An American Idyll by Cornelia Stratton Parker

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That winter Carl got the city of San Jose to stand behind a model
unemployed lodging-house, one of the two students who had "hoboed"
during the summer taking charge of it. The unemployed problem, as he ran
into it at every turn, stirred Carl to his depths. At one time he felt
it so strongly that he wanted to start a lodging-house in Berkeley,
himself, just to be helping out somehow, even though it would be only
surface help.

It was also about this time that California was treated to the spectacle
of an Unemployed Army, which was driven from pillar to post,--or, in
this case, from town to town,--each trying to outdo the last in
protestations of unhospitality. Finally, in Sacramento the fire-hoses
were turned on the army. At that Carl flamed with indignation, and
expressed himself in no mincing terms, both to the public and to the
reporter who sought his views. He was no hand to keep clippings, but I
did come across one of his milder interviews in the San Francisco
"Bulletin" of March 11, 1914.

"That California's method of handling the unemployed problem is in
accord with the 'careless, cruel and unscientific attitude of society on
the labor question,' is the statement made to-day by Professor Carleton
H. Parker, Assistant Professor of Industrial economy, and secretary of
the State Immigration Committee.

"'There are two ways of looking at this winter's unemployed problem,'
said Dr. Parker; 'one is fatally bad and the other promises good. One
way is shallow and biased; the other strives to use the simple rules of
science for the analysis of any problem. One way is to damn the army of
the unemployed and the irresponsible, irritating vagrants who will not
work. The other way is to admit that any such social phenomenon as this
army is just as normal a product of our social organization as our own
university.

"'Much street-car and ferry analysis of this problem that I have
overheard seems to believe that this army created its own degraded self,
that a vagrant is a vagrant from personal desire and perversion. This
analysis is as shallow as it is untrue. If unemployment and vagrancy are
the product of our careless, indifferent society over the half-century,
then its cure will come only by a half-century's careful regretful
social labor by this same tardy society.

"'The riot at Sacramento is merely the appearance of the problem from
the back streets into the strong light. The handling of the problem
there is unhappily in accord with the careless, cruel attitude of
society on this question. We are willing to respect the anxiety of
Sacramento, threatened in the night with this irresponsible, reckless
invasion; but how can the city demand of vagrants observance of the law,
when they drop into mob-assertion the minute the problem comes up to
them?'"

The illustration he always used to express his opinion of the average
solution of unemployment, I quote from a paper of his on that subject,
written in the spring of 1915.

"There is an old test for insanity which is made as follows: the suspect
is given a cup, and is told to empty a bucket into which water is
running from a faucet. If the suspect turns off the water before he
begins to bail out the bucket, he is sane. Nearly all the current
solutions of unemployment leave the faucet running. . . .

"The heart of the problem, the cause, one might well say, of
unemployment, is that the employment of men regularly or irregularly is
at no time an important consideration of those minds which control
industry. Social organization has ordered it that these minds shall be
interested only in achieving a reasonable profit in the manufacture and
the sale of goods. Society has never demanded that industries be run
even in part to give men employment. Rewards are not held out for such a
policy, and therefore it is unreasonable to expect such a performance.
Though a favorite popular belief is that we must 'work to live,' we
have no current adage of a 'right to work.' This winter there are
shoeless men and women, closed shoe-factories, and destitute shoemakers;
children in New England with no woolen clothing, half-time woolen mills,
and unemployed spinners and weavers. Why? Simply because the mills
cannot turn out the reasonable business profit; and since that is the
only promise that can galvanize them into activity, they stand idle, no
matter how much humanity finds of misery and death in this decision.
This statement is not a peroration to a declaration for Socialism. It
seems a fair rendering of the matter-of-fact logic of the analysis.

"It seems hopeless, and also unfair, to expect out-of-work insurance,
employment bureaus, or philanthropy, to counteract the controlling force
of profit-seeking. There is every reason to believe that profit-seeking
has been a tremendous stimulus to economic activity in the past. It is
doubtful if the present great accumulation of capital would have come
into existence without it. But to-day it seems as it were to be caught
up by its own social consequences. It is hard to escape from the
insistence of a situation in which the money a workman makes in a year
fails to cover the upkeep of his family; and this impairment of the
father's income through unemployment has largely to be met by child-and
woman-labor. The Federal Immigration Commission's report shows that in
not a single great American industry can the average yearly income of
the father keep his family. Seven hundred and fifty dollars is the bare
minimum for the maintenance of the average-sized American industrial
family. The average yearly earnings of the heads of families working in
the United States in the iron and steel industry is $409; in bituminous
coal-mining $451; in the woolen industry $400; in silk $448; in cotton
$470; in clothing $530; in boots and shoes $573; in leather $511; in
sugar-refining $549; in the meat industry $578; in furniture $598, etc.

"He who decries created work, municipal lodging-houses, bread-lines, or
even sentimental charity, in the face of the winter's destitution, has
an unsocial soul. The most despicable thing to-day is the whine of our
cities lest their inadequate catering to their own homeless draw a few
vagrants from afar. But when the agony of our winter makeshifting is by,
will a sufficient minority of our citizens rise and demand that the best
technical, economic, and sociological brains in our wealthy nation
devote themselves with all courage and honesty to the problem of
unemployment?"

Carl was no diplomat, in any sense of the word--above all, no political
diplomat. It is a wonder that the Immigration and Housing Commission
stood behind him as long as it did. He grew rabid at every political
appointment which, in his eyes, hampered his work. It was evident, so
they felt, that he was not tactful in his relations with various members
of the Commission. It all galled him terribly, and after much
consultation at home, he handed in his resignation. During the first
term of his secretaryship, from October to December, he carried his
full-time University work. From January to May he had a seminar only,
as I remember. From August on he gave no University work at all; so,
after asking to have his resignation from the Commission take effect at
once, he had at once to find something to do to support his family.

This was in October, 1914, after just one year as Executive Secretary.
We were over in Contra Costa County then, on a little ranch of my
father's. Berkeley socially had come to be too much of a strain, and,
too, we wanted the blessed sons to have a real country experience. Ten
months we were there. Three days after Carl resigned, he was on his way
to Phoenix, Arizona,--where there was a threatened union tie-up,--as
United States Government investigator of the labor situation. He added
thereby to his first-hand stock of labor-knowledge, made a firm friend
of Governor Hunt,--he was especially interested in his prison
policy,--and in those few weeks was the richer by one more of the really
intimate friendships one counts on to the last--Will Scarlett.

He wrote, on Carl's death, "What a horrible, hideous loss! Any of us
could so easily have been spared; that he, who was of such value, had to
go seems such an utter waste. . . . He was one of that very, very small
circle of men, whom, in the course of our lives, we come _really_ to
love. His friendship meant so much--though I heard but infrequently from
him, there was the satisfaction of a deep friendship that was _always
there_ and _always the same_. He would have gone so far! I have looked
forward to a great career for him, and had such pride in him. It's too
hideous!"

CHAPTER X

In January, 1915, Carl took up his teaching again in real earnest,
commuting to Alamo every night. I would have the boys in bed and the
little supper all ready by the fire; then I would prowl down the road
with my electric torch, to meet him coming home; he would signal in the
distance with his torch, and I with mine. Then the walk back together,
sometimes ankle-deep in mud; then supper, making the toast over the
coals, and an evening absolutely to ourselves. And never in all our
lives did we ask for more joy than that.

That spring we began building our very own home in Berkeley. The months
in Alamo had made us feel that we could never bear to be in the centre
of things again, nor, for that matter, could we afford a lot in the
centre of things; so we bought high up on the Berkeley hills, where we
could realize as much privacy as was possible, and yet where our friends
could reach us--if they could stand the climb. The love of a nest we
built! We were longer in that house than anywhere else: two years almost
to the day--two years of such happiness as no other home has ever seen.
There, around the redwood table in the living-room, by the window
overlooking the Golden Gate, we had the suppers that meant much joy to
us and I hope to the friends we gathered around us. There, on the
porches overhanging the very Canyon itself we had our Sunday
tea-parties. (Each time Carl would plead, "I don't have to wear a stiff
collar, do I?" and he knew that I would answer, "You wear anything you
want," which usually meant a blue soft shirt.)

We had a little swimming-tank in back, for the boys.

And then, most wonderful of all, came the day when the June-Bug was
born, the daughter who was to be the very light of her adoring father's
eyes. (Her real name is Alice Lee.) "Mother, there never really _was_
such a baby, _was_ there?" he would ask ten times a day. She was not
born up on the hill; but in ten days we were back from the hospital and
out day and night through that glorious July, on some one of the porches
overlooking the bay and the hills. And we added our adored Nurse Balch
as a friend of the family forever.

I always think of Nurse Balch as the person who more than any other,
perhaps, understood to some degree just what happiness filled our lives
day in and day out. No one assumes anything before a trained nurse--they
are around too constantly for that. They see the misery in homes, they
see what joy there is. And Nurse Balch saw, because she was around
practically all the time for six weeks, that there was nothing but joy
every minute of the day in our home. I do not know how I can make people
understand, who are used to just ordinary happiness, what sort of a life
Carl and I led. It was not just that we got along. It was an active, not
a passive state. There was never a home-coming, say at lunch-time, that
did not seem an event--when our curve of happiness abruptly rose. Meals
were joyous occasions always; perhaps too scant attention paid to the
manners of the young, but much gurglings, and "Tell some more, daddy,"
and always detailed accounts of every little happening during the last
few hours of separation.

Then there was ever the difficulty of good-byes, though it meant only
for a few hours, until supper. And at supper-time he would come up the
front stairs, I waiting for him at the top, perhaps limping. That was
his little joke--we had many little family jokes. Limping meant that I
was to look in every pocket until I unearthed a bag of peanut candy.
Usually he was laden with bundles--provisions, shoes from the cobbler, a
tennis-racket restrung, and an armful of books. After greetings, always
the question, "How's my June-Bug?" and a family procession upstairs to
peer over a crib at a fat gurgler. And "Mother, there never really _was_
such a baby, _was_ there?" No, nor such a father.

It was that first summer back in Berkeley, the year before the June-Bug
was born, when Carl was teaching in Summer School, that we had our
definite enthusiasm over labor-psychology aroused. Will Ogburn, who was
also teaching at Summer School that year, and whose lectures I attended,
introduced us to Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," several books by
Freud, McDougall's "Social Psychology," etc. I remember Carl's seminar
the following spring--his last seminar at the University of California.
He had started with nine seminar students three years before; now there
were thirty-three. They were all such a superior picked lot, some
seniors, mostly graduates, that he felt there was no one he could ask to
stay out. I visited it all the term, and I am sure that nowhere else on
the campus could quite such heated and excited discussions have been
heard--Carl simply sitting at the head of the table, directing here,
leading there.

The general subject was Labor-Problems. The students had to read one
book a week--such books as Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," Keller's
"Societal Evolution," Holt's "Freudian Wish," McDougall's "Social
Psychology,"--two weeks to that,--Lippmann's "Preface to Politics,"
Veblen's "Instinct of Workmanship," Wallas's "Great Society,"
Thorndike's "Educational Psychology," Hoxie's "Scientific Management,"
Ware's "The Worker and his Country," G.H. Parker's "Biology and Social
Problems," and so forth--and ending, as a concession to the idealists,
with Royce's "Philosophy of Loyalty."

One of the graduate students of the seminar wrote me: "For three years I
sat in his seminar on Labor-Problems, and had we both been there ten
years longer, each season would have found me in his class. His
influence on my intellectual life was by far the most stimulating and
helpful of all the men I have known. . . . But his spirit and influence
will live on in the lives of those who sat at his feet and learned."

The seminar was too large, really, for intimate discussion, so after a
few weeks several of the boys asked Carl if they could have a little
sub-seminar. It was a very rushed time for him, but he said that, if
they would arrange all the details, he would save them Tuesday evenings.
So every Tuesday night about a dozen boys climbed our hill to rediscuss
the subject of the seminar of that afternoon--and everything else under
the heavens and beyond. I laid out ham sandwiches, or sausages, or some
edible dear to the male heart, and coffee to be warmed, and about
midnight could be heard the sounds of banqueting from the kitchen. Three
students told me on graduation that those Tuesday nights at our house
had meant more intellectual stimulus than anything that ever came into
their lives.

One of these boys wrote to me after Carl's death:--

"When I heard that Doc had gone, one of the finest and cleanest men I
have ever had the privilege of associating with, I seemed to have
stopped thinking. It didn't seem possible to me, and I can remember very
clearly of thinking what a rotten world this is when we have to live and
lose a man like Doc. I have talked to two men who were associated with
him in somewhat the same manner as I was, and we simply looked at one
another after the first sentences, and then I guess the thoughts of a
man who had made so much of an impression on our minds drove coherent
speech away. . . . I have had the opportunity since leaving college of
experiencing something real besides college life and I can't remember
during all that period of not having wondered how Dr. Parker would
handle this or that situation. He was simply immense to me at all times,
and if love of a man-to-man kind does exist, then I truthfully can say
that I had that love for him."

Of the letters received from students of those years I should like to
quote a passage here and there.

An aviator in France writes: "There was no man like him in my college
life. Believe me, he has been a figure in all we do over here,--we who
knew him,--and a reason for our doing, too. His loss is so great to all
of us! . . . He was so fine he will always push us on to finding the truth
about things. That was his great spark, wasn't it?"

From a second lieutenant in France: "I loved Carl. He was far more to me
than just a friend--he was father, brother, and friend all in one. He
influenced, as you know, everything I have done since I knew him--for it
was his enthusiasm which has been the force which determined the
direction of my work. And the bottom seemed to have fallen out of my
whole scheme of things when the word just came to me."

From one of the young officers at Camp Lewis: "When E---- told me about
Carl's illness last Wednesday, I resolved to go and see him the coming
week-end. I carried out my resolution, only to find that I could see
neither him nor you. [This was the day before Carl's death.] It was a
great disappointment to me, so I left some flowers and went away. . . . I
simply could not leave Seattle without seeing Carl once more, so I made
up my mind to go out to the undertaker's. The friends I was with
discouraged the idea, but it was too strong within me. There was a void
within me which could only be filled by seeing my friend once more. I
went out there and stood by his side for quite a while. I recalled the
happy days spent with him on the campus. I thought of his kindliness,
his loyalty, his devotion. Carl Parker shall always occupy a place in
the recesses of my memory as a true example of nobility. It was hard for
me to leave, but I felt much better."

From one of his women students: "Always from the first day when I knew
him he seemed to give me a joy of life and an inspiration to work which
no other person or thing has ever given me. And it is a joy and an
inspiration I shall always keep. I seldom come to a stumbling-block in
my work that I don't stop to wonder what Carl Parker would do were he
solving that problem."

Another letter I have chosen to quote from was written by a former
student now in Paris:--

"We could not do without him. He meant too much to us. . . . I come now as
a young friend to put myself by your side a moment and to try to share a
great sorrow which is mine almost as much as it is yours. For I am sure
that, after you, there were few indeed who loved Carl as much as I.

"Oh, I am remembering a hundred things!--the first day I found you both
in the little house on Hearst Avenue--the dinners we used to have . . .
the times I used to come on Sunday morning to find you both, and the
youngsters--the day just before I graduated when mother and I had lunch
at your house . . . and, finally, that day I left you, and you said, both
of you, 'Don't come back without seeing some of the cities of Europe.'
I'd have missed some of the cities to have come back and found you both.

"Some of him we can't keep. The quaint old gray twinkle--the quiet,
half-impudent, wholly confident poise with which he defied all
comers--that inexhaustible and incorrigible fund of humor--those we
lose. No use to whine--we lose it; write it off, gulp, go on.

"But other things we keep, none the less. The stimulus and impetus and
inspiration are not lost, and shall not be. No one has counted the
youngsters he has hauled, by the scruff of the neck as often as not, out
of a slough of middle-class mediocrity, and sent careering off into some
welter or current of ideas and conjecture. Carl didn't know where they
would end, and no more do any of the rest of us. He knew he loathed
stagnation. And he stirred things and stirred people. And the end of the
stirring is far from being yet known or realized."

I like, too, a story one of the Regents told me. He ran into a student
from his home town and asked how his work at the University was going.
The boy looked at him eagerly and said, "Mr. M----, I've been born
again! ["Born again"--those were his very words.] I entered college
thinking of it as a preparation for making more money when I got out.
I've come across a man named Parker in the faculty and am taking
everything he gives. Now I know I'd be selling out my life to make money
the goal. I know now, too, that whatever money I do make can never be at
the expense of the happiness and welfare of any other human being."

CHAPTER XI

About this time we had a friend come into our lives who was destined to
mean great things to the Parkers--Max Rosenberg. He had heard Carl
lecture once or twice, had met him through our good friend Dr. Brown,
and a warm friendship had developed. In the spring of 1916 we were
somewhat tempted by a call to another University--$1700 was really not a
fortune to live on, and to make both ends meet and prepare for the
June-Bug's coming, Carl had to use every spare minute lecturing outside.
It discouraged him, for he had no time left to read and study. So when a
call came that appealed to us in several ways, besides paying a much
larger salary, we seriously considered it. About then "Uncle Max" rang
up from San Francisco and asked Carl to see him before answering this
other University, and an appointment was made for that afternoon.

I was to be at a formal luncheon, but told Carl to be sure to call me up
the minute he left Max--we wondered so hard what he might mean. And what
he did mean was the most wonderful idea that ever entered a friend's
head. He felt that Carl had a real message to give the world, and that
he should write a book. He also realized that it was impossible to find
time for a book under the circumstances. Therefore he proposed that Carl
should take a year's leave of absence and let Max finance him--not only
just finance him, but allow for a trip throughout the East for him to
get the inspiration of contact with other men in his field; and enough
withal, so that there should be no skimping anywhere and the little
family at home should have everything they needed.

It seemed to us something too wonderful to believe. I remember going
back to that lunch-table, after Carl had telephoned me only the broadest
details, wondering if it were the same world. That Book--we had dreamed
of writing that book for so many years--the material to be in it changed
continually, but always the longing to write, and no time, no hopes of
any chance to do it. And the June-Bug coming, and more need for
money--hence more outside lectures than ever. I have no love for the
University of California when I think of that $1700. (I quote from an
article that came out in New York: "It is an astounding fact which his
University must explain, that he, with his great abilities as teacher
and leader, his wide travel and experience and training, received from
the University in his last year of service there a salary of $1700 a
year! The West does not repay commercial genius like that.") For days
after Max's offer we hardly knew we were on earth. It was so very much
the most wonderful thing that could have happened to us. Our friends had
long ago adopted the phrase "just Parker luck," and here was an example
if there ever was one. "Parker luck" indeed it was!

This all meant, to get the fulness out of it, that Carl must make a trip
of at least four months in the East. At first he planned to return in
the middle of it and then go back again; but somehow four months spent
as we planned it out for him seemed so absolutely marvelous,--an
opportunity of a lifetime,--that joy for him was greater in my soul than
the dread of a separation. It was different from any other parting we
had ever had. I was bound that I would not shed a single tear when I saw
him off, even though it meant the longest time apart we had experienced.
Three nights before he left, being a bit blue about things, for all our
fine talk, we prowled down our hillside and found our way to our first
Charlie Chaplin film. We laughed until we cried--we really did. So that
night, seeing Carl off, we went over that Charlie Chaplin film in detail
and let ourselves think and talk of nothing else. We laughed all over
again, and Carl went off laughing, and I waved good-bye laughing. Bless
that Charlie Chaplin film!

It would not take much imagination to realize what that trip meant to
Carl--and through him to me. From the time he first felt the importance
of the application of modern psychology to the study of economics, he
became more and more intellectually isolated from his colleagues. They
had no interest in, no sympathy for, no understanding of, what he was
driving at. From May, when college closed, to October, when he left for
the East, he read prodigiously. He had a mind for assimilation--he knew
where to store every new piece of knowledge he acquired, and kept
thereby an orderly brain. He read more than a book a week: everything he
could lay hands on in psychology, anthropology, biology, philosophy,
psycho-analysis--every field which he felt contributed to his own
growing conviction that orthodox economics had served its day. And how
he gloried in that reading! It had been years since he had been able to
do anything but just keep up with his daily lectures, such was the
pressure he was working under. Bless his heart, he was always coming
across something that was just too good to hold in, and I would hear him
come upstairs two steps at a time, bolt into the kitchen, and say: "Just
listen to this!" And he would read an extract from some new-found
treasure that would make him glow.

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