T. W. H. Crosland

“ When an American meets an Englishman who is [115] trying to run his business or his household or other of his affairs after American models, and particularly when he meets an Englishman who looks upon the Americans as his superiors and masters at the game of life, he is sheerly, if unavowedly, amazed. He knows what America is, he knows in his heart what America means, and if it lay in his power to choose the place to which he will go when he dies, that place would not be Chicago, nor would it be even Paris, but a clean, free, un-Americanised England. ”

“ Eight times out of nine the American is a fine specimen of a manly man, but it is the ninth that is such a wonder. We, the obtuse and effete people of Great Britain, now and again wake up suddenly to the circumstance that we have been the victims of an American invasion. Such a ghastly conviction may at any moment overtake the best of us, for no class of society knows whose turn is likely to be next. There was an American invasion of the turf a year or two back, and English sport is sore and poor about it to this day. ”

“ Will they ever discover that sport is not merely a business of record breaking and that business and football, I class the two together, are not the sports of the stone age in which the vanquished was not only overthrown but subsequently utterly consumed? ”

“ The American woman has her good points and her good qualities, otherwise American man, dazzler as he is, could not be so idiotically contented with her, or, as he himself phrases it, “sot on her.” At the same time she has, on the average, omelettes soufflées for brains and tenderloin steaks for hearts—and in spite of her charming curves she exhibits defects of mind, emotions, person, and breeding alike which, in my opinion, condemn her to obscure, or exalt her to take the highest, rank in the table of civilised feminine precedence according to the way you look at her. ”

“ The plain fact is that humour in America is the humour of fatty degeneration of the intellect. America’s funny man was at one time a fairly clean, healthy creature, with a droll outlook on the facts of life. That he was a trifle over-devoted to rye whiskey and effusive practical jokes, and had a tendency to rank irreverence, were among the defects of his qualities. The great American people speedily learnt to vote him slow, and into his shoes they hurried the hard-faced, terrier-toothed, cigarette-smoking, anæmic, fleering decadent. ”

“ Rockefeller, Morgan and Carnegie that the brunt and burden and glitter and glory of real unlimited and omnipotent millionairedom has fallen. Mr. Rockefeller, indeed, is commonly credited with being the richest and most powerful capitalist in the world. So rich is he, and so enormous are his accumulations of earned and unearned increment, that he is rapidly becoming the overlord of all the other millionaires, who even now are, to a great extent, playing with his money and must, to a corresponding extent, do his bidding. ”

“ In England, of course, a park means, for the working classes at any rate, a somewhat decorous and over-laid-out open space where there is a band-stand, a range of concrete promenades, a Swiss châlet where bad tea is provided, a policeman, and a number of hard seats. In America, however, the park is an entirely different affair. It is always a place in which you can buy pea-nuts. Not only so; it is a place in which the benevolent American entrepreneurs throw together aggregations of “attractions” such as are to be seen nowhere else on sea or land. ”

“ You must always remember, however, that the accomplished American private advertiser has a soul vastly above the mere elements of the game. Usually he is rich and often his life has contained episodes which an ingenious press can work up into scandals with half a column of sensational headlines—pin new and piping hot—on the shortest notice. Most wealthy advertising Americans, and indeed many of those who do not advertise, have been treated to this beautiful brand of publicity. ”

“ I have no desire to suggest that the millionaires of America as a body are in straitened or difficult circumstances, [21] or that an American here and there has not succeeded in amassing vast sums of money. But I assert flatly that the great majority of them are not within a mile of being anything like so rich as they pretend to be, and that, taking millionaire for millionaire, they are an entirely Brummagem and specious company. They maintain all the appearances of riches, not on solid bullion or property, but on a little paper. ”

“ I have shown that the fiery, untameable American is a creature of more than doubtful antecedents, and that he conceals beneath a veneer of smartness and originality several qualities of mind and heart that are not greatly to his credit. ”

“ The big fact that I wish to bring out is that the Americans are a pea-nut-fed nation. With this simple statement it is possible to account for a great deal that is otherwise inexplicable in the American genius and character.
Nut-chewing is a habit which has been in vogue on the earth for an incredible period. Originally developed by the Simian races, it was at one time the only known dietetic habit that did not involve bloodshed. It fell into neglect in Europe with the coming of the white man, and throughout the dark ages which ensued nobody appears to have given it a thought. ”

“ By dint of a good deal of adroitness he has succeeded in keeping his diplomatic end up in Europe and particularly in England, and nobody between Tipperary and the Great Wall of China has hard words for him. The world recognises in him a great genius—unparalleled in modern times.
If ever an American had sound reason to look back with satisfaction on a well-spent life, Mr. Roosevelt is the man. And if ever republic had just cause to thank Providence for its luck in the matter of a President, the United States is that Republic. ”

“ An Irishman without a pig in one form or another would in all likelihood take cold, or die of heart-ache. In his own distressful Island, the Irishman and his pig live on terms of freedom and fraternity that put the American Constitution to the distinct blush. ”

“ As I shall presently show, America has no more love for England than would easily cover a threepenny-bit, and her insatiable cry is for markets, markets, markets—a howl in which she is dulcetly supported by her dear friend Germany. The causes for alarm in so far as they affect the larger concrete issues are as yet comparatively slight. But it behoves every Englishman to meditate on the possibility that Macaulay’s New Zealander may in the long run turn out to be an American. ”

“ It only remains to point out that the Americans as a people are frantic gamblers, and that they are infatuated enough to regard gambling as a form of sport. Probably more gambling at cards goes on in the United States than in the whole of the countries of Europe put together. The proper American is everlastingly playing at poker, which is a bluffing game, and which he will assure you trains him for his business. The American card-sharper has been famous in song and story time out of mind. For sheer coolness, audacity, and skill at the job, he has never had an equal. ”

“ The pig is rushed through his feeds, weighed every morning till he has assumed the right specific gravity, hurried off by car to his doom, killed and slain on the no-waiting-here principle, and turned into hams, sides, lard, brawn, and sausages for the delectation of a hungry world before he has a chance to say George Washington. ”

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“The man who would in business rise must either bust or advertise” is the American’s article of faith. In civilised countries advertising is confined to its proper limits, that is to say, it is part of the business of a tradesman. In America everybody advertises, and advertises through a megaphone.
The United States appears to have been created for the pure purpose of advertising itself and everything that occurs in it. ”

“ A nation whose principal diet is pea-nuts, and whose principal profit is derived from the sale of pigs, is obviously pretty low down in the scale of civilisation. A hog tender cannot by any chance be the finest kind of man, neither can a pork butcher or a wholesale ham merchant. And every American who is not a member of a trust, or a pastor of a church, or a boss billposter, or a missionary, or a comic singer, is either a hog tender, a pork butcher, or a wholesale ham merchant. ”

“ I have given you a peep at the American millionaire, and found him wanting in everything but money, and not invariably too well provided with that. I have pointed out that American advertising, whether for the sake of gain or of notoriety, is a shameless, blatant and undesirable affair. For the first time in history I have set it on record that the Americans eat too many pea-nuts. ”

“ If you talk with an American girl for any length of time you will discover that among other defects she is troubled with what one may term a statistical, or, perhaps, more correctly, an arithmetical mind. Her male folk talk dollars and put everything into the terms of dollars. She, cute little bon-bon head, talks figures. She is as full of dates as a Scotchman, and as full of heights, depths, widths, dimensions, aggregations, and general computations as a guide-book. ”

“ No matter how wealthy and hard-headed your man, and no matter how beautiful or accomplished your woman, they are spiritually and morally topsy-turvy if they laugh at the wrong things, and I maintain that the twentieth-century American is consistently laughing at the wrong things, and quite incapable of appreciating the right and proper humour even when you have explained it to him. ”

“ I need scarcely add that the pea-nut flavour predominates in most American affairs. The advertising of the country is done wholly on pea-nut principles, its politics are run on pea-nut lines, and its professional men and financiers indulge in every species of pea-nut methods. No doubt one should be charitable enough to refrain from blaming them for it. They are to the manner born, and the pea-nut idiosyncracy is so firmly implanted in their natures that it would be impossible for them to shake it out, even if they tried. ”

“ Every American advertiser insists that he is the greatest man of business alive, and that the article he is so anxious to get rid of is the only fine thing in the world. You note, too, with a certain restrained joy, that every second advertisement appearing in an American paper or magazine starts off with the magical words: “It Will Pay You.” Thus if we are to believe the veracious publicity-monger it will pay you to wear So and So’s Collegian clothes which “are the only garments made in this entire country with real dash to them” ”

“ There can be no doubt whatever that a very large percentage of Americans think, talk, and raise pig throughout the whole of their natural lives. This industry appears to be of such a fascinating character that when once you have got into it you cannot possibly get out of it. Even if you wax unrighteously rich and get elected to Congress and move your family to New York, you still stick to pork and lard as if they were your brother. ”

“ America as a country, and the Americans as a people, depend upon hogs for their prosperity to an extent that is appalling. Upon the dead weight of him in the warehouses, and upon his firmness, or want of it, in the markets, hangs the [104] stability of all sorts of stocks, shares, bonds, debentures, and general securities. If pig is “up,” America is a land of contented households and smiling faces. If pig is “down,” she is plunged forthwith into the deepest woe and the meanest irritability. ”

“ We have here, as I have said, views on America not by a shouting American bluffer or dealer in hyperbole, but by a man of recognised literary parts and judgment. Furthermore, Mr. Howells is plainly not one of those Americans who [49] affect a contempt for their country. When he speaks of American success he attributes it to the favour of Providence; he can perceive a “vast advance” in the American’s knowledge and love of literature, and while he reproves the American millionaire, he does so more in sorrow than in anger. ”

“ He is all for the amelioration and improvement and cleaning up of Chicago; he does not see that it is the pig and the [106] great American people who are the root trouble. Prohibit the breeding and rearing of pigs throughout the United States, and you will have gone much further towards the cleaning up of Chicago, and, for that matter, the cleaning up of America, than you are ever likely to get by dealing simply with Chicago itself. So long as there are pigs, so long will Chicago reek. Abolish pigs, and you have abolished the worst features of the world’s foulest city. ”

“ The popularity of Mark Twain has suffered woeful eclipse, and Artemus Ward and Mr. Billings have gone clean out of vogue, and are remembered only as the originators of a very tiresome kind of humour which depends on phonetic spelling for its more excruciating effects.
The fact is that America and England alike have been dosed to death with the lucubrations of handy scribblers who caught something of Mark Twain’s trick and pretended to something of his gift, and the label “American humourist” nowadays repels with an even greater insistence than it formerly attracted. ”

“ All the same, I will never believe that the modern American is leisurely [92] enough or uncommercial enough to know much about real sport.
That they play games in America even as we play games in England appears to be fairly evident. The game of white man’s games, namely, cricket, is, however, a game they do not understand. Baseball and football on the other hand are exercises which they are alleged to have cultivated out of all recognition. Baseball I know nothing about. And when I come to consider it closely, I could wish that I knew nothing about American football. ”