasts ! Dreadful, is it not?" 
 
 His ambition is to begin his military service next year 
 and then become a corporal or sergeant, and so get 
 " plenty to eat without too much to work," until he is, 
 say, thirty-five. He says the English and American boys 
 gave a little too much attention to the Frenchwomen 
 altogether to please their French husbands on the firing 
 lines. He puts a good deal of pepper into the popular 
 song when he sings: 
 
 "Apres la guerre finie 
 Et les Anglais partis " 
 
 Here's my bedfellow! He's a chum of the boy and 
 was a prisoner, too. His youth explains his nocturnal 
 
74 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 energy, doubtless also his inattention to my elbow jabs 
 against his pushing me into the wall. Luckily all six of 
 us in the room retire at a fairly early hour and are not 
 averse to a certain amount of ventilation. Luckily, too, 
 the sheets are comparatively clean, fairly ample, and, 
 apparently, not otherwise inhabited. Still, it's not very 
 pleasant to think of going down in a few minutes to the 
 supper of bread cut from the loaf by our pocket-knives, 
 with cheese and pickles and beer from off the slimy table 
 while the window opens onto the barnyard, and the baby 
 sits on the floor and eats from the same dish with the cat. 
 
 In spite of the weariness from the night's knees and 
 elbows and the day's thirty cars also the unhappiness 
 of the continued dirt, disorder, and nastiness of it all 
 still, I'm enthusiastic for M'sieu' Landlord. He is one 
 that takes his hostly responsibilities seriously. 
 
 When we reached home tired and grimy, he poured 
 out some evidently precious hot water into the tubs and 
 buckets in the shed just off the kitchen and gave us some 
 soap, wash-rags, and towels. A little later I offered to 
 wash the back of my buddy, figuring that that was the 
 best way to take care of my own in line with ordinary 
 mine-town procedure where the wife has to promise to 
 "love, honor, and obey," and also to wash her husband's 
 back ! To my surprise he waved my offer aside: 
 
 "No, it is not necessary. Are you ready? I will show 
 you something!" 
 
 With that he whistled. To my amazement in came 
 friend landlord. Without a word after all his years of 
 mining he took up soap and wash-rag and proceeded to 
 wash and then to wipe the backs of both of us ! 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 75 
 
 Greater consideration hath no landlord in all the world 
 than that ! 
 
 Ah, at last ! There's the call at the foot of the stairs 
 for supper. "Oui, oui ! Tout de suite ! I come !" 
 
 Friday, the 5th. 
 
 This entry ought to start with " Caution!" 
 The high explosive of "t. 'n. t." tiredness and temper 
 is all over the place and the world looks black after 
 a coal-black day. It started with the blackness of the 
 night filled with horrid wakings caused by some enor- 
 mous spiritual pressure to scream ! Perhaps that came 
 from being crowded into the wall by those active knees. 
 The only possible way out appeared to be to take my 
 pillow and camp out on the floor. But no bedclothes 
 could be taken without base injustice to my soundly 
 sleeping bedfellow. It required the greatest conceivable 
 effort at self-control to abandon one plan after another 
 and finally with a last push and jab at my companion 
 to turn over and fall asleep only to waken soon and 
 go through it all again! That doesn't put a fellow out 
 onto the bottom of a coal-mine at five-thirty in any very 
 keen mood for work especially for work the most dan- 
 gerous and grimy of any encountered to date. 
 
 On the way to a new " location," the gang of us went 
 down some sharply inclined seams that were only eighteen 
 inches thick! Furthermore, they had been bent over 
 so far by some great convulsion of nature that they were 
 at an angle of fully forty degrees also upside down! 
 So we slid down past the workers precisely as if we were 
 on a glacier in actuality sliding on the coal seam's roof ! 
 
76 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 Finally, we came to a hole directly under us a vertical 
 opening in which a sort of rough scaffolding had been 
 erected. When we had finally worked our way from one 
 timber elevation down to the one beneath very care- 
 fully so as not to fall or drop our bottles or lights we at 
 last reached a level passage fully one hundred feet be- 
 neath. Here, to my amazement, everybody hung up his 
 sandwich bag and proceeded to take off his coat and shirt. 
 Still worse, I had to follow the boss and the others as 
 they proceeded to climb back up the scaffolding again till 
 we were almost at the top. There we calmly started to 
 work ! The scaffolding was nothing but the cross timbers 
 for holding apart the roof and the floor after the coal had 
 been taken out of a narrow three-foot vein which nature 
 had put into a vertical or upright position ! The place 
 is called "the ladder." Finally we got some planks into 
 a position to make a sort of runway. Whereupon the 
 miners up above us commenced their work, their coal 
 falling into the chute and descending just above my head. 
 Unfortunately, just as I reached up to move a plank 
 over to keep some of the particles from falling down my 
 neck, a great piece gave two of my fingers a bloody and 
 extremely painful bruise that will probably stay by me 
 for weeks, if not for months. As we used our picks on 
 the solid coal just ahead of us, I could look up and see 
 through the planks a gleam of light. Always I got to 
 thinking that this meant daylight up there out through 
 our attic roof. Then would come the highly disturbing 
 thought that between us and sunshine were nearly 2,000 
 feet of the same coal seam, all threatening, except for 
 the timbering of the craftsmen above us, to slide down 
 upon our heads ! 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 77 
 
 Apparently my buddy wasn't bothered much by the 
 idea. Except when he was inserting his timbers as rapidly 
 as he got his coal down, he kept up an unceasing swing 
 of his pick. Such incessant work I never saw. Every 
 instant the stuff kept falling before his attack down into 
 the darkness seventy-five feet beneath us. From down 
 there we could occasionally hear the sound of the boy 
 filling his cars. All this meant an amazing amount of 
 dust. It was almost impossible to see my friend four 
 or five feet away, and always his black back sent gleams 
 of light like small rivers from the streams of sweat finding 
 their way down through the grime. His lamp looked like 
 a lighthouse through the heaviest of fogs. 
 
 The thought of letting my lamp fall to see what would 
 happen fascinated me. The bosses had explained with 
 unpleasant iteration how to be very careful because the 
 vein is very gassy. Even if it weren't, the coal-dust must 
 have made an explosive mixture of the greatest conceiv- 
 able instability. Evidently this upright position of the 
 seam makes the ordinary protection of ventilation im- 
 possible. So far as I could figure it, a pick point through 
 the mica of the lamp would push us into instantaneous 
 Kingdom Come us and all the others in the same local- 
 ity. Naturally my mind seemed to run continually on 
 the sign seen each morning at the lamp house: 
 
 "In view of the recent disaster in , a few miles 
 
 away, which resulted in the death of forty workers, the 
 management prays every miner here to exert the utmost 
 care in the interest of the security of life . . .," etc. 
 
 Not so very long ago, too, 1,400 men were entombed 
 for twenty-one days with, luckily, most of them saved. 
 With such things in mind and the dust in my eyes and 
 
78 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 nose, it was impossible not to turn again and again to 
 look at my lamp and the distance of my pick stroke from 
 it, adding meanwhile what was perhaps more a prayer 
 than a statement: 
 
 "Well, I'd like to assure the company that in their 
 prayer they have my personal co-operation 100 per cent ! 
 in fact, if desired, I'd be willing to take my assurance 
 up to the office right this minute ! " 
 
 At breakfast all the members of the gang expressed 
 their preference for government control as the only con- 
 ceivable buffer against the selfishness of "les patrons": 
 
 "You see, we're too much at their mercy. When they 
 don't want us to work we can't. And when we do work 
 it must always be at their price." 
 
 Still they have little sympathy, apparently, for the 
 miners' and other unions. Two strikes here have recently 
 been unsuccessful in addition to the unfortunate general 
 strike of a year ago last May. 
 
 "No, it is bad leadership that we suffer from. We've 
 struck and struck again. Still we've never touched a sou 
 from it all. For why? Well, no one knows. And in the 
 general strike of 1920 the railway men the ones we were 
 supposed to be helping, you understand? they kept on 
 working themselves ! And we we lost our wages ! What 
 do you make of that?" 
 
 They are evidently bewildered they hardly know 
 what to try next. They would hardly be averse, I be- 
 lieve, to some moderate compromise which would give 
 a little more guarantee that their continuous need of 
 bread and butter, and a little cake, would be more sym- 
 pathetically and more regularly taken care of. They 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 79 
 
 certainly have few of the marks of honest-to-goodness 
 radicals. They all think of the good old days when a 
 man got seven francs a day and had more left at least 
 as they now remember it than now. To-day they get 
 from twenty-two to twenty-five and twenty-six but they 
 pay nearly half just for bed and bread and butter. When 
 everything else is high, that's a pretty heavy proportion 
 of the day gone before you can begin to do more than 
 just exist it leaves one, so to speak, bedded and boarded 
 but still undressed. 
 
 To-day I didn't work anything like as hard as the 
 others, but was nevertheless dog-tired when I finally 
 reached home and got my shirt off. Then a fresh job 
 a really hard job began. I was as black as an African. 
 Scrubbing and scrubbing seemed to do little good even 
 though the coarse soap was very painful to the eyes. 
 Each time I would think to pass on to some other por- 
 tion of my work, my pal would laugh and suggest that 
 I take a look into the broken mirror. Alas, it was all 
 too evident. Still harder scrubbing. After a good half- 
 hour of it, I wanted to sit down and curse or cry shame 
 though it is to confess the desire for either of these forms 
 of relief. 
 
 Of all that work and dirt down below, it is easy to see 
 the necessity, if furnaces are to be fed, trains run, ore 
 melted and people warmed. But it does seem pretty nearly 
 needless that after a man has done that work, he should 
 have to come back to such dreadful surroundings as here. 
 Perhaps he wouldn't, except for the war. Just before it 
 began, so they say here, arrangements had been made 
 for installing mine baths. The peace has furnished too 
 
80 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 many other things to think about. In all the mines over 
 at Lens the baths were in fine order before the invaders 
 came besides all sorts of such arrangements as cook- 
 ing schools, nursing, pensions, etc. 
 
 But here, and now at our little estaminet well, I 
 do have a soft spot for our fat and stolid landlord because 
 he doesn't scold his wife or his children and does wash 
 my back. But to-day, at least, he and all his works seem 
 just outrageously dirty. I don't feel equal to describing 
 them properly too tired. The nastiness of it all requires 
 something more than just prose. I wonder if a Walt 
 Whitman, for instance, could come home, tired to the 
 bone, and then manage to see anything beautiful in such 
 conditions. If he wrote with his shoulders aching from 
 working and then from scrubbing to get clean with 
 hands blistered by those dreadful, awkward shovels I 
 wonder if he could avoid getting off something like this: 
 
 "I see before me my plate of greasy soup 
 And the unwashed spoon 
 On the slippery table (never again any more of this soup 
 
 1 Printanniere ' for me as long as I live !) . 
 And from the open window I catch the aroma 
 Of the nearness of the chickens, the rabbits, the pigeons 
 And the mildly protesting cow. 
 Yes, I see before me the primordial chaos: 
 The cataclysmic conglomeration of things worn out or about 
 
 to be: 
 
 The half-filled tubs of blue-blackish suds from miners' backs, 
 The decrepit, toothless and discouraged scrubbing brushes, 
 The empty wine bottles, prostrate in their sad, repentent 
 
 uselessness. 
 In the manure half overwhelmed they lie, 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 81 
 
 Like things dead, yet alive; gray ghosts of former services. 
 
 The broken dishes still begging to help 
 
 By holding a bit of soap or the shells of eggs, 
 
 The half-split sabots and the broken mattock, 
 
 Evidence of the landlord's strength (I wish he'd use it trying 
 to clean up a bit !) . 
 
 And then let one observe the rabbits how calmly they fold 
 their legs under them and, 
 
 Noses wiggling, ruminate philosophically on the litter of cab- 
 bage leaves beneath the rusty and half-fallen stove. 
 
 And the chickens ! Ah, now do I behold one roosting peace- 
 fully upon the chair and yes, by my soul, upon my towel ! 
 
 (Oh, hang it all, this is too much ! Why should I stand for 
 it another day !)" 
 
 And so on possibly ad infinitum, certainly ad nauseam. 
 
 As long as it is necessary to do it another day, I guess 
 I'll enjoy my most pleasurable indoor sport namely, 
 the study of the time-table to see precisely when I can 
 get away. 
 
 Doubtless I ought to be thankful that there is some 
 place else to go. Yesterday evening the interpreter for 
 the Polish laborers here reported that they are all very 
 unhappy and consider themselves badly treated, but 
 can't go back to Poland because there's nothing but idle- 
 ness and war there. They don't earn enough here to 
 bring their wives. On pay-day every two weeks the 
 conditions, he says, are frightful over at the barracks, 
 with the help of much alcohol and a few Polish women 
 who stay under pretense of being servants. When he 
 makes complaints he finds nobody authorized to pay 
 any attention. Still worse, he sees no way out for him- 
 self: 
 
82 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 "My uncle in America rich. When I write him no 
 answer come. Farm beeg farm he got in Jowa 
 (Iowa)." 
 
 Still it must be granted that he's hopeful, for he con- 
 fided that he has just discovered the secret of perpetual 
 motion. All it needs to make it go and keep it going, 
 he says, is "a little more force just a little more force." 
 
 We're not the only unlucky ones. Two workers in 
 near-by towns are reported killed yesterday by putting 
 their picks into unexploded German shells. A little baby 
 also was sent out of the world by coming upon an old 
 German rifle. A drunken man appears to have gone to 
 sleep on the railroad tracks with the usual result. 
 
 Unlike these poor fellows, I know there is always for 
 me a means of retreat to higher ground and more com- 
 fortable. So I'll stay a little longer perhaps it may 
 somehow, some day, be of value to them all. Anyway, 
 it would help a lot if I could take a nap, as do my com- 
 panions. It's too bad the afternoon flies here on the 
 bed make that just as difficult as does my nocturnal bed- 
 fellow. 
 
 The Coal Town, 
 Saturday. 
 
 "No ventilation here," a new boss explained this 
 morning as he took me off with him on a long walk from 
 the bottom into an old section of the mine for a day of 
 work "in rock." "No air at all. That's why all these 
 timbers here have this white beard of clammy fuzz. See 
 here! Yes, it's all rotting, and that's the wood rotting 
 that should support the roof above our heads. It is not 
 safe." 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 83 
 
 Still farther on he held up his lantern to show a great 
 gash from which rock had fallen it yawned ominously 
 a full twenty feet or more above us. 
 
 "Very dangerous, very!" he said and shook his head 
 after listening carefully for a moment. 
 
 I was willing to check with him completely: it cer- 
 tainly looked unsafe. So I moved along to indicate that 
 I was satisfied and ready to get to some other equally 
 interesting place and safer. To my dismay he calmly 
 took off his coat and showed me where to hang mine! 
 When he went back for another timber his partner came 
 up, went through the same head-shaking and opining 
 of " Highly dangerous, highly dangerous!" Of course 
 there was nothing to it but to take it calmly and roll up 
 my sleeves. When we had got our shovels busy clearing 
 up a place for building a stone wall, he would frequently 
 stop and listen. Several times the crackling of the mass 
 of loose stones was enough to make him jump back to 
 the cover of the strongest timbers with me only a 
 shadow behind him. I have been in various places which 
 looked worse to me. But I never saw miners themselves 
 take a place quite so seriously. It was not pleasant. In 
 addition, the work itself was in the nastiest mud and 
 water, shovelling fallen stone away or bringing up fresh 
 timbers. Worse still, it was obvious to eyes and nose 
 that the chamber was very gassy. So it looked like a 
 long and dreary, as well as a deadly dangerous day. 
 Luckily, before nine o'clock a big boss came along and 
 I jumped at his invitation to go with him on his inspec- 
 tion trip. 
 
 He covered an amazing amount of territory walking 
 
84 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 rapidly into the wall of darkness. One gang was work- 
 ing in the dusty din and clatter of the air-drills, hard at 
 work pushing a new entry on through solid rock. He took 
 a good look at the roof above them and then proceeded 
 to pick down a half ton or so of loose stone that had hung 
 almost ready to fall scolding them for their carelessness. 
 Later it took all my strength and skill to climb after him 
 up several of those sharply inclined eighteen-inch or two- 
 foot veins. We had to squirm our way, not on hands 
 and knees, but on stomach and arms and toes. Even 
 then the roof or floor above us, because many veins 
 were upside down, would somehow contrive continually 
 to get into the small of my back. In order to make the 
 roof or the bottom safe, and also to get a little more room, 
 the miners clean out several inches of stone. But even 
 that does not prevent the men whom we saw lying on 
 their sides or crouched low between roof and floor, from 
 keeping their picks going everlastingly for the full work- 
 ing day. The strange thing is to see how quickly you 
 come to share with them their freedom from the tender- 
 foot's fear of the roof's crushing their slender little wooden 
 supports and falling in upon them with its weight of hun- 
 dreds of feet of solid earth. 
 
 In many places not even the boy loader can stand 
 upright at the bottom of the incline. Several lads kept 
 running every blessed minute, pushing out their cars 
 through passages hardly higher than the car's top some- 
 times for long distances. After stooping for rods and 
 rods through some of these places, the finest thing in the 
 world appears to be just to get to a place where you can 
 stand upright! Many of the boys appear undersized 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 85 
 
 even for their fourteen or fifteen years. They must be 
 strong or else suffer severe strain. It must be said, how- 
 ever, that a great deal more care is evidently given to 
 lessening this strain by means of the up-keep of the cars 
 and the levelling of the tracks than I have seen in Amer- 
 ica where car-pushing is a frequent cause of complaint. 
 
 Well, I suppose it's these initial years of " charging" 
 (loading) and pushing these cars under the low roofs 
 out to where the horses can come, that make these boys 
 glad, later, to spend their hours pick in hand, crouched 
 in those narrow inches between roof and floor. "C'est 
 V habitude." That's doubtless their answer or alibi 
 for not being farmers, for instance. That is doubtless, 
 also, the reason the world gets as much coal as it does 
 that and the fact that a man earns more to get down a 
 ton of this " narrow" coal than in a larger seam. (That 
 does not necessarily mean that he earns more in a day's 
 work.) 
 
 Speaking of "habitude," they say that several of the 
 horses showed themselves not long ago the victims of it. 
 During the last strike they were all taken up and quar- 
 tered on a farm. One of them that had for years hauled 
 its cars out to the " parting" or switch, six times a day, 
 absolutely refused to make more than six trips with the 
 plough across the field. Another that had had a shorter 
 mine "trip" refused to go anywhere farther than its ac- 
 customed distance of fifty yards without turning around ! 
 
 Even the girls in the district appear to form in early 
 years the same "habitude" of hard horny-handed work. 
 They don't come underground but most of the pushing 
 and emptying of the cars on the tip is done by them and 
 
86 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 by still smaller boys. Other girls are seen carrying heavy 
 logs or unloading with their long shovels cars of sand 
 or lime. A shortage of labor surely exists in the district. 
 Of the foreign workers the biggest percentage is said to 
 be Belgian. After that come Italians, Poles, Czecko- 
 Slovaks, Spaniards, Greeks, etc. Of course the numerous 
 Moroccans and Algerians or French colonists are hardly 
 spoken of as foreign. All these outsiders as in America 
 seem to be lorded over a good deal by their native-born 
 fellow workers. They probably all help, too, to lower 
 still further the level of the local patois. "Id" (here) 
 is generally "tiki," "moi" (me) is "ma," "toi" is "tee." 
 
 It was a great relief to learn that a new engineer here 
 found it impossible to understand these workers when 
 he first arrived, even though he was a Frenchman ! 
 
 In spite of a fairly quiet French industry as a whole, 
 there seems still to be plenty of demand for miners, prob- 
 ably because France always has used at least 20,000,000 
 tons yearly more than she produces. A soldier boy says 
 he has had no trouble getting a promise of work as soon 
 as he finishes his army service next month : 
 
 " No, I don't love being soldier. Not at all. . . . Well, 
 for one thing, the food. . . . Yes, it's good what one 
 gets. But not enough of it." 
 
 The labor shortage is not enough, apparently to make 
 much of a conquest over the ubiquitous high cost of liv- 
 ing. The workers generally are far from happy. They 
 sigh for the good old days. They seem hesitant about 
 the company's new houses at three to five francs per 
 room per month. They want to know the wages and 
 living costs of America with only a hazy idea of any 
 
FELLOW-WORKERS IN THE COAL PIT NEAR LENS 
 
 EVEN THE YOUNG GIRLS IN THE DISTRICT APPEAR TO FORM IN 
 EARLY YEARS THE SAME "HABITUDE" OF HARD, HORNY- 
 HANDED WORK 
 
 They don't come under ground, but most of the pushing and emptying of the cars on 
 the tip is done by them and by still younger boys 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 87 
 
 difference between the American of the North and of the 
 South, or, say, Argentinian varieties. If they have a 
 friend in, for instance, "Co-awl-gawt," and you don't 
 understand their pronunciation of Colgate, you can see 
 that they think you're an impostor ! 
 
 Here at the boarding-house, the landlord has evidently 
 been busy. The place looks much cleaner, thanks be! 
 The prospects are hardly good, however, for his efforts 
 lasting long, with the dogs, chickens, and rabbits con- 
 tinuing to enjoy "the freedom of the city." This after- 
 noon a frightened chicken with a huge clutter and com- 
 motion suddenly flew into the window and almost into 
 the face of the wife as she nursed the baby at her generous 
 bosom. The child cried out in fear but the easy-going 
 mother only shouted with laughter. 
 
 I have just told her I must get some sleep somehow 
 after the worst night yet with my dancing bedfellow. So 
 I've played my last game of "flechette" its small arrows 
 and target are found in every estaminet in the region, 
 and that's saying a great deal because the small fee for 
 an alcohol license appears to favor a bar in hundreds of 
 homes. Am packed and ready to move on to the bigger 
 town of Bethune, about three miles away. 
 
 My chum just now breaks in to say that he's walking 
 over there to see his sweetheart his wife it is that's in 
 the hospital. 
 
 "Yes, perhaps," he shrugs his shoulders when I speak 
 of the energy and enthusiasm of his boy. "But I'm afraid 
 he'll not amount to much. Have you not noticed his 
 eye? Is it not the eye of a fox? Yes. You see, he's 
 had bad education. Instead of being in school, he spent 
 
88 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 his years as a prisoner stealing from his captors is very 
 bad for a boy when he's thirteen, is it not so?" 
 
 Have just been to thank the company official who 
 furnished the job. He feels sure that his miners at home 
 not at an estaminet are quite cleanly. The town ap- 
 pears to me to give small evidence of it. He feels, too, 
 that in general the spirit of his men is good. Peaceful, 
 I'd say, but hardly good. They speak too often of the 
 driving necessity of work, with starvation in the offing 
 if they don't. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Communist musicians in a French 
 town are reported to have spoiled the party at an after- 
 noon "f$te gymnastique" by refusing to play the Mar- 
 seillaise "because it has been too much taken over by 
 the conservative bourgeoisie!" 
 
 How times do change with the old one-time radicals 
 suddenly finding themselves tail-enders in the proces- 
 sion! 
 
 Meanwhile, too, the Communist paper, UHumanite 
 blames the whole Russian famine on to the present world- 
 wide dry spell! It is to be noted, however, that a con- 
 servative Socialist up at the Lille convention of the "C. 
 G. T." makes his stand for: " Re volution, yes, but for 
 a progressive revolution, a revolution by full stomachs, 
 not empty ones, as in Russia." 
 
 "I am not," still another announces, "I am not for 
 dissociating the interests of the working class from the 
 interests of society as a whole. Whether we like to admit 
 it or not, the two are inseparably bound up together. I 
 insist simply that at present we must not retreat. That 
 is the first condition of advancing." 
 
BELOW GROUND WITH THE MINERS 89 
 
 After the nights of poor sleep, the mornings of black 
 and dangerous work, and the afternoons of filth, fatigue, 
 and discomfort, I'll say that that's as much good sense 
 as could be expected of any worker in the land. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 OTHER VICTIMS OF A NEW KIND OF WAR 
 
 Bethune, 
 Pas de Calais, 
 Sunday, Aug. 7. 
 
 A GOOD night's sleep in a whole bed a whole bed and 
 a clean one a tasty breakfast on a fairly clean table- 
 cloth, more sleep, a wondrous dinner, a walk, and still 
 more sleep. "Ah, but how all that is marvellous," as 
 we French say, for one's body and mind and soul ! 
 
 As the centre of the British sector, the town here has 
 been badly shot up, especially near the main square. 
 Comparatively little, also, appears to have been done to 
 put things back into shape, though a number of builders 
 are breaking the Sabbath with their plastering. The 
 English evidently send a constant stream of visitors to 
 their honored dead hi the near-by cemetery. All signs 
 make it evident that the population here has been con- 
 siderably more prosperous than at Douai, for example. 
 In fact a very imposing show was given this afternoon 
 by the gentlemen of the district who, in their red coats, 
 jumped their handsome and expensive horses over various 
 gates, hedges, water-hazards, etc. This evening a grand 
 ball and fete with a prize gymnastic troupe is under way, 
 with plenty of colored lights and music hi the very at- 
 tractive city garden. A number^of drunken soldiers and 
 laborers, with much barroom singing, provide an un- 
 fortunate by-product of the festivity. 
 
 90 
 
OTHER VICTIMS OF A NEW KIND OF WAR 91 
 
 Everybody that tries to be anybody here in North 
 France seems to think it necessary to lead something of 
 a canine nature at the end of a string on Sunday after- 
 noon or evening. Most of these exhibitions appear to 
 be puppies of fox-terrier or similar breed. The aristocrats, 
 of course, have police-dogs "chiens du defense" At 
 a private club I saw these being trained to attack sus- 
 picious characters at the word of command. A man in 
 heavily padded and disreputable-looking clothes was sub- 
 mitting to their bitings and snappings for the sake of 
 their education. He probably gets two francs, possibly 
 three, per hour. That's my idea of a poor job ! 
 
 Such things as this training of " defense" dogs remind 
 one at every turn of the war that is past. Unfortunately 
 they also suggest unpleasantly the thought of war to 
 come. People don't seem to be able to get back very 
 quickly to entirely peaceful ways after living for years 
 so close to daily misery, fear, and death. That is doubt- 
 less one reason for the unexampled number of train rob- 
 beries and murders which are causing wide-spread alarm 
 all over France. That war baby known as the high cost 
 of living is doubtless behind the smaller robberies and 
 misdemeanors which fill the papers. 
 
 Altogether, it looks as though the people of France 
 up here in the north at least have been wounded much 
 more deeply than we outsiders have been able to ap- 
 preciate. It is not simply that fathers have been killed, 
 with families bereaved and put into poverty. That is 
 bad enough. In addition, other families in great number 
 have been broken up by the pressure of the abnormal 
 personal and domestic relationships of the war period. 
 
92 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 Every newspaper now contains in addition to the pre- 
 posterous promises regarding remedies which we have 
 driven out from our respectable columns numerous 
 advertisements of lawyers ready to secure divorces at a 
 minimum outlay of tune and money. Still other persons, 
 young and old, have been given the abnormal attitudes 
 and view-points sure to follow the years of prison or semi- 
 prison regime attitudes and view-points which will not 
 fail to affect them quite unconsciously all the rest of their 
 lives. The papers also tell of hundreds now or lately 
 under trial for giving intelligence to the enemy or of being, 
 in other ways, traitorously overfriendly with them. 
 
 Of course, this country here is not the normal France: 
 it is devastated or invaded France. It is surprising to 
 see how close its interests are tied up not only with the 
 rest of France but with Belgium, and, in a way, also, 
 with Germany. The maps show almost indiscernible 
 boundary-lines and the newspapers and especially the 
 trade papers, appear to pay the frontiers slight attention. 
 Unskilled Belgian workers go back and forth between 
 this district and their homes all the tune. This is all 
 very different from those days of sightseeing travel 
 when we used to take boundaries very seriously: they 
 meant changing trains, passing customs inspections, 
 changing to new money, getting out fresh guide-books, 
 etc., etc. Evidently Belgium is too much like France in 
 language, money, and industry to make people here feel 
 that way about it. Indeed, the threads of the cotton 
 trade of this whole district a few miles to the north, seem 
 to tie it up not only with Belgium but with America as 
 well. 
 
OTHER VICTIMS OF A NEW KIND OF WAR 93 
 
 "In cotton," according to an industrial weekly pub- 
 lished at Lille, "the event of the week has been the re- 
 port of the Bureau of Agriculture at Washington, stating 
 the condition of the harvest. The figure given has sur- 
 prised the market and the prices have gone to higher 
 levels which have had a distinctly unfavorable reper- 
 cussion on the progress of (cotton) affairs here." 
 
 By the same token we will probably have some "re- 
 percussions" in America from the long-standing strike 
 of the cotton employees here in the region and from that 
 of the weavers which is expected shortly. Both are ef- 
 forts to side-step any reduction of wages in the belief 
 that the cost of living has not gone down to the extent 
 claimed by the official figures of the State. Undoubtedly, 
 too, America is interested in the report that the repre- 
 sentatives of France to the coming conference of the 
 League of Nations have been instructed to oppose the 
 present efforts to make universal in France the eight- 
 hour day. The report's appearance in an article on 
 "France's Political Outlook" indicates how such matters 
 come to be in the forefront here not only of industrial 
 but of political thought. The statement continues to 
 the effect that France has still so much work to do in 
 order to catch up with the rest of the world that it should 
 not be compelled to compete on an eight-hour basis with 
 a Germany reported to be working generally ten to twelve 
 hours. 
 
 Yes, it looks as though the editor of Le Nord Industriel 
 has everything on his side when he goes so far as to say: 
 
 "To all economic activity you can apply the theory 
 of communicating chambers a change of levels in one 
 
94 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 country immediately produces a proportionate effect 
 upon the levels in other countries." 
 
 The chances are that the war has made exactly that 
 not only more widely true and more broadly compelling, 
 but also more manifest and obvious so much so as to 
 require no longer the eyes only of the professional econ- 
 omist. In that case it may prove a vital force for bring- 
 ing together the nations on the basis of mutual economic 
 interests. One of the most reassuring activities now 
 visible on the international horizon here is the way 
 Loucheur for France and Rathenau for Germany appear 
 to be agreeing upon a practical basis of paying repara- 
 tions in materials rather than in money. What is most 
 significant is that these gentlemen are the representa- 
 tives, one in France and one in Germany, of the General 
 Electric Company of the U. S. A. ! 
 
 All of which is a highly gratifying thought to take to 
 bed hi the midst of scores of Bethune's ruined houses. 
 
 P. S. Even the bill-boards help to give the impression 
 which appears to explain a great deal about this people, 
 namely that it is an elderly and long-established concern. 
 To-day a large building bore the notice "The Mayor 
 hereby decrees that refuse must not be deposited here 
 by virtue of the law of 1791 " ( !) A few days ago a state- 
 ment regarding the acceptance of Spanish or Italian 
 moneys at the post-office quoted as its authority the law 
 of 1807. Warnings against the posting of bills often give 
 their authority in the law of 1881. 
 
 Lille, 
 
 Monday, August 8. 
 
 "Well, then, if you are going up there to find work in 
 the steel plant," a French travelling companioo said to 
 
OTHER VICTIMS OF A NEW KIND OF WAR 95 
 
 me this morning after I had told him my plans in mono- 
 syllabic answers to his questions, "then, of course, you 
 must be French." 
 
 Of course I was delighted. But when I started to ex- 
 plain my Americanism, he interrupted: 
 
 "It is not necessary to explain, sir. I can see at once 
 that your features are not French, but I should say with- 
 out hesitation, Polish." ( !) 
 
 It was amazing to learn that both he and the woman 
 with him and another couple who chanced into the same 
 compartment are strolling singers. Furthermore, they 
 are members of a national or international Union of 
 Strolling Musicians! At the steel town not far from 
 Bethune we had coffee together. The woman was frank 
 enough about her affairs: 
 
 "How long married? Ah, mon Dieu, too long! You 
 see, I married the first man I met on the street. I haven't 
 seen him in a year. . . . This man? Ah, a brave gargon 
 he is. Always the fine gentleman and polite. So generous 
 and kind. Always like this. . . . Divorce? Why 
 trouble? Besides it costs thousands of francs." 
 
 Later I met the two walking out to the factory gate 
 for the noon recess. He had on black glasses and was 
 leaning heavily on her arm. He quickly snatched the black 
 things off with a word about the dust, but I'm uncom- 
 fortably persuaded he was posing as a wounded soldier 
 even though he didn't try that at the restaurant. Ac- 
 cording to his jolly report in his splendid speaking voice, 
 he had collected thirty francs already. Most of his audi- 
 ence of workers would envy him his profitable career. 
 
 The steel plant looks brand-new as the result of the 
 15,000,000 francs paid the company by the government 
 
96 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 for damages done by more than 3,000 shells of assorted 
 sizes delivered by the German artillery. The old battle 
 front is only about three miles away. Although business 
 is slow just now, the place manages to keep its 2,500 men 
 fairly busy. Outside of a large group of Belgian laborers, 
 the only foreigners are about fifty Portuguese soldiers 
 who haven't yet gone home from the war. The blast- 
 furnaces of American design and patent use ore from 
 the newly developed district in Normandy near Caen. 
 The open-hearth looks small but very efficient and up- 
 to-date. The rolling-mills show an amount of hand labor 
 that few American engineers would tolerate. Coal comes 
 by canal from the mines near Bethune, doubtless through 
 the huge canal-boat depot for which that town is famous. 
 
 The manager assured me that the workers are quite 
 happy. Such assurance is usually sincere but not always 
 valuable. Sorry that it seems unwise to stop for a job. 
 
 Between the steel town and Lille is an almost unbroken 
 line of original battle front including the town of Ar- 
 mentieres, where the fighting was evidently extremely 
 heavy. Altogether, the country makes a remarkable 
 picture of rusty war-tune damage alongside amazing 
 peace-time reconstruction in every way typical of pres- 
 ent-day France. Great expanses of golden harvest-fields 
 show here an active windmill and there a mass of barbed 
 wire or an ugly, half -ruined " pill-box," or machine-gun 
 shelter with its sinister slit peering out toward the enemy; 
 here a few trees with wondrous green branches, there a 
 forest reduced to naked telegraph-poles; here a gaping 
 roof with leaning walls, there a group of tasteful homes 
 under crowns of gorgeous red tiles. 
 
OTHER VICTIMS OF A NEW KIND OF WAR 97 
 
 Adding the afternoon's group of telegraph wire- 
 stringers to all the other French artisans encountered to 
 date makes it easy to describe the type fairly well-built 
 but not tall or large, with black mustache, naval cap 
 with patent-leather visor, neat suit of blue overalls with 
 double-breasted jacket buttoned tight to the neck, bicycle 
 clips on trouser bottoms. In many cases it would not 
 be wrong to add "and a good-sized wad of cotton hi 
 each ear." 
 
 As to the women, I keep wondering whether the dread- 
 ful frequency of mourning apparel is the result of war- 
 tune rifles or peace-time religion. As in South America, 
 it is necessary always to remember that social usage here 
 makes a virtue of underlining the blackness of death. 
 Long before the war, the institution of purgatory has 
 made these countries appear the land of the buried but 
 undecided or religiously undisposed of dead. 
 
 It must be added, however, that the same religion does 
 not fail to underline similarly the importance of giving 
 life here on earth. When to that emphasis is added the 
 present patriotic effort to increase France's population, 
 the results are sometimes spectacular. This morning's 
 paper gives 136 lines of names of families which have 
 received a gold medal for what might be called successful 
 national and religious " production records." These 
 lines appear to average 16.5 children each or 136 X 16.5 
 = 2,224 sons and daughters of "la Patrie." And that's 
 for only two of France's 88 departments ! 
 
 Still, something like this is undoubtedly called for by 
 a people whose practically diminishing population has 
 suffered the loss of 1,800,000 men 53 per cent of its 
 
98 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 manhood of fighting age ! also 600,000 homes and 100,- 
 000,000,000 francs of property. 
 
 One of the indications of all this, namely the cost of 
 living, is put by the government at 336 per cent as com- 
 pared with pre-war incidentally almost exactly twice 
 the present American figures. Here at Lille to-day a 
 well-informed editor went so far as to express his own 
 pessimistic disbelief in the figures as too low. Further- 
 more, instead of going down, he believes the present wide- 
 spread drought is raising them, temporarily at least. So 
 he sympathizes with the local textile strikers. He is also 
 extremely blue now that the government has failed to 
 get any German reparations money and so finds it neces- 
 sary to suspend payments for damages incurred by the 
 smaller manufacturers after it has advanced such large 
 sums to many of the larger companies. I must confess 
 that an hour or two on the streets to-night make one feel 
 with him that local industry is languishing sadly at the 
 moment. All the restaurants have plenty of good or- 
 chestras or, at worst, very noisy though really musical 
 automatic instruments. Everything is all right except 
 the people. They aren't in evidence. "I have piped for 
 ye, and ye have not danced." 
 
 Nevertheless, all the reports show that this depart- 
 ment of the north has made a much better record for 
 reconstruction than the other devastated counties its 
 present percentage of "reconstitution" is 83.2 of con- 
 cerns employing 20 persons or more now again hi opera- 
 tion. The amazing thing is that the district has done 
 so well, considering all it suffered from the new type of 
 warfare so fully demonstrated here as well as at Lens. 
 
 It appears that in February, 1916, over 200 German 
 
OTHER VICTIMS OF A NEW KIND OF WAR 99 
 
 scientists and experts made a detailed study of the in- 
 dustries of all the regions of France held by them. The 
 resultant 500-page report was sent by the government to 
 all the chambers of commerce and other commercial and 
 economic organizations in the empire "for the purpose 
 of giving a view of results which will probably follow for 
 Germany from the destruction of certain branches of in- 
 dustry of our enemies." The report gives minute infor- 
 mation as to the exact kind of machines which have been 
 destroyed and which will be necessary for the reconstruc- 
 tion, which should, therefore, be presently manufactured 
 in Germany so as to be ready to sell to France when 
 the war is over ! Very specifically it indicates, also, the 
 different products the international markets for which will 
 be open to German producers because the established 
 French producers will be out of commission. The number 
 of months following the war likely to pass before France 
 can make any successful effort to regain these markets, 
 the engineering experts calmly proceed to estimate with 
 the utmost exactitude! "The French sugar-making in- 
 dustry can be expected to disappear completely from all 
 later possibility of successful competition hi any foreign 
 markets," is one phrase. In order to get full credit for 
 the government and its careful thoughtfulness for its 
 business men, the report also details whether this or that 
 particular industry was damaged mainly by the ordinary 
 mishaps of war or by the far-sighted economic mandates 
 of the government. It takes particular pains to show 
 that the chief damages in the way of ruined factories 
 and machinery are to be credited to the latter, rather 
 than to the ordinary military operations of the army! 
 The invaders' failure, so far, to pay for this cold-blooded 
 
100 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 economic and non-military destruction is, of course, a 
 huge factor in causing the greatest " general strike" hi 
 history the present strike of the world's buyers. So 
 before going on further with France I'm glad to be step- 
 ping across the boundary to-morrow for a short stop- 
 over hi Belgium and then a look into the central power 
 station of the world's most recent unhappiness Ger- 
 many. 
 
 Later. The twin cities of Roubaix and Tourcoing, be- 
 tween Lille and the Belgian frontier, look surprisingly 
 well built and well equipped with up-to-date textile fac- 
 tories in spite of the suddenness and recentness of their 
 development as manufacturing centres famous through- 
 out the textile world. The streets, too, were peaceful 
 as could be, in spite of the newspaper reports of the 
 textile strikes and the general unhappiness among the 
 strikers. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF BELGIUM^ 
 
 Ltege, Belgium, 
 Sunday, August 14th. 
 
 No wonder these Belgians join the French in their 
 difficulty and hesitation in getting back to a normal state 
 of mind. Almost every day this past week has been the 
 seventh anniversary of the capture of some historic point 
 of national defense back in those awful days of August, 
 1914 capture and, worse, pillage. Even upon the busy 
 streets it is easy to imagine the gray lines moving on and 
 on, always in the direction of France. Post-cards show- 
 ing the outrages committed are still on display and sale. 
 Nobody would be more pleased than I to find few such 
 signs. But here they are and here they remain as both 
 symptoms and causes of the state of mind of the western 
 Europe of to-day. And that state of mind is, after all, 
 the only place in which to seek the seeds of the western 
 Europe of to-morrow. 
 
 The picture gamed these last few days of the life of 
 the Belgian worker is not an encouraging one. Every- 
 body has to work and work hard, that's sure. The men 
 do look huskier and more capable of it than the French. 
 In fact, they much resemble us Americans possibly as 
 the result of the Flemish blood. All seem to agree that 
 the Belgian worker in general is not as skilled as the 
 French also that the country's foreign trade is built 
 largely upon low wages. In Charleroi, the chief coal 
 
 101; 
 
102 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 . 
 town, the saioke, the untidy homes, the bad smells, the 
 
 heavily leaded burros, the wooden shoes, the dirty chil- 
 dren and the huge dumps of "gob" from the mines, make 
 life look considerably harder than, for instance, in the 
 coal towns of Wales. The coal is reported of high quality: 
 otherwise its working would not be profitable from the 
 seams located as much as 3,000 feet and more below 
 ground. All attempts to get down proving fruitless, the 
 time had to be spent in talking with the men and with 
 some of the hundreds of young girls working, in the 
 roughest of clothes, at emptying the heavy cars in the 
 tipple. An American soldier appears to have put it about 
 right: 
 
 "They treat the women here like dogs, and they make 
 the dogs work." 
 
 In October a national eight-hour law becomes effec- 
 tive. Compulsory public education, legislated just be- 
 fore the war, went into effect only last year. The corol- 
 lary of all this is seen in the seriousness of drunkenness 
 among the workers. Mr. Rowntree of England estimates 
 almost one-sixth of the worker's income as going into 
 alcohol. Recent legislation for limitation along this line 
 requires that spirituous liquors must now be bought in 
 quantities of not less than two litres at stores and not be 
 consumed on the premises. The saloon-keeper claims 
 naturally enough that there is more drunkenness now 
 that the worker takes his stuff home and treats the whole 
 family. Others complain that the legal minimum is too 
 large and expensive for the average worker. Meanwhile 
 the emphasis upon beer and wines has enormously in- 
 creased the importation of heavier beers and ales from 
 England and of wines from Spain and Portugal. Ac- 
 
A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF BELGIUM 103 
 
 cording to my friend, the saloon-keeper, these last contain 
 from 28 to 40 per cent alcohol ! It all makes it look cer- 
 tain that legislation permitting beer and light wines is 
 extremely difficult of enforcement. Most observers, how- 
 ever, seem to believe that there is considerably less 
 drunkenness than formerly. 
 
 Hardly half the workers are in the unions and these 
 are much split up. The most aggressive group is of fairly 
 radical Socialist persuasion, fighting the battles of class 
 enmity on the lines laid down by Karl Marx. Because 
 these are felt to be pretty thoroughly against religion, 
 the Catholics have organized a large membership in their 
 " Christian unions," working toward co-operation be- 
 tween worker and employer. In between these two in- 
 terests there is a body of neuter or non-religious unions, 
 numbering several hundred thousand members. 
 
 On all sides people evidently find the margin of living 
 pretty narrow. Even in the restaurants frequented by 
 clerks, throngs come in, buy a cup of coffee or a glass of 
 beer and unwrap their packages of sandwiches. "H. C. 
 L." has gone up close to 400 per cent. A local news- 
 paper dispute says volumes about the local working man's 
 standard of living. 
 
 "Our esteemed contemporary, the labor paper," so an 
 "upper class" newspaper argues; "figures a standard of 
 living requiring not less than one hundred francs weekly 
 for a family of three. We believe seventy-five is more 
 reasonable. We notice that in the higher schedule meat 
 appears once a day for every member of the family. To 
 us this seems an undue luxury justifiable only for the 
 sustenance of the family's bread-winners." ( !) 
 
 Perhaps my French landlady's conscience, as well as 
 
104 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 her pocketbook, was responsible for the frugality of her 
 meat-fork. "How it is pleasant to recall" the easy-going 
 ways of my American landladies with their heaping plates 
 of lamb stew or "two fried," and the never-failing "stack 
 of wheats"! It would be interesting to know what in- 
 fluence that frugal fork has on such notices as are to be 
 seen on the walls of some of the houses in the laborers' 
 suburbs here to-day: 
 
 "Comrades, come to the meeting of protestation 
 against the continued exploitation by your masters! 
 The time has come for us to put an end to it all and rise 
 in our night," etc., etc. 
 
 The famous "Maison du Peuple," maintained by a 
 federation of thirty-eight different national unions, be- 
 sides carrying on a great variety of health and other social 
 and educational activities, fights the cost of living by 
 co-operative buying and selling. Its stores, restaurants, 
 and movie theatre appear to do a huge business. Up- 
 stairs hi the offices of one of the union officials was to be 
 found much the same discouragement as hi similar circles 
 in France: 
 
 "At present the increase of unemployment necessitates 
 the practice of passive acceptance. Naturally we cannot 
 fight at a time when our employers would only be too 
 pleased to have us strike and get ourselves off the pay- 
 roll. So we try to keep thinking of the big gains we have 
 made within the last few years. You see, before the war, 
 labor here had almost no rights. Men were arrested not 
 only for striking but even for talking with each other 
 about striking. To-day the labor vote really counts in 
 the government. It is the war that helped the middle and 
 
A BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF BELGIUM 105 
 
 upper classes to realize that the working man had saved 
 the country. Now they are willing to treat him better. 
 Before, compulsory service in the army mainly affected 
 labor because well-to-do people could always pay a slight 
 penalty and then hire a worker to take their places. . . . 
 Of course, we cannot work out our own salvation here hi 
 Belgium as we would like. That is because we are sur- 
 rounded by Germany, Holland, and France. We have 
 always to think of them always. There are not so many 
 Communists amongst us, but we certainly are against 
 the present system of society which allows the masters to 
 put hundreds of thousands of men off the job the moment 
 it is no longer to their pocket's interests to keep them 
 busy especially when 80,000 houses destroyed by the 
 war need to be rebuilt, in addition to the 160,000 which 
 represents the ordinary 20,000 constructed every year 
 in pre-war times. ... As to alcohol, well, all I can say 
 is that there used to be hundreds of workers in the hos- 
 pital with delirium tremens; now only a few score." 
 
 As everywhere over here, the present appears always 
 rooted in that recent past which dates from August, 1914. 
 Here is the young woman stenographer, finally found for 
 some copying: 
 
 "Four years I was in England just in time my mother 
 and I got out of Ostend. Our father would stay to see 
 after our house. His body was found in the ruins after 
 the first day of bombardment. . . . No, we do not ex- 
 pect to get the money promised. The government is 
 soft with promises but with money very hard. . . . Now 
 my mother keeps a shop and I work, as you see. That 
 is not so bad. But well, you see, I had expected to 
 
106 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 marry my cousin that was before the war. You see, 
 then I was of a family fairly rich. Now he must marry 
 another. His father has lost much by the war also. So 
 he must use all his fortune to give his daughter the largest 
 possible 'dot' for her marriage. If the family does not 
 plan carefully it will lose its position. . . . No, I would 
 not let him marry me because for that his father would 
 cast him off. And that is impossible. He is only twenty- 
 five years old and a musician. He is not sure he can make 
 it go alone. . . . That may cause the usual, what we 
 call, ' marriage of four 7 : he and the girl he marries do 
 not love each other so they may find each another friend. 
 But I shall never be one of the four not at least as long 
 as my mother and sister live. Besides, for me my mother 
 has already picked out a husband. I do not like him and 
 have said so, but that will not make great difference. 
 . . . But you were dictating, sir?" (Business of wiping 
 away tears.) 
 
 Evidently the political as well as the family problem 
 here is highly complex. The Flemish people learn French, 
 but the Walloons or near-French find Flemish too hard 
 and not very usable. Every town has a name in each 
 language. Tirlemont hi one is Thiemen in the other. 
 The possibility of separating into two states or of splitting 
 off, one to Holland, the other to France, appears under 
 much discussion, as I imagine it has long been. The 
 need of increasing the state's income is evidently almost 
 as urgent as in France, seeing that the Belgian franc suf- 
 fers a little more depreciation. Business men are said 
 always to have in mind that the government is anxious 
 to get hold of profitable enterprises. At present it runs 
 
A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF BELGIUM 107 
 
 a line of turbine steamers on the Channel in connection 
 with the nationalized railroads. Luckily the government 
 telephone service is a little better than the French. Judg- 
 ing from the newspapers, the population takes about as 
 little interest in the affairs of the rest of the world as does 
 France. Cotton is used in the ears of the average citizen 
 about as much as across the border. 
 
 Here to-day it becomes extremely evident that the in- 
 vaders must have profited enormously from adding the 
 country's war resources to their own. On all sides are 
 coal-mines, steel plants, and chemical and fabricating 
 establishments of all sorts, not to mention a network 
 of rivers, canals, and railroads. The abundance of all 
 these possessions is made all the more impressive by the 
 sight of numerous cattle and prosperous harvests hi the 
 field in general, the restoration of normal conditions con- 
 siderably beyond that of near-by France. 
 
 At the German consulate yesterday, a Hollander told 
 of selling all the German-made hosiery he could find to 
 the merchants of both Belgium and England at prices 
 30 and 40 per cent below all competition. Perhaps, after 
 all, the interest of all of us in the dollar furnishes a salu- 
 tary antidote for the emotions which would retain the 
 old hatreds and so maintain the world in its old uproar. 
 
 The odd thing is that in the midst of all these affairs 
 of international weight, the load which bears most heavily 
 upon my own spirit at the moment comes from the amaz- 
 ing ability of a second-class waiter in a plain restaurant 
 here to look down upon me and my third-class clothes 
 in spite of his own ill-fitting waiter's coat and a greasy 
 shirt-front, soiled and frayed like an expired patent of 
 
108 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 nobility. It is strange how little satisfaction even taste- 
 ful food gives when every glance from others serves as a 
 push down toward the bottom of one's self-respect. It 
 takes much effort to overcome such obstructions and 
 get the frame of mind of the woman caretaker met yester- 
 day in a Brussels washroom singing cheerfully as on 
 her knees she made her tiles shine: 
 
 "Yes, every day here for seven years, and every day 
 the place rewards me with its being clean, you under- 
 stand? And always, too, the men are gentlemen. So 
 I am always happy. ... On Sunday, yes, of course, 
 always to mass and the confessional. . . . Yes, always 
 happy except when for some reason I must leave at night 
 without putting all hi order and must come in to find 
 my room with a dirty, ugly face for starting in the day. 
 Ugh, that I do not like till I have it smiling again. 
 Good day, m'sieuT 1 ' 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 
 
 Essen, Ruhr District, 
 Monday, August 15. 
 
 So this is Germany ! 
 
 Yes, and the industrial and war-making centre of it, 
 too. For most of the afternoon has been spent in the 
 huge and somewhat forbidding office-building which 
 bears the mighty name of Krupp. 
 
 Unfortunately no job can be given me: foreign-speak- 
 ing people are not yet popular again. Even my promised 
 trip through the plant is to be on the understanding that 
 all conversation with the workers is "streng verboten." 
 
 I hope that the visit will make it easier to understand 
 how all these people earn their living by day in order 
 to spend the evening overflowing the sidewalks out into 
 the streets unlessf they join the crowds who enjoy the 
 small orchestras hi the beer-halls and wine-rooms. Essen 
 is hardly going as yet full steam ahead, but the city of 
 munitions and mines certainly looks busy to-night. So 
 does the whole group of machinery and steel towns passed 
 through this early afternoon on the way up from Cologne. 
 Huge tall smoke-stacks by the dozen are in sight almost 
 every moment of the way. Many of them have a circular 
 water-tank half-way up their height which gives the 
 chimney a striking resemblance to the " fighting top" 
 of a battleship. Not inappropriate, considering the way 
 Essen in particular and this whole Ruhr district hi gen- 
 
 109 
 
110 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 eral sent to the war fronts on land and sea their train- 
 loads of shells, guns, armor-plate, locomotives, and muni- 
 tions of every kind. 
 
 Unluckily the most outstanding impression of the day 
 is very closely connected with those same suggestive 
 chimneys. It is exactly the impression I had hoped not 
 to receive here certainly not so quickly. It is this: 
 Everybody here is apparently hating the French with all 
 their powers of hatred. Everybody, apparently, is hoping 
 for the coming of "Der Tag' 1 the day of revenge. 
 
 "To-day hardly a German boy picks up his knife at 
 the table without uttering the wish that with it he might 
 go to Paris and avenge the wrongs of the Fatherland." 
 These were the words this afternoon of an important 
 citizen whom my letters made it possible to meet. 
 
 "If France had not so insisted upon every last tittle 
 of the outrageous Versailles treaty," he continued, "and 
 then committed the huge psychological error of putting 
 German populations under the supervision of colored 
 troops I have seen them on duty hi some of our greatest 
 cities, yes, with my own eyes then perhaps this dread- 
 ful new war of hate would not have made such progress 
 amongst us." 
 
 Everybody talked with so far has almost the same 
 testimony including the young man on the train who 
 had lost the ends of three fingers from a French hand- 
 grenade. No, he was not for fighting at once ! 
 
 "Just now, of course, we've not got men enough." 
 
 Strangely enough, nobody appears to hold anything 
 against either England or America. All are evidently 
 too busy hating France! Here is the way a calm and 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 111 
 
 capable industrial executive sees the present state of the 
 world this afternoon: 
 
 "Yes, Lloyd George is coming to see the danger to 
 England of a France tnat will not only own most of Eu- 
 rope's iron ore, in addition to the coal of the Saar, but 
 also control indirectly through Poland, where there is 
 much French capital, the coal and the iron and steel 
 plants of Upper Silesia besides hoping with all her heart 
 to get her foot into the mines and factories of this dis- 
 trict here. Such an industrial France could wipe British 
 as well as German steel out of the world's markets within 
 six months, and Lloyd George knows it. 
 
 " Upper Silesia is for France only a sort of second-best 
 substitute for this district here of the Ruhr. Our coal 
 here is much better more cokable, for instance, than 
 the Saar coal. With France in control here, the indus- 
 trial heart of Germany would be under France's heel 
 and all our industrial resources would be in her hands. 
 During the days when Germany was deciding whether 
 to refuse to pay and so to permit the occupation of the 
 Ruhr, France had at Diisseldorf in the regions already 
 occupied by the Allies hundreds of her best engineers. 
 Each of these had his instructions as to which coal-mine 
 or steel plant he was to find and what he was to do to 
 put it under his immediate control. 
 
 "It is much better for all the world that France should 
 have to send over here some of her business represen- 
 tatives to buy our coal and that we should have to send 
 ours to buy her iron that is much better than that we 
 should have a supply of her generals and colonels drink- 
 ing wine in our restaurants here in the Ruhr, is it not so? 
 
112 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 "The self-determination of peoples may be right 
 your President Wilson evidently believes so. But much 
 better is the ' self-determination of raw materials. 7 The 
 peace of the world now, as always, depends much more 
 upon that than upon the self-determination of peoples. 
 That it is that makes nations friends or enemies : whether 
 these supplies make the nations depend upon each other 
 for wholesome exchange and trade or whether they make 
 them too independent to be friendly or too dependent 
 to be able to exist on a self-respecting basis." 
 
 I had hardly expected to hear so much sense from an 
 official of the house of Krupp. 
 
 As it is, the soldiers of Great Britain, France, and Bel- 
 gium throng the streets and restaurants at Cologne, and 
 indeed the whole of the occupied area along the Rhine 
 ending at Duisberg, only twenty minutes away from 
 here. As it is, too, the chief thing on the mind of both 
 France and Belgium, at least, is the fear that German 
 troops will one day again and before long appear un- 
 expectedly at, and within, their borders for the demon- 
 stration of their burning hate. Only a day or two ago 
 a Brussels paper derided a prominent Socialist who re- 
 turned from Germany to announce that he found every- 
 body there so sick of war that Belgium could enjoy at 
 least fifty years of unadulterated peace and prosperity: 
 
 "Unfortunately, this man is the same person who 
 gave us exactly the same assurance in the late spring 
 of 1914 ! . . . And with us to-day the situation is even 
 more dangerous than then. To-day we have the Ger- 
 man enemies without, while within our borders we have 
 the disloyal Communists and Bolshevists." 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 113 
 
 It is this same kind of fear that made France and the 
 rest of the world feel the necessity of imposing the hard 
 conditions of the peace the able-bodied fear born of 
 forty years of fear fulfilled. Those fear-born conditions 
 have, in turn, caused the heaped-up hatreds here. This, 
 in turn, goes to justify that fear. And so the awful circle 
 revolves, growing more hateful and more fearful and 
 more hopeless at every dreadful turn. 
 
 Germany groans at the huge sum of indemnity, but 
 the possibility of a reckoning an unvictorious reckoning 
 appears hardly to have been kept in mind during those 
 days of the quick crossing of Belgium. It is hardly too 
 much to say that each and every anniversary of all those 
 awful days will cost Germany unhappiness, if not money, 
 for a long time to come. This morning over in Belgium, 
 for instance, the front page reminds that: " Seven years 
 ago to-day came the news of the fall of the Fort of Lonciu 
 (near Liege)," with the details of the heroic resistance of 
 a handful of brave martyrs. 
 
 The trip through southeastern Belgium luckily serves 
 to make this whole warring Europe a little easier to under- 
 stand. The hilly scenery of the last few hours up to the 
 German border is so entirely different from the plains 
 around Brussels that it helps to show how the geological 
 conditions of Europe provide an amazing amount of 
 geographical variety in an extremely small space. This 
 not only helps to modify somewhat the dispositions of 
 the different groups of inhabitants but also, throughout 
 the centuries of poor communications, to hold them sur- 
 prisingly wide apart. Geology changes people's jobs and 
 tools, for one thing. 
 
114 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 "This engine here," said the Belgian engineer when I 
 clambered up into the cab at a division point, "is of Ger- 
 man make because we have to have the strongest we can 
 get for this hilly country. If it had better tubes it would 
 be fine hi every way almost as good as the Americans 
 they're using much for the freight trains over here: 
 they're stronger still. These hills make us work harder 
 than we should, too, because we get only bad Belgian 
 coal. Look at it! Nothing but dust, except for those 
 briquettes. . . . Well, me, I believe it is because some 
 of our government railway officials have too many shares 
 in mines mines of bad coal. . . . No, I'd rather work 
 for a private railroad that is, not a government one. 
 Here we have too many functionaries with white collars, 
 high hats, and even higher salaries. ... I get about 
 800 francs a month here and I've served my years, you 
 understand, as day-laborer about the yards and then as 
 fireman. That gives me enough to eat but nothing for 
 any fine house, I assure you. . . . Ah, yes, we do try 
 to keep it nice and clean. You see my partner I mean 
 the other engineer we run each day, alternately, the 
 same two engines. So we get to know them like our 
 wives yes, and to care for them, in the same way. In 
 America I understand that is not so: an engineer over 
 there each day gets an engine he does not know. How 
 can he care for it or understand as he should? -It's 
 a pity a great pity." 
 
 It is a positive relief to recall his pleasure hi his job, 
 and his shining engine in contrast with the discouraging 
 testimonies of this afternoon. It is amazing to get so 
 quickly an impression so definite and so depressing a 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 115 
 
 feeling of such confusion and despair over the possibility 
 of the world's ever getting away from its past and the 
 bad habits which that past developed. 
 
 Still, perhaps we can all break away some day. Even 
 Krupps have broken away from one habit and started 
 something new, according to my official friend. He told 
 how a group of their workers had complained that the 
 gold fillings and especially the gold crowns of their teeth 
 did not stand the gritting they had to go through when 
 the men lifted the heavy weights of hot or cold steel. 
 So the plant dentist with the help of the alloy research 
 department started to pioneer a new line. As the re- 
 sult, 1,500 Krupp workmen are to-day wearing steel- 
 crowned teeth ! 
 
 For one I'd be glad to see Krupps become famous for 
 the steel teeth of peace now that the allies have pulled, 
 or at least done their best to pull, the establishment's 
 highly noted teeth of war. 
 
 Maybe sleep will make the prospect of the world's 
 ability to pull the teeth of Mars, as well as of Krupp, look 
 a bit brighter. 
 
 Essen, 
 Thursday night. 
 
 It is easy unpleasantly easy to get the "feel" of 
 the big war here to-day. 
 
 "In those days we were turning over to them all the 
 war-supplies our industrial army here of 115,000 men 
 and women could furnish." Our conductor had just 
 showed us the rooms up in the tower of the Krupp office- 
 building where, during the war, the army and navy ord- 
 nance officials lived. Doubtless, they often stood on the 
 
116 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 same high balcony where we were and looked over the 
 same square miles of plant. "Of course, we made nothing 
 then not helpful to war. But in normal peace times be- 
 fore the war, it is worth noting that 95 per cent of our 
 entire output by tonnage was in ships, farm machinery, 
 and other non-military materials in spite of our fame as 
 nothing but makers of cannon. During the war we 
 increased our space by over 70 per cent. Since the war 
 (note voice lowered and smile erased) our manufacture 
 of war materials is, of course, practically abandoned. 
 Now we have only about 50,000 workers. Of these about 
 3,000 mine coal in the pits which are directly beneath 
 the plant. They go down by those tips you see there. 
 Right over there in that big building we constructed the 
 1 mystery gun' which bombarded Paris." 
 
 Down below in one of the huge buildings we saw the 
 great rolls at which the massive armor-plates had earlier 
 been made now covered with rust. In another place 
 car-wheels and rims for locomotives are being fabricated. 
 (A recent news item tells of the formation in Berlin of 
 the world's largest locomotive trust.) Besides the new 
 Krupp locomotives, sewing-machines and even type- 
 writers are soon to be made. Who knows but that in a 
 year or two "Kruppsche" baby-carriages will be so popu- 
 lar that the advertisements will inform us that " chil- 
 dren cry for them." 
 
 The working conditions vary greatly in the various 
 departments according to age. They would hardly be 
 called excellent. Of course, we could not possibly see 
 the entire plant in a visit of a few hours. Afterward it 
 was interesting to see six or seven hundred boys and 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 117 
 
 mutilated soldiers being taught various kinds of more 
 or less skilled work. The company bank reports 30,000 
 active accounts. Besides paying interest at 5 per cent, 
 the company gets up a little sporting interest for their 
 depositors by giving them each a chance at a semiannual 
 lottery for considerable prizes. Some of the workers ought 
 to have a good deal of money to invest or gamble with 
 in this way. At the very large, clean, and comfortable 
 boarding-house for unfamilied workers, room and two 
 meals cost only 11.50 marks per day with the average 
 unskilled worker earning about fifty. Both these figures 
 represent an increase of about tenfold over pre-war. 
 Nothing but photographs would do justice to the thor- 
 oughly attractive cottages furnished workers worn out 
 in the Krupp service, each group in a colony by itself, 
 married, unmarried, widows, widowers, etc., etc. The hos- 
 pital also looks as clean and up-to-date as one could wish. 
 
 "I own this and these, my people. I will take care 
 of this and them," one of the family of owners is re- 
 ported to have said. 
 
 That is the only fault that could be found " paternal- 
 istic " " patriarchal," is the word used here. The Krupps 
 would doubtless admit it, without a murmur. They 
 have been making steel here since 1812, passing the whole 
 works down from father to son. To-day the head of it 
 all is the husband of the sole surviving daughter, and he 
 has taken the Krupp name Count Krupp von Bohlen. 
 The combined tradition of good wages, good care, and 
 absolutism make it difficult to put things on a some- 
 what more democratic basis, much as some of the officials 
 are now said to desire it. 
 
118 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 All the officials evidently take their jobs and their 
 different statuses and importances quite seriously. Our 
 guide never gave the slightest look at ordinary workers, 
 but demonstrated much elaborate hat-tipping and bow- 
 ing every time we came up to and departed from anybody 
 having the look of an over-foreman or department head. 
 On the whole, it looked much like a huge family affair, 
 and peaceful enough. It brought something of a shock to 
 see the boys mending a machine belt made up of little 
 bolts and tiny pieces of paper. 
 
 "Of course, we had no leather in those war days," the 
 boss explained. 
 
 "If I had known I was to meet an American," ex- 
 claimed a Saxon farmer who was visiting his first steel 
 plant, "I should have brought along some pictures of 
 the way these fiendish Poles are mutilating their German 
 and English captives, including officers. Barbarous, 
 they are, these Poles. They are not human, the way 
 they make war!" 
 
 Of course, the party had plenty to say about the French 
 and the ungodly severity of the peace terms imposed by 
 France and, so it appears to them, by France alone. All 
 approve completely of the view-point of a nationally 
 famous Professor Oncken of Heidelberg whose lectures 
 on "World History and the Versailles Treaty" I found 
 a few nights ago on a bookstore counter. He claims that 
 the treaty is the Great Betrayal of History that the 
 armies of Germany merely thought it better to quit be- 
 cause the enemy offered in the "Fourteen Points" the 
 attractive terms of "No annexation, no contributions, 
 and no penalties or indemnities." The German generals 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 119 
 
 having decided to sign up on this basis, they were sud- 
 denly given something entirely different, and by that 
 time it was too late f o get back their arms. 
 
 All that, of course, is on the basis of German armies 
 entirely undefeated, also, it would seem, of a civil rather 
 than military understanding of the famous points an 
 understanding upon which, surely, no German com- 
 mander could have based his decision to ask for a truce. 
 What the professor does not elucidate is the nature of 
 the precise terms discussed with Foch before the German 
 generals actually decided to lay down then* arms. 
 
 I confess I could get more out of such a soul-searing 
 acknowledgment not of defeat but of betrayal if there 
 weren't to be seen on the streets almost as many "Streng 
 Verboten" signs as before also almost as many hotels 
 and streets and things labelled " Kaiser," "Kaiserlich," 
 and "Hohenzollern." One railroad postal car yesterday 
 showed this last crossed off, making it "Reiches Post." 
 Unfortunate on the stranger, also, is the influence of the 
 popular style which makes nearly every man's head into 
 a close-clipped bullet-shaped cranium suggestive of so 
 much dreadfulness during the war. It has evidently 
 become universal since my days at Berlin University, 
 when we used to see dozens of students thus barbered 
 in order to show the scars they had won by their duelling. 
 My German chum there was very proud of himself after 
 his opponent and his doctor got through with him 
 even though his head was nothing but a ball of bandages 
 with a glass tube for a mouth. Through it he managed 
 to say: 
 
 "My friend, Fritz, he has fought already five 'Men- 
 
120 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 suren/ and had only twenty stitches. But I I have 
 fought this one time only and to-day the doctor gave 
 me forty-three!" 
 
 "All that man could do to prevent it I have done, but 
 my skin it is so healthy that all my wounds are healing 
 and will leave no scar. It is terrible!" he confided to 
 me sadly some weeks later. 
 
 With these bullet-heads go, generally, a very narrow- 
 brimmed straw hat, a white and very high stiff collar, 
 a cane, and, quite often, a frock coat altogether an 
 amazing amount of style, formality, and grandeur for a 
 people which feels as badly as the professor states and 
 my new acquaintances testify. Also for the fathers and 
 brothers of boys and girls who are still eating the bread 
 of charity. Everybody testifies that the Quakers have 
 done a wonderful work feeding hundreds of thousands 
 of children during the war. There seems to be plenty of 
 justification for continuing to give one square meal per 
 day to a comparatively small number now. This number 
 is more and more limited to those who are found by ex- 
 pert examiners to have suffered serious impairment or 
 stunting during the lean years of the blockade. 
 
 Among all the testimonies of hopelessness and bitter- 
 ness, and national blamelessness encountered in talking 
 with the owners of those close-cropped heads it was a 
 relief to come upon one man of rather distinguished posi- 
 tion this afternoon: 
 
 "No, it was not the result of the way our generals made 
 war. They merely did what they were told and they 
 tried to do it thoroughly. It was the fault of our states- 
 men. It was they with the help of the Kaiser who 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 121 
 
 brought it about that Germany came to have no friends 
 among the nations. 
 
 "Yes, if Upper Silesia were taken from us, we might 
 have a revolution and a Kaiser again. No, not the Kaiser. 
 He is too old. And not the Crown Prince. But perhaps 
 Eitel Fritz, for instance. He is popular. But he would 
 have to consent to be a constitutional monarch, as in 
 England." 
 
 It all seems a dreadful mess. The worst of it is that 
 each day brings a better understanding of how all these 
 nations here are not only mixed up with each other now 
 but have been so mixed up for centuries. So the mess is 
 not only a German mess. It is a European mess. What's 
 worse still, I see no possibility of our keeping very far 
 away from it, much as we should like to. And if we are 
 forced to get closer where its arms and tentacles can 
 so easily pull us still closer then there's evidently one 
 thing we've just got to do. We've got to try to under- 
 stand it better. 
 
 At this hour of the night, that makes me feel almost 
 as lacking in hope as are these Germans. But not so full 
 of hate, and for that, at least, I can thank God sincerely. 
 
 Essen, 
 
 Friday. 
 
 This region is certainly Germany's "Pittsburgh Dis- 
 trict." To travel through it is to pass one almost con- 
 tinuous line of tall, fighting-top stacks protruding from 
 great factories and steel-works. 
 
 Like so many others, the plant we visited in a near- 
 by town gets the coal for its coke ovens and blast-furnaces 
 
122 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 from seams directly beneath. It belongs to Thyssen, 
 before the war reputed the country's steel king next to 
 Krupp. The company is noted for its attention to the 
 well-being of its 50,000 or more workers, though it can 
 hardly be said to set any pace in that direction which 
 would particularly bother our most progressive American 
 employers except for its eight-hour shifts, with Sunday 
 off in all departments except the blast-furnaces. The 
 clubs or boarding-houses showed every degree of luxury 
 and the lack of it all at very reasonable prices, as also 
 the coffee, sandwiches, bottled waters, and beer sold to 
 the workers and their families. 
 
 " They're planning a strike. They see the cost of living 
 going always up, and they claim they must have more 
 wages." So the landlord explained as we came upon a 
 group of men in one of the best " bachelors' bunk-houses" 
 I've seen in a long time. 
 
 This particular district saw the worst of the outbreak 
 in March, 1920, which, begun by the reactionaries and 
 taken advantage of by the radicals, appears to have fright- 
 ened the republicans and the moderates considerably. 
 For two weeks the uproar continued, with a total of more 
 than 150 killed before the national troops got things set 
 right. Just now nobody appears to take the radicals 
 very seriously. 
 
 " Everybody's too tired to make an outcry," the 
 speaker was waiting outside a mine to try to get a job, 
 and a chance at the sixty to eighty marks they manage 
 to make. " After four years of fighting we have no energy 
 left. It makes us feel good to have a chance at enough 
 to eat especially now that 'worklessness' is spreading. 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 123 
 
 I come from over near Poland. There is no work there. 
 Here have I a friend my chum he was, in the navy dur- 
 ing the war. I hope he can help me stay here." 
 
 " As for me," explained one of the officers of a large fac- 
 tory, "I have had enough and more than enough of war. 
 If only the peoples themselves understood each other 
 better ! But how can they, as long as the newspapers talk 
 only of wars and hatreds and distrusts ? These it is these 
 false newspapers that are the murderers of the peoples 
 of the earth ! . . . In business we try only to find new 
 methods and new markets. One of our engineers goes 
 to your country only next Monday. In coal and ore 
 loading machinery you are already far ahead of us: he 
 goes to learn and perhaps to buy. That helps to under- 
 standing and good- will." 
 
 "We were forced into the war. We could not help 
 ourselves!" another official exclaimed with tears in his 
 voice. "And now we are ' occupied ' and compelled in 
 all ways to bow to the Supreme Council of the allies. 
 But that council will learn some day that there is a Being 
 in the heavens who is more supreme than they ! He will 
 redress Germany's wrongs ! And France how hateful ! 
 But France must learn that if you would milk a cow you 
 first must give her fodder!" 
 
 I wonder what emotional experience perhaps the 
 loss of a child during the blockade has given so pas- 
 sionate a tone to his thought and voice. At any rate, 
 he wanted badly to be friends to us: "I have a sister in 
 America. . . . Yes, she is in Sao Paulo, Brazil." 
 
 It is unpleasant to think that perhaps within a few 
 years some of the children of to-day will be hating most 
 
124 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 of the world outside of Germany because of their experi- 
 ence this afternoon. At Duisberg a great bridge spans 
 the Rhine and the various basins which make for thou- 
 sands of river and canal-boats what is said to be the 
 world's greatest inland harbor. Half-way over the bridge 
 are the sand-bag and barbed-wire pill-boxes of the Belgian 
 soldiers representing the allies. These guards have to 
 enforce a rule forbidding more than two persons under 
 certain conditions and more than ten under others to pass. 
 As we came by, a crowd of little boys and girls under the 
 leadership of a few young teachers were zigzagging back 
 and forth across the roadway in the utmost fear and con- 
 fusion, their frightened and uncomprehending faces turned 
 toward the soldiers, precisely like a lot of bewildered 
 sheep. And all the guards could do was to utter guttural 
 sounds which nobody understood though I think they 
 were intended to be German. Finally, the dismayed 
 teachers and panicky youngsters turned back probably 
 to remember their fright for a long, long time. 
 
 Other children are said to have similar cause to re- 
 member this carrying of the war of peace, as it were, 
 into their own town: they were kept out of their classes 
 for some time because it was necessary at first to quarter 
 the soldiers hi the schoolhouses. Bad feeling is also re- 
 ported from crowding several thousand soldiers into the 
 homes in small towns whose workers have to be away 
 on their jobs elsewhere throughout the week. Of course, 
 that is much the same thing that occurred hi so many 
 French homes with the soldiers coming there sometimes 
 as deadly enemies, other tunes as allies. 
 
 In the restaurants the waiters seem to have suffered 
 
KRUPPS AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 125 
 
 a relapse from the great day when, after "the Revolu- 
 lution," they voted to abolish the undemocratic insti- 
 tution of tips. It doesn't seem to have "stuck." It is 
 probably lucky that it occurred to me suddenly this eve- 
 ning that neither they nor the near-by owners of some of 
 these close-cropped heads were enjoying my writing on 
 picture post-cards showing the ruins of Louvain ! 
 
 Essen, 
 August 20. 
 
 'Amerikaner? Ach, I was German prisoner with the 
 American army. And when I came back, my friends 
 they hardly knew me so fat I was. They're splendid, 
 those boys! I ate better there as prisoner than in our 
 army, and, yes, better than I can eat now. You see, we 
 get here only thirty-three marks a day." I 
 
 He was a post-office employee of about twenty-three. 
 His case is said to be much that of all groups in the public 
 service. With the present exchange value of the mark 
 at a little over a cent eighty-five marks to the dollar 
 thirty-three marks hardly pays for a modest supper. 
 That suits the American visitor but makes serious busi- 
 ness for a local bread-winner. 
 
 "A 'Beamier' himself couldn't have done it better." 
 The expression represents the skill and the conscience 
 generally exercised by the "pre-revolutionary" federal 
 official in these same services. Now these men are down 
 at the heel. With the teachers and the doctors they have 
 seen the cost of living go up a thousand per cent, and 
 the number of marks coming into their hands increased 
 only four or five fold. The ex-army and navy officers 
 
126 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 are even worse off. Many of these, trained from youth 
 to be nothing else, are now apprentices learning trades 
 at almost nothing a week! And all of these " middle 
 classers" see themselves much worse off than the laborers 
 who here, as elsewhere, have utilized their organization 
 to keep up fairly close with the increased "h. c. 1." For 
 them all, too, the value of government pensions, never 
 as great as has been advertised in America, has vanished 
 into practical nothingness with the mark's fall. 
 
 As to the cause of it all, a local coal executive and 
 former army officer has been willing to express freely a 
 very thoughtful mind : 
 
 "You see, we, like every other country here in Eu- 
 rope, live in a very crowded room so crowded that if 
 one country puts its fork to its mouth, it is likely to put 
 its elbow in some other nation's eye. Now in that room 
 Germany has found only enemies. We could not move 
 except to fight. Always we were forced to fight. . . . 
 
 "But as early as 1917, all the German officers knew the 
 war was lost. With America in the war, our potential 
 air-craft material, for instance, compared to the allies' 
 as one to 1,000. Your Mr. Ford was making more engines 
 in a day than we in three months. 
 
 "Our Kaiser ran away he can never come back. 
 Even when he was here he was always interfering with 
 his ministers, and losing friends for us. The Crown Prince 
 is not respected by his officers: he had too many women 
 friends with him at Verdun." 
 
 I asked if he didn't think something like the League 
 of Nations might have obviated war if it had been in oper- 
 ation in, say, 1905, and had tried to arrange more elbow- 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 127 
 
 room for Germany by, for instance, making the Rhine 
 an international river through Holland. His answer was 
 not reassuring: 
 
 " Perhaps. But what about Alsace-Lorraine the 
 country, you understand, that Louis Fourteenth took 
 away from us, back in the seventeenth century? Of 
 course, some day we'll have our property back again. 
 To-day it has happened just as a French officer whom I 
 helped to capture said it would: 'You Germans will win 
 the war, but we will win the peace/ But France will 
 not long win the peace. France is done. She cannot 
 lose nearly 2,000,000 men and still be the power she has 
 dreamed of being. Yet she is strong enough to make 
 England now full of fear. Where England used to fear 
 us, she now fears France." 
 
 A moment later it took an effort to keep my face 
 straight in spite of the seriousness, indeed of the tremolo 
 of his voice as he exclaimed: 
 
 "Do you know why we Germans lost the war? I will 
 tell you. It is because we have never learned hate ! . . . 
 But now we begin. We hate France!" 
 
 "And for hoping," he added a little later; "for hoping 
 we are now too tired after our long effort. . . . No, 
 none of those plans will work. The world is bad. War 
 we must always have." 
 
 It is evidently the allies' need of coal and the treaty 
 arrangements for getting it here as part of the repara- 
 tions, that helps keep this district so busy. Every ten 
 minutes a train of fifty ten-ton cars leaves for allied fac- 
 tories mostly in France. At the same time, the German 
 herring boats up on the north coast are said to be tied 
 
128 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 up because the supply of coal left behind is too expensive. 
 The local representatives of the Interallied Reparations 
 Commission are doubtless helped by the fact that for a 
 long tune the coal industry of this and other areas has 
 been organized upon the basis of a kind of local and na- 
 tional trust. The purchase of supplies, the sale of product, 
 and the operation of the shafts are handled by a Syndikat 
 or federation which represents all the district's private 
 properties and functions in close touch with the state- 
 owned mines. These local committees have represen- 
 tation upon a national coal organization. That, in turn, 
 has its representatives upon a federal committee repre- 
 senting every field of the entire business of the nation. 
 Evidently that group has secured a better arrangement 
 with the railroads than we have hi America. Last eve- 
 ning the big station here showed the regular daily bulletin 
 giving the district's car situation for the day: "21,172 
 ordered (by the coal companies); 20,270 placed; 902 
 lacking; 19,558 taken away." This statement is tele- 
 graphed throughout the country so that to-morrow morn- 
 ing anybody can judge the railroad's efficiency and the 
 relation between demand and active, moving supply for 
 the entire country. 
 
 Local representatives of the allies also have to attend 
 to the destruction of war material at Krupp's. Accord- 
 ing to report, the plant managers used to write to gov- 
 ernment offices in Berlin for instructions before complying 
 with orders. Generally that meant months and months 
 of delay. Now a lot of contraband munitions is simply 
 put onto the tables and there broken up at once. Natu- 
 rally enough, these inspectors are not popular some of 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 129 
 
 them feel that their very lives have been in danger. 
 Nevertheless, the people on the street seem rather glad 
 for a chance to talk with an " Auslander." 
 
 "To America perhaps my son will go later," said a 
 white-haired gentleman this afternoon when asked about 
 a street and told of my nationality. "Now he comes 
 shortly from Spain to see if perhaps a better opening is 
 here. ... If only we could go ahead with our trade 
 we would still be happy in spite of the occupation. But 
 the sanctions the treaty's sanctions ! It is by these that 
 the hateful French arrange to interfere with our shipment 
 of goods, and so to stifle us. Without these we might 
 forget the war even though it was forced onto us by the 
 enemies of the man who was a veritable Prince of Peace, 
 our Kaiser." 
 
 The newspapers are probably somewhat to blame for 
 this willingness to talk with any one who looks a bit for- 
 eign. English and other outside journals are practically 
 unprocurable and both the local and the metropolitan 
 dailies give very little space to international news partly 
 because, of course, Germany has lost her cables. But 
 much of the space given is likely to be used by the editor 
 to set forth the hatefulness of the French, British, 
 or American motives behind the action or event de- 
 scribed. 
 
 "This persecuted feeling of Germany is one of the 
 greatest obstacles we have to fight," a worker connected 
 with an international relief organization explained. "It 
 is only with the greatest delicacy that we can set forth 
 the limits of our efforts here by calling attention to the 
 necessity for food in Russia, Armenia, and elsewhere. 
 
130 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 This sense of her own misery undoubtedly lessens what 
 this country might otherwise do for herself." 
 
 "Haben Sie gequaked?" is said to be the present form 
 of asking, "Have you breakfasted?" For a long tune 
 the only young people who enjoyed this luxury were those 
 that took them out of the bowls the "Quaker-kessel," 
 as they now are called used at the children's feeding 
 stations. "I am Quaker" now means not a new con- 
 version away from old faiths, but the lucky condition 
 of having an occasional full meal, thanks to Quaker kind- 
 ness. 
 
 "A great many observers come for a few days and 
 then go away to report that all the children here look 
 fat and healthy. But unprejudiced physicians find that 
 these children are nevertheless anywhere from one to 
 three years undersized." 
 
 So far, very little drunkenness has been evident, even 
 though the wine-rooms are always crowded. Even beer 
 is reported too expensive, following its increase of price 
 by twenty or thirty fold over pre-war. Some say that 
 the dreadful concoction served for beer during the con- 
 flict when grain was too precious to permit the real 
 thing was a real cause of the revolution at home which, 
 in turn, was a cause of the defeat at the front. To-day 
 a Munich brewer advertises the full pre-war 12 per cent 
 stuff. So at least one thing has come back to normalcy. 
 
 Last night in one of the rougher parts of the city, a 
 big crowd watched a policeman handle a few mildly in- 
 toxicated men. The arm of the law seemed to figure 
 that the old-time strong-arm measures would be resented, 
 so he considerately begged the offenders to go home. 
 
WORKERS INSPECTING CHEAP SUITINGS OUTSIDE ONE OF THE 
 
 SCORES OF GATES LEADING INTO THE HUGE KRUPP 
 
 ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 A GROUP OF WAR ORPHANS "AT" ELBERFELV ' 
 "Haben Sie ge-quaked?" is now good German for "Have you breakfasted?' 
 
KRUPP'S AND THE CANNON CAPITAL 131 
 
 Finally one of them started to run. In a flash, the police- 
 man's dog was after him, and a moment later in front 
 and under him, tripping and sending him sprawling with 
 the deftness of an artist. 
 
 Essen is evidently enough the capital of Germany's 
 war industry, and so, perhaps, unrepresentative of her 
 post-war public opinion. Elberfeld may be much farther 
 away psychologically than the few miles of geography. 
 I hope to find it so to-night and to-morrow. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE WORKERS IN GERMANY'S "PITTSBURGH DISTRICT" 
 
 Elberfeld, Ruhr, 
 Sunday, August 21. 
 
 THE local rapid-transit which hangs from one over- 
 head rail just above the bed of a very serpentine little 
 stream and at the height of factory and family window, 
 furnishes a most delightful way of studying this busy 
 valley city and its Sunday crowds at the zoological gar- 
 den at one end of the line, and its "fans" at the football 
 field close to the other terminal in Barmen. 
 
 Evidently this latter sport is furnishing to millions in 
 this country an outlet for the physical energy formerly 
 taken by the army. Undoubtedly it is to be recommended 
 in preference to the goose-step. The great crowd had 
 almost as much appreciation of the fine points of the 
 game played "soccer" style as hi England. 
 
 In the zoological garden an impressive array of men 
 plainly dressed but with silk hats and canes included 
 several musicians wearing opera hats. Such display 
 probably says more about one's social position at home 
 or office, and less about one's financial prosperity than 
 an American is apt to think. Besides, the male here is 
 still the kaiser of his family. The maintenance of this 
 position requires that he shall make sure of his plumage 
 and decoration. In line with all this outstanding em- 
 phasis upon position, one of the animal cages this after- 
 
 132 
 
GERMANY'S "PITTSBURGH DISTRICT " 133 
 
 noon bore the sign as though the garden and the city 
 had been honored more by the rank than by the char- 
 acter of the donors: 
 
 Presented 
 
 by 
 
 GEH. REGIERUNGSRAT 
 (Honorary Privy Councillor) 
 
 Dr. M und Frau. 
 
 
 
 But we all come by something of the same tendency 
 at an early age. 
 
 "My dear mister, won't you please take me by my- 
 self?" called out a number of war orphans the moment 
 my camera was pointed at then* group. 
 
 Perhaps some of them are mourning a father who is 
 not dead but who languishes in a Russian prison. This 
 afternoon, headed by a very noisy band, a procession 
 passed up the street bearing banners with the legend: 
 
 "Do you know that 10,000 of our brothers are still 
 prisoners in Russia? Make the government get them 
 back!" 
 
 The swaying car on its monorail shows the district to 
 be given mainly to textiles and color materials and other 
 fine chemicals. Outside of a few large plants, the fac- 
 tories are small, perhaps because there is hardly more 
 room for them than for the railway itself it was hung 
 over the river because there was no other space. The 
 place recalls Liege, perhaps because there, too, the hills 
 are close upon a highly industrial city. The stores here 
 show few, if any, of American or non-German typewriters, 
 
134 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 cash-registers, and machinery, while Lie*ge war full of 
 products of our factories. 
 
 Another difference between this country and Belgium 
 and France is the comparative absence of black crape 
 outside the newspapers which abound with such heavily 
 bordered notices as " Yesterday afternoon suddenly de- 
 parted my dear husband, our good father, stepfather, 
 
 and grandfather, Herr Professor K , Doctor of 
 
 Philosophy and of Engineering, etc. . . ." Religion 
 probably has most to do with this. Perhaps also the 
 government frowned upon crape during the war as hurt- 
 ful to morale. Nevertheless, the picture which will prob- 
 ably stay longest in my mind is that of a German mother 
 in heavy mourning with a high-spirited young lad in 
 my compartment last Monday. As he sat opposite her 
 in the train, he seemed to talk and perform with but one 
 object hi view to make her smile from behind her thick 
 black veil. Once he almost succeeded, but once only. 
 She seemed to be a picture of Germany yes, of all Eu- 
 rope and all the war-torn generation over here. The 
 boy was not born too late to feel the miseries of the war 
 but too late fully to recognize their source. 
 
 Will the new generation over here be able to make the 
 old one smile again smile again and also forget before 
 it passes on? 
 
 "All like that they are these children that were born 
 during the dreadful no-potato year," so the whisper went 
 around among the workers on the train last night as a 
 mother with a sickly four -year -old child that looked 
 only two got out. "Doubtless his mother could give 
 him DO milk and the cows, too, were starved by the block- 
 ade." 
 
GERMANY'S "PITTSBURGH DISTRICT" 135 
 
 "At first when my man's salary as a railway official 
 failed to go up with the cost of living, we cut off our little 
 luxuries, you understand?" explained a woman whose 
 face showed refinement though her clothes were those 
 of near-poverty. "But now since long time we have 
 been cutting off the necessities. And now the cost of liv- 
 ing goes up, our salary stands still, and our marks go 
 always down. What next we can do, I know not," and 
 she wiped away the tears. 
 
 "We all know what you mean, madam," a little man, 
 evidently of the teacher sort made himself spokesman of 
 the group's sympathy, "and we think we know also the 
 cause. These war profiteers, they know it, too. Right 
 in our town I know a man who used to be like the rest 
 of us and now he has his millions. How can that be?" 
 
 "Yes, how?" chorussed all the others. 
 
 "They try to tell us that the cost of living has increased 
 only tenfold," the teacher went on. "That isn't true. 
 Twenty-fold is nearer it. But after all, my friends, it is 
 France that we should hate. And not because she de- 
 feated us, either. Defeated we were, yes, but by America 
 and England, not France. If we could have a king such 
 as England has, then we should be better off. Why should 
 we take off our hats to our president? Isn't he an ordi- 
 nary fellow like the rest of us? We might still have the 
 Kaiser if he hadn't been so everlastingly strong with 
 that eternal 'I* of his. It all started when he first sent 
 Bismarck away. We'll have no more of him, that's sure. 
 . . . Yes, it's true that we were not invaded. Perhaps 
 we know nothing of war in spite of the great hunger of 
 that awful blockade. But you must remember Napoleon 
 and Louis Fourteenth always invading us they were." 
 
136 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 On all sides the most outstanding impression is one 
 of unstable government, possible revolution everywhere 
 uncertainty about the future. It is the state of mind 
 which we would doubtless know ourselves if we had to 
 face the possibility of, say, a serious and wide-spread 
 revolution after seeing some of our old certainties 
 smashed : 
 
 " When the revolution broke out in Russia we all smiled 
 to ourselves and said: 'No, that is impossible with us 
 us orderly Germans. Never will it reach here.' And 
 then a year later the same thing was with us. Unbe- 
 lievable! And the radicals and the reactionaries have 
 been much harder to put down than the papers say. Who 
 knows they are down yet that the new government can 
 control them ? And the cost of living and the mark that 
 loses its value at a word from the great bankers what 
 are we coming to?" 
 
 With the republican government in power there ap- 
 pears to be little if any of the long-hour working-day so 
 widely mentioned in France. Perhaps a few try to work 
 two eight-hour turns, but not many. Here as in France 
 and Belgium the unions are divided against themselves 
 on lines of both religion and politics. Among the dis- 
 trict's 530,000 miners (of a total in the country of about 
 1,300,000) are a dozen and more different divisions cer- 
 tainly enough to try any labor manager. All things con- 
 sidered, including the installation of a seven-hour day in 
 the mines, the production is considered very good even 
 with the leader of one of the largest unions off at Berlin 
 in conference about a wage increase. In any and all 
 events, this Ruhr is one of the world's prize industrial 
 
GERMANY'S "PITTSBURGH DISTRICT" 137 
 
 areas. Besides having coal under the factory, the world's 
 most tamed and industrialized river runs past the front 
 gate. No wonder Essen, Diisseldorf, Crefeld, Solingen, 
 and others are names that stand for far-flung lines hi 
 the field of the world's commerce. Its great lack appears 
 to be the "white coal" of convenient water-power. Not 
 very far away, for instance, the locks of the canal that 
 goes toward Hamburg are operated by screws instead of 
 water, because the canal lacks the needed flow. 
 
 What is most puzzling is how in such limited geography 
 with Germany, France, and Belgium together hardly 
 more than half again as big as Texas ! there can be so 
 huge a volume of psychology! Most of the men here 
 are husky and many are huge as compared with the 
 French. This is perhaps to be charged partly to Napo- 
 leon and the death-rate of his victorious ( ! ) warriors 
 besides the difference of early habitat in the north for 
 the Germans and in the south for the French. Possibly 
 the difficulty that we Americans have in understanding 
 Europe and her troubles is that it is practically impossible 
 for us to conceive either the number or the wide varia- 
 tions of view-points and aspirations which climate, geog- 
 raphy, and history have thus contrived to give the dif- 
 ferent peoples here besides pushing them all together 
 onto each other's toes and up against each other's elbows. 
 Yet every time I cross a frontier, I get the feeling that 
 these groups have not had anything like a genuinely 
 close contact with each other over any great length of 
 time. The development of a commerce which really 
 brings them together has been of comparatively recent 
 date. Furthermore, the difference of language serves 
 
138 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 not only to hold apart the foreign-born laborers hi France, 
 for instance, from the native population, but also to re- 
 strict the commercial relationships to the comparatively 
 small number who can get either the time or the money 
 to develop the desired facility of expression. It is, of 
 course, the pockets into which these hills and rivers have 
 divided the continent that have served for so many cen- 
 turies to maintain these differences in language. Per- 
 haps the recent and present amazing increase hi com- 
 munications of all sorts will lessen the effectiveness of 
 these national limits and boundaries, and so gradually 
 wear down and overcome the psychological pockets which 
 they have caused. In that case, the change into inter- 
 nationalism or into, say, a more friendly form of federated 
 nationalism, may come much more quickly than we ex- 
 pect, because these communications are now increasing 
 with the speed of geometrical rather than arithmetical 
 ratio. That speed, over here, however, encounters an 
 enormous check at every one of these boundaries. A 
 few days ago I wired Paris regarding mail and blithely 
 looked for an answer that afternoon. Later they said that 
 nothing could be expected within twenty-four hours, and 
 yet Paris fe only a few hours away according to geog- 
 raphy. I find to my amazement that my third-class fare 
 from there to here is less than six dollars! No wonder 
 the railways are losing money even though they have 
 not yet come back to anything like pre-war speeds and 
 schedules. 
 
 One thing is sure. Germany is adding to the r *tural 
 difficulties of these boundaries an additional wall of men- 
 tal and emotional offishness. All during the years of the 
 
GERMANY'S "PITTSBURGH DISTRICT" 139 
 
 war she was, naturally, cut off from any news about the 
 rest of us. If the war was for France the " Great Mix- 
 uption," it was for Germany the " Great Isolation." 
 Now, much as in the case of France, her feeling of self- 
 pity makes her believe that nobody else's troubles are 
 worth talking about. So the whole people seems to have 
 very much the same attitude of distrust and presumption 
 that led to her pre-war policy of friendship by compul- 
 sion, not by good-will. Few appear as yet to believe that 
 perhaps the best way to get elbow space in the crowded 
 room of enemies might be to try to turn these enemies 
 into friends. In spite of her delight in "Welt-Politik," 
 the country still appears to use logic rather than informa- 
 tion and sympathy in coming at a practical knowledge 
 of other peoples. 
 
 Unfortunately also quite naturally "the hurt that 
 honor feels " prevents such a plan of friend-making from 
 occurring at once to the child who has just been made 
 to go over and stand in the corner of that same crowded 
 room. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 "HAIL COLUMBIA UEBER ALLES!" 
 
 Coblenz, 
 
 Tuesday morning, 
 August 23. 
 
 THIS place is almost like a return ticket to the States. 
 Our dough-boys in their neat khaki uniforms are to be 
 seen on every side especially, it must be said, on the 
 sunny side of every attractive native Fraulein. Evidently 
 there will be many German wives going to America be- 
 fore long. 
 
 "My father, you see, was a Dane," so one of the boys 
 told about the complexity of being an American over 
 here or elsewhere, "from somewhere up in the Holstein 
 part that Germany grabbed a long time ago. My mother 
 was a Swede. We all went out to America in 1910. I 
 can't get into the big war while it's on, you see, because 
 I've only got my first papers. But as soon as they open 
 up enlistments, I come over here for my two years. Be- 
 lieve me, I'm going to take a fine girl home with me 
 back to Iowa where there's the best land in the world 
 and where I'm going to run it and run it right. . . . Yes, 
 I had a nice girl back home, but a few months ago what 
 does she do but turn up over here, and she not writin' 
 to me once! 'What you doin' here?' she says. 'Well/ 
 I says, 'you see I'm here, don't you?' I says. 'I'm mar- 
 ried now,' she comes at me. 'Yes, and I wish you luck/ 
 
 140 
 
"HAIL COLUMBIA UEBER ALLES!" 141 
 
 I says . . . and I turned away. That's the kind she 
 is. ... But I got a better one, anyway, I'll say." 
 
 German-American treaties are evidently being written 
 all over the place. 
 
 "Why, these girls over here," so a lieutenant later 
 registered his international experience and judgment; 
 "they stake you to a meal when you want it. Back hi 
 the States I had a girl and I spent a lot of money on 
 her, too, y'understand ? and one time she wants me 
 to take her to the theatre and everything, and I tell her 
 I got no money. Just that night, that was, see? be- 
 cause I had $800 in the bank all the time, but I was gettin' 
 a little tired of always puttin' up. So I says, Til be glad 
 to go as your guest,' and what do you think she tells me? 
 No. She ain't got no money! And all the time she 
 was gettin' $175 a month on her job! So I says, 'Oh, 
 that's it, is it?' I says. 'After all I've spent on you for 
 two years and you hain't no money! All right,' I 
 says, Tm done. I'm done!' I says. And I've never 
 seen her since and never mean to. I talk a little Ger- 
 man and I'm goin' to stay here with the one I've picked 
 out. Buyin' and sellin' things on the side that's my 
 line what they call here Schuebra that's German, y'un- 
 derstand, for war profiteer. . . . How do I pick up things 
 to sell to Americans? Well, now, that's what I ain't 
 tellin'. But, believe me, I'm goin' to have $30,000 in 
 my pocket if I can keep at it a little longer. Then you'll 
 see my smoke, I'm tellin' you!" 
 
 It has been surprising to hear that Americans get along 
 with the natives here better than with the French or 
 even the British soldiers of whom a few occasionally come 
 
142 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 along on visits from Cologne. The explanation is doubt- 
 less that the French and British do not feel that they 
 need to give way to the Yankees, seeing that they have 
 all been allies on the front line. The Germans are in 
 no position to make an argument; they must yield. Kegs 
 or barrels get along with the rope cushions used for un- 
 loading them better than with the pavement. The cush- 
 ions give under pressure; the pavement doesn't. 
 
 At the office of the Interallied High Commission, an 
 American official tells of the street-car men's requesting 
 an Arbitration Board for wage and similar problems. 
 The average worker earns only forty marks after some 
 years of service. Though these buy much more here 
 than does forty-five cents at home, nevertheless they 
 hardly make one happy anywhere especially after stand- 
 ing a tax of 10 per cent and other deductions for accident 
 insurance, old age pensions, etc. 
 
 "I can see no reason," the official continued, "why 
 the Germans should not let the mark go down indefinitely. 
 Somehow or other they manage to exist with it. Besides, 
 they can sell more goods in foreign markets with a cheap 
 mark than with a dearer one. About a year ago they 
 decided to put their money back to something like its 
 proper value. They did not raise it much, but enough 
 to bring in from all over the world sheaves of cancella- 
 tions which proceeded to close up the country's factories. 
 Now nobody seems to know what to do. If they close 
 many factories and produce wide-spread unemployment, 
 they may have a revolution. It's a hard proposition." 
 
 In one of the country's most important commercial 
 papers, 963 is given as in the index figure for the cost of 
 
"HAIL COLUMBIA UEBER ALLES!" 143 
 
 living in July as compared with pre-war making it the 
 dearest month of any with the possible exception of Jan- 
 uary, 1921. 
 
 "It is inconceivable," one of its editorials argues, "that 
 any state should be willing thus by conscious inflation to 
 plan purposely to make itself and its entire people poorer. 
 To all who think, furthermore, it is evident that what- 
 ever value such depreciation might have is lessened by 
 the fact that this policy like morphine demands con- 
 stantly a larger dose in order to secure the same result." 
 
 It is plain enough that Germany is a long way from 
 the prosperous and healthy country she has been reported. 
 An industrial activity so manifestly built upon financial 
 and economic poverty is hardly to be feared as perma- 
 nently as many at home appear to assume. What the 
 answer is, economically or politically, nobody appears to 
 know. 
 
 Considering that my clothes give the idea of a good 
 deal of a tramp, one of the important American officers 
 here has been extremely considerate in opening his mind: 
 
 "Yes, I'm a soldier but I preach peace all the time 
 because I know war too well. But I'll admit such preach- 
 ing is hard here in a country where a lot of fighting has 
 been done over a long, long time. For instance, the 
 French troops have their headquarters up at Treves, not 
 far from here. Well, the Romans had their headquarters 
 at exactly the same place when they came in centuries 
 ago. Long after that somewhere around 843 a treaty 
 that held for a long time was signed over at Verdun, not 
 far away. So it goes with old Father Tune skipping 
 across the centuries from one high spot of a war to another, 
 
144 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 back and forth all over this whole territory. . . . 
 Whether France with her low birth-rate, in addition to 
 her 20,000,000 less population than the Germans, can 
 brace up permanently enough to keep Germany off her 
 back that's a question. You see, they all live so close 
 to each other over here. People don't have any trouble 
 if they can somehow contrive to get along without any 
 dealings with each other. It's when they have to have 
 relations whether they want to or not that the situa- 
 tion becomes dangerous. 
 
 "Of course, the German generals did not need to lay 
 down their arms if they did not like the terms submitted 
 to them by General Foch there in the private car that 
 morning hi the woods up near the front," he went on 
 when I asked his idea about "the Great Betrayal." "The 
 Fourteen Points may have figured with the German popu- 
 lation, but the agreement there in the car was a military, 
 not a civil, affair. And the German army still had their 
 weapons that morning, too. 
 
 "Many Americans have wondered why General Foch 
 did not pursue the enemy to Berlin. To that the old 
 warrior answers, 'I should have done so if the Germans 
 had refused certain of the conditions laid down there 
 in the car. To have gone farther would have cost thou- 
 sands of lives: it would have been justified only if the 
 enemy could be made to sign in Berlin terms they would 
 not sign in France. The trouble was, accordingly, that 
 then- generals signed and signed without delay con- 
 ditions for a truce which included every single require- 
 ment I could possibly think of there or later in Berlin !' 
 
 "Nevertheless, I personally think the Grand Marshal 
 
"HAIL COLUMBIA UEBER ALLES!" 145 
 
 made perhaps one single mistake. He allowed the Ger- 
 man army to retain its arms. I have noticed that when- 
 ever soldiers go back home carrying their guns, the home- 
 town girls insist upon hanging garlands on them if for 
 nothing else than to lessen the sting of defeat. Before 
 long the garlanded heroes get to thinking that they won 
 the battle after all." 
 
 Yesterday morning the crowds of Germans in the train 
 up north made surprisingly little comment upon the in- 
 conveniences of stopping when we entered the occupied 
 area at Duisberg. The British Tommies, also, used the 
 best of tact in handling the situation. Of them there 
 and at Cologne, as of the Americans here and the Belgians 
 farther north, there appears to be surprisingly little com- 
 plaint. Here, apparently, what worries the merchants 
 and business men most is neither the presence of our 
 soldiers nor the lessening of business through their later 
 possible withdrawal, but the lack of water in the Rhine ! 
 Its present level is lower than for many years with very 
 unhappy results on the traffic upon which the district 
 largely depends. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 "MORT POUR LA FRANCE" FRENCH UNKNOWNS 
 
 Longwy, France, 
 Tuesday night, 
 August 23. 
 
 THE day has furnished a kind of railway lesson in this 
 part of the world's past and present history. The trip 
 here from Coblenz "over" Treves and Thionville in 
 German, it is Diederhofen ! ought to be a simple matter 
 of a few hours, so far as distance is concerned. Every 
 phase of its actuality, however, makes it a journey into 
 a far country. Last night an intelligent-looking woman 
 at the Coblenz railway window put there evidently 
 for helping American soldiers gave an entirely wrong 
 "steer" about the trip, just as if it had been into a far- 
 off land. The German time-tables, likewise, come to an 
 abrupt stop at the last German town, furnishing no idea 
 whatever as to what happens after that. When we 
 reached it, we had to get out and be examined to see 
 whether we should pay export duty upon our baggage 
 also whether our passports showed we had a right to leave 
 the country. Ten minutes later we had to dismount at 
 the first station in Alsace-Lorraine to see what import 
 duties we should pay for entering France. Also whether 
 our passports gave us a right to come in. At the start 
 my fellow travellers were German: 
 
 "Some time we will even up with the French for all 
 the dreadful things they do to us now. By us now there 
 
 146 
 
"MORT POUR LA FRANCE" 147 
 
 are many French who do business in our country, but 
 never would a German think of doing business in France. 
 Never ! ( ? ) Why should they fear us so ? We have no 
 weapons, no money, no power no anything. All is gone. 
 . . . And life is so costly ! The railway rates, they are 
 colossal, also and our railways they cost the govern- 
 ment a loss of, this year, fully 10,000,000,000 of marks ! 
 That is because so much material is stolen no, not by 
 the French, by the railroad workers themselves. Quite 
 true that they are not paid well, still they should not 
 steal. Besides, there are too many of them. The govern- 
 ment has at least two for every one job, is it not so?" 
 
 Those who took their places at Treves spoke French 
 a little better than German: 
 
 "All of us are loyal French here in Lorraine except 
 those who live near the German border. Down in Alsace 
 well, that's different. They speak mostly German and 
 don't like the French so well." 
 
 A little later, the station at Thionville gave the French 
 "feel" again French money, French newspapers, French 
 novels, and better-dressed women in the restaurants 
 and smaller French men. 
 
 Here this evening in the beginnings of the Ardennes 
 district, this iron town is hardly an attractive place. The 
 landlady of the inn does not appear to like my looks. 
 She asks repeatedly whether, like most of her patrons, 
 I am here for to-morrow's market in the main square. 
 I can't see that I appear much dirtier than either her 
 husband, the market farmers, or the local workers. The 
 blast-furnaces on all sides seem to employ laborers from 
 Italy, Spam, and various other countries. At the post- 
 
148 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 office door, a woman asked if I wasn't looking for a work- 
 man's room and board. She was evidently as sorry to 
 hear as I was to tell her that I could not stay long enough 
 to get a job. Just now the bugles from the barracks have 
 been giving what appears the characteristic sound of 
 France, indeed, the characteristic sound, I fancy, of all 
 Europe. At the table my French companions gave the 
 reason for the sound in the sincerity of their fear and 
 hopelessness : 
 
 " France? alas, but our beloved France is finished! 
 She can never return. War ! We must somehow get rid of 
 it. Otherwise the world, too, is finished. . . . The League 
 of Nations how can it be anything with no army to com- 
 pel order also with the United States outside of it ? ... 
 Somebody must be profiting from the low value of the 
 franc and the mark. Certainly, too, the people do not 
 want this bothersome thing they call exchange. Why 
 do we tolerate it if not to please the money captains? 
 The government, they are blockheads. Besides not know- 
 ing, they also care not. . . . Now, if we could use French 
 coke, our situation here would be better. But we must 
 buy it from the dreadful Germans perhaps, though, that 
 helps us sell them our ore and our iron. . . . Why did 
 they attack us ? Wliat had we done ? Why does America 
 not help Europe?" 
 
 Perhaps to-morrow will make the answer look easier, 
 though I doubt it. 
 
 Verdun, 
 
 Wednesday, August 24. 
 
 It is amazing how hard it is to get away from the psy- 
 chology of war in the midst of the practical common- 
 places of peaceful industry. 
 
"MORT POUR LA FRANCE " 149 
 
 To-night, to be sure/ I am almost camping in the 
 tumbled-down ruins of Verdun there is little to speak 
 of in the way of the reconstitution here. Electric lights 
 serve in the little bedrooms, but they have not yet been 
 put into the streets where, on all sides, the open fronts 
 of some houses and the ruins of others stand like ghosts 
 in the darkness. 
 
 But most of the day has been spent among the blast- 
 furnaces, and near the iron-mines for which the Longwy 
 district is famous. This morning at one of the larger 
 plants to which an Italian worker directed me, the door- 
 keeper needed no priming to talk about the subject most 
 in his mind, and everybody else's: 
 
 "It was not so bad here as in Belgium me, I am Bel- 
 gian, you understand. There they killed nearly 300 citi- 
 zens in one small village one I used to know well. If 
 any one, young or old, failed to answer any question 
 quickly zut! with the revolver, like that dead! A 
 woman here a very fine woman has told me. Before 
 her eyes her son was picked up yes, like this by the 
 head, you understand? given a shake and then thrown 
 down while she looked on dead ! They are not human, I 
 assure you ! . . . And here here we starved for four 
 years. Four kilogrammes, that's perhaps a few pounds, 
 is it not ? Yes, four kilos of potatoes, only, for a year ! 
 The pears and apples in our gardens nothing for us to 
 touch, I assure you all for our captors. And if we went 
 out and brought back perhaps a pound of potatoes, the 
 soldiers took them away. Always hungry always hun- 
 gry and yet we had to work every day. 
 
 "In October, 1918, they started away but always in 
 their places came others. So we knew nothing. When 
 
150 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 finally at four one day the last was gone, we expected 
 their friends. But at eight, the first Americans ! They 
 come and they tell us what has happened ! Oh, but how 
 they are fine, those Americans ! We find beds for them. 
 Yes, my wife and children, we sleep on the floor so 
 gladly! Ah, but brave lads they are! And when they 
 go, these Americans, they pay us one hundred francs. 
 Imagine it ! We were rich ! and, besides, they leave us 
 bread and chocolate. Yes, also some jam. Ah, but we 
 shall never forget them!" 
 
 The company official spoke almost with tears of the 
 new machines which had arrived just before hostilities, 
 and which were smashed to smithereens in their boxes. 
 All kinds of new installations had been put into operation 
 only one month before the war, but were completely 
 ruined before the invaders left. 
 
 "WThile we were rebuilding we employed Chinese, Rus- 
 sians, and Spaniards, as well as Moroccans and Algerians. 
 Now we have about as many Italians as French and about 
 half as many Belgians. While here, the invaders de- 
 stroyed the upper town. Perhaps when they left they 
 were fearful that some day they might have to pay. At 
 any rate, they left the lower town in order but none of 
 the plants." 
 
 In a near-by blast-furnace it was surprising to come 
 upon great train-loads of coke, every car of which was 
 marked, " Direct from Essen." 
 
 "Five-a year in Buenos Aires build-a beeg street. 
 Seex-a year in Boston, help make-a da subway. Twenty- 
 free year here, and never go away except go home 
 veesit." 
 
"MORT POUR LA FRANCE" 151 
 
 So an Italian boss gave his history while superintend- 
 ing the energies of other Italians and Spaniards unloading 
 the coke into the bins from which the furnaces were 
 charged. 
 
 The living conditions could easily cause much unhap- 
 piness. At the public wash-house in an iron-mine town, 
 women were scrubbing lustily. In the homes an abun- 
 dance of dirt was visible from the street. Wells were 
 locked with padlocks except at certain hours. The sani- 
 tary arrangements certainly leave much to be desired. 
 All that is only in tune with the numerous pitifully 
 wounded blast-furnaces, their steel work on the ground, 
 great holes in their brick walls. The marvellous thing 
 here as in the north is that the inhabitants have gone 
 as far as they have in the work of restoration. The first 
 sign of anything more than the mildest of protests oc- 
 curred this afternoon. The newspaper carried a letter 
 signed by a body of citizens stating that they have lost 
 all and have so far received nothing except the tiniest 
 of barracks; that after repeated requests nothing has 
 yet been done toward repairing the roofs of these; that 
 unless something is done they must face the necessity 
 this winter of sleeping in their beds under umbrellas ! 
 
 Meanwhile the greater sufferings of the war-time it- 
 self are recalled by various anniversaries. Exactly seven 
 years ago this week the district was occupied. Among 
 300 killed in the iron country on August 22, 1914, were 
 the son of General Foch and the son-in-law of M. Viviani. 
 
 A local paper announces the intention of Judge Gary 
 to visit this district in 1922, and makes the statement 
 that his corporation and this district furnish together 
 
152 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 84 per cent of the world's iron ore. In spite of the size 
 of the pits seen to-day above ground and below, that 
 sounds more like local pride than reliable information. 
 
 As we ran out of the iron country toward Verdun, only 
 a few pennies away, the ruined houses became more 
 numerous and miles of dilapidated trenches followed 
 shortly after. Later as we passed the waste land where 
 the trees stood like poles, and where every foot of the 
 hillside had been burrowed for its mite of protection from 
 bombardment, tears stood in the eyes of all. To-morrow 
 favors a visit to the battle-field. Meanwhile the im- 
 pression I take to bed is partly of the amazing hopefulness 
 which can walk in upon such wastes of warfare and take 
 up the burdens of peace. Alongside that, unfortunately, 
 is the thought of the future wars which are in the minds 
 of so many of those who now are busy in the works of 
 restoration and of peace. 
 
 " There at Fashoda the English were opposed to us just 
 as they are against us now in the Orient and in this Upper 
 Silesia matter." So a man from Strassburg was talking 
 in the inn. "You recall what dreadful coal we had when 
 it came from England, yes? And with the Irish, are the 
 English not handling the whole thing badly? Why can't 
 they let us have all of Upper Silesia that we can get? 
 Mon Dieu, do we not need it, if ever we are to stand up 
 against the boche? . . . My first wife in Strassburg 
 was French; my second, German. Do the Alsatians love 
 France or Germany? Well . . ." (business of shaking 
 right hand with the palm now up, now down). 
 
 What's the answer? It looks even more hopeless than 
 last night. 
 
"MORT POUR LA FRANCE" 153 
 
 P. S. The afternoon's various changes from Longwy 
 have furnished time to read the announcement of a 15- 
 20 per cent freight reduction for fruits and vegetables 
 during the month of August in the effort for lower living 
 costs. Evidently an advantage of the close connection 
 between government and transportation. But at one 
 small station, twenty-one railway workers of various de- 
 grees of importance were visible at the same time, none 
 being engaged at the moment in anything more wearying 
 than conversation. In this area the railroads are not 
 directly under state control, but a traveller finds it easy 
 to believe that national laws have been helpful to the 
 same overmanning mentioned yesterday by the Germans. 
 
 In the compartment this afternoon, by the way, the 
 wife of an Italian laborer and a young Italian girl from 
 Venice who is selling small articles among the Italians in 
 Longwy and in Luxemburg a few miles away, offered me 
 cigarettes of such good quality that I was ashamed when 
 my turn came to furnish my own. Evidently they and 
 their relatives have been profiting from France's need of 
 workers. 
 
 Verdun, 
 Thursday, 25th. 
 
 The footlessness of fighting that is the dreadful lesson 
 furnished by a morning amid the vast hills and valleys 
 of human and material wreckage which surround this 
 town. No other heights in all the world constitute so 
 vast a mortuary. For these enclose the bones of a mil- 
 lion men! Those that "laid them down in their last 
 sleep," in "the continuous wood where rolls the Oregon," 
 were blessed at least with the friendly tears and reveren- 
 
154 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 tial rites of decent burial. Here, to be sure, are rows 
 and rows of white crosses that denote interment, but other 
 hundreds of thousands lie where they fell or where their 
 pieces were blown covered, but unburied. The reason 
 is that they were covered too many times. The covering 
 furnished peace and protection only until the next shell 
 came over ! 
 
 As we walked the pathways through the small forest 
 of crosses, groups of French fathers, mothers, and sisters 
 found their way one by one to this or that grave, where 
 they knelt in tears as they found the sought-for name 
 written above the words, "Mort pour la France." Sadder 
 much than these thus honored were the thousands of 
 crosses that bore no name merely "Frangais Inconnu" 
 More dreadful still, if possible, were the other thousands 
 that bore the plural "Frangais Inconnus!" Evidently 
 a few fragments had been gathered together and given 
 the honor of interment. Perhaps the ultimate in the 
 way of death and burial at the post of duty is represented 
 by those 137 bayonets which still protrude from the 
 ground. As they stood guard in their trench, these pro- 
 tectors of the homes of France were overtaken with a 
 huge mine explosion which opened the ground beneath 
 them and then instantly closed upon them. There be- 
 neath those bayonets they watch and wait for that reveille 
 that will sound the commencement of a war-less world. 
 
 "This is for an officer, m'sieu 7 . See, it is six inches 
 deeper than the others," so one of the dozens of Moroccan 
 grave-diggers told of his job adding explanation of his 
 two francs for each of nine hours and of his five-franc 
 boarding-house. He has already been here five years. 
 
"MORT POUR LA FRANCE" 155 
 
 Even during the fighting he probably did much the same 
 work. From the way he spoke I judge he will not be 
 glad to leave. Later I saw him and his fellows standing 
 unconcerned while a priest in the midst of a half-dozen 
 well-dressed people performed the last rites over a rough- 
 board box. As the words sounded across the field, punc- 
 tuation came from the explosion of a number of "duds" 
 found just beyond the brow of the hill. The huge cloud 
 of black smoke made it easy to believe that the battle 
 was still going on between the nations, simply because 
 the quarrel has not yet been settled. Almost five years 
 of burying bodies and exploding shells what a way of 
 obtaining bread and bed ! 
 
 In the midst of what was once an imposing fort, it 
 seemed I was standing where my soldier friend at Douai 
 had been entombed those four long days and nights. 
 Surrounded by the waste of twisted steel protruding 
 from huge blocks of concrete and the litter of discarded 
 shoes, cartridge cases, and other paraphernalia of organ- 
 ized destruction, it sounded strange indeed to hear the 
 jolly songs of a handful of soldiers quartered in the place. 
 The same sudden shock of unexpected and unseemly life 
 in death came throughout the day as I walked across No 
 Man's Land or over miles of duck-boards at the bottom 
 of trenches whose high walls were held up by interwoven 
 twigs. In such places the silence is as heavy as though 
 loaded with the memories of dead and dreadful doings. 
 When you turn one of the sharp corners and a bird whirs 
 suddenly up before you, you come back into the midst 
 of corporeal things with a start jumping not out of but 
 back into your skin ! So, too, you are almost pushed into 
 
156 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 the putrid water of the enormous shell-holes by the sud- 
 denness with which the ghost-crowded silence is punctured 
 by the staccato submersion of a frog! Somewhat the 
 same shock comes also when, full of many thoughts, you 
 rejoin a group of mourners and priests and find them 
 discussing train schedules and politics, eating meanwhile 
 huge cheese and pickle eandwiches ! 
 
 But perhaps all that is not only unavoidable but right. 
 Every attempt to think continuously of death in the 
 midst of life results only in anomaly if not in absurdity. 
 After all, there can be no such thing as life worthy the 
 name if it concerns itself only with death. As one monu- 
 ment here reminds, "to be forgotten in death is twice 
 to die." Nevertheless, it is certain that none of the dead 
 here or elsewhere would care to be so fully and so 
 reverently remembered that in then: death they were 
 living more vitally and worthily than their rememberers 
 among the living and among the living's problems. It 
 is only better living that can make brave death honorable 
 and worthy. My chief complaint of one of the great 
 religions is that, following its precepts, so large a propor- 
 tion of the effort and solicitude of the living is diverted 
 toward the attempt to improve the well-being of those 
 who are known to have finished with life but who are 
 believed not yet to have attained in death. 
 
 I wonder if these million dead here are going to at- 
 tain what they hoped for amongst the living they left 
 behind them. Without a doubt most of them died with 
 "Long live my country!" on their lips in one language 
 or another. The tragedy is that in spite of that prayer 
 there still exist those hatreds which my last few days 
 
"MORT POUR LA FRANCE" 157 
 
 have shown in the hearts of the Germans and all those 
 fears which the past few weeks have discovered in the 
 hearts of the French. At any rate, it would surely help 
 to that end if somehow every American could spend a 
 morning in the midst of these silent miles of yellow-wa- 
 tered shell-holes, cruel barbed-wire thickets, rotting duck- 
 boards, and crumbling wastes of rusty steel and ruined 
 concrete. Nothing would so help us to come closer to 
 the fierce hatred of war which I find in all minds here 
 and which we need ourselves in the place of our idealistic 
 dream of the loveliness of peace a dream that seems 
 somehow to make us offish and inactive in our sense of 
 security. The preachment for peace given in some of 
 the northern towns I had thought effective enough. But 
 Lens, for instance, simply shows destruction down to the 
 level of the cellars. Here that stage is soon reached and 
 forgotten. 
 
 "Right there, my friend, was the little town you 
 named. Right there where you see those bushes." It 
 sounded so unbelievable that we all walked over. Not 
 even a brick was to be seen. First the houses had been 
 brought low, then their wreckage had been completely 
 buried until nothing but the slate and chalk of the deep 
 subsoil was to be found. 
 
 Surely there must be ways of building up reliable 
 mechanisms of peace the organized means by which 
 groups of people called nations can secure the necessary 
 elbow-room and save then* self-respect without having 
 always to fight for it. Certainly the self-respect of 
 these groups is just as necessary and just as insistent as 
 the self-respect of individuals. Its requirements change 
 
158 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 from year to year or age to age in the same way because 
 it depends upon our comparative status with others. Its 
 obstacles are surely much the same as between individuals 
 the hurt feelings that always follow a lowered sense of 
 our importance and value in the scheme of things. 
 
 Perhaps if more of us Americans had lived a little closer 
 to Verdun we would to-day come closer to recognizing 
 the need of some organization which would attempt to 
 make bayonets less necessary for saving people's and 
 nation's faces in the crowded room that the new com- 
 munications are making of the world. Certainly no one 
 within a thousand miles of the tragedy of Verdun can 
 fail to agree with Talleyrand that: 
 
 "You can do every thing with bayonets except sit on 
 them." 
 
 This part of the world, at least, is certainly weary 
 enough to want to sit a bit on something! 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 IN "THE HOT SPOT OF EUROPE" 
 
 Saarbrucken, 
 Friday, August 26. 
 
 IN "the hot spot of Europe," at last ! And by the right 
 route, too. Paris, Lens, Essen, Longwy, Verdun all 
 these have done their part to raise this place's tempera- 
 ture. Also perhaps most of all Alsace-Lorraine, where 
 most of yesterday afternoon was spent, much of the tune 
 toward evening in the midst of pleasant farms and husky 
 country people who spoke French to the conductor and 
 a German patois to each other. 
 
 The big steel town of Jceuf-Homecourt and others 
 near by in France made it appear highly proper to wipe 
 out the old boundary between them and the great iron 
 towns of Lorraine much as the railroads and steel plants 
 at home blot out the State line between Pittsburgh and 
 Youngstown. Serious unemployment has evidently not 
 yet struck any of these centres. Evidently, too, the new 
 officials are changing everything as rapidly as possible 
 for making the district French instead of German. Judg- 
 ing from the size of the blast-furnaces, it is not strange 
 that France has now become, next to Great Britain, the 
 greatest iron-producing and steel-making country in Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 That brings new difficulties seeing that it takes about 
 four tons of coal to make a ton of steel. France's regular 
 shortage of 20,000,000 tons of coal becomes all the more 
 
 159 
 
160 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 serious now that she must make more than twice as much 
 Bteel as before. That is the reason, undoubtedly, why 
 France is here hi the Saar as the owner and operator of 
 mines formerly owned by the German Government, with 
 the League of Nations charged with maintaining order 
 for fifteen years until a plebiscite determines whether the 
 district goes to France or to Germany or remains inde- 
 pendent. In other words, the flooded pits visited at Lens 
 are the direct cause of the presence here of the group of 
 French engineers from whom I hope to get a job this 
 afternoon at the Town Hall. 
 
 Already it looks like the world's prize problem in the 
 field of manager and man relations. After these few 
 weeks on both sides of the Rhine, it is impossible to imag- 
 ine anything harder than for French superintendents to 
 get coal in efficient quantities out of German mines filled 
 with German miners ! It must be hard enough amongst 
 the part-French and part-German in Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 "You see, the big question now," so spoke yesterday 
 on the train through Lorraine a French priest educated 
 in London also in Germany during two years as a war 
 prisoner following a surprise attack near Verdun "is 
 whether the clergy here will be put on the same status 
 as the clergy in France. Here they have had no state 
 church and, therefore, no state legislation. The status 
 quo was promised by the French Government beforehand. 
 But a big movement is trying to persuade the govern- 
 ment to break its promise. In some parts of the country, 
 an army officer who goes once to church is dismissed 
 immediately. 
 
 "Money and position not religion these are the 
 
IN "THE HOT SPOT OF EUROPE" 161 
 
 causes of what is called the Marriage of Four," he con- 
 tinued. "All the church can do about it is like pouring 
 water in a desert. Soon after the war started people 
 were religious yes, more religious than before. But it 
 lasted too long. It was too terrible. People became 
 and are still too tired to make the effort the spiritual 
 effort that religion requires." 
 
 One of the last scenes in the old France yesterday was 
 a group of housewives doing the week's washing on the 
 bank of a little stream while husbands and sons fished 
 near by. How the Frenchman does love to hold a pole 
 over water! Also how he dislikes evidently to put 
 water into pipes! The rest of my life I expect to be a 
 crank about water water-pipes and faucets. On the 
 whole, I can think of no better indicator of a population's 
 material comfort or its spiritual attitude toward itself 
 its self-respect than its attitude toward water. That 
 includes its point of view toward pipes and faucets, be- 
 cause the lack of these puts up a wall of bodily effort 
 which seriously interferes with too free and easy a rela- 
 tionship with water. Come to think of it, most of my 
 miseries during the last few years of adventuring are 
 connected with this matter of water-supply of com- 
 parative pipelessness. In one of my two American mine- 
 towns, for instance, I got along very well with everybody, 
 including the landlady probably because we boarders 
 had a chance at a shower-bath after the day's work "in- 
 side." In the other town everybody had to carry water 
 and we boarders had to bathe ourselves, stripped to the 
 waist, on the back porch or in the little kitchen. With- 
 out doubt all the dirt and discomfort which went with 
 
162 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 it had much to do with the ubiquitous profanity and 
 the chronic tiredness and temper which finally contrived 
 to put my landlady's fist in my eye. It would be safe to 
 gamble that an improvement of at least 20 per cent could 
 be secured in the factories and factory towns of the whole 
 industrial world by installing nothing more imposing 
 than some hundreds of miles of water-pipes ! 
 
 And now for the cleanest collar I can muster and a 
 rebrushing of my ancient coat it was discarded from 
 all standing in my wardrobe three years ago in the 
 effort to manifest enough respectability to support my 
 request of the engineers for a close-up view of their be- 
 wildering problem in international industrial relations. 
 
 Saarbrticken, 
 Sunday evening, 
 August 28. 
 
 Good luck is certainly with me as always. The job 
 is mine. My German landlady has just given her promise 
 to call me without fail at five to-morrow. My French 
 overalls with my time-worn and fire-tested heavy shoes 
 and woollen socks are all ready for a quick get-away 
 into the mines. 
 
 "Tell the district superintendent that the slightest 
 wish of our American visitor is to be law. Nothing of 
 any sort whatever is to be kept from his observation 
 nor from his closest possible contact with the workers on 
 the basis he suggests." So instructed the recipient of 
 my letter after deciding to put me at work in one of the 
 largest pits. 
 
 Have just had an enjoyable twenty-four hours with 
 
IN "THE HOT SPOT OF EUROPE" 163 
 
 the family of the clerk to whom the officials referred me. 
 The establishment is a little more respectable and com- 
 fortable than could be wished, but the view-point of my 
 host and his foremen and miner friends has already 
 proved worth while. 
 
 This afternoon a good dozen of us walked across the 
 Saar and into the hills till we came to a nest of villages 
 crowded with thousands of workers and their families 
 in full holiday regalia for the annual festival of the Ker- 
 mess. The merry-go-rounds and such things were busy, 
 but the innkeepers were much more so. In several little 
 establishments there were no seats, even though the land- 
 lord had expanded his facilities all over the courtyard 
 and the orchard as well as out into the narrow street. 
 Amazing quantities of beer and it was supposed to be 
 of pre-war strength were being consumed on all sides, 
 although comparatively few seemed to be much the worse 
 for it. All the party, however, assured me that the evi- 
 dence of better or at least, stronger spirits would in- 
 crease as the evening advances. According to my guides, 
 everybody in the district, young and old, plans through- 
 out the year to have his or her wardrobe in perfect con- 
 dition against the coming of this particular day. They 
 evidently do a good job of it. In no place in Germany 
 or Belgium or, I'd say, even in England have I seen 
 a working population so well dressed and prosperous- 
 looking. My amazement at the cleanliness of the neat 
 and often newly whitewashed homes of the miners was 
 lessened somewhat by the explanation given for this as 
 for many other things: 
 
 "But, you see, this is the great day of the year. Every 
 
164 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 one here plans regularly to put everything in shape for 
 Kermess!" 
 
 Furthermore, most of these homes, with their vine- 
 covered porches and little plots of well-cultivated ground, 
 are said to be owned by the miners members of families 
 that have worked in the same mines all during the last 
 seventy-five or one hundred years. The French adminis- 
 tration is now building new homes that make an ex- 
 tremely attractive appearance. The rent asked fifty 
 francs for four rooms would not be considered dear 
 with us, even without the free coal-supply which goes 
 with it, but none of my miner neighbors considers it a 
 possible price. Saving enough to buy a home, unluckily, 
 appears practically out of the question: the sum is too 
 prodigious 120,000 to 150,000 marks! That being so, 
 it leaves all the more to be spent for a good time at Ker- 
 mess and my friends have come back horrified at the 
 money evidently spent by some of their young neighbors 
 in making a grand show. It must be a great place for 
 any one to show off his or her new clothes because he 
 can be absolutely certain of making all his friends sit 
 up and take notice: from all the villages for miles around 
 everybody is sure to be there. The hands of the young 
 ladies are apparently universally acceptable to the frock- 
 coated and be-caned young fellows who walk with them. 
 Altogether, there must be something wrong with all this 
 "dope" spread about the world concerning the unhap- 
 piness of the Saar miners condemned to work under the 
 hated French engineers for the benefit of the hated French 
 Government. 
 
 Everybody in my particular community a few miles 
 
IN "THE HOT SPOT OF EUROPE" 165 
 
 out of the big city itself is connected with the mines in 
 one way or another. Judging from our group this after- 
 noon, the population is anxious to have the good-will of 
 America, though by no means too happy about our break- 
 ing into the party during the late unpleasantness. 
 
 "Yes, but what kind of neutrality do you call it when 
 you keep furnishing supplies to our enemies?" one who 
 is a mine foreman asked with a good deal of bitterness, 
 when I tried to oppose bis idea that the whole war, espe- 
 cially America's part of it, was fought merely for the 
 benefit of the capitalists, and tried to explain that 
 America had grown richer by being neutral than by tak- 
 ing up arms. 
 
 "It's our politics our statesmen (sniff) they are the 
 people that brought you over here and got us into all 
 this nastiness and unhappiness. . . . And if, on top of 
 it all, the Allies take away our raw materials in Upper 
 Silesia, then the only thing we can do is to try to die with 
 at least some appearance of glory by scraping up what 
 arms we can and trying to kill off as many of the hated 
 French as possible before we fall." 
 
 It was only Friday that the other side of the picture 
 was painted by one of the local French: 
 
 "So far France has not touched a franc of all the mil- 
 lions owed to us for all the destruction you yourself have 
 already seen. But even if she had received every sou 
 of it, France could never fully recover. . . . And they 
 say that we have broken faith by asking this huge sum ! 
 They have the face to claim that the 5,000,000,000 francs 
 we had to pay in 1870 was not indemnity but merely 
 expenses ! Then, as in 1914, they invaded and destroyed 
 
166 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 us and we gained nothing. At that tune, too, they said: 
 'For each 2,000,000 you pay we will recede forty kilo- 
 metres/ Then, during the war, they threatened: 'We will 
 ask 500,000,000,000 and we will hold all we have, Bel- 
 gium and everything, until the last penny is paid/ And 
 now that the tables are turned they weep. They cry, 
 'We cannot pay. France is cruel/ This France that 
 I see so weakened that I can hardly imagine her ever 
 rising again to her feet this France is cruel and hateful ! 
 How is it possible to get on with such people?" 
 
 It was strange to listen at one moment to such testi- 
 mony and it is almost impossible to overstate the emo- 
 tion that accompanies and colors it and then, a few 
 hours later, to be so thoroughly in the midst of the equally 
 intense mood of the other view-point, there by the 
 crowded tables beneath the trees of the little inn of the 
 mining town. No wonder the district has attained its repu- 
 tation as the meeting-point of the opposing currents of 
 the European muddle. Down-town I see both French and 
 German eating at the same tables in peace, though hardly 
 in friendliness. But it is reported that the French chil- 
 dren in a local private school are occasionally stoned by 
 the native youngsters. It is hard to wait till to-morrow 
 morning to learn whether these intense oppositions have 
 penetrated the underground. At any rate, it will be a 
 little simpler down there to know what to talk. Above 
 ground at least in Saarbriicken you have to consider 
 whether to use French or German. It is a tactical 
 blunder, for instance, to use German to ask a clerk how 
 to find the door of a French official's office likewise, 
 probably, to use French in speaking to a French official's 
 
IN "THE HOT SPOT OF EUROPE" 167 
 
 chauffeur. Indeed, it would offend my French friends 
 if they saw I had in deference to my landlady dated 
 this entry Saarbriicken instead of the French Sarrebruck. 
 But unless I get some sleep, I won't be able either to 
 keep neutral or to hold up the reputation of an American 
 shovel-wrestler ! 
 
 Monday, 
 August 29. 
 
 At least my experience in mining has been advanced 
 with the help of one of the most uncomfortable jobs yet. 
 Our vein down about 800 feet was hardly four feet 
 thick not low enough to favor hands and knees yet 
 not high enough to permit standing up. To shovel and 
 move about while making two sides of a right-angled 
 triangle of one's body never straightening up except 
 by lying down ! gives something new in the way of dis- 
 comfort. I wonder how long it would take to make a 
 stranger as accustomed to it as my miner friends ap- 
 peared. At any rate, that operation made it a joy to 
 practise the art of taking down the coal by kneeling before 
 the face of the seam, anchoring left elbow on the free 
 knee and then using right arm to work the handle up 
 and down exactly like a pump. That makes an immense 
 difference from trying to hold the left elbow up in the 
 air while working in the narrow berth between roof and 
 floor and seam and timber. 
 
 The gang plan "Kameradenschaft," it's called is 
 evidently as general here as in France with anywhere 
 from ten to thirty men in the group, each interested in 
 making sure that every one does his best. From all the 
 day's talking and listening, the men are working hard 
 
168 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 and are much less discontented than I had expected to 
 find. As a matter of fact, there was comparatively little 
 time to talk, for the cars kept coming to the end of our 
 chute in a way to keep the whole crowd of us very busy. 
 Several young car-pushers, representing, apparently, 
 many parts of German-speaking Europe, had all seen 
 more or less service at the front and agreed that, except 
 on the very front line in times close to active fighting, 
 they had mostly gone hungry. According to them, the 
 average of nineteen to twenty francs per day makes the 
 miner a better-paid worker than the district's steel 
 laborers, but many get too bad a location to permit mak- 
 ing anything like the average. Their chief complaint is 
 that the benzol engines which take out the loaded cars 
 give off a highly unpleasant gas. Otherwise, compressed 
 air furnished power for the air-drills and also for me- 
 chanically moving the chutes helping to furnish what 
 look like first-rate working conditions befitting the Prus- 
 sian state ownership and operation of pre-war tunes, 
 
 Riding in this morning for a mile and more with a Ger- 
 man foreman, the chief impression was of the slowness of 
 the train and of the stiff dignity of the native officials. As 
 he sat opposite me in an empty car, one of these made 
 an impressive picture with his high boots, his freshly 
 laundered overalls and his heavy-looking " metre stick/ ' 
 This last is typical of the semimilitary authority the 
 foreman appears to exercise here, hi between a good deal 
 of hat-tipping. Besides showing with its brass tacks 
 the various fractions of a metre for determining whether 
 the worker is obeying the mine regulations for inserting 
 this or that piece of timber for the support of the roof 
 
IN "THE HOT SPOT OF EUROPE" 169 
 
 at the proper distances, its iron ferrule and heavy copper 
 head make it not only a badge of authority, a useful tool 
 and walking-stick through the dark passages, but also 
 according to report an occasional aid to discipline. 
 
 According to my host, the position of these under- 
 bosses who were turned over to the new administration 
 with the mines, is superlatively difficult. If they remain 
 but fail to give satisfactory service to the French, they 
 may be discharged to lose, of course, their pensions as 
 German state officials. If, on the other hand, they re- 
 fuse to stay here under the French, then the German 
 Government is responsible for placing them elsewhere. 
 That is likely to be a difficult job now that Upper Silesia's 
 mines are in dispute, with the mines of the Ruhr well 
 filled. According to law, however, such an official must 
 be kept for five years at a certain salary, whether work 
 is found or not. After that he is eligible for a pension 
 of some value if ever the mark "comes back." No 
 wonder these who stay make their authority quite evi- 
 dent with their crisp commands. 
 
 Starting in at six o'clock means out again at one, hi 
 view of the seven-hour day now in operation. That gives 
 a very short tune for actual work with the coal but long 
 enough to get us all good and dirty, judging from the 
 appearance of the crowd this afternoon at the shower- 
 bath. The swarm of scores of naked workers there gave 
 a wonderful demonstration of the spiritual as well as the 
 physical possibilities of soap and water lots of water, 
 hot and cold. For we came in looking like grimy, black- 
 skinned, unshaved bums. Shortly after, we emerged 
 as white-skinned, red-cheeked gentlemen clothed in the 
 
170 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 garments and the minds of respectability. What this 
 means to a man's own thinking about himself as he goes 
 through the street is a lot, but to it must be added, also, 
 the relief it brings to all the housewives who otherwise 
 must keep eternally trying to fight off both the dirt and 
 the lowered self-respect their bread-winners bring home. 
 The shower also gives a good opportunity for team-work. 
 Having in mind here, as in the north France coal-town, 
 the difficulty of getting at my own back, I turned to my 
 nearest neighbor and proceeded to wash as muscular a 
 spinal column as it has been my pleasure to see in a long 
 tune the only difficulty being that we were so crowded 
 that I found it a little hard to make sure that he would 
 get the right back when my own turn came ! In an amaz- 
 ingly short time, considering the jam, we were ready to 
 take up again the burden of our white-collared citizenship, 
 while our sweaty mine clothes hung from their hooks and 
 chains in the warm air near the roof. Without doubt 
 there is a close connection between these showers and 
 these generally good working conditions and those clean 
 and comfortable-looking little homes in the Kermess 
 towns of yesterday. Me, I'm for a company shower in 
 every mine-town in the world ! also ready to congratu- 
 late the German Government on its good sense in making 
 it nationally compulsory. 
 
 For more than a century these pits have been operated 
 in various parts of the locality's 700 square miles, though 
 for most of the time on nothing like the scale of the pres- 
 ent 70,000 miners out of the district's 700,000 population. 
 People here believe that the local properties have never 
 been fully developed because the Ruhr up north has al- 
 
IN "THE HOT SPOT OF EUROPE" 171 
 
 ways had more "pull" with the officials in Berlin. But 
 even at that, it must cause quite a shock when so long- 
 standing an ownership is as suddenly terminated as this 
 has been. The shock, however, is probably much less 
 over here than we are apt to think, seeing that various 
 ruling houses have at different tunes fought or married 
 or inherited their way into this locality's ownership, 
 including at one time the Prince of Orange, and at two 
 other periods a French sovereign. This last fact appears 
 to have figured largely at Versailles when the French had 
 to find ways of handling their increased resources of iron- 
 ore with their badly crippled coal-supply. In any event 
 the valley's long and hectic history does not appear to 
 have hardened it perceptibly against the miseries of the 
 recent warfare to which its nearness to Alsace-Lorraine 
 exposed it. 
 
 "Our bread during the war, it was fit only for pigs," 
 relates my landlord. "Our beer nothing but water. 
 Potatoes? Why, my wife went to some relatives away 
 over in Bavaria to pay a huge price and then bring 
 back nothing but a few pounds ! And flying-machines ! 
 Here in my own house, I built my family a shelter. Night 
 after night with the explosion of the first bomb, we got 
 us all out of our beds and quick into the cellar. Terrible ! 
 Our son of fourteen is fully a fifth under normal size 
 from the bad food and the big fear. And now the cost 
 of living is higher than ever and higher here than hi 
 Germany or France for, you see, we are cut off from them 
 both. For potatoes that used to cost one mark twenty, 
 we pay 120 marks that's one hundredfold ! And one 
 says they will go still higher! No wonder our people 
 
172 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 are unhappy, especially now that the steel plants are 
 laying off men because their coal in francs is so ex- 
 pensive. . . . One can easily observe that our govern- 
 ment in Berlin, I mean is frightened. Erzberger's 
 murder is the eighteenth ! One after another the mod- 
 erate leaders are being killed off by those who want the 
 Kaiser back, the old reactionaries who have learned 
 nothing. Martial law has been declared in Bavaria 
 perhaps she will leave the Empire to-morrow. The gov- 
 ernment is afraid of the militarists even though they 
 know that the workers and the people generally are 
 against them. It does not know how long it will last or 
 what will happen and nobody else knows, also!" 
 
 From all that the past few weeks have brought, he's 
 a highly observant and well-balanced man. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 
 
 Saar Valley, 
 Tuesday, Aug. 30. 
 
 THIS "hot spot of Europe" is considerably cooler 
 and more contented than expected, but the mines, at 
 least, do their best to deserve the title. I must have lost 
 several pounds in honest sweat there in our low-roofed 
 "room" this morning. Luckily the rules require that, 
 before exploding any charge, the danger be lessened by 
 laying the dust with a hose from the near-by water-pipes. 
 That at least furnishes a comfortable part of the hot 
 day's work. Unluckily, when I tried to increase com- 
 fort by taking off my shirt, my companions said it was 
 against one of the "streng verbotens," of the old Prussian 
 regime which has not yet been abolished by the new 
 owners. 
 
 " 'America what of America?', many of my fellow 
 officers in our regiment said," so an under-official ex- 
 plained as we went together the long mile and more to 
 our location. " 'Nein, nein/ I told them. 'You wait. 
 You will see!' And they did. Then, too, a great mis- 
 take it was to export the Belgians to work for us. Even 
 the highest officers believed it was, too, but they claim 
 their orders came from far above doubtless from our 
 dullest statesmen. We fought too long. Reconciliation 
 with good-will, earlier, in, say, 1917 that would have 
 been better. As for me I am German, yes, and loyal, 
 
 173 
 
174 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 but with human beings you cannot do everything with 
 force. 
 
 "And that is what our French officials here also be- 
 lieve. Capable men they are: they know how to get 
 along with people. They study it. I will tell the truth. 
 Good men they are good to us and to our workers, 
 though we officers here inside, we know that the German 
 worker needs a firm hand over him." 
 
 Neither the local French nor the local German news- 
 papers are willing to take quite as fair a view. All of 
 them give more propaganda than news, the Germans 
 evidently centring their fight on the h. c. 1. The bitter- 
 ness with which the men complain not about their treat- 
 ment on the job but about the cause of high costs in their 
 isolation from the Fatherland would be amusing if it 
 were not so tragic. No one among them appears to have 
 the slightest conception as to the whys and wherefores 
 of it all; every one grunts uncomprehendingly when men- 
 tion is made, for instance, of the condition of those water- 
 logged entries up at Lens. In fact, few of my worker 
 friends appear to pay attention to any kind of newspaper. 
 
 "Why should we?" asked my buddy to-day in be- 
 tween the exhibition of his pride as he tried to pass over 
 to me as much as possible of his German craftsmanship. 
 "Before the war the Kaiser never let anything into the 
 papers he did not want. We knew nothing of the out- 
 side world. That's why it all happened. Our leaders 
 first pushed us off by ourselves and then pushed us into 
 the war. That's why we Communists are going to fight 
 the next war, not nation against nation, but under dog 
 against upper class. ... As to this Interallied Com- 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 175 
 
 mission in charge of things here, there's nobody on it 
 representing labor, is there? . . . Well?" 
 
 It is a long road from him and the dark, sweaty han- 
 dling of coal and timber up and out through the shower- 
 bath and into town and the office of an important Ger- 
 man civil official who won his job by adding to a 
 university degree considerable administrative experience 
 and a successful civil-service examination. 
 
 "Yes, some of these miners are unhappy, but most of 
 them feel better off now than the other workers in the 
 region. That may be changed now that some of the steel 
 plants are paying in francs. It is a hard problem a 
 hard problem politically and made still worse by religion. 
 With many Bohemians coming in for work, added to the 
 French near the Lorraine line, the country is now about 
 two-thirds Catholic and one-third Protestant. This dif- 
 ference in religion used also to complicate relations be- 
 tween the Catholic miners here and the Protestant officials 
 from Berlin. ... If only we could have a lower cost of 
 living, things would not be so bad. Meanwhile, we have 
 nothing but strikes though not for some time in the 
 mines and those for nothing but bread and butter. 
 Strikes by the workers and speculation by the white- 
 collared people all these without thought of the cultural 
 and spiritual things that used to interest the good old 
 German spirit yes, that's true even though the papers 
 advertise for a leader of the municipal orchestra at a big 
 salary. ... Of course, I have faith that somehow we 
 are going to get back, some day, to the old interests 
 otherwise I should feel that all I could do to merit my 
 position would be to throw myself into the river. . . . 
 
176 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 No, there's no chance of lessening France 's power here, 
 much as the League of Nation's High Commission of 
 Five might desire. You see, all the individual and eco- 
 nomic influences play into France's hands. French 
 private capital is buying up the control in all the local 
 steel plants. French money has been voted legal for 
 railways and postage. And French troops, as you have 
 seen, are all about, including those dark skins from Mo- 
 rocco what you call them, niggers though I will say 
 there are not many and not very black. But I can't 
 imagine that these will ever be taken away as long as 
 they represent France and we represent Germany." 
 
 Perhaps his hopelessness is born of many such tragic 
 games of " consequences " as that heard here lately. A 
 French officer informed a local housewife that he was 
 billeted with her and proposed to live comfortably. For 
 one thing, he wished all bed and table linen changed daily. 
 After a week she remonstrated that it was impossible 
 that she had already used up all her own and her neigh- 
 bor's supply, besides working always at the wash-tub. 
 
 "You are quite right," was his surprising reply. "It 
 is impossible and unnecessary. But I wished to show 
 you for one week what your son, madam, required my 
 mother in France to do throughout four years!" 
 
 Small wonder that the representative of the British 
 Empire a hardy, capable, and lovable Scotchman from 
 Winnipeg, Canada! finds it almost impossible to per- 
 suade the other four commissioners from France, the 
 Saar, Belgium, and Denmark to forget the hatreds and 
 fears of the war in the effort to work out the best good 
 of the district, and, therefore, of the League of Nations 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 177 
 
 intrusted with it. Charged with responsibility for both 
 finance and food-supply, he is reported to have found 
 that French influence was unloading on the population 
 excess war provisions some of which were pretty stale 
 and well calculated to remind the local citizens what had 
 happened since 1914 and who was boss. Altogether his 
 job looks like one of the hardest hi the world: 
 
 "Yes, the cost of living is high here with plenty of 
 reason. The district raises enough food only for a few 
 weeks in the year. We have bought all the cattle we 
 can buy from Holland. Now we are getting some from 
 Rumania; it takes five solid days' travel without food 
 or water and so with expensive loss of weight. But, you 
 see, we simply cannot buy any kind of food except from 
 countries with money as depreciated as ours our selling 
 money, namely, German. We have to buy in our best 
 money, francs, and sell in our worst because the two 
 moneys represent one of the compromises laid upon us 
 by the treaty. So we stand to lose millions of marks on 
 a single deal in potatoes or flour if the exchange fluctuates 
 too rapidly. That's why we still have family bread- 
 cards we sell so far below cost. Also why I'm glad 
 that we closed our year with a surplus after fearing a 
 big deficit. In spite of all that, I found the people here 
 wanting to use flour made of only 60 per cent of the wheat 
 for their bread. I have insisted upon their eating 80 per 
 cent. But, in a way, I am glad to see them wanting the 
 best and whitest bread in Europe. It shows that they 
 are appreciating their freedom from the war indemnities 
 or taxes which for years will be loading their neighbors 
 over in both Germany and France. In every way our 
 
178 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 rates here are lower than in the various war countries. 
 But even those we have are hard to collect because a 
 bombing-plane came over during hostilities and blew up 
 all the official records !" 
 
 In the towns there are many evidences besides silk 
 stockings and canes that there are worse fates than to 
 be in the hands of the League of Nations. In the villages 
 which dot the country, few houses but make, in the great, 
 square stone or concrete basins outside their front doors, 
 a good showing of the manure by which a farmer's wealth 
 is rated and rated accurately enough, seeing that the 
 pile registers both the number of cattle owned and the 
 number of acres from which income can be expected. 
 
 In both country and town, unfortunately, a sudden 
 shift in exchange may take 10 per cent off the contents 
 of a man's pocketbook or granary. But that is true all 
 over Germany and various other countries. It gives a 
 wondrous boost to speculation the worst possible thing 
 to do with money may be to hold it ! Also a body blow 
 to thrift just at the time it is most needed. In a way, 
 the universality of this demoralizing perversity of ex- 
 change and of the puzzlement over it is helping toward 
 some form of international co-operation: it makes it so 
 evident to everybody that no one nation alone can mas- 
 ter its disagreeable intricacies. If the League of Nations 
 could let its experts help on that by some concerted 
 programme of doctoring the various national financial 
 maladies of which the unpleasant exchange is a symptom 
 it would certainly go far toward helping to make it 
 properly "The League of Peoples" such as the Germans 
 call it (Voelkerbund). What would help most here, 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 179 
 
 also, would be for the League to permit or compel the 
 Commission to have France withdraw her soldiers and 
 hold them in call a few miles across the border. Any 
 payment of a Saar army is forbidden to the Commis- 
 sioners by the treaty and no other country except France 
 has thought to put one at the Commission's disposal. 
 
 Altogether it looks, tastes, and feels like as good a cross- 
 section of the poor old world's outfit of industrial, social, 
 and political difficulties as anybody could wish to see. 
 And I'm sure, too, that that impression isn't simply be- 
 cause the day's combination of underground sweat and 
 aboveground conversation with French, German, and 
 English leaders has made me more than willing to call 
 it a full day. 
 
 And now to remind the landlady of the tap on the door 
 to-morrow at four-thirty. 
 
 Wednesday, August 31. 
 
 This being introduced to the workers as an American 
 engineering student who has the good-will of the French 
 officials but is not unfriendly to Germany, furnishes regu- 
 larly a full day and a tiring one, in view of the active 
 shovel-exercise needed to get the workers' confidence 
 and conversation. To-day the pit where I worked re- 
 quired miles of walking through several mining villages. 
 Unfortunately, too, the walk underground was almost 
 as long and more muddy and slippery. The place of 
 working, too, was low, pitched at a steep angle and gen- 
 erally disagreeable. The coal, also, was very hard to 
 get out, requiring a great amount of shooting. All the 
 workers perhaps as one result of this appeared con- 
 
180 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 siderably less happy than the others encountered; for 
 some reason, too, they did not use their heads to plan 
 their work so well. The blisters given by my shovel, 
 added to the short night's sleep, made their free and out- 
 spoken prophecy of the next war between muscle-men 
 and money-men sound almost reasonable. 
 
 To-day at one time I grazed the edge of trouble by 
 turning on so much compressed air for agitating the long 
 iron chute for bringing the coal down into my car, that it 
 broke the connections. Luckily, the others soon fixed it 
 and let me continue to enjoy my pride in filling the tubs, 
 chalking them with our gang number and pushing them 
 to the near-by siding. 
 
 When the French engineers came along, in line with 
 the universal French engineer's custom of visiting some 
 part of the underground galleries every day, my buddies 
 were pretty outspoken in their complaints about wages. 
 It was splendid, however, to see the way the Frenchmen 
 endeavored to explain to us all the sincerity of their in- 
 terest and the difficulty of then* success in fighting against 
 the cost of living and other enemies of the worker. If 
 there is any way out, it must surely lie in some degree, 
 at least, through such close face-to-face and mind-to- 
 mind contact as our group furnished as we sat there in 
 the frame of the low, black room's darkness with our 
 smoky lamps showing up the whites of our eyes. 
 
 In spite of the men's unhappiness, to-day brought a 
 closer contact with the religious or near-religious spirit 
 which these craftsmen appear to bring with them every 
 morning to their jobs. After our miles of walk through 
 the valley we joined the crowd standing ready with their 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 181 
 
 lighted lamps as the German mine-boss took his seat 
 upon a small platform. As soon as everybody had re- 
 ported and bad acknowledged his orders for the day, 
 hats came off and heads were bowed while a formal prayer 
 for our safety was solemnly repeated. At its conclusion 
 we turned to each other with a very serious greeting of 
 "Glueck auf !" (Good luck!) Whether above ground or 
 below, every miner greets another with this symbol of 
 the common danger. Later I felt like repeating it as the 
 shot-firer examined our charge of explosive and then 
 with his electric apparatus ready, yelled with all his voice, 
 "Der-r-r-r spre-n-n-gt ! " (It's going off!) an instant 
 before the explosion seemed to shake the world. At such 
 a moment it is easy to believe for the miner, at least, 
 that "In the handiwork of his craft is his prayer." On 
 the whole, this morning prayer comes closer to expressing 
 the worker's thought about his job than that other prayer 
 which a mine-town pastor told of repeating at the funeral 
 of his miner friend who was entombed in a disaster and 
 whose body was found only after continuous effort dur- 
 ing two years! 
 
 There's the street crier ! 
 
 "Ta-ke no-tice that a new cooking class by a teacher 
 of domestic science to-morrow afternoon at three o'clock 
 in the company's restaurant kitchen, especially for women 
 and girls, ge-opened will be," to take it as it comes. 
 Also "Ta-ke no-tice that Mr. Blank, undertaker, re- 
 cently, everything in his establishment hi order to give 
 the best possible service for high-class funerals and 
 reverential burying, his house in order has put." Etc., 
 etc. 
 
182 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 My fellow workers tell me that during the war the 
 undertakers here were worked too hard and teachers 
 too little by the general scarcity of food and the over- 
 plus of enemy bombing planes. So it is good to see the 
 late causers and sufferers of the bombing planes getting 
 together in the interests of better food and a longer and 
 happier side-stepping of the grave-digger. For all this 
 hatred and unhappiness here is a matter more of hearts 
 than of heads, and men's hearts, as womenfolk the world 
 over know, are often best approached through the kitchen 
 door. 
 
 "My family and I can eat better and live better now/' 
 says one of the Germans he is on a level higher than a 
 miner "because I am paid better by the French than 
 I was by the German administration. Paid better, yes, 
 and treated better with less of the old Prussian bluster. 
 I am German and loyal German but I try to do my 
 duty by my employer and to tell the truth about him." 
 
 Well, this double life is a hard one with too much 
 language, too much walk and work, and too little sleep. 
 Am ashamed not to have another day as a worker, but 
 must not refuse the offer of the engineers to take me with 
 them on their morning trip through still another mine. 
 Must leave Friday in order to connect with the League 
 of Nations before my secretarial friends there get too 
 busy with the Second Annual Assembly to talk with me. 
 
 Thursday, September 1. 
 
 It grows plainer why these miners are all working so 
 well. If these French engineers don't become too dis- 
 couraged to continue making such contacts as I've seen 
 
GERMAN COAL-MINERS OF THE SAAR LEAVING TOWN FOR THE 
 SHAFT OF A COAL-MINE SEVERAL MILES IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 "THE HOT-SPOT OF EUROPE" 
 
 This name has been given the Saar by reason of the complicated political and in- 
 dustrial situation. The German miners shown here work directly under the su- 
 pervision of the German foreman at the left. He, in turn, is under the orders of 
 the French engineer shown with the cane. The League of Nations, in general 
 charge of the district, may point with pride to its record in the Saar 
 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 183 
 
 to-day and previously, they will get these loyal Germans 
 positively to liking them! And nothing in Europe is 
 harder to imagine than that ! 
 
 It comes mainly from this French idea whereby the 
 big chief thinks it a part of his job to go underground 
 for a part of every working-day that and the real in- 
 terest in the underground worker which goes with it. To- 
 day the two chiefs certainly gave good consideration to 
 the view-points of the men and showed their complete 
 willingness to meet their objections; their effort was evi- 
 dently all the more appreciated for being in broken Ger- 
 man. If the men said they were earning less than 20 
 francs per day, the reasons were taken up with surprising 
 seriousness. "Were they getting enough cars? How 
 about the undercutting and the shot-firing?" etc., etc. 
 
 " Quite so," they would reply when, as usual, the 
 worker shrugged his shoulders as he admitted that he 
 got good money but urged that with potatoes, meat, and 
 all at present prices he could not buy anything with it. 
 " Quite so, but don't you see, my friend, that we must 
 not blame the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick- 
 maker for his high prices as long as he has to pay so much 
 for his coal ? That cost is basic it counts in every mer- 
 chant's and every manufacturer's costs. In that cost 
 of coal, wages alone figure most of all, with the manage- 
 ment forced to add to that cost its 'overhead' for ma- 
 chinery, haulage, ventilation, etc., whether it gets much 
 coal or little. If, therefore, you miners will increase your 
 earnings by raising more coal per day, the company will 
 be delighted to put a big daily output against that over- 
 head, and so lower the price of coal and thus the whole 
 
184 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 cost of living ! Now, on that basis, can we help you do 
 better?" 
 
 Needless to say, the engineers did not forget to scru- 
 tinize the more mechanical details. A shot-firer was 
 promised severe punishment for leaving his electric de- 
 tonator lying carelessly on the floor. Another was scolded 
 for allowing an air-hammer hose to get into leaky con- 
 dition. 
 
 This afternoon in town at the central office, the head 
 of the whole engineering group gave the French phi- 
 losophy behind all this: 
 
 "Yes, undoubtedly we have a larger number of expert 
 engineers on our operation than did the Germans, and 
 than would either the average British or American opera- 
 tor. That's our standard French practice. We believe 
 that the ordinary foreman who works underground is 
 not capable of meeting all the underground problems, 
 and, least of all, of managing all the difficult underground 
 relationships. That follows from our belief our French 
 belief that the mind of these workers presents just as 
 important a part of the operation of a mine as the care 
 and up-keep of the mechanical machines. That is true 
 in every factory, but it is especially true in every mine, 
 where so much of the work is done not by machine but 
 by muscle that is, after all, by mind. We believe our 
 results here are indicating the Tightness of our phi- 
 losophy." 
 
 I know several countries that would profit from the 
 same line of thinking, and not far from home either. 
 Perhaps such wisdom will become more general if its 
 success here in the Saar's coal jobs helps to give success 
 to the League of Nation's efforts to demonstrate the pos- 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 185 
 
 sibility of a good piece of international team-work under 
 the most difficult conditions conceivable. 
 
 The workers make it plain that they see the change 
 from the strict, almost military, discipline of the former 
 German regime in which the sub-bosses carried the re- 
 sponsibility of making most of the miners' decisions for 
 them. As it is, even the present German under-foremen 
 give the impression of feeling more difference between 
 themselves and the laborers than appears between the 
 foremen and the French engineering functionaries. These 
 native supervisors, though, do appreciate the French 
 idea of paying the officials a little more salary in the ef- 
 fort to lessen their interest in commissions from sales- 
 men. Later on, the workers are pretty likely to appreci- 
 ate, also, the French efforts to arrange classes whereby 
 their boys will have a larger chance to become under- 
 officials. At present, as under the old regime, no one 
 can hope for promotion unless he passes a certain ex- 
 amination at fourteen. But he can't even take this unless 
 he was lucky enough to begin a certain course of study 
 at the age of ten. And worst of all he could not start 
 this at ten unless his father had a certain standing and 
 enjoyed a certain amount of prosperity. 
 
 In line with all this, complaints in the old days had 
 to be made in ink. One recently received said that the 
 writer was laying his long-standing trouble before the 
 French even though all his earlier letters to his German 
 bosses had never brought anything but a "good old Ger- 
 man 'Out with you!' " In line with it, too, the daily 
 production per man is considerably better than the out- 
 side world has understood, because the French follow 
 the American method of including official and above- 
 
186 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 ground workers, while the German reports figured ton- 
 nage only on the basis of "per underground worker." 
 To-day, by the way, I saw charts which gave production 
 and personnel figures for every year since 1816 ! 
 
 All this is supported, in turn, by the kind of books 
 which I was amazed to find upon the desks of these en- 
 gineers. They treat of "The Human Motor," "The 
 Organization of Human Activities," etc., etc. Books 
 that are found in America and England only upon the 
 desks of the students of psychology are here found to 
 be well-worn by the fingers and thumbs of mechanical 
 engineers! It is, verily, worth coming a long way to 
 see. If by all such means, here in the "hot spot," 
 this problem of industrial relationships can be solved, 
 then certainly there is hope for every employer in the 
 world ! 
 
 Oddly enough, all this human "complex" here appears 
 to have one very mechanical phase. Unfortunately, this 
 Saar coal does not make good coke. It breaks up too 
 easily to permit it to be used in those great blast furnaces 
 across the border in Lorraine and up near Longwy. For 
 that reason, it now has to go clear up to supply the mu- 
 nicipal utilities of Paris and the locomotives of a French 
 railway right past those furnaces that continue to get 
 their coke "direct from Essen." So if only some one 
 would contrive a way to make good stiff coke out of this 
 coal, France would at once lose much of her present in- 
 terest in getting her soldiers and engineers into the 
 Ruhr and one big factor in the world's present unhap- 
 piness could be cancelled. It makes a combination of 
 politics and research worthy of these modern days. 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 187 
 
 "A formula! A formula! The thanks of kingdoms 
 for a formula!" 
 
 A local editor may have had something like that in 
 his head this very morning: 
 
 "Away with all this hatred. It only retards the hap- 
 piness of the continent's two greatest peoples. Why not 
 commence to buy and sell to each other, seeing that we 
 now understand so thoroughly that reconciliation is the 
 basis of economics, and that economic considerations 
 are and always must be at the bottom of all constructive 
 politics and all lasting diplomacy?" 
 
 Reasonable enough, but a harder saying than it sounds, 
 seeing that every one of the buyers and sellers here goes 
 around with a hand and a heart full of memories and 
 feelings: 
 
 "If our Kaiser had mounted upon a high altar," so 
 the keeper of the showers assured me to-day, "and there, 
 while his people prayed, had met his death like some 
 great German hero of old yes, perhaps then he might 
 come back to us. But a deserter, never did I think him 
 that ! We are done with all Hohenzollerns. . . . And 
 never did I think that you Americans that rebelled against 
 your British masters would follow their lies into the fight 
 against us!" 
 
 Disappointment, fear, faith psychology, economics, 
 politics who has the answer? 
 
 Friday, Sept. 2, 
 On train to Geneva. 
 
 The walls of these countries are certainly close together. 
 This train down through Strassburg to Basel evidently 
 started from Brussels. From the notices I find myself 
 
188 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 forbidden to spit in four languages ! Close together and 
 thick! Examinations of baggage and passports, etc., 
 out of the Saar and into the new France of Alsace, then 
 other examinations out of Alsace and still others into 
 Switzerland all within less than four hours of locomo- 
 tion. Naturally enough none of the moments takes one 
 very far from the memory of the crowded room and the 
 hampered elbows in it. 
 
 "My father wept when I went off to war, but only 
 because I went as a German soldier not a French. You 
 know there were 23,000 of us did enlist with the French." 
 So a young Alsatian speaking French, German, and Eng- 
 lish has been telling me before getting off at Mulhouse, 
 one of the important textile and potash centres we passed. 
 "At Metz in the very garrison where my father had 
 fought against the invaders in 1870 they wanted to 
 make me officer. I refused. A few days later they sent 
 me over to the Russian front with hundreds of other 
 Alsatians. You see, they could not trust us. I soon 
 walked out into 'No Man's Land' ! The Russians failed 
 to understand me and my wishes to surrender quickly 
 enough to keep from bayoneting me. After I got nearly 
 well again, I walked 700 miles back into their country. 
 There I found 1,200 Alsatians! We had all done the 
 same thing. Finally, we were sent around by the north 
 to England and to France. ... Of course, my family 
 had had no news and the Germans reported our deaths. 
 The day this report came my mother died of the shock. 
 But my father kept insisting: 'I know better. I am sure 
 of what those Prussian ways will make him do. Some 
 day we shall see him again.' " 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 189 
 
 A Belgian companion adds still another facet to this 
 hard diamond of mixed relationships none the less il- 
 luminating for his having relieved the tedium of the long 
 trip with a good deal of cognac: 
 
 "Yes, it is true, as our Walloon fellow citizens say, 
 we Flemish people in Belgium are friendly with the Ger- 
 mans now. Now, you understand? During the war, 
 no, not at all. Then we fight them, for we are Flemish 
 yes, but Belgians, too, and our country is at war with 
 them. But the war is ended, is it not so? Yes. And 
 Antwerp, now that peace has come, must have the Ger- 
 mans. We want the Germans back for business. Even 
 the English do not do business with us as do the Ger- 
 mans. It is they who are the best business men in the 
 world. And if they do no business, then no money comes 
 to Belgium or even to France and other countries. Yes, 
 now we want to help Germany. We and all the world 
 need her." 
 
 Certainly these last few days show what enormous 
 effect upon our thinking and feeling can be secured by 
 the steady work with fair pay and good treatment brought 
 by business. If to these could be added a lessening of 
 the fear of high living costs, the Saar miners might amaze 
 Europe with their industrious patience possibly, also, 
 with their votes for an independent Saar in the plebiscite 
 at the end of the fifteen-year period. I feel sure the Saar's 
 h. c. 1. is not so far above Germany's as the Saar miners' 
 wages are above the wages of the Ruhr. So I have sug- 
 gested to the proper authorities that the Saar govern- 
 ment arrange to add to its plans for a commission on the 
 cost of living, the effort to make currently and continu- 
 
190 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 ously a scientific and unbiassed study of local living costs 
 as compared with similar figures for Germany and France, 
 making public announcement of its findings from month 
 to month. Such a report would have a hard fight against 
 the propaganda of such conversation as assailed me every 
 day, but would in time get such a hearing for the actual 
 situation as I am sure it deserves especially if, as pro- 
 posed, the commission includes representatives from the 
 miners themselves as well as from their native and French 
 officials. 
 
 Looking back on all the conversations to which it has 
 been my business to listen during the past three years, 
 it is fairly safe to say that more breath has been devoted 
 to the price of potatoes potatoes and bread than to 
 any other single subject. The getting or the gripping of 
 the job might perhaps be excepted, but even this has been 
 given larger importance by the price the increased price 
 of potatoes and bread. It is nothing short of amazing 
 what a lot of trouble can be caused in our feeling and 
 thinking by the sense of unhappiness connected with 
 potatoes and bread. Whether this unhappiness is ac- 
 tually justified by the facts appears to have little to do 
 with it. On the whole, I would say that both the politi- 
 cians and the philosophers have failed to give the humble 
 potato its proper recognition as one of the most impor- 
 tant factors in the organized life of Christendom. In 
 any event, the greatest cause of difficulty found in the 
 "hot spot " comes down to the fact that the potato, 
 whether it actually is too high or not, feels too high. In 
 a lesser degree, the same holds for most of Europe and 
 America. 
 
POLITICS AND POTATOES IN THE SAAR 191 
 
 I wonder whether the "S. d. N.," as the French papers 
 indicate their acceptance of the Society of Nations as 
 an established affair, will to-morrow give indications of 
 carrying anything like a proper potato philosophy on its 
 political mind. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 
 
 Chamonix, France, 
 Saturday, Sept. 10. 
 
 "JusT what I expected or feared," I said to myself 
 last Saturday afternoon after I had started off to find 
 my friends at the office of the League, and was following 
 the pointings of the motorman toward what looked like 
 a sizable but extremely stand-offish and aristocratic es- 
 tablishment, set like a private residence in the middle 
 of a great lawn and inside a high iron fence. All the gates 
 were imposing enough but, unfortunately, quite securely 
 locked. Around the entire block and still no kind of 
 Saturday afternoon back door. As likely as not my Amer- 
 ican friends were among the group enjoying their English 
 week-end in a beautifully shaded tennis-court just out- 
 side the unbusinesslike office-building of the organized 
 world. The farther I walked, the more typical it all ap- 
 peared of the whole European temperament and situa- 
 tion that the offices of the great League of Nations should 
 shut themselves off in such aristocratic and inactive dig- 
 nity right on the eve of its Second Annual Assembly, 
 composed of four representatives from almost every na- 
 tion in the world. 
 
 Finally, in considerable disgust, I asked a passer-by 
 if he could tell me how one could enter the Society's sanc- 
 tum of a Saturday afternoon. 
 
 192 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 193 
 
 "But yes, monsieur," and he gave a great shrug; "and 
 it should not be difficult. Right there!" 
 
 On the instant I began to arrive at a new appreciation 
 of the League of Nations. There just across the street 
 from the block I had been encircling stood a great five 
 or six story building. At the gate and in the courtyard 
 was a hurrying, chug-chugging, door-slamming, order- 
 giving melee and procession of magnificent limousines, 
 hard-working jitneys, nervous motor-cycles, uniformed 
 chauffeurs and messenger-boys, in addition to scores 
 of silk-hatted statesmen and handsome, Paris-gowned 
 women from various parts of Europe and South America 
 mixed with dignified gentlemen wearing fezes from Persia 
 and turbans from India! In the lobby several clerks 
 at a great desk somewhat like a New York hotel's, were 
 trying more or less vainly to keep cool while telephoning, 
 and at the same time answering the queries of the jam 
 of people who appeared to use a bewildering variety of 
 languages. Exceptionally active and intelligent-looking 
 young men and women, evidently a part of the working 
 staff or secretariat, were carrying papers in and out of 
 rooms where a number of international committee meet- 
 ings were in progress. This busy, throbbing aggregation 
 of serious-purposed people had all this been got into 
 such vitality and vividness of action within these months ? 
 
 It was one of the greatest surprises of my life and 
 certainly, after Douai, Lens, Essen, Saarbriicken one 
 of the most agreeable ! 
 
 That initial impression of down-to-brass-tacks, straight- 
 ahead aim and action has been upheld by every session 
 since hi spite of the puzzlement over the Washington 
 
194 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 Conference. The opening address of the acting presi- 
 dent, the young Wellington Koo, Chinese ambassador 
 at London, showed his eleven years hi America. It was 
 merely a common-sense statement of the gains already 
 made in the establishment of the International Court of 
 Justice and otherwise, and of the great tasks ahead. It 
 was no oratorical effort to attract world- wide attention 
 nor to pull down the stars and let their glory shine for 
 the lighting of a new earth under an old heaven. No 
 French or Latin-Ajnerican statesman would have missed 
 the opportunity to open the party in that way. And 
 when he had finished, everybody would have said " Won- 
 derful! Marvellous! but er where do we go from 
 here?" 
 
 Still the scene in the great Hall of the Reformation 
 certainly does somehow cause the heart to beat rapidly 
 and the eyes to fill. Below you sit at their appointed 
 tables the carefully chosen representatives of forty-two 
 out of the forty-eight sovereign states now actively tak- 
 ing a chance at the world's newest and hugest experiment 
 in good-will and universal betterment. Evidently, fur- 
 thermore, these nations are determined to play this chance 
 with all possible energy and though tfulness; they have 
 sent their best men to sit there at those tables their 
 best in every sense of the word. Beside Arthur Balfour 
 is Mr. Fisher, Britain's Commissioner of Education. 
 Viviani and Leon Bourgeois sit with their less famous 
 colleagues for France; Ex-president Matta with his friends 
 for the Swiss republic. Professor Gilbert Murray of Ox- 
 ford is with the African delegation. In all, thirteen uni- 
 versity professors $ncl several women are mixed with 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 195 
 
 various prime ministers altogether as intelligent-look- 
 ing and high-minded a group as could be gathered to- 
 gether. Certainly, too, the most cosmopolitan the world 
 has ever seen. There, alongside Sir Edward Meyer, rep- 
 resenting India, is a great black-bearded philosopher of 
 a man with an imposing turban on his mass of gray-black 
 hah-. When he stands up you can see his long silk coat 
 with just a glimpse of madras-silky and close- wrapped 
 brown trousers showing above his patent-leathers. (From 
 the way he walks it's safe to assume they're brand-new.) 
 And all these " nationals" mixed up together splendidly! 
 The British Empire's table is surrounded by Australia, 
 Argentine, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Brazil, 
 and Austria ! 
 
 This same impression of democratic cosmopolitanism 
 comes in the lobby before the bell rings. Everybody 
 seems to talk with everybody else. That is one big gain 
 now that the delegates meet again after having made each 
 other's acquaintance a year ago. It looks immensely 
 more like a league of peoples for furthering "open cove- 
 nants, openly arrived at," than I expected. In fact, there's 
 much comment that Germany, though not admitted to 
 membership, has already joined a number of others in 
 registering publicly with the League all the treaties she 
 has entered into. 
 
 Yes, as compared with, say, that sombre office-building 
 at Krupp's, this room seems to offer immensely more 
 elbow room more than any I've seen in Europe. Its 
 most obvious restriction appears to be that of language. 
 
 Luckily one of the best talkers at the Convention is 
 the chief interpreter, a French professor. The newly 
 
196 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 elected president, Mr. Karnebeek of Holland, scarcely 
 finishes his address in French before the professor, with 
 a better voice than most of the speakers, puts it into ex- 
 cellent English, even including the gestures. The Persian 
 representative who talked in alleged and very jerky 
 French almost floored the interpretive staff, but two or 
 three of them took turns in expressing the gentleman's 
 enthusiastic surprise that, thanks evidently to the Great 
 War, civilization was seeing the realization of its dream 
 of "the Parliament of Man, the federation of the world !" 
 One of the representatives of Chile was sufficiently ac- 
 complished and polite to make his remarks first in 
 English and then in French. It is easy to sympathize 
 with the school authorities of Geneva, who have sub- 
 stituted for the old German, courses in the attempted 
 universal tongue, Esperanto. That would be useful to 
 any Swiss. On the train last week a resident of Neuf- 
 chatel advised, when we were leaving Basel: 
 
 "We will do better to talk German until we get nearer 
 French Switzerland. Then it will be a pleasure to talk 
 our beloved tongue." 
 
 At the assembly, as everywhere in Europe, the out- 
 standing thing is the amazing progress English has made 
 toward becoming the universal language of business and, 
 therefore, of politics. The French are quite properly 
 alarmed. Yet hardly a paragraph in French newspapers 
 to-day but shows the breadth and depth of the English 
 penetration by means of such words as "coming man," 
 "right man in right place," "interview," "meeting," 
 "football," etc., etc. Such leaders as Benes, the prime 
 minister of Czecko-Slovakia, appear to represent the Eng- 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 197 
 
 lish instead of the French type and attitude. As a matter 
 of fact, talking with him gives the impression of talking 
 with the president of the local and live-wire Rotary 
 Club ! From the free discussion given his local or regional 
 league in the form of the Little Entente, there is evidently 
 no feeling that the big League Covenant is beyond modi- 
 fication or amendment. 
 
 In the whole room the most interested participant 
 the one who goes and stands near the platform when he 
 can't hear or, with his delegation's vote in his hand, awaits 
 his turn at the foot of the stairs is, next to his chief, the 
 world's most famous statesman, Balfour. He is said to 
 have come lately to a complete faith in the more idealistic 
 and democratic conception of the Society as represented 
 at all times, on the platform and off, by his colleague, 
 Lord Robert Cecil. In line with the big boyishness which 
 shines from his large face and frame, Lord Robert opposes 
 the French wish for an armed league, and insists that the 
 appeal of this organization must be to the peoples of the 
 world; the Tightness of its decisions as approved by their 
 good sense rather than upheld by bayonets, must be its 
 justification and its strength. 
 
 One day, before the assembly, he gave a very frank 
 scolding to the representatives from Lithuania and 
 Poland: 
 
 "By their failure to compose their differences like gen- 
 tlemen, they are to-day imperilling the peace of the entire 
 world." 
 
 As the applause came from all quarters, the public 
 opinion of the civilized and organized globe appeared to 
 be suddenly concentrated there in the room concen- 
 
198 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 trated and directed toward the two tables where it could 
 do the most good. Such a concentration on such a scale 
 and between representatives who came together not as 
 strangers but as acquaintances such has never before 
 been seen in history. If getting together in the same 
 room so often simplifies the capital-and-labor problem in 
 a great factory, surely such a yearly meeting or some- 
 thing like it must be looked to for realizing all the prayers 
 of the war-worn and war-sick workers over here and at 
 home. Especially when these annual gatherings are 
 aided by a permanent year-round group of secretaries 
 chosen from all parts of the world and busied with the 
 continuous collection of facts and view-points needed for 
 placing in the two official languages this problem or 
 that properly before the diplomats. Already the mail 
 coming to the new offices contains the prayers of an as- 
 tonishing variety of the world's unhappy peoples, as if 
 it were some great super-philanthropist. Already, too, 
 many of the makers of these prayers are disappointed 
 with results having failed to realize that the League is 
 not so much a new organization as merely a new and 
 tentative method by which the existing governmental 
 organizations are now endeavoring to operate in certain 
 fields of activity. In attempting to make the co-operation 
 an affair of opinion and not of arms, the temporary dis- 
 appointment of the world's masses was made unavoidable 
 because it represented a definite, conscious choice of the 
 simple, slow, and democratic, rather than the imposing, 
 sudden, and autocratic method the Anglo-Saxon rather 
 than the Prussian, the method of "Main Street" rather 
 than of Potsdam. The difference between the two is 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 199 
 
 the same as in the famous comparison once made by a 
 distinguished British statesman: 
 
 " Monarchy is like a great ship. In all the pomp and 
 panoply of power it rides the waves with all sails set 
 until it strikes a rock. Then it goes down forever. De- 
 mocracy is like a raft. You can't sink the thing but, 
 damn it, your feet are always in the water!" 
 
 The International Labor Bureau indicates the effort 
 to prevent the commercial competition of the politically 
 co-operating members from becoming merely a contest 
 as to which nation can get its workers to stand for the 
 lowest scale of living. As such it should be most useful 
 to the nation whose workers already enjoy the highest 
 standard ourselves. To date, for instance, our absence 
 from it has prevented the European powers from making 
 universally compulsory some of the advantages on ship- 
 board which we have already made compulsory for our- 
 selves. Its organization appears perfectly natural in- 
 deed completely indispensable to any kind of effective 
 world organization, considering that the summer's friends 
 among the workers have all shown how thoroughly and 
 inexorably the pressure of the crowded room pushes into 
 one inseparable ball over here the threads of foreign policy, 
 internal politics, domestic industry, and, finally, family 
 bread and butter. At any time the passing of a law hi 
 some country a frontier or two away may cut off 10,000 
 laborers' families from their means of livelihood. The 
 least and the most, probably that can be done is to 
 attempt agreement that such laws shall not cause hurt 
 to the workers of both nations. 
 
 "The new internationalists," according to Albert 
 
200 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 Thomas, the bureau's secretary and formerly a distin- 
 guished French labor leader and minister of munitions, 
 " agree largely with your Krupp friend as to the 'self- 
 determination of raw materials/ They would lessen 
 this cause of international friction, not by having all the 
 peoples lose their individuality, but by arranging some 
 feasible plan of so apportioning nature's bounties as to 
 place the different units on a more nearly even basis of 
 competition. That, they claim, would still leave plenty 
 of room for the present differences in production or selling 
 abilities. As to the feasible plan of apportionment, they 
 are, of course, far from agreement." 
 i Even the Swiss have seen this pressure of raw materials 
 the other nation's raw materials upon their domestic 
 life. During the war they had to part with much of their 
 live food because the Germans would not sell them at 
 a colossal price the coal needed for their state railways 
 except in return for the privilege of buying cattle. As 
 a result, the Swiss Government is borrowing money at 
 8 per cent for paying the hundreds of workers now con- 
 structing a hydro-electric plant in the heart of the Alps 
 for keeping the trains moving when her neighbors get 
 to fighting again. 
 
 That is typical of the way peace-loving and peace- 
 preserving Switzerland pays the price of the difficulties 
 of its neighbors. Just because its own currency has not 
 depreciated, the usual pre-war visitors from France and 
 Germany can now not afford to come or to buy goods. 
 Much unemployment is reported in the watch, textile, 
 machine, and other factories. So in one of its big cities in 
 spite of what look like handsome factories in the midst 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION " 201 
 
 of delightful though simple villages a great convention 
 has brought together the country's Communists! Swit- 
 zerland, joblessness, and Communists! What are we 
 coming to? 
 
 No, it's not surprising that both the statesmen and 
 the workers of this crowded continent have gone even 
 farther than their fellows in England and enormously 
 farther than their confreres in America in understand- 
 ing the tie-up between their 'cross-frontier relations and 
 their 'cross-table rations. That, rather than the nega- 
 tive hatred of war or the positive dream of peace, is pretty 
 surely the force behind that inspiring room well named 
 "of the Reformation" up at Geneva. And the certainty 
 of the development, in time, of something like that same 
 understanding at home will not fail to mean an enlarged 
 American interest in all such meetings on the part not 
 simply of the leaders of our international labor-unions 
 as at present, but of our employers and producers as 
 well. 
 
 Later. Speaking of 'cross-table rations, I took dinner 
 lately in a very grand dining-car. The wife of my French 
 neighbor gave me a distressingly careful look-over and 
 evidently asked him who let so uncouth a person into the 
 party, for I heard him explain that my clothes showed me 
 to be one of the railroad's employees, so I was doubtless 
 getting my meal at reduced rates ! The same difficulty, 
 incidentally, somewhat lessened my contact with the 
 League. If "it takes nine tailors to make a man," it 
 requires a free use of the multiplication table to figure 
 how many were called upon to put the Second Assembly 
 into the hall. So it has proved distinctly embarrassing, 
 
202 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 in addition to being enjoyable, for me to lunch and dine, 
 in my old clothes, with some of the meeting's leaders, 
 titled and untitled. But perhaps that is only one more 
 sign of their surprisingly democratic spirit! Anyway, 
 it is this spirit as much as anything else which has made 
 me feel that that group of men is going increasingly to 
 be looked upon as the hope of the world. Their organiza- 
 tion is certainly far from perfect but well, if we know 
 a better 'ole in which to protect the war-worn peoples 
 from the explosions of the present situation, we'd better 
 go to it or else help the others dig it ! 
 
 P. S. Just to remind us how all countries everywhere 
 are running into much the same difficulties hi the wake 
 of the all-countries war, the morning paper tells how "a 
 family of ten who have been ejected from one house and 
 unable to find another, have lately camped out on the 
 highway between Versailles and Paris. Inasmuch as 
 they interrupted traffic, the authorities of the district 
 have decided that the military authorities shall construct 
 a shelter for them." 
 
 St. Etienne, 
 
 South Central France, 
 
 September 14. 
 
 "Since the armistice 80 per cent of this district's 
 workers have been discharged, simply because it is to 
 the profit of the employers temporarily to suspend opera- 
 tions. It will be a misfortune to allow these factories 
 with their expensive tools and modern equipment to be- 
 come the prey of private firms operating them for their 
 sole profit. The government should retain them so that 
 the workers may retain their means of livelihood. Op- 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 203 
 
 pose with all your strength these machinations of your 
 enemies!" 
 
 Other evidences besides this flaming poster on the 
 town hall indicate much the same restlessness in this 
 old industrial centre as was apparent in the hardworking 
 suburbs of St. Ouen and St. Denis. Naturally enough, 
 the three places are just about equally dirty. It grows 
 more and more evident that a careful observer could 
 make a fair guess at the state of a working population's 
 mind by simply getting what the statisticians call the 
 " index number" of inside and outside faucets to the 
 block. Doubtless the absence of water in this city of 
 well over 150,000 is in line with the closeness to agricul- 
 tural simplicity indicated by the number of ox-carts slowly 
 going through the main streets. That same nearness 
 doubtless also furnishes a safety-valve for the radicals. 
 The same impression of an old, easy-going industry and 
 commerce came in the post-office this morning when a 
 man rushed up to the telephone girl asking immediate 
 connection with a business house near by. When he was 
 assured that he would have to wait for a half -hour before 
 he could be given the line, he replied with heat: 
 
 "Very well, then. I'll go 'round and see them first 
 and be back by the time you're ready!" 
 
 This same impression, indeed, comes in every French 
 post-office. The chief concern seems to be to make cer- 
 tain of the maximum security of age rather than to enjoy 
 the maximum opportunity of youth to emphasize the 
 prime desirability and importance of playing safe. The 
 ordinary citizen seldom uses a check and appears to feel 
 that the banks here are only for the rich altogether a, 
 
204 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 far cry from our American belief that at the bottom of 
 every worker's dinner-pail, like the baton at the bottom 
 of the knap-sack of every soldier of Napoleon, lies a check- 
 book. If more of these postal-savings depositors were 
 in the banks, keen to make their francs do heavier work 
 even though at greater risk, there would hardly fail to 
 be a larger chance for these men and women to get out 
 of the grooves into which their lives appear early to settle. 
 
 Many of these grooves, it must be said, however, have 
 their charm. To-day at lunch in as good a restaurant 
 as my costume would permit, I noticed a man of out- 
 standing appearance; with his broad-brimmed hat, flow- 
 ing beard, intellectual face and cutaway coat, he could 
 well have been the director of the local conservatory at 
 least, if not president of the departmental university. 
 A moment later he sounded a note upon his private tuning- 
 fork and launched into a song of moving romance and 
 fine feeling. Shortly thereafter we had the opportunity 
 to put our centimes and francs into that magnificent 
 chapeau! Unfortunately the tumble-down condition of 
 some of the local factories, suggest some connection with 
 the ancient days of the troubadours. In several quarters, 
 however, are some of the newer machinery establishments 
 bearing names internationally known. 
 
 The commercial capital of this country at Lyons sup- 
 ports the general impression of moving in one industrial 
 groove " since long time." Yesterday the walk up its 
 historic hill brought close contact with numberless stone 
 reminders of the old Roman times when the place served 
 its district as completely as to-day and for much the 
 same reason in its position at the confluence of the Rhone 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 205 
 
 and Saone. The capital of Gaul becomes the second 
 city of France. Its local silk culture is reported languish- 
 ing because the present-day youngsters dislike the ex- 
 tremely painstaking care which the silkworm requires. 
 The weaving industry finds it difficult to induce the 
 younger generation to work the old hand looms along- 
 side their fathers or grandfathers spending their fiftieth 
 year or more on exactly the one machine in the one fac- 
 tory which has provided their life's job. One of these 
 men, over ninety, continues to weave less than a metre 
 of silken fabric a week. But that metre is probably worth 
 seeing. Undoubtedly the old man could teach my miner 
 friends something about '''habit habit and custom, 
 m'sieu'." Pretty surely, also, about that patience and 
 imperturbability which is behind the national gesture of 
 shoulder-shrugging. When expressed in words, it takes 
 the form of: 
 
 "ga m'est egal!" "It's all the same to me what's 
 the difference?" 
 
 The combination of these two national acceptances of 
 grooves is perhaps the reason why conservative tradition 
 is said to hold so strongly in so large an industrial centre 
 as Lyons also why so great a city remains to-day with- 
 out sewers. That, of course, accounts for the scarcity 
 of faucets. That, in turn, according, at least, to the dic- 
 tum of a noted German philosopher, accounts for the 
 development of perfumery; socially, its use is fairly com- 
 parable to that of the grease on that pump at Lens. 
 
 In line with this French talent for accomplishing large 
 results with slender resources of every sort, an American 
 hi Lyons told me how he had done some fine figuring to 
 
206 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 prove to his truck-gardener that the purchase of a flivver 
 delivery wagon would be a profitable investment as com- 
 pared with his slow and always hungry horse. The gar- 
 dener looked over the figures carefully and then handed 
 them back with a gesture of finality: 
 
 "But you have failed to add all the money I should 
 have to pay for fertilizer!" 
 
 It would be proper to assume that France has long 
 been living an altogether simple, easy-going, and alto- 
 gether happy life in this ability to make much out of little, 
 except for one thing which can never be forgotten in con- 
 nection with modern France. 
 
 "Here is what happened here in France at various 
 intervals between 1870 and 1914," this American went 
 on yesterday. "Suppose you were a French citizen of 
 the type I know in great numbers. You would go to 
 your contractor and say, l Monsieur, my wife and I we 
 have agreed that we are now ready to build our home. 
 On Thursday morning at nine we shall be here, she and 
 I, to make a small payment and sign the contract. You 
 will have workers ready to begin, yes?' But the next 
 morning you would pick up a paper and there would be 
 the head-line, 'An Incident A Grave Incident Happened 
 Yesterday on the Frontier/ It would proceed to tell 
 how Captain So-and-so of the French army happened 
 to encounter Captain This-or-that of the German army 
 in some little restaurant close to the line, the conversa- 
 tion ending in one of them emptying his glass of wine or 
 beer in the other's face. Merely an incident ! But quite 
 enough to make it necessary for you to go to your con- 
 tractor and, with a shrug of your shoulders, say: 'You 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 207 
 
 have seen the papers, yes? ... I am very sorry. We 
 must wait/ And quite enough to make the contractor, 
 with a similar shrug and a turning of his hands, like this, 
 throw the contract into the fire. At such a time every- 
 body knew that all the men of the country might per- 
 haps be called out before next Monday to protect the 
 homes already built without bothering about building 
 others. Think of living under such conditions year after 
 year, decade after decade ! Of course, they affected not 
 only the contractor but the manufacturer, storekeeper, 
 tailor everybody from the top down to the least skilled 
 laborer. And now that France has no guarantee from 
 any nation that they will help her, exactly the same thing 
 is continuing. No wonder they try to be as contented 
 as they can under the shadow of such a fear. In fact 
 they are fearful of their happiness when they make bold 
 to master their fear! Only a few days ago one of my 
 friends here gave me his version of the war like this: 
 
 " 'You see, we French we were too happy. We had 
 our homes, our little businesses, our families, our pensions 
 against the future, our glass of wine and our good food. 
 Why should we trouble to protect ourselves? We were 
 too happy and they found us sleeping! 7 ; 
 
 The high price of vegetables and the vigor of a local 
 wife who ran away last week from her husband who drank 
 twenty-five bottles of beer daily, were the subjects of 
 discussion when I left the group down-stairs here in the 
 little inn. The unsatisfactoriness of government was 
 also duly considered, in line with the evening paper's 
 comment : 
 
 "During three years M. B has been pressing his 
 
208 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 claim, with as yet nothing of reimbursement for damages 
 caused by an explosion of government material. These 
 delays were caused by certain errors on the part of the 
 clerks in making the records. The judges now find excuse 
 for further delay by discovering again these same errors 
 which led to the first delay. So it goes year after year I" 
 
 St. Etienne, 
 Thursday, Sept. 15. 
 
 To-day's visit underground reconciles me to my in- 
 ability to stop for a miner's job. 
 
 The vein, 2,000 feet down, is unique in possessing at 
 some points the amazing thickness of nearly thirty feet. 
 If it were not limited in extent, such a deposit could keep 
 the whole country in coal though it might denude the 
 forests to supply the huge amount of timber required. 
 But it is only too evident that the operation is on a very 
 narrow margin. In every way the working conditions 
 appeared much older and less desirable than those in 
 the north. Most astonishing of all was to find certain 
 quarters so little ventilated that the heat was as much 
 as ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit ! It gave an uncanny 
 sensation to walk through the passages and come sud- 
 denly upon workers standing before their seams, shovel 
 or pick in hand, stark naked ! Neither that nor the heat, 
 however, appeared to offset the force of that " habitude" 
 which pushed them toward the usual energetic and un- 
 ceasing labor. I asked one of them if the narrow, twisted 
 ribbon around his waist was for holding his lantern while 
 pushing the coal tub even though personally I should 
 have preferred to hang the lantern on the tub or in my 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 209 
 
 teeth. My miner friend had evidently the same prefer- 
 ence: 
 
 "But no, m'sieu'. It is to hold one's belly !" 
 
 In addition, the mines are evidently quite gassy. In 
 each district numerous additional lamps are lighted and 
 taken down every morning wherewith to replace those 
 that go out: it is considered too dangerous to use the 
 style we had up north which can with some danger 
 be relighted underground. 
 
 Altogether I am just as happy to be above ground to- 
 night with no plan for descending as a worker to-morrow. 
 
 "Me leive (live) here one year for be student mak' 
 my practik study. Three months more be engineer cer- 
 tificate." So a young man this morning explained the 
 method of the mining schools for which the district is 
 noted. It appears that certain great disasters in this 
 region, a generation or so ago, demonstrated to these 
 schools the vital necessity of closer daily contact between 
 the chief technical officials and the workers and their 
 working conditions. So it proves to be the humble annals 
 of this little-known district that are now playing then- 
 part in making international history up in the Saar! 
 
 It is this district, also, which helps to give the answer 
 to that query of the days in the north How could France 
 "carry on" so amazingly in spite of the enemy's holding 
 her "Pittsburgh district"? One of many expedients 
 was to come down here and stage, as it were, a hurried 
 come-back of this industrial centre of the older France. 
 Even in the newer industry of ribbon-making, what 
 looked like well-lighted plants proved to be only the ship- 
 ping-rooms for ribbons actually made mostly in the 
 
210 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 workers 7 homes. That is probably here, as elsewhere, 
 a sign of bad working conditions, though there was no 
 tune to make inspection. 
 
 "M'sieu' Tom" was rightly informed: These people 
 are less cleanly, self-respecting, and happy than their 
 friends in Douai. The ubiquitous street markets indicate 
 pressure for the utmost cheapness. Wooden shoes are 
 the usual thing. The number of men with amazingly 
 dirty beards and altogether the look of what we would 
 call bums bespeaks considerable alcoholism. Saturday 
 night would pretty surely confirm the general report of 
 wide-spread drunkenness. In the worst quarter of all, 
 many foreign laborers live in evident discomfort in- 
 cluding a number of Spaniards and Chinese. It is al- 
 most too bad that the Germans could not have sent a 
 few bombs here. Then the district might compete better 
 with some of those new and up-to-date plants which now 
 dot the north particularly with the help of the power 
 which can be shipped here from the great hydro-electric 
 establishments over in Grenoble in a manner to compete 
 with coal! According to a current journal, one of the 
 group of British steel men that recently visited this region 
 was told by a proud employer that a certain building 
 had lasted for seventy-five years. He could not forbear 
 the pleasure of making the interpreter inquire: 
 
 "How long would it take you to tear it down and put 
 up a better one?" 
 
 My own mood of depression caused by all this was re- 
 echoed by the head of a local miners' union: 
 
 "No, we do not get much into politics here or, for 
 that matter, into anything outside our work. For the 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 211 
 
 present we have all we can do to keep the employers from 
 pushing wages still farther below the means of life. And 
 how can one live already? Do you know what potatoes 
 cost here? And wine! la, la! Well! . . . Yes, they 
 call us into conference and so, in a sense, recognize us, 
 but all the conference is for is to tell us that they, in their 
 power, have decided upon another decrease. With jobs 
 getting scarce throughout the country, what can we do? " 
 (Business of very wry face and highly active shoulders.) 
 ". . . No, there are not many Communists, but Socialists 
 of these is every one. . . . Jouhaux and his C. G. T? 
 . . . Yes, he's a marvellous orator, but well, for them 
 as for us all, the employer is too strongly united. . . . 
 Of course, the French engineers visit the pits daily but 
 only to push the workers for more production. They 
 have little interest in us workers as workers. " 
 
 With wages of unskilled labor as low as twelve francs, 
 narrow sheets evidently are pretty nearly universal for 
 the town's working population, organized or unorganized. 
 In some of even the best homes here, too, there are prob- 
 ably a number of maids who wish for some undiscouraged 
 union leader to fight for them against the national habi- 
 tude that urges, at every level, to the cutting of narrow 
 sheets and close corners. A French friend tells of one 
 well-to-do native householder who has kept the same 
 servant year after year, not only on a meagre salary but 
 also and the situation forms a part of the regular gossip 
 among her friends in constant need of enough to eat ! 
 Such a possibility can be understood only after seeing 
 the French housekeeper start the morning's cooking by 
 taking Jier great key, unlocking the cupboard, laying out 
 
212 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 exactly the proper amount of eggs, flour, bread, sugar, 
 butter, and salt, and then relocking everything before 
 she leaves the maid to her day's performance. The 
 strange thing and the characteristic is that this par- 
 ticular maid, so the gossip runs, continues loyally to stick 
 by her elderly and careful mistress. For one thing, she 
 obtains a small pension from the local welfare depart- 
 ment; for another, she is afraid that her patroness, known 
 as she is throughout the town for her closeness, might 
 not be able to get another servant ! 
 
 The discouragement of the union official increases my 
 wonderment whether the French labor movement does 
 not owe its present below-par condition partly to its em- 
 phasis upon oratory perhaps even its normal enjoyment 
 of about one-tenth the influence of the British move- 
 ment. It ought not necessarily to raise any presumption 
 against the strategy or brains of M. Jouhaux that he is 
 one of the country's best speakers: our American labor 
 leaders are also orators and amazingly able presiding 
 officers. But they apparently plan to do more of then* 
 work with the employers, and they are less advertised 
 than are the leaders here for " giving the word" at this 
 mass-meeting or that. Although we in America have 
 developed the luncheon or the evening meeting far be- 
 yond any other country of the world, nevertheless, we 
 do not give anything like the same importance to the 
 trained user of words and the expert arouser of emotions. 
 It would hardly be too much to say that not only French 
 labor but France in general is ruled by its orators. 
 
 I wonder whether that in turn is not in part the result 
 of the earlier mentioned scarcity of newspaper facts of 
 
.THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 213 
 
 the French emphasis upon views rather than news. Cer- 
 tainly this plays into the hands of these " givers of words." 
 In any event, it is refreshing to see just now that Leon 
 Bourgeois is using his oratory over at Geneva, along with 
 Lord Robert Cecil's, in an appeal for a wide-spread news- 
 paper and general publicity programme in favor of the 
 League. Incidentally, M. Bourgeois and his colleague 
 M. Viviani, France's greatest speakers, are members of 
 the Union of Intellectual Workers. 
 
 It is to be noted, however, that even the streets here 
 endeavor to make up for the shortcomings of the local 
 papers. Throughout the length of one thoroughfare to- 
 day I noticed the legend: 
 
 STREET OF MICHEL RONDET, FOUNDER OF THE UNION OF THE 
 MINERS OF THE LOIRE, BORN 1841, DIED 1908 
 
 Who knows but that our own labor problem might be 
 advanced if we were willing thus to give publicity to 
 the founder of a genuinely public-spirited and well-man- 
 aged union? 
 
 Not far away is " President Wilson Street." It is per- 
 haps a little less popular now that his supposed constit- 
 uency has so far deserted him. But to date there has 
 been no unfriendliness shown me as an American of the 
 working class except that no one over here is able quite 
 to understand us. 
 
 P. S. "At Roubaix-Turcoing," so the evening paper 
 reports, "the various groups of general strikers now in- 
 clude the municipal employees who make the daily ex- 
 amination at the custom-house gates of the city. They 
 exhibit their dissatisfaction in a peculiar manner. They 
 
214 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 present themselves without their uniforms before their 
 offices at the ordinary hours. These offices, however, 
 remain closed and the inactive officials content them- 
 selves with instructing the public to pass their declara- 
 tions of taxable merchandise under the office door ! . . . 
 Four employees connected with the funeral services have 
 been authorized by their colleagues in the general strike 
 to continue with then 1 work. The bodies, however, will 
 not be interred except in the temporary vault which holds 
 a very limited number." 
 
 In the same despatch, Mr. Jouhaux is quoted as be- 
 lieving that the trouble is caused by the " patrons," who 
 will not see anything but their private interests. "What 
 is needed is a reformation of the entire system of pro- 
 duction based upon co-operation and not competition 
 among the nations." 
 
 A near-by column gives the news that in view of the 
 alarming spread of unemployment in England, some 
 hundreds of British workers are now being set to work 
 in the devastated regions to clean up with pick and 
 shovel the towns they once defended with rifle and 
 grenade! What mighty currents are set in motion 
 throughout the world by the everlasting pressure for a 
 job! 
 
 Nevers, 
 Saturday, Sept. 17. 
 
 " An old concern, France ! An elderly and conservative 
 people, these French also skilled in the art of enjoying 
 what they have instead of ' hustling ' to get more." So 
 any visitor is certain to cogitate after a few days in such 
 long-established conditions as the past week has shown. 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 215 
 
 This afternoon, for instance, permitted a visit to a cathe- 
 dral which has been ministering to the religious needs of 
 the local population for something like 800 years with 
 a smaller church not far away dating and serving con- 
 tinuously from the tenth century ! 
 
 Even here the inevitable posters call upon the laborer 
 to defend his wage against every cut. 
 
 "For in defending your wages you are defending your 
 life and the lives of your companions and your children. 
 Organize with your fellow workers! Ally yourself with 
 your union ! That is your sole defense." 
 
 Such a modern appeal has evidently to beat hard upon 
 the huge inertia of centuries before it can greatly disturb 
 the " equilibrium" of the nation's life. No wonder these 
 towns appear to delight in their setness it serves as a 
 Gibraltar against some of these new-fangled threats that 
 come only with modern industrialism. So the new shops 
 now being located here by the "Paris, Lyons, and Medi- 
 terranean Railway" are probably not altogether wel- 
 comed by the older people, for the entrance of large-scale 
 industrial operation may change the social face of the 
 city and increase the number of these posters. That is 
 not very likely, judging from the attractive comfort of 
 the workers 7 homes already erected amid the pleasant 
 trees and just near enough to both the factory and the 
 indispensable fishing. 
 
 Under such conditions the poster preachment is not 
 likely to have the same appeal here as over at the famous 
 Schneider artillery establishment visited yesterday at 
 Le Creusot. There the company has shown great in- 
 terest in pensions and the older native workers appear 
 
216 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 well contented. Among the younger French workers, 
 also, plans are evidently in operation for educating those 
 most anxious to increase their skill and so advance their 
 standing. The foreign-born laborers, however, appear 
 to leave something to be desired. Among these are to 
 be seen an amazing contingent of 3,000 Chinese ! Most 
 of them live in a guarded cantonment, but some have 
 worked out the contracts which brought them over dur- 
 ing the war, and now give signs of affluence in their white 
 collars and stylish clothes. Their jobs in the plant do 
 not appear any worse than those of the foreign-born 
 workers in our own American steel plants, except that 
 machinery has evidently not been introduced to the vari- 
 ous processes to anything like the same extent as at home. 
 If it were, a good many of the present force of 18,000 
 workers 30,000 during the war could probably be laid 
 off. 
 
 There at Le Creusot and also in the great artillery 
 works at St. Chamont, near St. Etienne, one gets again 
 the same impressions as in the north the importance 
 of the French engineer as an operating official, the clean- 
 liness and accuracy of the French machinist, the popular- 
 ity of American machinery, and, oddly enough, the slight 
 use of labor-saving machinery, particularly hi the rolling- 
 mills. Still further, practically all machinery here goes 
 at considerably less speed than at home. This last makes 
 it easier to understand how American steel comes to be 
 made so cheaply that it can compete with any steel in 
 all the world in spite of the fact that the operators of its 
 machines are better paid per day and per hour of work 
 than the steel workers here, or, for that matter, in any 
 
IN "THE HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 217 
 
 other country. In the new and up-to-date departments 
 at both these establishments, as also at Krupp's, great 
 locomotives are occupying hands which previously were 
 busied with armor-plate and cannon now that all the 
 world is waiting to see what the Washington Conference 
 or the League will say about these last. 
 
 There is evidently less of the military discipline in the 
 industrial relations and a warmer personal relationship 
 between employer and employee in these French towns 
 than at Krupp's. But hi different ways the same word 
 paternalism appears to express the chief fault of all. 
 Both Krupp's and Le Creusot, however, are examples of 
 ownership which passes regularly from father to son 
 through several generations ownership both of the 
 plant for the masters and of the jobs in the plant for the 
 men; and in the course of such generations a good many 
 difficulties between manager and worker stand a fair 
 chance of getting straightened out to a degree we find 
 it hard to appreciate. Such long-continued closeness 
 the utmost conceivable antithesis to the absentee manage- 
 ment such as we know so well creates, however, all the 
 more expectation of cleanlier towns than either Essen or 
 Le Creusot or St. Chamont, and better living conditions 
 than at the latter two. As at St. Etienne, it must be 
 remembered, also, that in these French manufacturing 
 centres the whole mode of life is less compelling than 
 that of such an American centre as, say, Chicago. Here 
 the farm is close by with, usually, a demand for native 
 workers who may not be happy in the factory. It is 
 strange to step out from watching the assembling of hand- 
 some, up-to-the-minute locomotives or of ultra-modern 
 
218 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 "tanks" which replace their caterpillar tread on level 
 ground with motor wheels that cover fifty miles an hour, 
 and then hi the street have to wait for a teaYn of oxen 
 to pass ! 
 
 The broad shoulders of those oxen support the impres- 
 sions of the week and more or less of the whole summer 
 as to the secondary position which France gives to 
 modern industry as compared with us youngsters across 
 the Atlantic. In that connection, by the way, this morn- 
 ing's paper gives a storiette by a well-known writer which 
 sets out the national emphasis upon security in a manner 
 fairly shocking. According to the tale, the aged father 
 permits the young son's marriage to a stylish young so- 
 ciety woman. Shortly after, however, he breaks the news 
 that he has suddenly come upon severe financial reverses. 
 As a result, the loyal son and the new wife cut down their 
 scale of living hi order to make him a long series of loans. 
 Finally the young man is forced to try to save his life 
 by a short and inexpensive vacation, just as the hoped- 
 for grandson is born. In vain. The strain has been too 
 great. On the return from the funeral, the old father 
 strokes lovingly the head of his grandchild in the arms 
 of the young, but widowed, mother, as he breaks the 
 news: 
 
 "At any rate, I am most happy to think that the child 
 will never need to worry about his future. You see," 
 as the poor widow tries to understand the reason for so 
 cruel a deception, "you see, I have this long time kept 
 a fortune ready for him 200,000 francs in all ! Is it 
 not splendid? I told you about my supposed financial 
 troubles only in order to make sure that you would not 
 
THE CLOSENESS BETWEEN MODERN INDUSTRIAL AND CONSER- 
 VATIVE AGRICULTURAL FRANCE IS TYPIFIED IN LE CREUSOT 
 
 You "step out from watching the assembling of handsome, up-to-the-minute loco- 
 motives or of ultra-modern ' Tanks ' and then in the street have to wait for a 
 team of oxen to pass ! " 
 
 IN EUROPE GENERALLY, AS IN THIS SUBURB OF PARIS, EVERYBODY 
 WORKS, INCLUDING THE DOG 
 
THE "HALL OF THE REFORMATION" 219 
 
 induce my son to live beyond his means and thereby 
 ruin us and this my grandson." 
 
 Friends here say that the story is somewhat exaggerated 
 but, on the whole, not untrue to the French requirement 
 of a sure future whatever its cost in terms of the present. 
 
 Am sorry fast travel has made impossible the usual 
 number of personal contacts with the workers. Glad, 
 however, not to have missed what is evidently the very 
 heart of the country's older iron and coal industries, espe- 
 cially now that these represent the new post-war France 
 in suffering the increased complexity caused by the in- 
 flux of large numbers of foreign-born workers. Whether 
 she will avoid the class misunderstandings and conflicts 
 brought by the same change to America, will depend on 
 whether the employers see the necessity of modified poli- 
 cies or whether, like many American employers, they 
 continue to think of their relationships to their workers 
 hi the same easy-going terms of simpler days. If they 
 do, they can be more easily forgiven here, considering 
 both the resistance and the safeguard afforded by these 
 hundreds of years of simpler existence and relationships 
 which present themselves here at every corner. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it requires a good deal of an effort 
 to think of mixing in the stream of active, modern worries, 
 hopes, and fears of the troubled world of the latest 1921 
 model which the streets of Paris will present in the morn- 
 ing. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND 
 
 Paris, 
 
 Friday, Sept. 23. 
 
 HERE are a few results of the week's operations as a 
 human listening post along a wide front, beginning with 
 the forceful and urbane statesman now occupying the 
 chair of the President of the Council, or Prune Minister, 
 in the famous and imposing offices at the Quai d'Orsay, 
 M. Aristide Briand: 
 
 " Yes, my experience as a member of the working class 
 that composes so large a part of the population has un- 
 doubtedly had much to do with my serving as President 
 of the Council a number of times. You know, I was the 
 father of the 'C. G. TV and, with Jaures, a co-founder 
 of the Socialist group. Sometimes, as you can imagine, 
 is it not so ? I have regretted their attitude many tunes 
 my worker friends have turned upon me because I felt 
 constrained as an official of the government, you under- 
 stand, to put the interests of the Republic above those 
 of a class any class. (You recall when many years ago 
 I strenuously fought the strike of the railway men, yes?) 
 Nevertheless, I know that the dangerous moment for 
 any government arrives when it gets out of touch with 
 the mass of the people. That is why Germany lost the 
 war. Its government failed to represent the true senti- 
 ments and aspirations of the German people. Such a 
 
 220 
 
PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND 221 
 
 separation is very difficult here in France. Then, too, 
 most of our native workers are intelligent, trained arti- 
 sans, makers of goods of quality rather than quantity. 
 It has been so for generations. . . . Yes, it is different 
 now that we have regained the lost provinces with their 
 iron ore and their potash. But the old artisanship is too 
 deeply ingrained in the French spirit ever to be lost, and 
 we shall add to it the new spirit needed for finding the 
 markets for our surplus. 
 
 "In that connection I hope that the great nations will 
 find it increasingly easy to get together not only for the 
 discussion of political policies but also for agreeing upon 
 what might be called commercial and industrial spheres 
 of influence, thus reducing to a minimum the possibility 
 of war-like competition. Certainly there is now increased 
 willingness on the part of all thoughtful governments to 
 recognize their base in economic and industrial affairs. 
 And that base is not national but world-wide. No one 
 nation can alone cure itself of the present unemployment. 
 The causes of the difficulty are international; they re- 
 quire international world-wide treatment. In the for- 
 mer days before we understood the economic ties which 
 bind the world's people together, the statesmen gathered 
 to discuss a boundary or some other political problem. In 
 the light of our present understanding, I do not see why 
 the statesmen and diplomats should not get together for 
 finding ways and means of bettering business conditions, 
 and most of all of avoiding unemployment. Surely noth- 
 ing is more evident to any one who has been a worker 
 or close to them than that no people can be happy unless 
 its means of livelihood has been given the utmost of stabil- 
 
222 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 ity and regularity. Failure in that regard drives men 
 toward Bolshevism, is it not so? 
 
 "So with Germany if the German people settle down 
 to some regularity of life, and republican institutions 
 ^become more firmly established, with less of murder and 
 threats from the military reactionaries, then I for one 
 believe we French will have slight reason to fear the re- 
 sults of their normal existence and development. 
 
 "As to the Society of Nations, the Upper Silesian dis- 
 pute gives an excellent example of its possibilities. With- 
 out it, fighting might be going on at this moment. Just 
 see what has happened ! We diplomats sit about the 
 council table. After we have heard the reports of the 
 technical advisers, we are agreed yes, we are ready to 
 sign. But there are certain of us whose people whose 
 publics, you understand would not consent to such 
 action on the part of then* representatives. They are 
 still living in the high emotions of the war, is it not so? 
 Yes, they care comparatively little for expert reports; 
 they are too excited to wish to make big decisions upon 
 the basis of calm and careful study. Well, then, what 
 is to be done? In the old days we should have had to 
 separate, each wondering who would be the first to save 
 his dignity by recourse to arms. But now now we are 
 able to give the problem over to the League. We can 
 have confidence that they will hear the same reports, and 
 so will come to much the same decision. In that case, 
 the right answer will have been obtained, but you see 
 plainly, is it not so? quite without any statesman or 
 political party paying for the right answer the price of 
 their existence and further usefulness. Is it not useful? 
 
PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND 223 
 
 Yes, all of us diplomats are now in a position, if any of 
 our peoples dislike this decision, to shrug our shoulders 
 and say that it is, of course, something quite beyond our 
 control. So, you see, the League is very useful here be- 
 cause it permits us all to give calmer thought to certain 
 great subjects, for here in Europe a Prime Minister can- 
 not go too far ahead of his people or he is given his de- 
 parture. It is not quite so true in America where in a 
 sense you are less democratic in that your representatives 
 are chosen for a certain fixed period. 
 
 "All this, I think, is typical of the new situation in 
 which governments exist to-day. We must try to quiet 
 ourselves, to see things clearly, and then work upon them 
 unitedly. Just as victory on the battle-field came only 
 when our programmes had been amalgamated, so now 
 we must try to steer away from separate councils and 
 separate programmes. And in this necessity, the economic 
 situation is not at all different from the political. In both 
 these fields, furthermore, if you will permit me, America 
 has too wide a range of interests throughout the world 
 for her permanently to stand aside." 
 
 As far removed from him as possible is the editor of 
 the Communist paper, L'Humanite, M. Amede*e Dunois. 
 In America those who fear the good sense of any group 
 they don't know would long ago have put in jail the 
 writer of his virulent attacks upon the present system 
 of society, or his various defenses of the Bolshevist regime. 
 It^was a surprise, accordingly, to find the man's face a 
 striking resemblance to the pictured Christ ! From mo- 
 ment to moment his look of seriousness, rather than sad- 
 ness, was lighted by the gleam of the enthusiast's hope 
 
224 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 almost cheer as he recounted the progress being made 
 by his cause throughout the country: 
 
 "Yes, we are disappointed that affairs do not go better 
 in Russia. Nevertheless, it has to date served only to 
 increase our faith and our determination that some day 
 the proletariat shall rule in this country, and, by reason 
 of the Russian experiment, with less need of compromise 
 with capital than there. In fact, the morale of the true 
 Communist here has never been better. You have 
 noticed, perhaps, yes? how close we are to the control 
 of the ' General Federation of Labor'? Indeed, if the 
 vote is counted carefully according to membership we 
 are already in numerical mastery. The federation of- 
 ficials, these oppose us only because they are far from 
 the mass of the voters much farther than we. Natu- 
 rally they want to hold their positions. These labor 
 bureaucrats it is from these that most of our opposition 
 comes. Just think, to-day the Socialist organ of the 
 federation is selling only one-twentieth of our own paper's 
 circulation! Remarkable, is it not?" 
 
 And now one of the editors of the Socialist paper. Even 
 though a marked conservative compared to Dunois, he 
 is said to have missed narrowly a firing squad for his dis- 
 loyalty during the war. Following the heavy loss of 
 federation membership and so, of course, of circulation, 
 he is depressed at the prospect of the immediate future 
 of the organized workers of France: 
 
 "No, we don't take the Communists seriously you 
 see, we have too big a proportion on our farms. These 
 are not likely to give over their little holdings. . . . Yes, 
 to be sure, there is something to hope for in the worker's 
 
PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND 225 
 
 present intense hatred of war as a useless means of settling 
 disputes between nations. The difficulty is that the 
 worker group is not sufficiently well-educated to be proof 
 against the government's propaganda. So if the gov- 
 ernment wanted to-morrow to make out a case against 
 Italy or England it would within a few weeks so fill every 
 worker in the land and every one else, for that matter 
 with hatred against the enemy that the whole crowd 
 would want to march off at once to the battle-field ! Yes, 
 that's true, though I wish it were not. And education is 
 so slow that I see no way of preventing it for a long time. 
 . . . The great body of organization members bring 
 constant pressure upon the leaders for higher wages 
 always higher wages. But they are slow to study or to 
 work hard in order to increase their ability. The public 
 is also too reluctant to see the necessity of helping its 
 workers to get their proper share of prosperity and so to 
 add to the strength and happiness of the whole state. 
 For both groups the easiest way appears to put the whole 
 problem into politics and then count the votes. Our 
 railway men, for instance, can hardly be relied upon 
 greatly to assist the general labor movement, simply 
 because they hope always to obtain their wish through 
 politics." 
 
 "I have plenty of friends among the younger genera- 
 tion of Frenchmen," says a young American connected 
 with an official body of observers. "They discuss by 
 the hour not whether France can live or not, but whether 
 she can last as much as fifty years or not. Their ideals 
 are men like Poincare and Tardieu. For them the situa- 
 tion is so serious as to justify any sort of military or other 
 
226 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 policy which aims to secure for France the maximum 
 chance at the saving of her life. Naturally the explosion 
 of the huge quantity of chemicals at Oppau confirms 
 their fears of a new, deadly chemical warfare. They 
 cannot conceive of a restored France without German 
 money nor a safe France without either a restrained 
 Germany or an armed France. Meanwhile they believe 
 like many others, including some Americans here 
 that the unconscious influence of America is to encourage 
 Germany not to pay also to encourage many of the 
 different nations not to accept the decisions made at Ver- 
 sailles as to their boundaries and so to keep the whole 
 Continent in a turmoil. All agree that the interests of 
 America are well represented by the unofficial repara- 
 tions commission under the leadership of Mr. R. W. Boy- 
 den of Boston. Having no official standing in the dis- 
 pute, the commission is able to await the moment when 
 Italy and England on one side get into a deadlock with 
 France and Belgium on the other. Then with the help 
 of Mr. Boyden's remarkable ability to listen and think, 
 or tell a good story at the right moment it appears won- 
 drously able at suggesting a third alternative which 
 secures the general approval. " 
 
 An English statesman gave the European view-point 
 on America yesterday when he told of going to the office 
 of the commission not knowing that it had moved across 
 the street: 
 
 "When the concierge tried to stop me, I waved him 
 proudly aside and went up. When I found the place 
 bare I had a terrible shock. 'My God I' I said to myself, 
 'here these Americans have got out from under again V" 
 
PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND 227 
 
 And finally a Paris business man who has had con- 
 siderable touch with American industry: 
 
 "Yes, the war has caused much trouble in French 
 homes. But among the best people divorce is practically 
 unthinkable. Partly, because in many cases half a man's 
 fortune must go to the wife as alimony. Then there are 
 always the children, and, you know, the French worship 
 them too much to let them suffer in that way. . . . Me, 
 I wanted, of course, to make a good marriage, as we say. 
 It was necessary, therefore, to wait till I had made my 
 career. That meant waiting until I was thirty-five. Of 
 course, you would not expect a man to live as a monk 
 till then! . . . Now I save one-half of all I earn, yet 
 my wife fears always that I spend too much on her and 
 my family. Yes, so careful and so anxious are we French 
 for the future of our families and our children. My 
 friends, they are all shocked when I say I will not try to 
 give my fortune to my boy and girl. I will rather train 
 them to earn their livings, my daughter at typewriting 
 and my son in engineering. That is not French. Here 
 the father at the head of a business is too apt to put his 
 son in after him even though it might be much better to 
 hire an outside manager. 
 
 "You see, when we earn or make money here we must 
 be careful not to risk it. It is too hard to make it again. 
 For one thing, our business is so much smaller than with 
 you. That is why many people here look down upon a 
 friend who advertises. 'Ah! Alphonse is advertising/ 
 they say. 'He is then perhaps alarmed; things cannot 
 be going well with him.' . . . That may prevent our 
 learning to sell our new supplies of iron and steel upon 
 
228 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 the great scale now required. Me, I fear for it. I think 
 it is more likely that we will make the supplies, yes 
 for we do that well with our capable engineers but that 
 we will put them in the market through the selling or- 
 ganizations which have been built up throughout the 
 world by the Germans, Belgians, or the English. But 
 nobody can tell. Here as everywhere in Europe the situa- 
 tion is that of a kaleidoscope. Every week it changes- 
 yes, almost every day. No one in France I think also 
 in Germany can be dogmatic about the future. It is 
 only too hard even to know the present so new and 
 strange it all is from anything before." 
 
 To-morrow at ten o'clock our airplane starts for Lon- 
 don. Perhaps getting up in the air will give a perspec- 
 tive helpful to the final placing of the puzzle pieces 
 with the help of the cool-headed cogitations of our stolid 
 British friends. 
 
 P. S. The 80,000 strikers at Roubaix-Turcoing have 
 not yet got together with "les patrons," who plead the 
 disordered markets of Russia, Germany, the Balkans, 
 etc., as requiring a lowering of wages. Fifteen thousand 
 soldiers are on duty in the effort to keep the peace. The 
 country's standing army, by the way, is reported this 
 morning as totalling 769,628, including 87,000 now in 
 the Rhine district. 
 
 Paris Flying Field, 
 Saturday morning, 
 September 24. 
 
 Waiting for our " avion" from London reported de- 
 layed by fog. Luckily the time passes quickly. Every 
 few minutes a motor drives up and unloads a group of 
 men and women who walk in for the weighing of their 
 
PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND 229 
 
 bags and then pass out to the field and up the steps 
 into a small monoplane or into the salon of one of the 
 larger biplanes marked, say, for Brussels or Berlin. A 
 moment later an assistant gives the big propeller a whirl. 
 With the exhaust roaring, the machine "taxies" down 
 the field, then turns and, with a perfect cannonading of 
 the exhaust at full speed, bounces between ground and 
 air for a few rods, then finally is up and off into the gray 
 haze of the far horizon. A little later a big bird is visible 
 from the direction of Strassburg or, perhaps, Prague, and 
 shortly thereafter, when the big blades are still, the at- 
 tendants put up the steps for a group of stylish people 
 to alight and walk through the custom-house and into 
 the taxi for down-town Paris. 
 
 Evidently this matter of air transportation has come 
 to stay because it has come to serve. Instead of spend- 
 ing four or five hours on the train to the Channel, some 
 uncomfortable weather on that restless water, then the 
 train again to London, a flight of less than three hours 
 from here puts one in Croyden Field, a half-hour's 
 ride from Piccadilly Circus. And the cost is practically 
 the same as first-class railway fare. Such charges require 
 the help of government subsidy. That air transportation 
 is so common here and not in America is, I presume, be- 
 cause it is one of the commercial by-products of the uni- 
 versal interest in national self-protection here. 
 
 At present my chief objection is that this Grand Cen- 
 tral Station of the air routes is located in a part of Paris 
 which is most travelled by funerals. Nobody appeared 
 particularly happy to come, this morning, past six differ- 
 ent hearses and processions ! 
 
 Here comes the huge bird now ! 
 
230 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 Up in the air ! 
 
 The noise of the two motors out on the great wings is 
 deafening. It's impossible to talk to any of the seven 
 other passengers in the wicker chairs on both sides of the 
 aisle that opens out from the cabin to the cockpit and 
 our two pilots. Already we have out our papers and 
 pencils for naming to each other this or that of the land- 
 marks passing beneath. The beauty of the country at 
 our feet is amazing great plaques of green with huge 
 figures of yellow sunlight where the clouds let it through. 
 Now the pattern is crisscrossed with the slender shining 
 silvers of the steel rails. We must be up only about 1,000 
 feet, else we could not see the swishing of the horses' tails. 
 Here's a field of a wondrous combination of mauve and 
 pink the difference between the turned and unturned 
 earth of the farmer's plough. If only he could see the 
 stunning rug he's making! And that colossal bouquet 
 of different shades of green and brown and rusty yel- 
 lows of course it's nothing but a new aspect of an old 
 forest ! 
 
 What a satisfying noise comes from the solid grind of 
 hard-working motors. I hug every particle of it for 
 the reassurance it gives of the force that is working for 
 us. Being in a balloon without being able to hear the 
 gas working for you must be terrible ! If the grind hesi- 
 tates or changes for the briefest fraction of an instant, 
 every particle of soul and body is on tiptoe and regular 
 breathing returns only with the regularity of the strain- 
 ing motors. 
 
 Field-glasses report that the great machine shop di- 
 rectly beneath us believes thoroughly in cleanliness with- 
 
PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND 231 
 
 in its compact high fence. . . . This method of travel 
 makes plainer than ever how solidly France has placed 
 her conservative feet upon beautiful farms beautiful 
 and comfortable farms, like that one over there now where 
 the pigs are scampering about the edge of the little pond 
 by the manure pile within the hollow square of the artistic 
 and bounteous brick barn. 
 
 Behold Beauvais cathedral beneath us like a great 
 architectural and ecclesiastical hen protecting her chil- 
 dren beneath those red-tiled roofs of the compact town. 
 The hen must feel queer to feel herself become a land- 
 mark for air pilots ! The long rectangular black bug down 
 there is doubtless an express-train. The engineer prob- 
 ably takes his fifty miles an hour seriously; from here it 
 looks like old stuff ! And now, just beneath us, the river 
 Somme shows a network of burnished gold as it goes out 
 to meet the sea, in a great yellow ocean stretching off 
 into the hazy north. At the Channel's edge the funnels 
 of a sunken steamer show up through the breakers, while 
 the dozens of little brown triangles of sail bring the fish- 
 ing fleet back home. 
 
 The air is changing. ... I wish the plane's tip would 
 not move about quite so much. It's unpleasant, too, to 
 see the drops of oil come down out of the engine on one 
 of the great steel struts, quaver on their way out to the 
 wing's farthest edge and then gather up courage from 
 other tiny drops and finally, after many efforts, jump 
 boldly off into space. Wonder where they land or if 
 they land. . . . Now France is hidden behind a bank 
 of clouds and England is nowhere to be seen nothing 
 but green water and whitecaps beneath us and inside us 
 
232 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 the memory of the plane which only a few days ago in 
 this same part of the route suddenly fell as its motors 
 stopped, one of them starting up again just as it struck 
 the water. . . . Nothing ahead except a bank of clouds 
 now they're alongside. Each wisp seems to hiss its 
 name as we whizz past it mist! mist! Clouds hurry 
 by on both sides. Has the evening arrived so suddenly? 
 . . . Think I'll return to Paris by train ! 
 
 Ah, there's England ahead ! Feeling better, thanks. 
 
 Who could believe it possible to find England so dif- 
 ferent from France with so small a piece of water be- 
 tween! No longer the red roofs and the mauves and 
 pinks and lavenders in the fields. Tiles and turf here all 
 of the same tawny or dull brown. Amazing! Is this 
 the result of a different climate or merely a different dis- 
 position? Or both? And is the second caused by the 
 first? No wonder the English are matter-of-fact and 
 the French emotional ! Yes, European nature is a quick- 
 change artist! A thirty-mile partition and a complete 
 change of both aspect and disposition ! 
 
 Nothing but clouds again black and ugly. Ought to 
 be picking up the smoke of London. Just to be frank, 
 I wish we would. I don't like that stage-whisper hiss of 
 hurrying fog, even though it's we who do the hurrying. 
 Wonder if they have gas enough to get back to those 
 big fields by the coast, if we have to land. Evidently 
 the motors are unhappy. Funny how disconcerting that 
 is. The pilot is evidently anxious. 
 
 Neighbor across the aisle points to clouds and shakes 
 head. I laugh but find I can't hear myself laugh- 
 ing. Makes a fellow feel queer as though he didn't 
 
PARIS AND BY AIR TO ENGLAND 233 
 
 mean it. Why doesn't London show up? The sheep 
 are bigger here no, we are flying much lower only 
 two or three hundred feet. That's dangerous for so huge 
 a machine. Still the clouds and their whispers 
 "Miss-ed! Missed!" Not nice! Well, if they're right, 
 I've certainly had a fine tune while the going was good. 
 Clouds, clouds. . . . More engine trouble! It must 
 be ticklish getting this affair down into one of these tiny 
 fields. Well, anyway, " everybody's been awfully good 
 to me" given me a bully time, like suppose I ought 
 to have thanked 'em more. Engine's stopped! We're 
 going down fast ! Whew ! we certainly gave that roof 
 a close call ! What's up or, rather, down ! We're bounc- 
 ing! Wha. . . . 
 
 Later. Police station Maidstone. 
 
 " Hills between us and Croyden too high," the pilot 
 explained after bringing us to a standstill hi a stubble- 
 field as gently as a dove. "We'll get a machine and take 
 you up to the station near by, and you can take the train 
 for the thirty miles into London." 
 
 We had hardly landed before half the population of 
 the village was out to greet us, including the local con- 
 stable. Now after a ride in an American flivver-van 
 we are in the status of practically " alien invaders." One 
 of the passengers has just declared a quart of whiskey; 
 that and our surrendered passports are the only results 
 after waiting four hours for the local excise officials. 
 
 Still later. A friend who waited at Croyden reports 
 that the company officials there were apparently more 
 worried about us than we ourselves and I'm willing to 
 testify that that's saying a lot. 
 
234 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 "Up until you reached the French side of the Channel, 
 the manager was continually talking with your pilot by 
 wireless telephone with everything quite all right. Then 
 for what seemed several hours, but probably wasn't, he 
 was unable to get you. He kept calling for you out into 
 space with no reply whatsoever. Sort of creepy yes, 
 jolly uncanny, you know. And the Mogul, he nearly 
 went off his head ! Finally when your man answered, 
 he threw down the instrument and waltzed about the 
 place yes, over the chairs and on the desk! When he 
 calmed down he got word of your trouble with the clouds. 
 Finally, he gave the pilot orders to pick out the biggest 
 field he could find and send you on by rail. ' Jolly fine 
 pilot, that chap the best in all the air lanes of the world/ 
 he told us when he finally got word you were down safe 
 and sound. Next time I'd rather not meet you at Croy- 
 den, if you don't mind." 
 
 Until fog is mastered I'm afraid that flying is not going 
 greatly to relieve the press of Europe's crowded room 
 inside those various frontiers, although it must be a great 
 joy to fly over not merely one but several of those inces- 
 sant custom-houses ! 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 READJUSTMENT IN ENGLAND 
 
 London, 
 Friday, Sept. 30. 
 
 THE first man encountered here was an ex-soldier out 
 of work and asking for a penny ! The 2,000,000 of British 
 unemployed make practically the same proportion as 
 the 4,000,000 now reported jobless in America. The 
 country's mayors have been telling Lloyd George that 
 the situation is too wide-spread for them to cope with 
 on any merely local basis. M. Briand would say, and 
 Lloyd George would probably agree with him, that every 
 prime minister would do well to go to some international 
 and world-wide central office and make exactly the same 
 report. As a matter of fact, the tariff walls erected by 
 the different countries in their single-handed efforts at 
 job protection have so far done about as much harm as 
 good. 
 
 The new idea here seems to be that every man has 
 an inalienable right to either "Work or Maintenance." 
 The discussion is not so much what is the right amount 
 to pay for a workless worker in the form of insurance 
 benefits over 300,000 have drawn their maximum 
 twenty-two weeks of benefits but what constitutes a 
 full standard of living for a family of, say, five, whether 
 obtained by work or charity. 
 
 " Why don't I go over and get a job at B 's?" one 
 
 worker asks. "Well, why should I work my 'ead off for 
 
 235 
 
236 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 a quid (pound) a week . . . yes, a quid a week. Well, 
 'ere I am on the local doles a-gettin' my two pounds- 
 no, that's the doles (charity), not insurance money be- 
 cause that's all done in. On that job I'd get only three 
 pound or, perhaps, three pound ten. That makes, you 
 see, only twenty or thirty shillin* more for my work than 
 for my no-work." 
 
 "Of course, there is a good deal of work that needs 
 doing, but nobody will let it out," so a citizen observes. 
 "It's too expensive. You hire a man to do a short job 
 and he stretches it out to make it last as long as possible. 
 He nurses it until it grows into a big job at a big cost 
 a cost all out of reason. That's his way of keeping him- 
 self from the municipal charity doles and also of making 
 sure that he doesn't take more than his share from other 
 men that need it. Lately one of my own friends, a chap 
 that used to be a good man, told me his story: 'I'm not 
 afraid of work and never 'ave been, but I notice that 
 w'ilst I do one-fourth of the 'ole job, all the others shuffle 
 around and then get paid as much as ever I do. So I'm 
 takin' it now as easy as they and I don't see why as ever 
 I shouldn't.' " 
 
 On the other hand, over in my Welsh mining town, 
 my friends are evidently working considerably harder 
 than when I was among them a year ago.* After the 
 close of the mine strike, hardly more than half of the 
 former workers were hired back but with the surprising 
 result that production became almost normal. Unfor- 
 tunately, there is much unhappiness among them after 
 
 *"Full Up and Fed Up": The Worker's Mind in Crowded Britain. 
 (Page 61.) 
 
READJUSTMENT IN ENGLAND 237 
 
 their thirteen weeks' strike and its ending in what they 
 consider a severe defeat. During the first of these weeks, 
 the little town was in an uproar when crowds of the miners 
 tried to prevent the safety men and the office clerks from 
 manning the pumps and saving the mines from destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 "The worse we mikes it for the mawsters, the sooner 
 over. In four days we'll 'ave them on their knees/' so 
 the Bolshies told their fellows. 
 
 "You see that hole up there half-way to the top of 
 the hill?" one of my friends explained. "One of our 
 miners was killed there. You see, the whole place ran 
 out of coals. With the soup kitchens busy, some of the 
 strikers tried to make a living by going up into the hills 
 on almost anybody's property and taking out a few sacks 
 for selling on the street. This one was covered by a fall 
 as he dug. His son ran for help. Just as they were about 
 to reach the old fellow, three other falls came in quick 
 succession and they could hear him dying a few feet 
 away. It has been very bad, here." 
 
 "If the leaders whom we refuse to employ call us un- 
 fair," one of the mine officials explained, "we show them 
 their production records during the days they were prac- 
 tising 'ca-canny.' Some of them know very well that 
 for weeks they filled only one tram of coal a day be- 
 sides boasting about it." 
 
 "Ah, it's terrible," says my old friend, the repairer. 
 "Terrible punishment our leaders do 'ave not to be 
 'set on' again after all this while. But it's fair devils 
 these employers of ours all employers do be fair 
 devils and naught else, I tell ye. ... Only eleven shil- 
 
238 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 lings, one penny, we're gettin' now with another cut 
 to come soon. They do 'ave the power now, ye see ? Yet 
 'twas not oos as was licked only our leaders. They 
 backed down after we told 'em in the vote to stick 
 only a week befoor." 
 
 "Ah," adds the wife, "'twould be all right if only 
 food would come down. Instead it goes always oop. 
 Oh, 'tis terrible for men to 'ave to work for so little; with 
 the children wantin' of their shoes and all, and shoes 
 that dear!" 
 
 Good old Tom, the boss, looked old. An accident had 
 put him into bed for days with life hanging in the balance. 
 
 "Yes, 'e 'ave let down a bit, like, 'e 'ave," volunteered 
 his wife. "'E lets the men carry on now with only 'is 
 eye over them. Because, in a sense o' speakin', the acci- 
 dent was needless; it 'appened, you see, when 'e kept 
 at 'is work after a-finishin' of 'is turn." 
 
 A little later I found the young leader of the "Bolshies," 
 who last year took the trouble to write up into Yorkshire 
 warning his "comrades" there against me as a spy. Re- 
 fused work here in the pits, he is now running a candy 
 store several babies came in with their pennies as we 
 talked. 
 
 "They've the upper hand, now, the masters, but of 
 course, 'tis only temporary. All this unemployment and 
 all this war and bitterness, they are nothing but the set- 
 ting of the stage for the final calling of the turn we Bol- 
 shies are waiting for." 
 
 "Yes, I'd say, they were almost right in believing that 
 another great war will come within twenty years and 
 will bring with it the end of civilization," he replied when 
 
READJUSTMENT IN ENGLAND 239 
 
 I asked him what he thought about this evident con- 
 census of the opinion of both the workers and the states- 
 men of Europe. "Almost right they are, I'd say, but 
 not quite. 'Twill be the end, not of civilization, but of 
 capitalism of the system we now know. That's why 
 we Bolshies are hoping that the President's Conference 
 and the League of Nations will fail. For if they do fail, 
 then all the nations of the earth will be at each other's 
 throats within ten years, without waiting for twenty. 
 And when they do get at each other's throats, all we Bol- 
 shies have to do is to wait 'til they get through with those 
 throats and then we can walk in and own the whole place. 
 . . . Yes, all this unrest and unhappiness is leading to 
 the barricades. And on the other side the barricades 
 you'll find us and the system of society we stand for." 
 
 Perhaps, it is because this states exactly the alternative 
 proposed by the radicals over here that makes Europe 
 so much more interested in pushing forward any pos- 
 sible means of peaceful organization. Thus Mr. Gar- 
 vin, the extremely thoughtful editor of The Observer, 
 expresses his belief that it the League of Nations were 
 to be wrecked to-morrow morning, we should have to 
 organize another or a substitute to-morrow night in order 
 to carry on all the hundred and one responsibilities which 
 have been assigned to it. 
 
 On the train down out of the crowded valley over 
 200,000 people are packed together hi thirty narrow miles 
 a travelling salesman gave a new point of view on the 
 "coops," or co-operative societies: 
 
 "For my own part, I'm jolly well through trying to 
 sell them at all. You see, they have to pay small salaries 
 
240 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 in order to show profit. So everywhere you go^the officer 
 in charge says to you: 'Well, now, Jack, I'm sorry, you 
 know, but 'ere's 'ow it is. Your goods just don't seem 
 to move; just seem to sit on the shelves, like/ You can 
 tell by his eye what's the matter. After you fix a special 
 commission to him personally, he says: 'Right you are! 
 Well, I fancy it will be O. K. now. Good afternoon/ 
 So all up and down the line, palms want to be oiled with 
 5 or 10 per cent velvet." 
 
 At several union offices the same discouragement is 
 evident as hi similar circles hi France. The membership 
 of the miners' union has fallen off immensely. On the 
 street the same kind of workmen who last year talked 
 of the power of the Triple Alliance of miners, transport 
 and railway men as more powerful than the government, 
 now calls it, with a snort of disdain, "the Cripple Al- 
 liance." Of that group, some of the leaders retaliate 
 by blaming the most revolutionary of their adherents 
 for pushing things so hard that they brought down public 
 opinion upon the whole effort of the miners. Personally, 
 I still believe that the decision obtained in the form of 
 " standard wage, standard profit and profit sharing," 
 would have been considered a gain for the workers if 
 industrial conditions at the tune, or since, had been any- 
 thing like normal. 
 
 "It's not strange the coal men lost," so an important 
 member of the steelmen's union expressed himself . " Too 
 many of them 100,000 too many, you might say were 
 out of work before it started. Before it was finished, 
 90 per cent of our own members were on our union funds 
 no coal, no steel, you understand? We got down to 
 
READJUSTMENT IN ENGLAND 241 
 
 our last penny as the worker says, 'Yer cawn't eat yer 
 cike (cake) and 'ave yer ha'penny, too.' . . . The in- 
 dustrial revolution, if it ever comes here which I doubt 
 will break out there in South Wales in such places as 
 you visited unless it breaks out earlier hi Glasgow. 
 For ourselves, our sliding scale of wages up or down, 
 you know, with the selling price of our product has 
 for years avoided bad feeling in steel. Now that work is 
 a little slack we are trying to push our classes hi various 
 technical lines for our members. In fact, at an early 
 conference we're trying to persuade the whole trade-union 
 movement to adopt this same programme everywhere. 
 
 "One reason for the success of our union is that its 
 permanent officials do not come up for re-election every 
 three years, as do most of the officials of most British 
 unions. On the other hand, they can be let out by our 
 executive council on three months' notice at any time. 
 That three-year or periodic re-election is the curse 
 of British unionism. It makes, you see, every official 
 into a trimmer. Every three years and all in between, 
 any wild-eyed member can ask his union officers to go 
 and get the moon for him and his pals, and then shake 
 his finger hi their faces and say: 'Just you come back to 
 us without it and then see what happens to you and your 
 jobs!' Why, the whole force of unionism from Land's 
 End to the Orkneys would be summoned instantly if 
 the employers tried to insert a clause like that for putting 
 their workers on that kind of a carpet every so often. 
 
 "Eight-hour day? Everybody knows it's a huge suc- 
 cess. Where it hasn't worked out, committees of the 
 men themselves have asked for a chance to look things 
 
242 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 over and try to find out why. In one place the committee 
 found nineteen men holding their jobs on pull and favorit- 
 ism nineteen ' umbrella men/ we call them. You know 
 yourself that even a half dozen, if they're paid by results, 
 will raise the very devil about a seventh being 'set on' 
 unless he can increase their output." 
 
 Later a representative employer agreed that the eight- 
 hour day would be the last thing the steel operators would 
 now expect to touch, even though the low German mark 
 has made it necessary for the British steel-makers to pare 
 down their costs to a minimum. 
 
 The mark, incidentally, has now touched bottom at 
 one-third of a cent ! It is inconceivable that wages will 
 be raised proportionately. That may mean more foreign 
 business, perhaps, for Germany, but also more suffering 
 and uncertainty for the worker and especially the " middle 
 classes," and not only there but hi France and elsewhere. 
 
 Extraordinary efforts are going forward here toward 
 getting the unemployed into the radical groups with, 
 according to careful observers, disconcertingly large re- 
 sults. One observer reports 12,000 starving out of 30,000 
 jobless tin-miners in Cornwall. The textile country up 
 around Lancashire is said to be badly scared at the com- 
 petition of the new Indian cotton industry. The pos- 
 sibility of shipping some millions of citizens out of the 
 country is receiving surprisingly serious attention from 
 the public, though the government is reported to be pay- 
 ing slight attention to a reputed offer from Australia to 
 take a million British immigrants during the next two 
 years. Such things make an uncomfortable reminder of 
 the pessimism of a certain prominent American financier 
 
READJUSTMENT IN ENGLAND 243 
 
 who, a few weeks ago in Geneva, expressed to me his 
 belief that England can never again obtain her old in- 
 dustrial pre-eminence. Something like that has already 
 been predicted by an Oxford economist and other experts 
 who believe that in tune the colonies will themselves at 
 home fabricate the raw materials now sent to the island's 
 factories, but their predictions allow considerably longer 
 time than does the American's. Presumably, also, they 
 make larger allowance for the Briton's amazing ability 
 to adjust himself successfully to changed conditions his 
 reduction of " muddling through" to something like a 
 science ! 
 
 This " science" is, presumably, responsible for the 
 signs of the return to pre-war conditions in many lines. 
 The railways come back to private operation this week. 
 The iron and steel business shows real improvement. 
 The exclusive restaurants are reported now to be turn- 
 ing back all not properly attired in dress suit, white vest, 
 "'n' everything." According to a fellow passenger a 
 member of the civil service the damages caused by the 
 British hi France at such places as Douai have all been 
 inspected, adjudicated and settled to the tune of 50,- 
 000,000 pound sterling Ibesides, of course, the 75,000,- 
 000 reported as the cost of repatriating the Belgian 
 refugees. Incidentally he says the next war will not 
 prove so costly in bicycles, now that the governments 
 are requiring their license and registration. In every 
 way the government's attitude toward matters financial 
 here appears immensely better than that of any Con- 
 tinental power. Surely, that is a good symptom. 
 
 Another evidence of this astonishing British ability to 
 
244 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 meet changing circumstances is in the new relationship 
 established since the war between the mother country 
 and her colonies. According to it, all parts of the Empire 
 now share in the responsibility for declaring war and in 
 general enjoy a closer connection than ever before. The 
 French call it "The United States of Great Britain." 
 Here its new name is "The Commonwealth of Nations 
 known as the British Empire." I believe time will show 
 it the most important change in world institutions since 
 1918. 
 
 There is no question but that one great cause or per- 
 haps only a symptom of this genius for modification 
 and adjustment is the English newspaper. It has been 
 a perfect feast after France and Germany to devour here 
 each day, especially Sunday, great editions loaded down 
 with detailed news stories from not only Britain but also 
 the Continent, America, Australia, the Orient, and the 
 Islands of the Sea. With so much information about 
 their customers everywhere, added to the extraordinarily 
 low overhead permitted by the age of so many of its manu- 
 facturing establishments, it is no wonder this people is, 
 normally, so able somehow to keep selling its goods in 
 every corner of the world. 
 
 Unhappily, the week has brought one great disappoint- 
 ment. With all my heart I have been nursing the hope 
 that stolid old England would find reason for distrusting, 
 yes, for largely discounting, France's fear of Germany 
 and so prove wrong my own failure to discount it. This 
 hope was dashed the very first day here. The Times in 
 a long editorial stated its belief that serious attention 
 must be given to recent disclosures of certain expert ob- 
 
READJUSTMENT IN ENGLAND 245 
 
 servers as to the still belligerent mind and view-point of 
 Germany, as evidenced in the retention of large supplies 
 of arms, etc., etc. The Times is perhaps to be taken less 
 seriously than before its owner was so anxious to make 
 trouble for the ruling party. The disclosures also, prob- 
 ably, do not properly distinguish between the republican 
 government and the military reactionaries. But all the 
 same, the prospects for plentiful jobs and general happi- 
 ness would be much better if such disclosures, whether 
 fully true or not, were completely impossible. 
 
 And now for the gang-plank one end of which rests 
 upon a certain porch in Cleveland, U. S. A. there to 
 discover, if possible, what it all means ! 
 
 P. S. "The workers in the building trades/ ' so runs a 
 Paris head-line, " throughout the vicinity of Paris vote 
 with lifted hands for a general strike." 
 
PART II 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 HORNY HANDS 
 
 Cleveland, July, 1922. 
 
 ONE thing is evident. The laborer hi western Europe 
 whether on the Continent or in England is a hard 
 worker. He lives in the land of horny hands as com- 
 pared with America. He does not wear canvas or other 
 gloves as does his fellow across the sea, but the denim 
 of working clothes is much more evident upon his streets. 
 He expects to grow more blisters and give with simple 
 tools more sweat and " elbow grease" to his work than 
 does his friend in America and to get less for it. His 
 standard of living is certainly below that of his "Yankee" 
 fellow worker. His ability to earn and enjoy the mini- 
 mum pleasures and satisfactions of life is certainly less. 
 
 On both sides of the Atlantic the worker is to-day in 
 the clutch of the high cost of living. On both sides, also, 
 he is held in the grip of a falling labor market that pre- 
 vents his making any effective protest indeed it has 
 everywhere prevented the success of any of the larger 
 strikes. At all times, too, the European worker has evi- 
 dently learned to accept and be fairly comfortable with 
 a smaller share of the possessions and pleasures to which 
 the American worker is accustomed. In France the 
 worker does stand a fairly good chance of possessing his 
 home; hi England, a fairly minute one; but, owned or 
 unowned, these homes hardly compare in comfort with 
 those of the corresponding citizen here in the States. 
 
 249 
 
250 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 The craftsman who parks his flivver outside the Toledo 
 or Bridgeport factory considers himself hardly any luckier, 
 as compared with his neighbor, than does the artisan 
 who takes off his bicycle clips as he enters the "Usine," 
 in Douai or Longwy: France, Germany, Belgium, and 
 Britain possess fewer automobiles than the State of New 
 York. The enjoyment of a telephone is for the European 
 worker unthinkable, and even the talking-machine is 
 something of a rarity. The attitude toward meat has 
 been indicated. Without attempting anything like a 
 careful study of figures, it would seem that the labor 
 leader of Glasgow comes fairly close to the situation for 
 western Europe as well as Britain in his statement: 
 
 "The American worker certainly enjoys a standard of 
 living not less than 50 per cent above that of our workers 
 here: his wage scale is not less than 75 per cent higher." 
 
 And, on the whole, the British worker of the upper 
 half certainly lives better than the corresponding Belgian 
 and German, and probably better than the corresponding 
 French native-born worker. 
 
 Without any doubt the status enjoyed and the figure 
 cut by the American worker as an integral part of the 
 community is higher and greater than in Europe. Also, 
 because of the absence of anything like Europe's lines of 
 class, immensely more hopeful. One sign of all this is 
 the surprisingly slight difference in the wage of the skilled 
 laborers of Europe as compared with semiskilled and un- 
 skilled workers. With us these differences are so great, 
 not only in wages but in dignity and responsibility, that 
 there is undoubtedly a greater distance between our skilled 
 men and our unskilled, foreign-born laborers than between 
 
HORNY HANDS 251 
 
 those same skilled workers and the superintendents and 
 other representatives of capital. This simply means 
 that the whole body of hand workers abroad is restricted 
 into a more nearly uniform and certainly more definitely 
 characterized group than here, where at the top our 
 worker group shades off almost imperceptibly into the 
 administrative body. That restricted compactness of the 
 workers tends in turn to persuade the rest of the citizenry 
 in Europe to the comfortable assumption that, in the 
 nature of the case, the life of the "working classes" can- 
 not be expected to give any real satisfaction. 
 
 Yes, as a whole and it is necessary always to remem- 
 ber how dangerous it is to generalize regarding such huge 
 and such varied groups as comprise the workers of any 
 country the wage-earners of Europe expect to give more 
 muscle in a day and get less bread and betterment for it 
 than their colleagues hi America. That does not mean, 
 however, that they accomplish more. On the contrary, 
 their individual productiveness is less undoubtedly 
 much less. That is true partly because their work has 
 been given less thought by their supervisors for the sav- 
 ing of time and effort than here; partly, also, because 
 the long history of hand-work has there built up a very 
 deep-rooted sense of craftsmanship of job mystery and 
 "know how." This has taken the property of the job so 
 seriously as to form considerable of a barrier to the in- 
 troduction of either labor-saving methods or labor-sav- 
 ing and mystery-destroying, perhaps also job-destroy- 
 ing tools. This sense of job ownership as well as skill 
 ownership, as inherited and passed on to succeeding gen- 
 erations, has been the compelling force behind the more 
 
252 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 or less general pressure of the unions for the saving of 
 jobs, even at the cost of individual and national produc- 
 tiveness. It is an error to see the unions only as a cause 
 and not as an effect. 
 
 But the worker is not the only one in Europe who finds 
 it necessary to live under a narrow sheet as compared 
 with America. The same holds true for the employer 
 group as well. As a class he has nothing like the same 
 opportunity to earn a wide margin of profit in the coun- 
 tries visited as here in the States. 
 
 When all is said and done, every country, together 
 with all its citizens, whether employer or employee, has 
 to be content in the long run to divide up the total value 
 produced from either the national material resources or 
 from the services performed in the fabrication or dis- 
 position of the resources of other countries. It is evident 
 that the cause of the comparative margin of practically 
 all groups of Continental society is represented by some- 
 thing more fundamental than the shortcomings of any 
 or all classes: it is rather the shortcomings typified by 
 those irregular and deep-down eighteen-inch and three- 
 foot coal seams as described. Contrast these whether 
 in France, Belgium, or Germany with, for instance, 
 those of West Virginia. There recently a friend pointed 
 from a great mountainside off toward the North: 
 
 "From here clear down to the Ohio River, seventy- 
 five miles, you will find a solid seam of coal of excellent 
 quality and with few admixtures of rock or other matter, 
 lying with magnificent regularity, seldom less than four 
 feet in thickness or more than nine!" 
 
 Much the same could be said for our other natural 
 
HORNY HANDS 253 
 
 and job-giving resources. It is the greatest and most 
 far-reaching difference between the two continents and 
 the peoples they support. 
 
 The skimpiness of Mother Nature in Europe as com- 
 pared with her bounteousness to us, this, together with 
 the longer use of her gifts there than here, is the funda- 
 mental cause of that curtailment of opportunity which 
 affects the whole people. The fixity of that grip upon 
 the job and the division of the whole population into 
 definite groups according to the nature and standing of 
 the job gripped, these are the "protective behavior" 
 whereby the lessened opportunity is made to contribute 
 the required maximum of security. Any lessening of the 
 first of these always automatically produces pressure for 
 the increase of the second. Similarly, too, the accumu- 
 lated demonstration of the unfeasibility of men's enjoy- 
 ing opportunity as a result of their individual effort, al- 
 ways persuades them to use the protection of group or 
 class team-work. And in that strategy, as hi the case of 
 Germany, dependable defense may require initial offense. 
 In Europe this defensive team-work has hi some ways 
 been adopted almost as much by the managers as 
 by the craftsmen: it is almost as serious for the em- 
 ployer to go beyond the practice of his fellows in. say, 
 the expression of interest in his workers as for an em- 
 ployee to show an unseemly loyalty to his capitalist em- 
 ployer, i 
 
 Britain, Germany, and Belgium have done more than 
 France to make up for the deficiency of native materials 
 by the development of service values. Nevertheless it is, 
 I believe, the fault of Mother Nature rather than human 
 
254 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 nature or human institutions that industrial Europe shows 
 everywhere a much wider gap between the director and 
 the directed than does industrial America. Without 
 doubt, also, that gulf is not only wider but enormously 
 more permanent and impassable. 
 
 This, in turn, is responsible for the fact that an ob- 
 server encounters in a week more radicals more dis- 
 believers in the present system of society among the 
 workers of Europe than in a month here assuming, of 
 course, that he moves among comparable groups in both 
 countries. 
 
 Doubtless, our own wage-earners would be immensely 
 more unhappy under the same conditions of work and 
 life than are their European brothers, for these last, as 
 we have seen, have for generations inherited a surprising 
 ability to make the most of a modicum. Much of the 
 expression of the protest encountered is caused, there- 
 fore, I believe, not so much by the sur.oundings them- 
 selves as by the sense of the width of the gap which must 
 be bridged before those protests are to obtain result. 
 In the land of the narrow sheet and the wide gap, that 
 is, the protestant must pound the table and raise his 
 voice if his desires are to carry across to the ear of either 
 the public or the capitalist. That failing, he is forced to 
 contrive ways of registering his unhappiness in more 
 extreme efforts or perhaps in the absence of effort rep- 
 resented by sabotage, the "on-the-job strike." Nat- 
 urally, enough, also, the constant barrier of the gulf tends 
 to drive the resultless protestant on to the platform offered 
 by politics. Similarly, too, it tends to recommend to him 
 some form of society which makes a point of abhorring 
 exactly such sound-proof gulfs and vacuums. 
 
HORNY HANDS 255 
 
 The comparative narrowness of the gulf here with us 
 and the comparative feasibility of its bridging, this is 
 undoubtedly the reason why, as a group, the leaders of 
 our American labor movement have not adopted even 
 Socialism to say nothing of Communism to anything 
 like the extent of their colleagues across the sea. The 
 strange thing is that the same Sam Gompers who, with 
 his maximum demand for collective bargaining, is con- 
 sidered by European leaders as a hopeless standpatter, 
 is here felt by many employers to be a radical of the 
 deepest dye. The real difference is that Mr. Gompers 
 doesn't need to make so much fuss nor to be so extreme, 
 simply because he and his followers are already, before 
 they start to talk, so much closer to the employers with 
 whom they wish to negotiate. Though the American, 
 like the French and British, leaders undoubtedly have 
 their times of depression, nevertheless, they are con- 
 vinced that by their comparatively moderate methods 
 they have not only put their followers into a better posi- 
 tion here than there, but also moved them a greater dis- 
 tance from the starting-point. They have simply adapted 
 their method to that enormous difference in the class 
 lines and class gulfs. It was John Mitchell of the miners 
 who said that no labor movement can be truly aggressive 
 until it operates as the cutting edge of a distinct and more 
 or less fixed working class. In the absence of that fixed 
 and therefore hopeless, alignment, the individual may 
 at any moment cast off his affiliation with his class in 
 the belief that he can "make the grade" more success- 
 fully alone. Under such circumstances, of course, perfect 
 class discipline is impossible. 
 
 This difference in social stratification due, at bottom, 
 
256 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 mainly to the difference of geological layers, thus comes 
 to make it fruitless to discuss the truth or falsity of the 
 statement, frequently encountered, that "the European 
 labor movement in general, and the British hi particular, 
 is thirty years ahead of the American." 
 
 The difference is immensely greater than that of either 
 method or degree. It is the difference between the Land 
 of Holding On and the Land of Getting On. It is for the 
 American public to say by its attitude toward the trea- 
 sures of opportunity still locked up in its unused raw 
 resources how soon we are to see an equally hopeless 
 widening and broadening of class cleavages in the social 
 structure we are rearing upon the foundation given us 
 by nature. Also, for the American employer to determine 
 by his attitude toward both his customers and his asso- 
 ciated workers how soon these last must rely, not upon 
 reason and right, but upon pounding the drum or build- 
 ing the barricade of class warfare, as the only means of 
 satisfying the self-respect of American citizens. By too 
 easy an assumption of the permanence of either our ma- 
 terial goods or of the efficiency and satisfactoriness of 
 our productive and distributive service, we may all be- 
 come the victims of that pressure which is inseparable 
 from a lessened national unit of value delivered. With 
 that is sure to come a tightening of all the screws of 
 self-protection class solidarity, organized opposition to 
 machinery and other restrictions of output, governmental 
 standardization of procedure every form of abandonment 
 of the risks of opportunity and initiative for the certain- 
 ties of security. All these appear to protect the individual 
 but in actuality tend to lessen the basic unit of value pro- 
 
HORNY HANDS 257 
 
 duced. This shortly increases the pressure and so brings 
 another turn of the screws for another round of the 
 vicious circle. 
 
 At the present moment, whether for better or for worse, 
 the American employer enjoys a much larger freedom 
 from either governmental or union restriction than his 
 friends abroad. That represents our public's present 
 conviction that our situation entitles him to a larger de- 
 gree of responsibility. But that conviction rests upon 
 continued demonstration of results. It is threatened to- 
 day most of all by the absentee management of the re- 
 mote corporation head and by the folly of the near-by 
 executive who, in the memory of twenty years ago, still 
 continues to boast of his calling his workers " all by their 
 first name," but fails completely to organize his relations 
 with his present enlarged personnel on the basis of any- 
 thing like the unfailing sincerity and sensitiveness which 
 may for years have characterized his relations with his 
 customers. 
 
 That threat is opposed by two constructive tendencies, 
 among others. One of these is the lately developed col- 
 lege or graduate school of business for training the 
 next generation of industrial captains in the principles 
 and the technic, as well as the sentiment, of right rela- 
 tions with men. Europe has nothing quite like these 
 courses, but our next step is to follow the example of 
 France in adding to our training in engineering the French 
 emphasis upon the human factor in production. 
 
 The other is the awakened interest of our public to 
 the part which the prosperity of the workers plays in the 
 prosperity of the whole people. This active interest is 
 
258 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 to-day puzzled by the way such matters as coal and trans- 
 portation have suddenly cast off their former local or 
 regional dimensions and assumed the startling propor- 
 tions and complexities of national problems in which 
 each region must have consideration as a part of a closely 
 related whole. It will require serious effort for the opinion 
 of an easy-going and highly individualistic public to mas- 
 ter these new proportions and complexities, just as these 
 have puzzled the most up-to-date corporation officials 
 and labor leaders. But whether the public is altogether 
 the master of both the facts and the sentiments of the 
 new nation-wide type of dispute or not, it nevertheless 
 remains the arbiter; for right or wrong, the public makes 
 the final decision. The same public opinion, also, de- 
 cides from day to day whether the employer can be trusted 
 to continue hi his present comparative freedom or whether 
 he must be given fresh and unmistakable reminders to 
 keep open the roads to individual Opportunity in the 
 Land of Getting On while making its harbors of Security 
 somewhat more like those in the Land of Holding On. 
 In case these reminders are not heeded, the result is cer- 
 tain to bring about the same vicious coil of self -protection 
 here as there and to the hurt not only of the worker 
 but of every other individual and group beneath our 
 
 According to the thesis of our preface, any factor which 
 markedly affects a people's working conditions is bound 
 to have highly significant repercussions upon its condi- 
 tions of living and hence of its thinking and feeling. 
 
 Perhaps, accordingly, if we discuss some of these ef- 
 fects, we may find an explanation for those other tokens 
 
HORNY HANDS 259 
 
 of the present mind of Europe and her workers which 
 are seen with such sad frequency alongside the horny 
 hands and the denim of hard work I mean the hampered 
 elbows of limitation and the crape of mourning. 
 
CHAPTER XVHI 
 HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 JUST as the Bedouin of the North African desert is 
 driven to a fatalistic philosophy by constantly noting 
 the demonstrated omnipotence of his natural surround- 
 ings, so the long-established acceptance of material 
 meagreness persuades a person or a people to the general 
 use of the grooves which promise a maximum of protec- 
 tion and certainty. Both expansion and self-preservation 
 are likely thus to appear linked up with the known cer- 
 tainties of long experience that is, with the past. 
 
 This or something much like it must be the reason for 
 the hold which the past has upon Europe and also for 
 our American inability to understand its strength. At 
 any rate, it is certainly the platform which gives in the 
 life of present-day France such prominence to those two 
 characteristic phrases: 
 
 "C'est 1'habitude" and "a m'est egal!" 
 
 "Habit and custom, m'sieu'," plus a certain amount 
 of stoical indifference, is sure to be called upon to serve 
 as a pair of padded gloves for saving to the utmost those 
 horny hands from further hurt in dealing with the sharp 
 edges of a restrictive economic environment. 
 
 The social and moral life of France is thus the result, 
 not so much of the passage of an extraordinary number 
 of generations in the same physical environment with a 
 surprisingly small admixture of foreign blood as of gener- 
 
 260 
 
HAMPERED ELBOWS 261 
 
 ations in the use of a geological equipment which has 
 virtually required that, in self-defense, thrift be exalted 
 to the status of a national virtue. 
 
 Unluckily for France, the loss of the iron ore of Alsace- 
 Lorraine came just at the beginning of the expansion of 
 our modern iron age. Added to that economic loss came 
 the spiritual blow of disgraceful military defeat. As with 
 individuals, so with nations. Unceasingly the main- 
 spring desire to enjoy one's self-respect and the approval 
 of some group causes the testing of this or that sector 
 of its Western Front in the effort finally to discover the 
 right spot for making the break-through into the longed 
 for satisfaction and recognition. So at the moment when 
 France might logically have developed the commercial 
 tendencies common to the new age, she was divested of 
 the material tools essential to achievement in the sector 
 of practical, industrial realism; as a result she inevitably, 
 though perhaps unconsciously, left at that point of the 
 line a minimum of her interest while she directed the full 
 reserves of her aspirations against some sector of lesser 
 opposition and restriction. She continued, accordingly, 
 to seek and to find her satisfaction in the field of 
 quality rather than quantity, of taste and the aesthetic 
 rather than the crude, in the intellectual and the emo- 
 tional rather than the actual and material. In all this 
 the men of the " generation of defeat " supplied with their 
 philosophies a leadership which gave to the national 
 choice a spiritual justification and flavor. France found 
 happiness in remaining merely agricultural and careful in 
 an age of industrial realism and expansion. Her fates 
 thus forced the continued choice of a policy of holding 
 
262 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 on rather than getting on. For always the lessening of 
 the chance of getting increases the necessity o/ holding: 
 "Will you hold fast that which I give thee?" It de- 
 pends on how easy it is to get something else. 
 
 The moment, also, that this tendency to hold rather 
 than to get begins to make society fixed and static, 
 the importance of social position increases. As noted 
 in Belgium, the son fears to cast himself off from his 
 father's financial protection and so accepts his family's 
 obligations for the sake both of his own and his sister's 
 social standing. Thus, the polite thing in Belgium and 
 France is always to address a young woman of marriage- 
 able age as "Madame" instead of "Miss" as with us 
 to give her, as it were, the benefit of the social doubt 
 by virtue of which unmarried women of twenty-five are 
 in France considered "old maids." 
 
 Follows naturally enough on all this the French atti- 
 tude toward the advertiser in particular and the business 
 man in general. For him to go too far in accepting the 
 risks always connected with the employment of both 
 brains and capital connected to an extent, incidentally, 
 seldom appreciated by the hand worker is to fly 
 in the face of the national the nationally defensive 
 insistence upon "holding fast." His good citizenship is 
 fairly questionable for the reason that his future is so 
 much so. On the other hand, the holder of a local or 
 Federal office at one-fifth the commercial risk-taker's 
 earnings his present earnings, of course has a social 
 prestige which nothing can break. The reason is that 
 nothing short of scandal can cause him to "let go." 
 
 So the institution of marriage up to 1918, at least 
 
HAMPERED ELBOWS 263 
 
 has had to throw up its hands and surrender before the 
 insistent demands for social and economic security as 
 made upon it by the public opinion of a people long organ- 
 ized on a narrow-margined economy. Under the circum- 
 stances, wife and husband cannot afford to risk their 
 futures simply for the privilege of being in love with each 
 other. If one of them has social position and the other 
 has money, that is enough. This is the cause of the "ma- 
 riage a quatre." It leaves both husband and wife free 
 with the help of two outside friends and a certain amount 
 of discretion to maintain a secure and respectable do- 
 mestic establishment, and raise the children without 
 being too much bored with each other. Under such cir- 
 cumstances the position of the husband is decidedly dif- 
 ferent from that, say, of a young American business man. 
 As a functionary with a life-hold on his highly honorable 
 position, and married to a comfortable income, he need 
 expend on his work comparatively little of the energy 
 which the American would put into developing the full 
 possibilities of his business. Where the first is able to 
 find little chance for the satisfaction of overcoming ob- 
 stacles and solving problems, the other sees the oppor- 
 tunity that challenges most of his physical, mental, and 
 spiritual capacities. The one's future is already made; 
 the other's waits upon his effort. The one will, therefore, 
 be interested in finding some new and challenging sector 
 in which to obtain the satisfactions of fresh victories; 
 the other will have found it. Something like this appears 
 to me to fit the matter of sex into our picture, and to ex- 
 plain the origin of the art seen so generally in French 
 life the art of philandering. It is a development in the 
 
264 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 field of morals out of that same national narrowness of 
 material resources and economic opportunities. It is a 
 sort of "reverse English" of that economic determinism 
 which was at one time felt to push so many girls here 
 hi America into prostitution. 
 
 In much the same way I found here in America that 
 among the laborers the narrowness of opportunity for 
 self-expression and achievement on the muscle jobs caused 
 an increased interest hi the possibilities for them as offered 
 in the field of sex relationships. Among the French work- 
 ing men, naturally, marriages are not arranged upon the 
 basis of economic security. But even there the problem 
 of morals is complicated by the social permissions and 
 approvals which make entirely commonplace a bit of 
 gossip regarding the highest government officials and 
 their mistresses. 
 
 These social concomitants of established economic 
 conservatism and age undoubtedly help to explain, also, 
 the French attitude toward certain matters in which we 
 see sex but in which old people everywhere see nothing 
 but physiology. They serve also to create France's most 
 serious problem namely, the narrowness of the margin 
 between the births and deaths of her population. 
 
 But all this applies only to the France that this genera- 
 tion has known. That France is gone. The war has 
 erased it. In its place is the France that stands upon an 
 entirely different platform of material equipment the 
 France that now wears the crown of the "Iron Queen 
 of Europe" the France of hope. 
 
 Will these riches now added to her extensive colonial 
 domain enable her to become a first-rate instead of a 
 
HAMPERED ELBOWS 265 
 
 fourth-rate industrial power? Will those long-estab- 
 lished, close-margined habits of yesterday stand in her 
 way or help her to fulfil the hopes of to-day and to-mor- 
 row? Can she sell all the products she is now equipped 
 to make ? Nothing means more to the workers of France 
 than the answers to these questions. On these answers, 
 for one thing, may depend the length of time to be spent 
 in France by the present thousands of laborers from the 
 Algerian and Moroccan colonies and from Poland, Italy, 
 Spain, and elsewhere. 
 
 These queries are hard to answer, but it is worth re- 
 membering that with a people as with a person no trait 
 is a mere "happen-stance." Each is part of a consistent 
 whole. The backbone that yesterday held together the 
 France the world has known is gone. But as a result the 
 French people is far from lazy and far from inept in the 
 fullest possible utilization of all its resources, sparse or 
 abundant. Thanks to its long training, it has demon- 
 strated that it can hang on to a spiritual ideal when any 
 nation of a different environment might have given up. 
 So no one who has seen the combination of demoralized 
 actuality and devoted aspiration pictured at ruined but 
 reviving Lens can be anything but optimistic about 
 France's ability to meet her newest possibilities and fulfil 
 them. Her centuries of habit in faithfulness over yester- 
 day's little now justify the hope of her faithfulness over 
 to-day's much. It is only necessary for her friends or 
 her enemies to be patient. She has been sorely wounded 
 and sorely wearied. She has not yet recovered from the 
 shell-shock of her testing at the very centre of the world's 
 worst wrenching. The idealists who went through the 
 
266 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 war are perhaps spending too much time endeavoring to 
 determine with exactness whether her wounds are mortal, 
 chronic, or merely temporary. Meanwhile, in the young 
 men born too late to see full service at the front there is 
 appearing the " generation of the victory." Instead of 
 devoting themselves to cinching the honorable and per- 
 manent honorable because permanent position of a 
 Federal functionary, they are insisting upon going into 
 business. That is causing trouble in the families, but it 
 will be the families that will give way and not the youths. 
 For it is they who have on their side all the thrust of 
 France's future. 
 
 There is a real possibility that these young men will 
 give to the factory, office, and the banking-room 
 exactly that touch of idealism which business so much 
 needs. It is something of this that we Americans have 
 put into industry and commerce to an extent un- 
 equalled by any other nation. We have found that 
 spirit in business because we have had to find it some- 
 where, and we have not had time to look elsewhere. 
 The French have found it outside of business because 
 they did not care to find anything in business except what 
 was necessary to existence. It would be immensely help- 
 ful to the world's peace if France's " generation of the 
 victory" could avail to combine the practical and the 
 ideal in a new and higher species of business technic. 
 That might go far not only toward solving the labor prob- 
 lem, but also toward preventing a revival of the war- 
 like spirit among the nations a spirit which can be 
 expressed even during naval holidays by the knife-point 
 of cutthroat competition. 
 
HAMPERED ELBOWS 267 
 
 In this, however, one factor is always to be considered. 
 Its name is Germany. 
 
 The same years which saw France accepting material 
 contraction and accomplishing spiritual elaboration, saw 
 Germany's " generation of the victory" utilizing to the 
 utmost her expanded natural resources and her possibili- 
 ties of both productive and distributive service. In the 
 effort to keep her workers from radicalism the govern- 
 ment offered the compromise of a conservative Socialism 
 which did not greatly protect the laborer from the re- 
 strictions of a pretty narrow sheet. But, especially in 
 view of the shortness of the German people's life as a 
 unit in comparison with the French, the industrial and 
 economic factors appear to me to call for a considerable 
 admixture of the political in order to explain the develop- 
 ment which led to the great catastrophe. To be sure, 
 Germany's astounding industrial expansion produced a 
 growth hi population which made its established borders 
 extremely narrow. Nevertheless, this might have been 
 made fairly harmless except for Germany's distressing 
 observation that the achievement of her commercial 
 success failed for some reason to secure from the other 
 peoples of the world the hoped-for appreciation and recog- 
 nition of German greatness. We are most sensitive in 
 those areas of our self-respect where we most desperately 
 desire recognition, but are least certain of our right to 
 it. Undoubtedly, the newness of the empire and the 
 suddenness of its exploits produced the same touchiness 
 hi this regard as is still evinced in the tender political 
 sensibilities of the newest and least stable South and 
 Central American Republics. This touchiness would 
 
268 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 hardly fail to be increased by the sight of France and 
 the French spirit continuing to enjoy the spiritual leader- 
 ship and homage of the world in spite of military and 
 material eclipse. Well, if the shaking of the shekels does 
 not appear to make any impression on the grand stand, 
 why not try the rattling of the sabre ! 
 
 If to-day the mind of the sabre rattler were gone from 
 Germany, it would be easy to discuss the future. Un- 
 happily, every morning's paper and every fresh murder 
 of a progressive make it more certain that it is still there. 
 Luckily, however, other minds are there, too some 
 that would earn the world's confidence by demonstrated 
 worthiness, others that, as in France a generation ago, 
 would forsake the world of commerce and delve deeper 
 into the intangibilities of the spirit. Time will show the 
 result of all these highly active forces. The pity is 
 that in July of '22, as in September of '21, it is impos- 
 sible for any one to say with authority that France or 
 Europe has no justification for its fear of the cloud upon 
 its eastern horizon. Like all significant clouds it is the 
 size of a man's hand and takes the form of a man's fist. 
 As long as it is visible, it means a French army in the 
 absence of other guarantees. That army, I believe with 
 all my heart, does not at all represent a military people. 
 In any event, the taxes for its support only give still an- 
 other twist to that noose of limitation upon the lives of 
 its hard-working narrow-margined citizens. 
 
 Under these conditions the horny hands of France 
 as of Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and for that matter 
 the rest of Europe cannot hope immediately to get far 
 away from those hampered elbows in the narrow room 
 which nature has provided. 
 
HAMPERED ELBOWS 269 
 
 It is the meagre equipment of that room which in times 
 past has aggravated the pressure everywhere against 
 those narrow walls. In the days before commerce could 
 disregard such merely geographical boundaries by means 
 of its ability to find its markets and establish its relations 
 everywhere, these walls led men inevitably to the use 
 of the sword. The crape that followed the monarch's 
 military effort to overcome nature's geographical nar- 
 rowness and so to escape from this or that valley or high- 
 land became thus the established accompaniment of the 
 denim of the heavy toil required for overcoming nature's 
 geological " nearness." The supreme tragedy is that the 
 tendency toward the levelling of geographic and political 
 boundaries which modern high-speed and world- wide busi- 
 ness is exerting, did not proceed fast enough to control the 
 new tendency toward commercial and political expansion 
 which also resulted from that same institution of mod- 
 ern business and its world-conquering tools of communi- 
 cation. 
 
 It is not fanciful to consider the French Revolution as 
 one result of a failure to control and direct the expansion 
 of the business and political life of France which followed 
 upon the increase in the means of communication within 
 the nation. Such commerce as existed came to the point 
 where its development required it to operate upon a na- 
 tional basis. It found that its political machinery was 
 equipped only to oppose this. Its new cross-country cur- 
 rents of relations encountered the resistance of a maze 
 of local taxes, local prohibitions regional restrictions of 
 every sort. The heat caused by this resistance might 
 long have gone without exploding in the demand for a 
 reformed government which would widen the field of 
 
270 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 operations, except that this same commercial expansion 
 brought with it the increased means of communication 
 and therefore of a national public opinion. This pro- 
 vided for the first tune the means of that united ex- 
 pression which is essential to united action and the 
 revolution was on! 
 
 Similarly, it is not fanciful to see hi the Great War 
 the result of the energy generated by the resistance of 
 the opposing walls of the various political cells of old 
 Europe against the flow of the powerful currents of the 
 new world-wide commerce and of the new world-wide 
 public opinion. 
 
 If that is true, the enormously increased forces of both 
 international trade and international self-respect are sure 
 to increase the wearers of both crape and denim unless 
 they can somehow and in some measure be controlled. 
 Small wonder that our "Bolshie" friend in South Wales 
 sees so close a connection between the world's conferences 
 and the world's barricades. And as a wearer of the uni- 
 versal crape and denim, he is entitled to protest that 
 either conference or barricade that organization at either 
 the top or the bottom must be tried as an outlet from 
 the meagreness of living and the commonness of mourn- 
 ing which Europe to-day presents. 
 
 Small wonder, too, that Europe's workers hate the 
 bayonets which, as the signs and symbols of Europe's 
 " elbow complex," have come inevitably to dot the "i's" 
 and cross the "t's" of age-old limitation. Nor that with 
 all their hearts they hope though they are too tired 
 fully to expect that the forces which make for the 
 horny hands of their work and the hampered elbows 
 
HAMPERED ELBOWS 271 
 
 of their life, may somehow be better directed than here- 
 tofore ! 
 
 Can that be done? 
 
 On the answer to that question, surely, depends the 
 future of Europe and of Europe's worker-citizens. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF EUROPE? 
 
 TOWARD the answer to that question, the war has con- 
 tributed surprisingly. 
 
 Besides affording a demonstration of the astonishing 
 possibilities of both international co-operation and inter- 
 national conflict, and in addition to developing instru- 
 ments of communication far beyond the level earlier 
 developed by business, the universal call to arms 
 demonstrated to the workers the unreliability of that 
 long-discussed horizontal cleavage by which the labor 
 groups of the different nations would fight, not against 
 each other but only against the employer and other 
 more fortunate groups similarly united throughout the 
 world. 
 
 "So well established did the theory of class, instead of 
 national, solidarity appear before the war," so explained a 
 French labor statesman, "that all estimates of our mili- 
 tary strength when completely mobilized included con- 
 siderable deductions for the Socialists and others who, it 
 was believed, would make unsafe soldiers. When the 
 test came, even the government was surprised. It found 
 the percentage an extremely small one practically neg- 
 ligible. Furthermore, it proved quite unnecessary to 
 carry out the long-contemplated plans for the arrest of 
 certain leaders who were expected to impede mobiliza- 
 
 272 
 
THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF EUROPE? 273 
 
 tion. In the moment of invasion these, like all the others, 
 came into the army ready to defend their homes." 
 
 The same was true of other countries. As a result, 
 the question of some measure of control of the interna- 
 tional currents is to-day a question not of the destruction 
 of national political lines and boundaries, but merely of 
 dulling the edges of those boundaries by some sort of 
 permanent economic and social confederation such as is 
 represented at this moment in general type if not in de- 
 gree, by the League of Nations (now that the President's 
 Conference has taken no continuing or permanent form). 
 
 Is that possible or impossible? 
 
 It has been quite common to place the blame for the 
 present high tension of the various nationalistic antago- 
 nisms and competitions of Europe and the rest of the 
 world on the diplomats who assembled for the making of 
 the Versailles Treaty. That means that we view these 
 gentlemen as if they had arisen, uncaused, unfathered, 
 full-panoplied with all their shifty wiles and whisperings, 
 out of some unruffled sea. That view has the advantage 
 of saving the faces of us all by freeing our shoulders com- 
 pletely from whatever errors time may have shown to 
 follow their decisions. The trouble is that it misses what 
 is immensely closer to the facts namely, that these 
 diplomats were and are little more than the employees of 
 their peoples and the spokesmen of the hatreds, fears, 
 and hopes engendered in the hearts of those peoples by 
 the long past, and intensified by the recent, conflict. 
 
 At the conference, in point of fact, President Wilson 
 was the only one who was free to express his own per- 
 sonal idealism, and then devote the rest of his term to 
 
274 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 proving its value to his public. Every other represen- 
 tative could be forced out of the meeting and out of the 
 leadership of his country within twenty-four hours after 
 agreeing in spoken or written word to anything, large 
 or small, which happened to be repugnant to the feelings 
 of his constituency at the moment, however wise it might 
 come to appear in the course of a few weeks, months, or 
 years. That is simply to say that the forces for the mak- 
 ing of the treaty were precisely the same forces which 
 to-day exist for the making or the marring of the 
 world's future, peaceful or otherwise, organized or un- 
 organized namely, the feelings of the peoples involved. 
 
 "But I must add, with the consent of my colleagues, 
 that the policy which I have endeavored to set forth just 
 now was in actuality the policy of the British Empire 
 yesterday morning at ten o'clock." So Earl Baifour is 
 reported to have replied with a smile in a meeting where 
 his explanation was stopped by his Prime Minister. 
 
 The particular form in which these emotions will ex- 
 press themselves is impossible to predict. But the main- 
 springs beneath these particular forms are not likely 
 greatly to change for some time, for the reason that these 
 mainsprings are emotions which were tempered to their 
 present fixity in the heat of the highest conceivable in- 
 tensity the intensity which always follows when mortal 
 and uttermost threat is made against the very life of a 
 person or a group. So it may help toward the answer 
 to our query if we merely catalogue those underlying 
 feelings from which the near future is sure to result : 
 
 First, France's fear for her life at the hands of Germany 
 unless protection by others can somehow be made fairly 
 certain. 
 
THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF EUROPE|? 275 
 
 Second, Germany's concentration of her hurt pride 
 and fear for her own national existence hi her hatred of 
 France. 
 
 Third, the hunger of both the British worker and the 
 British capitalist for the wages and profits of a normal, 
 buying world. 
 
 Fourth, the hankering of Russia's people for the square 
 meals of normalcy as soon as these can be secured with- 
 out the loss of the face and, perhaps, the lives of the 
 leaders. 
 
 Fifth, the nationalistic instincts of self-preservation 
 on the part of Austria, Hungary, and the Balkans. 
 
 Sixth, the political-religious instinct of self-esteem on 
 the part of the Moslem and Hindu worlds. 
 
 Seventh, the wish of America to retain her traditional 
 political aloofness if this can be done without serious 
 hurt to her commercial pre-eminence. 
 
 War weariness and war hatred intensify all these, but 
 unfortunately may almost as easily cause as prevent 
 war. For the first of these two means the touchi- 
 ness of the high explosive of " tiredness and temper." 
 The second is only a hatred of war in general. Unluckily, 
 nobody ever goes off to fight a war in general. It is al- 
 ways a war in particular against a particular adversary 
 and for the redress of a particular wrong or hurt. Due 
 nationalistic emphasis upon that particular grievance 
 can undoubtedly be expected, for a long time to come, 
 to secure all the cannon fodder yes, all the voluntary 
 cannon fodder needed. 
 
 Something like these appear to me the emotions from 
 which must be worked out somehow the future behavior 
 of the world. But how, then, can such a mass of oppos- 
 
276 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 ing instincts be worked into a going and concerted pro- 
 gramme that will give some measure of expectation for 
 the larger and less hampered opportunities and securi- 
 ties so much prayed for? 
 
 Well, if our original thesis is true, that we live ourselves 
 into our thinking infinitely more than we think ourselves 
 into our living, then there is no possibility of finding our 
 way into an organized world by preliminary argument 
 or reason. Nothing is more futile than for any one of 
 these peoples to try to convince the other that its par- 
 ticular fear or wish is altogether groundless. There the 
 emotion is the actual and unavoidable residuum of 
 actual and unavoidable experience and life. The argu- 
 ment of such emotions and the argument of logic simply 
 do not meet. The only way is to find at once, on some 
 sector or other, every possible opportunity to think and 
 feel co-operation by first experiencing and living it. 
 
 WQiat, then, are the fields and the forces in the present 
 actual and unavoidable living of the world's day-by-day 
 life which tend, consciously or unconsciously, to lessen 
 the intensity of those antagonizing emotions and so to 
 propel the world's life in the direction of the indispensable 
 co-operative feelings? 
 
 Surely, the first of these is that modern platform of 
 world-wide publicity and opinion that world-wide stage 
 on which to enjoy the sense of national self-respect in 
 relationship with the other national actors. Even though 
 this went far to cause the recent war, nevertheless, its 
 further development is certain to make other wars more 
 difficult because, as its power grows, it tends to make 
 bayonets unnecessary and victories resultless. 
 
THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF EUROPE? 277 
 
 Second, and closely allied with that, is the unity of 
 culture in the spread of the practices and conventions of 
 a common industrial and social life. 
 
 Third, the "self-determination of raw materials," and 
 the exchange and interdependence which these require, 
 aided by 
 
 Fourth, the "seK-determination" of both profits and 
 wages as a force toward simplifying the political as well 
 as the commercial processes of this exchange and niter- 
 dependence the pressure of "big business" and "over- 
 head" in the direction of removing all possible friction 
 to the flow of goods throughout the widest possible mar- 
 kets. This the war has demonstrated to be most profit- 
 ably gamed, not by force but by the competition of 
 economic service. 
 
 Just as hi our nation-wide commerce the recent experi- 
 ence with child labor has forced more and more considera- 
 tion of the Federal Government as the only effective 
 means of preventing the backwardness of one State from 
 working harm to others as well as itself, so both profits 
 and wages everywhere are seeing that the existence of a 
 world market on any basis of fairness requires the help 
 of some middle and inclusive organization. Just as, also, 
 each national unit has found a policy of "Laissez faire," 
 unfair in practice unless modified by public opinion, so 
 every fresh development of the competitive warfare is 
 certain to produce a world-wide opinion favoring and 
 requiring some sort of central referee. Furthermore, the 
 post-war unemployment has demonstrated as never be- 
 fore to every group of workers that its wages depend 
 upon both the continued and the expanding ability of 
 
278 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 other groups of workers elsewhere about the world to 
 buy the products of their hands and hours. Without 
 such a " creative evolution in business," the whole 
 machine of civilization comes to a dead stop.* 
 
 Fifth: The " United States of Great Britain" as an 
 accomplished " Commonwealth of Nations/' now fur- 
 nishes daily the world's most active and going demon- 
 stration of a political, social, and economic federation, 
 which involves one-fifth the total population of the globe. 
 
 Sixth: The increased solidarity of Christendom, in re- 
 sponse to the religious-political threat referred to. 
 
 Seen or unseen, these forces are now influencing the 
 daily living of tens of millions and they are bound to 
 influence their thinking and their feeling. Avoiding the 
 field of argument, these forces work daily upon those 
 supernationalistic attitudes and emotions by calling 
 forth such mechanisms of peace as the League's Barce- 
 lona transit conference for facilitating traffic on bodies of 
 water which serve groups of nations. In their attrition 
 upon these attitudes and emotions, however, "time is of 
 the essence": the sure results must not be expected too 
 quickly. On the other hand, the concentric forces of 
 modern business and communications are so recent as 
 compared with the ages of comparative isolation and 
 insulation, and are multiplying themselves in such geomet- 
 ric ratio, that a wireless year may easily prove more re- 
 sultful in changing men's lives and attitudes than a post- 
 chaise century. 
 
 Gladstone has defined the spirit of conservatism and 
 Toryism as "the distrust of the people qualified by fear," 
 
 *See " Full Up and Fed Up," pp. 308-317. 
 
THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF EUROPE? 279 
 
 as opposed to the liberal's " trust in the people qualified 
 by prudence." Oddly enough, Europe feels to-day that 
 one of the most puzzling of all obstacles to world organi- 
 zation is this " distrust of the people' 7 of other peoples 
 as represented by history's greatest democracy. By 
 our assumption that other nations are not to be trusted, 
 we Americans endeavor to rationalize our wish to stand 
 aloof. The real difficulty is doubtless much the same as 
 that which keeps the bookworm off the dance floor the 
 feeling of inferiority hi one sector as compared with that 
 of comfortable pre-eminence in another. Perfectly sure 
 of ourselves at home and at work, we cannot yet over- 
 come our embarrassment on the platform of world-wide 
 politics to which our commercial success tends unmis- 
 takably to draw us. Our behavior is thus the result of 
 that comparative inexperience with and ignorance of 
 other peoples which has been the natural result of our 
 development. 
 
 It may more easily prove to be the cause of a great 
 World War than we imagine. To be sure, that outcome 
 is inconceivably distant from our mind or purpose. But 
 we embark upon a highly dangerous career the moment 
 we assume that the cause of all war is ill-will. For the 
 very next moment we feel free to reach the infinitely 
 more dangerous assumption that the certainty of our 
 mood of peace our friendliness toward all mankind 
 completely justifies a virtual refusal to co-operate with 
 others in the mechanisms of peace. But the cause of war, 
 whether between nation and nation, or employer and 
 employee, is not ill-will. It is ignorance. For ignorance 
 leads to the desire for mental and spiritual isolation the 
 
280 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 avoidance of that sense of inferiority which follows con- 
 tact with those we do not understand. With spiritual 
 isolation in the unavoidable presence of the unknown, 
 comes always fear. That fear unfailingly thrusts toward 
 armament and that thrust remains even after all the 
 neighborhood's acquaintances and strangers have met 
 about the conference table and agreed to restrict their 
 armament to certain ratios. After armament, in turn, 
 comes arrogance: the man whose fear of his unknown 
 neighbor makes him carry an according-to-ratio 32-cali- 
 ber automatic can never understand why he should be 
 expected to show conciliation especially when he knows 
 that his neighbor carries only a 22. It was a Greek tra- 
 gedian who long ago described the next and final step 
 especially for those who add to isolation and armament 
 the vastest aggregation of wealth and temporal power 
 the ages have ever known: 
 
 "Always presumption blossoms 
 And the fruit is doom 
 And all the harvest tears." 
 
 The first step toward war is always taken by the poli- 
 tician or the employer or labor leader the moment he 
 assumes that either his good-will or his ill-will makes it 
 either kind or safe for him to remain ignorant of the hopes 
 and fears at the bottom of his neighbor's heart. 
 
 Luckily the Golden Rule may be expected to work as 
 successfully for the new and vastly complicated and 
 enlarged relationships of the radio era as for the old; 
 but only if we see in that rule the challenge to a new em- 
 phasis. As rapidly as the wireless and the turbine expand 
 
THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF EUROPE? 281 
 
 the word " neighbor," so rapidly it becomes necessary 
 to understand the futility of mere good-will. In the 
 old days we lived so closely to "the other fellow " that 
 with the help of a moment's sympathetic imagination 
 we could hope to put ourselves into his shoes and so feel 
 free to decide how he would wish to "be done by." But 
 to-day ! How is our imagination to know the heart of a 
 neighbor whose life daily affects our own, but who lives 
 and moves at vast psychological distances away from us, 
 across the ocean or perhaps in the coal town or the 
 steel plant only a few blocks or miles away? As never 
 before, good-will is helpless and awkward unless directed 
 by intelligence based upon long effort in collecting facts 
 and interpreting them with sympathy. Neither of these 
 two can displace the other. With either of them alone, 
 feelings may be hurt, and the hurt feelings of a group's 
 injured or threatened self-respect will always serve and 
 always should serve as the vestibule to war until their 
 healing can be made possible by somewhat the same ar- 
 rangements as individuals have contrived to set up and 
 operate for themselves. The hope of the world's peace 
 is that the great majority of the new fields and forces of 
 our modern living are pushing harder in the direction of 
 both intelligence and good-will and the arrangements 
 they call for than are the older forces which oppose 
 them. That does not mean that there may not be new 
 wars, nor that there is no need to hurry! Time is on 
 the side of the centripetal forces if only the centrif- 
 ugal do not bring destruction before time has its de- 
 cent chance ! 
 
 But this larger admixture of information and facts for 
 
282 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 guiding our feelings does not by any means lessen the 
 need of that initial spark of pure good-will by which its 
 possessor makes bold with nothing but the strength of 
 faith to enter into closer relations with the still un- 
 known neighbor. It is the tragedy of our day-by-day 
 existence as individuals that the weariness of our bodies 
 so often hinders the turning of our feet into this path 
 of hope at just the moment when that turning is most 
 vital to our soul's salvation. Considering the colossal de- 
 pletion of both her body and her spirit the marvel is that 
 Europe has already turned as far as she has in the direc- 
 tion of peace. The question of her successfully making 
 the corner appears to me to depend upon this query: Is 
 America willing to express the spiritual and material 
 wealth of her comparative freedom from fatigue by one 
 comparatively simple but highly and nobly challenging 
 step? 
 
 " Neither the steady jobs and, so, the steady life and 
 steady thought and feeling you speak of can come in 
 England nor the absence of fear hi France and elsewhere 
 until Germany is more settled. And that cannot come 
 until the reparations matter is reconsidered. " So an 
 astute statesman hi Washington replied recently: "But 
 the reparations question cannot be modified with the 
 consent of France until her obligations to us can also 
 be modified and you or any one else who has seen the 
 destruction of France's homes and its means of livelihood 
 can realize how properly she comes to consider Germany's 
 debts to her quite as definite and as essential as we con- 
 sider her debt to us in fact, infinitely more so. Now 
 we here in official Washington favor some modification 
 
THE (DIS) UNITED STATES OF EUROPE? 283 
 
 of France's and of all the allied debts to us on the under- 
 standing that Germany also will benefit. But we do not 
 believe the American public will listen to any such pro- 
 posal not at this moment. In six months we hope that 
 everybody here will see that it is just as impossible for 
 France to pay all her debts to us as for Germany to pay 
 France and that, therefore, we might just as well get 
 the credit of being a kindly dispositioned creditor. We 
 would lose nothing in actual cash and probably gain much 
 in good-will. But for the moment at least, the admin- 
 istration believes itself hamstrung and so the world's 
 impasse continues." 
 
 After a very wide range of contact with public opinion 
 in this country, I believe that the view-point of the vast 
 majority of our fellow citizens is about like this: 
 
 "Yes, I'd be for doing the fair thing in this matter of 
 reparations and debts. I'm for forgetting the war for 
 getting busy again. And if our assurance and action 
 would help them to lessen their armament and get busy, 
 then I'm for it. But of course I wouldn't propose this 
 not just now because the people I know well, they're 
 a hard-boiled crowd, you know, and they're against it 
 and will be for, maybe, six months." 
 
 I believe that as a whole, the Land of Getting On and 
 the Continent of Hope of hope justified by more than 
 a century of hope fulfilled stands to-day more than 
 willing to give to the Land of Denim and Crape and to 
 the Continent of Fear of fear justified by centuries of 
 fear fulfilled that demonstration of co-operation which 
 is needed to speed the forces now working surely but 
 slowly to restore the equilibrium of peace and organized 
 
284 HORNY HANDS AND HAMPERED ELBOWS 
 
 steady work and business. Certainly such aid will assist 
 enormously to the happiness of all the millions of owners 
 of those horny hands and hampered elbows. But every 
 day which decreases our material resources or increases 
 our communications with the lands of already decreased 
 treasures, brings nearer the tune when it will be ourselves 
 who will suffer from the same restrictions of the disap- 
 pearing furniture and the contracting room of the crowded 
 world. 
 
 "In a couple of minutes, sir, we'll be a-mikin* 'istory, 
 won't we, sir?" the sergeant whispered to the captain 
 who stood watch in hand, waiting for the zero hour's 
 signal to go over the top. 
 
 " History? History be hanged!" returned the cap- 
 tain. "What we've got to do to-day is to make geog- 
 raphy" 
 
 It is not so much American idealism as the good sense 
 made possible by our life in one of the world's compara- 
 tively unwearied and hopeful areas that, more than any 
 other single force, can hasten the coming of the com- 
 paratively speaking " United States of Europe." That 
 will make history, indeed, but it will also be the only 
 conceivable assurance of our own peace and safety, now 
 that the Atlantic Ocean has become so completely use- 
 less as a shock-absorber. 
 
 Sentiment, however, is always a greater and, in the 
 long run, a better, mainspring to action and especially 
 to difficult action than sense. So the motive that will 
 finally and shortly persuade us to stop scolding and to 
 commence demonstrating to Europe our best combina- 
 tion of both good- will and intelligence of sense and sym- 
 
THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF EUROPE? 285 
 
 pathy will not be our cold-blooded "horse-sense." It 
 will be our sentiment, our wish our traditional, national 
 wish to continue to earn our right, not to the world's 
 trade but to its good opinion of us as a nation^of prac- 
 tical idealists whose joy is that we helped to win a spiri- 
 tual as well as a military victory on Flanders Field: 
 
 "Like the Catholic man who hath mightily won 
 God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain: 
 Sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain." 
 
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