all future
progress. It is a place to which the fit will be attracted, and where
the fit will survive. It has rather a harsh quality. It reminded me of a
phrase used by an American at the head of an enormous business. He had
been explaining to me how he tried a man in one department, and, if he
did not shine in that, then in another, and in another, and so on. "And
if you find in the end that he's honest but not efficient?" I asked.
"Then," was the answer, "we think he's entitled to die, and we fire
him."

The Bronx presented itself to me as a place where the right of the
inefficient to expire would be cheerfully recognized. The district that
I inspected was certainly, as I say, for the fit. Efficiency in physical
essentials was inculcated--and practised--by the landlord-company, whose
constant aim seemed to be to screw up higher and higher the self-respect
of its tenants. That the landlord-company was not a band of
philanthropists, but a capitalistic group in search of dividends, I
would readily admit. But that it should find its profit in the business
of improving the standard of existence and appealing to the pride of the
folk was to me a wondrous sign of the essential vigor of American
civilization, and a proof that public spirit, unostentatious as a coral
insect, must after all have long been at work somewhere.

Compare the East Side with the Bronx fully, and one may see, perhaps
roughly, a symbol of what is going forward in America. Nothing, I should
imagine, could be more interesting to a sociological observer than that
actual creation of a city of homes as I saw it in the Bronx. I saw the
home complete, and I saw the home incomplete, with wall-papers not on,
with the roof not on. Why, I even saw, further out, the ground being
leveled and the solid rock drilled where now, most probably, actual
homes are inhabited and babies have been born! And I saw further than
that. Nailed against a fine and ancient tree, in the midst of a desolate
waste, I saw a board with these words: "A new Subway station will be
erected on this corner." There are legendary people who have eyes to see
the grass growing. I have seen New York growing. It was a hopeful sight,
too.

* * * * *

At this point my impressions of America come to an end, for the present.
Were I to assert, in the phrase conventionally proper to such an
occasion, that no one can be more sensible than myself of the manifold
defects, om