The campus seems to have "just growed."... Nevertheless there is a sort of homely charm about the place, with its unimposing, helter-skelter piles of brick and stoneThe campus seems to have "just growed."... Nevertheless there is a sort of homely charm about the place, with its unimposing, helter-skelter piles of brick and stone
"Just what do you mean by the West?" I asked.
"In general," he replied, "I mean students from north and west of Chicago. If I show an eastern boy a machine which he does not understand, the chances are that he will put his hands in his pockets and shake his head dubiously. But if I show the same machine to a western boy, he will go right at it, unafraid. Western boys usually have more 'gumption,' as they call it."
Brief as was my visit to the University of Kansas, I felt that there, indeed, was "gumption." And it is easy to account for. The breed of men and women who are being raised in the Western States is a sturdier breed than is being produced in the East. They have just as much fun in their college life as any other students do, but practically none of them go to college just "to have a good time," or with the even less creditable purpose of improving their social position. Kansas is still too near to first principles to be concerned with superficialities. It goes to college to work and learn, and its reason for wishing to learn are, for the most part, practical. One does not feel, in the University of Kansas, the aspiration for a vague culture for the sake of culture only. It is, above all, a practical university, and its graduates are notably free from the cultural affectations which mark graduates of some eastern colleges, enveloping them in a fog of pedantry which they mistake for an aura of erudition, and from which many of them never emerge.
Directness, sincerity, strength, thoughtfulness, andpracticality are Kansas qualities. Even the very young men and women of Kansas are not far removed from pioneer forefathers, and it must be remembered that the Kansas pioneer differed from some others in that he possessed a strain of that Puritan love of freedom which not only brought his forefathers to Plymouth, but brought him overland to Kansas, as has been said, to cast his vote for abolition. Naturally, then, the zeal which fired him and his ancestors is reflected in his children and his grandchildren. And that, I think, is one reason why Kansas has developed "cranks."
Contrasting curiously with Kansas practicality, however, there must be among the people of that State another quality of a very different kind, which I might have overlooked had I not chanced to see a copy of the "Graduate Magazine," and had I not happened to read the list of names of graduates who returned to the university for the last commencement. The list was not a very long one, yet from it I culled the following collection of given names for women: Ava, Alverna, Angie, Ora, Amida, Lalia, Nadine, Edetha, Violetta, Flo, Claudia, Evadne, Nelle, Ola, Lanora, Amarette, Bernese, Minta, Juanita, Babetta, Lenore, Letha, Leta, Neva, Tekla, Delpha, Oreta, Opal, Flaude, Iva, Lola, Leora, and Zippa.
Clearly, then, Kansas has a penchant for "fancy" names. Why, I wonder? Is it not, perhaps, a reaction, on the part of parents, against the eternal struggle with the soil, the eternal practicalities of farm life? Is it anexpression of the craving of Kansas mothers for poetry and romance? It seems to me that I detect a wistful something in those names of Kansas' daughters.
Much has been heard, in the last few years, of the "Wisconsin idea" of linking up the state university with the practical life of the people of the State. This idea did not originate in Wisconsin, however, but in Kansas, where as long ago as 1868 a law was passed making the chancellor of the university State Sealer of Weights and Measures. Since that time the connection between the State and its great educational institutions has continued to grow, until now the two are bound together by an infinite number of ties.
For example, no municipality in Kansas may install a water supply, waterworks, or sewage plant without obtaining from the university sanction of the arrangements proposed. The dean of the University School of Medicine, Dr. S. J. Crumbine, is also secretary of the State Board of Health. It was Dr. Crumbine who started the first agitation against the common drinking cup, the roller towel, etc., and he succeeded in having a law passed by the State Legislature in Kansas abolishing these. He also accomplished the passage of a law providing for the inspection of hotels, and requiring, among other things, ten-foot sheets. All water analysis for the State is done at the university, as well as analysis in connection with food, drugs, etc., and student work is utilized in a practical way in connection with this state service, wherever possible.
Passing through the laboratories, I saw many examples of this activity, and was shown quantities of samples of foods, beverages, and patent medicines, which had failed to comply with the requirements of the law. There was an artificial cider made up from alcohol and coal-tar dye; a patent medicine called "Spurmax," sold for fifty cents per package, yet containing nothing but colored Epsom salts; another patent medicine sold at the same price, containing the same material plus a little borax; bottles of "SilverTop," a beer-substitute, designed to evade the prohibition law—bottles with sly labels, looking exactly alike, but which, on examination, proved, in some cases, to have mysteriously dropped the first two letters in the word "unfermented." All sorts of things were being analyzed; paints were being investigated for adulteration; shoes were being examined to see that they conformed to the Kansas "pure-shoe law," which requires that shoes containing substitutes for leather be stamped to indicate the fact.
"This law," remarks "The Masses," "is being fought by Kansas shoe dealers who declare it unconstitutional. Apparently the right to wear paper shoes without knowing it is another of our precious heritages."
The same department of the university is engaged in showing different Kansas towns how to soften their water supply; efforts are also being made to find some means of softening the fiber of the Yucca plant—a weed which the farmers of western Kansas have been trying to get rid of—so that it may be utilized for making rope.The Kansas state flower is also being put to use for the manufacture of sunflower oil, which, in Russia, is burned in lamps, and which Kansas already uses, to some extent, as a salad dressing and also as a substitute for linseed oil.
The university has also given attention to the situation with regard to natural gas in Kansas, Professor Cady having recently appeared before the State Board of Utilities recommending that, as natural gas varies greatly as to heat units, the heat unit, rather than the measured foot, be made the basis for all charges by the gas companies.
In one room I came upon a young man who was in charge of a machine for the manufacture of liquid air. This product is packed in vacuum cans and shipped to all parts of the world. I had never seen it before. It is strange stuff, having a temperature of 300 degrees below zero. The young man took a little of it in his hand (it looked like a small pill made of water), and, after holding it for an instant, threw it on the floor, where it evaporated instantly. He then took some in his mouth and blew it out in the form of a frosty smoke. He was an engaging young man, and seemed to enjoy immensely doing tricks with liquid air.
In the department of entomology there is also great activity. Professor S. J. Hunter has, among other researches, been conducting for the last three years elaborate experiments designed to prove or disprove the Sambon theory with regard to pellagra.
"Pellagra," Professor Hunter explained to me, "has been known in Italy since 1782, but has existed in the United States for less than thirty years, although it is now found in nearly half our States and has become most serious in the South. Its cause, character, and cure are unknown, although there are several theories. One theory is that it is caused by poisoning due to the excessive use of corn products; another attributes it to cottonseed products; and the Sambon theory, dating from 1910, attributes it to the sand fly, the theory being that the fly becomes infected through sucking the blood of a victim of pellagra, and then communicates the infection by biting other persons. In order to ascertain the truth or untruth of this contention, we have bred uncontaminated sand flies, and after having allowed them to bite infected persons, have let them bite monkeys. The result of these experiments is not yet complete. One monkey is, however, sick, at this time, and his symptoms are not unlike certain symptoms of pellagra."
The university's Museum of Natural History contains the largest single panoramic display of stuffed animals in the world. This exhibition is contained in one enormous case running around an extensive room, and shows, in suitable landscape settings, American animals from Alaska to the tropics. The collection is valued at $300,000, and was made, almost entirely, by members of the faculty and students.
The Department of Physical Education is in charge of Dr. James Naismith, who can teach a man to swim in thirty minutes, and who is famous as the inventor of the game of basketball. Dr. Naismith devised basketball as a winter substitute for football, and gave the game its name because, originally, he used peach baskets as his goals.
A very complete system of university extension is operated, covering an enormous field, reaching schools, colleges, clubs, and individuals, and assisting them in almost all branches of education; also a Department of Correspondence Study, covering about 150 courses. Likewise, in the Department of Journalism a great amount of interesting and practical work is being done on the editorial, business, and mechanical sides of newspaper publishing. Following the general practice of other departments of the university, the Department of Journalism places its equipment and resources at the service of Kansas editors and publishers. A clearing house is maintained where buyers and sellers of newspaper properties may be brought together, printers are assisted in making estimates, cost-system blanks are supplied, and job type is cast and furnished free to Kansas publishers in exchange for their old worn-out type.
These are but a few scattered examples of the inner and outer activities of the University of Kansas, as I noted them during the course of an afternoon and evening spent there. For me the visit was an education. I wish that all Americans might visit such a university. But more than that, I wish that some system might be devised for the exchange of students between great colleges in different parts of the country. Doubtless it would be a good thing for certain students at western colleges to learn something of the more elaborate life and the greater sophistication of the great colleges of the East, but more particularly I think that vast benefits might accrue to certain young men from Harvard, Yale, and similar institutions, by contact with such universities as that of Kansas. Unfortunately, however, the eastern students, who would be most benefited by such a shift, would be the very ones to oppose it. Above all others, I should like to see young eastern aristocrats, spenders, and disciples of false culture shipped out to the West. It would do them good, and I think they would be amazed to find out how much they liked it. However, this idea of an exchange is not based so much on the theory that it would help the individual student as on the theory that greater mutual comprehension is needed by Americans. We do not know our country or our fellow countrymen as we should. We are too localized. We do not understand the United States as Germans understand Germany, as the French understand France, or as the British understand Great Britain. This is partly because of the great distances which separate us, partly because of the heterogeneous nature of our population, and partly because, being ayoung civilization, we flock abroad in quest of the ancient charm and picturesqueness of Europe. The "See America First" idea, which originated as the advertising catch line of a western railroad, deserves serious consideration, not only because of what America has to offer in the way of scenery, but also because of what she has to offer in the way of people. I found that a great many thoughtful persons all over the United States were considering this point.
In Detroit, for example, the Lincoln National Highway project is being vigorously pushed by the automobile manufacturers, and within a short time streams of motors will be crossing the continent. As a means of making Americans better acquainted with one another the automobile has already done good work, but its service in that direction has only begun.
Mr. Charles C. Moore, president of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, whom I met, later, in San Francisco, told me that the authorities of the exposition had been particularly interested in the idea of promoting friendliness between Americans.
"We Americans," said Mr. Moore, "are still wondering what America really is, and what Americans really are. One of the greatest benefits of a fair like ours is the opportunity it gives us to form friendly ties with people from all over the country. We shall have a great series of congresses, conferences, and conventions, and will provide the use of halls without charge. The railroads are coöperating with us by making low round-triprates which enable the visitor to come one way and return by another route, so that, besides seeing the fair, they can see the country. The more Americans there are who become interested in seeing the country, the better it is for us and for the United States. Any one requiring proof of the absolute necessity of a closer mutual understanding between the people of this country has but to look at the condition which exists in national politics. What do the Atlantic Coast Congressmen and the Pacific Coast Congressmen really know of one another's requirements? Little or nothing as a rule. They reach conclusions very largely by exchanging votes: 'I'll vote for your measure if you'll vote for mine.' That system has cost this country millions upon millions. If I had my way, there would be a law making it necessary for each Congressman to visit every State in the Union once in two years."
In an earlier chapter I mentioned Quantrell's gang of border ruffians, of which Frank and Jesse James were members, and referred to the Lawrence massacre conducted by the gang.
In all the border trouble, from 1855-6 to the time of the Civil War, Lawrence figured as the antislavery center. That and the ill feeling engendered by differences of opinion along the Missouri border with regard to slavery, caused the massacre. It occurred on August 21, 1863. Lawrence had been expecting an attack by Quantrell for some time before that date, and had at one period posted guards on the roads leading to theeastward. After a time, however, this precaution was given up, enabling Quantrell to surprise the town and make a clean sweep. He arrived at Lawrence at 5.30 in the morning with about 450 men. Frank James told me that he himself was not present at the massacre, as he had been shot a short time before and temporarily disabled.
Lawrence, which then had a population of about 1,200, was caught entirely unawares, and was absolutely at the mercy of the ruffians. A good many of the latter got drunk, which added to the horror, for these men were bad enough when sober. They burned down almost the entire business section of the town, as well as a great many houses, and going into the homes, dragged out 163 men, unarmed and defenseless, and cold-bloodedly slaughtered them in the streets, before the eyes of their wives and children. Very few men who were in the town at the time escaped, but among the survivors were twenty-five men who were in the Free State Hotel, the proprietor of which had once befriended Quantrell, and was for that reason spared together with his guests. Some forty or fifty persons living in Lawrence at the present time remember the massacre, most of these being women who saw their husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons killed in the midst of the general orgy. Many stories of narrow escapes are preserved. In one instance a woman whose house had been set on fire, wrapped her husband in a rug, and dragged him, thus enveloped, in the yard as though attempting to save her rug from theconflagration. There he remained until, on news that soldiers were on the way to the relief of the stricken town, the Quantrell gang withdrew.
We left Lawrence late at night and went immediately to bed upon the train. When I awoke in the morning the car was standing still. In the ventilators overhead, I heard the steady monotonous whistling of the wind. As I became more awake I began to wonder where we were and why we were not moving. Presently I raised the window shade and looked out.
How many things there are in life which we think we know from hearsay, yet which, when we actually encounter them, burst upon us with a new and strange significance! I had believed, for example, that I realized the vastness of the United States without having actually traveled across the country, yet I had not realized it at all, and I do not believe that any one can possibly realize it without having felt it, in the course of a long journey. So too, with the interminable rolling desolation of the prairies, and the likeness of the prairies to the sea: I had imagined that I understood the prairies without having laid eyes upon them, but when I raised my window shade that morning, and found the prairies stretching out before me, I was as surprised, as stunned,as though I had never heard of them before, and the idea came to me like an original thought: How perfectlyenormousthey are! And how like the sea!
I had discovered for myself the truth of another platitude.
For a long time I lay comfortably in my berth, gazing out at the appalling spread of land and sky. Even at sea the great bowl of the sky had never looked so vast to me. The land was nothing to it. In the foreground there was nothing; in the middle distance, nothing; in the distance, nothing—nothing, nothing, nothing, met the eye in all that treeless waste of brown and gray which lay between the railroad line and the horizon, on which was discernible the faint outlines of several ships—ships which were in reality a house, a windmill and a barn.
Presently our craft—for I had the feeling that I was on a ship at anchor—got under way. On we sailed over the ocean of land for mile upon mile, each mile like the one before it and the one that followed, save only when we passed a little fleet of houses, like fishing boats at sea, or crossed an inconsequential wagon road, resembling the faintly discernible wake of some ship, long since out of sight.
Presently I arose and joining my companion, went to the dining car for breakfast. He too had fallen under the spell of the prairies. We sat over our meal and stared out of the window like a pair of images. After breakfast it was the same: we returned to our car andcontinued to gaze out at the eternal spaces. Later in the morning, we became restless and moved back to the observation car as men are driven by boredom from one room to another on an ocean liner.
Now and then in the distance we would see cattle like dots upon the plain, and once in a long time a horseman ambling along beneath the sky. The little towns were far apart and had, like the surrounding scenery, an air of sadness and of desolation. The few buildings were of primitive form, most of them one-story structures of wood, painted in raw color. But each little settlement had its wooden church, and each church its steeple—a steeple crude and pathetic in its expression of effort on the part of a poor little hamlet to embellish, more than any other house, the house of God.
Even our train seemed to have been affected by this country. The observation car was deserted when we reached it. Presently, however, a stranger joined us there, and after a time we fell into conversation with him as we sat and looked at the receding track.
He proved to be a Kansan and he told us interesting things about the State.
Aside from wheat, which is the great Kansas crop, corn is grown in eastern Kansas, and alfalfa in various parts of the State. Alfalfa stays green throughout the greater part of the year as it goes through several sowings. Fields of alfalfa resemble clover fields, save that the former grows more densely and is of a richer, darker shade of green. After alfalfa has grown a few yearsthe roots run far down into the ground, often reaching the "underflow" of western Kansas. This underflow is very characteristic of that part of the State, where it is said, there are many lost rivers flowing beneath the surface, adding one more to the list of Kansas phenomena. Some of these rivers flow only three or four feet below the ground, I am told, while others have reached a depth of from twenty to a hundred feet. Alfalfa roots will go down twenty feet to find the water. The former bed of the Republican River in northwestern Kansas is, with the exception of a narrow strip in the middle where the river runs on the surface in flood times, covered with rich alfalfa fields. Excepting at the time of spring and summer rains, this river is almost dry. The old bridges over it are no longer necessary except when the rains occur, and the river has piled sand under them until in some places there is not room for a man to stand beneath bridges which, when built, were ten and twelve feet above the river bed. Now, I am told, they don't build bridges any more, but lay cement roads through the sand, clearing their surfaces after the freshets.
The Arkansas River once a mighty stream, has held out with more success than the Republican against the winds and drifting sands, but it is slowly and certainly disappearing, burying itself in the sand and earth it carries down at flood times—a work in which it is assisted by the strong, persistent prairie winds.
Even at sea the great bowl of the sky had never looked to me so vastEven at sea the great bowl of the sky had never looked to me so vast
The great wheat belt begins somewhere about the middle of the State and continues to the west. In the springthe wheat is light green in color and is flexible in the wind so that at that time of year, the resemblance of the prairies to the sea is much more marked, and travelers are often heard to declare that the sight of the green billows makes them seasick. The season in Kansas is about a month earlier than in the eastern states; in May and June the wheat turns yellow, and in the latter part of June it is harvested, leaving the prairies brown and bare again.
The prairie land which is not sown in wheat or alfalfa, is covered with prairie grass—a long, wiry grass, lighter in shade than blue grass, which waves in the everlasting wind and glistens like silver in the sun.
Rain, sun, wind! The elements rule over Kansas. People's hearts are light or heavy according to the weather and the prospects as to crops. My Kansan friend in the observation car pointed out to me the fact that at every railroad siding the railroad company had paid its respects to the Kansas wind by the installation of a device known as a "derailer," the purpose of which is to prevent cars from rolling or blowing from a siding out onto the main line. If a car starts to blow along the siding, the derailer catches it before it reaches the switch, and throws one truck off the track.
"I suppose you've seen cyclones out here, too?" I asked the Kansan.
"Oh, yes," he said.
"Do the people out in this section of the State all have cyclone cellars?"
"Oh, some," he said. "Some has 'em. But a great many folks don't pay no attention to cyclones."
Last year, during a bad drought in western Kansas, the wind performed a new feat, adding another item to Kansas tradition. A high wind came in February and continued until June, actually blowing away a large portion of the top-soil of Thomas County, denuding a tract of land fifteen by twenty miles in extent. It was not a mere surface blow, either. In many places two feet of soil would be carried away; roads were obliterated, houses stood like dreary, deserted little forts, the earth piled up breast high around their wire-enclosed dooryards, and fences fell because the supporting soil was blown away from the posts. During this time the air was full of dust, and after it was over the country had reverted to desert—a desert not of sand, but of dust.
This story sounded so improbable that I looked up a man who had been in Thomas County at the time. He told me about it in detail.
"I have spent most of my life in the Middle West," he said, "but that exhibition was a revelation to me of the power of the wind. A quarter of the county was stripped bare. The farmers had, for the most part, moved out of the district because they couldn't keep the wheat in the ground long enough to raise a crop. But they were camped around the edges, making common cause against the wind. You couldn't find a man among them, either, who would admit that he was beaten. Thekind of men who are beaten by things like that couldn't stand the racket in western Kansas. The fellows out there are the most outrageously optimistic folks I ever saw. They will stand in the wind, eating the dirt that blows into their mouths, and telling you what good soil it is—they don't mean good to eat, either—and if you give them a kind word they are up in arms in a minute trying to sell you some of the cursed country.
"The men I talked to attributed the trouble to too much harrowing; they said the surface soil was scratched so fine that it simply wouldn't hold. There were wild theories, too, of meteorological disturbances, but I think those were mostly evolved in the brains of Sunday editors.
"The farmers fought the thing systematically by a process they called 'listing': a turning over of the top-soil with plows. And after a while the listing, for some reason known only to the Almighty and the Department of Agriculture, actually did stop the trouble and the land stayed put again. Then the farmers planted Kaffir corn because it grows easily, and because they needed a network of roots to hold down the soil. Most of that land was reclaimed by the end of last summer."
The little towns along the line are almost all alike. Each has a watering tank for locomotives, a grain elevator, and a cattle pen, beside the track. Each has a station made of wide vertical boards, their seams covered by wooden strips, and the whole painted ochre. Then there is usually a wide, sandy main street with afew brick buildings and more wooden ones, while on the outskirts of the town are shanties, covered with tar paper, and beyond them the eternal prairie. You can see no more reason why a town should be at that point on the prairie than at any other point. And it is a fact, I believe, that, in many instances, the railroad companies have simply created towns, arbitrarily, at even distances. The only town I recall that looked in any way different from every other town out there, was Wallace, where a storekeeper has made a lot of curious figures, in twisted wire, and placed them on the roof of his store, whence they project into the air for a distance of twenty or thirty feet.
I think, though I am not sure, that it was before we crossed the Colorado line when we saw our first 'dobe house, our first sage brush, and our first tumbleweed. Mark Twain has described sagebrush as looking like "a gnarled and venerable live oak tree reduced to a little shrub two feet high, with its rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete." In "Roughing It" he writes two whole pages about sagebrush, telling how it gives a gray-green tint to the desert country, how hardy it is, and how it is used for making camp fires on the plains and he winds up with this characteristic paragraph:
"Sagebrush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child, the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner."
The little towns of Western Kansas are far apart and have, like the surrounding scenery, an air of sadness and desolationThe little towns of Western Kansas are far apart and have, like the surrounding scenery, an air of sadness and desolation
Though Mark Twain tells about coyotes and prairie dogs—animals which I looked for, but regret to say I did not see—he ignores the tumbleweed, the most curious thing, animal, vegetable, or mineral, that crossed my vision as I crossed the plains. I cannot understand why Mark Twain did not mention this weed, because he must have seen it, and it must have delighted him, with its comical gyrations.
Tumbleweed is a bushy plant which grows to a height of perhaps three feet, and has a mass of little twigs and branches which make its shape almost perfectly round. Fortunately for the amusement of mankind, it has a weak stalk, so that, when the plant dries, the wind breaks it off at the bottom, and then proceeds to roll it, over and over, across the land. I well remember the first tumbleweed we saw.
"What on earth is that thing?" cried my companion, suddenly, pointing out through the car window. I looked. Some distance away a strange, buff-colored shape was making a swift, uncanny progress toward the east. It wasn't crawling; it wasn't running; but it was traveling fast, with a rolling, tossing, careening motion, like a barrel half full of whisky, rushing down hill. Now it tilted one way, now another; now it shot swiftly into some slight depression in the plain, but only to comebounding lightly out again, with an air indescribably gay, abandoned and inane.
Soon we saw another and another; they became more and more common as we went along until presently they were rushing everywhere, careering in their maudlin course across the prairie, and piled high against the fences along the railroad's right of way, like great concealing snowdrifts.
We fell in love with tumbleweed and never while it was in sight lost interest in its idiotic evolutions. Excepting only tobacco, it is the greatest weed that grows, and it has the advantage over tobacco that it does no man any harm, but serves only to excite his risibilities. It is the clown of vegetation, and it has the air, as it rolls along, of being conscious of its comicality, like the smartcaniche, in the dog show, who goes and overturns the basket behind the trainer's back; or the circus clown who runs about with a rolling gait, tripping, turning double and triple somersaults, rising, running on, tripping, falling, and turning over and over again. Who shall say that tumbleweed is useless, since it contributes a rare note of drollery to the tragic desolation of the western plains?
As I have said, I am not certain that we saw the tumbleweed before we crossed the line from Kansas into Colorado, but there is one episode that I remember, and which I am certain occurred before we reached the boundary, for I recall the name of the town at which it happened.
It was a sad-looking little town, like all the rest—just a main street and a few stores and houses set down in the midst of the illimitable waste. Our train stopped there.
I saw a man across the aisle look out of the window, scowl, rise from his seat, throw up his arms, and exclaim, addressing no one in particular: "God! How can they stand living out here? I'd rather be dead!"
My companion and I had been speaking of the same thing, wondering how people could endure their lives in such a place.
"Come on," he said, rising. "This is the last stop before we get to Colorado. Let's get out and walk."
I followed him from the car and to the station platform.
Looking away from the station, we gazed upon a foreground the principal scenic grandeur of which was supplied by a hitching post. Beyond lay the inevitable main street and dismal buildings. One of them, as I recall it, was painted sky-blue, and bore the simple, unostentatious word, "Hotel."
My companion gazed upon the scene for a time. He looked melancholy. Finally, without turning his head, he spoke.
"How would you like to get off and spend a week here, some day?" he asked me.
"You mean get off some day and spend a week," I corrected.
"No, I mean get off and spend a week some day."
I was still cogitating over that when the train started. We scrambled aboard and, resuming our seats in the observation car, looked back at the receding station. There, in strong black letters on a white sign, we saw, for the first time, the name of the town:
Monotony!
THE MOUNTAINS AND THE COAST
What a curious thing it is, that mental process by which a first impression of a city is summed up. A railway station, a taxicab, swift glimpses through a dirty window of streets, buildings, people, blurred together, incoherently, like moving pictures out of focus; then a quick unconscious adding of infinitesimal details and the total: "I like this city," or: "I do not like it."
It was late afternoon when the train upon which we had come from eastern Kansas stopped at the Denver station—a substantial if not distinguished structure, neither new nor very old, but of that architectural period in which it was considered that a roof was hardly more essential to a station than a tower.
Passing through the building and emerging upon the taxi stand, we found ourselves confronted by an elaborate triple gateway of bronze, somewhat reminiscent of certain city gates of Paris, at which theoctroiwaits with the inhospitable purpose of collecting taxes. However, Denver has nooctroi, nor is the Denver gate a barrier. Indeed, it is not even a gate, having no doors, but is intended merely as a sort of formal portal to the city—a city proud of its climate, of the mountainscenery, and of its reputation for thoroughgoing hospitality. Over the large central arch of this bronze monstrosity the beribboned delegate (arriving to attend one of the many conventions always being held in Denver) may read, in large letters, the word "Welcome"; and when, later, departing, he approaches the arch from the city gate, he finds Denver giving him godspeed with the word "Mizpah."
Passing beneath the central arch, our taxi swept along a wide, straight street, paved with impeccably smooth asphalt, and walled in with buildings tall enough and solid enough to do credit to the business and shopping district of any large American city.
All this surprised me. Perhaps because of the unfavorable first impression I had received in Kansas City, I had expected Denver, being farther west, to have a less finished look. Furthermore, I had been reading Richard Harding Davis's book, "The West Through a Car Window," which, though it told me that Denver is "a smaller New York in an encircling range of white-capped mountains," added that Denver has "the worst streets in the country." Denver is still by way of being a miniature New York, with its considerable number of eastern families, and its little replica of Broadway café life, as well; but the Denver streets are no longer ill paved. Upon the contrary, they are among the best paved streets possessed by any city I have visited. That caused me to look at the copyright notice in Mr. Davis's book, whereupon I discovered, to my surprise, that twenty-two years (and Heaven only knows how many steam rollers) had passed over Denver since the book was written. Yet, barring such improvements, the picture is quite accurate to-day.
In the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel my companion and I saw several old fellows, sitting about, looking neither prosperous nor busy, but always talking mines. A kind word, or even a pleasant glance, is enough to set them off.In the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel my companion and I saw several old fellows, sitting about, looking neither prosperous nor busy, but always talking mines. A kind word, or even a pleasant glance, is enough to set them off.
Another feeling of my first ten minutes in Denver was one of wonder at the city's flatness. That part of it through which we passed on the way to the Brown Palace Hotel was as flat as Chicago, whereas I had always thought of Denver as being in the mountains. However, if flat, the streets looked attractive, and I arrived at the proudly named caravansary with the feeling that Denver was a fine young city.
Meeting cities, one after another, as I met them on this journey, is like being introduced, at a reception, to a line of strangers. A glance, a handshake, a word or two, and you have formed an impression of an individuality. But there is this difference: the individual at the reception is "fixed up" for the occasion, whereas the city has but one exterior to show to every one.
That the exterior shown by Denver is pleasing has been, until recently, a matter more or less of accident. The city was laid out by pioneers and mining men, who showed their love of liberality in making the streets wide. There is nothing close about Denver. She has the open-handed, easy affluence of a mining city. She spends money freely on good pavements and good buildings. Thus, without any brilliant comprehensive plan she has yet grown from a rough mining camp into a delightful city, all in the space of fifty years.
A little more than a hundred years ago Captain Zebulon Pike crossed the plains and visited the territory which is now Colorado, though it was then a part of the vast country of Louisiana. Long, Frémont, Kit Carson, and the other early pioneers followed, but it was not until 1858 that gold was found on the banks of Cherry Creek, above its juncture with the South Platte River, causing a camp to be located on the present site of Denver. The first camp was on the west side of Cherry Creek and was named Auraria, after a town in Georgia. On the east side there developed another camp, St. Charles by name, and these two camps remained, for some time, independent of each other. The discovery of gold in California brought a new influx of men to Colorado—though the part of Colorado in which Denver stands was then in the territory of Kansas, which extended to the Rockies. Many of the pioneers were men from eastern Kansas, and hence it happened that when the mining camps of Auraria and St. Charles were combined into one town, the town was named for General James W. Denver, then Governor of Kansas.
Kansas City and Denver are about of an age and are comparable in many ways. The former still remains a kind of capital to which naturally gravitate men who have made fortunes in southwestern oil and cattle, while the latter is a mining capital. Of her "hundred millionaires," most have been enriched by mines, and the story of her sudden fortunes and of her famous "characters"makes a long and racy chapter in American history, running the gamut from tragedy to farce. And, like Kansas City, Denver is particularly American. Practically all her millionaires, past and present, came of native stock, and almost all her wealth has been taken from ground in the State of Colorado.
J. M. Oskison, in his "Unconventional Portrait," published in "Collier's" a year or so ago, told a great deal about Denver in a few words:
Last October a frock-coated clergyman of the Episcopal Church stood up in one of the luxurious parlors of Denver's newest hotel and said: "I am an Arapahoe Indian; when I was a little boy my people used to hunt buffalo all over this country; we made our camps right on this place where Denver is now." There is not very much gray in that man's hair.In the summer of 1867, when Vice-President Colfax came to Denver from Cheyenne, after a stage ride of twenty-two hours, he found it a hopeful city of 5,000. Denver had just learned that Cherry Creek sometimes carried a great deal of water down to the Platte River, and that it wasn't wise to build in its bed.Irrigation has made a garden of the city and lands about. There are 240,000 people who make Denver their home to-day. The city under the shadow of the mountains is spread over an area of sixty square miles; a plat of redeemed desert with an assessed valuation of $135,000,000.
Last October a frock-coated clergyman of the Episcopal Church stood up in one of the luxurious parlors of Denver's newest hotel and said: "I am an Arapahoe Indian; when I was a little boy my people used to hunt buffalo all over this country; we made our camps right on this place where Denver is now." There is not very much gray in that man's hair.
In the summer of 1867, when Vice-President Colfax came to Denver from Cheyenne, after a stage ride of twenty-two hours, he found it a hopeful city of 5,000. Denver had just learned that Cherry Creek sometimes carried a great deal of water down to the Platte River, and that it wasn't wise to build in its bed.
Irrigation has made a garden of the city and lands about. There are 240,000 people who make Denver their home to-day. The city under the shadow of the mountains is spread over an area of sixty square miles; a plat of redeemed desert with an assessed valuation of $135,000,000.
In 1870, three years after the visit of Colfax, Denver got its first railroad: a spur line from Cheyenne; in the 80's it got street cars; to-day it has the look of a city that is made—and well made. But, as I have said before, that has, hitherto, been largely a matter of good fortune. Denver's youth has saved her fromthe municipal disease which threatens such older cities as St. Louis and St. Paul: hardening of the arteries of traffic. Also, nature has given her what may be termed a good "municipal complexion," wherein she has been more fortunate than Kansas City, whose warts and wens have necessitated expensive operations by the city "beauty doctor."
Now, a city with the natural charm of Denver is, like a woman similarly endowed, in danger of becoming oversure. Either is likely to lie back and rest upon Nature's bounty. Yet, to Denver's eternal credit be it said, she has not fallen into the ways of indolent self-satisfaction. Indeed, I know of no American city which has done, and is doing, more for herself. Consider these few random items taken from the credit side of her balance: She is one of the best lighted cities in the land. She has the commission form of government. (Also, as you will remember, she has woman suffrage, Colorado having been the first State to accept it.) Her Children's Court, presided over by Judge Ben B. Lindsey, is famous. She has no bread line, and, as for crime, when I asked Police Inspector Leonard De Lue about it, he shook his head and said: "No; business is light. The fact is we ain't got no crime out here." Denver owns her own Auditorium, where free concerts are given by the city. Also, in one of her parks, she has a city race track, where sport is the only consideration, betting, even between horse owners, having been successfully eliminated. Furthermore, Denver has been one of thefirst American cities to begin work on a "civic center." Several blocks before the State Capitol have been cleared of buildings, and a plaza is being laid out there which will presently be a Tuileries Garden, in miniature, surrounded by fine public buildings, forming a suitable central feature for the admirable system of parks and boulevards which already exists.
Curiously enough, however, by far the smallest part of Denver's parks are within the confines of the city. About five years ago Mr. John Brisben Walker proposed that mountain parks be created. Denver seized upon the idea with characteristic energy, with the result that she now has mountain parks covering forty square miles in neighboring counties. These parks have an area almost as great as that of the whole city, and are connected with the Denver boulevards by fine roads, so that some of the most spectacular motor trips in the country are within easy range of the "Queen City of the Plains."
But though the mountains give Denver her individuality, and though she has made the most of them, they have not proved an unmixed blessing. The riches which she has extracted from them, and the splendid setting that they give her, is the silver lining to her commercial cloud. The mountains directly west of Denver form a barrier which has forced the main lines of trancontinental travel to the north and south, leaving Denver in a backwater.
To overcome this handicap the late David Moffat,one of Denver's early millionaires, started in to build the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad, better known as the Moffat Road. This railway strikes almost due west from Denver and crosses the continental divide at an altitude of over two miles. While it is one of the most astonishing pieces of railroad in the world, its windings and severe grades have made operation difficult and expensive, and the road has been built only as far as Craig, Colo., less than halfway to Salt Lake City. The great difficulty has always been the crossing of the divide. The city of Denver has now come forward with the Moffat tunnel project, and has extended her credit to the extent of three million dollars, for the purpose of helping the railroad company to build the tunnel. It will be more than six miles long, and will penetrate the Continental Divide at a point almost half a mile below that now reached by the road, saving twenty-four miles in distance and over two per cent. in grade. The tunnel is now under construction, and will, when completed, be the longest railroad tunnel in the Western Hemisphere. The railroad company stands one-third of the cost, while the city of Denver undertakes two-thirds. When completed, this route will be the shortest between Denver and Salt Lake by many miles.
Nor is Denver giving her entire attention to her railway line. The good-roads movement is strong throughout the State of Colorado. Last year two million dollars was expended under the direction of the State Highway Commission—a very large sum when it is considered that the total population of the State is not a great deal larger than that of the city of St. Louis.
The construction of roads in Colorado is carried on under a most advanced system. Of a thousand convicts assigned to the State Penitentiary at Cañon City, four hundred are employed upon road work. In traveling through the State I came upon several parties of these men, and had I not been informed of the fact, I should never have known that they were convicts. I met them in the mountains, where they live in camps many miles distant from the penitentiary. They seemed always to be working with a will, but as we passed, they would look up and smile and wave their hands to us. They appeared healthy, happy, and—respectable. They do not wear stripes, and their guards are unarmed, being selected, rather, as foremen with a knowledge of road building. When one considers the ghastly mine wars which have, at intervals, disgraced the State, it is comforting to reflect upon Colorado's enlightened methods of handling her prisons and her prisoners.
Denver, in her general architecture, is more attractive than certain important cities to the eastward of her. Her houses are, for the most part, built solidly of brick and stone, and more taste has been displayed in them, upon the whole, than has been shown in either St. Louis or Kansas City. Like Kansas City, Denver has many long, tree-bordered streets lined with modest homes which look new and which are substantially built, but there is less monotony of design in Denver.
As in Kansas City, the wonder of Denver is that it has all happened in such a short time. This was brought home to me when, dining in a delightful house one evening, I was informed by my hostess that the land on which is her home was "homesteaded," in '64 or '65, by her father; that is to say, he had taken it over, gratis, from the Government. That modest corner lot is now worth between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars.
Though Denver has no art gallery, she hopes to have one in connection with her new "civic center." In the meantime, some paintings are shown in the Public Library and in the Colorado Museum of Natural History—a building which also shelters a collection of stuffed animals (somewhat better, on the whole, than the paintings) and of minerals found in the State.
A symphony hall is planned along with the new art gallery, for Denver has a real interest in music. Indeed, I found that true of many cities in the Middle West and West. In Kansas City, for instance, important concerts are patronized not only by residents of the place, but by quantities of people who come in from other cities and towns within a radius of thirty or forty miles.
Denver has her own symphony orchestra, one which compares favorably with many other large orchestras in various parts of the country. The Denver organization is led by Horace Tureman, a very capable conductor, and its seventy musicians have been gathered fromtheater and café orchestras throughout the city. Six or eight programs of the highest character are given each season, and in order that all music lovers may be enabled to attend the concerts, seats are sold as low as ten cents each.
"If some of the big concert singers who come out here could hear one of our symphony programs," one Denver woman said to me, "I think they might revise their opinion of us. A great many of them must think us less advanced, musically, than we are, for they insist on singing 'The Suwanee River' and 'Home, Sweet Home'—which we always resent."
The one conspicuous example of sculpture which I saw in Denver—the Pioneer's Fountain, by Macmonnies—is not entirely Denver's fault. When a city gives an order to a sculptor of Macmonnies's standing, she shows that she means to do the best she can. It is then up to the sculptor.
The Pioneer's Fountain, which is intended to commemorate the early settlers, could hardly be less suitable. It is large and exceedingly ornate. Surmounting the top of it is a rococo cowboy upon a pony of the same extraction. The pony is not a cow-pony, and the cowboy is not a cowboy, but a theatrical figure: something which might have been modeled by a Frenchman whose acquaintance with this country had been limited to the reading of bad translations of Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte. At the base of the fountain are figures which, I was informed, represent pioneers.If western pioneers had been like these, there never would have been a West. They are soft creatures, almost voluptuous, who would have wept in face of hostile Indians. The whole fountain seems like something intended for a mantel ornament in Dresden china, but which, through some confusion, had gotten itself enlarged and cast in bronze.
Society in Denver has several odd features. For one thing, it is the habit of fashionables, and those who wish to gaze upon them, to attend the theaters on certain nights, which are known as "society night." Thus, the Broadway Theater has "society night" on Mondays, the Denham on Wednesdays, and the Orpheum on Fridays.
"Society," of course, means different things to different persons. In Denver the word, used in its most restricted, most elegant, mostrecherché, and most exclusive sense, means that group of persons who are celebrated in the society columns of the Denver newspapers, as "The Sacred Thirty-six."
If it is possible for newspapers anywhere to outdo in idiocy those of New York in the handling of "society news," I should say that the Denver newspapers accomplished it. Having less to work with, they have to make more noise in proportion. Thus the arrival in Denver, at about the time I was there, of Lord and Lady Decies caused an amount of agitation the like of which I have never witnessed anywhere. The Denver papers were absolutely plastered over with the picturesand doings and sayings of this English gentleman and his American wife, and the matter published with regard to them revealed a delight in their presence which was childlike and engaging.
I have a copy of one Denver paper, containing an interview with Lord and Lady Decies, in which the reporter mentions having been greeted "like I was a regular caller," adding: "The more I looked the grander everything got." The same reporter referred to Decies as "the Lord," which must have struck him as more flattering than when, later, he was mentioned as "His Nibs." The interviewer, however, finally approved the visitors, stating definitely that "they are Regular Folks and they don't four-flush about anything."
When it comes to publicity there is one man in Denver who gets more of it than all the "Sacred Thirty-six" put together, adepts though they seem to be.
It is impossible to consider Denver without considering Judge B. Lindsey—although I may say in passing that I was urged to perform the impossible in this respect.
Opinion with regard to Judge Lindsey is divided in Denver. It is passionately divided. I talked not only with the Judge himself, but with a great many citizens of various classes, and while I encountered no one who did not believe in the celebrated Juvenile Court conducted by him, I found many who disapproved more or less violently of certain of his political activities, his speech-making tours, and, most of all, of his writingsin the magazines which, it was contended, had given Denver a black eye.
Denver is clearly sensitive about her reputation. As a passing observer, I am not surprised. With Denver, I believe that she has had to take more than a fair share of criticism. She thoroughly is sick of it, and one way in which she shows that she is sick of it is by a billboard campaign.
"Denver has no bread line," I read on the bill-boards. "Stop knocking. Boost for more business and a bigger city."
The charge that the Judge had injured Denver by "knocking" it in his book was used against him freely in the 1912 and 1914 campaign, but he was elected by a majority of more than two to one. He is always elected. He has run for his judgeship ten times in the past twelve years—this owing to certain disputes as to whether the judgeship of the Juvenile Court is a city, county, or state office. But whatever kind of office it is, he holds it firmly, having been elected by all three.
At present the Judge is engaged in trying to complete a code of laws for the protection of women and children, which he hopes will be a model for all other States. This code will cover labor, juvenile delinquency, and dependency, juvenile courts, mothers' compensation, social insurance (the Judge's term for a measure guaranteeing every woman the support of her child, whether she be married or unmarried), probation, and other matters having to do with social and industrial justice toward mother and child. It is the Judge's general purpose to humanize the law, to cause temptations and frailties to be considered by the law, and to make society responsible for its part in crime.
The Judge is also trying to get himself appointed a Commissioner of Child Welfare for the State, without salary or other expense.
Of all these activities Denver, so far as I could learn, seemed generally to approve. A number of women, two corporation presidents, a hotel waiter, and a clerk in an express office, among others, told me they approved of Lindsey's work for women and children. A barber in the hotel said that he "guessed the Judge was all right," but added that there had been "too much hollering about reform," considering that Denver was a city depending for a good deal of her prosperity upon tourists.
In the more intelligent circles the great objections to the Judge seemed to rest upon the florid methods he has used to promote his causes, upon the diversity of his interests, and upon the allegation that he had become a demagogue.
One gentleman described him to me as "the most hated citizen of Colorado in Colorado, and the most admired citizen of Colorado everywhere outside the State."
"Lindsey has done the State harm, perhaps," said this gentleman, "by what he has said about it, but he has done us a lot of good with his reforms. The great trouble is that he has too many irons in the fire. Hiscourt is a splendid thing; we all admit that. And he is peculiarly suited to his work. But he has gotten into all kinds of movements and has been so widely advertised that he has become a monumental egotist. He believes in his various causes, but, more than anything else, he believes in himself, in getting himself before the public and keeping himself there. He has posed as a little god, and, as Shaw says: 'If you pose as a little god, you must pose for better or for worse.'"
The Judge is a very small, slight man, with a high, bulging white forehead, thin hair, a sharp, aquiline nose, a large, rolling black mustache and very fine eyes, brown almost to blackness. The most striking things about him are the eyes, the forehead, and the waxy whiteness of his skin. He looks thin-skinned, but he seems to have proved that, in the metaphorical sense at least, he is not.
He speaks of his causes quietly but very earnestly, and you feel, as you listen to him, that he hardly ever thinks of other things. There is something strange and very individual about him.
"The story of one American city," he said to me, "is the story of every American city. Denver is no worse than the rest. Indeed, I believe it is a cleaner and better city than most, and I have been in every city in every State in this Union."
It has been said that "the worst thing about reform is the reformer." You can say the same thing about authorship and authors, or about plumbing and plumbers. It is only another way of saying that the human element is the weak element. I have met a number of reformers and have come to classify them under three general heads. Without considering the branch of reform in which they are interested, but only their characteristics as individuals, I should say that all professional reformers might be divided as follows: First, zealots, or "inspired" reformers; second, cold-blooded, theoretical, statistical reformers; third, a small number of normal human beings, capable alike of feeling and of reasoning clearly.
About reformers of the first type there is often something abnormal. They are frequently of the most radical opinions, and are likely to be impatient, intolerant, and suspicious of the integrity of those who do not agree with them. They take to the platform like ducks to water and their egos are likely to be very highly developed. Reformers of the second type are repulsive, because reform, with them, has become mechanical; they measure suffering and sin with decimals, and regard their fellow men as specimens. What the reformer of the third class will do is more difficult to say. It is possible that, blowing neither hot nor cold, he will not accomplish so much as the others, but he can reach groups of persons who consider reformers of the first class unbalanced and those of the second inhuman.
I have a friend who is a reformer of the third class. His temperate writings, surcharged with sanity and a sense of justice, have reached many persons who couldhardly be affected by "yellow" methods of reform. Becoming deeply interested in his work, he was finally tempted to take the platform. One day, when he had come back from a lecture tour, I chanced to meet him, and was surprised to hear from him that, though he had been successful as a lecturer, he nevertheless intended to abandon that field of work.
I asked him why.
"I'll tell you," he said. "At first it was all right. I had certain things I wanted to say to people, and I said them. But as I went on, I began to feel my audiences more and more. I began to know how certain things I said would affect them. I began to want to affect them—to play upon them, see them stirred, hear them applaud. So, hardly realizing it at first, I began shifting my speeches, playing up certain points, not so much because those points were the ones which ought to be played up, but because of the pleasure it gave me to work up my listeners. Then, one night while I was talking, I realized what was happening to me. I was losing my intellectual honesty. Public speaking had been stealing it from me without my knowing it. Then and there I made up my mind to give it up. I'm not going to Say it any more; I'm going to Write it. When a man is writing, other minds are not acting upon his, as they are when he is speaking to an audience."
Personally, I think Judge Lindsey would be stronger with the more critical minds of Colorado if he, too, had felt this way.
A number of odd items about Denver should be mentioned.
Elitch's Garden, the city's great summer amusement place, is famous all through the country. It was originally a farm, and still has a fine orchard, besides its orderly Coney Island features. Children go there in the afternoons with their nurses, and all of Denver goes there in the evenings when the great attraction is the theater with its stock company which is of a very high order.
The Tabor Opera House in Denver is famous among theatrical people largely because of the man who built it. Tabor was one of Denver's most extraordinary mining millionaires. After he had struck it rich he determined to build as a monument to himself, the finest Opera House in the United States, and "damn the expense."
While the building was under construction he was called away from the city. The story is related that on his return he went to see what progress had been made, and found mural painters at work, over the proscenium arch. They were painting the portrait of a man.
"Who's that?" demanded Tabor.
"Shakespeare," the decorator informed him.
"Shakespeare—shake hell!" responded the proprietor. "He never done nothing for Denver. Paint him out and put me up there."
Though there have been no Tabors made in Denver in the last few years, mining has not gone out of fashion.In the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel my companion and I saw several old fellows, sitting about, looking neither prosperous nor busy, but always talking mines. A kind word, or even a pleasant glance is enough to set them off. Instantly their hands dive into their pockets and out come nuggets and samples of ore, which they polish upon their coat sleeves, and hold up proudly, turning them to catch the light.
"Yes, sir! I made the doggondest strike up there you ever saw! It's all on the ground. Come over here and look at this!"
To which the answer is likely to be:
"No, I haven't time."
The Denver Club is a central rallying place for the successful business men of the city. It is a splendid club, with the best of kitchens, and cellars, and humidors. All over the land I have met men who had been entertained there and who spoke of the place with something like affection.
One night, several weeks after we had left Denver, we were at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, and fell to talking of Denver and her clubs.
"It was in a club in Denver," one man said, "that I witnessed the most remarkable thing I saw in Colorado."
"What was that?" we asked.
"I met a former governor of the State there one night," he said. "We sat around the fire. Every now and then he would hit the very center of a cuspidor whichstood fifteen feet away. The remarkable thing about it was that he didn't look more than forty-five years old. I have always wondered how a man of that age could have carried his responsibility as governor, yet have found time to learn to spit so superbly."