He wrote, after visiting Swift's plant, of "seeing illustrations for all the lectures on technique I have given, and Gee! it felt good. [I could not quote him honestly and leave out his "gees"] to actually look at things being done the way one has orated about 'em being done. The thing for me to do here is to see, and see the things I'm going to write into my thesis. I want to spend a week, if I can, digging into the steel industry. With my fine information about the ore [he had just acquired that], I am anxious to fill out my knowledge of the operation of smelting and making steel. Then I can orate industrial dope." Later: "This morning I called on the Vice-President of the Illinois Steel Company, on the Treasurer of Armour & Co., and lunched with Mr. Crane of Crane Co.—Ahem!"

The time we had when it came to the actual printing of the thesis! It had 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 a printing-office and read proof just as fast as it came off the press, while Carl worked at home, under you can guess what pressure, to complete his manuscript—tearing down with new batches for me to get in shape for the type-setter, and then racing home to do more writing. We finished the thesis about one o'clock one morning, proof-reading and all; and the next day—or that same day, later—war was declared. Which meant just this—that the University of Heidelberg sent word that it would not be safe for Carl to send over his thesis,—there were about three or four hundred copies to go, according to German University regulations,—until the situation had quieted down somewhat. The result was that those three Or four hundred copies lay stacked up in the printing-office for three or four years, until at last Carl decided it was 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 it could get safely to its destination. So he told the printer-man to do away with the whole batch. This meant that we were out about a hundred and fifty dollars, oh, luckless thought!—a small fortune to the young Parkers. So though in a way the thesis as it stands was not meant for publication, I shall risk quoting from Part One, "The Problem," so that at 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 be forming and reforming, weak and instable. To prohibit or greatly restrict immigration would bring forth class conflict within a generation,' what does it mean?

"President Woodrow Wilson in a statement of his fundamental beliefs has said: 'Why are we in the presence, why are we at the threshold, of a revolution? . . . Don't you know that some man with eloquent tongue, without conscience, who did not care for the nation, could put this whole country into a flame? Don't you know that this country, from one end to the other, believes that something is wrong? What an opportunity it would be for some man without conscience to spring up and say: "This is the way; follow me"—and lead in paths of destruction!' What does it mean?

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

"A nation-wide antagonism to trade-unions, to the idea of collective bargaining between men and employer, cannot spring from a temperamental aversion of a mere individual, however powerful, be he Carnegie, Parry, or Post, or from the common opinion in a group such as the so-called Beef Trust, or the directorate of the United States Steel Corporation. Such a hostility, characterizing as it does one of the vitally important relationships in industrial production, must seek its reason-to-be in economic causes. Profits, market, financing, are placed in certain jeopardy by such a labor policy, and this risk is not continued, generation after generation, as a casual indulgence in temper. Deep below the strong charges against the unions of narrow self-interest and un-American limitation of output, dressed by the Citizens' Alliance in the language of the Declaration of Independence, lies a quiet economic reason for the hostility. Just as slavery was about to go because it did not pay, and America stopped building a merchant marine because it was cheaper to hire England to transport American goods, so the American Trust, as soon as it had power, abolished the American trade-union because it found it costly. What then are these economic causes which account for the hostility?

"What did the union stand in the way of? What conditions did the trust desire to establish with which the union would interfere? Or did a labor condition arise which allowed the employer to wreck the union with such ease, that he turned aside for a moment to do it, to commit an act desirable only if its performance cost little danger or money?

"The answer can be found only after an analysis of certain factors in industrial production. These are three:—

"(a) The control of industrial production. Not only, in whose hands has industrial capitalism for the moment fallen, but in what direction does the evolution of control tend?

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

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

"If the character of these three factors be studied, trust hostility to American labor-unions can be explained in terms of economic measure. One national characteristic, however, must be taken for granted. That is the commercialized business morality which guides American economic life. The responsibility for the moral or social effect of an act is so rarely a consideration in a decision, that it can be here neglected without error. It is not a factor."

* * * * *

At the close of his investigation, he took his first vacation in five years—a canoe-trip up the Brule with Hal Bradley. That was one of our dreams that could never come true—a canoe-trip together. We almost bought the canoe at the Exposition—we looked holes through the one we wanted. Our trip was planned to the remotest detail. We never did come into our own in the matter of our vacations, although no two people could have more fun in the woods than we. But the combination of small children and no money and new babies and work—We figured that in three more 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 was offered the position of Executive Secretary in the State Immigration and Housing Commission of California. I remember so well the night he came home about midnight and told me. I am afraid the financial end would have 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 University salary. We figured that we could be square with the world in one year on a $4000 salary, and then need never be swayed by financial considerations again. So Carl accepted the new job. It was the wise thing to do anyway, as matters turned out. It threw him into direct contact for the first time with the migratory laborer and the I.W.W. It gave him his first bent in the direction of labor-psychology, which was to become his intellectual passion, and he was fired with a zeal that never left him, to see that there should be less unhappiness and inequality in the world.

The concrete result of Carl's work with the Immigration Commission was the clean-up of labor camps all over California. From unsanitary, fly-ridden, dirty makeshifts were developed ordered sanitary housing accommodations, designed and executed by experts in their fields. Also he awakened, through countless talks up and down the State, some understanding of the I.W.W. and his problem; although, judging from the newspapers 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, as the dramatic incident which focused his attention on the need of a deeper approach to a sound understanding of labor and its problems, and which, in turn, justified Mr. Bruere in stating in the "New Republic": "Parker was the first of our Economists, not only to analyse the psychology of labor and especially of casual labor, but also to make his analysis the basis for an applied technique of industrial and social reconstruction." Also, that was the occasion of his concrete introduction 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" for the "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 facts of it are new and naive in strike histories. Twenty-eight hundred pickers were camped on a treeless hill which was part of the —— ranch, the largest single employer of agricultural labor in the state. Some were in tents, some in topless squares of sacking, or with piles of straw. There was no organization for sanitation, no garbage-disposal. The temperature during the week of the riot had remained near 105 deg., and though the wells were a mile from where the men, women, and children were picking, and their bags could not be left for fear of theft of the hops, no water was sent into the fields. A lemonade wagon appeared at the end of the week, later found to be a concession granted to a cousin of the ranch owner. Local Wheatland stores were forbidden to send delivery wagons to the camp grounds. It developed in the state investigation that the owner of the ranch received half of the net profits earned by an alleged independent grocery store, which had been granted the 'grocery concession' and was located in the centre of the camp ground. . . .

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

"The ranch owner, a nervous man, was harassed by the rush of work brought on by the too rapidly ripening hops, and indignant at the jeers and catcalls which greeted his appearance near the meetings of the pickers. Confused with a crisis outside his slender social philosophy, he acted true to his tradition, and perhaps his type, and called on a sheriff's posse. What industrial relationship had existed was too insecure to stand such a procedure. It disappeared entirely, leaving in control the instincts and vagaries of a mob on the one hand, and great apprehension and inexperience on the other.

"As if a stage had been set, the posse arrived in automobiles at the instant when the officially 'wanted' strike-leader was addressing a mass meeting of excited men, women, and children. After a short and typical period of skirmishing and the minor and major events of arresting a person under such circumstances, a member of the posse standing outside fired a double-barreled shot-gun over the heads of the crowd, 'to sober them,' as he explained it. Four men were killed—two of the posse and two strikers; the posse fled in their automobiles to the county seat, and all that night the roads out of Wheatland were filled with pickers leaving the camp. Eight months later, two hop-pickers, proved to be the leaders of the strike and its agitation, were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Their appeal for a new trial was denied."

In his report to the Governor, written in 1914, Carl characterized the case as follows:—

"The occurrence known as the Wheatland Hop-Fields riot took place on Sunday afternoon, August 3, 1913. Growing discontent among the hop-pickers over wages, neglected camp-sanitation and absence of water in the fields had resulted in spasmodic meetings of protest on Saturday and Sunday morning, and finally by Sunday noon in a more or less involuntary strike. At five o'clock on Sunday about one thousand pickers gathered about a dance pavilion to listen to speakers. Two automobiles carrying a sheriff's posse drove up to this meeting, and officials armed with guns and revolvers attempted to disperse the crowd and to arrest, on a John Doe warrant, Richard Ford, the apparent leader of the strike. In the ensuing confusion shooting began and some twenty shots were fired. Two pickers, a deputy sheriff, and the district attorney of the county were killed. The posse fled and the camp remained unpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn next morning.

"The occurrence has grown from a casual, though bloody, event in California labor history into such a focus for discussion and analysis of the State's great migratory labor-problem that the incident can well be 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 and the law relating to criminal conspiracy; the housing and wages of agricultural laborers; the efficiency and sense of responsibility found in a posse of country deputies; the temper of the country people faced with the confusion and rioting of a labor outbreak; all these problems have found a starting point for their new and vigorous analysis in the Wheatland riot.

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

"The manager and part-owner of the ranch is an example of a certain type of California employer. The refusal of this type to meet the social responsibilities which come with the hiring of human beings for labor, not only works concrete and cruelly unnecessary misery upon a class little able to combat personal indignity and degradation, but adds fuel to the fire of resentment and unrest which is beginning to burn in the uncared-for migratory worker in California. That —— could refuse his clear duty of real trusteeship of a camp on his own ranch, which contained hundreds of women and children, is a social fact of miserable import. The excuses we have heard of unpreparedness, of alleged ignorance of conditions, are shamed by the proven human suffering and humiliation repeated each day of the week, from Wednesday to Sunday. Even where the employer's innate sense of moral obligation fails to point out his duty, he should have realized the insanity of stimulating unrest and bitterness in this inflammable labor force. The riot on the —— ranch is a California contribution to the literature of the social unrest in America."

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

"The position taken by the defense and their sympathizers in the course of the trial has not only an economic and social bearing, but many arguments made before the court are distinct efforts to introduce sociological modifications of the law which will have a far-reaching effect on the industrial relations of capital and labor. It is asserted that the common law, on which American jurisprudence is founded, is known as an ever-developing law, which must adapt itself to changing economic and social conditions; and, in this connection, it is claimed that the established theories of legal causation must be enlarged to include economic and social factors in the chain of causes leading to a result. Concretely, it is argued:—

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

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

"Furthermore, on the legal side, modifications of the law of property are urged. It is argued that modern law no longer holds the rights of private property sacred, that these rights are being constantly regulated and limited, and that in the Wheatland case the owner's traditional rights in relation to his own lands are to be held subject to the right of the laborers to organize thereon. It is urged that a worker on land has a 'property right in his job,' and that he cannot be made to leave the job, or the land, merely because he is trying to organize his fellow workers to make a protest as to living and economic conditions. It is urged that the organizing worker cannot be made to leave the job because the job is his property and it is all that he has."

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 to improve camp conditions, are not to be accepted as a solution of the problem. It is also obvious that the conviction of the agitators, such as Ford and Suhr, of murder, is not a solution, but is only the punishment 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 living conditions in the labor camps will have the immediate effect of making the recurrence of impassioned, violent strikes and riots not only improbable, but impossible; and furthermore, such improvement will go far towards eradicating the hatred and bitterness in the minds of the employers and in the minds of the roving, migratory laborers. This accomplished, the two conflicting parties will be in a position to meet on a saner, more constructive basis, in solving the further industrial problems arising between them. . . .

"They must come to realize that their own laxity in allowing the existence of unsanitary and filthy conditions gives a much-desired foothold to the very agitators of the revolutionary I.W.W. doctrines whom they so dread; they must learn that unbearable, aggravating living conditions inoculate the minds of the otherwise peaceful workers with the germs of bitterness and violence, as so well exemplified at the Wheatland riot, giving the agitators a fruitful field wherein to sow the seeds of revolt and preach the doctrine of direct action and sabotage.

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

"The Commission intends to furnish a clearinghouse to hear complaints of grievances, 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 100 had been I.W.W. 'card men,' or had had affiliations with that organization. There is evidence that there was in this camp a loosely caught 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 with the aid of the deplorable camp conditions, dominated a heterogeneous mass of 2800 unskilled laborers in 3 days. Some 700 or 800 of the force were of the 'hobo' class, in every sense potential I.W.W. strikers. At least 400 knew in a rough way the—for them curiously attractive—philosophy of the I.W.W., and could also sing some of its songs.

"Of the 100-odd 'card men' of the I.W.W., some had been through the San Diego affair, some had been soap-boxers in Fresno, a dozen had been in the Free Speech fight in Spokane. They sized up the hop-field as a ripe opportunity, as the principal defendant, 'Blackie' Ford, puts it, 'to start something.' On Friday, two days after picking began, the practical agitators began working through the camp. Whether or not Ford came to the —— ranch to foment trouble seems immaterial. There are five Fords in every camp of seasonal laborers in California. We have devoted ourselves in these weeks to such questions as this: 'How big a per cent of California's migratory seasonal labor force know the technique of an I.W.W. strike?' 'How many of the migratory laborers know when conditions are ripe to "start something"?' We are convinced that among the individuals of every fruit-farm labor group are many potential strikers. Where a group of hoboes sit around a fire under a railroad bridge, many of the group can sing I.W.W. songs without the book. This was not so three years ago. The I.W.W. in California is not a closely organized body, with a steady membership. The rank and file know little of the technical organization of industrial life which their written constitution demands. They listen eagerly to the appeal for the 'solidarity' of their class. In the dignifying of vagabondage through their crude but virile song and verse, in the bitter vilification of the jail turnkey and county sheriff, in their condemnation of the church and its formal social work, they find the vindication of their hobo status which they desire. They cannot sustain a live organization unless they have a strike or free-speech fight to stimulate their spirit. It is in their methods of warfare, not in their abstract philosophy or even hatred of law and judges, that danger lies for organized society. Since every one of the 5000 laborers in California who have been at some time connected with the I.W.W. considers himself a 'camp delegate' with walking papers to organize a camp local, this small army is watching, as Ford did, for an unsanitary camp or low wage-scale, to start the strike which will not only create a new I.W.W. local, but bring fame to the organizer. This common acceptance of direct action and sabotage as the rule of operation, the songs and the common vocabulary are, we feel convinced, the first stirring of a class expression.

"Class solidarity they have not. That may never come, for the migratory laborer has neither the force nor the vision nor tenacity to hold long enough to the ideal to attain it. But the I.W.W. is teaching a method of action which will give this class in violent flare-ups, such as that at Wheatland, expression.

"The dying away of the organization after the outburst is, therefore, to be expected. Their social condition is a miserable one. Their work, even at 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 is about the only intellectual fun we have.'

"Taking into consideration the misery and physical privation and the barren outlook of this life of the seasonal worker, the I.W.W. movement, with all its irresponsible motive and unlawful action, becomes in reality a class-protest, and the dignity which this characteristic gives it perhaps alone explains the persistence of the organization in the field.

"Those attending the protest mass-meeting of the Wheatland hop-pickers were singing the I.W.W. song 'Mr. Block,' when the sheriff's posse came up in its automobiles. The crowd had been harangued by an experienced I.W.W. orator—'Blackie' Ford. They had been told, according to evidence, to 'knock the blocks off the scissor-bills.' Ford had taken a sick baby from its mother's arms and, holding it before the eyes of the 1500 people, had cried out: 'It's for the life of the kids we're doing this.' Not a quarter of the crowd was of a type normally venturesome enough to strike, and yet, when the sheriff went after Ford, he was knocked down and kicked senseless by infuriated men. In the bloody riot which then ensued, District Attorney Manwell, Deputy Sheriff Riordan, a negro Porto Rican and the English boy were shot and killed. Many were wounded. The posse literally fled, and the camp remained practically unpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn the next day.

"The question of social responsibility is one of the deepest significance. The posse was, I am convinced, over-nervous and, unfortunately, over-rigorous. This can be explained in part by the state-wide apprehension over the I.W.W.; in part by the normal California country posse's attitude toward a labor trouble. A deputy sheriff, at the most critical moment, fired a shot in the air, as he stated, 'to sober the crowd.' There were armed men in the crowd, for every crowd of 2000 casual laborers includes a score of gunmen. Evidence goes to show that even the gentler mountainfolk in the crowd had been aroused to a sense of personal injury. ——'s automobile had brought part of the posse. Numberless pickers cling to the belief that the posse was '——'s police.' When Deputy Sheriff Dakin shot into the air, a fusillade took place; and when he had fired his last shell, an infuriated crowd of men and women chased him to the ranch store, where he was forced to barricade himself. The crowd was dangerous and struck the first blow. The murderous temper which turned the crowd into a mob is incompatible with social existence, let alone social progress. The crowd at the moment of the shooting was a wild and lawless animal. But to your investigator the important subject to analyze is not the guilt or innocence of Ford or Suhr, as the direct stimulators of the mob in action, but to name and standardize the early and equally important contributors to a psychological situation which resulted in an unlawful killing. If this is done, how can we omit either the filth of the hop-ranch, the cheap gun-talk of the ordinary deputy sheriff, or the unbridled, irresponsible speech of the soap-box orator?

"Without doubt the propaganda which the I.W.W. had actually adopted for the California seasonal worker can be, in its fairly normal working out in law, a criminal conspiracy, and under that charge, Ford and Suhr have been found guilty of the Wheatland murder. But the important fact is, that this propaganda will be carried out, whether unlawful or not. We have talked hours with the I.W.W. leaders, and they are absolutely conscious of their position in the eyes of the law. Their only comment is that they are glad, if it must be a conspiracy, that it is a criminal conspiracy. They have volunteered the beginning of a cure; it is to clean up the housing and wage problem of the seasonal worker. The shrewdest I.W.W. leader we found said: 'We can't agitate in the country unless things are rotten enough to bring the crowd along.' They evidently were in Wheatland."

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

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

"There is here, beyond a doubt, a great laboring population experiencing a high suppression of normal instincts and traditions. There can be no greater perversion of a desirable existence than this insecure, under-nourished, wandering life, with its sordid sex-expression and reckless and rare pleasures. Such a life leads to one of two consequences: either a sinking of the class to a low and hopeless level, where they become, through irresponsible conduct and economic inefficiency, a charge upon society; or revolt and guerrilla labor warfare.

"The migratory laborers, as a class, are the finished product of an environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out beings moulded after all the standards society abhors. Fortunately the psychologists have made it unnecessary to explain that there is nothing willful or personally reprehensible in the vagrancy of these vagrants. Their histories show that, starting with the long hours and dreary winters of the farms they ran away from, through their character-debasing experience with irregular industrial labor, on to the vicious economic life of the winter unemployed, their training predetermined but one outcome. Nurture has triumphed over nature; the environment has produced its type. Difficult though the organization of these people may be, a coincidence of favoring conditions may place an opportunity in the hands of a super-leader. If this comes, one can be sure that California will be both very astonished and very misused."

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

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

It was also about this time that California was treated to the spectacle of an Unemployed Army, which was driven from pillar to post,—or, in this case, from town to town,—each trying to outdo the last in protestations of unhospitality. Finally, in Sacramento the fire-hoses were turned on the army. At that Carl flamed with indignation, and expressed himself in no mincing terms, both to the public and to the reporter who sought his views. He was no hand to keep clippings, but I did 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 in accord with the 'careless, cruel and unscientific attitude of society on the labor question,' is the statement made to-day by Professor Carleton H. Parker, Assistant Professor of Industrial economy, and secretary of the 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. One way is shallow and biased; the other strives to use the simple rules of science for the analysis of any problem. One way is to damn the army of the unemployed and the irresponsible, irritating vagrants who will not work. The other way is to admit that any such social phenomenon as this army is just as normal a product of our social organization as our own university.

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

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

The illustration he always used to express his opinion of the average solution 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 suspect is given a cup, and is told to empty a bucket into which water is running from a faucet. If the suspect turns off the water before he begins to bail out the bucket, he is sane. Nearly all the current solutions of unemployment leave the faucet running. . . .

"The heart of the problem, the cause, one might well say, of unemployment, is that the employment of men regularly or irregularly is at no time an important consideration of those minds which control industry. Social organization has ordered it that these minds shall be interested only in achieving a reasonable profit in the manufacture and the sale of goods. Society has never demanded that industries be run even in part to give men employment. Rewards are not held out for such a policy, and therefore it is unreasonable to expect such a performance. Though a favorite popular belief is that we must 'work to live,' we have no current adage of a 'right to work.' This winter there are shoeless 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 mills cannot turn out the reasonable business profit; and since that is the only promise that can galvanize them into activity, they stand idle, no matter how much humanity finds of misery and death in this decision. This statement is not a peroration to a declaration for Socialism. It seems 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 force of profit-seeking. There is every reason to believe that profit-seeking has been a tremendous stimulus to economic activity in the past. It is doubtful if the present great accumulation of capital would have come into existence without it. But to-day it seems as it were to be caught up by its own social consequences. It is hard to escape from the insistence of a situation in which the money a workman makes in a year fails to cover the upkeep of his family; and this impairment of the father's income through unemployment has largely to be met by child-and woman-labor. The Federal Immigration Commission's report shows that in not a single great American industry can the average yearly income of the father keep his family. Seven hundred and fifty dollars is the bare minimum for the maintenance of the average-sized American industrial family. The average yearly earnings of the heads of families working in the United States in the iron and steel industry is $409; in bituminous coal-mining $451; in the woolen industry $400; in silk $448; in cotton $470; in clothing $530; in boots and shoes $573; in leather $511; in sugar-refining $549; in the meat industry $578; in furniture $598, etc.

"He who decries created work, municipal lodging-houses, bread-lines, or even sentimental charity, in the face of the winter's destitution, has an unsocial soul. The most despicable thing to-day is the whine of our cities lest their inadequate catering to their own homeless draw a few vagrants from afar. But when the agony of our winter makeshifting is by, will a sufficient minority of our citizens rise and demand that the best technical, economic, and sociological brains in our wealthy nation devote themselves with all courage and honesty to the problem of unemployment?"

Carl was no diplomat, in any sense of the word—above all, no political diplomat. It is a wonder that the Immigration and Housing Commission stood behind him as long as it did. He grew rabid at every political appointment which, in his eyes, hampered his work. It was evident, so they felt, that he was not tactful in his relations with various members of the Commission. It all galled him terribly, and after much consultation at home, he handed in his resignation. During the first term of his secretaryship, from October to December, he carried his full-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 at once, 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 my father'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. Ten months we were there. Three days after Carl resigned, he was on his way to Phoenix, Arizona,—where there was a threatened union tie-up,—as United States Government investigator of the labor situation. He added thereby to his first-hand stock of labor-knowledge, made a firm friend of Governor Hunt,—he was especially interested in his prison policy,—and in those few weeks was the richer by one more of the really intimate friendships one counts on to the last—Will Scarlett.

He wrote, on Carl's death, "What a horrible, hideous loss! Any of us could so easily have been spared; that he, who was of such value, had to go seems such an utter waste. . . . He was one of that very, very small circle of men, whom, in the course of our lives, we come really to love. His friendship meant so much—though I heard but infrequently from him, there was the satisfaction of a deep friendship that was always there and always the same. He would have gone so far! I have looked forward to a great career for him, and had such pride in him. It's too hideous!"



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

That spring we began building our very own home in Berkeley. The months in Alamo had made us feel that we could never bear to be in the centre of things again, nor, for that matter, could we afford a lot in the centre of things; so we bought high up on the Berkeley hills, where we could realize as much privacy as was possible, and yet where our friends could reach us—if they could stand the climb. The love of a nest we built! We were longer in that house than anywhere else: two years almost to 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 window overlooking the Golden Gate, we had the suppers that meant much joy to us and I hope to the friends we gathered around us. There, on the porches overhanging the very Canyon itself we had our Sunday tea-parties. (Each time Carl would plead, "I don't have to wear a stiff collar, do I?" and he knew that I would answer, "You wear anything you want," 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 was born, the daughter who was to be the very light of her adoring father's eyes. (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 not born up on the hill; but in ten days we were back from the hospital and out day and night through that glorious July, on some one of the porches overlooking the bay and the hills. And we added our adored Nurse Balch as 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 lives day in and day out. No one assumes anything before a trained nurse—they are around too constantly for that. They see the misery in homes, they see what joy there is. And Nurse Balch saw, because she was around practically all the time for six weeks, that there was nothing but joy every minute of the day in our home. I do not know how I can make people understand, who are used to just ordinary happiness, what sort of a life Carl and I led. It was not just that we got along. It was an active, not a passive state. There was never a home-coming, say at lunch-time, that did not seem an event—when our curve of happiness abruptly rose. Meals were joyous occasions always; perhaps too scant attention paid to the manners of the young, but much gurglings, and "Tell some more, daddy," and always detailed accounts of every little happening during the last few hours of separation.

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

The general subject was Labor-Problems. The students had to read one book a week—such books as Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," Keller's "Societal Evolution," Holt's "Freudian Wish," McDougall's "Social Psychology,"—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 Social Problems," 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 I sat in his seminar on Labor-Problems, and had we both been there ten years longer, each season would have found me in his class. His influence on my intellectual life was by far the most stimulating and helpful of all the men I have known. . . . But his spirit and influence will 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 a few weeks several of the boys asked Carl if they could have a little sub-seminar. It was a very rushed time for him, but he said that, if they would arrange all the details, he would save them Tuesday evenings. So every Tuesday night about a dozen boys climbed our hill to rediscuss the subject of the seminar of that afternoon—and everything else under the heavens and beyond. I laid out ham sandwiches, or sausages, or some edible dear to the male heart, and coffee to be warmed, and about midnight could be heard the sounds of banqueting from the kitchen. Three students told me on graduation that those Tuesday nights at our house had meant more intellectual stimulus than anything that ever came into their 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 I have ever had the privilege of associating with, I seemed to have stopped thinking. It didn't seem possible to me, and I can remember very clearly of thinking what a rotten world this is when we have to live and lose a man like Doc. I have talked to two men who were associated with him in somewhat the same manner as I was, and we simply looked at one another after the first sentences, and then I guess the thoughts of a man who had made so much of an impression on our minds drove coherent speech away. . . . I have had the opportunity since leaving college of experiencing something real besides college life and I can't remember during all that period of not having wondered how Dr. Parker would handle 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 say that I had that love for him."

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

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

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

From one of the young officers at Camp Lewis: "When E—— told me about Carl's illness last Wednesday, I resolved to go and see him the coming week-end. I carried out my resolution, only to find that I could see neither him nor you. [This was the day before Carl's death.] It was a great disappointment to me, so I left some flowers and went away. . . . I simply could not leave Seattle without seeing Carl once more, so I made up my mind to go out to the undertaker's. The friends I was with discouraged the idea, but it was too strong within me. There was a void within me which could only be filled by seeing my friend once more. I went out there and stood by his side for quite a while. I recalled the happy days spent with him on the campus. I thought of his kindliness, his loyalty, his devotion. Carl Parker shall always occupy a place in the recesses of my memory as a true example of nobility. It was hard for me to leave, but I felt much better."

From one of his women students: "Always from the first day when I knew him he seemed to give me a joy of life and an inspiration to work which no other person or thing has ever given me. And it is a joy and an inspiration I shall always keep. I seldom come to a stumbling-block in my work that I don't stop to wonder what Carl Parker would do were he solving that problem."

Another letter I have chosen to quote from was written by a former student now in Paris:—

"We could not do without him. He meant too much to us. . . . I come now as a young friend to put myself by your side a moment and to try to share a great sorrow which is mine almost as much as it is yours. For I am sure that, 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 both in 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 the youngsters—the day just before I graduated when mother and I had lunch at your house . . . and, finally, that day I left you, and you said, both of 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 all comers—that inexhaustible and incorrigible fund of humor—those we lose. 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 and inspiration are not lost, and shall not be. No one has counted the youngsters he has hauled, by the scruff of the neck as often as not, out of a slough of middle-class mediocrity, and sent careering off into some welter or current of ideas and conjecture. Carl didn't know where they would end, and no more do any of the rest of us. He knew he loathed stagnation. And he stirred things and stirred people. And the end of the stirring is far from being yet known or realized."

I like, too, a story one of the Regents told me. He ran into a student from 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 born again! ["Born again"—those were his very words.] I entered college thinking 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 taking everything he gives. Now I know I'd be selling out my life to make money the goal. I know now, too, that whatever money I do make can never be at the 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 to mean great things to the Parkers—Max Rosenberg. He had heard Carl lecture once or twice, had met him through our good friend Dr. Brown, and a warm friendship had developed. In the spring of 1916 we were somewhat tempted by a call to another University—$1700 was really not a fortune to live on, and to make both ends meet and prepare for the June-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 a call came that appealed to us in several ways, besides paying a much larger salary, we seriously considered it. About then "Uncle Max" rang up from San Francisco and asked Carl to see him before answering this other 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 up the minute he left Max—we wondered so hard what he might mean. And what he did mean was the most wonderful idea that ever entered a friend's head. He felt that Carl had a real message to give the world, and that he should write a book. He also realized that it was impossible to find time for a book under the circumstances. Therefore he proposed that Carl should take a year's leave of absence and let Max finance him—not only just finance him, but allow for a trip throughout the East for him to get the inspiration of contact with other men in his field; and enough withal, so that there should be no skimping anywhere and the little family at home should have everything they needed.

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

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

It would not take much imagination to realize what that trip meant to Carl—and through him to me. From the time he first felt the importance of the application of modern psychology to the study of economics, he became more and more intellectually isolated from his colleagues. They had no interest in, no sympathy for, no understanding of, what he was driving at. From May, when college closed, to October, when he left for the East, he read prodigiously. He had a mind for assimilation—he knew where to store every new piece of knowledge he acquired, and kept thereby an orderly brain. He read more than a book a week: everything he could lay hands on in psychology, anthropology, biology, philosophy, psycho-analysis—every field which he felt contributed to his own growing conviction that orthodox economics had served its day. And how he gloried in that reading! It had been years since he had been able to do anything but just keep up with his daily lectures, such was the pressure he was working under. Bless his heart, he was always coming across something that was just too good to hold in, and I would hear him come upstairs two steps at a time, bolt into the kitchen, and say: "Just listen to this!" And he would read an extract from some new-found treasure that would make him glow.

But outside of myself,—and I was only able to keep up with him by the merest skimmings,—and one or two others at most, there was no one who understood what he was driving at. As his reading and convictions grew, he waxed more and more outraged at the way Economics was handled in his own University. He saw student after student having every ounce of intellectual curiosity ground out of them by a process of economic education that would stultify a genius. Any student who continued his economic studies did so in spite of the introductory work, not because he had had one little ounce of enthusiasm aroused in his soul. Carl would walk the floor with his hands in his pockets when kindred spirits—especially students who had gone through the mill, and as seniors or graduates looked back outraged at certain courses they had had to flounder through—brought up the subject of Economics at the University of California.

Off he went then on his pilgrimage,—his Research Magnificent,—absolutely unknown to almost every man he hoped to see before his return. The first stop he made was at Columbia, Missouri, to see his idol Veblen. He quaked a bit beforehand,—had heard Veblen might not see him,—but the second letter from Missouri began, "Just got in after thirteen hours with Veblen. It went wonderfully and I am tickled to 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 his advice regarding a thesis-subject in labor. "I told him to go to his New England home and study the reaction of machine-industry on the life of the town. That is a typical Veblen subject. It scared the student to death, and Veblen chuckled over my advice." In Wisconsin he was especially anxious to see Guyer. Of his visit with him he wrote: "It was a whiz of a session. He is just my meat." At Yale he saw Keller. "He is a wonder and is going to do a lot for me in criticism."

Then began the daily letters from New York, and every single letter—not only from New York but from every other place he happened to be in: Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cambridge—told of at least one intellectual Event—with a capital E—a day. No one ever lived who had a more stimulating experience. Friends would ask me: "What is the news from Carl?" And I would just gasp. Every letter was so full of the new influences coming into his life, that it was impossible to give even an idea 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 on him and introduced myself baldly, and he is a corker. A remarkable talker, with a mind like a flash. I am to see him again. To-morrow will be 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." Next day: "Called on Hollingworth to-day. He gave me some invaluable data and opinions. . . . To-morrow I see Thorndike." And the next day: "I'm so joyful and excited over Thorndike. He was so enthusiastic over my work. . . . He at once had brass-tack ideas. Said I was right—that strikes usually started because of small and very human violations of man's innate dispositions."

Later he called on Professor W.C. Mitchell. "He went into my thesis very fully and is all for it. Professor Mitchell knows more than any one the importance 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 of employers in New York. I sat in on a meeting of the Building Trades Board where labor delegates and employers appeared. After two hours of it (awfully interesting) the Board took me to dinner and we talked labor stuff till ten-thirty. Gee, it was fine, and I got oceans of stuff."

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

Next day: "Had a remarkable visit with Dr. Gregory this A.M. He is one of the greatest psychiatrists in New York and up on balkings, business tension, and the mental effect of monotonous work. He was so worked up over my explanation of unrest (a mental status) through instinct-balkings other than sex, that he asked if I would consider using 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 mental specialists in New York will be present, to talk over the manner in which psychiatry will aid my research! I can't say how tickled I am over 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 was simply tickled to death. He is really a wonder and I was very enthused. . . . Before leaving he said: 'You come to dinner Friday night here and I will have Dr. Paton from Princeton and I'll get in some more to meet you.' . . . Then I beat it to the 'New Republic' offices, and sat down to dinner with the staff plus Robert Bruere, and the subject became 'What is a labor policy?' The Dad, he did his share, he did, and had a great row with Walter Lippmann and Bruere. Walter Lippmann said: 'This won't do—you have made me doubt a lot of things. You come to lunch with me Friday at the Harvard Club and we'll thrash it all out.' Says I, 'All right!' Then says Croly, 'This won't do; we'll have a dinner here the following 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 Harry Overstreet on Wednesday, Thorndike on Saturday, and gee, but I'll beat it 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 reading and pegging away unencouraged in his basement study up on the Berkeley hills?

The next day he heard Roosevelt at the Ritz-Carton. "Then I watched that remarkable 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 night a dinner with Winston Churchill. Next letter: "Had a simply superb talk with Hollingworth for two and a half hours this afternoon. . . . The dinner was the four biggest psychiatrists in New York and Dad. Made me simply yell, it did. . . . It was for my book simply superb. All is going so wonderfully." Next day: "Now about the Thorndike dinner: it was grand. . . . I can't tell you how much these talks are maturing my ideas about the book. I think in a different plane and am certain that my ideas are surer. There have come up a lot of odd problems touching the conflict, so-called, between intelligence and instinct, and these I'm getting thrashed out grandly." After the second "New Republic" dinner he wrote: "Lots of important people there . . . Felix Frankfurter, two judges, and the two Goldmarks, Pierce Bailey, etc., and the whole staff. . . . Had been all day with Dr. Gregory and other psychiatrists and had met Police Commissioner Woods . . . a wonderfully rich day. . . . I must run for a date with Professor Robinson and then to meet Howe, the Immigration 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 with Professor Robinson, he who wrote that European history we bought in Germany." Then a trip to Philadelphia, being dined and entertained by various members of the Wharton School faculty. Then the Yale-Harvard game, followed by three days and two nights in the psychopathic ward at Sing 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 that I have met." The next day, back in New York: "Just had a most remarkable visit with Thomas Mott Osborne." Later in the same day: "Just had an absolutely grand visit and lunch with Walter Lippmann . . . it was about the best talk with regard to my book that I have had in the East. He is an intellectual wonder and a big, good-looking, friendly boy. I'm for him a million."

Then his visit with John Dewey. "I put up to him my regular questions—the main one being the importance of the conflict between MacDougall and the Freudians. . . . He was cordiality itself. I am expecting red-letter days with him. My knowledge of the subject is increasing fast." Then a visit with Irving Fisher at New Haven. The next night "was simply remarkable." Irving Fisher took him to a banquet in New York, in honor of some French dignitaries, with President Wilson present—"at seven dollars a plate!" As to President Wilson, "He was simply great—almost the greatest, in fact is the greatest, speaker I have ever heard."

Then a run down to Cambridge, every day crammed to the edges. "Had breakfast with Felix Frankfurter. He has the grand spirit and does so finely appreciate what my subject means. He walked me down to see a friend of his, Laski, intellectually a sort of marvel—knows psychology and philosophy cold—grand talk. Then I called on Professor Gay and he dated me for a dinner to-morrow night. Luncheon given to me by Professor Taussig—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 taken with 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 a brilliant one.")

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

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

Later he went to Washington with Walter Lippmann. They ran into Colonel House on the train, and talked foreign relations for two and a half hours. "My hair stood on end at the importance of what he said." From Washington he wrote: "Am having one of the Great Experiences of my young life." Hurried full days in Philadelphia, with a most successful talk before the University of Pennsylvania Political and Social Science Conference ("Successful," was the report to me later of several who were present), and extreme kindness and hospitality from all the Wharton group. He rushed to Baltimore, and at midnight, December 31, he wrote: "I had from eleven-thirty to one P.M. an absolute supergrand talk with Adolph Meyer and John Watson. He is a grand young southerner and simply knows his behavioristic psychology in a way to make one's hair stand up. We talked my plan clear out and they are enthusiastic. . . . Things are going grandly." Next day: "Just got in from dinner with Adolph Meyer. He is simply a wonder. . . . At nine-thirty I watched Dr. Campbell give a girl Freudian treatment for a suicide mania. She had been a worker in a straw-hat factory and had a true industrial psychosis—the kind I am looking for." Then, later: "There is absolutely no doubt that the trip has been my making. I have learned a lot of background, things, and standards, that will put their stamp on my development."

Almost every letter would tell of some one visit which "alone was worth the trip East." Around Christmastime home-longings got extra strong—he wrote five letters in three days. I really wish I could quote some from them—where he said for instance: "My, but it is good for a fellow to be with his family and awful to be away from it." And again: "I want to be interrupted, I do. I'm all for that. I remember how Jim and Nand used to come into my study for a kiss and then go hastily out upon urgent affairs. I'm for that. . . . I've got my own folk and they make the rest of the world thin and pale. The blessedness of babies is beyond words, but the 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 begin to quote from them. "I'm simply having the time of my life . . . every one is here." In a talk when he was asked to fill in at the last minute, he presented "two arguments why trade-unions alone could not be depended on to bring desirable change in working conditions through collective bargaining: one, because they were numerically so few in contrast to the number of industrial workers, and, two, because the reforms about to be demanded 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'm not where a Dad ought to be. My blessed, precious family! I tell you there isn't anything in this world like a wife and babies and I'm for that life that puts me close. I'm near smart enough to last a heap of years. Though when I see how my trip makes me feel alive in my head and enthusiastic, I know it has been worth while. . . ." Along in January he worked his thesis up in writing. "Last night I read my paper to the Robinsons after the dinner and they had Mr. and Mrs. John Dewey there. A most superb and grand discussion followed, the Deweys going home at eleven-thirty and I stayed to talk to one A.M. I slept dreaming wildly of the discussion. . . . Then had an hour and a half with Dewey on certain moot points. That talk was even more superb and resultful to me and I'm just 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 the problem of Labor.

"In 1914 I was asked to investigate a riot among 2800 migratory hop-pickers in California which had resulted in five deaths, many-fold more wounded, hysteria, fear, and a strange orgy of irresponsible persecution 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 in two American universities, under Sidney Webb in London, and in four universities of Germany. I found that I had no fundamentals which could be called good tools with which to begin my analysis of this riot. And I felt myself merely a conventional if astonished onlooker before the theoretically abnormal but manifestly natural emotional activity which swept over California. After what must have been a most usual intellectual cycle of, first, helplessness, then conventional cataloguing, some rationalizing, some moralizing, and an extensive feeling of shallowness and inferiority, I called the job done.

"By accident, somewhat later, I was loaned two books of Freud, and I felt after the reading, that I had found a scientific approach which might lead to the discovery of important fundamentals for a study of unrest and violence. Under this stimulation, I read, during a year and a half, general psychology, physiology and anthropology, eugenics, all the special material I could find on Mendelism, works on mental hygiene, feeblemindedness, insanity, evolution of morals and character, and finally found a resting-place in a field which seems to be best designated as Abnormal and Behavioristic Psychology. My quest throughout this experience seemed to be pretty steadily a search for those irreducible fundamentals which I could use in getting a technically decent opinion on that riot. In grand phrases, I was searching for the Scientific Standard of Value to be used in analyzing Human Behavior.

"Economics (which officially holds the analysis of labor-problems) has been allowed to devote itself almost entirely to the production of goods, and to neglect entirely the consumption of goods and human organic welfare. The lip-homage given by orthodox economics to the field of consumption seems to be inspired merely by the feeling that disaster might overcome production if workers were starved or business men discouraged. . . . So, while official economic science tinkers at its transient institutions which flourish in one decade and pass out in the next, abnormal and behavioristic psychology, physiology, psychiatry, are building in their laboratories, by induction from human specimens of modern economic life, a standard of human values and an elucidation of behavior fundamentals which alone we must use in our legislative or personal modification of modern civilization. It does not seem an overstatement to say that orthodox economics has cleanly overlooked two of the most important generalizations about human life which can be phrased, and those are,—

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

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

After giving a description of the instincts he writes:—

"The importance to me of the following description of the innate tendencies or instincts lies in their relation to my main explanation of economic behavior which is,—

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

"Secondly, that if the environment through any of the conventional instruments of repression, such as religious orthodoxy, university mental discipline, economic inferiority, imprisonment, physical disfigurement,—such as short stature, hare-lip, etc.,—repress the full psychological expression in the field of these tendencies, then a psychic revolt, slipping into abnormal mental functioning, takes place, and society accuses the revolutionist of being either willfully inefficient, alcoholic, a syndicalist, supersensitive, an agnostic, or insane."

I hesitate somewhat to give his programme as set forth in this paper. I have already mentioned that it was written in the spring of 1917, and hurriedly. In referring to this very paper in a letter from New York, he said, "Of course it is written in part to call out comments, and so the statements are strong and unmodified." Let that fact, then, be borne in mind, and also the fact that he may have altered his views somewhat in the light of his further studies and readings—although again, such studies may only have strengthened the following ideas. I cannot now trust 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 its members. The members of the Herd will be under merciless fire from the convention-ridden members of general society. They will be branded outlaws, radicals, agnostics, impossible, crazy. They will be lucky to be 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. In the end, after a long time, parts of the social sham will collapse, as it did in England, and small promises will become milestones of progress.

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

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

"Take simply the beginning of life, take childhood, for that is where the human material is least protected, most plastic, and where most injury to-day is done. In the way of general suggestion, I would say, exclude children from formal disciplinary life, such as that of all industry and most schools, up to the age of eighteen. After excluding them, what shall we do with them? Ask John Dewey, I suggest, or read his 'Schools of To-morrow,' or 'Democracy and Education.' It means tremendous, unprecedented money expense to ensure an active trial and error-learning activity; a chance naturally to recapitulate the racial trial and error-learning experience; a study and preparation of those periods of life in which fall the ripening of the relatively late maturing instincts; a general realizing that wisdom can come only from experience, and not from the Book. It means psychologically calculated childhood opportunity, in which the now stifled instincts of leadership, workmanship, hero-worship, hunting, migration, meditation, sex, could grow and take their foundation place in the psychic equipment of a biologically promising human being. To illustrate in trivialities, no father, with knowledge of the meaning of the universal bent towards workmanship, would give his son a puzzle if he knew of the Mecano or Erector toys, and no father would give the Mecano if he had grasped the educational potentiality of the gift to his child of $10 worth of lumber and a set of good carpenter's tools. There is now enough loose wisdom around devoted to childhood, its needed liberties and experiences, both to give the children of this civilization their first evolutionary chance, and to send most teachers back to the farm.

"In the age-period of 18 to 30 would fall that pseudo-educational monstrosity, the undergraduate university, and the degrading popular activities of 'beginning a business' or 'picking up a trade.' Much money must be spent here. Perhaps few fields of activity have been conventionalized as much as university education. Here, just where a superficial theorist would expect to find enthusiasm, emancipated minds, and hope, is found fear, convention, a mean instinct-life, no spirit of adventure, little curiosity, in general no promise of preparedness. No wonder philosophical idealism flourishes and Darwin is forgotten.

"The first two years of University life should be devoted to the Science of Human Behavior. Much of to-day's biology, zooelogy, history, if it is interpretive, psychology, if it is behavioristic, philosophy, if it is pragmatic, literature, if it had been written involuntarily, would find its place here. The last two years could be profitably spent in appraising with that ultimate standard of value gained in the first two years, the various institutions and instruments used by civilized man. All instruction would be objective, scientific, and emancipated from convention—wonderful prospect!

"In industrial labor and in business employments a new concept, a new going philosophy must be unreservedly accepted, which has, instead of the ideal of forcing the human beings to mould their habits to assist the continued existence of the inherited order of things, an ideal of moulding all business institutions and ideas of prosperity in the interests of scientific evolutionary aims and large human pleasures. As Pigou has said, 'Environment has its children as well as men.' Monotony in labor, tedium in officework, time spent in business correspondence, the boredom of running a sugar refinery, would be asked to step before the bar of human affairs and get a health standardization. To-day industry produces goods that cost more than they are worth, are consumed by persons who are degraded by the consuming; it is destroying permanently the raw-material source which, science has painfully explained, could be made inexhaustible. Some intellectual revolution must 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 was to be hung in St. Mark's, the town closed down for a holiday, and the people, with garlands of flowers and songs, escorted the picture from the artist's studio to the church. Three weeks ago I stood, in company with 500 silent, sallow-faced men, at a corner on Wall Street, a cold and wet corner, till young Morgan issued from J.P. Morgan & Company, and walked 20 feet to his carriage.—We produce, probably, per capita, 1000 times more in weight of ready-made clothing, Irish lace, artificial flowers, terra cotta, movie-films, telephones, and printed matter than those Florentines did, but we have, with our 100,000,000 inhabitants, yet to produce that little town, her Dante, her Andrea del Sarto, her Michael Angelo, her Leonardo da Vinci, her Savonarola, her Giotto, or the group who followed Giotto's picture. Florence had a marvelous energy—re-lease experience. All our industrial formalism, our conventionalized young manhood, our schematized universities, are instruments of balk and thwart, are machines to produce protesting abnormality, to block efficiency. So the problem of industrial labor is one with the problem of the discontented business man, the indifferent student, the unhappy wife, the immoral minister—it is one of maladjustment between a fixed human nature and a carelessly ordered world. The result is suffering, insanity, racial-perversion, and danger. The final cure is gaining acceptance for a new standard of morality; the first step towards this is to break down the mores-inhibitions to free experimental thinking."

If only the time had been longer—if only the Book itself could have been finished! For he had a great message. He was writing about a thousand words a day on it the following summer, at Castle Crags, when the War Department called him into mediation work and not another word did 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 his shorter articles. There have been many who have offered their services in completing the Book, but the field is so new, Carl's contribution so unique, that few men in the whole country understand the ground enough to be of service. It was not so much to be a book on Labor as on Labor-Psychology—and that is almost an unexplored field.



CHAPTER XII

Three days after Carl started east, on his arrival in Seattle, President Suzzallo called him to the University of Washington as Head of the Department of Economics and Dean of the College of Business Administration, his work to begin the following autumn. It seemed an ideal 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 call the men I wished, and could call at least five. I cannot imagine a better man to work with nor a better proposition than the one he put up to me. . . . The job itself will let me teach what I wish and in my own way. I can give Introductory Economics, and Labor, and Industrial Organization, etc." Later, he telegraphed from New York, where he had again seen Suzzallo: "Have accepted Washington's offer. . . . Details of job 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 of Washington. I like to think of what the three Pennsylvania men he wanted had to say about him. Seattle seemed very far away to them—they were doubtful, very. Then they heard the talk before the Conference referred to above, and every one of the three accepted his call. As one of them expressed it to his wife later: "I'd go anywhere for that man." Between that Seattle call and his death there were eight universities, some of them the biggest in the country, which wished Carl Parker to be on their faculties. One smaller university held out the presidency to him. Besides this, there were nine jobs outside of University work that were offered him, from managing a large mine to doing research work in Europe. He had come into his own.

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

"This brings one to perhaps the most costly delinquency of modern Economics, and that is its refusal to incorporate into its weighings and appraisals the facts and hypotheses of modern psychology. Nothing in the postulates of the science of Economics is as ludicrous as its catalogue of human wants. Though the practice of ascribing 'faculties' to man has been passed by psychology into deserved discard, Economics still maintains, as basic human qualities, a galaxy of vague and rather spiritual faculties. It matters not that, in the place of the primitive concepts of man stimulated to activity by a single trucking sense, or a free and uninfluenced force called a soul, or a 'desire for financial independence,' psychology has established a human being possessed of more instincts than any animal, and with a psychical nature whose activities fall completely within the causal law.

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

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

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

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