A great metropolitan daily in one of its columns of editorial comment recently enjoyed a little mild and good-natured fun at the expense of a rather prominent journalist and editor from Kansas who had been visiting the modern Babylon. He measured everything in the metropolis by the standards of his own small town, so the paper said, and was inclined to believe all the whoppers concerning the big city’s wickedness which obliging reporters told him. Perhaps the country editor had been imposed upon, said the cIty editor said the city editor, who thereupon dismissed the subject.
It is inevitable that city populations, especially in the East, should feel toward the Westerner a certain easy-going tolerance coupled with just a tinge of superiority. Chose who live in the older and more thickly settled regions can hardly fail to regard, perhaps almost unconsciously, the newer and more sparsely settled portions of the country with a trace of condescension, just as the older countries of Europe look out upon their children in other continents as somewhat in the nature of upstarts. From the fact of its newness the culture of the West, especially in the more remote portions, cannot present so hard-surfaced a polish as that of the older communities. One does not expect to find so much activity in art, drama, music and book publishing in a prairie, desert or mountain state as in Boston or New York. The impressiveness of an academic or ecclesiastical function is heightened by age, memories and historic associations. There are thousands of miles of Western country whose only memories and historic associations have to do with cattle and sheep wars, the severity of blizzards and early Indian raids we except a few cities on the Pacific Coast and a couple or so in the mountains, the West beyond Kansas City is a vastly extended mountain and plain. Population is spread out very thin indeed across the endless face of Nature. Human interests do not concentrate, one might say coagulate, as they do in such a place as the New York Stock Exchange. In the great centers of population, one feels as if a mighty pulse were beating. From the force of numbers the very city becomes a crucible of rumors, news and intelligence.
Thus lightly and thoughtlessly, and for the most part untruly, men will say that unless they are near these masses of population they are far away from the center of things. What they really mean is that the sheer force of numbers, the wealth of entertainment, even if they cannot avail themselves of it all, the multiplicity of buildings, factories, stores and homes, even if they cannot enter them all, the very pressure, complexity and speed of life give human beings a vicarious sense of being in the midst of things.
It must be admitted, of course, that much of the West is quite bare and primitive in appearance. There is beauty and majesty of natural scenery in the mountain regions, and an impressive sweep of 6pen country in the prairies, but man has not as yet had the time or opportunity to add much to Nature.
Nor does it seem possible to pile up the ornaments and monuments of civilization except in its greater cities, and these develop where industry, and especially commerce and government, come to a head; not in the broad spaces given over to agriculture, grazing, mining and lumbering.
But the center of things, the center of the country should, after all, exist for each individual where that individual finds happiness and self-development. It must or it should be where one finds the possibility of hope, of health, of self-respect, of independence and competence. How can the center of things be any place except where self-development reaches its highest point? For many that place is no doubt in the East, but just as surely it is in the West for many others.
The masses of people who live in or near the great cities, complacent and self-satisfied, seem curiously unaware that the individual counts for several times as much in the Not merely the important, successful individual, who is acknowledged as such but each man or woman counts for more. Freed from the complicated and impersonal life of the industrial and commercial portions of the country, human beings cease to be mere, almost nameless, hardly numbered cogs in a vast machine.
Out from under the weight of the older, more thickly populated and impersonal communities and regions, the individual finds himself less discouraged by failure. Hope is a stronger plant; fears and inhibitions are fewer. He stands in less awe of mere position. Social stratification is less clearly marked, although by no means wholly absent. Democracy to the cynical is an ideal state which has never existed anywhere. But in any case there is developed in the West not only hope but a quality, a spirit of heartiness and enthusiasm which carries one far on the hard road of life.
Great spaces, invigorating climate and high altitudes all these are influences which singly or in combination in various portions of the West aid in developing the human qualities which give value and zest to life. The outdoors is more real in these places, and leaving them for other regions one wonders why the daylight is so rarely turned on. “They wanted to show me a big skyscraper when I went East last time,”’ said a pioneer of the Rockies, ‘but I told them that where I came from we had mountains higher than their tallest building, with more wood on the out side and more iron inside.”
But the influences are not all due to climate and physical geography. The Westerner still feels in his nature the urge of the pioneer. For the most part the covered-wagon era has passed. Pioneering in a country that has even more automobiles, good roads, electricity and telephones in proportion to population than the older sections is not quite like that of fifty or seventy-five years ago.
Nor is progress necessarily greater or faster in the West than in the East. Change is not the sole prerogative of any section. But pioneering is different from change and progress. There is somehow more breaking of ground in the broad Western spaces. Growth may not be faster or any more real, but the individual is closer to it. In most cases he is more a part of it; he feels more like one of the actors and less like a mere super. He is more likely to be in the show, and usually it is more stirring to be actually in even a minor action than to be looking on at a major battle.
The future of the country is dark indeed if its people become convinced that the only worth-while centers are in a few metropolitan communities. We have improved upon the European pattern by giving a full rich life to millions. America will remain great only as this abundance continues, and that in turn depends upon the ability of men to find their own opportunity scattered far across all the forty-eight commonwealths.
From the editorial page of the Saturday Evening Post, February 25, 1924, George Horace Lorimer, Editor.
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