desperately poor, and therefore by these
standards of no account, know things, and will understand when I write
that they have managed to get a million of men together on flat land,
and that the bulk of these men appear to be lower than _mahajans_ and
not so companionable as a punjabi _jat_ after harvest. But I don't think
it was the blind hurry of the people, their argot, and their grand
ignorance of things beyond their immediate interests that displeased me
so much as a study of the daily papers of Chicago. Imprimis, there was
some sort of dispute between New York and Chicago as to which town
should give an exhibition of products to be hereafter holden, and
through the medium of their more dignified journals the two cities were
ya-hooing and hi-yi-ing at each other like opposition newsboys. They
called it humour, but it sounded like something quite different. That
was only the first trouble. The second lay in the tone of the
productions. Leading articles which include gems such as: "Back of such
and such a place," or "We noticed, Tuesday, such an event," or "don't"
for "does not" are things to be accepted with thankfulness. All that
made me want to cry was that, in these papers, were faithfully
reproduced all the war-cries and "back-talk" of the Palmer House bar,
the slang of the barbers' shops, the mental elevation and integrity of
the Pullman-car porter, the dignity of the Dime Museum, and the accuracy
of the excited fishwife. I am sternly forbidden to believe that the
paper educates the public. Then I am compelled to believe that the
public educate the paper?

Just when the sense of unreality and oppression were strongest upon me,
and when I most wanted help, a man sat at my side and began to talk what
he called politics. I had chanced to pay about six shillings for a
travelling-cap worth eighteen pence, and he made of the fact a text for
a sermon. He said that this was a rich country and that the people liked
to pay two hundred per cent on the value of a thing. They could afford
it. He said that the Government imposed a protective duty of from ten
to seventy per cent on foreign-made articles, and that the American
manufacturer consequently could sell his goods for a healthy sum. Thus
an imported hat would, with duty, cost two guineas. The American
manufacturer would make a hat for seventeen shillings and sell it for
one pound fifteen. In these things, he said, lay the greatness of
America and the effeteness of Eng