The Dutch Folks
Rotterdam, Holland, July 23.
It seemed to me unnecessary, but I had to explain to some friends why I was going especially to Holland. It is the biggest little country in the world. In art it rivals Italy, in business it competes with England, historically it has had more thrills to the mile than France, and in appearance it is the oddest, queerest, and most different from our own country, of all the nations of central Europe. Holland gives you more for your money and your time than any other, and that’s why I am back here to renew the hurried acquaintance with the Dutch made a few years ago.
Landing in Rotterdam was an experiment. The guide books and the tourist authorities pass Rotterdam over with brief mention. Baedeker, the tripper’s friend, suggests that you can see Rotterdam in a half-day. That is because Rotterdam is short on picture galleries and cathedrals. It is a great, busycity of a half-million people, and one of the most active commercially in the world. It is the port where the boats from the Rhine meet the ships of the sea. It is the greatest freight shipping and receiving port of northern Europe. It is the coming city of the north, because of its natural advantages in cheap freight rates. After looking it over hurriedly it seems to me to be one of the most interesting of cities. I am not going to run away from cathedrals and galleries. I am not intending to dodge when I see a beautiful landscape coming. But I have done my duty in the past and have seen the great cathedrals and the exhibitions of art. No one can come to Europe and not see these things once, for if he did he would not be able to lift up his head in the presence of other travelers. But he does not have to do them a second time. If I want to see pictures of Dutch ladies labeled “Madonna,” I will see them. If I don’t want to, I do not have to. In other words, if I go to the “tourist delights” it will be my own fault.
I would rather see the people themselves than the pictures of them. I want to observehow they work, what they work for, what their prospects are, and wherein they differ from the great Americans.
Man made most of Holland. Nearly all of the country is below the level of the sea, much of it many feet below. All that keeps the tide of the North Sea from flooding the country with from ten to a hundred feet of water every day are the dikes which man has built. Behind these huge embankments lies a country as flat as the flattest prairie in Kansas. A few sandhills and an occasional little rise of ground might stick out of the water if the dikes broke, but I doubt it. This “made” land has been fertilized and built up by the silt of the rivers, added to by the labor and science of man, until it is a vast market garden. The water of the rivers is diverted in every direction into canals. There is no current to the rivers; the surface is too flat, and the fresh water is backed up twice a day by the ocean tides at the mouths. There are practically no locks and the movement of the water is hardly perceptible, except near the coast, where it responds to theadvance and retreat of the sea. These canals are an absolute necessity for drainage, otherwise the country would be a swamp. Then they are used as roads, and practically all the freight is carried to market cheaply in canal-boats. The canals also serve as fences. The drainage water is pumped by windmills, which are then used to furnish power for every imaginable manufacturing purpose, from sawing lumber to grinding wheat. The cheap wind-power enabled the people to clear the land of water. So you see why there are dikes, canals and windmills in Holland: because they were the only available instruments in the hand of man to beat back the sea and build a productive soil. They were not inserted in the Holland landscape for beauty or for art’s sake, but because they were necessities; and yet great artists come to Holland to paint pictures of these practical things, and when they want to add more beauty they insert Dutch cattle and wooden shoes. All of which shows that the plain everyday things around us are really picturesque; and they are, whether you look atthe sandhills along the Arkansas or the dunes along the North Sea.
In this little country, containing 12,500 square miles of land and water, smaller than the seventh congressional district of Kansas, live almost 6,000,000 of the busiest people on earth. Their character may be drawn from their history. They first beat the ocean out of the arena and then made the soil. They met and overcame more obstacles than any other people in getting their land. And then for several centuries they had to fight all the rest of Europe to keep from being absorbed by one or the other of the great powers. They drove out the Spaniards at a time when Spain was considered invincible. They licked England on the sea, and the Dutch Admiral Tromp sailed up and down the Channel with a broom at the mast of his ship. They drove Napoleon’s soldiers and his king out of the country. They never willingly knuckled down to anybody, and they never stayed down long when they were hit.
The Dutch have for centuries been considered the best traders in Europe. Theyhave the ports for commerce and they have the money. They own 706,000 square miles of colonies, with a population six times as large as their own. From the beginning they have been ruled by merchants and business men, rather than by kings and princes, by men who knew how to buy and sell and fight. They have been saving and thrifty, and can dig up more cash than any other bunch of inhabitants on the globe. They have sunk some money in American railroads, but they have made it back, and they always take interest. Market-gardening and manufacturing and trade have been their resources, and nothing can beat that three of a kind for piling up profits and providing a way to keep the money working.
Of course these characteristics and this environment have made the Dutch peculiar in some ways, and they are generally counted a little close or “near.” They habitually use their small coin, the value of two-fifths of an American cent, and they want and give all that is coming. They have good horses, fat stomachs, and lots of children. They are pleasant but not effusive, and they are asproud of their country as are the inhabitants of any place on earth. They believe in everybody working, including the women and the dogs. Their struggle with the sea never ends, and they follow the same persistent course in every line of development. They are so clean it is a wonder they are comfortable, and they believe in eating and drinking and having a good time, just so it doesn’t cost too much. They are a great people, and here’s looking at them.