[Illustration: Carleton H. Parker]

AN AMERICAN IDYLL

THE LIFE OFCARLETON H. PARKER

_By_

CORNELIA STRATTON PARKER

[Illustration]

BOSTON

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS

1919

 _The poem on the opposite page is here reprinted with the express permission of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers of Robert Louis Stevenson's Works. _

 _Yet, O stricken heart, remember, O remember, How of human days he lived the better part. April came to bloom, and never dim December Breathed its killing chill upon the head or heart. 

 Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being Trod the flowery April blithely for a while, Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing, Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile. 

 Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished, You alone have crossed the melancholy stream, Yours the pang, but his, O his, the undiminished, Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream. 

 All that life contains of torture, toil, and treason, Shame, dishonor, death, to him were but a name. Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came. _

 _Written for our three children. 

 Dedicated to all those kindred souls, friends of Carl Parker whether they knew him or not, who are making the fight, without bitterness but with all the understanding, patience, and enthusiasm they possess, for a saner, kindlier, and more joyous world. 

 And to those especially who love greatly along the way. _

PREFACE

It was a year ago to-day that Carl Parker died--March 17, 1918. Hisfortieth birthday would have come on March 31. His friends, hisstudents, were free to pay their tribute to him, both in the press andin letters which I treasure. I alone of all, --I who knew him best andloved him most, --had no way to give some outlet to my soul; could see nochance to pay _my_ tribute. 

One and another have written of what was and will be his valuableservice to economic thought and progress; of the effects of hismediation of labor disputes, in the Northwest and throughout the nation;and of his inestimable qualities as friend, comrade, and teacher. 

"He gave as a Federal mediator, "--so runs one estimate of him, --"all hisunparalleled knowledge and understanding of labor and its point of view. That knowledge, that understanding he gained, not by academicinvestigation, but by working in mines and woods, in shops and on farms. He had the trust and confidence of both sides in disputes between laborand capital; his services were called in whenever trouble wasbrewing. . . . Thanks to him, strikes were averted; war-work of the mostvital importance, threatened by misunderstandings and smoulderingdiscontent, went on. "

But almost every one who has written for publication has told of but oneside of him, and there were such countless sides. Would it then be soout of place if I, his wife, could write of all of him, even to themanner of husband he was?

I have hesitated for some months to do this. He had not yet made sotruly national a name, perhaps, as to warrant any assumption that such awork would be acceptable. Many of his close friends have asked me to dojust this, however; for they realize, as I do so strongly, that his lifewas so big, so full, so potential, that, even as the story of a man, itwould be worth the reading. 

And, at the risk of sharing intimacies that should be kept in one'sheart only, I long to have the world know something of the life we ledtogether. 

An old friend wrote: "Dear, splendid Carl, the very embodiment of life, energized and joyful to a degree I have never known. And the thought ofthe separation of you two makes me turn cold. . . . The world can never bethe same to me with Carl out of it. I loved his high spirit, hishelpfulness, his humor, his adoration of you. Knowing you and Carl, andseeing your life together, has been one of the most perfect things in mylife. "

An Eastern professor, who had visited at our home from time to timewrote: "You have lost one of the finest husbands I have ever known. Eversince I have known the Parker family, I have considered their home lifeas ideal. I had hoped that the too few hours I spent in your home mightbe multiplied many times in coming years. . . . I have never known a manmore in love with a woman than Carl was with you. "

So I write of him for these reasons: because I must, to ease my ownpent-up feelings; because his life was so well worth writing about;because so many friends have sent word to me: "Some day, when you havethe time, I hope you will sit down and write me about Carl"--the newerfriends asking especially about his earlier years, the older friendswishing to know of his later interests, and especially of the lastmonths, and of--what I have written to no one as yet--his death. I cananswer them all this way. 

And, lastly, there is the most intimate reason of all. I want ourchildren to know about their father--not just his academic worth, hispublic career, but the life he led from day to day. If I live till theyare old enough to understand, I, of course, can tell them. If not, howare they to know? And so, in the last instance, this is a document forthem. 

 C. S. P. March 17, 1919

AN AMERICAN IDYLL

CHAPTER I

Such hosts of memories come tumbling in on me. More than fifteen yearsago, on September 3, 1903, I met Carl Parker. He had just returned tocollege, two weeks late for the beginning of his Senior year. There wasmuch concern among his friends, for he had gone on a two months'hunting-trip into the wilds of Idaho, and had planned to return in timefor college. I met him his first afternoon in Berkeley. He was on thetop of a step-ladder, helping put up an awning for our sorority dancethat evening, uttering his proverbial joyous banter to any one who camealong, be it the man with the cakes, the sedate house-mother, fellowawning-hangers, or the girls busying about. 

Thus he was introduced to me--a Freshman of two weeks. He called downgayly, "How do you do, young lady?" Within a week we were fast friends, I looking up to him as a Freshman would to a Senior, and a Senior sevenyears older than herself at that. Within a month I remember decidingthat, if ever I became engaged, I would tell Carl Parker before I toldany one else on earth!

After about two months, he called one evening with his pictures ofIdaho. Such a treat as my mountain-loving soul did have! I still havethe map he drew that night, with the trails and camping-places marked. And I said, innocence itself, "_I'm_ going to Idaho on my honeymoon!"And he said, "I'm not going to marry till I find a girl who wants to goto Idaho on her honeymoon!" Then we both laughed. 

But the deciding event in his eyes was when we planned our first longwalk in the Berkeley hills for a certain Saturday, November 22, and thatmorning it rained. One of the tenets I was brought up on by my fatherwas that bad weather was _never_ an excuse for postponing anything; so Itook it for granted that we would start on our walk as planned. 

Carl telephoned anon and said, "Of course the walk is off. "

"But why?" I asked. 

"The rain!" he answered. 

"As if that makes any difference!"

At which he gasped a little and said all right, he'd be around in aminute; which he was, in his Idaho outfit, the lunch he had suggestedbeing entirely responsible for bulging one pocket. Off we started in therain, and such a day as we had! We climbed Grizzly Peak, --only we didnot know it for the fog and rain, --and just over the summit, in theshelter of a very drippy oak tree, we sat down for lunch. A fairlysanctified expression came over Carl's face as he drew forth a ratherdamp and frayed-looking paper-bag--as a king might look who uncoveredthe chest of his most precious court jewels before a courtier deemedworthy of that honor. And before my puzzled and somewhat doubtful eyeshe spread his treasure--jerked bear-meat, nothing but jerked bear-meat. I never had seen jerked anything, let alone tasted it. I was used tothe conventional picnic sandwiches done up in waxed paper, plus astuffed egg, fruit, and cake. I was ready for a lunch after theconservative pattern, and here I gazed upon a mess of mostunappetizing-looking, wrinkled, shrunken, jerked bear-meat, the raindropping down on it through the oak tree. 

I would have gasped if I had not caught the look of awe and reverence onCarl's face as he gazed eagerly, and with what respect, on his offering. I merely took a hunk of what was supplied, set my teeth into it, andpulled. It was salty, very; it looked queer, tasted queer, _was_ queer. Yet that lunch! We walked farther, sat now and then under other drippytrees, and at last decided that we must slide home, by that time soakedto the skin, and I minus the heel to one shoe. 

I had just got myself out of the bath and into dry clothes when thetelephone rang. It was Carl. Could he come over to the house and spendthe rest of the afternoon? It was then about four-thirty. He came, andfrom then on things were decidedly--different. 

How I should love to go into the details of that Freshman year of mine!I am happier right now writing about it than I have been in six months. I shall not go into detail--only to say that the night of the JuniorProm of my Freshman year Carl Parker asked me to marry him, and two dayslater, up again in our hills, I said that I would. To think of thatnow--to think of waiting two whole days to decide whether I would marryCarl Parker or not!! And for fourteen years from the day I met him, there was never one small moment of misunderstanding, one day that wasnot happiness--except when we were parted. Perhaps there are people whowould consider it stupid, boresome, to live in such peace as that. All Ican answer is that it was _not_ stupid, it was _not_ boresome--oh, howfar from it! In fact, in those early days we took our vow that the onething we would never do was to let the world get commonplace for us;that the time should never come when we would not be eager for the startof each new day. The Kipling poem we loved the most, for it was thespirit of both of us, was "The Long Trail. " You know the last of it:--

 The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass, And the Deuce knows what we may do-- But we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We're down, hull down, on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new!

CHAPTER II

After we decided to get married, and that as soon as ever we could, --Ibeing a Freshman at the ripe and mature age of, as mentioned, justeighteen years, he a Senior, with no particular prospects, not even sureas yet what field he would go into, --we began discussing what we mightdo and where we might go. Our main idea was to get as far away fromeverybody as we could, and live the very fullest life we could, and atlast we decided on Persia. Why Persia? I cannot recall the steps nowthat brought us to that conclusion. But I know that first Christmas Isent Carl my picture in a frilled high-school graduation frock and asilk Persian flag tucked behind it, and that flag remained always thesymbol for us that we would never let our lives get stale, never losethe love of adventure, never "settle down, " intellectually at any rate. 

Can you see my father's face that sunny March day, --Charter Day itwas, --when we told him we were engaged? (My father being theconventional, traditional sort who had never let me have a real "caller"even, lest I become interested in boys and think of matrimony tooyoung!) Carl Parker was the first male person who was ever allowed at myhome in the evening. He came seldom, since I was living in Berkeley mostof the time, and anyway, we much preferred prowling all over our end ofcreation, servant-girl-and-policeman fashion. Also, when I married, according to father it was to be some one, preferably an attorney ofparts, about to become a judge, with a large bank account. Instead, ateighteen, I and this almost-unknown-to-him Senior stood before him andsaid, "We are going to be married, " or words to that general effect. And--here is where I want you to think of the expression on myconservative father's face. 

Fairly early in the conversation he found breath to say, "And what, mayI ask, are your prospects?"

"None, just at present. "

"And where, may I ask, are you planning to begin this married career youseem to contemplate?"

"In Persia. "

Can you see my father? "_Persia_?"

"Yes, Persia. "

"And what, for goodness' sake, are you two going to do in _Persia_?"

"We don't know just yet, of course, but we'll find something. "

I can see my father's point of view now, though I am not sure but that Ishall prefer a son-in-law for our daughter who would contemplateabsolute uncertainty in Persia in preference to an assured legalprofession in Oakland, California. It was two years before my fatherbecame at all sympathetic, and that condition was far from enthusiastic. So it was a great joy to me to have him say, a few months before hisdeath, "You know, Cornelia, I want you to understand that if I had hadthe world to pick from I'd have chosen Carl Parker for your husband. Your marriage is a constant source of satisfaction to me. "

I saw Carl Parker lose his temper once, and once only. It was that firstyear that we knew each other. Because there was such a differencebetween his age and mine, the girls in my sorority house refused tobelieve there could be anything serious about our going together somuch, and took great pains to assure me in private that of course Carlmeant nothing by his attentions, --to which I agreed volubly, --and theyscolded him in private because it would spoil a Freshman to have aSenior so attentive. We always compared notes later, and were muchamused. 

But words were one thing, actions another. Since there could be nothingserious in our relationship, naturally there was no reason why we shouldbe left alone. If there was to be a rally or a concert, the Seniorsitting at the head of the dinner-table would ask, "How many are goingto-night with a man?" Hands. "How many of the girls are going together?"Hands. Then, to me, "Are you going with Carl?" A faint "Yes. " "Thenwe'll all go along with you. " Carl stood it twice--twice he beheld thiscavalcade bear away in our wake; then he gritted his teeth andannounced, "Never again!"

The next college occasion was a rally at the Greek Theatre. Again it wasannounced at the table that all the unescorted ones would accompany Carland me. I foresaw trouble. When I came downstairs later, with my hat andcoat on, there stood Carl, surrounded by about six girls, all hastilybuttoning their gloves, his sister, who knew no more of the truth aboutCarl and me than the others, being one of them. Never had I seen such alook on Carl's face, and I never did again. His feet were spread apart, his jaw was set, and he was glaring. When he saw me he said, "Come on!"and we dashed for the door. 

Sister Helen flew after us. "But Carl--the other girls!"

Carl stuck his head around the corner of the front door, calleddefiantly, "_Damn_ the other girls!" banged the door to, and we fled. Never again were we molested. 

Carl finished his Senior year, and a full year it was for him. He waseditor of the "Pelican, " the University funny paper, and of the"University of California Magazine, " the most serious publication on thecampus outside the technical journals; he made every "honor"organization there was to make (except the Phi Beta Kappa); he and afellow student wrote the successful Senior Extravaganza; he was a readerin economics, and graduated with honors. And he saw me every single day. 

I feel like digressing here a moment, to assail that oldprinciple--which my father, along with countless others, held sostrongly--that a fellow who is really worth while ought to know by hisJunior year in college just what his life-work is to be. A few with anearly developed special aptitude do, but very few. Carl entered collegein August, 1896, in Engineering; but after a term found that it had nofurther appeal for him. "But a fellow ought to stick to a thing, whetherhe likes it or not!" If one must be dogmatic, then I say, "A fellowshould never work at anything he does not like. " One of the things inour case which brought such constant criticism from relatives andfriends was that we changed around so much. Thank God we did! It tookCarl Parker until he was over thirty before he found just the work heloved the most and in which his soul was content--university work. Andhe was thirty-seven before he found just the phase of economic studythat fired him to his full enthusiasm--his loved field of theapplication of psychology to economics. And some one would have had himstick to engineering because he started in engineering!

He hurt his knee broad-jumping in his Freshman year at college, andfinally had to leave, going to Phoenix, Arizona, and then back to theParker ranch at Vacaville for the better part of a year. The family wasaway during that time, and Carl ran the place alone. He returned tocollege in August, 1898, this time taking up mining. After a year'sstudy in mining he wanted the practical side. In the summer of 1899 heworked underground in the Hidden Treasure Mine, Placer county, California. In 1900 he left college again, going to the gold and coppermines of Rossland, British Columbia. From August, 1900, to May, 1901, heworked in four different mines. It was with considerable feeling ofpride that he always added, "I got to be machine man before I quit. "

It was at that time that he became a member of the Western Federation ofMiners--an historical fact which inimical capitalists later endeavoredto make use of from time to time to do him harm. How I loved to listenby the hour to the stories of those grilling days--up at four in thepitch-dark and snow, to crawl to his job, with the blessing of a dearold Scotch landlady and a "pastie"! He would tell our sons of tamping inthe sticks of dynamite, till their eyes bulged. The hundreds of timesthese last six months I've wished I had in writing the stories of thosedays--of all his days, from early Vacaville times on! Sometimes it wouldbe an old Vacaville crony who would appear, and stories would fly ofthose boy times--of the exploits up Putah Creek with Pee Wee Allen; ofthe prayer-meeting when Carl bet he could out-pray the minister's son, and won; of the tediously thought-out assaults upon an ancient hired manon the place, that would fill a book and delight the heart of Tom Sawyerhimself; and how his mother used to sigh and add to it all, "If only hehad _ever_ come home on time to his meals!" (And he has one son justlike him. Carl's brothers tell me: "Just give up trying to get Jim homeon time. Mamma tried every scheme a human could devise to make Carlprompt for his meals, but nothing ever had the slightest effect. Half anhour past dinner-time he'd still be five miles from home. ")

One article that recently appeared in a New York paper began:--

"They say of him that when he was a small boy he displayed the sametendencies that later on made him great in his chosen field. His familypossessed a distinct tendency toward conformity and respectability, butCarl was a companion of every 'alley-bum' in Vacaville. His respectablefriends never won him away from his insatiable interest in theunder-dog. They now know it makes valid his claim to achievement. "

After the British Columbia mining days, he took what money he had saved, and left for Idaho, where he was to meet his chum, Hal Bradley, for hisfirst Idaho trip--a dream of theirs for years. The Idaho stories hecould tell--oh, why can I not remember them word for word? I have seenhim hold a roomful of students in Berlin absolutely spellbound overthose adventures--with a bit of Parker coloring, to be sure, which noone ever objected to. I have seen him with a group of staid faculty folksitting breathless at his Clearwater yarns; and how he loved to tellthose tales! Three and a half months he and Hal were in--hunting, fishing, jerking meat, trailing after lost horses, having his dreams ofIdaho come true. (If our sons fail to have those dreams!)

When Hal returned to college, the _Wanderlust_ was still too strong inCarl; so he stopped off in Spokane, Washington, penniless, to trypot-luck. There were more tales to delight a gathering. In Spokane hetook a hand at reporting, claiming to be a person of large experience, since only those of large experience were desired by the editor of the"Spokesman Review. " He was given sport, society, and the tenderloin tocover, at nine dollars a week. As he never could go anywhere withoutmaking folks love him, it was not long before he had his cronies amongthe "sports, " kind souls "in society" who took him in, and at least onestrong, loyal friend, --who called him "Bub, " and gave him muchexcellent advice that he often used to refer to, --who was the owner ofthe biggest gambling-joint in town. (Spokane was wide open in thosedays, and "some town. ")

It was the society friends who seem to have saved his life, for ninedollars did not go far, even then. I have heard his hostesses tell ofthe meal he could consume. "But I'd been saving for it all day, withjust ten cents in my pocket. " I met a pal of those days who used to saveCarl considerable of his nine dollars by "smooching" his wash into hisown home laundry. 

About then Carl's older brother, Boyd, who was somewhat fastidious, raninto him in Spokane. He tells how Carl insisted he should spend thenight at his room instead of going to a hotel. 

"Is it far from here?"

"Oh, no!"

So they started out with Boyd's suitcase, and walked and walked throughthe "darndest part of town you ever saw. " Finally, after crossing untoldrailroad tracks and ducking around sheds and through alleys, they cameto a rooming-house that was "a holy fright. " "It's all right inside, "Carl explained. 

When they reached his room, there was one not over-broad bed in thecorner, and a red head showing, snoring contentedly. 

"Who's that?" the brother asked. 

"Oh, a fellow I picked up somewhere. "

"Where am I to sleep?"

"Right in here--the bed's plenty big enough for three!"

And Boyd says, though it was 2 A. M. And miles from anywhere, he lit outof there as fast as he could move; and he adds, "I don't believe he evenknew that red-headed boy's name!"

The reporting went rather lamely it seemed, however. The editor saidthat it read amateurish, and he felt he would have to make a change. Carl made for some files where all the daily papers were kept, and readand re-read the yellowest of the yellow. As luck would have it, thatvery night a big fire broke out in a crowded apartment house. It was notin Carl's "beat, " but he decided to cover it anyhow. Along with thefiremen, he managed to get upon the roof; he jumped here, he flew there, demolishing the only suit of clothes he owned. But what an account hehanded in! The editor discarded entirely the story of the reporter sentto cover the fire, ran in Carl's, word for word, and raised him totwelve dollars a week. 

But just as the crown of reportorial success was lighting on his brow, his mother made it plain to him that she preferred to have him return tocollege. He bought a ticket to Vacaville, --it was just about Christmastime, --purchased a loaf of bread and a can of sardines, and with thirtycents in his pocket, the extent of his worldly wealth, he left forCalifornia, traveling in a day coach all the way. I remember his storyof how, about the end of the second day of bread and sardines, hecold-bloodedly and with aforethought cultivated a man opposite him, wholooked as if he could afford to eat; and how the man "came through" andasked Carl if he would have dinner with him in the diner. To hear himtell what and how much he ordered, and of the expression and depressionof the paying host! It tided him over until he reached home, anyhow--never mind the host. 

All his mining experience, plus the dark side of life, as contrastedwith society as he saw them both in Spokane, turned his interest to thefield of economics. And when he entered college the next spring, it wasto "major" in that subject. 

May and June, 1903, he worked underground in the coal-mines of Nanaimo. In July he met Nay Moran in Idaho for his second Idaho camping-trip; andit was on his return from this outing that I met him, and ate his jerkedmeat and loved him, and never stopped doing that for one second. 

CHAPTER III

There were three boys in the Parker family, and one girl. Each of theother brothers had been encouraged to see the world, and in his turnCarl planned fourteen months in Europe, his serious objective being, onhis return, to act as Extension Secretary to Professor Stephens of theUniversity of California, who was preparing to organize Extension workfor the first time in California. Carl was to study the EnglishExtension system and also prepare for some Extension lecturing. 

By that time, we had come a bit to our senses, and I had realized thatsince there was no money anyhow to marry on, and since I was so young, Ihad better stay on and graduate from college. Carl could have his tripto Europe and get an option, perhaps, on a tent in Persia. A friend wastelling me recently of running into Carl on the street just before heleft for Europe and asking him what he was planning to do for thefuture. Carl answered with a twinkle, "I don't know but what there'sroom for an energetic up-and-coming young man in Asia Minor. "

I stopped writing here to read through Carl's European letters, and laidaside about seven I wanted to quote from: the accounts of three dinnersat Sidney and Beatrice Webb's in London--what knowing them always meantto him! They, perhaps, have forgotten him; but meeting the Webbs andGraham Wallas and that English group could be nothing but red-letterevents to a young economic enthusiast one year out of college, studyingTrade-Unionism in the London School of Economics. 

Then there was his South-African trip. He was sent there by a Londonfirm, to expert a mine near Johannesburg. Although he cabled five times, said firm sent no money. The bitter disgust and anguish of thoseweeks--neither of us ever had much patience under such circumstances. But he experted his mine, and found it absolutely worthless; exploredthe veldt on a second-hand bicycle, cooked little meals of bacon andmush wherever he found himself, and wrote to me. Meanwhile he learnedmuch, studied the coolie question, investigated mine-workings, wasentertained by his old college mates--mining experts themselves--inJohannesburg. There was the letter telling of the bull fight atZanzibar, or Delagoa Bay, or some seafaring port thereabouts, that brokehis heart, it was such a disappointment--"it made a Kappa tea look goryby comparison. " And the letter that regretfully admitted that perhaps, after all, Persia would not just do to settle down in. About that timehe wanted California with a fearful want, and was all done with foreignparts, and declared that any place just big enough for two suitedhim--it did not need to be as far away as Persia after all. At last heborrowed money to get back to Europe, claiming that "he had learned hislesson and learned it hard. " And finally he came home as fast as ever hecould reach Berkeley--did not stop even to telegraph. 

I had planned for months a dress I knew he would love to have me greethim in. It was hanging ready in the closet. As it was, I had started toretire--in the same room with a Freshman whom I was supposed to be"rushing" hard--when I heard a soft whistle--our whistle--under mywindow. My heart stopped beating. I just grabbed a raincoat and threw itover me, my hair down in a braid, and in the middle of a sentence to theastounded Freshman I dashed out. 

My father had said, "If neither of you changes your mind while Carl isaway, I have no objection to your becoming engaged. " In about tenminutes after his return we were formally engaged, on a bench up in theDeaf and Dumb Asylum grounds--our favorite trysting-place. It would havebeen foolish to waste a new dress on that night. I was clad in cloth ofgold for all Carl knew or cared, or could see in the dark, for thatmatter. The deserted Freshman was sound asleep when I got back--andjoined another sorority. 

Thereafter, for a time, Carl went into University Extension, lecturingon Trade-Unionism and South Africa. It did not please him altogether, and finally my father, a lawyer himself, persuaded him to go into law. Carl Parker in law! How we used to shudder at it afterwards; but it wasjust one more broadening experience that he got out of life. 

Then came the San Francisco earthquake. That was the end of my Junioryear, and we felt we had to be married when I finished college--nothingelse mattered quite as much as that. So when an offer came out of aclear sky from Halsey and Company, for Carl to be a bond-salesman on asalary that assured matrimony within a year, though in no affluence, andthe bottom all out of the law business and no enthusiasm for it anyway, we held a consultation and decided for bonds and marriage. What abond-salesman Carl made! Those who knew him knew what has been referredto as "the magic of his personality, " and could understand how he washaving the whole of a small country town asking him to dinner on hissecond visit. 

I somehow got through my Senior year; but how the days dragged! For allI could think of was Carl, Carl, Carl, and getting married. Yet noone--no one on this earth--ever had the fun out of their engaged daysthat we did, when we were together. Carl used to say that theaccumulated expenses of courting me for almost four years came to$10. 25. He just guessed at $10. 25, though any cheap figure would havedone. We just did not care about doing things that happened to costmoney. We never did care in our lives, and never would have cared, nomatter what our income might be. Undoubtedly that was the main reason wewere so blissful on such a small salary in University work--we couldnever think, at the time, of anything much we were doing without. Iremember that the happiest Christmas we almost ever had was over in thecountry, when we spent under two dollars for all of us. We wereabsolutely down to bed-rock that year anyway. (It was just after we paidoff our European debt. ) Carl gave me a book, "The Pastor's Wife, " and wegloated over it together all Christmas afternoon! We gave each of theboys a ten-cent cap-pistol and five cents' worth of caps--they were intheir Paradise. I mended three shirts of Carl's that had been in mybasket so long they were really like new to him, --he'd forgotten heowned them!--laundered them, and hung the trio, tied in tissue paper andred ribbon, on the tree. That _was_ a Christmas!

He used to claim, too, that, as I got so excited over five cents' worthof gum-drops, there was no use investing in a dollar's worth of Frenchmixed candy--especially if one hadn't the dollar. We always lovedtramping more than anything else, and just prowling around the streetsarm-in-arm, ending perhaps with an ice-cream soda. Not over-costly, anyof it. I have kept some little reminder of almost every spree we took inour four engaged years--it is a book of sheer joy from cover to cover. Except always, always the need of saying good-bye: it got so that itseemed almost impossible to say it. 

And then came the day when it did not have to be said each time--thatday of days, September 7, 1907, when we were married. Idaho for ourhoneymoon had to be abandoned, as three weeks was the longest vacationperiod we could wring from a soulless bond-house. But not even Idahocould have brought us more joy than our seventy-five-mile trip up theRogue River in Southern Oregon. We hired an old buckboard and twoancient, almost immobile, so-called horses, --they needed scantattention, --and with provisions, gun, rods, and sleeping-bags, westarted forth. The woods were in their autumn glory, the fish werebiting, corn was ripe along the roadside, and apples--Rogue Riverapples--made red blotches under every tree. "Help yourselves!" thefarmers would sing out, or would not sing out. It was all one to us. 

I found that, along with his every other accomplishment, I had marriedan expert camp cook. He found that he had married a person who could noteven boil rice. The first night out on our trip, Carl said, "You startthe rice while I tend to the horses. " He knew I could not cook--I hadplanned to take a course in Domestic Science on graduation; however, hepreferred to marry me earlier, inexperienced, than later, experienced. But evidently he thought even a low-grade moron could boil rice. Thebride of his heart did not know that rice swelled when it boiled. Wewere hungry, we would want lots of rice, so I put lots in. By the timeCarl came back I had partly cooked rice in every utensil we owned, including the coffee-pot and the wash-basin. And still he loved me!

That honeymoon! Lazy horses poking unprodded along an almost desertedmountain road; glimpses of the river lined with autumn reds and yellows;camp made toward evening in any spot that looked appealing--and allspots looked appealing; two fish-rods out; consultation as to flies;leave-taking for half an hour's parting, while one went up the river totry his luck, one down. Joyous reunion, with much luck or little luck, but always enough for supper: trout rolled in cornmeal and fried, cornon the cob just garnered from a willing or unwilling farmer thatafternoon, corn-bread, --the most luscious corn-bread in the world, baked camper-style by the man of the party, --and red, red apples, eatenby two people who had waited four years for just that. Eveningsin a sandy nook by the river's edge, watching the stars come outabove the water. Adventures, such as losing Chocolada, the brownseventy-eight-year-old horse, and finding her up to her neck in a deepstream running through a grassy meadow with perpendicular banks oneither side. We walked miles till we found a farmer. With the aid ofhimself and his tools, plus a stout rope and a tree, in an afternoon'stime we dug and pulled and hauled and yanked Chocolada up and out ontodry land, more nearly dead than ever by that time. The ancient senilehad just fallen in while drinking. 

We made a permanent camp for one week seventy-five miles up the river, in a spot so deserted that we had to cut the road through to reach it. There we laundered our change of overalls and odds and ends, using thelargest cooking utensil for boiling what was boiled, and all the foodtasted of Ivory soap for two days; but we did not mind even that. Andthen, after three weeks, back to skirts and collars and civilization, and a continued honeymoon from Medford, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, doing all the country banks _en route_. In Portland we had to beseparated for one whole day--it seemed nothing short of harrowing. 

Then came Seattle and house-hunting. We had a hundred dollars a month tolive on, and every apartment we looked at rented for from sixty dollarsup. Finally, in despair, we took two wee rooms, a wee-er kitchen, andbath, for forty dollars. It was just before the panic in 1907, and rentswere exorbitant. And from having seventy-five dollars spending money amonth before I was married, I jumped to keeping two of us on sixtydollars, which was what was left after the rent was paid. I am notrationalizing when I say I am glad that we did not have a cent more. Itwas a real sporting event to make both ends meet! And we did it, andsaved a dollar or so, just to show we could. Any and every thing wecommandeered to help maintain our solvency. Seattle was quite given tofood fairs in those days, and we kept a weather eye out for such. Wewould eat no lunch, make for the Food Show about three, nibble atsamples all afternoon, and come home well-fed about eight, having boughtenough necessities here and there to keep our consciences from hurting. 

Much of the time Carl had to be on the road selling bonds, and we almostgrieved our hearts out over that. In fact, we got desperate, and whenCarl was offered an assistant cashiership in a bank in Ellensburg, Washington, we were just about to accept it, when the panic came, and itwas all for retrenchment in banks. Then we planned farming, planned itwith determination. It was too awful, those good-byes. Each got worseand harder than the last. We had divine days in between, to be sure, when we'd prowl out into the woods around the city, with a picnic lunch, or bummel along the waterfront, ending at a counter we knew, whichproduced, or the man behind it produced, delectable and cheap clubhousesandwiches. 

The bond business, and business conditions generally in the Northwest, got worse and worse. In March, after six months of Seattle, we werecalled back to the San Francisco office. Business results were better, Carl's salary was raised considerably, but there were still separations. 

CHAPTER IV

On July 3, the Marvelous Son was born, and never was there such afather. Even the trained nurse, hardened to new fathers by years ofexperience, admitted that she never had seen any one take parenthoodquite so hard. Four times in the night he crept in to see if the babywas surely breathing. We were in a very quiet neighborhood, yet the nextday, being Fourth of July, now and then a pop would be heard. At eachreport of a cap-pistol a block away, Carl would dash out and vehementlyprotest to a group of scornful youngsters that they would wake our son. As if a one-day-old baby would seriously consider waking if a giantfire-cracker went off under his bed!

Those were magic days. Three of us in the family instead of two--andseparations harder than ever. Once in all the ten and a half years wewere married I saw Carl Parker downright discouraged over his ownaffairs, and that was the day I met him down town in Oakland and heannounced that he just could not stand the bond business any longer. Hehad come to dislike it heartily as a business; and then, leaving the boyand me was not worth the whole financial world put together. Since hisEuropean experience, --meeting the Webbs and their kind, --he had had ahankering for University work, but he felt that the money return was sosmall he simply could not contemplate raising a family on it. But now wewere desperate. We longed for a life that would give us the maximumchance to be together. Cold-bloodedly we decided that University workwould give us that opportunity, and the long vacations would give us ourmountains. 

The work itself made its strong appeal, too. Professor Henry MorseStephens and Professor Miller of the University of California had longurged Carl to go into teaching; and at last we decided that, even if itmeant living on husks and skimmed milk all our days, at least we wouldbe eating what there was to eat together, three meals a day every day. We cashed in our savings, we drew on everything there was to draw on, and on February 1, 1909, the three of us embarked for Harvard--withfifty-six dollars and seventy-five cents excess-baggage to pay at thedepot, such young ignoramuses we were. 

That trip East was worth any future hardship we might have reaped. Ourseven-months-old baby was one of the young saints of the world--not oncein the five days did he peep. We'd pin him securely in the lower berthof our compartment for his nap, and back we would fly to the corner ofthe rear platform of the observation car, and gloat, just gloat, overhow we had come into the inheritance of all creation. We owned theworld. And I, who had never been farther from my California home townthan Seattle, who never had seen real snow, except that Christmas whenwe spent four days at the Scenic Hot Springs in the Cascades, and skiedand sledded and spilled around like six-year-olds! But stretches andstretches of snow! And then, just traveling, and together!

And to be in Boston! We took a room with a bath in the Copley SquareHotel. The first evening we arrived, Nandy (Carleton, Jr. ) rolled offthe bed; so when we went gallivanting about Boston, shopping for the newhome, we left him in the bath-tub where he could not fall out. We paddedit well with pillows, there was a big window letting in plenty of freshair, and we instructed the chambermaid to peep at him now and then. Andthere we would leave him, well-nourished and asleep. (By the time thatstory had been passed around by enough people in the home town, itdeveloped that one day the baby--just seven months old, remember--got upand turned on the water, and was found by the chambermaid sinking forthe third time. )

Something happened to the draft from the home bank, which should havereached Boston almost at the same time we did. We gazed into the familypocket-book one fine morning, to find it, to all intents and purposes, empty. Hurried meeting of the finance committee. By unanimous consent ofall present, we decided--as many another mortal in a strange town hasdecided--on the pawnshop. I wonder if my dear grandmother will readthis--she probably will. Carl first submitted his gold watch--the babyhad dropped it once, and it had shrunk thereby in the eyes of thepawnshop man, though not in ours. The only other valuable we had alongwith us was my grandmother's wedding present to me, which had been mygrandfather's wedding present to her--a glorious old-fashionedbreast-pin. We were allowed fifty dollars on it, which saved the day. What will my grandmother say when she knows that her bridal gift residedfor some days in a Boston pawnshop?

We moved out to Cambridge in due time, and settled at Bromley Court, onthe very edge of the Yard. We thrilled to all of it--we drank in everyounce of dignity and tradition the place afforded, and our wild Westernsouls exulted. We knew no one when we reached Boston, but our firstSunday we were invited to dinner in Cambridge by two people who were, ever after, our cordial, faithful friends--Mr. And Mrs. John GrahamBrooks. They made us feel at once that Cambridge was not the sociallyicy place it is painted in song and story. Then I remember the afternoonthat I had a week's wash strung on an improvised line back and forthfrom one end of our apartment to the other. Just as I hung the last dampgarment, the bell rang, and there stood an immaculate gentleman in acutaway and silk hat, who had come to call--an old friend of mymother's. He ducked under wet clothes, and we set two chairs where wecould see each other, and yet nothing was dripping down either of ournecks; and there we conversed, and he ended by inviting us both todinner--on Marlborough Street, at that! He must have loved my mothervery dearly to have sought further acquaintance with folk who hung thefamily wash in the hall and the living-room and dining-room. His houseon Marlborough Street! We boldly and excitedly figured up on the wayhome, that they spent on the one meal they fed us more than it cost usto live for two weeks--they honestly did. 

Then there was the dear "Jello" lady at the market. I wish she wouldsomehow happen to read this, so as to know that we have never forgottenher. Every Saturday the three of us went to the market, and there wasthe Jello lady with her samples. The helpings she dished for us eachtime! She brought the man to whom she was engaged to call on us justbefore we left. I wonder if they got married, and where they are, and ifshe still remembers us. She used to say she just waited for Saturdaysand our coming. Then there was dear Granny Jones, who kept aboarding-house half a block away. I do not remember how we came to knowher, but some good angel saw to it. She used to send around little bowlsof luscious dessert, and half a pie, or some hot muffins. Then I wasalways grateful also--for it made such a good story, and it was true--tothe New England wife of a fellow graduate student who remarked, when Itold her we had one baby and another on the way, "How interesting--justlike the slums!"

We did our own work, of course, and we lived on next to nothing. Iwonder now how we kept so well that year. Of course, we fed the babyeverything he should have, --according to Holt in those days, --and we atethe mutton left from his broth and the beef after the juice had beensqueezed out of it for him, and bought storage eggs ourselves, and queerbutter out of a barrel, and were absolutely, absolutely blissful. Perhaps we should have spent more on food and less on baseball. I amglad we did not. Almost every Saturday afternoon that first semester wefared forth early, Nandy in his go-cart, to get a seat in the front rowof the baseball grandstand. I remember one Saturday we were late, frontseats all taken. We had to pack baby and go-cart more than half-way upto the top. There we barricaded him, still in the go-cart, in the middleof the aisle. Along about the seventh inning, the game waxedparticularly exciting--we were beside ourselves with enthusiasm. Fellowonlookers seemed even more excited--they called out things--they seemedto be calling in our direction. Fine parents we were--there was Nandy, go-cart and all, bumpety-bumping down the grandstand steps. 

I remember again the Stadium on the day of the big track meet. Everytime the official announcer would put the megaphone to his mouth, tocall out winners and time to a hushed and eager throng, Nandy, not yet ayear old, would begin to squeal at the top of his lungs for joy. Nobodycould hear a word the official said. We were as distressed as anyone--we, too, had pencils poised to jot down records. 

Carl studied very hard. The first few weeks, until we got used to thenew wonder of things, he used to run home from college whenever he had aspare minute, just to be sure he was that near. At that time he wasrather preparing to go into Transportation as his main economic subject. But by the end of the year he knew Labor would be his love. (His firstpublished economic article was a short one that appeared in the"Quarterly Journal of Economics" for May, 1910, on "The Decline ofTrade-Union Membership. ") We had a tragic summer. 

Carl felt that he must take his Master's degree, but he had no foreignlanguage. Three terrible, wicked, unforgivable professors assured himthat, if he could be in Germany six weeks during summer vacation, hecould get enough German to pass the examination for the A. M. We believedthem, and he went; though of all the partings we ever had, that was thevery worst. Almost at the last he just could not go; but we were so surethat it would solve the whole A. M. Problem. He went third class on aGerman steamer, since we had money for nothing better. The food diddistress even his unfinicky soul. After a particularly sad offering ofsalt herring, uncooked, on a particularly rough day, he wrote, "I find Iam not a good Hamburger German. The latter eat all things in allweather. "

Oh, the misery of that summer! We never talked about it much. He went toFreiburg, to a German cobbler's family, but later changed, as thecobbler's son looked upon him as a dispensation of Providence, sent topractise his English upon. His heart was breaking, and mine wasbreaking, and he was working at German (and languages came fearfullyhard for him) morning, afternoon, and night, with two lessons a day, hisonly diversion being a daily walk up a hill, with a cake of soap and atowel, to a secluded waterfall he discovered. He wrote a letter and apostcard a day to the babe and me. I have just re-read all of them, andmy heart aches afresh for the homesickness that summer meant to both ofus. 

He got back two days before our wedding anniversary--days like thosefirst few after our reunion are not given to many mortals. I would sayno one had ever tasted such joy. The baby gurgled about, and was kissedwithin an inch of his life. The Jello lady sent around a dessert ofsixteen different colors, more or less, big enough for a family ofeight, as her welcome home. 

About six weeks later we called our beloved Dr. J---- from a banquet hehad long looked forward to, in order to officiate at the birth of oursecond, known as Thomas-Elizabeth up to October 17, but from aboutten-thirty that night as James Stratton Parker. We named him after mygrandfather, for the simple reason that we liked the name Jim. How wechuckled when my father's congratulatory telegram came, in which heclaimed pleasure at having the boy named after his father, but cautionedus never to allow him to be nicknamed. I remember the boresome youth whoused to call, week in week out, --always just before a meal, --and we wereso hard up, and got so that we resented feeding such an impossibleperson so many times. He dropped in at noon Friday the 17th, for lunch. A few days later Carl met him on the street and announced rapturouslythe arrival of the new son. The impossible person hemmed and stammered:"Why--er--when did it arrive?" Carl, all beams, replied, "The veryevening of the day you were at our house for lunch!" We never laid eyeson that man again! We were almost four months longer in Cambridge, butnever did he step foot inside our apartment. I wish some one could havepsycho-analyzed him, but it's too late now. He died about a year afterwe left Cambridge. I always felt that he never got over the shock ofhaving escaped Jim's arrival by such a narrow margin. 

And right here I must tell of Dr. J----. He was recommended as the bestdoctor in Cambridge, but very expensive. "We may have to economize ineverything on earth, " said Carl, "but we'll never economize on doctors. "So we had Dr. J----, had him for all the minor upsets that families needdoctors for; had him when Jim was born; had him through a queer feverNandy developed that lasted some time; had him through a bad case ofgrippe I got (this was at Christmastime, and Carl took care of bothbabies, did all the cooking, even to the Christmas turkey I was wellenough to eat by then, got up every two hours for three nights to changean ice-pack I had to have--that's the kind of man he was!); had himvaccinate both children; and then, just before we left Cambridge, we satand held his bill, afraid to open the envelope. At length we gatheredour courage, and gazed upon charges of sixty-five dollars foreverything, with a wonderful note which said that, if we would beinconvenienced in paying that, he would not mind at all if he gotnothing. 

Such excitement! We had expected two hundred dollars at the least! Wetore out and bought ten cents' worth of doughnuts, to celebrate. When weexclaimed to him over his goodness, --of course we paid the sixty-fivedollars, --all he said was: "Do you think a doctor is blind? And does aman go steerage to Europe if he has a lot of money in the bank?" Blessthat doctor's heart! Bless all doctors' hearts! We went through ourmarried life in the days of our financial slimness, with kindness shownus by every doctor we ever had. I remember our Heidelberg German doctorsent us a bill for a year of a dollar and a half. And even in our moreprosperous days, at Carl's last illness, with that good Seattle doctorcalling day and night, and caring for me after Carl's death, he refusedto send any bill for anything. And a little later, when I paid a longoverdue bill to our blessed Oakland doctor for a tonsil operation, hesent the check back torn in two. Bless doctors!

When we left for Harvard, we had an idea that perhaps one year ofgraduate work would be sufficient. Naturally, about two months wasenough to show us that one year would get us nowhere. Could we financean added year at, perhaps, Wisconsin? And then, in November, ProfessorMiller of Berkeley called to talk things over with Carl. Anon heremarked, more or less casually, "The thing for you to do is to have ayear's study in Germany, " and proceeded to enlarge on that idea. We satdumb, and the minute the door was closed after him, we flopped. "Whatwas the man thinking of--to suggest a year in Germany, when we have nomoney and two babies, one not a year and a half, and one six weeks old!"Preposterous!

That was Saturday afternoon. By Monday morning we had decided we wouldgo! Thereupon we wrote West to finance the plan, and got beautifully satupon for our "notions. " If we needed money, we had better give up thiswhole fool University idea and get a decent man-sized job. And then wewrote my father, --or, rather, I wrote him without telling Carl tillafter the letter was mailed, --and bless his heart! he replied with a fatGod-bless-you-my-children registered letter, with check enclosed, agreeing to my stipulation that it should be a six-per-cent businessaffair. Suppose we could not have raised that money--suppose our liveshad been minus that German experience! Bless fathers! They may scold andfuss at romance, and have "good sensible ideas of their own" on suchmatters, but--bless fathers!

CHAPTER V

We finished our year at Harvard, giving up the A. M. Idea for thepresent. Carl got A's in every subject and was asked to take a teachingfellowship under Ripley; but it was Europe for us. We set forth February22, 1909, in a big snowstorm, with two babies, and one thousand sixhundred and seventy-six bundles, bags, and presents. Jim was in one ofthose fur-bags that babies use in the East. Everything we were about toforget the last minute got shoved into that bag with Jim, and it surelybegan to look as if we had brought a young and very lumpy mastodon intothe world!

We went by boat from Boston to New York, and sailed on the PennsylvaniaFebruary 24. People wrote us in those days: "You two brave people--thinkof starting to Europe with two babies!" Brave was the last word to use. Had we worried or had fears over anything, and yet fared forth, weshould perhaps have been brave. As it was, I can feel again thesensation of leaving New York, gazing back on the city buildings andbridges bathed in sunshine after the storm. Exultant joy was in ourhearts, that was all. Not one worry, not one concern, not one small dropof homesickness. We were to see Europe together, year before we haddreamed it possible. It just seemed too glorious to be true. "Brave"?Far from it. Simply eager, glowing, filled to the brim with adetermination to drain every day to the full. 

I discovered that, while my husband had married a female who could notcook rice (though she learned), I had taken unto myself a spouse whocurled up green half a day out on the ocean, and stayed that way forabout six days. He tried so desperately to help with the babies, but italways made matters worse. If I had turned green, too--But babies and Iprospered without interruption, though some ants did try to eat Jim'sscalp off one night--"sugar ants" the doctor called them. "They knewtheir business, " our dad remarked. We were three days late getting intoHamburg--fourteen days on the ocean, all told. And then to be in Hamburgin Germany--in Europe! I remember our first meal in the queer littlecheap hotel we rooted out. "_Eier_" was the only word on the bill offare we could make out, so Carl brushed up his German and ordered fourfor us, fried. And the waiter brought four each. He probably declaredfor years that all Americans always eat four fried eggs each and everynight for supper. 

We headed for Leipzig at once, and there Carl unearthed the PensionSchröter on Sophien Platz. There we had two rooms and all the food wecould eat, --far too much for us to eat, and oh! so delicious, --forfifty-five dollars a month for the entire family, although Jim hardlyranked as yet, economically speaking, as part of the consuming public. We drained Leipzig to the dregs--a good German idiom. Carl worked at hisGerman steadily, almost frantically, with a lesson every day along withall his university work--a seven o'clock lecture by Bücher every morningbeing the cheery start for the day, and we blocks and blocks from theUniversity. I think of Carl through those days with extra pride, thoughit is hard to decide that I was ever prouder of him at one time thananother. But he strained and labored without ceasing at such anuninspiring job. All his hard study that broken-hearted summer atFreiburg had given him no single word of an economic vocabulary. InLeipzig he listened hour by hour to the lectures of his Germanprofessors, sometimes not understanding an important word for severaldays, yet exerting every intellectual muscle to get some light in hisdarkness. Then, for, hours each day and almost every evening, it wasgrammar, grammar, grammar, till he wondered at times if all life meantan understanding of the subjunctive. Then, little by little, rays ofhope. "I caught five words in ----'s lecture to-day!" Then it was ten, then twenty. Never a lecture of any day did he miss. 

We stole moments for joy along the way. First, of course, there was theopera--grand opera at twenty-five cents a seat. How Wagner bored us atfirst--except the parts here and there that we had known all our lives. Neither of us had had any musical education to speak of; each of us gotgreat joy out of what we considered "good" music, but which wasevidently low-brow. And Wagner at first was too much for us. That nightin Leipzig we heard the "Walküre!"--utterly aghast and rather impatientat so much non-understandable noise. Then we would drop down to"Carmen, " "La Bohême, " Hoffman's "Erzäblung, " and think, "This is life!"Each night that we spared for a spree we sought out some beer-hall--asunfrequented a one as possible, to get all the local color we could. 

Once Carl decided that, as long as we had come so far, I must get aglimpse of real European night-life--it might startle me a bit, butwould do no harm. So, after due deliberation, he led me to the CaféBauer, the reputed wild and questionable resort of Leipzig night-life, though the pension glanced ceiling-wards and sighed and shook theirheads. I do not know just what I did expect to see, but I know that whatI saw was countless stolid family parties--on all sides grandmas andgrandpas and sons and daughters, and the babies in high chairs beatingthe tables with spoons. It was quite the most moral atmosphere we everfound ourselves in. That is what you get for deliberately setting out tosee the wickedness of the world!

From Leipzig we went to Berlin. We did not want to go to Berlin--Jenawas the spot we had in mind. Just as a few months at Harvard showed usthat one year there would be but a mere start, so one semester inGermany showed us that one year there would get us nowhere. We must staylonger, --from one to two years longer, --but how, alas, how finance it?That eternal question! We finally decided that, if we took the nextsemester or so in Berlin, Carl could earn money enough coaching to keepus going without having to borrow more. So to Berlin we went. Weaccomplished our financial purpose, but at too great a cost. 

In Berlin we found a small furnished apartment on the ground floor of aGartenhaus in Charlottenburg--Mommsen Strasse it was. At once Carlstarted out to find coaching; and how he found it always seemed to me anillustration of the way he could succeed at anything anywhere. We knewno one in Berlin. First he went to the minister of the American church;he in turn gave him names of Americans who might want coaching, and thenCarl looked up those people. In about two months he had all the coachinghe could possibly handle, and we could have stayed indefinitely inBerlin in comfort, for Carl was making over one hundred dollars a month, and that in his spare time. 

But the agony of those months: to be in Germany and yet get so littleGermany out of it! We had splendid letters of introduction to Germanpeople, from German friends we had made in Leipzig, but we could notfind a chance even to present them. Carl coached three youngsters in thethree R's; he was preparing two of the age just above, for college; hehad one American youth, who had ambitions to burst out monthly in the"Saturday Evening Post" stories; there was a class of five middle-agedwomen, who wanted Shakespeare, and got it; two classes in CurrentEvents; one group of Christian Scientists, who put in a modest demandfor the history of the world. I remember Carl had led them up to Pepinthe Short when we left Berlin. He contracted everything and anythingexcept one group who desired a course of lectures in Pragmatism. I donot think he had ever heard of the term then, but he took one look atthe lay of the land and said--not so! In his last years, when he becamesuch a worshiper at the shrine of William James and John Dewey, we oftenused to laugh at his Berlin profanity over the very idea of ever gettinga word of such "bunk" into his head. 

But think of the strain it all meant--lessons and lessons every day, onevery subject under heaven, and in every spare minute continued grindingat his German, and, of course, every day numerous hours at theUniversity, and so little time for sprees together. We assumed in ourprosperity the luxury of a maid--the unparalleled Anna Bederke ausRothenburg, Kreis Bumps (?), Posen, at four dollars a month, who for ayear and a half was the amusement and desperation of ourselves and ourfriends. Dear, crooked-nosed, one-good-eye Anna! She adored the groundwe walked on. Our German friends told us we had ruined her forever--shewould never be fit for the discipline of a German household again. Sincewar was first declared we have lost all track of Anna. Was her Polandhome in the devastated country? Did she marry a soldier, and is she too, perhaps, a widow? Faithful Anna, do not think for one minute you willever be forgotten by the Parkers. 

With Anna to leave the young with now and then, I was able to get in twosprees a week with Carl. Every Wednesday and Saturday noon I met him atthe University and we had lunch together. Usually on Wednesdays we ateat the Café Rheingold, the spot I think of with most affection as I lookback on Berlin. 

We used to eat in the "Shell Room"--an individual chicken-and-rice pie(as much chicken as rice), a vegetable, and a glass of beer each, forthirty-five cents for both. Saturdays we hunted for different smallerout-of-the-way restaurants. Wednesday nights "Uncle K. " of theUniversity of Wisconsin always came to supper, bringing athirty-five-cent rebate his landlady allowed him when he ate out; and wehad chicken every Wednesday night, which cost--a fat one--never morethan fifty cents. (It was Uncle K. Who wrote, "The world is so differentwith Carl gone!") Once we rented bicycles and rode all through theTiergarten, Carl and I, with the expected stiffness and soreness nextday. 

Then there was Christmas in Berlin. Three friends traveled up from Rometo be with us, two students came from Leipzig, and four fromBerlin--eleven for dinner, and four chairs all told. It was a regular"La Bohême" festival--one guest appearing with a bottle of wine underhis arm, another with a jar of caviare sent him from Russia. We had agay week of it after Christmas, when the whole eleven of us went on someDutch-treat spree every night, before going back to our studies. 

Then came those last grueling months in Berlin, when Carl had abreakdown, and I got sick nursing him and had to go to a Germanhospital; and while I was there Jim was threatened with pneumonia andNandy got tonsillitis. In the midst of it all the lease expired on ourWohnung, and Carl and Anna had to move the family out. We decided thatwe had had all we wanted of coaching in Berlin, --we came to thatconclusion before any of the breakdowns, --threw our pride to the winds, borrowed more money from my good father, and as soon as the family waswell enough to travel, we made for our ever-to-be-adored Heidelberg. 

CHAPTER VI

Here I sit back, and words fail me. I see that year as a kaleidoscope ofone joyful day after another, each rushing by and leaving the memorythat we both always had, of the most perfect year that was ever given tomortals on earth. I remember our eighth wedding anniversary in Berkeley. We had been going night after night until we were tired of goinganywhere, --engagements seemed to have heaped up, --so we decided that thevery happiest way we could celebrate that most-to-be-celebrated of alldates was just to stay at home, plug the telephone, pull down theblinds, and have an evening by ourselves. Then we got out everythingthat we kept as mementos of our European days, and went over them--allthe postcards, memory-books, theatre and opera programmes, etc. , and, lastly, read my diary--I had kept a record of every day in Europe. Whenwe came to that year in Heidelberg, we just could not believe our owneyes. How had we ever managed to pack a year so full, and live to tellthe tale? I wish I could write a story of just that year. We swore anoath in Berlin that we would make Heidelberg mean Germany to us--noEnglish-speaking, no Americans. As far as it lay in our power, we livedup to it. Carl and I spoke only German to each other and to thechildren, and we shunned our fellow countrymen as if they had had theplague. And Carl, in the characteristic way he had, set out to fill ourlives with all the real German life we could get into them, not waitingfor that life to come of itself--which it might never have done. 

One afternoon, on his way home from the University, he discovered in aback alley the Weiser Boch, a little restaurant and beer-hall so full oflocal color that it "hollered. " No, it did not holler: it was too realfor that. It was sombre and carved up--it whispered. Carl made immediatefriends, in the way he had, with the portly Frau and Herr who ran theWeiser Boch: they desired to meet me, they desired to see the Kinder, and would not the Herr Student like to have the Weiser Boch lady mentionhis name to some of the German students who dropped in? Carl left hiscard, and wondered if anything would come of it. 

The very next afternoon, --such a glowing account of the Amerikaner theWeiser Boch lady must have given, --a real truly German student, in hiscorps cap and ribbons, called at our home--the stiffest, most decorousheel-clicking German student I ever was to see. His embarrassment wasgreat when he discovered that Carl was out, and I seemed to take itquite for granted that he was to sit down for a moment and visit withme. He fell over everything. But we visited, and I was able to gatherthat his corps wished Herr Student Par-r-r-ker to have beer with themthe following evening. Then he bowed himself backwards and out, andfled. 

I could scarce wait for Carl to get home--it was too good to be true. And that was but the beginning. Invitation after invitation came toCarl, first from one corps, then from another; almost every Saturdaynight he saw German student-life first hand somewhere, and at least oneday a week he was invited to the duels in the Hirsch Gasse. Little bylittle we got the students to our Wohnung; then we got chummier andchummier, till we would walk up Haupt Strasse saluting here, passing aword there, invited to some student function one night, another affairanother night. The students who lived in Heidelberg had us meet theirfamilies, and those who were batching in Heidelberg often had us come totheir rooms. We made friendships during that year that nothing couldever mar. 

It is two years now since we received the last letter from anyHeidelberg chum. Are they all killed, perhaps? And when we cancommunicate again, after the war, think of what I must write them! Carlwas a revelation to most of them--they would talk about him to me, andask if all Americans were like him, so fresh in spirit, so clean, sosincere, so full of fun, and, with it all, doing the finest work of allof them but one in the University. 

The economics students tried to think of some way of influencing AlfredWeber to give another course of lectures at the University. He was inretirement at Heidelberg, but still the adored of the students. Finally, they decided that a committee of three should represent them and make apersonal appeal. Carl was one of the three chosen. The report soon flewaround, how, in Weber's august presence, the Amerikaner had stood withhis hands in his pockets--even sat for a few moments on the edge ofWeber's desk. The two Germans, posed like ramrods, expected to see suchinformality shoved out bodily. Instead, when they took their leave, theHerr Professor had actually patted the Amerikaner on the shoulder, andsaid he guessed he would give the lectures. 

Then his report in Gothein's Seminar, which went so well that I fairlyburst with pride. He had worked day and night on that. I was to meet himat eight after it had been given, and we were to have a celebration. Iwas standing by the entrance to the University building when out came anenthused group of jabbering German students, Carl in their midst. Theywere patting him on the back, shaking his hands furiously; and when theysaw me, they rushed to tell me of Carl's success and how Gothein hadsaid before all that it had been the best paper presented that semester. 

I find myself smiling as I write this--I was too happy that night toeat. 

The Sunday trips we made up the Neckar: each morning early we would takethe train and ride to where we had walked the Sunday previous; then wewould tramp as far as we could, --meaning until dark, --have lunch at someuntouristed inn along the road, or perhaps eat a picnic lunch of our ownin some old castle ruin, and then ride home. Oh, those Sundays! I tellyou no two people in all this world, since people were, have ever had_one_ day like those Sundays. And we had them almost every week. Itwould have been worth going to Germany for just one of those days. 

There was the gay, glad party that the Economic students gave, out inHandschusheim at the "zum Bachlenz"; first, the banquet, with a bigroomful of jovial young Germans; then the play, in which Carl and I bothtook part. Carl appeared in a mixture of his Idaho outfit and a Germanpeasant's costume, beating a large drum. He represented "Materialindex, "and called out loudly, "Ich bitte mich nicht zu vergessen. Ich bin auchda. " I was "Methode, " which nobody wanted to claim; whereat I wept. I amlooking at the flashlight picture of us all at this moment. Then camethe dancing, and then at about four o'clock the walk home in themoonlight, by the old castle ruin in Handschusheim, singing the Germanstudent-songs. 

There was Carnival season, with its masque balls and frivolity, andFaschings Dienstag, when Hauptstrasse was given over to merriment allafternoon, every one trailing up and down the middle of the streetmasked, and in fantastic costume, throwing confetti and tooting horns, Carl and I tooting with the rest. 

As time went on, we came to have one little group of nine students whomwe were with more than any others. As each of the men took his degree, he gave a party to the rest of us to celebrate it, every one trying tooutdo the other in fun. Besides these most important degreecelebrations, there were less dazzling affairs, such as birthdayparties, dinners, or afternoon coffee in honor of visiting Germanparents, or merely meeting together in our favorite café after aSocialist lecture or a Max Reger concert. In addition to such functions, Carl and I had our Wednesday night spree just by ourselves, when everyweek we met after his seminar. Our budget allowed just twelve and a halfcents an evening for both of us. I put up a supper at home, and in goodweather we ate down by the river or in some park. When it rained and wascold, we sat in a corner of the third-class waiting-room by the stove, watching the people coming and going in the station. Then, for dessert, we went every Wednesday to Tante's Conditorei, where, for two and a halfcents apiece, we got a large slice of a special brand of the most divinecake ever baked. Then, for two and a half cents, we saw the movies--at areduced rate because we presented a certain number of street-cartransfers along with the cash, and then had to sit in the first threerows. But you see, we used to remark, we have to sit so far away at theopera, it's good to get up close at something! Those were realmovies--no danger of running into a night-long Robert W. Chambersscenario. It was in the days before such developments. Then across thestreet was an "Automat, " and there, for a cent and a quarter apiece, wecould hold a glass under a little spigot, press a button, andget--refreshments. Then we walked home. 

O Heidelberg--I love your every tree, every stone, every blade of grass!

But at last our year came to an end. We left the town in a bower offruit-blossoms, as we had found it. Our dear, most faithful friends, the Kecks, gave us a farewell luncheon; and with babies, bundles, andbaggage, we were off. 

Heidelberg was the only spot I ever wept at leaving. I loved it then, and I love it now, as I love no other place on earth and Carl felt thesame way. We were mournful, indeed, as that train pulled out. 

CHAPTER VII

The next two weeks were filled with vicissitudes. The idea was for Carlto settle the little family in some rural bit of Germany, while he didresearch work in the industrial section of Essen, and thereabouts, coming home week-ends. We stopped off first at Bonn. Carl spent severaldays searching up and down the Rhine and through the Moselle country fora place that would do, which meant a place we could afford that was fitand suitable for the babies. There was nothing. The report always was:pensions all expensive, and automobiles touring by at a mile a minutewhere the children would be playing. 

On a wild impulse we moved up to Clive, on the Dutch border. After Carlwent in search of a pension, it started to drizzle. The boys, baggage, and I found the only nearby place of shelter in a stone-cutter'sinclosure, filled with new and ornate tombstones. What was myimpecunious horror, when I heard a small crash and discovered that Jimhad dislocated a loose figure of Christ (unconsciously Cubist inexecution) from the top of a tombstone! Eight marks charges! the cost ofsixteen Heidelberg sprees. On his return, Carl reported two pensions, one quarantined for diphtheria, one for scarlet fever. We slept over abeer-hall, with such a racket going on all night as never was; and nextmorning took the first train out--this time for Düsseldorf. 

It is a trifle momentous, traveling with two babies around a country youknow nothing about, and can find no one to enlighten you. At DüsseldorfCarl searched through the town and suburbs for a spot to settle us in, getting more and more depressed at the thought of leaving us anywhere. That Freiburg summer had seared us both deep, and each of us dreadedanother separation more than either let the other know. And then, onenight, after another fruitless search, Carl came home and informed methat the whole scheme was off. Instead of doing his research work, wewould all go to Munich, and he would take an unexpected semester there, working with Brentano. 

What rejoicings, oh, what rejoicings! As Carl remarked, it may be that"He travels fastest who travels alone"; but speed was not the only thinghe was after. So the next day, babies, bundles, baggage, and parentswent down the Rhine, almost through Heidelberg, to Munich, with such joyand contentment in our hearts as we could not describe. All those daysof unhappy searchings Carl had been through must have sunk deep, for inhis last days of fever he would tell me of a form of delirium in whichhe searched again, with a heart of lead, for a place to leave the babiesand me. 

I remember our first night in Munich. We arrived about supper-time, hunted up a cheap hotel as usual, near the station, fed the babies, andstarted to prepare for their retirement. This process in hotels wasalways effected by taking out two bureau-drawers and making a bed ofeach. While we were busy over this, the boys were busy over--just busy. This time they both crawled up into a large clothes-press that stood inour room, when, crash! bang!--there lay the clothes-press, front down, on the floor, boys inside it. Such a commotion--hollerings andsquallings from the internals of the clothes-press, agitated scurryingsfrom all directions of the hotel-keeper, his wife, waiters, andchambermaids. All together, we managed to stand the clothes-press oncemore against the wall, and to extricate two sobered young ones, the onlydamage being two clothes-press doors banged off their hinges. 

Munich is second in my heart to Heidelberg. Carl worked hardest of allthere, hardly ever going out nights; but we never got over the feelingthat our being there together was a sort of gift we had made ourselves, and we were ever grateful. And then Carl did so remarkably well in theUniversity. A report, for instance, which he read before Brentano'sseminar was published by the University. Our relations' with Brentanoalways stood out as one of the high memories of Germany. After Carl'sreport in Brentano's class, that lovable idol of the German studentscalled him to his desk and had a long talk, which ended by his asking usboth to tea at his house the following day. The excitement of ourpension over that! We were looked upon as the anointed of the Lord. Wewere really a bit overawed, ourselves. We discussed neckties, andbrushed and cleaned, and smelled considerably of gasoline as we struttedforth, too proud to tell, because we were to have tea with Brentano! Ican see the street their house was on, their front door; I can feelagain the little catch in our breaths as we rang the bell. Then thecharming warmth and color of that Italian home, the charming warmth andhospitality of that white-haired professor and his gracious, kindlywife. There were just ourselves there; and what a momentous time it wasto the little Parkers! Carl was simply radiating joy, and in the way healways had when especially pleased, would give a sudden beam from ear toear, and a wink at me when no one else was looking. 

Not long after that we were invited for dinner, and again for tea, thistime, according to orders, bringing the sons. They both fell into anItalian fountain in the rear garden as soon as we went in forrefreshments. By my desk now is hanging a photograph we have prized asone of our great treasures. Below it is written: "Mrs. And Mr. Parker, zur freundlichen Erinnerrung--Lujio Brentano. " Professor Bonn, anotherof Carl's professors at the University, and his wife, were kindnessitself to us. Then there was Peter, dear old Peter, the Austrian studentat our pension, who took us everywhere, brought us gifts, and adored thebabies until he almost spoiled them. 

From Munich we went direct to England. Vicissitudes again in finding acheap and fit place that would do for children to settle in. Afterever-hopeful wanderings, we finally stumbled upon Swanage in Dorset. That was a love of a place on the English Channel, where we had tworooms with the Mebers in their funny little brick house, the "Netto. "Simple folk they were: Mr. Meber a retired sailor, the wife rather wornwith constant roomers, one daughter a dressmaker, the other working inthe "knittin" shop. Charges, six dollars a week for the family, whichincluded cooking and serving our meals--we bought the food ourselves. 

Here Carl prepared for his Ph. D. Examination, and worked on his thesisuntil it got to the point where he needed the British Museum. Then hetook a room and worked during the week in London, coming down to usweek-ends. He wrote eager letters, for the time had come when he longedto get the preparatory work and examination behind him and beginteaching. We had an instructorship at the University of Californiawaiting for us, and teaching was to begin in January. In one letter hewrote: "I now feel like landing on my exam, like a Bulgarian; I am thatfierce to lay it out. " We felt more than ever, in those days of workpiling up behind us, that we owned the world; as Carl wrote in anotherletter: "We'll stick this out [this being the separation of his lasttrip to London, whence he was to start for Heidelberg and hisexamination, without another visit with us], for, _Gott sei dank!_ thetime isn't so fearful, fearful long, it isn't really, is it? Gee! I'mglad I married you. And I want more babies and more you, and then thewhole gang together for about ninety-two years. But life is so fine tous and we are getting so much love and big things out of life!"

November 1 Carl left London for Heidelberg. He was to take hisexamination there December 5, so the month of November was a full onefor him. He stayed with the dear Kecks, Mother Keck pressing andmending his clothes, hovering over him as if he were her own son. Hewrote once: "To-day we had a small leg of venison which I sneaked inlast night. Every time I note that I burn three quarters of a lampful ofoil a day among the other things I cost them, it makes me feel likebuying out a whole Conditorei. "

I lived for those daily letters telling of his progress. Once he wrote:"Just saw Fleiner [Professor in Law] and he was _fine_, but I must gethis Volkerrecht cold. It is fine reading, and is mighty good andinteresting every word, and also stuff which a man ought to know. Thisis the last man to see. From now on, it is only to _study_, and I amtickled. I do really like to study. " A few days later he wrote: "It isjust plain sit and absorb these days. Some day I will explain how toughit is to learn an entire law subject in five days in a strange tongue. "

And then, on the night of December 5, came the telegram of success to"Frau Dr. Parker. " We both knew he would pass, but neither of us wasprepared for the verdict of "_Summa cum laude_, " the highestaccomplishment possible. I went up and down the main street of littleSwanage, announcing the tidings right and left. The community all knewthat Carl was in Germany to take some kind of an examination, though itall seemed rather unexplainable. Yet they rejoiced with me, --thebutcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, --without having the leastidea what they were rejoicing about. Mrs. Meber tore up and down OsborneRoad to have the fun of telling the immediate neighbors, all of whomwere utterly at a loss to know what it meant, the truth being that Mrs. Meber herself was in that same state. But she had somehow caught myexcitement, and anything to tell was scarce in Swanage. 

So the little family that fared forth from Oakland, California, thatFebruary 1, for one year at Harvard had ended thus--almost four yearslater a Ph. D. _summa cum laude_ from Heidelberg. Not Persia as we hadplanned it nine years before--a deeper, finer life than anything we haddreamed. We asked Professor Miller, after we got back to California, whyin the world he had said just "one year in Europe. "

"If I had said more, I was afraid it would scare you altogether out ofever starting; and I knew if you once got over there and were made ofthe right stuff, you'd stay on for a Ph. D. "

On December 12 Carl was to deliver one of a series of lectures in Munichfor the Handelshochschule, his subject being "Die Einwanderungs undSiedelungspolitik in Amerika (Carleton Parker, Privatdocent, California-Universität, St. Francisco). " That very day, however, thePrince Regent died, and everything was called off. We had our glory--andgot our pay. Carl was so tired from his examination, that he did notobject to foregoing the delivery of a German address before an audienceof four hundred. It was read two weeks later by one of the professors. 

On December 15 we had our reunion and celebration of it all. Carl tookthe Amerika, second class, at Hamburg; the boys and I at Southampton, ushered thither from Swanage and put aboard the steamer by our faithfulOnkel Keck, son of the folk with whom Carl had stayed in Heidelberg, whocame all the way from London for that purpose. It was not such a brashHerr Doktor that we found, after all: the Channel had begun to tell onhim, as it were, and while it was plain that he loved us, it was alsoplain that he did not love the water. So we gave him his six days off, and he lay anguish-eyed in a steamer-chair while I covered fifty-sevenmiles a day, tearing after two sons who were far more filled withWanderlust than they had been three years before. When our dad did feelchipper again, he felt very chipper, and our last four days wereperfect. 

We landed in New York on Christmas Eve, in a snowstorm; paid thecrushing sum of one dollar and seventy-five cents duty, --such a jovialagent as inspected our belongings I never beheld; he must already havehad just the Christmas present he most wanted, whatever it was. When heheard that we had been in Heidelberg, he and several other officialsbegan a lusty rendering of "Old Heidelberg, "--and within an hour we werespeeding toward California, a case of certified milk added to ouralready innumerable articles of luggage. Christmas dinner we ate on thetrain. How those American dining-car prices floored us after three yearsof all we could eat for thirty-five cents!

CHAPTER VIII

We looked back always on our first semester's teaching in the Universityof California as one hectic term. We had lived our own lives, found ourown joys, for four years, and here we were enveloped by old friends, byrelatives, by new friends, until we knew not which way to turn. Inaddition, Carl was swamped by campus affairs--by students, many of whomseemed to consider him an oasis in a desert of otherwise-to-be-deplored, unhuman professors. Every student organization to which he had belongedas an undergraduate opened its arms to welcome him as a faculty member;we chaperoned student parties till we heard rag-time in our sleep. FromJanuary 1 to May 16, we had four nights alone together. You can know wewere desperate. Carl used to say: "We may have to make it Persia yet. "

The red-letter event of that term was when, after about two months ofteaching, President Wheeler rang up one evening about seven, --one of thefour evenings, as it happened, we were at home together, --and said: "Ithought I should like the pleasure of telling you personally, though youwill receive official notice in the morning, that you have been made anassistant professor. We expected you to make good, but we did not expectyou to make good to such a degree quite so soon. "

Again an occasion for a spree! We tore out hatless across the campus, nearly demolishing the head of the College of Commerce as we rounded theLibrary. He must know the excitement. He was pleased. He slipped hishand into his pocket saying, "I must have a hand in this celebration. "And with a royal gesture, as who should say, "What matter the costs!"slipped a dime into Carl's hand. "Spend it all to-night. "

Thus we were started on our assistant professorship. But always beforeand always after, to the students Carl was just "Doc. "

I remember a story he told of how his chief stopped him one afternoon atthe north gate to the university, and said he was discouraged anddistressed. Carl was getting the reputation of being popular with thestudents, and that would never do. "I don't wish to hear more of suchrumors. " Just then the remnants of the internals of a Ford, hungtogether with picture wire and painted white, whizzed around the corner. Two slouching, hard-working "studes" caught sight of Carl, reared up thecar, and called, "Hi, Doc, come on in!" Then they beheld the Head of theDepartment, hastily pressed some lever, and went hurrying on. To theHead it was evidence first-hand. He shook his head and went his way. 

Carl was popular with the students, and it is true that he was too muchso. It was not long before he discovered that he was drawing untohimself the all-too-lightly-handled "college bum, " and he rebelled. Harvard and Germany had given him too high an idea of scholarship tohave even a traditional university patience with the student who, in theUniversity of California jargon, was "looking for a meal. " He waspetitioned by twelve students of the College of Agriculture to give acourse in the Economics of Agriculture, and they guaranteed himtwenty-five students. One hundred and thirty enrolled, and as Carlsurveyed the assortment below him, he realized that a good half of themdid not know and did not want to know a pear tree from a tractor. Hestiffened his upper lip, stiffened his examinations, and cinched fortyof the class. There should be some Latin saying that would just fit sucha case, but I do not know it. It would start, "Exit ----, " and the exitwould refer to the exit of the loafer in large numbers from Carl'scourses and the exit from the heart of the loafer of the absorbing lovehe had held for Carl. His troubles were largely over. Someone else couldcare for the maimed, the halt, and the blind. 

It was about this time, too, that Carl got into difficulties with theintrenched powers on the campus. He had what has been referred to as "apassion for justice. " Daily the injustice of campus organization grew onhim; he saw democracy held high as an ideal--lip-homage only. Studentaffairs were run by an autocracy which had nothing to justify it exceptits supporters' claim of "efficiency. " He had little love for thatword--it is usually bought at too great a cost. That year, as usual, hehad a small seminar of carefully picked students. He got them to opentheir eyes to conditions as they were. When they ceased to accept thoseconditions just because they were, they, too, felt the inequality, thefarce, of a democratic institution run on such autocratic lines. Afterseminar hours the group would foregather at our house to plot as to waysand means. The editor of the campus daily saw their point of view--I amnot sure now that he was not a member of the seminar. 

A slow campaign of education followed. Intrenched powers becameoutraged. Fraternities that had invited Carl almost weekly to lunch, now"couldn't see him. " One or two influential alumnæ, who had something togain from the established order, took up the fight. Soon we had a"warning" from one of the Regents that Carl's efforts on behalf of"democracy" were unwelcome. But within a year the entire organization ofcampus politics was altered, and now there probably is not a student whowould not feel outraged at the suggestion of a return to the old system. 

Perhaps here is where I can dwell for a moment on Carl's particularbrand of democracy. I see so much of other kinds. He was what I shouldcall an utterly unconscious democrat. He never framed in his own mindany theory of "the brotherhood of man"--he just lived it, without everthinking of it as something that needed expression in words. I neverheard him use the term. To him the Individual was everything--by that Imean that every relation he had was on a personal basis. He could not gointo a shop to buy a necktie hurriedly, without passing a word with theclerk; when he paid his fare on the street car, there was a moment'sconversation with the conductor; when we had ice-cream of an evening, heasked the waitress what was the best thing on in the movies. When weleft Oakland for Harvard, the partially toothless maid we had sobbedthat "Mr. Parker had been more like a brother to her!"

One of the phases of his death which struck home the hardest was theconcern and sorrow the small tradespeople showed--the cobbler, theplumber, the drug-store clerk. You hear men say: "I often find itinteresting to talk to working-people and get their view-point. " Such anattitude was absolutely foreign to Carl. He talked to "working-people"because he talked to everybody as he went along his joyous way. At atrack meet or football game, he was on intimate terms with every onewithin a conversational radius. Our wealthy friends would tell us heruined their chauffeurs--they got so that they didn't know their places. As likely as not, he would jolt some constrained bank president byengaging him in genial conversation without an introduction; at a formaldinner he would, as a matter of course, have a word or two with thebutler when he passed the cracked crab, although at times the butlersseemed somewhat pained thereby. Some of Carl's intimate friends wereoccasionally annoyed--"He talks to everybody. " He no more could helptalking to everybody than he could help--liking pumpkin-pie. He was bornthat way. He had one manner for every human being--President of theUniversity, students, janitors, society women, cooks, small boys, judges. He never had any material thing to hand out, --not even cigars, for he did not smoke himself, --but, as one friend expressed it, "heradiated generosity. "

Heidelberg gives one year after passing the examination to get thedoctor's thesis in final form for publication. The subject of Carl'sthesis was "The Labor Policy of the American Trust. " His first summervacation after our return to Berkeley, he went on to Wisconsin, chieflyto see Commons, and then to Chicago, to study the stockyards atfirst-hand, and the steel industry. He wrote: "Have just seen Commons, who was _fine_. He said: 'Send me as soon as possible the outline ofyour thesis and I will pass upon it according to my lights. ' . . . He isvery interested in one of my principal subdivisions, i. E. 'Technique andUnionism, ' or 'Technique and Labor. ' Believes it is a big newconsideration. " Again he wrote: "I have just finished working through abook on 'Immigration' by Professor Fairchild of Yale, --437 pagespublished three weeks ago, --lent me by Professor Ross. It is the verybook I have been looking for and is _superb_. I can't get over howstimulating this looking in on a group of University men has been. It initself is worth the trip. I feel sure of my field of work; that I am notgoing off in unfruitful directions; that I am keeping up with the wagon. I am now set on finishing my book right away--want it out within a yearfrom December. " From Chicago he wrote: "Am here with the reek of thestockyards in my nose, and just four blocks from them. Here lived, inthis house, Upton Sinclair when he wrote 'The Jungle. '" And MaryMcDowell, at the University Settlement where he was staying, told afriend of ours since Carl's death about how he came to the table thatfirst night and no one paid much attention to him--just some youngWesterner nosing about. But by the end of the meal he had the wholegroup leaning elbows on the table, listening to everything he had tosay; and she added, "Every one of us loved him from then on. "

He wrote, after visiting Swift's plant, of "seeing illustrations for allthe lectures on technique I have given, and Gee! it felt good. [I couldnot quote him honestly and leave out his "gees"] to actually look atthings being done the way one has orated about 'em being done. The thingfor me to do here is to see, and see the things I'm going to write intomy thesis. I want to spend a week, if I can, digging into the steelindustry. With my fine information about the ore [he had just acquiredthat], I am anxious to fill out my knowledge of the operation ofsmelting and making steel. Then I can orate industrial dope. " Later:"This morning I called on the Vice-President of the Illinois SteelCompany, on the Treasurer of Armour & Co. , and lunched with Mr. Crane ofCrane Co. --Ahem!"

The time we had when it came to the actual printing of the thesis! Ithad to be finished by a certain day, in order to make a certain steamer, to reach Heidelberg when promised. I got in a corner of aprinting-office and read proof just as fast as it came off the press, while Carl worked at home, under you can guess what pressure, tocomplete his manuscript--tearing down with new batches for me to get inshape for the type-setter, and then racing home to do more writing. Wefinished the thesis about one o'clock one morning, proof-reading andall; and the next day--or that same day, later--war was declared. Whichmeant just this--that the University of Heidelberg sent word that itwould not be safe for Carl to send over his thesis, --there were aboutthree or four hundred copies to go, according to German Universityregulations, --until the situation had quieted down somewhat. The resultwas that those three Or four hundred copies lay stacked up in theprinting-office for three or four years, until at last Carl decided itwas not a very good thesis anyway, and he didn't want any one to see it, and he would write another brand-new one when peace was declared and itcould get safely to its destination. So he told the printer-man to doaway with the whole batch. This meant that we were out about a hundredand fifty dollars, oh, luckless thought!--a small fortune to the youngParkers. So though in a way the thesis as it stands was not meant forpublication, I shall risk quoting from Part One, "The Problem, " so thatat least his general approach can be gathered. Remember, the title was"The Labor Policy of the American Trust. "

"When the most astute critic of American labor conditions has said, 'While immigration continues in great volume, class lines will beforming and reforming, weak and instable. To prohibit or greatlyrestrict immigration would bring forth class conflict within ageneration, ' what does it mean?

"President Woodrow Wilson in a statement of his fundamental beliefs hassaid: 'Why are we in the presence, why are we at the threshold, of arevolution? . . . Don't you know that some man with eloquent tongue, without conscience, who did not care for the nation, could put thiswhole country into a flame? Don't you know that this country, from oneend to the other, believes that something is wrong? What an opportunityit would be for some man without conscience to spring up and say: "Thisis the way; follow me"--and lead in paths of destruction!' What does itmean?

"The problem of the social unrest must seek for its source in all threeclasses of society! Two classes are employer and employee, the third isthe great middle class, looking on. What is the relationship between thedominating employing figure in American industrial life and the men whowork?

"A nation-wide antagonism to trade-unions, to the idea of collectivebargaining between men and employer, cannot spring from a temperamentalaversion of a mere individual, however powerful, be he Carnegie, Parry, or Post, or from the common opinion in a group such as the so-calledBeef Trust, or the directorate of the United States Steel Corporation. Such a hostility, characterizing as it does one of the vitally importantrelationships in industrial production, must seek its reason-to-be ineconomic causes. Profits, market, financing, are placed in certainjeopardy by such a labor policy, and this risk is not continued, generation after generation, as a casual indulgence in temper. Deepbelow the strong charges against the unions of narrow self-interest andun-American limitation of output, dressed by the Citizens' Alliance inthe language of the Declaration of Independence, lies a quiet economicreason for the hostility. Just as slavery was about to go because it didnot pay, and America stopped building a merchant marine because it wascheaper to hire England to transport American goods, so the AmericanTrust, as soon as it had power, abolished the American trade-unionbecause it found it costly. What then are these economic causes whichaccount for the hostility?

"What did the union stand in the way of? What conditions did the trustdesire to establish with which the union would interfere? Or did a laborcondition arise which allowed the employer to wreck the union with suchease, that he turned aside for a moment to do it, to commit an actdesirable only if its performance cost little danger or money?

"The answer can be found only after an analysis of certain factors inindustrial production. These are three:--

"(_a_) The control of industrial production. Not only, in whose handshas industrial capitalism for the moment fallen, but in what directiondoes the evolution of control tend?

"(_b_) The technique of industrial production. Technique, at times, instead of being a servant, determines by its own characteristics thecharacter of the labor and the geographical location of the industry, and even destroys the danger of competition, if the machinery demandedby it asks for a bigger capital investment than a raiding competitorwill risk. 

"(_c_) The labor market. The labor market can be stationary as inEngland, can diminish as in Ireland, or increase as in New England. 

"If the character of these three factors be studied, trust hostility toAmerican labor-unions can be explained in terms of economic measure. Onenational characteristic, however, must be taken for granted. That is thecommercialized business morality which guides American economic life. The responsibility for the moral or social effect of an act is so rarelya consideration in a decision, that it can be here neglected withouterror. It is not a factor. "

 * * * * *

At the close of his investigation, he took his first vacation in fiveyears--a canoe-trip up the Brulé with Hal Bradley. That was one of ourdreams that could never come true--a canoe-trip together. We almostbought the canoe at the Exposition--we looked holes through the one wewanted. Our trip was planned to the remotest detail. We never did comeinto our own in the matter of our vacations, although no two peoplecould have more fun in the woods than we. But the combination of smallchildren and no money and new babies and work--We figured that in threemore years we could be sure of at least one wonderful trip a year. Anyway, we had the joy of our plannings. 

CHAPTER IX

The second term in California had just got well under way when Carl wasoffered the position of Executive Secretary in the State Immigration andHousing Commission of California. I remember so well the night he camehome about midnight and told me. I am afraid the financial end wouldhave determined us, even if the work itself had small appeal--which, however, was not the case. The salary offered was $4000. We were getting$1500 at the University. We were $2000 in debt from our European trip, and saw no earthly chance of ever paying it out of our Universitysalary. We figured that we could be square with the world in one year ona $4000 salary, and then need never be swayed by financialconsiderations again. So Carl accepted the new job. It was the wisething to do anyway, as matters turned out. It threw him into directcontact for the first time with the migratory laborer and the I. W. W. Itgave him his first bent in the direction of labor-psychology, which wasto become his intellectual passion, and he was fired with a zeal thatnever left him, to see that there should be less unhappiness andinequality in the world. 

The concrete result of Carl's work with the Immigration Commission wasthe clean-up of labor camps all over California. From unsanitary, fly-ridden, dirty makeshifts were developed ordered sanitary housingaccommodations, designed and executed by experts in their fields. Alsohe awakened, through countless talks up and down the State, someunderstanding of the I. W. W. And his problem; although, judging from thenewspapers nowadays, his work would seem to have been almost forgotten. As the phrase went, "Carleton Parker put the migratory on the map. "

I think of the Wheatland Hop-Fields riot, or the Ford and Suhr case, which Carl was appointed to investigate for the Federal government, asthe dramatic incident which focused his attention on the need of adeeper approach to a sound understanding of labor and its problems, andwhich, in turn, justified Mr. Bruère in stating in the "New Republic":"Parker was the first of our Economists, not only to analyse thepsychology of labor and especially of casual labor, but also to make hisanalysis the basis for an applied technique of industrial and socialreconstruction. " Also, that was the occasion of his concreteintroduction to the I. W. W. He wrote an account of it, later, for the"Survey, " and an article on "The California Casual and His Revolt" forthe "Quarterly Journal of Economics, " in November, 1915. 

It is all interesting enough, I feel, to warrant going into some detail. 

The setting of the riot is best given in the article above referred to, "The California Casual and His Revolt. "

"The story of the Wheatland hop-pickers' riot is as simple as the factsof it are new and naïve in strike histories. Twenty-eight hundredpickers were camped on a treeless hill which was part of the ---- ranch, the largest single employer of agricultural labor in the state. Somewere in tents, some in topless squares of sacking, or with piles ofstraw. There was no organization for sanitation, no garbage-disposal. The temperature during the week of the riot had remained near 105°, andthough the wells were a mile from where the men, women, and childrenwere picking, and their bags could not be left for fear of theft of thehops, no water was sent into the fields. A lemonade wagon appeared atthe end of the week, later found to be a concession granted to a cousinof the ranch owner. Local Wheatland stores were forbidden to senddelivery wagons to the camp grounds. It developed in the stateinvestigation that the owner of the ranch received half of the netprofits earned by an alleged independent grocery store, which had beengranted the 'grocery concession' and was located in the centre of thecamp ground. . . . 

"The pickers began coming to Wheatland on Tuesday, and by Sunday theirritation over the wage-scale, the absence of water in the fields, plusthe persistent heat and the increasing indignity of the camp, hadresulted in mass meetings, violent talk, and a general strike. 

"The ranch owner, a nervous man, was harassed by the rush of workbrought on by the too rapidly ripening hops, and indignant at the jeersand catcalls which greeted his appearance near the meetings of thepickers. Confused with a crisis outside his slender social philosophy, he acted true to his tradition, and perhaps his type, and called on asheriff's posse. What industrial relationship had existed was tooinsecure to stand such a procedure. It disappeared entirely, leaving incontrol the instincts and vagaries of a mob on the one hand, and greatapprehension and inexperience on the other. 

"As if a stage had been set, the posse arrived in automobiles at theinstant when the officially 'wanted' strike-leader was addressing a massmeeting of excited men, women, and children. After a short and typicalperiod of skirmishing and the minor and major events of arresting aperson under such circumstances, a member of the posse standing outsidefired a double-barreled shot-gun over the heads of the crowd, 'to soberthem, ' as he explained it. Four men were killed--two of the posse andtwo strikers; the posse fled in their automobiles to the county seat, and all that night the roads out of Wheatland were filled with pickersleaving the camp. Eight months later, two hop-pickers, proved to be theleaders of the strike and its agitation, were convicted of murder in thefirst degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Their appeal for a newtrial was denied. "

In his report to the Governor, written in 1914, Carl characterized thecase as follows:--

"The occurrence known as the Wheatland Hop-Fields riot took place onSunday afternoon, August 3, 1913. Growing discontent among thehop-pickers over wages, neglected camp-sanitation and absence of waterin the fields had resulted in spasmodic meetings of protest on Saturdayand Sunday morning, and finally by Sunday noon in a more or lessinvoluntary strike. At five o'clock on Sunday about one thousandpickers gathered about a dance pavilion to listen to speakers. Twoautomobiles carrying a sheriff's posse drove up to this meeting, andofficials armed with guns and revolvers attempted to disperse the crowdand to arrest, on a John Doe warrant, Richard Ford, the apparent leaderof the strike. In the ensuing confusion shooting began and some twentyshots were fired. Two pickers, a deputy sheriff, and the districtattorney of the county were killed. The posse fled and the camp remainedunpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn next morning. 

"The occurrence has grown from a casual, though bloody, event inCalifornia labor history into such a focus for discussion and analysisof the State's great migratory labor-problem that the incident can wellbe said to begin, for the commonwealth, a new and momentous labor epoch. 

"The problem of vagrancy; that of the unemployed and the unemployable;the vexing conflict between the right of agitation and free speech andthe law relating to criminal conspiracy; the housing and wages ofagricultural laborers; the efficiency and sense of responsibility foundin a posse of country deputies; the temper of the country people facedwith the confusion and rioting of a labor outbreak; all these problemshave found a starting point for their new and vigorous analysis in theWheatland riot. 

In the same report, submitted a year before the "Quarterly Journal"article, and almost a year before his study of psychology began, Carlwrote:--

"The manager and part-owner of the ranch is an example of a certain typeof California employer. The refusal of this type to meet the socialresponsibilities which come with the hiring of human beings for labor, not only works concrete and cruelly unnecessary misery upon a classlittle able to combat personal indignity and degradation, but adds fuelto the fire of resentment and unrest which is beginning to burn in theuncared-for migratory worker in California. That ---- could refuse hisclear duty of real trusteeship of a camp on his own ranch, whichcontained hundreds of women and children, is a social fact of miserableimport. The excuses we have heard of unpreparedness, of allegedignorance of conditions, are shamed by the proven human suffering andhumiliation repeated each day of the week, from Wednesday to Sunday. Even where the employer's innate sense of moral obligation fails topoint out his duty, he should have realized the insanity of stimulatingunrest and bitterness in this inflammable labor force. The riot on the---- ranch is a California contribution to the literature of the socialunrest in America. "

As to the "Legal and Economic Aspects" of the case, again quoting fromthe report to the Governor:--

"The position taken by the defense and their sympathizers in the courseof the trial has not only an economic and social bearing, but manyarguments made before the court are distinct efforts to introducesociological modifications of the law which will have a far-reachingeffect on the industrial relations of capital and labor. It is assertedthat the common law, on which American jurisprudence is founded, isknown as an ever-developing law, which must adapt itself to changingeconomic and social conditions; and, in this connection, it is claimedthat the established theories of legal causation must be enlarged toinclude economic and social factors in the chain of causes leading to aresult. Concretely, it is argued:--

"First, That, when unsanitary conditions lead to discontent so intensethat the crowd can be incited to bloodshed, those responsible for theunsanitary conditions are to be held legally responsible for thebloodshed, as well as the actual inciters of the riot. 

"Second, That, if the law will not reach out so far as to hold thecreator of unsanitary, unlivable conditions guilty of bloodshed, at anyrate such conditions excuse the inciters from liability, becauseinciters are the involuntary transmitting agents of an uncontrollableforce set in motion by those who created the unlivable conditions. . . . 

"Furthermore, on the legal side, modifications of the law of propertyare urged. It is argued that modern law no longer holds the rights ofprivate property sacred, that these rights are being constantlyregulated and limited, and that in the Wheatland case the owner'straditional rights in relation to his own lands are to be held subjectto the right of the laborers to organize thereon. It is urged that aworker on land has a 'property right in his job, ' and that he cannot bemade to leave the job, or the land, merely because he is trying toorganize his fellow workers to make a protest as to living and economicconditions. It is urged that the organizing worker cannot be made toleave the job because the job is _his_ property and it is all that hehas. "

As to "The Remedy":--

"It is obvious that the violent strike methods adopted by the I. W. W. Type agitators, which only incidentally, although effectively, tend toimprove camp conditions, are not to be accepted as a solution of theproblem. It is also obvious that the conviction of the agitators, suchas Ford and Suhr, of murder, is not a solution, but is only thepunishment or revenge inflicted by organized society for a past deed. The Remedy lies in prevention. 

"It is the opinion of your investigator that the improvement of livingconditions in the labor camps will have the immediate effect of makingthe recurrence of impassioned, violent strikes and riots not onlyimprobable, but impossible; and furthermore, such improvement will gofar towards eradicating the hatred and bitterness in the minds of theemployers and in the minds of the roving, migratory laborers. Thisaccomplished, the two conflicting parties will be in a position to meeton a saner, more constructive basis, in solving the further industrialproblems arising between them. . . . 

"They must come to realize that their own laxity in allowing theexistence of unsanitary and filthy conditions gives a much-desiredfoothold to the very agitators of the revolutionary I. W. W. Doctrineswhom they so dread; they must learn that unbearable, aggravating livingconditions inoculate the minds of the otherwise peaceful workers withthe germs of bitterness and violence, as so well exemplified at theWheatland riot, giving the agitators a fruitful field wherein to sow theseeds of revolt and preach the doctrine of direct action and sabotage. 

"On the other hand, the migratory laborers must be shown that revoltsaccompanied by force in scattered and isolated localities not onlyinvolve serious breaches of law and lead to crime, but that theyaccomplish no lasting constructive results in advancing their cause. 

"The Commission intends to furnish a clearinghouse to hear complaints ofgrievances, of both sides, and act as a mediator or safety-valve. "

In the report to the Governor appear Carl's first writings on the I. W. W. 

"Of this entire labor force at the ---- ranch, it appears that some 100had been I. W. W. 'card men, ' or had had affiliations with thatorganization. There is evidence that there was in this camp a looselycaught together camp local of the I. W. W. , with about 30 active members. It is suggestive that these 30 men, through a spasmodic action, and withthe aid of the deplorable camp conditions, dominated a heterogeneousmass of 2800 unskilled laborers in 3 days. Some 700 or 800 of theforce were of the 'hobo' class, in every sense potential I. W. W. Strikers. At least 400 knew in a rough way the--for them curiouslyattractive--philosophy of the I. W. W. , and could also sing some of itssongs. 

"Of the 100-odd 'card men' of the I. W. W. , some had been through the SanDiego affair, some had been soap-boxers in Fresno, a dozen had been inthe Free Speech fight in Spokane. They sized up the hop-field as a ripeopportunity, as the principal defendant, 'Blackie' Ford, puts it, 'tostart something. ' On Friday, two days after picking began, the practicalagitators began working through the camp. Whether or not Ford came tothe ---- ranch to foment trouble seems immaterial. There are five Fordsin every camp of seasonal laborers in California. We have devotedourselves in these weeks to such questions as this: 'How big a per centof California's migratory seasonal labor force know the technique of anI. W. W. Strike?' 'How many of the migratory laborers know when conditionsare ripe to "start something"?' We are convinced that among theindividuals of every fruit-farm labor group are many potential strikers. Where a group of hoboes sit around a fire under a railroad bridge, manyof the group can sing I. W. W. Songs without the book. This was not sothree years ago. The I. W. W. In California is not a closely organizedbody, with a steady membership. The rank and file know little of thetechnical organization of industrial life which their writtenconstitution demands. They listen eagerly to the appeal for the'solidarity' of their class. In the dignifying of vagabondage throughtheir crude but virile song and verse, in the bitter vilification of thejail turnkey and county sheriff, in their condemnation of the church andits formal social work, they find the vindication of their hobo statuswhich they desire. They cannot sustain a live organization unless theyhave a strike or free-speech fight to stimulate their spirit. It is intheir methods of warfare, not in their abstract philosophy or evenhatred of law and judges, that danger lies for organized society. Sinceevery one of the 5000 laborers in California who have been at some timeconnected with the I. W. W. Considers himself a 'camp delegate' withwalking papers to organize a camp local, this small army is watching, asFord did, for an unsanitary camp or low wage-scale, to start the strikewhich will not only create a new I. W. W. Local, but bring fame to theorganizer. This common acceptance of direct action and sabotage as therule of operation, the songs and the common vocabulary are, we feelconvinced, the first stirring of a class expression. 

"Class solidarity they have not. That may never come, for the migratorylaborer has neither the force nor the vision nor tenacity to hold longenough to the ideal to attain it. But the I. W. W. Is teaching a method ofaction which will give this class in violent flare-ups, such as that atWheatland, expression. 

"The dying away of the organization after the outburst is, therefore, tobe expected. Their social condition is a miserable one. Their work, evenat the best, must be irregular. They have nothing to lose in a strike, and, as a leader put it, 'A riot and a chance to blackguard a jailer isabout the only intellectual fun we have. '

"Taking into consideration the misery and physical privation and thebarren outlook of this life of the seasonal worker, the I. W. W. Movement, with all its irresponsible motive and unlawful action, becomes inreality a class-protest, and the dignity which this characteristic givesit perhaps alone explains the persistence of the organization in thefield. 

"Those attending the protest mass-meeting of the Wheatland hop-pickerswere singing the I. W. W. Song 'Mr. Block, ' when the sheriff's posse cameup in its automobiles. The crowd had been harangued by an experiencedI. W. W. Orator--'Blackie' Ford. They had been told, according toevidence, to 'knock the blocks off the scissor-bills. ' Ford had taken asick baby from its mother's arms and, holding it before the eyes of the1500 people, had cried out: 'It's for the life of the kids we're doingthis. ' Not a quarter of the crowd was of a type normally venturesomeenough to strike, and yet, when the sheriff went after Ford, he wasknocked down and kicked senseless by infuriated men. In the bloody riotwhich then ensued, District Attorney Manwell, Deputy Sheriff Riordan, anegro Porto Rican and the English boy were shot and killed. Many werewounded. The posse literally fled, and the camp remained practicallyunpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn the next day. 

"The question of social responsibility is one of the deepestsignificance. The posse was, I am convinced, over-nervous and, unfortunately, over-rigorous. This can be explained in part by thestate-wide apprehension over the I. W. W. ; in part by the normalCalifornia country posse's attitude toward a labor trouble. A deputysheriff, at the most critical moment, fired a shot in the air, as hestated, 'to sober the crowd. ' There were armed men in the crowd, forevery crowd of 2000 casual laborers includes a score of gunmen. Evidencegoes to show that even the gentler mountainfolk in the crowd had beenaroused to a sense of personal injury. ----'s automobile had broughtpart of the posse. Numberless pickers cling to the belief that the possewas '----'s police. ' When Deputy Sheriff Dakin shot into the air, afusillade took place; and when he had fired his last shell, aninfuriated crowd of men and women chased him to the ranch store, wherehe was forced to barricade himself. The crowd was dangerous and struckthe first blow. The murderous temper which turned the crowd into a mobis incompatible with social existence, let alone social progress. Thecrowd at the moment of the shooting was a wild and lawless animal. Butto your investigator the important subject to analyze is not the guiltor innocence of Ford or Suhr, as the direct stimulators of the mob inaction, but to name and standardize the early and equally importantcontributors to a psychological situation which resulted in an unlawfulkilling. If this is done, how can we omit either the filth of thehop-ranch, the cheap gun-talk of the ordinary deputy sheriff, or theunbridled, irresponsible speech of the soap-box orator?

"Without doubt the propaganda which the I. W. W. Had actually adopted forthe California seasonal worker can be, in its fairly normal working outin law, a criminal conspiracy, and under that charge, Ford and Suhr havebeen found guilty of the Wheatland murder. But the important fact is, that this propaganda will be carried out, whether unlawful or not. Wehave talked hours with the I. W. W. Leaders, and they are absolutelyconscious of their position in the eyes of the law. Their only commentis that they are glad, if it must be a conspiracy, that it is a criminalconspiracy. They have volunteered the beginning of a cure; it is toclean up the housing and wage problem of the seasonal worker. Theshrewdest I. W. W. Leader we found said: 'We can't agitate in the countryunless things are rotten enough to bring the crowd along. ' Theyevidently were in Wheatland. "

He was high ace with the Wobbly for a while. They invited him to theirJungles, they carved him presents in jail. I remember a talk he gave onsome phase of the California labor-problem one Sunday night, at theCongregational church in Oakland. The last three rows were filled withunshaven hoboes, who filed up afterwards, to the evident distress of theclean regular church-goers, to clasp his hand. They withdrew theirallegiance after a time, which naturally in no way phased Carl'sscientific interest in them. A paper hostile to Carl's attitude on theI. W. W. And his insistence on the clean-up of camps published an articleportraying him as a double-faced individual who feigned an interest inthe under-dog really to undo him, as he was at heart and pocket-book acapitalist, being the possessor of an independent income of $150, 000 ayear. Some I. W. W. 's took this up, and convinced a large meeting that hewas really trying to sell them out. It is not only the rich who arefickle. Some of them remained his firm friends always, however. Thatsummer two of his students hoboed it till they came down with malaria, in the meantime turning in a fund of invaluable facts regarding themigratory and his life. 

A year later, in his article in the "Quarterly Journal, " and, be itremembered, after his study of psychology had begun, Carl wrote:--

"There is here, beyond a doubt, a great laboring population experiencinga high suppression of normal instincts and traditions. There can be nogreater perversion of a desirable existence than this insecure, under-nourished, wandering life, with its sordid sex-expression andreckless and rare pleasures. Such a life leads to one of twoconsequences: either a sinking of the class to a low and hopeless level, where they become, through irresponsible conduct and economicinefficiency, a charge upon society; or revolt and guerrilla laborwarfare. 

"The migratory laborers, as a class, are the finished product of anenvironment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out beings mouldedafter all the standards society abhors. Fortunately the psychologistshave made it unnecessary to explain that there is nothing willful orpersonally reprehensible in the vagrancy of these vagrants. Theirhistories show that, starting with the long hours and dreary winters ofthe farms they ran away from, through their character-debasingexperience with irregular industrial labor, on to the vicious economiclife of the winter unemployed, their training predetermined but oneoutcome. Nurture has triumphed over nature; the environment hasproduced its type. Difficult though the organization of these people maybe, a coincidence of favoring conditions may place an opportunity in thehands of a super-leader. If this comes, one can be sure that Californiawill be both very astonished and very misused. "

I was told only recently of a Belgian economics professor, out here inCalifornia during the war, on official business connected with aviation. He asked at once to see Carl, but was told we had moved to Seattle. "Mycolleagues in Belgium asked me to be sure and see Professor Parker, " hesaid, "as we consider him the one man in America who understands theproblem of the migratory laborer. "

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

It was also about this time that California was treated to the spectacleof an Unemployed Army, which was driven from pillar to post, --or, inthis case, from town to town, --each trying to outdo the last inprotestations of unhospitality. Finally, in Sacramento the fire-hoseswere turned on the army. At that Carl flamed with indignation, andexpressed himself in no mincing terms, both to the public and to thereporter who sought his views. He was no hand to keep clippings, but Idid 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 inaccord with the 'careless, cruel and unscientific attitude of society onthe labor question, ' is the statement made to-day by Professor CarletonH. Parker, Assistant Professor of Industrial economy, and secretary ofthe 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. Oneway is shallow and biased; the other strives to use the simple rules ofscience for the analysis of any problem. One way is to damn the army ofthe unemployed and the irresponsible, irritating vagrants who will notwork. The other way is to admit that any such social phenomenon as thisarmy is just as normal a product of our social organization as our ownuniversity. 

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

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

The illustration he always used to express his opinion of the averagesolution 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 suspectis given a cup, and is told to empty a bucket into which water isrunning from a faucet. If the suspect turns off the water before hebegins to bail out the bucket, he is sane. Nearly all the currentsolutions of unemployment leave the faucet running. . . . 

"The heart of the problem, the cause, one might well say, ofunemployment, is that the employment of men regularly or irregularly isat no time an important consideration of those minds which controlindustry. Social organization has ordered it that these minds shall beinterested only in achieving a reasonable profit in the manufacture andthe sale of goods. Society has never demanded that industries be runeven in part to give men employment. Rewards are not held out for such apolicy, and therefore it is unreasonable to expect such a performance. Though a favorite popular belief is that we must 'work to live, ' wehave no current adage of a 'right to work. ' This winter there areshoeless 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 millscannot turn out the reasonable business profit; and since that is theonly promise that can galvanize them into activity, they stand idle, nomatter how much humanity finds of misery and death in this decision. This statement is not a peroration to a declaration for Socialism. Itseems 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 forceof profit-seeking. There is every reason to believe that profit-seekinghas been a tremendous stimulus to economic activity in the past. It isdoubtful if the present great accumulation of capital would have comeinto existence without it. But to-day it seems as it were to be caughtup by its own social consequences. It is hard to escape from theinsistence of a situation in which the money a workman makes in a yearfails to cover the upkeep of his family; and this impairment of thefather's income through unemployment has largely to be met by child-andwoman-labor. The Federal Immigration Commission's report shows that innot a single great American industry can the average yearly income ofthe father keep his family. Seven hundred and fifty dollars is the bareminimum for the maintenance of the average-sized American industrialfamily. The average yearly earnings of the heads of families working inthe United States in the iron and steel industry is $409; in bituminouscoal-mining $451; in the woolen industry $400; in silk $448; in cotton$470; in clothing $530; in boots and shoes $573; in leather $511; insugar-refining $549; in the meat industry $578; in furniture $598, etc. 

"He who decries created work, municipal lodging-houses, bread-lines, oreven sentimental charity, in the face of the winter's destitution, hasan unsocial soul. The most despicable thing to-day is the whine of ourcities lest their inadequate catering to their own homeless draw a fewvagrants from afar. But when the agony of our winter makeshifting is by, will a sufficient minority of our citizens rise and demand that the besttechnical, economic, and sociological brains in our wealthy nationdevote themselves with all courage and honesty to the problem ofunemployment?"

Carl was no diplomat, in any sense of the word--above all, no politicaldiplomat. It is a wonder that the Immigration and Housing Commissionstood behind him as long as it did. He grew rabid at every politicalappointment which, in his eyes, hampered his work. It was evident, sothey felt, that he was not tactful in his relations with various membersof the Commission. It all galled him terribly, and after muchconsultation at home, he handed in his resignation. During the firstterm of his secretaryship, from October to December, he carried hisfull-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 atonce, 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 myfather'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. Tenmonths we were there. Three days after Carl resigned, he was on his wayto Phoenix, Arizona, --where there was a threatened union tie-up, --asUnited States Government investigator of the labor situation. He addedthereby to his first-hand stock of labor-knowledge, made a firm friendof Governor Hunt, --he was especially interested in his prisonpolicy, --and in those few weeks was the richer by one more of the reallyintimate friendships one counts on to the last--Will Scarlett. 

He wrote, on Carl's death, "What a horrible, hideous loss! Any of uscould so easily have been spared; that he, who was of such value, had togo seems such an utter waste. . . . He was one of that very, very smallcircle of men, whom, in the course of our lives, we come _really_ tolove. His friendship meant so much--though I heard but infrequently fromhim, there was the satisfaction of a deep friendship that was _alwaysthere_ and _always the same_. He would have gone so far! I have lookedforward to a great career for him, and had such pride in him. It's toohideous!"

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 thelittle supper all ready by the fire; then I would prowl down the roadwith my electric torch, to meet him coming home; he would signal in thedistance with his torch, and I with mine. Then the walk back together, sometimes ankle-deep in mud; then supper, making the toast over thecoals, and an evening absolutely to ourselves. And never in all ourlives did we ask for more joy than that. 

That spring we began building our very own home in Berkeley. The monthsin Alamo had made us feel that we could never bear to be in the centreof things again, nor, for that matter, could we afford a lot in thecentre of things; so we bought high up on the Berkeley hills, where wecould realize as much privacy as was possible, and yet where our friendscould reach us--if they could stand the climb. The love of a nest webuilt! We were longer in that house than anywhere else: two years almostto 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 windowoverlooking the Golden Gate, we had the suppers that meant much joy tous and I hope to the friends we gathered around us. There, on theporches overhanging the very Canyon itself we had our Sundaytea-parties. (Each time Carl would plead, "I don't have to wear a stiffcollar, do I?" and he knew that I would answer, "You wear anything youwant, " 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 wasborn, the daughter who was to be the very light of her adoring father'seyes. (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 notborn up on the hill; but in ten days we were back from the hospital andout day and night through that glorious July, on some one of the porchesoverlooking the bay and the hills. And we added our adored Nurse Balchas 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 livesday in and day out. No one assumes anything before a trained nurse--theyare around too constantly for that. They see the misery in homes, theysee what joy there is. And Nurse Balch saw, because she was aroundpractically all the time for six weeks, that there was nothing but joyevery minute of the day in our home. I do not know how I can make peopleunderstand, who are used to just ordinary happiness, what sort of a lifeCarl and I led. It was not just that we got along. It was an active, nota passive state. There was never a home-coming, say at lunch-time, thatdid not seem an event--when our curve of happiness abruptly rose. Mealswere joyous occasions always; perhaps too scant attention paid to themanners of the young, but much gurglings, and "Tell some more, daddy, "and always detailed accounts of every little happening during the lastfew hours of separation. 

Then there was ever the difficulty of good-byes, though it meant onlyfor a few hours, until supper. And at supper-time he would come up thefront stairs, I waiting for him at the top, perhaps limping. That washis little joke--we had many little family jokes. Limping meant that Iwas to look in every pocket until I unearthed a bag of peanut candy. Usually he was laden with bundles--provisions, shoes from the cobbler, atennis-racket restrung, and an armful of books. After greetings, alwaysthe question, "How's my June-Bug?" and a family procession upstairs topeer 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-Bugwas born, when Carl was teaching in Summer School, that we had ourdefinite enthusiasm over labor-psychology aroused. Will Ogburn, who wasalso teaching at Summer School that year, and whose lectures I attended, introduced us to Hart's "Psychology of Insanity, " several books byFreud, McDougall's "Social Psychology, " etc. I remember Carl's seminarthe following spring--his last seminar at the University of California. He had started with nine seminar students three years before; now therewere thirty-three. They were all such a superior picked lot, someseniors, mostly graduates, that he felt there was no one he could ask tostay out. I visited it all the term, and I am sure that nowhere else onthe campus could quite such heated and excited discussions have beenheard--Carl simply sitting at the head of the table, directing here, leading there. 

The general subject was Labor-Problems. The students had to read onebook a week--such books as Hart's "Psychology of Insanity, " Keller's"Societal Evolution, " Holt's "Freudian Wish, " McDougall's "SocialPsychology, "--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 SocialProblems, " 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 Isat in his seminar on Labor-Problems, and had we both been there tenyears longer, each season would have found me in his class. Hisinfluence on my intellectual life was by far the most stimulating andhelpful of all the men I have known. . . . But his spirit and influencewill 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 afew weeks several of the boys asked Carl if they could have a littlesub-seminar. It was a very rushed time for him, but he said that, ifthey would arrange all the details, he would save them Tuesday evenings. So every Tuesday night about a dozen boys climbed our hill to rediscussthe subject of the seminar of that afternoon--and everything else underthe heavens and beyond. I laid out ham sandwiches, or sausages, or someedible dear to the male heart, and coffee to be warmed, and aboutmidnight could be heard the sounds of banqueting from the kitchen. Threestudents told me on graduation that those Tuesday nights at our househad meant more intellectual stimulus than anything that ever came intotheir 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 Ihave ever had the privilege of associating with, I seemed to havestopped thinking. It didn't seem possible to me, and I can remember veryclearly of thinking what a rotten world this is when we have to live andlose a man like Doc. I have talked to two men who were associated withhim in somewhat the same manner as I was, and we simply looked at oneanother after the first sentences, and then I guess the thoughts of aman who had made so much of an impression on our minds drove coherentspeech away. . . . I have had the opportunity since leaving college ofexperiencing something real besides college life and I can't rememberduring all that period of not having wondered how Dr. Parker wouldhandle 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 saythat I had that love for him. "

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

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

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

From one of the young officers at Camp Lewis: "When E---- told me aboutCarl's illness last Wednesday, I resolved to go and see him the comingweek-end. I carried out my resolution, only to find that I could seeneither him nor you. [This was the day before Carl's death. ] It was agreat disappointment to me, so I left some flowers and went away. . . . Isimply could not leave Seattle without seeing Carl once more, so I madeup my mind to go out to the undertaker's. The friends I was withdiscouraged the idea, but it was too strong within me. There was a voidwithin me which could only be filled by seeing my friend once more. Iwent out there and stood by his side for quite a while. I recalled thehappy days spent with him on the campus. I thought of his kindliness, his loyalty, his devotion. Carl Parker shall always occupy a place inthe recesses of my memory as a true example of nobility. It was hard forme to leave, but I felt much better. "

From one of his women students: "Always from the first day when I knewhim he seemed to give me a joy of life and an inspiration to work whichno other person or thing has ever given me. And it is a joy and aninspiration I shall always keep. I seldom come to a stumbling-block inmy work that I don't stop to wonder what Carl Parker would do were hesolving that problem. "

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

"We could not do without him. He meant too much to us. . . . I come now asa young friend to put myself by your side a moment and to try to share agreat sorrow which is mine almost as much as it is yours. For I am surethat, 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 bothin 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 theyoungsters--the day just before I graduated when mother and I had lunchat your house . . . And, finally, that day I left you, and you said, bothof 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 allcomers--that inexhaustible and incorrigible fund of humor--those welose. 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 andinspiration are not lost, and shall not be. No one has counted theyoungsters he has hauled, by the scruff of the neck as often as not, outof a slough of middle-class mediocrity, and sent careering off into somewelter or current of ideas and conjecture. Carl didn't know where theywould end, and no more do any of the rest of us. He knew he loathedstagnation. And he stirred things and stirred people. And the end of thestirring is far from being yet known or realized. "

I like, too, a story one of the Regents told me. He ran into a studentfrom 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 bornagain! ["Born again"--those were his very words. ] I entered collegethinking 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 takingeverything he gives. Now I know I'd be selling out my life to make moneythe goal. I know now, too, that whatever money I do make can never be atthe 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 tomean great things to the Parkers--Max Rosenberg. He had heard Carllecture once or twice, had met him through our good friend Dr. Brown, and a warm friendship had developed. In the spring of 1916 we weresomewhat tempted by a call to another University--$1700 was really not afortune to live on, and to make both ends meet and prepare for theJune-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 acall came that appealed to us in several ways, besides paying a muchlarger salary, we seriously considered it. About then "Uncle Max" rangup from San Francisco and asked Carl to see him before answering thisother 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 upthe minute he left Max--we wondered so hard what he might mean. And whathe did mean was the most wonderful idea that ever entered a friend'shead. He felt that Carl had a real message to give the world, and thathe should write a book. He also realized that it was impossible to findtime for a book under the circumstances. Therefore he proposed that Carlshould take a year's leave of absence and let Max finance him--not onlyjust finance him, but allow for a trip throughout the East for him toget the inspiration of contact with other men in his field; and enoughwithal, so that there should be no skimping anywhere and the littlefamily at home should have everything they needed. 

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

This all meant, to get the fulness out of it, that Carl must make a tripof at least four months in the East. At first he planned to return inthe middle of it and then go back again; but somehow four months spentas we planned it out for him seemed so absolutely marvelous, --anopportunity of a lifetime, --that joy for him was greater in my soul thanthe dread of a separation. It was different from any other parting wehad ever had. I was bound that I would not shed a single tear when I sawhim 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 ourfine talk, we prowled down our hillside and found our way to our firstCharlie Chaplin film. We laughed until we cried--we really did. So thatnight, seeing Carl off, we went over that Charlie Chaplin film in detailand let ourselves think and talk of nothing else. We laughed all overagain, and Carl went off laughing, and I waved good-bye laughing. Blessthat Charlie Chaplin film!

It would not take much imagination to realize what that trip meant toCarl--and through him to me. From the time he first felt the importanceof the application of modern psychology to the study of economics, hebecame more and more intellectually isolated from his colleagues. Theyhad no interest in, no sympathy for, no understanding of, what he wasdriving at. From May, when college closed, to October, when he left forthe East, he read prodigiously. He had a mind for assimilation--he knewwhere to store every new piece of knowledge he acquired, and keptthereby an orderly brain. He read more than a book a week: everything hecould lay hands on in psychology, anthropology, biology, philosophy, psycho-analysis--every field which he felt contributed to his owngrowing conviction that orthodox economics had served its day. And howhe gloried in that reading! It had been years since he had been able todo anything but just keep up with his daily lectures, such was thepressure he was working under. Bless his heart, he was always comingacross something that was just too good to hold in, and I would hear himcome upstairs two steps at a time, bolt into the kitchen, and say: "Justlisten to this!" And he would read an extract from some new-foundtreasure that would make him glow. 

But outside of myself, --and I was only able to keep up with him by themerest skimmings, --and one or two others at most, there was no one whounderstood what he was driving at. As his reading and convictions grew, he waxed more and more outraged at the way Economics was handled in hisown University. He saw student after student having every ounce ofintellectual curiosity ground out of them by a process of economiceducation that would stultify a genius. Any student who continued hiseconomic studies did so in spite of the introductory work, not becausehe had had one little ounce of enthusiasm aroused in his soul. Carlwould walk the floor with his hands in his pockets when kindredspirits--especially students who had gone through the mill, and asseniors or graduates looked back outraged at certain courses they hadhad to flounder through--brought up the subject of Economics at theUniversity of California. 

Off he went then on his pilgrimage, --his ResearchMagnificent, --absolutely unknown to almost every man he hoped to seebefore his return. The first stop he made was at Columbia, Missouri, tosee his idol Veblen. He quaked a bit beforehand, --had heard Veblen mightnot see him, --but the second letter from Missouri began, "Just got inafter thirteen hours with Veblen. It went wonderfully and I am tickledto death. He O. K. S my idea entirely and said I could not go wrong. . . . Gee, but it is some grand experience to go up against him. "

In the next letter he told of a graduate student who came out to get hisadvice regarding a thesis-subject in labor. "I told him to go to his NewEngland home and study the reaction of machine-industry on the life ofthe town. That is a typical Veblen subject. It scared the student todeath, and Veblen chuckled over my advice. " In Wisconsin he wasespecially anxious to see Guyer. Of his visit with him he wrote: "It wasa whiz of a session. He is just my meat. " At Yale he saw Keller. "He isa wonder and is going to do a lot for me in criticism. "

Then began the daily letters from New York, and every single letter--notonly from New York but from every other place he happened to be in:Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cambridge--told of at least one intellectualEvent--with a capital E--a day. No one ever lived who had a morestimulating experience. Friends would ask me: "What is the news fromCarl?" And I would just gasp. Every letter was so full of the newinfluences coming into his life, that it was impossible to give even anidea of the history in the making that was going on with the Parkers. 

In the first days in New York he saw T. H. Morgan. "I just walked in onhim and introduced myself baldly, and he is a corker. A remarkabletalker, with a mind like a flash. I am to see him again. To-morrow willbe a big day for me--I'll see Hollingworth, and very probably Thorndike, and I'll know then something of what I'll get out of New York. " Nextday: "Called on Hollingworth to-day. He gave me some invaluable data andopinions. . . . To-morrow I see Thorndike. " And the next day: "I'm sojoyful and excited over Thorndike. He was so enthusiastic over mywork. . . . He at once had brass-tack ideas. Said I was right--that strikesusually started because of small and very human violations of man'sinnate dispositions. "

Later he called on Professor W. C. Mitchell. "He went into my thesis veryfully and is all for it. Professor Mitchell knows more than any one theimportance of psychology to economics and he is all for my study. Gee, but I get excited after such a session. I bet I'll get out a real book, my girl!"

After one week in New York he wrote: "The trip has paid for itself now, and I'm dead eager to view the time when I begin my writing. " Later:"Just got in from a six-hour session with the most important group ofemployers in New York. I sat in on a meeting of the Building TradesBoard where labor delegates and employers appeared. After two hours ofit (awfully interesting) the Board took me to dinner and we talkedlabor stuff till ten-thirty. Gee, it was fine, and I got oceans ofstuff. "

Then came Boas, and more visits with Thorndike. "To-night I put in sixhours with Thorndike, and am pleased plum to death. . . . Under hisfriendly stimulus I developed a heap of new ideas; and say, wait till Ibegin writing! I'll have ten volumes at the present rate. . . . This visitwith Thorndike was worth the whole trip. " (And in turn Thorndike wroteme: "The days that he and I spent together in New York talking of thesethings are one of my finest memories and I appreciate the chance thatlet me meet him. ") He wrote from the Harvard Club, where Walter Lippmannput him up: "The Dad is a 'prominent clubman. ' Just lolled back atlunch, in a room with animals (stuffed) all around the walls, andwaiters flying about, and a ceiling up a mile. Gee!" Later: "I just hada most wonderful visit with the Director of the National Committee forMental Hygiene, Dr. Solman, and he is a wiz, a wiz!"

Next day: "Had a remarkable visit with Dr. Gregory this A. M. He is oneof the greatest psychiatrists in New York and up on balkings, businesstension, and the mental effect of monotonous work. He was so worked upover my explanation of unrest (a mental status) throughinstinct-balkings other than sex, that he asked if I would considerusing his big psychopathic ward as a laboratory field for my own work. Then he dated me up for a luncheon at which three of the biggest mentalspecialists in New York will be present, to talk over the manner inwhich psychiatry will aid my research! I can't say how tickled I amover his attitude. " Next letter: "At ten reached Dr. Pierce Bailey's, the big psychiatrist, and for an hour and a half we talked, and I wassimply tickled to death. He is really a wonder and I was veryenthused. . . . Before leaving he said: 'You come to dinner Friday nighthere and I will have Dr. Paton from Princeton and I'll get in some moreto meet you. ' . . . Then I beat it to the 'New Republic' offices, and satdown to dinner with the staff plus Robert Bruère, and the subject became'What is a labor policy?' The Dad, he did his share, he did, and had agreat row with Walter Lippmann and Bruère. Walter Lippmann said: 'Thiswon't do--you have made me doubt a lot of things. You come to lunch withme Friday at the Harvard Club and we'll thrash it all out. ' Says I, 'Allright!' Then says Croly, 'This won't do; we'll have a dinner here thefollowing Monday night, and I'll get Felix Frankfurter down from Boston, and we'll thrash it out some more!' Says I, 'All right!' And says Mr. Croly, private, 'You come to dinner with us on Sunday!'--'All right, 'sez Dad. Dr. Gregory has me with Dr. Solman on Monday, and HarryOverstreet on Wednesday, Thorndike on Saturday, and gee, but I'll beatit for New Haven on Thursday, or I'll die of up-torn brain. "

Are you realizing what this all meant to my Carl--until recently readingand pegging away unencouraged in his basement study up on the Berkeleyhills?

The next day he heard Roosevelt at the Ritz-Carton. "Then I watched thatremarkable man wind the crowd almost around his finger. It was great, and pure psychology; and say, fool women and some fool men; but T. R. Went on blithely as if every one was an intellectual giant. " That nighta dinner with Winston Churchill. Next letter: "Had a simply superb talkwith Hollingworth for two and a half hours this afternoon. . . . The dinnerwas the four biggest psychiatrists in New York and Dad. Made me simplyyell, it did. . . . It was for my book simply superb. All is going sowonderfully. " Next day: "Now about the Thorndike dinner: it wasgrand. . . . I can't tell you how much these talks are maturing my ideasabout the book. I think in a different plane and am certain that myideas are surer. There have come up a lot of odd problems touching theconflict, so-called, between intelligence and instinct, and these I'mgetting thrashed out grandly. " After the second "New Republic" dinner hewrote: "Lots of important people there . . . Felix Frankfurter, twojudges, and the two Goldmarks, Pierce Bailey, etc. , and the wholestaff. . . . Had been all day with Dr. Gregory and other psychiatrists andhad met Police Commissioner Woods . . . A wonderfully rich day. . . . Imust run for a date with Professor Robinson and then to meet Howe, theImmigration Commissioner. "

Then a trip to Ellis Island, and at midnight that same date he wrote:"Just had a most truly remarkable--eight-thirty to twelve--visit withProfessor Robinson, he who wrote that European history we bought inGermany. " Then a trip to Philadelphia, being dined and entertained byvarious members of the Wharton School faculty. Then the Yale-Harvardgame, followed by three days and two nights in the psychopathic ward atSing Sing. "I found in the psychiatrist at the prison a true wonder--Dr. Glueck. He has a viewpoint on instincts which differs from any one thatI have met. " The next day, back in New York: "Just had a most remarkablevisit with Thomas Mott Osborne. " Later in the same day: "Just had anabsolutely grand visit and lunch with Walter Lippmann . . . It was aboutthe best talk with regard to my book that I have had in the East. He isan intellectual wonder and a big, good-looking, friendly boy. I'm forhim a million. "

Then his visit with John Dewey. "I put up to him my regularquestions--the main one being the importance of the conflict betweenMacDougall and the Freudians. . . . He was cordiality itself. I amexpecting red-letter days with him. My knowledge of the subject isincreasing fast. " Then a visit with Irving Fisher at New Haven. The nextnight "was simply remarkable. " Irving Fisher took him to a banquet inNew York, in honor of some French dignitaries, with President Wilsonpresent--"at seven dollars a plate!" As to President Wilson, "He wassimply great--almost the greatest, in fact is the greatest, speaker Ihave ever heard. "

Then a run down to Cambridge, every day crammed to the edges. "Hadbreakfast with Felix Frankfurter. He has the grand spirit and does sofinely appreciate what my subject means. He walked me down to see afriend of his, Laski, intellectually a sort of marvel--knows psychologyand philosophy cold--grand talk. Then I called on Professor Gay and hedated me for a dinner to-morrow night. Luncheon given to me by ProfessorTaussig--that was _fine_. . . . Then I flew to see E. B. Holt for an hour[his second visit there]. Had a grand visit, and then at six was takenwith Gay to dinner with the visiting Deans at the Boston Harvard Club. "(Mr. Holt wrote: "I met Mr. Parker briefly in the winter of 1916-17, briefly, but so very delightfully! I felt that he was an ally and abrilliant one. ")

I give these many details because you must appreciate what this newwonder-world meant to a man who was considered nobody much by his ownUniversity. 

Then one day a mere card: "This is honestly a day in which no twominutes of free time exist--so superbly grand has it gone and sofruitful for the book--the best of all yet. One of the biggest men inthe United States (Cannon of Harvard) asked me to arrange my thesis tobe analyzed by a group of experts in the field. " Next day he wrote: "Upat six-forty-five, and at seven-thirty I was at Professor Cannon's. Iput my thesis up to him strong and got one of the most encouraging andstimulating receptions I have had. He took me in to meet his wife, andsaid: 'This young man has stimulated and aroused me greatly. We must gethis thesis formally before a group. '" Later, from New York: "Fromseven-thirty to eleven-thirty I argued with Dr. A. A. Brill, whotranslated all of Freud!!! and it was simply wonderful. I came home attwelve and wrote up a lot. "

Later he went to Washington with Walter Lippmann. They ran into ColonelHouse on the train, and talked foreign relations for two and a halfhours. "My hair stood on end at the importance of what he said. " FromWashington he wrote: "Am having one of the Great Experiences of my younglife. " Hurried full days in Philadelphia, with a most successful talkbefore the University of Pennsylvania Political and Social ScienceConference ("Successful, " was the report to me later of several who werepresent), and extreme kindness and hospitality from all the Whartongroup. He rushed to Baltimore, and at midnight, December 31, he wrote:"I had from eleven-thirty to one P. M. An absolute supergrand talk withAdolph Meyer and John Watson. He is a grand young southerner and simplyknows his behavioristic psychology in a way to make one's hair stand up. We talked my plan clear out and they are _enthusiastic_. . . . Things aregoing _grandly_. " Next day: "Just got in from dinner with Adolph Meyer. He is simply a wonder. . . . At nine-thirty I watched Dr. Campbell give agirl Freudian treatment for a suicide mania. She had been a worker in astraw-hat factory and had a true industrial psychosis--the kind I amlooking for. " Then, later: "There is absolutely no doubt that the triphas been my making. I have learned a lot of background, things, andstandards, that will put their stamp on my development. "

Almost every letter would tell of some one visit which "alone was worththe trip East. " Around Christmastime home-longings got extra strong--hewrote five letters in three days. I really wish I could quote some fromthem--where he said for instance: "My, but it is good for a fellow to bewith his family and awful to be away from it. " And again: "I want to beinterrupted, I do. I'm all for that. I remember how Jim and Nand used tocome into my study for a kiss and then go hastily out upon urgentaffairs. I'm for that. . . . I've got my own folk and they make the rest ofthe world thin and pale. The blessedness of babies is beyond words, butthe blessedness of a wife is such that one can't start in on it. "

Then came the Economic-Convention at Columbus--letters too full to beginto quote from them. "I'm simply having the time of my life . . . Every oneis here. " In a talk when he was asked to fill in at the last minute, hepresented "two arguments why trade-unions alone could not be depended onto bring desirable change in working conditions through collectivebargaining: one, because they were numerically so few in contrast to thenumber of industrial workers, and, two, because the reforms about to bedemanded were technical, medical, and generally of scientific character, and skilled experts employed by the state would be necessary. "

Back again in New York, he wrote: "It just raises my hair to feel I'mnot where a Dad ought to be. My blessed, precious family! I tell youthere isn't anything in this world like a wife and babies and I'm forthat life that puts me close. I'm near smart enough to last a heap ofyears. Though when I see how my trip makes me feel alive in my head andenthusiastic, I know it has been worth while. . . . " Along in January heworked his thesis up in writing. "Last night I read my paper to theRobinsons after the dinner and they had Mr. And Mrs. John Dewey there. Amost superb and grand discussion followed, the Deweys going home ateleven-thirty and I stayed to talk to one A. M. I slept dreaming wildlyof the discussion. . . . Then had an hour and a half with Dewey on certainmoot points. That talk was even more superb and resultful to me and I'mjust about ready to quit. . . . I need now to write and read. "

I quote a bit here and there from a paper written in New York in 1917, because, though hurriedly put together and never meant for publication, it describes Carl's newer approach to Economics and especially to theproblem of Labor. 

"In 1914 I was asked to investigate a riot among 2800 migratoryhop-pickers in California which had resulted in five deaths, many-foldmore wounded, hysteria, fear, and a strange orgy of irresponsiblepersecution by the county authorities--and, on the side of the laborers, conspiracy, barn-burnings, sabotage, and open revolutionary propaganda. I had been teaching labor-problems for a year, and had studied them intwo American universities, under Sidney Webb in London, and in fouruniversities of Germany. I found that I had no fundamentals which couldbe called good tools with which to begin my analysis of this riot. And Ifelt myself merely a conventional if astonished onlooker before thetheoretically abnormal but manifestly natural emotional activity whichswept over California. After what must have been a most usualintellectual cycle of, first, helplessness, then conventionalcataloguing, some rationalizing, some moralizing, and an extensivefeeling of shallowness and inferiority, I called the job done. 

"By accident, somewhat later, I was loaned two books of Freud, and Ifelt after the reading, that I had found a scientific approach whichmight lead to the discovery of important fundamentals for a study ofunrest and violence. Under this stimulation, I read, during a year and ahalf, general psychology, physiology and anthropology, eugenics, all thespecial material I could find on Mendelism, works on mental hygiene, feeblemindedness, insanity, evolution of morals and character, andfinally found a resting-place in a field which seems to be bestdesignated as Abnormal and Behavioristic Psychology. My quest throughoutthis experience seemed to be pretty steadily a search for thoseirreducible fundamentals which I could use in getting a technicallydecent opinion on that riot. In grand phrases, I was searching for theScientific Standard of Value to be used in analyzing Human Behavior. 

"Economics (which officially holds the analysis of labor-problems) hasbeen allowed to devote itself almost entirely to the production ofgoods, and to neglect entirely the consumption of goods and humanorganic welfare. The lip-homage given by orthodox economics to the fieldof consumption seems to be inspired merely by the feeling that disastermight overcome production if workers were starved or business mendiscouraged. . . . So, while official economic science tinkers at itstransient institutions which flourish in one decade and pass out in thenext, abnormal and behavioristic psychology, physiology, psychiatry, arebuilding in their laboratories, by induction from human specimens ofmodern economic life, a standard of human values and an elucidation ofbehavior fundamentals which alone we must use in our legislative orpersonal modification of modern civilization. It does not seem anoverstatement to say that orthodox economics has cleanly overlooked twoof the most important generalizations about human life which can bephrased, and those are, --

"That human life is dynamic, that change, movement, evolution, are itsbasic characteristics. 

"That self-expression, and therefore freedom of choice and movement, areprerequisites to a satisfying human state. "

After giving a description of the instincts he writes:--

"The importance to me of the following description of the innatetendencies or instincts lies in their relation to my main explanation ofeconomic behavior which is, --

"First, that these tendencies are persistent, are far less warped ormodified by the environment than we believe; that they function quite asthey have for several hundred thousand years; that they, as motives, intheir various normal or perverted habit-form, can at times dominatesingly the entire behavior, and act as if they were a clear characterdominant. 

"Secondly, that if the environment through any of the conventionalinstruments of repression, such as religious orthodoxy, universitymental discipline, economic inferiority, imprisonment, physicaldisfigurement, --such as short stature, hare-lip, etc. , --repress the fullpsychological expression in the field of these tendencies, then apsychic revolt, slipping into abnormal mental functioning, takes place, and society accuses the revolutionist of being either willfullyinefficient, alcoholic, a syndicalist, supersensitive, an agnostic, orinsane. "

I hesitate somewhat to give his programme as set forth in this paper. Ihave already mentioned that it was written in the spring of 1917, andhurriedly. In referring to this very paper in a letter from New York, hesaid, "Of course it is written in part _to call out_ comments, and sothe statements are strong and unmodified. " Let that fact, then, be bornein mind, and also the fact that he may have altered his views somewhatin the light of his further studies and readings--although again, suchstudies may only have strengthened the following ideas. I cannot nowtrust to my memory for what discussions we may have had on the subject. 

"Reform means a militant minority, or, to follow Trotter, a small Herd. This little Herd would give council, relief, and recuperation to itsmembers. The members of the Herd will be under merciless fire from theconvention-ridden members of general society. They will be brandedoutlaws, radicals, agnostics, impossible, crazy. They will be lucky tobe out of jail most of the time. They will work by trial and study, gaining wisdom by their errors, as Sidney Webb and the Fabians did. Inthe end, after a long time, parts of the social sham will collapse, asit did in England, and small promises will become milestones ofprogress. 

"From where, then, can we gain recruits for this minority? Two realsources seem in existence--the universities and the field ofmental-disease speculation and hospital experiment. The one, theuniversities, with rare if wonderful exceptions, are fairly hopeless;the other is not only rich in promise, but few realize how full inperformance. Most of the literature which is gripping that greatintellectual no-man's land of the silent readers, is basing its appeal, and its story, on the rather uncolored and bald facts which come fromFreud, Trotter, Robinson, Dewey, E. B. Holt, Lippmann, Morton Prince, Pierce, Bailey, Jung, Hart, Overstreet, Thorndike, Campbell, Meyer andWatson, Stanley Hall, Adler, White. It is from this field of comparativeor abnormal psychology that the challenge to industrialism and theprogramme of change will come. 

"But suppose you ask me to be concrete and give an idea of such aprogramme. 

"Take simply the beginning of life, take childhood, for that is wherethe human material is least protected, most plastic, and where mostinjury to-day is done. In the way of general suggestion, I would say, exclude children from formal disciplinary life, such as that of allindustry and most schools, up to the age of eighteen. After excludingthem, what shall we do with them? Ask John Dewey, I suggest, or readhis 'Schools of To-morrow, ' or 'Democracy and Education. ' It meanstremendous, unprecedented money expense to ensure an active trial anderror-learning activity; a chance naturally to recapitulate the racialtrial and error-learning experience; a study and preparation of thoseperiods of life in which fall the ripening of the relatively latematuring instincts; a general realizing that wisdom can come only fromexperience, and not from the Book. It means psychologically calculatedchildhood opportunity, in which the now stifled instincts of leadership, workmanship, hero-worship, hunting, migration, meditation, sex, couldgrow and take their foundation place in the psychic equipment of abiologically promising human being. To illustrate in trivialities, nofather, with knowledge of the meaning of the universal bent towardsworkmanship, would give his son a puzzle if he knew of the Mecano orErector toys, and no father would give the Mecano if he had grasped theeducational potentiality of the gift to his child of $10 worth of lumberand a set of good carpenter's tools. There is now enough loose wisdomaround devoted to childhood, its needed liberties and experiences, bothto give the children of this civilization their first evolutionarychance, and to send most teachers back to the farm. 

"In the age-period of 18 to 30 would fall that pseudo-educationalmonstrosity, the undergraduate university, and the degrading popularactivities of 'beginning a business' or 'picking up a trade. ' Much moneymust be spent here. Perhaps few fields of activity have beenconventionalized as much as university education. Here, just where asuperficial theorist would expect to find enthusiasm, emancipated minds, and hope, is found fear, convention, a mean instinct-life, no spirit ofadventure, little curiosity, in general no promise of preparedness. Nowonder philosophical idealism flourishes and Darwin is forgotten. 

"The first two years of University life should be devoted to the Scienceof Human Behavior. Much of to-day's biology, zoölogy, history, if it isinterpretive, psychology, if it is behavioristic, philosophy, if it ispragmatic, literature, if it had been written involuntarily, would findits place here. The last two years could be profitably spent inappraising with that ultimate standard of value gained in the first twoyears, the various institutions and instruments used by civilized man. All instruction would be objective, scientific, and emancipated fromconvention--wonderful prospect!

"In industrial labor and in business employments a new concept, a newgoing philosophy must be unreservedly accepted, which has, instead ofthe ideal of forcing the human beings to mould their habits to assistthe continued existence of the inherited order of things, an ideal ofmoulding all business institutions and ideas of prosperity in theinterests of scientific evolutionary aims and large human pleasures. AsPigou has said, 'Environment has its children as well as men. ' Monotonyin labor, tedium in officework, time spent in business correspondence, the boredom of running a sugar refinery, would be asked to step beforethe bar of human affairs and get a health standardization. To-dayindustry produces goods that cost more than they are worth, are consumedby persons who are degraded by the consuming; it is destroyingpermanently the raw-material source which, science has painfullyexplained, could be made inexhaustible. Some intellectual revolutionmust come which will _de_-emphasize business and industry and_re_-emphasize most other ways of self-expression. 

"In Florence, around 1300, Giotto painted a picture, and the day it wasto be hung in St. Mark's, the town closed down for a holiday, and thepeople, with garlands of flowers and songs, escorted the picture fromthe artist's studio to the church. Three weeks ago I stood, in companywith 500 silent, sallow-faced men, at a corner on Wall Street, a coldand wet corner, till young Morgan issued from J. P. Morgan & Company, andwalked 20 feet to his carriage. --We produce, probably, per capita, 1000times more in weight of ready-made clothing, Irish lace, artificialflowers, terra cotta, movie-films, telephones, and printed matter thanthose Florentines did, but we have, with our 100, 000, 000 inhabitants, yet to produce that little town, her Dante, her Andrea del Sarto, herMichael Angelo, her Leonardo da Vinci, her Savonarola, her Giotto, orthe group who followed Giotto's picture. Florence had a marvelousenergy--re-lease experience. All our industrial formalism, ourconventionalized young manhood, our schematized universities, areinstruments of balk and thwart, are machines to produce protestingabnormality, to block efficiency. So the problem of industrial labor isone with the problem of the discontented business man, the indifferentstudent, the unhappy wife, the immoral minister--it is one ofmaladjustment between a fixed human nature and a carelessly orderedworld. The result is suffering, insanity, racial-perversion, and danger. The final cure is gaining acceptance for a new standard of morality; thefirst step towards this is to break down the mores-inhibitions to freeexperimental thinking. "

If only the time had been longer--if only the Book itself could havebeen finished! For he _had_ a great message. He was writing about athousand words a day on it the following summer, at Castle Crags, whenthe War Department called him into mediation work and not another worddid he ever find time to add to it. It stands now about one third done. I shall get that third ready for publication, together with some of hisshorter articles. There have been many who have offered their servicesin completing the Book, but the field is so new, Carl's contribution sounique, that few men in the whole country understand the ground enoughto be of service. It was not so much to be a book on Labor as onLabor-Psychology--and that is almost an unexplored field. 

CHAPTER XII

Three days after Carl started east, on his arrival in Seattle, PresidentSuzzallo called him to the University of Washington as Head of theDepartment of Economics and Dean of the College of BusinessAdministration, his work to begin the following autumn. It seemed anideal opportunity. He wrote: "I am very, very attracted by Suzzallo. . . . He said that I should be allowed to plan the work as I wished and callthe men I wished, and could call at least five. I cannot imagine abetter man to work with nor a better proposition than the one he put upto me. . . . The job itself will let me teach what I wish and in my ownway. I can give Introductory Economics, and Labor, and IndustrialOrganization, etc. " Later, he telegraphed from New York, where he hadagain seen Suzzallo: "Have accepted Washington's offer. . . . Details ofjob even more satisfactory than before. "

So, sandwiched in between all the visits and interviews over the Book, were many excursions about locating new men for the University ofWashington. I like to think of what the three Pennsylvania men he wantedhad to say about him. Seattle seemed very far away to them--they weredoubtful, very. Then they heard the talk before the Conference referredto above, and every one of the three accepted his call. As one of themexpressed it to his wife later: "I'd go anywhere for that man. " Betweenthat Seattle call and his death there were eight universities, some ofthem the biggest in the country, which wished Carl Parker to be on theirfaculties. One smaller university held out the presidency to him. Besides this, there were nine jobs outside of University work that wereoffered him, from managing a large mine to doing research work inEurope. He had come into his own. 

It was just before we left Berkeley that the University of Californiaasked Carl to deliver an address, explaining his approach to economics. It was, no doubt, the most difficult talk he ever gave. There under hisvery nose sat his former colleagues, his fellow members in the EconomicsDepartment, and he had to stand up in public and tell them just howinadequate he felt most of their teaching to be. The head of theDepartment came in a trifle late and left immediately after the lecture. He could hardly have been expected to include himself in the group whogathered later around Carl to express their interest in his stand. Ishall quote a bit from this paper to show Carl's ideas on orthodoxeconomics. 

"This brings one to perhaps the most costly delinquency of modernEconomics, and that is its refusal to incorporate into its weighings andappraisals the facts and hypotheses of modern psychology. Nothing in thepostulates of the science of Economics is as ludicrous as its catalogueof human wants. Though the practice of ascribing 'faculties' to man hasbeen passed by psychology into deserved discard, Economics stillmaintains, as basic human qualities, a galaxy of vague and ratherspiritual faculties. It matters not that, in the place of the primitiveconcepts of man stimulated to activity by a single trucking sense, or afree and uninfluenced force called a soul, or a 'desire for financialindependence, ' psychology has established a human being possessed ofmore instincts than any animal, and with a psychical nature whoseactivities fall completely within the causal law. 

"It would be a great task and a useless one to work through currenteconomic literature and gather the strange and mystical collection ofhuman dispositions which economists have named the springs of humanactivity. They have no relation to the modern researches into humanbehavior of psychology or physiology. They have an interesting relationonly to the moral attributes postulated in current religion. 

"But more important and injurious than the caricaturing of wants hasbeen the disappearance from Economics of any treatment or interest inhuman behavior and the evolution of human character in Economic life. This is explained in large part by the self-divorce of Economics fromthe biological field; but also in an important way by the exclusion fromEconomics of considerations of consumption. 

"Only under the influence of the social and educational psychologistsand behaviorists could child-labor, the hobo, unemployment, poverty, andcriminality be given their just emphasis; and it seems accurate toascribe the social sterility of Economic theory and its programme to itsignorance and lack of interest in modern comparative psychology. 

"A deeper knowledge of human instincts would never have allowedAmerican economists to keep their faith in a simple rise of wages as anall-cure for labor unrest. In England, with a homogeneous labor class, active in politics, maintaining university extension courses, spendingtheir union's income on intricate betterment schemes, and wealthy intradition--there a rise in wages meant an increase in welfare. But inthe United States, with a heterogeneous labor class, bereft of theirsocial norms by the violence of their uprooting from the old world, dropped into an unprepared and chaotic American life, with its insidiousprestige--here a rise in wages could and does often mean addedostentation, social climbing, superficial polishing, new vice. Thissocial perversion in the consuming of the wage-increase is without theken of the economist. He cannot, if he would, think of it, for he has nomental tools, no norms applicable for entrance into the medley of humanmotives called consumption. 

"For these many reasons economic thinking has been weak and futile inthe problems of conservation, of haphazard invention, of unrestrictedadvertising, of anti-social production, of the inadequacy of income, ofcriminality. These are problems within the zone of the intimate life ofthe population. They are economic problems, and determine efficiencieswithin the whole economic life. The divorcing for inspection of thefield of production from the rest of the machinery of civilization hasbrought into practice a false method, and the values arrived at havebeen unhappily half-truths. America to-day is a monument to the truththat growth in wealth becomes significant for national welfare onlywhen it is joined with an efficient and social policy in itsconsumption. 

"Economics will only save itself through an alliance with the sciencesof human behavior, psychology, and biology, and through a completeemancipation from 'prosperity mores. ' . . . The sin of Economics has beenthe divorce of its work from reality, of announcing an analysis of humanactivity with the human element left out. "

One other point remained ever a sore spot with Carl, and that was theAmerican university and its accomplishments. In going over his writings, I find scattered through the manuscripts explosions on the ways, means, and ends, of academic education in our United States. For instance, --

"Consider the paradox of the rigidity of the university student's schemeof study, and the vagaries and whims of the scholarly emotion. Contemplate the forcing of that most delicate of human attributes, _i. E. _, interest, to bounce forth at the clang of a gong. To illustrate:the student is confidently expected to lose himself in finecontemplation of Plato's philosophy up to eleven o'clock, and then at11. 07, with no important mental cost, to take up a profitable andscholarly investigation into the banking problems of the United States. He will be allowed by the proper academic committee German Compositionat one o'clock, diseases of citrus fruit trees at two, and at three heis asked to exhibit a fine sympathy in the Religions and Customs of theOrient. Between 4. 07 and five it is calculated that he can with profitindulge in gymnasium recreation, led by an instructor who counts outloud and waves his arms in time to a mechanical piano. Between five andsix, this student, led by a yell-leader, applauds football practice. Thegrowing tendency of American university students to spend their eveningsin extravagant relaxation, at the moving pictures, or in unconventionaldancing, is said to be willful and an indication of an important moralsag of recent years. It would be interesting also to know if Arkwright, Hargreaves, Watt, or Darwin, Edison, Henry Ford, or the Wrights, orother persons of desirable if unconventional mechanical imagination, were encouraged in their scientific meditation by scholastic experiencesof this kind. Every American university has a department of educationdevoted to establishing the most effective methods of impartingknowledge to human beings. "

From the same article:--

"The break in the systematization which an irregular and unpredictablethinker brings arouses a persistent if unfocused displeasure. Hence wehave the accepted and cultivated institutions, such as our universities, our churches, our clubs, sustaining with care mediocre standards ofexperimental thought. European critics have long compared the repressedand uninspiring intellect of the American undergraduate with the mobilestate of mind of the Russian and German undergraduates which has madetheir institutions the centre of revolutionary change propaganda. To onewho knows in any intimate way the life of the American student, itbecomes only an uncomfortable humor to visualize any of his campuses asthe origins of social protests. The large industry of American collegeathletics and its organization-for-victory concept, the tendency to setup an efficient corporation as the proper university model, theextensive and unashamed university advertising, and consequentapprehension of public opinion, the love of size and large registration, that strange psychological abnormality, organized cheering, the curiouscompanionship of state universities and military drill, regularexaminations and rigidly prescribed work--all these interestingcharacteristics are, as is natural in character-formation, both causeand effect. It becomes an easy prophecy within behaviorism to forecastthat American universities will continue regular and mediocre in mentalactivity and reasonably devoid of intellectual bent toward experimentalthinking. "

Perhaps here is where I may quote a letter Carl received just beforeleaving Berkeley, and his answer to it. This correspondence brings upseveral points on which Carl at times received criticism, and I shouldlike to give the two sides, each so typical of the point of view itrepresents. 

_February 28_, 1917

MY DEAR CARLETON PARKER, --

When we so casually meet it is as distressing as it is amusing to me, toknow that the God I intuitively defend presents to you the image of thecurled and scented monster of the Assyrian sculpture. 

He was never that to me, and the visualization of an imaginative childis a remarkable thing. From the first, the word "God, " spoken in thecomfortable (almost smug) atmosphere of the old Unitarian congregation, took my breath and tranced me into a vision of a great flood ofvibrating light, and _only_ light. 

I wonder if, in your childhood, some frightening picture in some oldbook was not the thing that you are still fighting against? So that, emancipated as you are, you are still a little afraid, and mustperforce--with a remainder of the brave swagger of youth--set up abarrier of authorities to fight behind, and, quite unconsciously, youare thus building yourself into a vault in which no flowers canbloom--because you have sealed the high window of the imagination sothat the frightening God may not look in upon you--this same windowthrough which simple men get an illumination that saves their lives, andin the light of which they communicate kindly, one with the other, theirfaith and hopes?

I am impelled to say this to you, first, because of the responsibilitywhich rests upon you in your relation to young minds; and, second, Ilike you and your eagerness and the zest for Truth that you transmit. 

You are dedicated to the pursuit of Truth, and you afford us thedramatic incidents of your pursuit. 

Yet up to this moment it seems to me you are accepting Truth atsecond-hand. 

I counted seventeen "authorities" quoted, chapter and verse (and thenabandoned the enumeration), in the free talk of the other evening; andasked myself if this reverence of the student for the master, was allthat we were ultimately to have of that vivid individual whom we had socounted upon as Carl Parker?

I wondered, too, if, in the great opportunity that has come to you, those simple country boys and girls of Washington were to be thusdeprived, --were to find not you but your "authorities, "--because CarlParker refused (even ever so modestly) to learn that Truth, denied theaid of the free imagination, takes revenge upon her disciple, byshutting off from him the sources of life by which a man is made free, and reducing his mind--his rich, variable, potential mind--to themechanical operation of a repetitious machine. 

I feel this danger for you, and for the youths you are to educate, sopoignantly that I venture to write with this frankness. 

Your present imprisonment is not necessarily a life sentence; but yoursatisfaction in it--your acceptance of the routine of your treadmill--ischilling to the hopes of those who have waited upon your progress; andit imperils your future--as well as that hope we have in the humanitiesthat are to be implanted in the minds of the young people you are toinstruct. We would not have you remain under the misapprehension thatTruth alone can ever serve humanity--Truth remains sterile until it ismarried to Goodness. That marriage is consummated in the high flight ofthe imagination, and its progeny is of beauty. 

_You_ need beauty--you need verse and color and music--you need all theescapes--all the doors wide open--and this seemingly impertinent letteris merely the appeal of one human creature to another, for the sake ofall the human creatures whom you have it in your power to endow withchains or with wings. 

 Very sincerely yours, BRUCE PORTER. 

 MY DEAR BRUCE PORTER, --

My present impatient attitude towards a mystic being without doubt hasbeen influenced by some impression of my childhood, but not theterror-bringing creatures you suggest. My family was one of the lastthree which clung to a dying church in my country town. I, though a boyof twelve, passed the plate for two years while the minister's daughtersang a solo. Our village was not a happy one, and the incongruity of ouremotional prayers and ecstasies of imagery, and the drifting dullnessand meanness of the life outside, filtered in some way into my boy mind. I saw that suffering was real and pressing, and so many sufferedresignedly; and that imagery and my companionship with a God (I washighly "religious" then) worked in a self-centred circle. I neverstrayed from the deadly taint of some gentle form of egotism. I was thentruly in a "vault. " I did things for a system of ethics, not because ofa fine rush of social brotherly intuition. My imagination was everconcerned with me and my prospects, my salvation. I honestly and soberlybelieve that your "high window of the imagination" works out in ourworld as such a force for egotism; it is a self-captivating thing, itdivorces man from the plain and bitter realities of life, it brings ananti-social emancipation to him. I can sincerely make this terriblecharge against the modern world, and that is, that it is its benttowards mysticism, its blinding itself through hysteria, which makespossible in its civilization its desperate inequalities oflife-expression, its tortured children, its unhappy men and women, itswasted potentiality. We have not been humble and asked what is man; wehave not allowed ourselves to weigh sorrow. It is in such a use that ourpowers of imagination could be brotherly. We look on high in ecstasy, and fail to be on flame because 'of the suffering of those whose woundsare bare to our eyes on the street. 

And that brings me to my concept of a God. God exists in us because ofour bundle of social brother-acts. Contemplation and crying out andassertions of belief are in the main notices that we are substitutingsomething for acts. Our God should be a thing discovered only inretrospect. We live, we fight, we know others, and, as Overstreet says, our God sins and fights at our shoulder. He may be a mean God or a fineone. He is limited in his stature by our service. 

I fear your God, because I think he is a product of the unreal andunhelpful, that he has a "bad psychological past, " that he is subtlyegotistical, that he fills the vision and leaves no room for the simpleand patient deeds of brotherhood, a heavenly contemplation taking theplace of earthly deeds. 

You feel that I quote too many minds and am hobbled by it. I delightjust now in the companionship of men through their books. I am devotedto knowing the facts of the lives of other humans and the train ofthought which their experiences have started. To lead them is liketalking to them. I suspect, even dread, the "original thinker" who knowslittle of the experiments and failures of the thinkers of other placesand times. To me such a stand denies that promising thing, the evolutionof human thought. I also turn from those who borrow, but neglect to telltheir sources. I want my "simple boys and girls of Washington" to knowthat to-day is a day of honest science; that events have antecedents;that "luck" does not exist; that the world will improve only throughthoughtful social effort, and that lives are happy only in that effort. And with it all there will be time for beauty and verse and color andmusic--far be it from me to shut these out of my own life or the livesof others. But they are instruments, not attributes. I am very glad youwrote. 

 Sincerely yours, Carleton H. Parker. 

CHAPTER XIII

In May we sold our loved hill nest in Berkeley and started north, stopping for a three months' vacation--our first real vacation since wehad been married--at Castle Crags, where, almost ten years before, wehad spent the first five days of our honeymoon, before going intoSouthern Oregon. There, in a log-cabin among the pines, we passedunbelievably cherished days--work a-plenty, play a-plenty, and thefamily together day in, day out. There was one little extra trip he gotin with the two sons, for which I am so thankful. The three of them wentoff with their sleeping-bags and rods for two days, leaving "the girls"behind. Each son caught his first trout with a fly. They put the fish, cleaned, in a cool sheltered spot, because they had to be carried homefor me to see; and lo! a little bear came down in the night and ate thefish, in addition to licking the fat all off the frying-pan. 

Then, like a bolt from the blue, came the fateful telegram fromWashington, D. C. --labor difficulties in construction-work at CampLewis--would he report there at once as Government Mediator. Oh! theBook, the Book--the Book that was to be finished without fail before thenew work at the University of Washington began! Perhaps he would be backin a week! Surely he would be back in a week! So he packed just enoughfor a week, and off he went. One week! When, after four weeks, therewas still no let up in his mediation duties, --in fact they increased, --Ipacked up the family and we left for Seattle. I had rewound hisfishing-rod with orange silk, and had revarnished it, as a surprise forhis home-coming to Castle Crags. He never fished with it again. 

How that man loved fishing! How he loved every sport, for that matter. And he loved them with the same thoroughness and allegiance that he gaveto any cause near his heart. Baseball--he played on his high-school team(also he could recite "Casey at the Bat" with a gusto that many a friendof the earlier days will remember. And here I am reminded of his"Christopher Columnibus. " I recently ran across a postcard a collegemate sent Carl from Italy years ago, with a picture of a statue ofColumbus on it. On the reverse side the friend had written, quoting fromCarl's monologue: "'Boom Joe!' says the king; which is beinginterpreted, 'I see you first. ' 'Wheat cakes, ' says Chris, which is theEgyptian for 'Boom Joe'"). He loved football, track, --he won three goldmedals broad-jumping, --canoeing, swimming, billiards, --he won a lovingcup at that, tennis, ice-skating, hand-ball; and yes, ye of finercalibre, quiver if you will--he loved a prize-fight and played a mightygood game of poker, as well as bridge--though in the ten and a halfyears that we were married I cannot remember that he played poker onceor bridge more than five times. He did, however, enjoy his bridge withSimon Patton in Philadelphia; and when he played, he played well. 

I tell you there was hardly anything the man could not do. He could drawthe funniest pictures you ever saw--I wish I could reproduce the lettershe sent his sons from the East. He was a good carpenter--the joy itmeant to his soul to add a second-hand tool ever so often to hiscollection! Sunday morning was special carpenter-time--new shelves here, a bookcase there, new steps up to the swimming-tank, etc. I have heardmany a man say that he told a story better than any one they ever heard. He was an expert woodsman. And, my gracious! how he did love babies!That hardly fits in just here, but I think of it now. His love forchildren colored his whole economic viewpoint. 

"There is the thing that possessed Parker--the perception of thedestructive significance of the repressed and balked instincts of themigratory worker, the unskilled, the casuals, the hoboes, the womanless, jobless, voteless men. To him their tragedy was akin to the tragedy ofchild-life in our commercialized cities. More often than of anythingelse, he used to talk to me of the fatuous blindness of a civilizationthat centred its economic activities in places where child-life wasperpetually repressed and imperiled. The last time I saw him he wasflaming indignation at the ghastly record of children killed and maimedby trucks and automobiles. What business had automobiles where childrenshould be free to play? What could be said for the human wisdom of acivilization that placed traffic above child-life? In our denial tochildren, to millions of men and women, of the means for satisfyingtheir instinctive desires and innate dispositions, he saw the principalexplanation of crime, labor-unrest, the violence of strikes, the ghastlyviolence of war[1]. "

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

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

The tenderness of him over his own! Any hour of the day or night he wasalert to be of any service in any trouble, big or little. He had acollection of tricks and stories on hand for any youngster who happenedalong. The special pet of our own boys was "The Submarine Obo Bird"--alarge flapper (Dad's arms fairly rent the air), which was especiallyactive early in the morning, when small boys appeared to prefer stayingin bed to getting up. The Obo Bird went "Pak! Pak!" and lit on numerousobjects about the sleeping porch. Carl's two hands would plump stiff, fingers down, on the railing, or on a small screw sticking outsomewhere. Scratches. Then "Pak!" and more flaps. This time the Obo Birdwould light a trifle nearer the small boy whose "turn" it was--roundeyes, and an agitated grin from ear to ear, plus explosive giggles andgurglings emerging from the covers. Nearer and nearer came the Obo Bird. Gigglier and gigglier got the small boy. Finally, with a spring and alast "Pak! Pak! Pak!" the Obo Bird dove under the covers at the side ofthe bed and pinched the small boy who would not get up. (Rather apremium on not rising promptly was the Obo Bird. ) Final ecstatic squealsfrom the pinched. Then, "Now it's my turn, daddo!" from the otherson. --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. Infact, the baby was not more than three months old when the boys demandeda Submarine Obo Bird that ate little Spooka biscuits for sister. 

 * * * * *

His trip to Camp Lewis threw him at once into the midst of the lumberdifficulties of the Northwest, which lasted for months. The big strikein the lumber industry was on when he arrived. He wrote: "It is a striketo better conditions. The I. W. W. Are only the display feature. The mainbody of opinion is from a lot of unskilled workers who are sick of thefilthy bunk-houses and rotten grub. " He wrote later of a conference withthe 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 asolution, or businesslike, but what we wanted was a statement of howthey 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 businessmen had as much trouble as this keeping to the real points involved, give me a faculty analysis. They laughed over this and got down tobusiness, 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 variousconferences, 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 amgetting frantic to be home. " Home, for the Parkers, was always where wehappened to be then. Castle Crags was as much "home" as any place hadever been. We had moved fourteen times in ten years: of the elevenChristmases 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 nowlook at places to live in. It used to be that Carl and I, in passing thelittlest bit of a hovel, would say, "We could be perfectly happy in aplace like that, couldn't we? Nothing makes any difference if we aretogether. " But certain kinds of what we called "cuddly" houses used tomake us catch our breaths, to think of the extra joy it would be livingtogether tucked away in there. Now, when I pass a place that looks likethat, I have to drop down some kind of a trap-door in my brain, and notthink at all until I get well by it. 

Labor conditions in the Northwest grew worse, strikes more general, andfinally Carl wrote that he just must be indefinitely on the job. "I amso home-sick for you that I feel like packing up and coming. I literallyfeel terribly. But with all this feeling I don't see how I can. Not onlyhave I been telegraphed to stay on the job, but the situation is growingsteadily worse. Last night my proposal (eight-hour day, non-partisancomplaint and adjustment board, suppression of violence by the state)was turned down by the operators in Tacoma. President Suzzallo and Ifought for six hours but it went down. The whole situation is driftinginto a state of incipient sympathetic strikes. " Later: "This is the mostbull-headed affair and I don't think it is going to get anywhere. " Stilllater: "Things are not going wonderfully in our mediation. Employersdemanding everything and men granting much but not that. " Again: "Eachday brings a new crisis. Gee, labor is unrestful . . . And gee, thepigheadedness of bosses! Human nature is sure one hundred per centpsychology. " Also he wrote, referring to the general situation at theUniversity and in the community: "Am getting absolutely crazy withenthusiasm over my job here. . . . It is too vigorous and resultful forwords. " And again: "The mediation between employers and men blew upto-day at 4 P. M. And now a host of nice new strikes show on thehorizon. . . . 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-sevendisputes which concerned Government work in the Pacific Northwest weresettled, and it was his method to lay the basis for permanent relief ashe went along. . . . 

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

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

"But when a study was finished, his diagnosis made, and his prescriptionof treatment completed, Parker always insisted in carrying it straightto the workers. And he did not just tell them results. He often tookseveral hours, sometimes several meetings of several hours each. Inthese meetings he would go over every detail of his method, from startto finish, explaining, answering questions, meeting objections withreason. And he always won them over. But, of course, it must be saidthat 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 whichhe scanned the people stepping out of our car at the station, and thebeam that lit up his face as he spied us. There is a line in DorothyCanfield's "Bent Twig" that always appealed to us. The mother and fatherwere separated for a few days, to the utter anguish of the fatherespecially, and he remarked, "It's Hell to be happily married!" Everytime we were ever separated we felt just that. 

In one of Carl's letters from Seattle he had written: "The 'AtlanticMonthly' wants me to write an article on the I. W. W. !!" So the firstpiece of work he had to do after we got settled was that. We weretremendously excited, and never got over chuckling at some of themoss-grown people we knew about the country who would feel outraged atthe "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 ontime! The stenographer from the University came about two one Sundayafternoon. I sat on the floor up in the guest-room and read themanuscript to her while she typed it off. Carl would rush down more copyfrom his study on the third floor. I'd go over it while Miss Van Dorenwent over what she had typed. Then the reading would begin again. Wehated to stop for supper, all three of us were so excited to get the jobdone. It _had_ to be at the main post-office that night by eleven, toarrive 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 wasto mail the article on her way home, --and Carl and I, knowing this wasan occasion for a treat if ever there was one, routed out a sleepydrug-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 andpublished before Carl died. The influence of it ramified in many and themost unexpected directions. I am still hearing of it. We expectedcondemnation at the time. There probably was plenty of it, but only onecondemner wrote. On the other hand, letters streamed in by the scorefrom friends and strangers bearing the general message, "God bless youfor it!"

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

"The futility of much conventional American social analysis is due toits description of the given problem in terms of its relationship tosome relatively unimportant or artificial institution. Few of thecurrent analyses of strikes or labor violence make use of the basicstandards of human desire and intention which control these phenomena. Astrike and its demands are usually praised as being law-abiding, oreconomically bearable, or are condemned as being unlawful, orconfiscatory. These four attributes of a strike are important only asincidental consequences. The habit of Americans thus to measure upsocial problems to the current, temporary, and more or less accidentalscheme of traditions and legal institutions, long ago gave birth to ournational belief that passing a new law or forcing obedience to an oldone was a specific for any unrest. The current analysis of the I. W. W. And its activities is an example of this perverted and unscientificmethod. The I. W. W. Analysis, which has given both satisfaction and abasis for treating the organization, runs as follows: the organizationis unlawful in its activity, un-American in its sabotage, unpatriotic inits relation to the flag, the government, and the war. The rest of thecondemnation is a play upon these three attributes. So proper and sosufficient has this condemnatory analysis become, that it is a riskymatter to approach the problem from another angle. But it is now soobvious that our internal affairs are out of gear, that anycomprehensive scheme of national preparedness would demand that full andhonest consideration be given to all forces determining the degree ofAmerican unity, one force being this tabooed organization. 

"It would be best to announce here a more or less dogmatic hypothesis towhich the writer will steadfastly adhere: that human behavior resultsfrom the rather simple, arithmetical combination of the inherited natureof man and the environment in which his maturing years are passed! Manwill behave according to the hints for conduct which the accidents ofhis life have stamped into his memory mechanism. A slum produces a mindwhich has only slum incidents with which to work, and a spoiled andprotected child seldom rises to aggressive competitive behavior, simplybecause its past life has stored up no memory imprints from which apredisposition to vigorous life can be built. The particular thingscalled the moral attributes of man's conduct are conventionally found bycontrasting this educated and trained way of acting with the exigenciesand social needs or dangers of the time. Hence, while his immoral orunpatriotic behavior may fully justify his government in imprisoning oreliminating him when it stands in some particular danger which hisconduct intensifies, this punishment in no way either explains hischaracter or points to an enduring solution of his problem. Suppression, while very often justified and necessary in the flux of humanrelationship, always carries a social cost which must be liquidated, andalso a backfire danger which must be insured against. The human being isborn with no innate proclivity to crime or special kind of unpatriotism. Crime and treason are habit-activities, educated into man byenvironmental influences favorable to their development. . . . 

"The I. W. W. Can be profitably viewed only as a psychological by-productof the neglected childhood of industrial America. It is discouraging tosee the problem to-day examined almost exclusively from the point ofview of its relation to patriotism and conventional ventional commercialmorality. . . . 

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

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

"The argument was rather difficult to keep productive, becausegratitude--that material prerequisite to patriotism--seemed wanting intheir attitude toward the American government. Their state of mind couldbe explained only by referring it, as was earlier suggested, to itsmajor relationships. The dominating concern of the I. W. W. Is what Kellercalls the maintenance problem. Their philosophy is, in its simplereduction, a stomach-philosophy, and their politico-industrial revoltcould be called without injustice a hunger-riot. But there is animportant correction to this simple statement. While their way of livinghas seriously encroached on the urgent minima of nutrition, shelter, clothing, and physical health, it has also long outraged the Americanlaboring-class traditions touching social life, sex-life, self-dignity, and ostentation. Had the food and shelter been sufficient, the revolttendencies might have simmered out, were the migratory labor populationnot keenly sensitive to traditions of a richer psychological life thanmere physical maintenance. "

The temper of the country on this subject, the general closed attitudeof mind which the average man holds thereon, prompt me to add here a fewmore of Carl's generalizations and conclusions in this article. If onlyhe were here, to cry aloud again and yet again on this point! Yet I knowthere are those who sense his approach, and are endeavoring in every waypossible to make wisdom prevail over prejudice. 

"Cynical disloyalty and contempt of the flag must, in the light ofmodern psychology, come from a mind which is devoid of nationalgratitude, and in which the United States stirs no memory ofsatisfaction or happiness. To those of us who normally feel loyal to thenation, such a disloyal sentiment brings sharp indignation. As an indexof our own sentiment and our own happy relations to the nation, thisindignation has value. As a stimulus to a programme or ethicalgeneralization, it is the cause of vast inaccuracy and sad injustice. American syndicalism is not a scheming group dominated by anunconventional and destructive social philosophy. It is merely acommonplace attitude--not such a state of mind as Machiavelli orRobespierre possessed, but one stamped by the lowest, most miserablelabor-conditions and outlook which American industrialism produces. Tothose who have seen at first-hand the life of the western casuallaborer, any reflections on his gratitude or spiritual buoyancy seemironical humor. 

"An altogether unwarranted importance has been given to the syndicalistphilosophy of the I. W. W. A few leaders use its phraseology. Of thesefew, not half a dozen know the meaning of French syndicalism or Englishguild socialism. To the great wandering rank and file, the I. W. W. Issimply the only social break in the harsh search for work that they haveever had; its headquarters the only competitor of the saloon in whichthey are welcome. . . . 

"It is a conventional economic truism that American industrialism isguaranteeing to some half of the forty millions of our industrialpopulation a life of such limited happiness, of such restrictions onpersonal development, and of such misery and desolation when sickness oraccident comes, that we should be childish political scientists not tosee that from such an environment little self-sacrificing love ofcountry, little of ethics, little of gratitude could come. It isunfortunate that the scientific findings of our social condition mustuse words which sound strangely like the phraseology of the Socialists. This similarity, however, should logically be embarrassing to thecritics of these findings, not to the scientists. Those who haveinvestigated and studied the lower strata of American labor have longrecognized the I. W. W. As purely a symptom of a certain distressing stateof affairs. The casual migratory laborers are the finished product of aneconomic environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out humanbeings modeled after all the standards which society abhors. The historyof the migratory workers shows that, starting with the long hours anddreary winters on the farms they ran away from, or the sour-smellingbunk-house in a coal village, through their character-debasingexperience with the drifting 'hire and fire' life in the industries, onto the vicious social and economic life of the winter unemployed, theirtraining predetermined but one outcome, and the environment produced itstype. 

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

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

"No one doubts the full propriety of the government's suppressingruthlessly any interference of the I. W. W. With war-preparation. Allpatriots should just as vehemently protest against all suppression ofthe normal protest activities of the I. W. W. There will be neitherpermanent peace nor prosperity in our country till the revolt basis ofthe I. W. W. Is removed. And until that is done, the I. W. W. Remains anunfortunate, valuable symptom of a diseased industrialism. "

 * * * * *

I watch, along with many others, the growth of bitterness and hysteriain 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 aposition of guidance for these troublous times. 

I am reminded here of a little incident that took place just at thistime. An I. W. W. Was to come out to have dinner with us--some otherfriends, faculty people, also were to be there. About noon the telephonerang. Carl went. A rich Irish brogue announced: "R---- can't come toyour party to-night. " "Why is that?" "He's pinched. An' he wants t' knowcan he have your Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' to read while he's injail. "

CHAPTER XV

I am forever grateful that Carl had his experience at the University ofWashington before he died. He left the University of California a youngAssistant Professor, just one rebellious morsel in a huge machine. Hefound himself in Washington, not only Head of the Department ofEconomics and Dean of the College of Commerce, and a power on thecampus, but a power in the community as well. He was working under aPresident who backed him in everything to the last ditch, who was keenlyinterested 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 haveit given--realizing at the same time that his plans were in the natureof an experiment. The two textbooks used in the first semester wereMcDougall's "Social Psychology" and Wallas's "Great Society. " Duringpart of the time he pinned the front page of the morning paper on theboard, and illustrated his subject-matter by an item of news of thatvery day. 

His theory of education was that the first step in any subject was toawaken a keen interest and curiosity in the student; for that reason hefelt that pure theory in Economics was too difficult for any but seniorsor graduates; that, given too soon, it tended only to discourage. Heallowed no note-taking in any of his courses, insisted on discussion bythe class, no matter how large it was, planned to do away with writtenexaminations as a test of scholarship, substituting instead a short oraldiscussion with each student individually, grading them "passed" and"not passed. " As it was, because of the pressure of Government work, hehad to resort to written tests. The proportion of first sections in thefinal examination, which was difficult, was so large that Carl was surethe reader must have marked too leniently, and looked over the papershimself. His results were the same as the reader's, and, he felt, couldjustifiably be used as some proof of his theory that, if a student isinterested in the subject, you cannot keep him from doing good work. 

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

"May I, as only a student, add my inadequate sympathy for the loss ofDr. Parker--the most liberal man I have known. While his going from myeducative life can be nothing as compared to his loss from a verybeautiful family group, yet the enthusiasm, the radiance of hispersonality--freely given in his classes during the semester I wasprivileged to know him--made possible to me a greater realization of thefascination of humanity than I obtained during my previous four years ofcollege study. I still look for him to enter the classroom, nor shall Isoon 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 wasindeed privileged, and I shall always carry with me the charm andinspiration of his glorious personality. The campus was never so sad ason the day which brought the news of his death--it seemed almostincredible that one man in five short months could have left soindelible an impress of his character on the student body. "

Besides being of real influence on the campus, he had the respect andconfidence of the business world, both labor and capital; and inaddition, he stood as the representative of the Government inlabor-adjustments and disputes. And--it was of lesser consequence, butoh it _did_ matter--_we had money enough to live on!!_ We had madeourselves honestly think that we had just about everything we wanted onwhat we got, plus outside lectures, in California. But once we hadtasted of the new-found freedom of truly enough; once there was goneforever the stirring around to pick up a few extra dollars here andthere to make both ends meet; once we knew for the first time thesatisfaction and added joy that come from some responsible person tohelp with the housework--we felt that we were soaring through life withour feet hardly touching the ground. 

Instead of my spending most of the day in the kitchen and riding herd onthe young, we had our dropped-straight-from-heaven Mrs. Willard. And seewhat that meant. Every morning at nine I left the house with Carl, andwe walked together to the University. As I think of those daily walksnow, arm-in-arm, rain or shine, I'd not give up the memory of them forall creation. Carl would go over what he was to talk about that morningin Introductory Economics (how it would have raised the hair of theorthodox Econ. I teacher!), and of course we always talked some of whatmarvelous children we possessed. Carl would begin: "Tell me some moreabout the June-Bug!"

He would go to his nine o'clock, I to mine. After my ten-o'clock class, and on the way to my eleven-o'clock lecture, I always ran in to hisoffice a second, to gossip over what mail he had got that morning andhow things were going generally. Then, at twelve, in his office again. "Look at this telegram that just came in. " "How shall I answer Mr. ----'s about that job?" And then home together; not once a week, but_every day_. 

Afternoons, except the three afternoons when I played hockey, I was athome; but always there was a possibility that Carl would ring up aboutfive. "I am at a meeting down-town. Can't get things settled, so wecontinue this evening. Run down and have supper with me, and perhaps, who knows, a Bill Hart film might be around town!" There was Mrs. Willard who knew just what to do, and off I could fly to see my husband. You can't, on $1700 a year. 

I hear people nowadays scold and roar over the pay the working classesare getting, and how they are spending it all on nonsense and not savinga cent. I stand it as long as I can and then I burst out. For I, too, have tasted the joy of at last being able to get things we never thoughtwe would own and of feeling the wings of financial freedom feather outwhere, before, all had been cold calculation: Can we do this? if so, what must we give up? I wish every one on earth could feel it. I do notcare if they do not save a cent. 

Only I do wish my Carl could have experienced those joys a littlelonger. It was so good--so good, while it lasted! And it was only juststarting. Every new call he got to another university was at a salaryfrom one to two thousand dollars more than what we were getting, even atSeattle. It looked as if our days of financial scrimping were goneforever. We even discussed a Ford! nay--even a four-cylinder Buick! Andevery other Sunday we had fricasseed chicken, and always, always afrosting on the cake. For the first two months in Seattle we felt as ifwe ought to have company at every meal. It did not seem right to sitdown to food as good as that, with just the family present. And it wassuch fun to bring home unexpected guests, and to know that Mrs. Willardcould concoct a dream of a dish while the guests were removing theirhats; and I not having to miss any of the conversation from being in thekitchen. Every other Sunday night we had the whole Department and theirwives to Sunday supper--sixteen of them. Oh dear, oh dear, money doesmake a difference. We grew more determined than ever to see that morefolk in the world got more of it. 

And yet, in a sense, Carl was a typical professor in his unconcern overmatters financial. He started in the first month we were married byturning over every cent to me as a matter of course; and from thebeginning of each month to the end, he never had the remotest idea howmuch money we possessed or what it was spent for. So far as his peace ofmind went, on the whole, he was a capitalist. He knew we needed moremoney than he was making at the University of California, therefore hemade all he could on the outside, and came home and dumped it in my lap. From one year's end to the next, he spent hardly five cents onhimself--a new suit now and then, a new hat, new shirts at a sale, butnever a penny that was not essential. 

On the rest of us--there he needed a curbing hand! I discovered himnegotiating to buy me a set of jade when he was getting one hundreddollars a month. He would bring home a box of peaches or a tray ofberries, when they were first in the market and eaten only by bankpresidents and railway magnates, and beam and say, "Guess what surpriseI have for you!" Nothing hurt his feelings more than to have him suggestI should buy something for myself, and have me answer that we could notafford it. "Then I'll dig sewers on the side!" he would exclaim. "Youbuy it, and I'll find the money for it somewhere. " If he had turned offat an angle of fifty degrees when he first started his earthly career, he would have been a star example of the individual who presses thepalms of his hands together and murmurs, "The Lord will provide!"

I never knew a man who was so far removed from the traditional ideas ofthe proper position of the male head of a household. He felt, as I havesaid, that he was not the one to have control over finances--that wasthe wife's province. Then he had another attitude which certainly didnot jibe with the Lord-of-the-Manor idea. Perhaps there would besomething I wanted to do, and I would wait to ask him about it when hegot home. Invariably the same thing would happen. He would take my twohands and put them so that I held his coat-lapels. Then he would placehis hands on my shoulders, beam all over, eyes twinkling, and say:--

"Who's boss of this household, anyway?"

And I _had_ to answer, "I am. "

"Who gets her own way one hundred per cent?"

"I do. "

"Who never gets his own way and never wants to get his own way?"

"You. "

"Well, then, you know perfectly well you are to do anything in thisworld you want to do. " With a chuckle he would add, "Think of it--not alook-in in my own home!"

 * * * * *

Seattle, as I look back on it, meant the unexpected--in every way. Ourlittle sprees together were not the planned-out ones of former years. From the day Carl left Castle Crags, his time was never his own; wecould never count on anything from one day to the next--a strike here, an arbitration there, government orders for this, some investigationneeded for that. It was harassing, it was wearying. But always every fewdays there would be that telephone ring which I grew both to dread andto love. For as often as it said, "I've got to go to Tacoma, " it alsosaid, "You Girl, put on your hat and coat this minute and come down townwhile I have a few minutes off--we'll have supper together anyhow. "

And the feeling of the courting days never left us--that almost sharpjoy of being together again when we just locked arms for a block andsaid almost nothing--nothing to repeat. And the good-bye that alwaysmeant a wrench, always, though it might mean being together within a fewhours. And always the waving from the one on the back of the car to theone standing on the corner. Nothing, nothing, ever got tame. After tenyears, if Carl ever found himself a little early to catch the train forTacoma, say, though he had said good-bye but a half an hour before andwas to be back that evening, he would find a telephone-booth and ring upto say, perhaps, that he was glad he had married me! Mrs. Willard oncesaid that after hearing Carl or me talk to the other over the telephone, it made other husbands and wives when they telephoned sound as if theymust be contemplating divorce. But telephoning was an event: it was alittle extra present from Providence, as it were. 

And I think of two times when we met accidentally on the street inSeattle--it seemed something we could hardly believe: all the world--thewar, commerce, industry--stopped while we tried to realize what hadhappened. 

Then, every night that he had to be out, --and he had to be out nightafter night in Seattle, --I would hear his footstep coming down thestreet; it would wake me, though he wore rubber heels. He would fix thecatch on the front-door lock, then come upstairs, calling out softly, "You awake?" He always knew I was. Then, sitting on the edge of the bed, he would tell all the happenings since I had seen him last. Once in awhile he'd sigh and say, "A little ranch up on the Clearwater would gopretty well about now, wouldn't it, my girl?" And I would sigh, and say, "Oh dear, wouldn't it?"

I remember once, when we were first married, he got home one afternoonbefore I did. When I opened the door to our little Seattle apartment, there he was, walking the floor, looking as if the bottom had droppedout of the universe. "I've had the most awful twenty minutes, " heinformed me, "simply terrible. Promise me absolutely that never, neverwill you let me get home before you do. To expect to find you home andthen open the door into empty rooms--oh, I never lived through such atwenty minutes!" We had a lark's whistle that we had used since beforeour engaged days. Carl would whistle it under my window at the Thetahouse in college, and I would run down and out the side door, to theutter disgust of my well-bred "sisters, " who arranged to make cuttingremarks at the table about it in the hope that I would reform my"servant-girl tactics. " That whistle was whistled through those earlySeattle days, through Oakland, through Cambridge, Leipzig, Berlin, Heidelberg, Munich, Swanage, Berkeley, Alamo in the country, Berkeleyagain (he would start it way down the hill so I could surely hear), Castle Crags, and Seattle. Wherever any of us were in the house, itmeant a dash for all to the front door--to welcome the Dad home. 

One evening I was scanning some article on marriage by the fire inSeattle--it was one of those rare times that Carl too was at home andgoing over lectures for the next day. It held that, to be successful, marriage had to be an adjustment--a giving in here by the man, there bythe woman. 

I said to Carl: "If that is true, you must have been doing all theadjusting; I never have had to give up, or fit in, or relinquish onelittle thing, so you've been doing it all. "

He thought for a moment, then answered: "You know, I've heard that too, and wondered about it. For I know I've given up nothing, made no'adjustments. ' On the contrary, I seem always to have been getting morethan a human being had any right to count on. "

It was that way, even to the merest details, such as both likingidentically the same things to eat, seasoned the identical way. We bothliked to do the identical things, without a single exception. Perhapsone exception--he had a fondness in his heart for firearms that I couldnot share. (The gleam in his eyes when he got out his collection everyso often to clean and oil it!) I liked guns, provided I did not have toshoot at anything alive with them; but pistols I just plain did not likeat all. We rarely could pass one of these shooting-galleries withouttrying our luck at five cents for so many turns--at clay pigeons orrabbits whirling around on whatnots; but that was as wild as I everwanted to get with a gun. 

We liked the same friends without exception, the same books, the samepictures, the same music. He wrote once: "We (the two of us) love eachother, like to do things together (absolutely anything), don't need orwant anybody else, and the world is ours. " Mrs. Willard once told methat if she had read about our life together in a book, she would nothave believed it. She did not know that any one on earth could live likethat. Perhaps that is one reason why I want to tell about it--because itwas just so plain wonderful day in, day out. I feel, too, that I have acomplete record of our life. For fourteen years, every day that we werenot together we wrote to each other, with the exception of two shortcamping-trips that Carl made, where mail could be sent out only bychance returning campers. 

Somehow I find myself thinking here of our weddinganniversaries, --spread over half the globe, --and the joy we got out ofjust those ten occasions. The first one was back in Oakland, after ourreturn from Seattle. We still had elements of convention left in usthen, --or, rather, I still had some; I don't believe Carl had a streakof it in him ever, --so we dressed in our very best clothes, dress-suitand all, and had dinner at the Key Route Inn, where we had gone afterthe wedding a year before. After dinner we rushed home, I nursed theson, we changed into natural clothes, and went to the circus. I hadmisgivings about the circus being a fitting wedding-anniversarycelebration; but what was one to do when the circus comes to town butone night in the year?

The second anniversary was in Cambridge. We always used to laugh eachyear and say: "Gracious! if any one had told us a year ago we'd be herethis September seventh!" Every year we were somewhere we never dreamedwe would be. That first September seventh, the night of the wedding, wewere to be in Seattle for years--selling bonds. What a fearful prospectin retrospect, compared to what we really did! The second September, back in Oakland, we thought we were to be in the bond business for yearsin Oakland. More horrible thoughts as I look back upon it. The thirdSeptember seventh, the second anniversary, lo and behold, was inCambridge, Massachusetts! Whoever would have guessed it, in all theworld? It was three days after Carl's return from that awful Freiburgsummer--we left Nandy with a kind-hearted neighbor, and away we spreedto Boston, to the matinée and something good to eat. 

Then, whoever would have imagined for a moment that the next year wewould be celebrating in Berlin--dinner at the Café Rheingold, with wine!The fourth anniversary was at Heidelberg--one of the red-letter days, asI look back upon those magic years. We left home early, with our lunch, which we ate on a bed of dry leaves in a fairy birch forest back--and agood ways up--in the Odenwald. Then we walked and walked--almosttwenty-five miles all told--through little forest hamlets, stopping nowand then at some small inn along the roadside for a cheese sandwich ora glass of beer. By nightfall we reached Neckarsteinach and therailroad, and prowled around the twisted narrow streets till train-time, gazing often at our beloved Dilsberg crowning the hilltop across theriver, her ancient castle tower and town walls showing black against thestarlight. The happiness, the foreign untouristed wonder of that day!

Our fifth anniversary was another red-letter day--one of the days thatalways made me feel, in looking back on it, that we must have beenpeople in a novel, an English novel; that it could not really have beenCarl and I who walked that perfect Saturday from Swanage to Studland. But it was our own two joyous souls who explored that quaint Englishthatched-roof, moss-covered corner of creation; who poked about the weeold mouldy church and cemetery; who had tea and muffins and jam outunder an old gnarled apple tree behind a thatched-roof cottage. What awonder of a day it was! And indeed it was my Carl and I who walked thefew miles home toward sunset, swinging hands along the downs, and fairlyspeechless with the glory of five years married and England and ourlove. I should like to be thinking of that day just before I die. It wasso utterly perfect, and so ours. 

Our sixth anniversary was another, yes, yet another red-lettermemory--one of those times that the world seemed to have been leading upto since it first cooled down. We left our robust sons in the care ofour beloved aunt, Elsie Turner, --this was back in Berkeley, --and oneSaturday we fared forth, plus sleeping-bags, frying-pan, fishing-rod, and a rifle. We rode to the end of the Ocean Shore Line--but first gotoff the train at Half Moon Bay, bought half a dozen eggs from alonely-looking female, made for the beach, and fried said eggs forsupper. Then we got back on another train, and stepped off at the end ofthe line, in utter darkness. We decided that somewhere we should find asuitable wooded nook where we could sequester ourselves for the night. We stumbled along until we could not see another inch in front of us forthe dark and the thick fog; so made camp--which meant spreading out twobags--in what looked like as auspicious a spot as was findable. When weopened our eyes to the morning sunlight, we discovered we were on aperfectly barren open ploughed piece of land, and had slept so near theroad that if a machine passing along in the night had skidded out a bitto the side, it would have removed our feet. 

That day, Sunday, was our anniversary, and the Lord was with us earlyand late, though not obtrusively. We got a farmer out of bed to buy someeggs for our breakfast. He wanted to know what we were doing out soearly, anyhow. We told him, celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary. Whereat he positively refused to take a cent for the eggs--weddingpresent, he said. Around noon we passed a hunter, who stopped to chat, and ended by presenting us with a cotton-tail rabbit to cook for dinner. And such a dinner!--by a bit of a stream up in the hills. Thatafternoon, late, we stumbled on a deserted farmhouse almost at thesummit--trees laden with apples and the ground red with them, pears anda few peaches for the picking, and a spring of ice-cold water with onelost fat trout in it that I tried for hours to catch by fair means orfoul; but he merely waved his tail slowly, as if to say, "One weddingpresent you don't get!" We slept that night on some hay left in an oldbarn--lots of mice and gnawy things about; but I could not get nearly asangry at a gnawy mouse as at a fat conceited trout who refused to becaught. 

Next day was a holiday, so we kept on our way rejoicing, and slept thatnight under great redwoods, beside a stream where trout had bettermanners. After a fish breakfast we potted a tin can full of holes withthe rifle, and then bore down circuitously and regretfully on RedwoodCity and the Southern Pacific Railway, and home and college and dishesto wash and socks to darn--but uproarious and joyful sons to compensate. 

The seventh anniversary was less exciting, but that could not be helped. We were over in Alamo, with my father, small brother, and sistervisiting us at the time--or rather, of course, the place was theirs tobegin with. There was no one to leave the blessed sons with; also, Carlwas working for the Immigration and Housing Commission, and no holidays. But he managed to get home a bit early; we had an early supper, got thesons in bed, hitched up the old horse to the old cart, and off we faredin the moonlight, married seven years and not sorry. We just pokedabout, ending at Danville with Danville ice-cream and Danville pumpkinpie; then walked the horse all the way back to Alamo and home. 

Our eighth anniversary, as mentioned, was in our very own home inBerkeley, with the curtains drawn, the telephone plugged, and our Europespread out before our eyes. 

The ninth anniversary was still too soon after the June-Bug's arrivalfor me to get off the hill and back, up our two hundred and seventeensteps home, so we celebrated under our own roof again--this time with aroast chicken and ice-cream dinner, and with the entire familyparticipating--except the June-Bug, who did almost nothing then butsleep. I tell you, if ever we had chicken, the bones were not worthsalvaging by the time we got through. We made it last at least twomeals, and a starving torn cat would pass by what was left with ascornful sniff. 

Our tenth and last anniversary was in Seattle. Carl had to be at CampLewis all day, but he got back in time to meet me at six-thirty in thelobby of the Hotel Washington. From there we went to our own favoriteplace--Blanc's--for dinner. Shut away behind a green latticearbor-effect, we celebrated ten years of joy and riches and deepcontentment, and as usual asked ourselves, "What in the world shall webe doing a year from now? Where in the world shall we be?" And as usualwe answered, "Bring the future what it may, we have _ten years_ that nopower in heaven or earth can rob us of!"

 * * * * *

There was another occasion in our lives that I want to putdown in black and white, though it does not come under weddinganniversaries. But it was such a celebration! "Uncle Max" 'lowed thatbefore we left Berkeley we must go off on a spree with him, andsuggested--imagine!--Del Monte! The twelve-and-a-half-cent Parkers atDel Monte! That was one spot we had never seen ourselves even riding by. We got our beloved Nurse Balch out to stay with the young, and when abrand-new green Pierce Arrow, about the size of our whole living-room, honked without, we were ready, bag and baggage, for a spree such as wehad never imagined ourselves having in this world or the next. We calledfor the daughter of the head of the Philosophy Department. Max had saidto bring a friend along to make four; so, four, we whisked the dust ofBerkeley from our wheels and--presto--Del Monte!

Parents of three children, who do most of their own work besides, do notneed to be told in detail what those four days meant. Parents of threechildren know what the hours of, say, seven to nine mean, at home; nordoes work stop at nine. It is one mad whirl to get the family earswashed and teeth cleaned, and "Chew your mush!" and "Wipe your mouth!"and "Where's your speller?" and "Jim, come back here and put on yourrubbers!" ("Where are my rubbers?" Ach Gott! where?) Try six times toget the butcher--line busy. Breakfast dishes to clear up; baby to bathe, dress, feed. Count the laundry. Forget all about the butcher untilfifteen minutes before dinner. Laundry calls. Telephone rings seventimes. Neighbor calls to borrow an egg. Telephone the milkman for apound of butter. Make the beds, --telephone rings in the middle, --twobeds do not get made till three. Start lunch. Wash the baby's clothes. Telephone rings three times while you are in the basement. Rice burns. Door-bell--gas and electric bill. Telephone rings. Patch boys' overalls. Water-bill. Stir the pudding. Telephone rings. Try to read at least thetable of contents of the "New Republic. " Neighbor calls to return someflour. Stir the pudding again. Mad stamping up the front steps. Sonshome. Forget to scrape their feet. Forget to take off their rubbers. Dad's whistle. Hurray! Lunch. --Let's stop about here, and return to DelMonte. 

This is where music would help. The Home _motif_ would be--I do not knowthose musical terms, but a lot of jumpy notes up and down the piano, fast and never catching up. Del Monte _motif_ slow, lazy melody--endingwith dance-music for night-time. In plain English, what Del Monte meantwas a care-free, absolutely care-free, jaunt into another world. It wasnot our world, --we could have been happy forever did we never lay eyeson Del Monte, --and yet, oh, it was such fun! Think of lazing in bed tilleight or eight-thirty, then taking a leisurely bath, then dressing anddeliberately using up time doing it--put one shoe on and look at it aspell; then, when you are good and ready, put on the next. Just feelingsort of spunky about it--just wanting to show some one that time isnothing to you--what's the hurry?

Then--oh, what _motif_ in music could do a Del Monte breakfast justice?Just yesterday you were gulping down a bite, in between getting thefamily fed and off. Here you were, holding hands under the table to makesure you were not dreaming, while you took minutes and minutes to eatfruit and mush and eggs and coffee and waffles, and groaned to thinkthere was still so much on the menu that would cost you nothing to keepon consuming, but where, oh, where, put it? After rocking a spell in thesun on the front porch, the green Pierce Arrow appears, and all honk offfor the day--four boxes of picnic lunch stowed away by a graciouswaiter; not a piece of bread for it did you have to spread yourself. Basking in the sun under cypress trees, talking over every subject underheaven; back in time for a swim, a rest before dinner; then dinner (why, oh, why has the human such biological limitations?). Then a concert, then dancing, then--crowning glory of an unlimited bank-account--Napasoda lemonade--and bed. Oh, what a four days!

In thinking over the intimate things of our life together, I havedifficulty in deciding what the finest features of it were. There was somuch that made it rich, so much to make me realize I was blessed beyondany one else, that I am indebted to the world forever for the color thatliving with Carl Parker gave to existence. Perhaps one of the mosthelpful memories to me now is the thought of his absolute faith in me. From the time we were first in love, it meant a new zest in life to knowthat Carl firmly believed there was nothing I could not do. For all thatI hold no orthodox belief in immortality, I could no more get away fromthe idea that, if I fail in anything now--why I _can't_ fail--think ofCarl's faith in me! About four days before he died, he looked up at meonce as I was arranging his pillow and said, so seriously, "You know, there isn't a university in the country that wouldn't give you yourPh. D. Without your taking an examination for it. " He was delirious, itis true; but nevertheless it expressed, though indeed in a veryexaggerated form, the way he had of thinking I was somebody! I knewthere was no one in the world like him, but I had sound reasons forthat. Oh, but it is wonderful to live with some one who thinks you arewonderful! It does not make you conceited, not a bit, but it makes ahappy singing feeling in your heart to feel that the one you love bestin the world is proud of you. And there is always the incentive ofvowing that some day you will justify it all. 

The fun of dressing for a party in a hand-me-down dress from somerelative, knowing that the one you want most to please will honestlybelieve; and say on the way home, that you were the best-looking one atthe party! The fun of cooking for a man who thinks every dish set beforehim is the best food he _ever_ ate--and not only say it, but act thatway. ("That was just a sample. Give me a real dish of it, now that Iknow it's the best pudding I ever tasted!")

CHAPTER XVI

As soon as the I. W. W. Article was done, Carl had to begin on his paperto be read before the Economic Association, just after Christmas, inPhiladelphia. That was fun working over. "Come up here and let me readyou this!" And we'd go over that much of the paper together. Then morereading to Miss Van Doren, more correctings, finally finishing it justthe day before he had to leave. But that was partly because he had toleave earlier than expected. The Government had telegraphed him to go onto Washington, to mediate a threatened longshoremen's strike. Carlworked harder over the longshoremen than over any other single labordifficulty, not excepting the eight-hour day in lumber. Here again I donot feel free to go into details. The matter was finally, at Carl'ssuggestion, taken to Washington. 

The longshoremen interested Carl for the same reason that the migratoryand the I. W. W. Interested him; in fact, there were many I. W. W. Amongthem. It was the lower stratum of the labor-world--hard physical labor, irregular work, and, on the whole, undignified treatment by the men setover them. And they reacted as Carl expected men in such a position toreact. Yet, on the side of the workers, he felt that in this particularinstance it was a case of men being led by stubborn egotistical uniondelegates not really representing the wishes of the rank and file ofunion members, their main idea being to compromise on nothing. On theother hand, be it said that he considered the employers he had to dealwith here the fairest, most open-minded, most anxious to compromise inthe name of justice, of all the groups of employers he ever had to dealwith. The whole affair was nerve-racking, as is best illustrated by thefact that, while Carl was able to hold the peace as long as he was onthe job, three days after his death the situation "blew up. "

On his way East he stopped off in Spokane, to talk with the lumbermeneast of the mountains. There, at a big meeting, he was able to put overthe eight-hour day. The Wilson Mediation Commission was in Seattle atthe time. Felix Frankfurter telephoned out his congratulations to me, and said: "We consider it the single greatest achievement of its kindsince the United States entered the war. " The papers were full of it andexcitement ran high. President Wilson was telegraphed to by the LaborCommission, and he in turn telegraphed back his pleasure. In addition, the East Coast lumbermen agreed to Carl's scheme of an employmentmanager for their industry, and detailed him to find a man for the jobwhile in the East. My, but I was excited!

Not only that, but they bade fair to let him inaugurate a system whichwould come nearer than any chance he could have expected to try out on abig scale his theories on the proper handling of labor. The men were tohave the sanest recreation devisable for their needs andinterests--out-of-door sports, movies, housing that would permit ofdignified family life, recreation centres, good and proper food, alteration in the old order of "hire and fire, " and general control overthe men. Most employers argued: "Don't forget that the type of men wehave in the lumber camps won't know how to make use of a single reformyou suggest, and probably won't give a straw for the whole thing. " Towhich Carl would reply: "Don't forget that your old conditions havedrawn the type of man you have. This won't change men over-night by along shot, but it will at once relieve the tension--and see, in fiveyears, if your type itself has not undergone a change. "

From Washington, D. C. , he wrote: "This city is one mad mess of men, desolate, and hunting for folks they should see, overcharged by hotels, and away from their wives. " The red-letter event of Washington was whenhe was taken for tea to Justice Brandeis's. "We talked I. W. W. , unemployment, etc. , and he was oh, so grand!" A few days later, two daysbefore Christmas, Mrs. Brandeis telephoned and asked him for Christmasdinner! That was a great event in the Parker annals--Justice Brandeishaving been a hero among us for some years. Carl wrote: "He is all he issupposed to be and more. " He in turn wrote me after Carl's death: "Ourcountry shares with you the great loss. Your husband was among the veryfew Americans who possessed the character, knowledge, and insight whichare indispensable in dealing effectively with our labor-problem. Appreciation of his value was coming rapidly, and events were enforcinghis teachings. His journey to the East brought inspiration to many; andI seek comfort in the thought that, among the students at theUniversity, there will be some at least who are eager to carry forwardhis work. "

There were sessions with Gompers, Meyer Bloomfield, Secretary Baker, Secretary Daniels, the Shipping Board, and many others. 

Then, at Philadelphia, came the most telling single event of oureconomic lives--Carl's paper before the Economic Association on "Motivesin Economic Life. " At the risk of repeating to some extent the ideasquoted from previous papers, I shall record here a few statements fromthis one, as it gives the last views he held on his field of work. 

"Our conventional economics to-day analyzes no phase of industrialism orthe wage-relationship, or citizenship in pecuniary society, in a mannerto offer a key to such distressing and complex problems as this. Humannature riots to-day through our economic structure, with ridicule anddestruction; and we economists look on helpless and aghast. The menaceof the war does not seem potent to quiet revolt or still class cries. The anxiety and apprehension of the economist should not be produced bythis cracking of his economic system, but by the poverty of thecriticism of industrialism which his science offers. Why are economistsmute in the presence of a most obvious crisis in our industrial society?Why have our criticisms of industrialism no sturdy warnings about thisunhappy evolution? Why does an agitated officialdom search to-day invain among our writings, for scientific advice touchinglabor-inefficiency or industrial disloyalty, for prophecies and plansabout the rise in our industrialism of economic classes unharmonious andhostile?

"The fair answer seems this: We economists speculate little on humanmotives. We are not curious about the great basis of fact which dynamicand behavioristic psychology has gathered to illustrate the instinctstimulus to human activity. Most of us are not interested to think ofwhat a psychologically full or satisfying life is. We are not curious toknow that a great school of behavior analysis called the Freudian hasbeen built around the analysis of the energy outbursts brought bysociety's balking of the native human instincts. Our economic literatureshows that we are but rarely curious to know whether industrialism issuited to man's inherited nature, or what man in turn will do to ourrules of economic conduct in case these rules are repressive. Themotives to economic activity which have done the major service inorthodox economic texts and teachings have been either the vaguemiddle-class virtues of thrift, justice, and solvency, or the equallyvague moral sentiments of 'striving for the welfare of others, ' 'desirefor the larger self, ' 'desire to equip one's self well, ' or, lastly, thelabor-saving deduction that man is stimulated in all things economic byhis desire to satisfy his wants with the smallest possible effort. Allthis gentle parody in motive theorizing continued contemporaneously withthe output of the rich literature of social and behavioristicpsychology which was almost entirely addressed to this very problem ofhuman motives in modern economic society. Noteworthy exceptions are theremarkable series of books by Veblen, the articles and criticisms ofMitchell and Patten, and the most significant small book by Taussig, entitled 'Inventors and Money-makers. ' It is this complementary field ofpsychology to which the economists must turn, as these writers haveturned, for a vitalization of their basic hypotheses. There awaits thema bewildering array of studies of the motives, emotions, and folkways ofour pecuniary civilization. Generalizations and experiment statisticsabound, ready-made for any structure of economic criticism. The humanmotives are isolated, described, compared. Business confidence, therelease of work-energy, advertising appeal, market vagaries, the basisof value computations, decay of workmanship, the labor unrest, declinein the thrift habit, are the subjects treated. 

"All human activity is untiringly actuated by the demand for realizationof the instinct wants. If an artificially limited field of humanendeavor be called economic life, all its so-called motives harkdirectly back to the human instincts for their origin. _There are, intruth, no economic motives as such. _ The motives of economic life arethe same as those of the life of art, of vanity and ostentation, of warand crime, of sex. Economic life is merely the life in which instinctgratification is alleged to take on a rational pecuniary habit form. Manis not less a father, with a father's parental instinct, just because hepasses down the street from his home to his office. His business raidinto his rival's market has the same naïve charm that tickled the heartof his remote ancestor when in the night he rushed the herds of anear-by clan. A manufacturer tries to tell a conventional world that heresists the closed shop because it is un-American, it loses him money, or it is inefficient. A few years ago he was more honest, when he saidhe would run his business as he wished and would allow no man to tellhim what to do. His instinct of leadership, reinforced powerfully by hisinnate instinctive revulsion to the confinement of the closed shop, gavethe true stimulus. His opposition is psychological, not ethical. "

He then goes on to catalogue and explain the following instincts whichhe considered of basic importance in any study of economics: (1)gregariousness; (2) parental bent, motherly behavior, kindliness; (3)curiosity, manipulation, workmanship; (4) acquisition, collecting, ownership; (5) fear and flight; (6) mental activity, thought; (7) thehousing or settling instinct; (8) migration, homing; (9) hunting("Historic revivals of hunting urge make an interesting recital ofreligious inquisitions, witch-burnings, college hazings, persecution ofsuffragettes, of the I. W. W. , of the Japanese, or of pacifists. All thisgoes on often under naïve rationalization about justice and patriotism, but it is pure and innate lust to run something down and hurt it"); (10)anger, pugnacity; (11) revolt at confinement, at being limited inliberty of action and choice; (12) revulsion; (13) leadership andmastery; (14) subordination, submission; (15) display, vanity, ostentation; (166) sex. 

After quoting from Professor Cannon, and discussing the contributionsthat his studies have made to the subject of man's reaction to hisimmediate environment, he continues:--

"The conclusion seems both scientific and logical, that behavior inanger, fear, pain, and hunger is a basically different behavior frombehavior under repose and economic security. The emotions generatedunder the conditions of existence-peril seem to make the emotions andmotives generative in quiet and peace pale and unequal. It seemsimpossible to avoid the conclusion that the most vital part of man'sinheritance is one which destines him to continue for some myriads ofyears ever a fighting animal when certain conditions exist in hisenvironment. Though, through education, man be habituated in social andintelligent behavior or, through license, in sexual debauchery, still, at those times when his life or liberty is threatened, hisinstinct-emotional nature will inhibit either social thought or sexideas, and present him as merely an irrational fighting animal. . . . 

"The instincts and their emotions, coupled with the obedient body, laydown in scientific and exact description the motives which must and willdetermine human conduct. If a physical environment set itself againstthe expression of these instinct motives, the human organism is fullyand efficiently prepared for a tenacious and destructive revolt againstthis environment; and if the antagonism persist, the organism is readyto destroy itself and disappear as a species if it fail of a psychicalmutation which would make the perverted order endurable. "

And in conclusion, he states:--

"The dynamic psychology of to-day describes the present civilization asa repressive environment. For a great number of its inhabitants asufficient self-expression is denied. There is, for those who care tosee, a deep and growing unrest and pessimism. With the increase inknowledge is coming a new realization of the irrational direction ofeconomic evolution. The economists, however, view economic inequalityand life-degradation as objects in truth outside the science. Ourvalue-concept is a price-mechanism hiding behind a phrase. If we are toplay a part in the social readjustment immediately ahead, we must puthuman nature and human motives into our basic hypotheses. Ourvalue-concept must be the yardstick to measure just how fully things andinstitutions contribute to a full psychological life. We must know moreof the meaning of progress. The domination of society by one economicclass has for its chief evil the thwarting of the instinct life of thesubordinate class and the perversion of the upper class. The extent andcharacteristics of this evil are to be estimated only when we know theinnate potentialities and inherited propensities of man; and theordering of this knowledge and its application to the changeableeconomic structure is the task before the trained economist to-day. "

A little later I saw one of the big men who was at that EconomicAssociation meeting, and he said: "I don't see why Parker isn'tspoiled. He was the most talked-about man at the Convention. " Sixpublishing houses wrote, after that paper, to see if he could enlarge itinto a book. Somehow it did seem as if now more than ever the world wasours. We looked ahead into the future, and wondered if it could seem asgood to any one as it did to us. It was almost _too_ good--we were dazeda bit by it. It is one of the things I just cannot let myself ever thinkof--that future and the plans we had. Anything I can ever do now wouldstill leave life so utterly dull by comparison. 

CHAPTER XVII

One of the days in Seattle that I think of most was about a month beforethe end. The father of a great friend of ours died, and Carl and I wentto the funeral one Sunday afternoon. We got in late, so stood in acorner by the door, and held hands, and seemed to own each otherespecially hard that day. Afterwards we prowled around the streets, talking of funerals and old age. 

Most of the people there that afternoon were gray-haired--the family hadlived in Seattle for years and years, and these were the friends ofyears and years back. Carl said: "That is something we can't have whenyou and I die--the old, old friends who have stood by us year in andyear out. It is one of the phases of life you sacrifice when you movearound at the rate we do. But in the first place, neither of us wants afuneral, and in the second place, we feel that moving gives more than ittakes away--so we are satisfied. "

Then we talked about our own old age--planned it in detail. Carldeclared: "I want you to promise me faithfully you will make me stopteaching when I am sixty. I have seen too much of the tragedy of menhanging on and on and students and education being sacrificed becausethe teacher has lost his fire--has fallen behind in the parade. I feelnow as if I'd never grow old--that doesn't mean that I won't. So, nomatter how strong I may be going at sixty, make me stop--promise. "

Then we discussed our plans: by that time the children would be lookingout for themselves, --very much so, --and we could plan as we pleased. Itwas to be England--some suburb outside of London, where we could getinto big things, and yet where we could be peaceful and by ourselves, and read and write, and have the young economists who were travelingabout, out to spend week-ends with us; and then we could keep ourgrandchildren while their parents were traveling in Europe! About amonth from that day, he was dead. 

 * * * * *

There is a path I must take daily to my work at college, which passesthrough the University Botanical Garden. Every day I must brace myselffor it, for there, growing along the path, is a clump of old-fashionedmorning glories. Always, from the time we first came back to teach inBerkeley and passed along that same path to the University, we plannedto have morning glories like those--the odor came to meet you yardsaway--growing along the path to the little home we would at last settledown in when we were old. We used always to remark pictures in thenewspapers, of So-and-so on their "golden anniversary, " and would planabout our own "golden wedding-day"--old age together always seemed sogood to think about. There was a time when we used to plan to live in alighthouse, way out on some point, when we got old. It made a strongappeal, it really did. We planned many ways of growing old--not that wetalked of it often, perhaps twice a year, but always, always it was, ofcourse, _together_. Strange, that neither of us ever dreamed one wouldgrow old without the other. 

And yet, too, there is the other side. I found a letter written duringour first summer back in Berkeley, just after we had said good-bye atthe station when Carl left for Chicago. Among other things he wrote: "Itjust makes me feel bad to see other folks living put-in lives, when wetwo (four) have loved through Harvard and Europe and it has onlycommenced, and no one is loving so hard or living so happily. . . . I ammost willing to die now (if you die with me), for we have lived onecomplete life of joy already. " And then he added--if only the adding ofit could have made it come true: "But we have fifty years yet of love. "

Oh, it was so true that we packed into ten years the happiness thatcould normally be considered to last a lifetime--a long lifetime. Sometimes it seems almost as if we must have guessed it was to end sosoon, and lived so as to crowd in all the joy we could while our timetogether was given us. I say so often that I stand right now the richestwoman in the world--why talk of sympathy? I have our three precious, marvelously healthy children, I have perfect health myself, I have alland more than I can handle of big ambitious maturing plans, with achance to see them carried out, I have enough to live on, and, greatestof all, fifteen years of perfect memories--And yet, to hear a snatch ofa tune and know that the last time you heard it you weretogether--perhaps it was the very music they played as you left thetheatre arm-in-arm that last night; to put on a dress you have not wornfor some time and remember that, when you last had it on, it was thenight you went, just the two of you, to Blanc's for dinner; to meetunexpectedly some friend, and recall that the last time you saw him itwas that night you two, strolling with hands clasped, met him on SecondAvenue accidentally, and chatted on the corner; to come acrossa necktie in a trunk, to read a book he had marked, to see hishandwriting--perhaps just the address on an old baggage-check--Oh, onecan sound so much braver than one feels! And then, because you havetried so hard to live up to the pride and faith he had in you, to betold: "You know I am surprised that you haven't taken Carl's deathharder. You seem to be just the same exactly. "

What is _seeming_? Time and time again, these months, I have thought, what do any of us know about what another person _feels_? A smile--alaugh--I used to think of course they stood for happiness. There can bemany smiles, much laughter, and it means--nothing. But surely anythingis kinder for a friend to see than tears!

When Carl returned from the East in January, he was more rushed thanever--his time more filled than ever with strike mediations, street-cararbitrations, cost of living surveys for the Government, conferences onlumber production. In all, he had mediated thirty-two strikes, sat ontwo arbitration boards, made three cost-of-living surveys for theGovernment. (Mediations did gall him--he grew intellectually impatientover this eternal patching up of what he was wont to call "a rottensystem. " Of course he saw the war-emergency need of it just then, butwhat he wanted to work on was, why were mediations ever necessary? whatsocial and economic order would best ensure absence of friction?)

On the campus work piled up. He had promised to give a course onEmployment Management, especially to train men to go into the lumberindustries with a new vision. (Each big company east of the mountainswas to send a representative. ) It was also open to seniors in college, and a splendid group it was, almost every one pledged to take upemployment management as their vocation on graduation--no fear that theywould take it up with a capitalist bias. Then--his friends and I had tolaugh, it was so like him--the afternoon of the morning he arrived, hewas in the thick of a scrap on the campus over a principle he held totenaciously--the abolition of the one-year modern-language requirementfor students in his college. To use his own expression, he "went to thebat on it, " and at a faculty meeting that afternoon it carried. He hadbeen working his little campaign for a couple of months, but in hisabsence in the East the other side had been busy. He returned just intime for the fray. Every one knows what a farce one year of a modernlanguage is at college; even several of the language teachers themselveswere frank enough to admit it. But it was an academic tradition! Ithink the two words that upset Carl most were "efficiency" and"tradition"--both being used too often as an excuse for practices thatdid more harm than good. 

 * * * * *

And then came one Tuesday, the fifth of March. He had his hands full allmorning with the continued threatened upheavals of the longshoremen. About noon the telephone rang--threatened strike in all the flour-mills;Dr. Parker must come at once. (I am reminded of a description which waspublished of Carl as a mediator. "He thought of himself as a physicianand of an industry on strike as the patient. And he did not merely easethe patient's pain with opiates. He used the knife and tried forpermanent cures. ") I finally reached him by telephone; his voice soundedtired, for he had had a very hard morning. By one o'clock he was workingon the flour-mill situation. He could not get home for dinner. Aboutmidnight he appeared, having sat almost twelve hours steadily on the newflour-difficulty. He was "all in, " he said. 

The next morning, one of the rare instances in our years together, heclaimed that he did not feel like getting up. But there were fourimportant conferences that day to attend to, besides his work atcollege. He dressed, ate breakfast, then said he felt feverish. Histemperature was 102. I made him get back into bed--let all theconferences on earth explode. The next day his temperature was 105. "This has taught us our lesson--no more living at this pace. I don'tneed two reminders that I ought to call a halt. " Thursday, Friday, andSaturday he lay there, too weary to talk, not able to sleep at allnights; the doctor coming regularly, but unable to tell just what thetrouble was, other than a "breakdown. "

Saturday afternoon he felt a little better; we planned then what wewould do when he got well. The doctor had said that he should allowhimself at least a month before going back to college. One month givento us! "Just think of the writing I can get done, being around home withmy family!" There was an article for Taussig half done to appear in the"Quarterly Journal of Economics, " a more technical analysis of theI. W. W. Than had appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly"; he had just begun areview for the "American Journal of Economics" of Hoxie's"Trade-Unionism. " Then he was full of ideas for a second article he hadpromised the "Atlantic"--"Is the United States a Nation?"--"And think ofbeing able to see all I want of the June-Bug!"

Since he had not slept for three nights, the doctor left powders which Iwas to give him for Saturday night. Still he could not sleep. He thoughtthat, if I read aloud to him in a monotonous tone of voice, he couldperhaps drop off. I got a high-school copy of "From Milton to Tennyson, "and read every sing-songy poem I could find--"The Ancient Mariner"twice, hardly pronouncing the words as I droned along. Then he began toget delirious. 

It is a very terrifying experience--to see for the first time a personin a delirium, and that person the one you love most on earth. All nightlong I sat there trying to quiet him--it was always some mediation, somecommittee of employers he was attending. He would say: "I am sotired--can't you people come to some agreement, so that I can go homeand sleep?"

At first I would say: "Dearest, you must be quiet and try to go tosleep. "--"But I can't leave the meeting!" He would look at me in suchdistress. So I learned my part, and at each new discussion he would getinto, I would suggest: "Here's Will Ogburn just come--he'll take chargeof the meeting for you. You come home with me and go to sleep. " So hewould introduce Will to the gathering, and add: "Gentlemen, my wifewants me to go home with her and go to sleep--good-bye. " For a fewmoments he would be quiet. Then, "O my Lord, something to investigate!What is it this time?" I would cut in hastily: "The Government feelsnext week will be plenty of time for this investigation. " He would lookat me seriously. "Did you ever know the Government to give you a week'stime to begin?" Then, "Telegrams--more telegrams! Nobody keeps theirword, nobody. "

About six o'clock in the morning I could wait no longer and called thedoctor. He pronounced it pneumonia--an absolutely different case fromany he had ever seen: no sign of it the day before, though it was whathe had been watching for all along. Every hospital in town was full. Asplendid trained nurse came at once to the house--"the best nurse inthe whole city, " the doctor announced with relief. 

Wednesday afternoon the crisis seemed to have passed. That whole eveninghe was himself, and I--I was almost delirious from sheer joy. To hearhis dear voice again just talking naturally! He noticed the nurse forthe first time. He was jovial--happy. "I am going to get some fun out ofthis now!" he smiled. "And oh, won't we have a time, my girl, while I amconvalescing!" And we planned the rosiest weeks any one ever planned. Thursday the nurse shaved him--he not only joked and talked like hisdear old self--he looked it as well. (All along he had beencheerful--always told the doctor he was "feeling fine"; never complainedof anything. It amused the doctor so one morning, when he was leaningover listening to Carl's heart and lungs, as he lay in more or less of adoze and partial delirium. A twinkle suddenly came into Carl's eye. "Yousprung a new necktie on me this morning, didn't you?" Sure enough, itwas new. )

Thursday morning the nurse was preparing things for his bath in anotherroom and I was with Carl. The sun was streaming in through the windowsand my heart was too contented for words. He said: "Do you know whatI've been thinking of so much this morning? I've been thinking of whatit must be to go through a terrible illness and not have some one youloved desperately around. I say to myself all the while: 'Just think, mygirl was here all the time--my girl will be here all the time!' I'velain here this morning and wondered more than ever what good angel washovering over me the day I met you. "

I put this in because it is practically the last thing he said beforedelirium came on again, and I love to think of it. He said really morethan that. 

In the morning he would start calling for me early--the nurse would tryto soothe him for a while, then would call me. I wanted to be in hisroom at night, but they would not let me--there was an unborn life to bethought of those days, too. As soon as I reached his bed, he would claspmy hand and hold it oh, so tight. "I've been groping for you allnight--all night! Why _don't_ they let me find you?" Then, in a moment, he would not know I was there. Daytimes I had not left him five minutes, except for my meals. Several nights they had finally let me be by him, anyway. Saturday morning for the first time since the crisis the doctorwas encouraged. "Things are really looking up, " and "You go out for afew moments in the sun!"

I walked a few blocks to the Mudgetts' in our department, to tell themthe good news, and then back; but my heart sank to its depths again assoon as I entered Carl's room. The delirium always affected me that way:to see the vacant stare in his eyes--no look of recognition when Ientered. 

The nurse went out that afternoon. "He's doing nicely, " was the lastthing she said. She had not been gone half an hour--it was justtwo-fifteen--and I was lying on her bed watching Carl, when he called, "Buddie, I'm going--come hold my hand. " O my God--I dashed for him, Iclung to him, I told him he could not, must not go--we needed him tooterribly, we loved him too much to spare him. I felt so sure of it, thatI said: "Why, my love is enough to _keep_ you here!"

He would not let me leave him to call the doctor. I just knelt thereholding both his hands with all my might, talking, talking, telling himwe were not going to let him go. And then, at last, the color came backinto his face, he nodded his head a bit, and said, "I'll stay, " veryquietly. Then I was able to rush for the stairs and tell Mrs. Willard totelephone for the doctor. Three doctors we had that afternoon. Theyreported the case as "dangerous, but not absolutely hopeless. " Hisheart, which had been so wonderful all along, had given out. That verymorning the doctor had said: "I wish my pulse was as strong as that!"and there he lay--no pulse at all. They did everything: our own doctorstayed till about ten, then left, with Carl resting fairly easily. Helived only a block away. 

About one-thirty the nurse had me call the doctor again. I could seethings were going wrong. Once Carl started to talk rather loud. I triedto quiet him and he said: "Twice I've pulled and fought and struggled tolive just for you [one of the times had been during the crisis]. Let mejust talk if I want to. I can't make the fight a third time--I'm sotired. "

Before the doctor could get there, he was dead. 

 * * * * *

With our beliefs what they were, there was only one thing to be done. Wehad never discussed it in detail, but I felt absolutely sure I wasdoing as he would have me do. His body was cremated, without any servicewhatsoever--nobody present but one of his brothers and a great friend. The next day the two men scattered his ashes out on the waters of PugetSound. I feel it was as he would have had it. 

 * * * * *

"Out of your welded lives--welded in spirit and in the comradeship thatyou had in his splendid work--you know everything that I could say. 

"I grieve for you deeply--and I rejoice for any woman who, for even afew short years, is given the great gift in such a form. "

THE END