oubt. As it is they don't know whether their future
is bright or is as dark as mud. But it's not my fault. The reporters
never asked me.

If the first question had been handled properly it would have led up
by an easy and pleasant transition to question two, which always runs:
"Have you seen our factories?" To which the answer is:

"I have. I was taken out early this morning by a group of your citizens
(whom I cannot thank enough) in a Ford car to look at your pail and
bucket works. At eleven-thirty I was taken out by a second group in what
was apparently the same car to see your soap works. I understand that
you are the second nail-making centre east of the Alleghenies, and I
am amazed and appalled. This afternoon I am to be taken out to see your
wonderful system of disposing of sewerage, a thing which has fascinated
me from childhood."

Now I am not offering any criticism of the London system of
interviewing, but one sees at once how easy and friendly for all
concerned this Youngstown method is; how much better it works than the
London method of asking questions about literature and art and difficult
things of that sort. I am sure that there must be soap works and
perhaps a pail factory somewhere in London. But during my entire time
of residence there no one ever offered to take me to them. As for the
sewerage--oh, well, I suppose we are more hospitable in America. Let it
go at that.

I had my answer all written and ready, saying:

"I understand that London is the second greatest hop-consuming, the
fourth hog-killing, and the first egg-absorbing centre in the world."

But what I deplore still more, and I think with reason, is the total
omission of the familiar interrogation: "What is your impression of our
women?"

That's where the reporter over on our side hits the nail every time.
That is the point at which we always nudge him in the ribs and buy him
a cigar, and at which youth and age join in a sly jest together. Here
again the sub-heading comes in so nicely: THINKS YOUNGSTOWN WOMEN
CHARMING. And they are. They are, everywhere. But I hate to think that
I had to keep my impression of London women unused in my pocket while
a young man asked me whether I thought modern literature owed more to
observation and less to inspiration than some other kind of literature.

Now that's exactly the kind of question, the last one, that the London
reporters seem to harp on. They seemed hipped about literature; and
their q