When a man starts on a journey he usually makes a plan before starting. He will go to this place or that at such a time or times: He will meet this man and that—and will say to them thus and so. If he is a man of trained habits—say a commercial traveller for an exacting firm—he will carry out his plans—or lie about them in his report to the home office. As my report is to be made to the public there is no need of lying. I have promised nothing and nothing is expected. My plans went all awry before I was in the United States two days. But what of that? I may not find the information I was after, but I am finding things that are interesting and amusing, so let us carry on. But first a word about those plans—for what happened to them was rather illuminating. It seems to cast a light on the law of acceleration that I hear about sometimes.

It has been my experience that a mere observer—"a looker-on here in Vienna"—seldom arrives at the truth about anything. He sees only the outside of things. It is when one is actually doing things that he learns about them. With this in mind I deferred taking the present trip for many months. Not wishing to come as a holiday onlooker I waited until actual business made it necessary for me to come. This business would make it necessary for me to have dealings with men in various cities, and in order to transact it I would be obliged to keep step with that part of the business world in which I found it necessary to move. I would find the chance comments of business conversation more enlightening than any formal interviews, for they would rise spontaneously from the soul of things. With all this carefully thought out I started on my trip.

When I left the farm my plans were vague and leisurely. I had business to transact, but it was not urgent. It could wait on my convenience and on the convenience of others. It was little more than a good excuse for meeting business men in their offices so that I could glimpse what they were thinking about when off their guard.

When I reached Toronto I found that it would be necessary for me to make my plans more definite and to speed up to a regular schedule. There seemed to be more in the business than I thought and it would be well to make the most of it. So I reformed my plans and prepared to step lively wherever necessary.

In Boston I was startled to find that further changes in my plans were advisable. The business looked better than ever, but if I was to transact it and keep step with the march of things I must exert myself and move fully three times as fast as had been planned before leaving Toronto. This would wipe out the holiday aspect of my trip, but it would give me a more intimate view of the business life of the American people. I decided to rise to the occasion.

Then I went to New York and what happened to me and my plans may be indicated by my first experience in the city. Knowing that an old friend was located at a certain address on lower Broadway I decided to call on him before doing anything else. I found a real sky-scraper at the address sought. Looking up his address in the office directory I found that his room number was 3224. Being accustomed to office buildings and hotels where the rooms are numbered with the first figure indicating the floor on which the room is located, I expected to find my friend on the third floor. Stepping in the elevator I asked for room 3224, and was promptly whirled to the thirty-second floor. My guess at the location had been multiplied by ten. And I soon found that this kind of multiplication touched everything. If Boston made me move three times as fast as Toronto, New York would make me move ten times as fast and far as Boston. Right there my plans went glimmering. Like Huck Finn, "I lost all holts." I was willing to forego a holiday, but I did not propose to invite apoplexy. Since then I have been doing business in a catch-as-catch-can way—and getting information and impressions in the same way. And what I am getting I shall pass on just as I get it—without plan or too much order. The impossibility of keeping step with New York without a long previous training has compelled me to give up the attempt and has restored me to the holiday humor I was in when leaving the farm. So now we can step lightly again.

One day many years ago I happened to be with the late "Billy" Garrison, whose memory still lingers in New York newspaper life. A bewildered individual approached and asked Garrison:

"Are you a Scotchman?"

"No," said the wit, "but if you wait a minute I think I can find you one."

That swift absurdity epitomizes New York. If you want a man of any nationality or from any place, you can find him in a minute or two if you care to search. In trying to get in touch with the United States, or even the whole world, it is not necessary to leave Manhattan Island. But I was not searching. I was waiting for mine own to come to me. In this care-free and receptive mood I met men from many States of the Union and from many walks of life. Some I met as old friends, some in the way of business, and some by the simple expedient of borrowing a match in a smoking-car or hotel lobby. As none suspected any motive beyond what appeared on the surface, they talked copiously if not always entertainingly. And I soon discovered the astounding fact that if my patriotic sentiments were to be outraged I must pave the way for the insult myself. The war and international relations never cropped up. Of course the Americans lack the irritant of the adverse exchange which touches Canadian business life at many points every day and arouses wrath. As a matter of fact, the exchange gives their dealings with Canada and Great Britain an added zest and tends to make them take a placid view of the international situation. That in itself is enough to increase the irritation of a Canadian, but I could hardly make it a cause of argument, for exchange is a subject that I do not feel that I understand except in moments of exalted financial meditation such as seldom come to me. While I might feel sore about having my Canadian money discounted, the Americans were not sore at all. Indeed, they went farther and were unfailing in their sympathy. That hurt a little, but I could hardly treat it as an insult.

Still I was not without my moments of insight and amusement. I found that my friends and chance acquaintances, like those who talked in the parlor car, had one great grievance in common—the activities of agitators, Bolshevists, I.W.W.'s and all who are attacking American institutions. This touches them more nearly than international relations or any criticisms that come from abroad. And all of them dealt with the trouble in the same strain. They are not afraid of these wild men or of their wild ideas. But they are hurt and humiliated to find that people exist, especially within the borders of the United States, who believe the kind of nonsense that these people talk. Real Americans feel disgraced that news of that sort of discontent should be going out to the world. The attitude seems to be one of shame and indignation rather than of fear or anger. They were hurt to find that any one—especially any one who had come to America to live—could fail to see the manifold advantages of living under the Stars and Stripes. No one was afraid that the radicals could accomplish their ends—they were simply a noisy, irrational minority—but it was an insult to every American to have these people denying that the United States is the finest country in the world. It seemed incredible, stupefying.

The man from Seattle on the observation car was able to give first-hand information about the I.W.W. and he proceeded to do so volubly and emphatically. He pinned his faith to the chastening influence of an accurately applied bludgeon in dealing with this element of society, and told with relish of how I.W.W. leaders were beaten up whenever they tried to start something. He established his claim to being a true American by stating that although living in the West he was born in Boston and was descended from one of the seven men who had established the town of Salem. He was all for direct action in dealing with the advocates of direct action.

The sum of the matter is that the unrest is rousing American citizens to a keener sense of their heritage as descendants of the men who laid the foundations of the country, and they are inclined to be intolerant of any one who questions the soundness and essential rightness of American institutions. They have no patience with those who would overturn their system of government. The result will probably be a livelier sense of citizenship on the part of many who have been neglectful of their duties in the matter. They will not leave the conduct of affairs to those who cater to the forces of disruption. They are all for the America of their fathers, and this unrest will probably cause a rebirth of the old-fashioned American spirit. The danger is that a nation that has been roused to a sense of power by the war will act swiftly and intolerantly without discriminating sufficiently between those who would reform society and those who would wreck it.