AMERICAN TOWNSHIPS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 97, 18 January 1921, Page 5

AMERICAN TOWNSHIPS

THEIR VOTING POWER CALM BACKWATER CONTENTMENT An interesting account of the coun-try-town conditions in which the Presi-dent-elect of the United. 'States (Mr. W. G. Harding) worked his way up to commercial and political prominence is given in the following article written by Mr. A. Maurice Law for the London "Morning Post/’ The article was written at Marion, Ohio, the President-elect s home town. : "Small Town Stuff" is an expression frequently used by the people of New York, Boston, Chicago, and other large cities to express their lordly disdain of the small town and its people. Like so many other good things, it originated with the stage, and was intended to characterise certain theatrical performances that the bucolic intelligence would tolerate but metropolitan sophistication would reject; since then it has come to have wider meaning, and been incorporated into the general speech of the day, so that everybody understands the meaning of "small town stuff,” just as ho knows whav is implied when men and women are dismissed with n wave of the hand and the casual sentence, "a small town man” or "a small town woman.”

About a tenth of the population of the United States live in the three cities of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, and about a quarter live in cities, but three-quarters are the "small town stuff.” In England we should call them provincials, but' the term does not correctly apply to America. They are less provincial self-centred. They are not isolated from the great world, but they are not dependent upon it as the people of the cities are. They live flheir own lives, think their own thoughts, observe their own code. They have their own standards. Coming from Washington, Marion suggests a backwater. Its placidity is undisturbed by the flumult of the waves, even by the swing of the ever-recurring tide, hut the water is not stagnant. Life flows evenly, but is not torpid. The Marionite, man and woman, similar to men and women m hundreds of other Marions dotted between the two oceans, is keen, alert, shrewd; not intellectually high brow, but not mentally dull. Vote Value. New York sneers at Marion, if it ever gives Marion a thought, which is to be doubted, but Marion (speaking generally, and tlhinking of the hundreds of other Marions) is conscious _of its power. When there is a President to be elected, a great policy to be effected, war or peace to be decided, it is Marion,_ and not New York, that casts the decisive rote. Sixty-eight cities with populations ranging from five and a half millions to a hundred thousand represent twenty-five per cent, of the population, but the other seventy-five per cent, is In ci’.ies having populations from 10,000 Ho 100,000. It is a question of simple arithmetic. The wealth, and in some directions the influence, is in the hands of the large cities, but not the votes, and in a country where the power is exercised through the vote a hundred cities of the size of Marion, with its population of 27,000, is the equivalent of Chicago, the second city in the country, with its population of 2.700,000; and superior no Philadelphia, the third city, with a population of 1,800,000. Yet Philadelphia, with its background of tradition and culture, unaware of the existence ofMarion, would resent the suggestion that it was of less importance than the Marions big and little, and it would be difficult to convince the Philadelphian that it was Marion who dictated to Philadelphia, and not Philadelphia to Marion.

In Marion, and I take it not because it lias suddenly come into prominence, but because it is typical, there are not extremes of great wealth and hopeless, despairing poverty. There are a few rich men, and one must remember that wealth is relative, and there are the shiftless and the thriftless who drift and finally find anchorage in the harbour of failure; but between these two extremes is the bulk' of the population, more than fairly prosperous, well fed. decently clothed, comfortably housed. . Pleasant Places. It is a city of wooden houses, as are all these small western cities. In the business section the shops and offices are of brick, but the residences are so universally of wood that the brick house is the exception and betokens great riches. Marion has six banks, four building and loan associations, five theatres and kinemas, two daily newspapers, a public library, twenty-seven churches, public schools under the control of the State, and several hotels, one of which I am prepared to declare is the worst in the world, with the exception of the corresponding hotels in the other 317 Marions in the United States. The small town hotel in America is always an abomination; it is always shockingly dirty, and everything cooked is fried and swims in half-cold grease. Without any pretentions to architectural beauty, the residential portion cf Marion is pretty. The well-paved streets are bordered with heavy shade trees. The houses stand back from the street, each with its little patch of Testful green lawn in front. The Biblical phrase “dwellers in pleasant places” seems peculiarly appropriate. There is an air of friendliness and hospitality that is engaging. The clang of the tram is hushed. The raucous cries of the newsboys are stilled. The great heat of the summer is gone, but there is a sensual warmth In the air, clinging, embracing, a faint breeze stirring the whispering trees, that bring a feeling of peace and an invitation to sit under a tree with a book as an excuse, but shamelessly to dream and doze. Marion Manners. In a city the size of Marion men and women live much on the surface because everybody knows everybody elp/e, and there are few class distinctions. Tuv banker is not on terms of social intimacy with the porter who sweeps out the bank, but the gulf between the bank president and the junior clerk is not wide or deep. In the office of the Marion “Star,” of which Senator Harding is the principal owner, the older men who have long been associated with him, call him “W. G.,” while to the younger men' he is simply "Mr. Harding.” In Washington to address a Senator as "Mr. Harding" instead of "Mr. Senator” or “.Scaiutcir” /".raid be to show bad manners or ignorance, but An Marion "Mr. Senator'* seems rather a mouthful and too formal, and formality, "putting on the dog,” is the thing above m|l others the small town man scorns. Marion has its social life, dances and picnics for the young, lunches and dinners for their senior.-, where the note Hgain is informality, and too much toed or too lavish a display is bad taste. "Uo women smoke?” I asked a Marionile by adoption who knows his world. "As a lark, yes, but regularly, no.” 1 asked him why not, and he said for no particular reason except it was not considered good form. If a. woman were to be seen smoking in public it would be regarded as not quite respectable. I asked this same man it women drunk before prohibition went into effect, and he said rarely, if ever. Wine was not served at meals, and for a woman to taken cocktail before dinner, like smoking, it was not the thing, ami therefore it was not done. The small town is a law unto itself. It may, from Hie standpoint of Uie metropolis, bo narrow, provincial, puritanical, but it is a force to lie reckoned with, ami must always be considered in the political and sccinl calculations of America.