Looking Backward: 2000-1887 Read online

  CHAPTER XIV.

  A heavy rainstorm came up during the day, and I had concluded that thecondition of the streets would be such that my hosts would have togive up the idea of going out to dinner, although the dining-hall Ihad understood to be quite near. I was much surprised when at thedinner hour the ladies appeared prepared to go out, but without eitherrubbers or umbrellas.

  The mystery was explained when we found ourselves on the street, for acontinuous waterproof covering had been let down so as to inclose thesidewalk and turn it into a well lighted and perfectly dry corridor,which was filled with a stream of ladies and gentlemen dressed fordinner. At the corners the entire open space was similarly roofed in.Edith Leete, with whom I walked, seemed much interested in learningwhat appeared to be entirely new to her, that in the stormy weatherthe streets of the Boston of my day had been impassable, except topersons protected by umbrellas, boots, and heavy clothing. "Weresidewalk coverings not used at all?" she asked. They were used, Iexplained, but in a scattered and utterly unsystematic way, beingprivate enterprises. She said to me that at the present time all thestreets were provided against inclement weather in the manner I saw,the apparatus being rolled out of the way when it was unnecessary. Sheintimated that it would be considered an extraordinary imbecility topermit the weather to have any effect on the social movements of thepeople.

  Dr. Leete, who was walking ahead, overhearing something of our talk,turned to say that the difference between the age of individualism andthat of concert was well characterized by the fact that, in thenineteenth century, when it rained, the people of Boston put up threehundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentiethcentury they put up one umbrella over all the heads.

  As we walked on, Edith said, "The private umbrella is father'sfavorite figure to illustrate the old way when everybody lived forhimself and his family. There is a nineteenth century painting at theArt Gallery representing a crowd of people in the rain, each oneholding his umbrella over himself and his wife, and giving hisneighbors the drippings, which he claims must have been meant by theartist as a satire on his times."

  We now entered a large building into which a stream of people waspouring. I could not see the front, owing to the awning, but, if incorrespondence with the interior, which was even finer than the storeI visited the day before, it would have been magnificent. My companionsaid that the sculptured group over the entrance was especiallyadmired. Going up a grand staircase we walked some distance along abroad corridor with many doors opening upon it. At one of these, whichbore my host's name, we turned in, and I found myself in an elegantdining-room containing a table for four. Windows opened on a courtyardwhere a fountain played to a great height and music made the airelectric.

  "You seem at home here," I said, as we seated ourselves at table, andDr. Leete touched an annunciator.

  "This is, in fact, a part of our house, slightly detached from therest," he replied. "Every family in the ward has a room set apart inthis great building for its permanent and exclusive use for a smallannual rental. For transient guests and individuals there isaccommodation on another floor. If we expect to dine here, we put inour orders the night before, selecting anything in market, accordingto the daily reports in the papers. The meal is as expensive or assimple as we please, though of course everything is vastly cheaper aswell as better than it would be if prepared at home. There is actuallynothing which our people take more interest in than the perfection ofthe catering and cooking done for them, and I admit that we are alittle vain of the success that has been attained by this branch ofthe service. Ah, my dear Mr. West, though other aspects of yourcivilization were more tragical, I can imagine that none could havebeen more depressing than the poor dinners you had to eat, that is,all of you who had not great wealth."

  "You would have found none of us disposed to disagree with you on thatpoint," I said.

  The waiter, a fine-looking young fellow, wearing a slightlydistinctive uniform, now made his appearance. I observed him closely,as it was the first time I had been able to study particularly thebearing of one of the enlisted members of the industrial army. Thisyoung man, I knew from what I had been told, must be highly educated,and the equal, socially and in all respects, of those he served. Butit was perfectly evident that to neither side was the situation in theslightest degree embarrassing. Dr. Leete addressed the young man in atone devoid, of course, as any gentleman's would be, ofsuperciliousness, but at the same time not in any way deprecatory,while the manner of the young man was simply that of a person intenton discharging correctly the task he was engaged in, equally withoutfamiliarity or obsequiousness. It was, in fact, the manner of asoldier on duty, but without the military stiffness. As the youth leftthe room, I said, "I cannot get over my wonder at seeing a young manlike that serving so contentedly in a menial position."

  "What is that word 'menial'? I never heard it," said Edith.

  "It is obsolete now," remarked her father. "If I understand itrightly, it applied to persons who performed particularly disagreeableand unpleasant tasks for others, and carried with it an implication ofcontempt. Was it not so, Mr. West?"

  "That is about it," I said. "Personal service, such as waiting ontables, was considered menial, and held in such contempt, in my day,that persons of culture and refinement would suffer hardship beforecondescending to it."

  "What a strangely artificial idea," exclaimed Mrs. Leete, wonderingly.

  "And yet these services had to be rendered," said Edith.

  "Of course," I replied. "But we imposed them on the poor, and thosewho had no alternative but starvation."

  "And increased the burden you imposed on them by adding yourcontempt," remarked Dr. Leete.

  "I don't think I clearly understand," said Edith. "Do you mean thatyou permitted people to do things for you which you despised them fordoing, or that you accepted services from them which you would havebeen unwilling to render them? You can't surely mean that, Mr. West?"

  I was obliged to tell her that the fact was just as she had stated.Dr. Leete, however, came to my relief.

  "To understand why Edith is surprised," he said, "you must know thatnowadays it is an axiom of ethics that to accept a service fromanother which we would be unwilling to return in kind, if need were,is like borrowing with the intention of not repaying, while to enforcesuch a service by taking advantage of the poverty or necessity of aperson would be an outrage like forcible robbery. It is the worstthing about any system which divides men, or allows them to bedivided, into classes and castes, that it weakens the sense of acommon humanity. Unequal distribution of wealth, and, still moreeffectually, unequal opportunities of education and culture, dividedsociety in your day into classes which in many respects regarded eachother as distinct races. There is not, after all, such a difference asmight appear between our ways of looking at this question of service.Ladies and gentlemen of the cultured class in your day would no morehave permitted persons of their own class to render them services theywould scorn to return than we would permit anybody to do so. The poorand the uncultured, however, they looked upon as of another kind fromthemselves. The equal wealth and equal opportunities of culture whichall persons now enjoy have simply made us all members of one class,which corresponds to the most fortunate class with you. Until thisequality of condition had come to pass, the idea of the solidarity ofhumanity, the brother hood of all men, could never have become thereal conviction and practical principle of action it is nowadays. Inyour day the same phrases were indeed used, but they were phrasesmerely."

  "Do the waiters, also, volunteer?"

  "No," replied Dr. Leete. "The waiters are young men in theunclassified grade of the industrial army who are assignable to allsorts of miscellaneous occupations not requiring special skill.Waiting on table is one of these, and every young recruit is given ataste of it. I myself served as a waiter for several months in thisvery dining-house some forty years ago. Once more you must rememberthat there is recognized no sort of difference between the dignity ofthe di
fferent sorts of work required by the nation. The individual isnever regarded, nor regards himself, as the servant of those heserves, nor is he in any way dependent upon them. It is always thenation which he is serving. No difference is recognized between awaiter's functions and those of any other worker. The fact that his isa personal service is indifferent from our point of view. So is adoctor's. I should as soon expect our waiter to-day to look down on mebecause I served him as a doctor, as think of looking down on himbecause he serves me as a waiter."

  After dinner my entertainers conducted me about the building, of whichthe extent, the magnificent architecture and richness ofembellishment, astonished me. It seemed that it was not merely adining-hall, but likewise a great pleasure-house and social rendezvousof the quarter, and no appliance of entertainment or recreation seemedlacking.

  "You find illustrated here," said Dr. Leete, when I had expressed myadmiration, "what I said to you in our first conversation, when youwere looking out over the city, as to the splendor of our public andcommon life as compared with the simplicity of our private and homelife, and the contrast which, in this respect, the twentieth bears tothe nineteenth century. To save ourselves useless burdens, we have aslittle gear about us at home as is consistent with comfort, but thesocial side of our life is ornate and luxurious beyond anything theworld ever knew before. All the industrial and professional guildshave clubhouses as extensive as this, as well as country, mountain,and seaside houses for sport and rest in vacations."

  NOTE. In the latter part of the nineteenth century it became a practice of needy young men at some of the colleges of the country to earn a little money for their term bills by serving as waiters on tables at hotels during the long summer vacation. It was claimed, in reply to critics who expressed the prejudices of the time in asserting that persons voluntarily following such an occupation could not be gentlemen, that they were entitled to praise for vindicating, by their example, the dignity of all honest and necessary labor. The use of this argument illustrates a common confusion in thought on the part of my former contemporaries. The business of waiting on tables was in no more need of defense than most of the other ways of getting a living in that day, but to talk of dignity attaching to labor of any sort under the system then prevailing was absurd. There is no way in which selling labor for the highest price it will fetch is more dignified than selling goods for what can be got. Both were commercial transactions to be judged by the commercial standard. By setting a price in money on his service, the worker accepted the money measure for it, and renounced all clear claim to be judged by any other. The sordid taint which this necessity imparted to the noblest and the highest sorts of service was bitterly resented by generous souls, but there was no evading it. There was no exemption, however transcendent the quality of one's service, from the necessity of haggling for its price in the market-place. The physician must sell his healing and the apostle his preaching like the rest. The prophet, who had guessed the meaning of God, must dicker for the price of the revelation, and the poet hawk his visions in printers' row. If I were asked to name the most distinguishing felicity of this age, as compared to that in which I first saw the light, I should say that to me it seems to consist in the dignity you have given to labor by refusing to set a price upon it and abolishing the market-place forever. By requiring of every man his best you have made God his task-master, and by making honor the sole reward of achievement you have imparted to all service the distinction peculiar in my day to the soldier's.