Chapter 14
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 to giveup the idea of going out to dinner, although the dining-hall I hadunderstood to be quite near. I was much surprised when at the dinnerhour the ladies appeared prepared to go out, but without either rubbersor 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 comers 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 weather thestreets of the Boston of my day had been impassable, except to personsprotected by umbrellas, boots, and heavy clothing. "Were sidewalkcoverings not used at all?" she asked. They were used, I explained, butin a scattered and utterly unsystematic way, being private enterprises.She said to me that at the present time all the streets were providedagainst inclement weather in the manner I saw, the apparatus beingrolled out of the way when it was unnecessary. She intimated that itwould be considered an extraordinary imbecility to permit the weatherto have any effect on the social movements of the people.
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's favoritefigure to illustrate the old way when everybody lived for himself andhis family. There is a nineteenth century painting at the Art Galleryrepresenting a crowd of people in the rain, each one holding hisumbrella over himself and his wife, and giving his neighbors thedrippings, which he claims must have been meant by the artist as asatire 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 store Ivisited 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, according tothe daily reports in the papers. The meal is as expensive or as simpleas we please, though of course everything is vastly cheaper as well asbetter than it would be prepared at home. There is actually nothingwhich our people take more interest in than the perfection of thecatering and cooking done for them, and I admit that we are a littlevain of the success that has been attained by this branch of theservice. 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, allof 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 slightly distinctiveuniform, now made his appearance. I observed him closely, as it was thefirst time I had been able to study particularly the bearing of one ofthe enlisted members of the industrial army. This young man, I knewfrom what I had been told, must be highly educated, and the equal,socially and in all respects, of those he served. But it was perfectlyevident that to neither side was the situation in the slightest degreeembarrassing. Dr. Leete addressed the young man in a tone devoid, ofcourse, as any gentleman's would be, of superciliousness, but at thesame time not in any way deprecatory, while the manner of the young manwas simply that of a person intent on discharging correctly the task hewas engaged in, equally without familiarity or obsequiousness. It was,in fact, the manner of a soldier on duty, but without the militarystiffness. As the youth left the room, I said, "I cannot get over mywonder at seeing a young man like that serving so contentedly in amenial position."
"What is that word 'menial'? I never heard it," said Edith.
"It is obsolete now," remarked her father. "If I understand it rightly,it applied to persons who performed particularly disagreeable andunpleasant 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 those whohad no alternative but starvation."
"And increased the burden you imposed on them by adding your contempt,"remarked Dr. Leete.
"I don't think I clearly understand," said Edith. "Do you mean that youpermitted 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 from anotherwhich we would be unwilling to return in kind, if need were, is likeborrowing with the intention of not repaying, while to enforce such aservice by taking advantage of the poverty or necessity of a personwould be an outrage like forcible robbery. It is the worst thing aboutany system which divides men, or allows them to be divided, intoclasses and castes, that it weakens the sense of a common humanity.Unequal distribution of wealth, and, still more effectually, unequalopportunities of education and culture, divided society in your dayinto classes which in many respects regarded each other as distinctraces. There is not, after all, such a difference as might appearbetween our ways of looking at this question of service. Ladies andgentlemen of the cultured class in your day would no more havepermitted persons of their own class to render them services they wouldscorn to return than we would permit anybody to do so. The poor and theuncultured, 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 brotherhood of all men, could never have become the realconviction and practical principle of action it is nowadays. In yourday the same phrases were indeed used, but they were phrases merely."
"Do the waiters, also, volunteer?"
"No," replied Dr. Leete. "The waiters are young men in the unclassifiedgrade of the industrial army who are assignable to all sorts ofmiscellaneous occupations not requiring special skill. Waiting on tableis one of these, and every young recruit is given a taste of it. Imyself served as a waiter for several months in this very dining-housesome forty years ago. Once more you must remember that there isrecognized no sort of difference between the dignity of the differe
ntsorts of work required by the nation. The individual is never regarded,nor regards himself, as the servant of those he serves, nor is he inany way dependent upon them. It is always the nation which he isserving. No difference is recognized between a waiter's functions andthose of any other worker. The fact that his is a personal service isindifferent from our point of view. So is a doctor's. I should as soonexpect our waiter today to look down on me because I served him as adoctor, as think of looking down on him because he serves me as awaiter."
After dinner my entertainers conducted me about the building, of whichthe extent, the magnificent architecture and richness of embellishment,astonished me. It seemed that it was not merely a dining-hall, butlikewise a great pleasure-house and social rendezvous of the quarter,and no appliance of entertainment or recreation seemed lacking.
"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 guilds haveclubhouses as extensive as this, as well as country, mountain, andseaside houses for sport and rest in vacations."
NOTE. In the latter part of the nineteenth century it became a practiceof needy young men at some of the colleges of the country to earn alittle money for their term bills by serving as waiters on tables athotels during the long summer vacation. It was claimed, in reply tocritics who expressed the prejudices of the time in asserting thatpersons voluntarily following such an occupation could not begentlemen, that they were entitled to praise for vindicating, by theirexample, the dignity of all honest and necessary labor. The use of thisargument illustrates a common confusion in thought on the part of myformer contemporaries. The business of waiting on tables was in no moreneed of defense than most of the other ways of getting a living in thatday, but to talk of dignity attaching to labor of any sort under thesystem then prevailing was absurd. There is no way in which sellinglabor for the highest price it will fetch is more dignified thanselling goods for what can be got. Both were commercial transactions tobe judged by the commercial standard. By setting a price in money onhis service, the worker accepted the money measure for it, andrenounced all clear claim to be judged by any other. The sordid taintwhich this necessity imparted to the noblest and the highest sorts ofservice was bitterly resented by generous souls, but there was noevading it. There was no exemption, however transcendent the quality ofone's service, from the necessity of haggling for its price in themarket-place. The physician must sell his healing and the apostle hispreaching like the rest. The prophet, who had guessed the meaning ofGod, must dicker for the price of the revelation, and the poet hawk hisvisions in printers' row. If I were asked to name the mostdistinguishing felicity of this age, as compared to that in which Ifirst saw the light, I should say that to me it seems to consist in thedignity you have given to labor by refusing to set a price upon it andabolishing the market-place forever. By requiring of every man his bestyou have made God his task-master, and by making honor the sole rewardof achievement you have imparted to all service the distinctionpeculiar in my day to the soldier's.
Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 Page 14