Текст книги "Little Golden America"

Автор книги: Евгений Петров

Соавторы: Илья Ильф
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

This happened in a country which has freedom of the press. The girl's mother had complete freedom, not only to speak but even to shout. She shouted, but no one heard her.

This happened in a country where freedom of the press has been declared. Yet not a single newspaper wrote a thing about this case. Where were all the resourceful, tireless, fleet-footed reporters from whose penetrating gaze not a single robbery can escape, or a single wealthy wedding, or a single step of a motion-picture star of even the fourth magnitude ?

This happened in a country where inviolability of person exists. But a poor person sat in a brothel, and no power could free her from it. It seems to us that if Abraham Lincoln himself were able to rise from his grave, even he could not do anything about it. Not even the cannons of General Grant could help him!

For some reason, every time one begins to sift in his memory the elements of which American life is composed, one recalls bandits, and if not bandits, then racketeers, and if not racketeers, then bankers, which as a matter of fact is one and the same thing. One recalls all this human garbage which has polluted an excellent, freedom-loving, and industrious country.

What could be gladder tidings than free elections in a democratic country whose citizens according to the Constitution are guaranteed all the rights to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? In their Sunday best the electors go to the ballot boxes and gently drop into them ballots with the names of their favourite candidates.

As a matter of fact, what happens was what our Chicago doctor told us—racketeer politicians come and by means of blackmail or threats force a good man to vote for some crook.

And so, the right to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness is undoubtedly there, but the possibility of actually enjoying that right is exceedingly dubious. This right is in too dangerous proximity with the money vaults of Wall Street.

But, to make up for that, the outer forms of democracy are preserved by Americans with extraordinary metkulousness. And that, one must say in truth, is rather impressive.

Henry Ford, by virtue of his position in American society, is a figure almost unapproachable. Yet on one occasion he walked into one of the buildings of his plant where several engineers happened to be, shook hands with all of them, and began to talk about the business on which he came. Throughout the conversation old Henry looked very worried. A certain thought tormented him. He stopped several times in the middle of a word, evidently trying to recall something. Finally, he excused himself, interrupted the conversation, and walked up to a young engineer who was sitting in a far corner of the room.

"I am very sorry, Mr. Smith," said Mr. Ford, "but I think I forgot to say hello to you."

An extra handshake will not lie as a heavy burden on the balance sheet of the Ford automobile plants, while the impression produced was tremendous. Ford will never invite that young engineer to his home, but they are equals on the job, they make automobiles together. Ford knows many old workers in his plant and calls them by their first names —" Hello, Mike!" or " Hello, John!" And Mike and John address him: " Hello, Henry!" Here they seem to be equals; they make automobiles together. But old Henry alone will be selling them. And old Mike or old John, after they've worked themselves out, will be thrown out into the street, just as worn-out bearings are thrown out.

And so, after making ten thousand miles, we found ourselves in the capital of the United States.

Washington, with its comparatively low government buildings, its gardens, its monuments, its broad streets, looks somewhat like Vienna, somewhat like Berlin, somewhat like Warsaw, somewhat like all the capitals. And only automobiles remind one that this city is located in America. Here there is an automobile for every two persons, but there is not a single permanent theatre for the entire population of five hundred thousand. Having looked over George Washington's house in Mount Vernon, having visited sessions of Congress, and having been at the grave of the Unknown Soldier, we discovered that there was really nothing else to see. Only the President remained to be seen. In America that is not so difficult.

Democratism in relations between people, the democratism of daily intercourse, is quite strongly developed in America and reaches quite far at times.

Twice a week, at ten o'clock in the morning, the President of the United States receives journalists. We managed to come to such a reception. It takes place in the White House. We walked into the reception room. There stood a large round table made of sequoia wood. It was a gift made to one of the former presidents. There was no cloakroom, so the incoming journalists laid their overcoats on that table, and when there was no more room on the table, they began laying them on the floor. Gradually about a hundred people gathered. They smoked, talked aloud, and looked impatiently at the small white door, behind which, apparently, the President of the United States was sequestered.

We were advised to stand as close as possible to the door, so that as people were being admitted to the President we would find ourselves in front; otherwise, it might so happen that behind the backs of the journalists we would not see anything. With the skill of experienced street-car fighters, we pushed ahead. Before us were only three men. They were greyish and quite respectable gentlemen.

The reception hour struck, but the journalists were not yet admitted. Then the greyish gentlemen, at first quietly but then louder, began to rap on the door. They were knocking to be admitted to the President of the United States, just as some assistant director might rap on the door of an actor to remind him of his entrance cue. They knocked laughingly, but still they knocked.

Finally, the door opened and the journalists, crowding each other, rushed ahead. We ran with the rest of them. The cavalcade raced across the corridor, then, passed through a large empty room. In that room we easily outstripped the panting grey-haired gentlemen and were the first to run. into the next room.

Before us in the depths of a circular private study—on the walls of which hung old lithographs depicting Mississippi steamers, and in the small niches of which stood models of frigates—at a medium-sized writing-desk, a smoking cigarette in his hand, and Chekhovian pince-nez on his large handsome nose, sat Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States. Behind his back twinkled the stars and stripes of two national flags.

Questions began. The correspondents asked them, the President answered.

All of this ritual was, of course, somewhat conditional. Everybody knows that the President will not disclose any particular secrets to the journalists. Certain questions the President answered seriously and quite extensively, parried some with a jest (it is not so easy, of course, twice a week to get off with a. joke against a hundred pushing journalists), to still others he replied that he would discuss them the next time.

Roosevelt's large handsome face looked tired. Only the day before the Supreme Court had vetoed the AAA, Roosevelt's law regulating farmers' sowing of crops, one of the pivots of his programme.

The questions and answers took up half an hour. When a pause came, the President looked quizzically at the people gathered there. This was understood to be a signal for a general retreat. There resounded a helter-skelter "Good-bye, Mr. President!" and everyone departed. And Mr. President remained alone in his circular study among the frigates and the star-spangled banners.

Millions of people, old and young, who compose the great American nation, an honest, boisterous, talented people, who have a somewhat too great respect for money but who are hard-working, can do anything they like according to the Constitution, for they are the masters of the country. They can even take Morgan himself, John Pierpont Morgan himself, and call him out for questioning in a senatorial commission and ask him severely:

"Mr. Morgan, didn't you pull the United States into the World War because of the mundane interests of your personal enrichment?"

The people can ask that. But this is how Mr. Morgan answers–we heard him ourselves.

And on that occasion, too, everything was very democratic.

The entrance to the hall where the Senate Commission was sitting was free. Again you were free to do with your overcoat what you liked—put it on the floor, or shove it under the chair on which you were sitting.

At one end of a small hall were chairs for the public; at the other end, a table at which the questioning was proceeding. The table was covered with neither red nor green cloth. It was a long polished table. Everything was very simple. Right beside the billionaire, on the floor, lay his thick and no longer new brief-case. Morgan was surrounded by his lawyers and advisers. They were numerous. Grey and pink-cheeked, fat and bald-headed, or young with piercing eyes—they were all armed with facts, information, documents, folios, and folders. All this band of Morgan's braves felt quite unconstrained.

In the chair was Senator Nye, his face thin, inspired, almost Russian. (A Russian shirt would suit him very well.) The interrogation was carried on by Senator Clark, round-faced and gay. It was at once evident that he enjoyed questioning John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.

"Junior" was almost seventy years old. He was a huge and obese old man in a long dark coat. On the back of Morgan's apoplectic head was visible the grey fuzz of a chick. He was calm. He knew that nothing untoward would happen to him. He would be asked a question, he would look at his lawyers, the latter would begin to dig frantically in their books and would prompt the answer to him.

It was an amazing spectacle. Several score of advisers whispered something into Morgan's ear, shoved little papers to him, prompted him, helped him. It was not Morgan speaking, it was his billions speaking. And when money talks in America, it always talks authoritatively. After all, America's favourite saying is:

"He looks like a million dollars."

Indeed, a million dollars looks very good.

And Morgan, in his long dark coat resembling an old fat hawk, looked like several billions.

For being summoned to the Senate Commission, the person subpoenaed is entitled to daily pay, the normal government daily pay for expenses. John Pierpont Morgan, Jr., took that money. He took advantage of all the rights which a democratic constitution gave him.

Morgan received everything he was entitled to under the Constitution —even a little more. But what did the people get?

On the territory of the United States live more than a hundred and twenty million people.

Thirteen million of them have not had work for several years. Together with their families they make up one-fourth of the population of the entire country. Yet economists insist that on the territory of the United States right now, even today, it would be possible to feed a billion people.

46 They and We

OUR JOURNEY came to an end. Within two months we had been in twenty-five states and several hundred towns, we had breathed the dry air of deserts and prairies, and crossed the Rocky Mountains, had seen Indians, had talked with the young unemployed, with the old capitalists, with radical intellectuals, with revolutionary workers, with poets, with writers, with engineers. "We had examined factories and parks, had admired roads and bridges, had climbed up the Sierra Nevadas and descended into the Carlsbad Caves. We had travelled ten thousand miles.

And throughout that entire journey we never once stopped thinking of the Soviet Union.

We had travelled over American highways but in our thoughts were Soviet highways. We spent nights in American hotels, but we thought about Soviet hotels. We examined Ford's factories, but in our thoughts we saw ourselves in our own automobile factories, and while conversing with Indians we thought of Kazakstan.

Through the tremendous distance that separated us from Soviet soil we envisioned it with especial incisiveness. It is necessary to see the capitalist world in order to appreciate in a new way the world of socialism. All the attributes of the socialist arrangement of our life, which man ceases to notice because of daily contact with them, seem especially significant at a distance. We understood the mood of Maxim Gorky when upon his return to the Union after many years of life abroad, tirelessly, day in and day out, he repeated one and the same thing: "It's a remarkable thing you are doing, comrades! A great thing!"

We talked constantly about the Soviet Union, drew parallels, made comparisons. We noticed that the Soviet people whom we frequently met in America were possessed of the same emotions. There was not a single conversation which in the end would not end up with a reference to the Soviet Union: " But at home it is like this," " but at home it is like that," "it would be well to introduce it at home," "we don't know how to do that yet," "that we have already adopted." Soviet people abroad were not mere travellers, not merely engineers or diplomats on a mission. All of them were lovers who had been torn away from the object of their affection and who remembered it every minute. It is a unique patriotism that cannot be understood, let us say, by an American. In all probability the American is a good patriot. If he were asked he would sincerely say that he loves his country; but at the same time it will be found out that he does not love Morgan, that he does not know and does not care to know the names of the people who planned the suspension bridges in San Francisco, that he is not interested to know why in America drought increases every year, who built Boulder Dam and why, why Negroes are lynched in the Southern states, or why he must eat frozen meat. He will say that he loves his country—yet he is profoundly indifferent to questions of agriculture, since he is not an agriculturist; to questions of industry, since he is not an industrialist; to finances, since he is not a financier; to art, since he is not an artist; and to military problems, since he is not a military man. He is a hard-working man who receives his hundred and thirty dollars a month, so he sneers at Washington with all its laws, at Chicago with all its bandits, and at New York with its Wall Street. He asks only one thing of his country—to let him alone, and not to interfere with his listening to his radio or going to the movies. Of course, when he becomes unemployed, then it's a different matter. Then he will begin to think about everything. No, he will not understand the patriotism of a Soviet man, who loves not his juridical native land which give,s him merely the rights of citizenship, but a native land which is tangible, where to him belong the soil, the factories, the stores, the banks, the dreadnoughts, the airplanes, the theatres, and the books, where he himself is the politician and the master of all.

The average American cannot endure abstract conversations nor does he touch upon themes too far removed from him. He is interested only in what is directly connected with his house, his automobile, or his nearest neighbours. He shows an interest in the life of the country once in four years, at the time of the presidential election.

We do not at all insist that this absence of spirituality is an organic attribute of the American people. There was a time, after all, when the Northern armies marched off to liberate the. Negroes from slavery! It is capitalism that has made these people thus, and in every way it nurtures in them this spiritual lassitude. Terrible are the crimes of American

capitalism, which with amazing trickiness has palmed off on the people the most trivial of motion pictures, radio, and weekly journalistic tosh, while reserving for itself Tolstoy, Van Gogh, and Einstein, but remaining profoundly indifferent to them.

Essentially there is in the world only one noble striving of the human mind—to vanquish spiritual and material poverty, to make people happy. Yet those people in America who have made it their goal to attain that– the advanced workers, the radical intellectuals—are at best regarded as dangerous cranks, and in the worst case as the enemies of society. The result is that even indirect fighters for human happiness—men of learning, inventors, builders—are not popular in America. They and their works, inventions, and wonderful constructions, remain in the shadows, while all of fame goes to boxers, bandits, and motion-picture stars. While among the people themselves—who see that with the increase in the number of machines, life becomes not better but worse—prevails even hatred of technical progress. There are people who are ready to break up machines, just like the drowning man who, in desperation to get out of the water, seizes his saviour by the neck and drags him down to the bottom.

We have already said that the American, in spite of his businesslike activity, has a passive nature., Some Hearst or some Hollywood shyster can manage to drag millions of good, honest, hard-working average Americans down to the spiritual level of a savage. But even these all-powerful men cannot divest the people of the notion that life must be improved. That notion is very widespread in America. But when it finally finds its expression in the form of political ideas, their level does not exceed the level of the average Hollywood picture. And such ideas have a colossal success.

All the political ideas which tend to the improvement of the welfare of the American people are inevitably presented in the form of easy arithmetic problems for students of the third grade. In order to understand the idea, the voter need merely take a sheet of paper, a pencil, make a quick calculation, and it's done. As a matter of fact, all of them are not really ideas but tricks, suitable for advertising purposes only. They would hardly bear mentioning, if scores of millions of Americans were not carried away by them.

How to save America and improve its life?

Huey Long advises division of wealth. A sheet of paper and a pencil appear on the scene. The voter, puffing, adds, multiplies, subtracts, and divides. This is a terribly interesting occupation. What a smart fellow this Huey Long is! Everyone will get a large sum of money! People are so carried away by this impudent arithmetic that it does not even occur to them to think about where these millions will come from.

How to improve life? How to save America?

There arises a new titan of thought, another Socrates or Confucius, the physician Townsend. The thought which has entered the thinking head of this respectable practising physician could have been born in any small European country only in a psychiatric hospital in a ward for the tranquil, quiet, polite, and utterly hopeless madmen. But in America it has a dizzying success. Here it isn't even necessary to bother with sub traction and multiplication. Here everything is quite simple. Every old man and every old woman in the United States upon attaining the age of sixty will receive two hundred dollars a month under obligation to spend these dollars. Then trade will increase automatically and automatically unemployment will disappear. Everything takes place automatically.

We saw a sound newsreel of a meeting of the Townsend Committee under the management of the thinker himself. The meeting began with Dr. Townsend, a haggard old man with a freckled face, in spectacles and an old-fashioned coat, delivering a short speech on his plan.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, clearing his throat, "I spent many sleepless nights before I thought up my plan."

If Mark Twain could only take a look at this freckled old man, so methodical, so neat, and undoubtedly Godfearing! There is no doubt that it is precisely such an old man, coming out of Sister McPherson's ecclesiastical musical hall, weighs himself and weighs his entire family, in order to calculate how many pennies of live weight he must pay for, through the intercession of the esteemed sister, to the Lord God.

After Dr. Townsend the old men and women who filled the hall spoke. They came out on the stage and asked questions, to which the thinker replied.

"In other words, I will receive two hundred dollars?" an old man asked.

"Yes, if my plan goes through," the thinker answered firmly.

"Every month?"

"Every month."

"Well, thank you," the old man said.

And he vacated the place for the old woman who followed him.

"Listen, Dr. Townsend," she asked excitedly. "We are two old people—my husband and I. Will both of us really receive two hundred dollars each?"

"Yes, both of you," the thinker replied importantly.

"That is, all told, we will get four hundred dollars?"

"Quite right—four hundred dollars."

"I also receive a pension of seventeen dollars. They won't take that away from me?"

"No, you will likewise receive your pension."

The old woman bowed low and went away.

When we were leaving America the number of Townsend's followers was increasing at a frightful rate. Not a single politician dared to speak against this doctor of genius on the eve of elections.

But American capitalists understand that motion pictures, a radio broadcast, stories in weeklies, bill-boards about revolution "which can never happen in America," churches, and arithmetical plans may not prove sufficient, so there are already growing "American Legions" and "Liberty Leagues," and little by little Fascist forces are trained, so that at the necessary moment they may be turned into the most genuine kind of storm troops, which will be ordered to stifle the revolutionary movement by force.

America is rich. But it is not merely rich. It is phenomenally rich. It has everything—oil, grain, coal, gold, cotton—everything that can only lie beneath the earth or grow upon the earth. It has people—the best workers in the world—capable, neat, efficient, honest, hard-working. America marched toward its enrichment at a quick rate of speed. The country reminds one of a man who has made a rapid career, who at first sells suspenders from a push-cart on the East Side, then opens his own store of ready-made clothes and moves to Brooklyn. Then he opens a department store, begins to play the stock market and moves to the Bronx. And finally he buys a railroad, hundreds of steamships, two motion-picture factories, builds a skyscraper, opens a bank, joins a golf club, and moves to Park Avenue. He is a billionaire. He had striven for that goal all his life. He bought and sold everything in any old way. He dispossessed people, speculated, sat at the stock exchange from morning until night, he toiled sixteen hours a day, he awoke with the thought of money, he fell asleep with the same thought, and now he is monstrously wealthy. Now he may rest. He has villas by the ocean, he has yachts and castles, but he becomes ill with an incurable disease. He is dying, and no billions can save him.

The stimulus of American life has been and is money. Contemporary American technique grew up and developed so that money might be made faster. Everything that brings in money develops, and everything that does not bring money degenerates and wilts away. Gas, electricity, construction, and automobile companies, in their chase for money, have created a high standard of living. America has raised itself to a high degree of welfare, having left Europe far behind. But precisely at this point it has become clear that America is seriously and dangerously ill. The country is now facing its own reductio ad absurdum. It is capable now, today, of feeding a billion people, and yet it cannot feed its own hundred and twenty millions. It has everything needed to create a peaceful life for its people, yet it has come to such a pass that the entire population is in a state of unrest: the unemployed fears that he will never again find a job; the employed fears that he will lose his job; the farmer fears a crop failure, because then prices will increase and it will cost him more to buy bread, but he also fears a good crop, because then prices will fall and he will have to sell his produce for a pittance. The rich fear that bandits will kidnap their children, bandits fear that they will be placed in the electric chair. Immigrants fear that they will be deported from America; Negroes fear that they will be lynched; politicians fear elections; the average man fears illness, because then doctors will take everything he owns; the merchant fears that racketeers will come and riddle his store counters with a machine-gun fusillade.

At the foundation of life of the Soviet Union lies the communist idea. We have a definite goal, toward which the country advances. The slogan that technique decides everything was given by Stalin after that idea triumphed. That is why we, the people, by comparison with Americans of the average kind, are now already much calmer and happier than they, in the land of Morgan and Ford, of twenty-five million automobile!, of a million miles of ideal roads, the land of cold and hot water, of bath* rooms, and service. That is why technique does not seem to us an evil spirit sprung from a bottle. On the contrary, we want to catch up with technical America and to outstrip it.

America does not know what will happen with it tomorrow. We know, and we can tell with definite accuracy, what will happen with us fifty years from now.

Nevertheless, we can still learn much from America. We are doing that. But the lessons which we learn from America are episodic and too specialized.

To catch up with America! That task which Stalin set before our people is immense, but in order to carry out this task we must first of all study America, study not only its automobiles, its turbine generators and radio apparatuses (we are doing that), but likewise the very character of the work of American workers, engineers, business people, especially the business people, because if our stakhanovists sometimes outstrip the norms of American workers, while the engineers are no worse at times than the American engineers (about that we heard frequently from Americans themselves), still, our business people or economists are considerably behind American business people and cannot compete with them in any way.

We will not discuss now the attributes of our economists, their loyalty to ideas, their devotion, their efficiency. These are the attributes of the Communist party, which brought them up. Nor will we touch upon the deficiencies of American business people, their lack of loyalty to ideas, their lack of principle, their chase after the dollar. These are the defects of the capitalism which brought them up. It is important for us right now to study their attributes and our defects, because it is necessary for us to learn from them. Not only engineers but also economists, our business people, must learn from them.

The American businessman always finds time for a business conversation. The American sits in his office with his coat off and works. He works quietly, unobtrusively, without making any fuss. He is never late anywhere. He never hurries anywhere. He has only one telephone. No one waits for him in his reception room, because an appointment is usually made with absolute accuracy, and not a single extra minute is wasted during the interview. He is occupied only with his business, exclusively with his business. When he holds conferences nobody knows. In all likelihood he holds conferences rarely.

Should an American say in the course of a conversation, even incidentally, "I'll do that," it is not necessary to remind him of anything at all in the future. Everything will be done. The ability to keep his word, to keep it firmly, accurately, to burst, but keep his word—this is the most important thing which our Soviet business people must learn from American business people.

We wrote about American democracy, which in fact does not give man freedom and only masks the exploitation of man by man. But in American life there is a phenomenon which should interest us no less than a new machine model. That phenomenon is democracy in intercourse between people, albeit that democracy, too, covers social inequality and is a purely outward form. The outward forms of such a democracy are splendid. They help a lot in work, deliver a blow to bureaucracy, and enhance human dignity.

We drove out of Washington to New York. In a few hours, and our journey over the American land would come to an end. We thought about America during those final hours. We think that in our book we have told everything that we have thought.

Americans are very angry with Europeans who come to America, enjoy its hospitality, and later scold it. Americans often told us about this with annoyance. But we do not understand such posing of the question: to scold or to praise. America is not the first night of a new play, and we are not theatre critics. We transmit to paper our impressions about that country and our thoughts about it.

What can be said about America, which simultaneously horrifies, delights, calls forth pity, and sets examples worthy of emulation, about a land which is rich, poor, talented, and ungifted?

We can say honestly, with hand on heart, that we would not like to live in America. It is interesting to observe this country, but one does not care to live in it.

47 Farewell, America!

THE WEATHER was crisp in New York. The wind blew. The sun shone.

New York is amazingly beautiful! But why does one feel sad in this great city? The houses are so high, the light of the sun lies only on the upper stories, and throughout the day one does not lose the impression that the sun is setting. Sunset begins in the morning. Probably that is why one feels so sad in New York.

We again returned to the city where live two million automobiles and seven million persons who serve them. Oh, it is a remarkable sight – automobiles driving on a promenade through Central Park! One cannot get rid of the thought that this immense park located in the middle of New York was built so that automobiles might breathe fresh air there. There are only automobile roads in the park—little place is left for pedestrians. New York has been captured by automobiles, and in the city the automobiles behave like genuine troops of occupation. They kill and cripple the natives, deal with them strictly, and won't let them complain. People deprive themselves of much in order to fill their oppressors with petrol, quench their eternal thirst for oil and water.