IN CHICAGO-AN ECONOMIST GOES ABROAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 110, 30 July 1927, Page 24

IN CHICAGO-AN ECONOMIST GOES ABROAD

ü ß>ig Bill” Chicago' 9 ! Mayor Threatens King George!. A Biuirlesqne Election Campaign Life in Hobohemia . . «

Dr. J. B. Condliffe contributes, for SUN readers, another entertaining impression of America. Dr. Condliffe is wellknown in New Zealand as an economist. He is now engaged in research work with the Institute of Pacific Relations at Honolulu. HHICAGO was my first really big American town. San Francisco after all is not nearly as big as Sydney, which it resembles a great deal, harbour and all. Chicago, on the other hand, is a polyglot inland town of more than three million people, resembling nothing else on earth or in heaven. It so happened that I came into it a week after King George had been ejected and forbidden ever to "show his snoot” inside the city limits again. The excitement attending the remarkable election of Big Bill Thompson as Mayor had far from died down, and, in consequence, an economist with an inquiring turn of mind was able to get many interesting sidelights on American mob psychology. It should be said in passing that the British Royal Family holds a strong fascination for the American mind. 'Wales” figured prominently in each of the three vaudeville shows I was able to see, always as a moderately successful horseman in scarlet hunting coat and white breeches. The progress of the “Yorks” through New Zealand and Australia has been faithfully chronicled, especially the intriguing piece of gossip about the expected visit of the stork, which apparently is based on nothing more than the Duchess’s attack of tonsiiitis in Christchurch. It is not surprising, therefore, that Big Bill should have chosen King George to star in his effective vaudeville performance. Rumour has it that he isn’t himself quite sure which King George it was that he kicked out of Chicago or whether the third of the line doesn’t still reign at Buckingham Palace. When I arrived, he was in Florida, celebrating, so I presume he wasn't worried over such niceties. The whole election campaign was, of course, d burlesque. Everyone knew what the issues were. Big Bill promised a “wide-open town,” threatened instant dismissal to any policeman who ventured to interfere with the private habits of the citizens, touted openly for the large negro vote and the foreign interest, and generally led a barefaced attack upon the regime which in the last few years has restored some semblance of civic purity and efficiency in Chicago. These, however, are not matters that one can talk about from the election platform, and Big Bill took refuge in patriotism and one hundred per cent. Americanism. He discovered a conspiracy to pervert the youth of Chicago by teaching them pro-British history and located the source of this treachery in the University of Chicago, which is a privatelyendowed institution and therefore fortified against political pressure. The university retaliated in kind. Many of its distinguished scholars, led by the political scientist, who this year is chairman of the Social Science Research Council, uniting all the social science organisations of America, fought actively against Thompson, and were thoroughly and decisively beaten by an enormous majority. The result of the campaign was a blow not so much to their pride as to their faith. The basis of their teaching after all is faith in the ability and will democracy to choose between sincerity and sham, corruption and disinterested service. Chicago’s

choice betokened either that the electorate was easily humbugged or that it deliberately rejected the improvements in civic administration against which Thompson fought. Neither reading of the results was very pleasant to those in the university who have believed in and worked for democracy. Their great leader, who is not only world-famous among his academic colleague but has behind him also a long and creditable record in practical politics, was physically ill. I saw him only for a few moments, but his illness seemed more mental than physical. Before leaving Chicago, however, I was fortunate enough to get a glimpse into what might well be called the human physiology of the city. The political scientists who are active in the fight for better government here and now, were beaten and somewhat, dispirited. But the research men were going on in their slow, scientific way, caring nothing for Bill Thompson or for democracy, but seeking to unravel and understand the tangled processes that make up the life of a modern city. To them Chicago is a growing organism to be studied as a physiologist studies the human body.

First they take large scale maps of the city and its environs, using' them as ground-plans for their investigations. Then with infinite patience and labour they plot on these maps the material they have collected concerning the location of industries, racial habitation, frequency of divorce, juvenile delinquency, the range of land values—any social facts which throw light on the common life of the town. There are maps which show how the coming of the movies decentralised traffic, luxury shops, and land values, and how these are concentrating again about the large suburban picture halls instead of in the downtown theatre district. Other maps trace the development of the largescale dance cabarets, and the way in which they draw their patronage from all districts, mixing up races and social classes in an extraordinary way.

From this basic data is coming the most illuminating series of studies of social life in a great city. The first and in many ways the best of the series is a smallish book by Nels Andersen called “The Hobo.” The director of the survey explained to me how Andersen, himself a ten-.peramental

vagrant, lived in the “flop-houses” of Hobohemia, contributed to the “Hobo Times,” lectured in the Hobo College, camped in the roadside “jungles,” jumped trains, and everywhere gathered first-hand materials out of w r hich to construct this book. It is a revelation of the underworld of modern industry, centred in Chicago, the greatest railroad centre of America, out of which at any time the restless “bum” may sneak a ride to casual employment in distant fields. This vagrant, dispossessed and antisocial people, numbering at times many tens of thousands in Chicago alone, lives an inverted, wraith-like existence all its own. A millionaire named How who has for years thrown in his lot and his income with the hobos, is the main support of their college, their literary ventures and their better lodging-houses. He still believes, after many years of disillusion, that the hobo may, with sympathetic education, be developed into a self-respecting, socially-minded citizen.

Actually Hobohemia is the refuge of those to whom life has presented problems too difficult for solution. Homeless, womanless, hopeless, and effortless, they lapse into a dreamy, shadowy existence and build a ghostlike imitation of the society in which they have failed to win a place. To Hobohemia also there gather the iconoclasts and revolutionaries. The I.W.W. was born and still has its chief home on “the main stem,” as Hobohemia’s principal street is known. Its appeal is almost entirely to the vagrant casual worker, proto type of the nomadic shearer or the swagger in Australia and New Zealand. The settled trade unionist who is so often intrigued by its simple theories, but who lives in our towns with his wife and family, would not even be admitted as a “home bum” in Hobohemia. The social revolution of which the hobo dreams, which shall one day enthrone Demogorgon and liberate Prometheus, will never come unless more and more energetic and constructive spirits are forced by economic necessity to break the ties of family and neighbourhood and live in the frustration of Hobohemia. I did not see much of Chicago. My few days there were divided between the Quadrangle Club at the University, a down-town hotel, and strolls with an expert guide along “the main stem” and its subsidiaries. But I saw enough to get a glimpse of the tremendous problems of an American polyglot town, its wealth and its failures, the gallant effort of the intellectuals to grapple with vast social problems and the deadweight of ignorant and insolent prejudice. The melting pot is seething and scum rises to the top, but one has not altogether lost hope that even in Chicago pure gold may yet come out of the process.