AN IMMIGRANT AMONG THE EDITORS
Ever since I began to read the American magazines one burning question has consumed me: why is it that only the thoughts of educated people are written up? Why shouldn’t sometimes a servant girl or a janitress or a coal-heaver give his thoughts to the world? We who are forced to do the drudgery of the world, and who are considered ignorant because we have no time for school, could say a lot of new and different things, if only we had a chance to get a hearing.
Very rarely I’d come across a story about a shop-girl or a washerwoman. But they weren’t real stories. They were twisted pictures of the way the higher-ups see us people. They weren’t as we are. They were as unreal as the knowledge of the rich about the poor. Often I’d read those smooth-flowing stories about nothing at all, and I’d ask myself: why is it that so many of the educated, with nothing to say, knowhow to say that nothing with such an easy flow of words, while I, with something so aching to be said, can say nothing?
I was like a prison world full of choked-in voices, all beating in my brain to be heard. The minute I’d listen to one voice a million other voices would rush in crying for a hearing, till I’d get too excited and mixed up to know what or where.
Sometimes I’d see my brain as a sort of Hester Street junk-shop, where a million different things—rich up-town silks and velvets and the cheapest kind of rags—were thrown around in bunches. It seemed to me if I struggled from morning till night all my years I could never put order in my junk-shop brain.
Ach! If I only had an education, I used to think. It seemed to me that educated people were those who had their hearts and their heads so settled down in order that they could go on with quiet stillness to do anything they set out to do. They could take up one thought, one feeling at a time without getting the rest of themselves mixed up and excited over it. They had each thought, each feeling, laid out in separate shelves in their heads. So they could draw out one shelf of ideas while the rest of their ideasremained quiet and still in the orderly place inside of them.
With me my thoughts were not up in my head. They were in my hands and feet, in the thinnest nerves of my hair, in the flesh and blood of my whole body. Everything hurt in me when I tried to think; it was like struggling up towards something over me that I could never reach—like tearing myself out inch by inch from the roots of the earth—like suffering all pain of dying and being born.
And when I’d really work out a thought in words, I’d want to say it over and over a million times, for fear maybe I wasn’t saying it strong enough. And I’d clutch at my few little words as a starving man clutches at crumbs. I could never sit back with the feeling that I had said what I wanted to say, like the educated people, who are sure of themselves when they say something. The real thing I meant remained inside of me for want of deeper, more burning words than I had yet found in the cold English language.
With all the confused unsureness of myself, I was absolutely sure I had great things in me. I felt that all I needed was the chance to reach the educated higher-ups, and all the big thingsin me would leap out quicker than lightning. But how was I to reach these American-born higher-ups when they were so much above me? I could never get into their colleges because I could never take the time to learn all the beginnings from school to pass their entrance examinations. And even if I had the time to study, I wasn’t interested in grammar and arithmetic and dry history and still drier and deader literature about Chaucer and Marlowe. I was too much on fire trying to think out my own thoughts to get interested in the dust and ashes of dead and gone ones. And yet I was so crazy to reach those who had all that book-learning from school in their heads that I was always dreaming of the wonderful educated world that was over me.
Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and stare through the darkness at an imaginary world of educated people that would invite me in to share with them their feast of learning. I saw them sitting around a table talking high thoughts, all the wisdom of the ages flowing from lip to lip like living light. I saw just how they talked and how they looked, because once I had worked as a waitress in a professor’s house. Their words were over my head, but the sound of their low voices wentthrough me like music of all that I longed and dreamed and desired to be.
I used to hold myself tight-in, like a wooden dummy, when I passed them the food. My lips were tight together, my eyes half-closed, like a Chinaman’s, as though I didn’t see or hear anything but my one business of waiting on them. But all the time something in the choked stillness of me was crying out to them: “I’m no dummy of a servant. I want to be like you. I could be like all of you if I only had a chance.”
“If I only had a chance” kept going round and round in my head.
“Make your chance,” a still voice goaded me.
“If I could only write out my wonderful thoughts that fly away in the air I’d get myself a first place in America.”
“No, go ahead. Think connectedly for one minute. Catch your crazy wild birds and bring them down to earth.”
And so I pushed myself on to begin the adventure of writing out my thoughts.
But who’ll print what I write? was my next bother.
In my evenings off I used to go to the library and kept looking and looking through all themagazines to see where I could get a start. At last I picked out three magazines that stood out plainly for their special interest in working people. I will call themThe Reformer,The PeopleandFree Mankind.
Free Mankindwas a thin, white, educated-looking magazine, without covers, without pictures, without any advertising. It gave me the feeling when I looked through the pages that it was a head without a body. Most of the articles were high words in the air. I couldn’t make out what they were talking about, but some of the editorials talked against paying rent. This at once got me on fire with interest, because all my life the people I knew were wearing out their years worrying for the rent. If this magazine was trying to put the landlords out of business, I was with it. So, fired by the inspiration of the moment, I rushed to see the editor ofFree Mankind.
I don’t remember how I ever pushed myself past the telephone girl and secretary, but I found myself talking face to face with a clean, cold, high-thinking head, Mr. Alfred Nott, editor-boss ofFree Mankind. My burning enthusiasm turned into ice through all my bones as I looked into the terrible, clean face and cold eyes ofthis clean cold higher-up. But I heard my words rushing right to him like the words of a soap-box speaker who is so on fire with his thoughts that even the cold ones from up-town are forced to listen to him.
“I can put a lot of new life into your magazine,” I said. “I have in me great new ideas about life, and I’m crazy to give them out to you. Your magazine is too much up in the head and not enough down on earth. It’s all words, words, long-winded empty words in emptiness. Your articles are something like those long sermons about nothing, that put people to sleep. I can wake up your readers like lightning. I can make your magazine mean living things to living people.”
The man fell back in his chair as if frightened. His mouth opened to speak, but no words came from his lips.
“What you tell us about not paying rent is good enough,” I went on. “But you should tell us how to put an end to all that. I know enough about not having a place to sleep in to write you something that will wake up the dead. You’re not excited enough with feelings when you write, because you live in a soft steam-heated place with plenty of money to pay for it. But thepoor like me, with little rent, and drying out their heads worrying for that little, they feel what it is to be under the foot of those Cossacks, the landlords. In my stories I’d write for you, I’d get the readers so mad, they’d rush out and do something.”
Even while I was yet talking, Mr. Nott slipped out of the chair and disappeared like a frightened rabbit. I could see him vanishing through the door before I could stop my flow of words. I looked about me in the empty room. I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face.
I ran out of the office with tears in my eyes. And I couldn’t stop my crying in the street. So this is his Free Mankind! When a person comes to him with something real he runs away as from a madman. Here was a paper that would reform the world, and its boss wouldn’t even listen to one of the people he was setting out to save.
But there were other magazines in America, I told myself.The Reformerflashed before my eyes, because I remember it said on the back page, “It speaks for the average man.”
I found myself again face to face with an editor—John Blair, the great liberal, the friend of an American President, the starter of a new school that was to gather all the minds of thenew world. With this man I thought I’d begin by asking him a question instead of rushing myself out to him in all my hungry eagerness.
“Mr. Blair,” I demanded in a voice of choked-in quietness, “do you think that the educated people know it all?”
He looked at me for a long minute. His lips closed together, his eyes cool like a judge. I felt he looked me over to decide in what shelf I belonged in the filing bureau of his college head.
“No, my dear young woman. I don’t say that educated people have a monopoly of knowledge, but they are the only ones that know how to use it.”
“Then it’s only the thoughts of educated people for your magazine,” I cried disappointedly. “How about people like me with a lot to say but can’t put it in fancy language? Isn’t your new school to be different from the old colleges in that you want to bring out the new thoughts of new people like me? Wouldn’t you want to give a person like me a chance in your magazine?”
“But can you express yourself logically, reasonably?”
“Logic—reason! Reason—logic!” I jumped from the chair with excitement. “That’s why your magazine is so dull, so dead, because all your living thoughts die down in the ashes of dead logic. Reason and logic aren’t life. Hunger and desire are life. I know, because I’m burning up with it. With this hunger they paint pictures and write books and sing songs——”
“You Russians are full of interesting stuff. But you’re so incoherent. You’d be no use to us unless you could learn to think clearly.”
“I know my thoughts are all mixed up,” I pleaded with educated quietness, “but it’s only because I have so much to give and nobody wants it. Wouldn’t it be better for your magazine to have my mixed-up aliveness instead of the cold logic from your college writers?”
He smiled down pityingly on me.
“I’m afraid that such a chaotic mind as yours would be useless to an intellectual journal. Good day.”
Not crushed, but bitter and hard and with head high, I walked out ofThe Reformeroffice. Were all the magazines that set themselves up to save the world headed by such narrow-thinking tsars? Only to prove that all of them were run by someclique of college professors, I went to the office ofThe People.
Here the editor didn’t run from me like a frightened rabbit or sting me with logic like John Blair. He cut short the interview by going over to the shelf and taking down a book which he handed to me with pitying kindness. “This will help you to think and maybe to write.”
Out in the street, I gave a look at the book. It was Genung’s “Psychology of Madness.” It grew black and red before my eyes. So it’s madness to want to give out my thoughts to the world? They turn me down like a crazy beggar only because I come to give them new ideas.
I threw the book away in the nearest ash can. But that word “madness” was to me like a red rag to a bull. I had to write now or go crazy with the wrath these reformers roused in me.
“What’s my place in America?” I asked myself. “Must I remain a choked-in servant in somebody’s kitchen or somebody’s factory, or will I find a way to give out my thoughts to America?”
So what I wrote was the story of myself—myself lost in America.
It was like new air in my lungs to let myself loose on paper. But how could I get it to theAmerican people? One thing I was sure of. I wasn’t going to subject myself to another insult from those reform magazines. I don’t know how it happened, but I picked outWharton’s Magazine, the most literary magazine of all those I looked over, simply because it looked so solidly high above the rest. My desperate need for a hearing made me bold. In my ragged coat and torn shoes I walked into that breath-taking rich office like a millionaire landlord with pockets full of rent money.
“Do you want something new and different for your magazine?” I asked with the low voice and the high head of an American-born.
Friendly eyes turned on me. “We’re always seeking something new and different. Have you got it?”
I looked right into the friendly eyes. This was Mr. Robert Reeves, the editor. He had the clean, well-dressed look of the born higher-up. But how different from those others! His face was human. And there was a shine in the eyes that warmed me.
“I’m an immigrant,” I said. “I have worked in kitchens, factories and sweatshops. I’m dying away with the loneliness of my thoughts, so I wrote myself out in a story.”
He snatched up the papers and began to read. A quick light flashed into his eyes. Then he turned to me.
“I can see you have something original. But I can’t decide just now. You’ll hear from me as soon as I have read it through.”
I could hardly walk the street for excitement. My life hung on this man’s answer. And it came two days later in a small envelope. He offered me two hundred dollars for my story.
I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a dream. And I rushed with the letter to his office. “You could have given me a hundred dollars, fifty, twenty-five, and it would have been to me a fortune. But two hundred—do you mean really to give that much to me?”
He chuckled to himself, and I rushed right on. “I thought New York was a den of thieves. The landlord robbing you with the rent, and the restaurants cheating the strength out of every bite of food you buy. And I thought the college higher-ups were only educated cowards with dish-water in their veins, scared to death of hungry people like me, scared to look at the face of suffering. Their logic and their reason—only how to use their book-learning brains to shut out their hearts—to make themselves deaf, dumb andblind to the cry of hunger and want knocking at their doors.”
“Just because you felt all that so deeply you were able to put fire in your words.”
A thousand windows of light burst open in me as I listened to him. I was like something choked for ages in the tight chains of ignorance and fear, breathing the first breath of free air. For the first time my eyes began to see, my ears began to hear, my heart began to understand the world’s wonder and the beauty.
A great pity welled up in my heart for the Alfred Notts and the John Blairs whom I had so mercilessly condemned. Poor little-educated ones! Why did I fear them and envy them and hate them so for nothing? They were only little children putting on a long wooden face, playing teacher to the world. And I was a little scared child afraid of teacher—afraid they were grown-ups with the power to hurt me and shut me out from the fun of life.
Why wasn’t I scared of Robert Reeves from the first minute? It was because he didn’t frighten people with his highness. He didn’t wear a wooden face of dignity. He was no reformer, no holy social worker—only a human being who loved people.
That one flash of understanding from Robert Reeves filled me with such enthusiasm for work that I shut myself off from the rest of the world and began turning out story after story.
Years passed. The only sign of success I became aware of was the increasing flood of mail that poured in on me. People who wanted to be writers asked me for literary help. People who imagined I was rolling in money sent me begging letters for aid. At the beginning I wanted to help them all. But I soon saw that I’d have to spend all my time answering the demands of foolish self-seekers who had nothing in common with me. And so I had to harden my heart against these time-wasting intruders.
One day, as I walked out of my house absorbed in one of the characters that I was writing about, someone stopped me. I looked up. A pale, thin, hungry-eyed young man asked timidly: “May I speak to you for a minute?” Then he told me that he had written a book, and that the publishers had turned it down, so he had printed it himself. “And I want your opinion,” he pleaded, “because none of the critics would listen to me.”
“I’m too busy,” I said irritably. “If you had to print the book yourself it means it’s no good.”
“I thought you, who once had such a hard struggle, would remember—would understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand except that you killed yourself with the public.” And I walked off.
I tried to resume the trend of my thoughts, but I could not think. The pale face, the hungry eyes, followed me accusingly in the street. “You who once struggled would understand” rang in my ears. And suddenly I realized how brutal I had been.
“But it’s the merciless truth,” I defended. Nobody could help him till he finds himself. Nobody helped me till I had found myself.
“No, I’m all wrong,” another voice cried. “Robert Reeves helped me. I could never have helped myself all alone. You can only help yourself half the way. The other half is some Hand of God in the shape of a human contact.”
Something hurt so deep in me I couldn’t work that day. I couldn’t sleep that night. The pale face and the hungry eyes kept staring at me through the darkness. I, who judged the Alfred Notts and the John Blairs—I saw myself condemned as one of them. I had let myself get so absorbed with the thoughts in my head that I ceased to have a heart for the people about me.
What would I not have given to see that young man and tell him how I suffered for my inhuman busy-business, which had shut my eyes to the hungry hands reaching up to me. But I never saw him again. And yet that man whom I had turned away like a beggar had brought me the life of a new awakening. He had made me aware that I could never contribute my deepest to America if I lost the friendly understanding of humanity that Robert Reeves had given me, if I lost the one precious thing that makes life real—the love for people, even if they are lost, wandering, crazy people.