An American Idyll by Cornelia Stratton Parker

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"There is the thing that possessed Parker--the perception of the
destructive significance of the repressed and balked instincts of the
migratory worker, the unskilled, the casuals, the hoboes, the womanless,
jobless, voteless men. To him their tragedy was akin to the tragedy of
child-life in our commercialized cities. More often than of anything
else, he used to talk to me of the fatuous blindness of a civilization
that centred its economic activities in places where child-life was
perpetually repressed and imperiled. The last time I saw him he was
flaming indignation at the ghastly record of children killed and maimed
by trucks and automobiles. What business had automobiles where children
should be free to play? What could be said for the human wisdom of a
civilization that placed traffic above child-life? In our denial to
children, to millions of men and women, of the means for satisfying
their instinctive desires and innate dispositions, he saw the principal
explanation of crime, labor-unrest, the violence of strikes, the ghastly
violence of war[1]."

[Footnote 1: Robert Bruere, in the _New Republic_, May 18, 1918.]

He could never pass any youngster anywhere without a word of greeting as
from friend to friend. I remember being in a crowded car with him in our
engaged days. He was sitting next to a woman with a baby who was most
unhappy over the ways of the world. Carl asked if he could not hold the
squaller. The mother looked a bit doubtful, but relinquished her child.
Within two minutes the babe was content on Carl's knees, clutching one
of his fingers in a fat fist and sucking his watch. The woman leaned
over to me later, as she was about to depart with a very sound asleep
offspring. "Is he as lovely as that to his own?"

The tenderness of him over his own! Any hour of the day or night he was
alert to be of any service in any trouble, big or little. He had a
collection of tricks and stories on hand for any youngster who happened
along. The special pet of our own boys was "The Submarine Obo Bird"--a
large flapper (Dad's arms fairly rent the air), which was especially
active early in the morning, when small boys appeared to prefer staying
in bed to getting up. The Obo Bird went "Pak! Pak!" and lit on numerous
objects about the sleeping porch. Carl's two hands would plump stiff,
fingers down, on the railing, or on a small screw sticking out
somewhere. Scratches. Then "Pak!" and more flaps. This time the Obo Bird
would light a trifle nearer the small boy whose "turn" it was--round
eyes, and an agitated grin from ear to ear, plus explosive giggles and
gurglings emerging from the covers. Nearer and nearer came the Obo Bird.
Gigglier and gigglier got the small boy. Finally, with a spring and a
last "Pak! Pak! Pak!" the Obo Bird dove under the covers at the side of
the bed and pinched the small boy who would not get up. (Rather a
premium on not rising promptly was the Obo Bird.) Final ecstatic squeals
from the pinched. Then, "Now it's my turn, daddo!" from the other
son.--The Submarine Obo Bird lived in Alaska and ate Spooka biscuits.
There was just developing a wee Obo Bird, that made less vehement
"paks!" and pinched less agitatedly--a special June-Bug Obo Bird. In
fact, the baby was not more than three months old when the boys demanded
a Submarine Obo Bird that ate little Spooka biscuits for sister.

* * * * *

His trip to Camp Lewis threw him at once into the midst of the lumber
difficulties of the Northwest, which lasted for months. The big strike
in the lumber industry was on when he arrived. He wrote: "It is a strike
to better conditions. The I.W.W. are only the display feature. The main
body of opinion is from a lot of unskilled workers who are sick of the
filthy bunk-houses and rotten grub." He wrote later of a conference with
the big lumbermen, and of how they would not stay on the point but
"roared over the I.W.W. I told them that condemnation was not a
solution, or businesslike, but what we wanted was a statement of how
they were to open their plants. More roars. More demands for troops,
etc. I said I was a college man, not used to business; but if business
men had as much trouble as this keeping to the real points involved,
give me a faculty analysis. They laughed over this and got down to
business, and in an hour lined up the affair in mighty good shape."

I wish it were proper to go into the details here of the various
conferences, the telegrams sent to Washington, the replies. Carl wrote:
"I am saving all the copies for you, as it is most interesting history."
Each letter would end: "By three days at least I should start back. I am
getting frantic to be home." Home, for the Parkers, was always where we
happened to be then. Castle Crags was as much "home" as any place had
ever been. We had moved fourteen times in ten years: of the eleven
Christmases we had had together, only two had been in the same place.
There were times when "home" was a Pullman car. It made no difference.
One of the strange new feelings I have to get used to is the way I now
look at places to live in. It used to be that Carl and I, in passing the
littlest bit of a hovel, would say, "We could be perfectly happy in a
place like that, couldn't we? Nothing makes any difference if we are
together." But certain kinds of what we called "cuddly" houses used to
make us catch our breaths, to think of the extra joy it would be living
together tucked away in there. Now, when I pass a place that looks like
that, I have to drop down some kind of a trap-door in my brain, and not
think at all until I get well by it.

Labor conditions in the Northwest grew worse, strikes more general, and
finally Carl wrote that he just must be indefinitely on the job. "I am
so home-sick for you that I feel like packing up and coming. I literally
feel terribly. But with all this feeling I don't see how I can. Not only
have I been telegraphed to stay on the job, but the situation is growing
steadily worse. Last night my proposal (eight-hour day, non-partisan
complaint and adjustment board, suppression of violence by the state)
was turned down by the operators in Tacoma. President Suzzallo and I
fought for six hours but it went down. The whole situation is drifting
into a state of incipient sympathetic strikes." Later: "This is the most
bull-headed affair and I don't think it is going to get anywhere." Still
later: "Things are not going wonderfully in our mediation. Employers
demanding everything and men granting much but not that." Again: "Each
day brings a new crisis. Gee, labor is unrestful . . . and gee, the
pigheadedness of bosses! Human nature is sure one hundred per cent
psychology." Also he wrote, referring to the general situation at the
University and in the community: "Am getting absolutely crazy with
enthusiasm over my job here. . . . It is too vigorous and resultful for
words." And again: "The mediation between employers and men blew up
to-day at 4 P.M. and now a host of nice new strikes show on the
horizon. . . . There are a lot of fine operators but some hard shells."
Again: "Gee, I'm learning! And talk about material for the Book!"

An article appeared in one of the New York papers recently, entitled
"How Carleton H. Parker Settled Strikes":--

"It was under his leadership that, in less than a year, twenty-seven
disputes which concerned Government work in the Pacific Northwest were
settled, and it was his method to lay the basis for permanent relief as
he went along. . . .

"Parker's contribution was in the method he used. . . . Labor leaders of
all sorts would flock to him in a bitter, weltering mass, mouthing the
set phrases of class-hatred they use so effectually in stirring up
trouble. They would state their case. And Parker would quietly deduce
the irritation points that seemed to stand out in the jumbled testimony.

"Then it would be almost laughable to the observer to hear the
employer's side of the case. Invariably it was just as bitter, just as
unreasoning, and just as violent, as the statement of their case by the
workers. Parker would endeavor to find, in all this heap of words, the
irritation points of the other side.

"But when a study was finished, his diagnosis made, and his prescription
of treatment completed, Parker always insisted in carrying it straight
to the workers. And he did not just tell them results. He often took
several hours, sometimes several meetings of several hours each. In
these meetings he would go over every detail of his method, from start
to finish, explaining, answering questions, meeting objections with
reason. And he always won them over. But, of course, it must be said
that he had a tremendously compelling personality that carried him far."

CHAPTER XIV

At the end of August the little family was united again in Seattle.
Almost the clearest picture of Carl I have is the eager look with which
he scanned the people stepping out of our car at the station, and the
beam that lit up his face as he spied us. There is a line in Dorothy
Canfield's "Bent Twig" that always appealed to us. The mother and father
were separated for a few days, to the utter anguish of the father
especially, and he remarked, "It's Hell to be happily married!" Every
time we were ever separated we felt just that.

In one of Carl's letters from Seattle he had written: "The 'Atlantic
Monthly' wants me to write an article on the I.W.W.!!" So the first
piece of work he had to do after we got settled was that. We were
tremendously excited, and never got over chuckling at some of the
moss-grown people we knew about the country who would feel outraged at
the "Atlantic Monthly" stooping to print stuff by that young radical.
And on such a subject! How we tore at the end, to get the article off on
time! The stenographer from the University came about two one Sunday
afternoon. I sat on the floor up in the guest-room and read the
manuscript to her while she typed it off. Carl would rush down more copy
from his study on the third floor. I'd go over it while Miss Van Doren
went over what she had typed. Then the reading would begin again. We
hated to stop for supper, all three of us were so excited to get the job
done. It _had_ to be at the main post-office that night by eleven, to
arrive in Boston when promised. At ten-thirty it was in the envelope,
three limp people tore for the car, we put Miss Van Doren on,--she was
to mail the article on her way home,--and Carl and I, knowing this was
an occasion for a treat if ever there was one, routed out a sleepy
drug-store clerk and ate the remains of his Sunday ice-cream supply.

I can never express how grateful I am that that article was written and
published before Carl died. The influence of it ramified in many and the
most unexpected directions. I am still hearing of it. We expected
condemnation at the time. There probably was plenty of it, but only one
condemner wrote. On the other hand, letters streamed in by the score
from friends and strangers bearing the general message, "God bless you
for it!"

That article is particularly significant as showing his method of
approach to the whole problem of the I.W.W., after some two years of
psychological study.

"The futility of much conventional American social analysis is due to
its description of the given problem in terms of its relationship to
some relatively unimportant or artificial institution. Few of the
current analyses of strikes or labor violence make use of the basic
standards of human desire and intention which control these phenomena. A
strike and its demands are usually praised as being law-abiding, or
economically bearable, or are condemned as being unlawful, or
confiscatory. These four attributes of a strike are important only as
incidental consequences. The habit of Americans thus to measure up
social problems to the current, temporary, and more or less accidental
scheme of traditions and legal institutions, long ago gave birth to our
national belief that passing a new law or forcing obedience to an old
one was a specific for any unrest. The current analysis of the I.W.W.
and its activities is an example of this perverted and unscientific
method. The I.W.W. analysis, which has given both satisfaction and a
basis for treating the organization, runs as follows: the organization
is unlawful in its activity, un-American in its sabotage, unpatriotic in
its relation to the flag, the government, and the war. The rest of the
condemnation is a play upon these three attributes. So proper and so
sufficient has this condemnatory analysis become, that it is a risky
matter to approach the problem from another angle. But it is now so
obvious that our internal affairs are out of gear, that any
comprehensive scheme of national preparedness would demand that full and
honest consideration be given to all forces determining the degree of
American unity, one force being this tabooed organization.

"It would be best to announce here a more or less dogmatic hypothesis to
which the writer will steadfastly adhere: that human behavior results
from the rather simple, arithmetical combination of the inherited nature
of man and the environment in which his maturing years are passed! Man
will behave according to the hints for conduct which the accidents of
his life have stamped into his memory mechanism. A slum produces a mind
which has only slum incidents with which to work, and a spoiled and
protected child seldom rises to aggressive competitive behavior, simply
because its past life has stored up no memory imprints from which a
predisposition to vigorous life can be built. The particular things
called the moral attributes of man's conduct are conventionally found by
contrasting this educated and trained way of acting with the exigencies
and social needs or dangers of the time. Hence, while his immoral or
unpatriotic behavior may fully justify his government in imprisoning or
eliminating him when it stands in some particular danger which his
conduct intensifies, this punishment in no way either explains his
character or points to an enduring solution of his problem. Suppression,
while very often justified and necessary in the flux of human
relationship, always carries a social cost which must be liquidated, and
also a backfire danger which must be insured against. The human being is
born with no innate proclivity to crime or special kind of unpatriotism.
Crime and treason are habit-activities, educated into man by
environmental influences favorable to their development. . . .

"The I.W.W. can be profitably viewed only as a psychological by-product
of the neglected childhood of industrial America. It is discouraging to
see the problem to-day examined almost exclusively from the point of
view of its relation to patriotism and conventional ventional commercial
morality. . . .

"It is perhaps of value to quote the language of the most influential of
the I.W.W. leaders.

"'You ask me why the I.W.W. is not patriotic to the United States. If
you were a bum without a blanket; if you left your wife and kids when
you went West for a job, and had never located them since; if your job
never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if you
slept in a lousy, sour bunk-house, and ate food just as rotten as they
could give you and get by with it; if deputy sheriffs shot your
cooking-cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your
wages were lowered on you when the bosses thought they had you down; if
there was one law for Ford, Suhr, and Mooney, and another for Harry
Thaw; if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat
you up, railroaded you to jail, and the good Christian people cheered
and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be
patriotic? This war is a business man's war and we don't see why we
should go out and get shot in order to save the lovely state of affairs
that we now enjoy.'

"The argument was rather difficult to keep productive, because
gratitude--that material prerequisite to patriotism--seemed wanting in
their attitude toward the American government. Their state of mind could
be explained only by referring it, as was earlier suggested, to its
major relationships. The dominating concern of the I.W.W. is what Keller
calls the maintenance problem. Their philosophy is, in its simple
reduction, a stomach-philosophy, and their politico-industrial revolt
could be called without injustice a hunger-riot. But there is an
important correction to this simple statement. While their way of living
has seriously encroached on the urgent minima of nutrition, shelter,
clothing, and physical health, it has also long outraged the American
laboring-class traditions touching social life, sex-life, self-dignity,
and ostentation. Had the food and shelter been sufficient, the revolt
tendencies might have simmered out, were the migratory labor population
not keenly sensitive to traditions of a richer psychological life than
mere physical maintenance."

The temper of the country on this subject, the general closed attitude
of mind which the average man holds thereon, prompt me to add here a few
more of Carl's generalizations and conclusions in this article. If only
he were here, to cry aloud again and yet again on this point! Yet I know
there are those who sense his approach, and are endeavoring in every way
possible to make wisdom prevail over prejudice.

"Cynical disloyalty and contempt of the flag must, in the light of
modern psychology, come from a mind which is devoid of national
gratitude, and in which the United States stirs no memory of
satisfaction or happiness. To those of us who normally feel loyal to the
nation, such a disloyal sentiment brings sharp indignation. As an index
of our own sentiment and our own happy relations to the nation, this
indignation has value. As a stimulus to a programme or ethical
generalization, it is the cause of vast inaccuracy and sad injustice.
American syndicalism is not a scheming group dominated by an
unconventional and destructive social philosophy. It is merely a
commonplace attitude--not such a state of mind as Machiavelli or
Robespierre possessed, but one stamped by the lowest, most miserable
labor-conditions and outlook which American industrialism produces. To
those who have seen at first-hand the life of the western casual
laborer, any reflections on his gratitude or spiritual buoyancy seem
ironical humor.

"An altogether unwarranted importance has been given to the syndicalist
philosophy of the I.W.W. A few leaders use its phraseology. Of these
few, not half a dozen know the meaning of French syndicalism or English
guild socialism. To the great wandering rank and file, the I.W.W. is
simply the only social break in the harsh search for work that they have
ever had; its headquarters the only competitor of the saloon in which
they are welcome. . . .

"It is a conventional economic truism that American industrialism is
guaranteeing to some half of the forty millions of our industrial
population a life of such limited happiness, of such restrictions on
personal development, and of such misery and desolation when sickness or
accident comes, that we should be childish political scientists not to
see that from such an environment little self-sacrificing love of
country, little of ethics, little of gratitude could come. It is
unfortunate that the scientific findings of our social condition must
use words which sound strangely like the phraseology of the Socialists.
This similarity, however, should logically be embarrassing to the
critics of these findings, not to the scientists. Those who have
investigated and studied the lower strata of American labor have long
recognized the I.W.W. as purely a symptom of a certain distressing state
of affairs. The casual migratory laborers are the finished product of an
economic environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out human
beings modeled after all the standards which society abhors. The history
of the migratory workers shows that, starting with the long hours and
dreary winters on the farms they ran away from, or the sour-smelling
bunk-house in a coal village, through their character-debasing
experience with the drifting 'hire and fire' life in the industries, on
to the vicious social and economic life of the winter unemployed, their
training predetermined but one outcome, and the environment produced its
type.

"The I.W.W. has importance only as an illustration of a stable American
economic process. Its pitiful syndicalism, its street-corner opposition
to the war, are the inconsequential trimmings. Its strike alone,
faithful as it is to the American type, is an illuminating thing. The
I.W.W., like the Grangers, the Knights of Labor, the Farmers' Alliance,
the Progressive Party, is but a phenomenon of revolt. The cure lies in
taking care of its psychic antecedents; the stability of our Republic
depends on the degree of courage and wisdom with which we move to the
task."

In this same connection I quote from another article:--

"No one doubts the full propriety of the government's suppressing
ruthlessly any interference of the I.W.W. with war-preparation. All
patriots should just as vehemently protest against all suppression of
the normal protest activities of the I.W.W. There will be neither
permanent peace nor prosperity in our country till the revolt basis of
the I.W.W. is removed. And until that is done, the I.W.W. remains an
unfortunate, valuable symptom of a diseased industrialism."

* * * * *

I watch, along with many others, the growth of bitterness and hysteria
in the treatment of labor spreading throughout our country, and I long,
with many others, for Carl, with his depth and sanity of understanding,
coupled with his passion for justice and democracy, to be somewhere in a
position of guidance for these troublous times.

I am reminded here of a little incident that took place just at this
time. An I.W.W. was to come out to have dinner with us--some other
friends, faculty people, also were to be there. About noon the telephone
rang. Carl went. A rich Irish brogue announced: "R---- can't come to
your party to-night." "Why is that?" "He's pinched. An' he wants t' know
can he have your Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' to read while he's in
jail."

CHAPTER XV

I am forever grateful that Carl had his experience at the University of
Washington before he died. He left the University of California a young
Assistant Professor, just one rebellious morsel in a huge machine. He
found himself in Washington, not only Head of the Department of
Economics and Dean of the College of Commerce, and a power on the
campus, but a power in the community as well. He was working under a
President who backed him in everything to the last ditch, who was keenly
interested in every ambition he had for making a big thing of his work.
He at last could see Introductory Economics given as he wanted to have
it given--realizing at the same time that his plans were in the nature
of an experiment. The two textbooks used in the first semester were
McDougall's "Social Psychology" and Wallas's "Great Society." During
part of the time he pinned the front page of the morning paper on the
board, and illustrated his subject-matter by an item of news of that
very day.

His theory of education was that the first step in any subject was to
awaken a keen interest and curiosity in the student; for that reason he
felt that pure theory in Economics was too difficult for any but seniors
or graduates; that, given too soon, it tended only to discourage. He
allowed no note-taking in any of his courses, insisted on discussion by
the class, no matter how large it was, planned to do away with written
examinations as a test of scholarship, substituting instead a short oral
discussion with each student individually, grading them "passed" and
"not passed." As it was, because of the pressure of Government work, he
had to resort to written tests. The proportion of first sections in the
final examination, which was difficult, was so large that Carl was sure
the reader must have marked too leniently, and looked over the papers
himself. His results were the same as the reader's, and, he felt, could
justifiably be used as some proof of his theory that, if a student is
interested in the subject, you cannot keep him from doing good work.

I quote here from two letters written by Washington students who had
been under his influence but five months.

"May I, as only a student, add my inadequate sympathy for the loss of
Dr. Parker--the most liberal man I have known. While his going from my
educative life can be nothing as compared to his loss from a very
beautiful family group, yet the enthusiasm, the radiance of his
personality--freely given in his classes during the semester I was
privileged to know him--made possible to me a greater realization of the
fascination of humanity than I obtained during my previous four years of
college study. I still look for him to enter the classroom, nor shall I
soon forget his ideals, his faith in humanity." From the second letter:
"To have known Mr. Parker as well as I did makes me feel that I was
indeed privileged, and I shall always carry with me the charm and
inspiration of his glorious personality. The campus was never so sad as
on the day which brought the news of his death--it seemed almost
incredible that one man in five short months could have left so
indelible an impress of his character on the student body."

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