Book IV: Chapter I

by Sherwood Anderson

　　Chicago is a vast city and millions of people live within the limitsof its influence. It stands at the heart of America almost withinsound of the creaking green leaves of the corn in the vast corn fieldsof the Mississippi Valley. It is inhabited by hordes of men of allnations who have come across the seas or out of western corn--shippingtowns to make their fortunes. On all sides men are busy makingfortunes.

　　In little Polish villages the word has been whispered about, "InAmerica one gets much money," and adventurous souls have set forthonly to land at last, a little perplexed and disconcerted, in narrowill--smelling rooms in Halstead Street in Chicago.

　　In American villages the tale has been told. Here it has not beenwhispered but shouted. Magazines and newspapers have done the job. Theword regarding the making of money runs over the land like a windamong the corn. The young men listen and run away to Chicago. Theyhave vigour and youth but in them has been builded no dream notradition of devotion to anything but gain.

　　Chicago is one vast gulf of disorder. Here is the passion for gain,the very spirit of the bourgeoise gone drunk with desire. The resultis something terrible. Chicago is leaderless, purposeless, slovenly,down at the heels.

　　And back of Chicago lie the long corn fields that are not disorderly.There is hope in the corn. Spring comes and the corn is green. Itshoots up out of the black land and stands up in orderly rows. Thecorn grows and thinks of nothing but growth. Fruition comes to thecorn and it is cut down and disappears. Barns are filled to burstingwith the yellow fruit of the corn.

　　And Chicago has forgotten the lesson of the corn. All men haveforgotten. It has never been told to the young men who come out of thecorn fields to live in the city.

　　Once and once only in modern times the soul of America was stirred.The Civil War swept like a purifying fire through the land. Menmarched together and knew the feel of shoulder to shoulder action.Brown stout bearded figures returned after the war to the villages.The beginning of a literature of strength and virility arose.

　　And then the time of sorrow and of stirring effort passed andprosperity returned. Only the aged are now cemented together by thesorrow of that time and there has been no new national sorrow.

　　It is a summer evening in America and the citizens sit in their housesafter the effort of the day. They talk of the children in school or ofthe new difficulty of meeting the high prices of food stuff. In citiesthe bands play in the parks. In villages the lights go out and onehears the sound of hurrying horses on distant roads.

　　A thoughtful man walking in the streets of Chicago on such an eveningsees women in white shirt waists and men with cigars in their mouthswho sit on the porches of the houses. The man is from Ohio. He owns afactory in one of the large industrial towns there and has come to thecity to sell his product. He is a man of the better sort, quiet,efficient, kindly. In his own community every one respects him and herespects himself. Now he walks and gives himself over to thoughts. Hepasses a house set among trees where a man cuts grass by the streaminglight from a window. The song of the lawn mower stirs the walker. Heidles along the street and looks in through the windows at Prints uponthe walls. A white--clad woman sits playing on a piano. "Life isgood," he says, lighting a cigar; "it climbs on and up toward a kindof universal fairness."

　　And then in the light from a street lamp the walker sees a manstaggering along the sidewalk, muttering and helping himself with hishands upon a wall. The sight does not greatly disturb the pleasantsatisfying thoughts that stir in his mind. He has eaten a good dinnerat the hotel, he knows that drunken men are often but gay money-spending dogs who to-morrow morning will settle down to their workfeeling secretly better for the night of wine and song.

　　My thoughtful man is an American with the disease of comfort andprosperity in his blood. He strolls along and turns a corner. He issatisfied with the cigar he smokes and, he decides, satisfied with theage in which he lives. "Agitators may howl," he says, "but on thewhole life is good, and as for me I am going to spend my lifeattending to the business in hand."

　　The walker has turned a corner into a side street. Two men emerge fromthe door of a saloon and stand upon the sidewalk under a light. Theywave their arms up and down. Suddenly one of them springs forward andwith a quick forward thrust of his body and the flash of a clenchedfist in the lamp light knocks his companion into the gutter. Down thestreet he sees rows of tall smoke-begrimed brick buildings hangingblack and ominous against the sky. At the end of a street a hugemechanical apparatus lifts cars of coal and dumps them roaring andrattling into the bowels of a ship that lies tied in the river.

　　The walker throws his cigar away and looks about. A man walks beforehim in the silent street. He sees the man raise his fist to the skyand notes with a shock the movement of the lips and the hugeness andugliness of the face in the lamplight.

　　Again he goes on, hurrying now, around another corner into a streetfilled with pawn shops, clothing stores and the clamour of voices. Inhis mind floats a picture. He sees two boys, clad in white rompers,feeding clover to a tame rabbit in a suburban back lawn and wishes hewere at home in his own place. In his fancy the two sons are walkingunder apple trees and laughing and tusseling for a great bundle ofnewly pulled sweet smelling clover. The strange looking red man withthe huge face he has seen in the street is looking at the two childrenover a garden wall. There is a threat in the look and the threatalarms him. Into his mind comes the notion that the man who looks overthe wall wants to destroy the future of his children.

　　The night advances. Down a stairway beside a clothing store comes awoman with gleaming white teeth who is clad in a black dress. Shemakes a Peculiar little jerking movement with her head to the walker.A patrol wagon with clanging bells rushes through the street, two blueclad policemen sitting stiffly in the seat. A boy--he can't be abovesix--runs along the street pushing soiled newspapers under the nosesof idlers on the corners, his shrill childish voice rises above thedin of the trolley cars and the clanging notes of the patrol wagon.

　　The walker throws his cigar into the gutter and climbing the steps ofa street car goes back to his hotel. His fine reflective mood is gone.He half wishes that something lovely might come into American life butthe wish does not persist. He is only irritated and feels that apleasant evening has been in some way spoiled. He is wondering if hewill be successful in the business that brought him to the city. As heturns out the light in his room and putting his head upon the pillowlistens to the noises of the city merged now into a quiet droning roarhe thinks of the brick factory on the banks of the river in Ohio andas he falls into sleep the face of the red-haired man lowers at himfrom the factory door.

　　* * * * *When McGregor returned to the city after the burial of his mother hebegan at once to try to put his idea of the marching men into form.For a long time he did not know how to begin. The idea was vague andshadowy. It belonged to the nights in the hills of his own country andseemed a little absurd when he tried to think of it in the daylight ofNorth State Street in Chicago.

　　McGregor felt that he had to prepare himself. He believed that hecould study books and learn much from men's ideas expressed in bookswithout being overwhelmed by their thoughts. He became a student andquit the place in the apple-warehouse to the secret relief of thelittle bright-eyed superintendent who had never been able to gethimself up to the point of raging at this big red fellow as he hadraged at the German before McGregor's time. The warehouse man feltthat during the meeting on the corner before the saloon on the dayMcGregor began to work for him something had happened. The miner's sonhad unmanned him. "A man ought to be boss in his own place," hesometimes muttered to himself, as he walked in the passageways amongrows of piled apple barrels in the upper part of the warehousewondering why the presence of McGregor irritated him.

　　From six o'clock in the evening until two in the morning McGregor nowworked as night-cashier in a restaurant on South State Street belowVan Buren and from two until seven in the morning he slept in a roomwhose windows looked down into Michigan Boulevard. On Thursday he wasfree, his place being taken for the evening by the man who owned therestaurant, a small excitable Irishman by the name of Tom O'Toole.

　　McGregor got his chance to become a student through the bank accountbelonging to Edith Carson. The opportunity arose in this way. On asummer evening after his return from Pennsylvania he sat with her inthe darkened store back of the closed screen door. McGregor was moroseand silent. On the evening before he had tried to talk to several menat the warehouse about the Marching Men and they had not understood.He blamed his inability with words and sat in the half darkness withhis face in his hands and looked up the street saying nothing andthinking bitter thoughts.

　　The idea that had come to him made him half drunk with itspossibilities and he knew that he must not let it make him drunk. Hewanted to begin forcing men to do the simple thing full of meaningrather than the disorganised ineffective things and he had an ever-present inclination to arise, to stretch himself, to run into thestreets and with his great arms see if he could not sweep the peoplebefore him, starting them on the long purposeful march that was to bethe beginning of the rebirth of the world and that was to fill withmeaning the lives of men. Then when he had walked the fever out of hisblood and had frightened the people in the streets by the grim look inhis face he tried to school himself to sit quietly waiting.

　　The woman sitting beside him in a low rocking chair began trying totell him of something that had been in her mind. Her heart jumped andshe talked slowly, pausing between sentences to conceal the tremblingof her voice. "Would it help you in what you want to do if you couldquit at the warehouse and spend your days in study?" she asked.

　　McGregor looked at her and nodded his head absent-mindedly. He thoughtof the nights in his room when the hard heavy work of the day in thewarehouse seemed to have benumbed his brain.

　　"Besides the business here I have seventeen hundred dollars in thesavings bank," said Edith, turning aside to conceal the eager hopefullook in her eyes. "I want to invest it. I do not want it lying theredoing nothing. I want you to take it and make a lawyer of yourself."

　　Edith sat rigid in her chair waiting for his answer. She felt that shehad put him to a test. In her mind was a new hope. "If he takes it hewill not be walking out at the door some night and never coming back."

　　McGregor tried to think. He had not tried to explain to her his newnotion of life and did not know how to begin.

　　"After all why not stick to my plan and be a lawyer?" he askedhimself. "That might open the door. I'll do that," he said aloud tothe woman. "Both you and mother have talked of it so I'll give it atrial. Yes, I'll take the money."

　　Again he looked at her as she sat before him flushed and eager and wastouched by her devotion as he had been touched by the devotion of theundertaker's daughter in Coal Creek. "I don't mind being underobligations to you," he said; "I don't know any one else I would takeit from."

　　In the street later the troubled man walked about trying to make newplans for the accomplishment of his purpose. He was annoyed by what hethought to be the dulness of his own brain and he thrust his fist upinto the air to look at it in the lamplight. "I'll get ready to usethat intelligently," he thought; "a man wants trained brains backed upby a big fist in the struggle I'm going into."

　　It was then that the man from Ohio walked past with his hands in hispockets and attracted his attention. To McGregor's nostrils came theodour of rich fragrant tobacco. He turned and stood staring at theintruder on his thoughts. "That's what I am going to fight," hegrowled; "the comfortable well-to-do acceptance of a disorderly world,the smug men who see nothing wrong with a world like this. I wouldlike to frighten them so that they throw their cigars away and runabout like ants when you kick over ant hills in the field."