An American Idyll. Ii: Episodes in the Life of Carleton H. Parker

I

WE looked back always on our first semester’s teaching in the University of California as one hectic term. The red-letter event of that term was when, after about two months of teaching, President Wheeler rang up one evening about seven, and said, ’I thought I should like the pleasure of telling you personally, though you will receive official notice in the morning, that you have been made an assistant professor. We expected you to make good, but we did not expect you to make good to such a degree quite so soon.’

The second term in California had just got well under way, when Carl was offered the position of Executive Secretary in the Immigration and Housing Commission of the state. I remember so well the night that he came home about midnight and told me. I am afraid the financial end would have determined us in this case, 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 that after that we need never beswayed 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 also gave him his first bent in the direction of labor-psychology, which was destined 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 most dramatic incident during his connection with the Commission was the famous Ford and Suhr case, the riot in the Wheatland hop-fields, which Carl was deputized to investigate for the federal government. He wrote an account of this later for the Survey, and also an article on ’The California Casual and his Revolt’ for the Quarterly Journal of Economics, in November, 1915. Also he did a big piece of work in his clean-up of camps all over California, and in awakening, through countless talks up and down the state, some understanding of the I.W.W. and his problem. (Not but what it seems now to have been almost forgotten.) As the phrase went, ‘Carleton Parker put the migratory on the map.’

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 churchgoers, to clasp his hand. They withdrew their allegiance after a time, which naturally in no way lessened Carl’s scientific interest in them. A paper hostile to his attitude on the I.W.W. and his insistence on the clean-up of camps published an article protraying him as a double-faced individual, who feigned an interest in the under-dog really to undo him, as he was at heart and pocketbook 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.

Carl was no diplomat in any sense of the word — particularly, no political diplomat. It is a wonder the Immigration and Housing Commission stood behind him as long as it did. He grew rabid at every political appointment made, which in his eyes hampered his work. It was evident that he was not tactful, so they felt, to various members of the Commission. It all got so that it 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, on asking to have his resignation from the Commission take effect immediately, he had at once to find something to do to support his family. This was 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, as United States Government investigator of the labor situation there. He thereby added 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.

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 also was teaching at Summer School that year, and whose lectures I attended, introduced us to Hart ’s Psychology of Insanity, McDougall’s Social Psychology, several books by Freud, 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 and now there were thirty-three. They were 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 am sure that at no other place on the campus could quite such heated and excited discussions have been heard — Carl merely 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, — Lipmann’s Preface to Politics, etc., etc., and ending, as a concession to the idealists, with Royce’s Philosophy of Loyalty.

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 had ever come into their lives.

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, and had met him through our good friend Dr. Brown, and a warm friendship had developed. 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 on the 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, before answering the other university, to see him; 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 Carl to get the inspiration of contact with other men in his field; and enough withal, so that there should be no skimping anywhere, and that the little family at home should have everything that 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! 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 ever could have happened to us. Our friends had long before adopted the phrase ‘just Parker luck,’ and here, if ever, was an example of it. ‘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 the 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 that he could lay hands on in psychology, anthropology, biology, philosophy, psycho-analysis, — every field that he felt contributed to his own growing conviction that orthodox economics had served its day. But outside of myself, — and I was only able to keep up with him by the merest skimming, — 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 indignant at the way in which economics was handled in his own University. He saw student after student having every ounce of intellectual curiosity ground out of him 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, and not because he had had one little spark 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.

II

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.’

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.

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.’

Next day, ‘Had a remarkable visit with Dr. Gregory this morning. 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. . . . Then I beat it to the New Republic offices and sat down to dinner with the staff, plus Robert Bruère, and the subject became, ‘What is a labor policy?’

He heard Roosevelt at the Ritz-Carlton. ‘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 everyone was an intellectual giant.

‘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 came the Economic Convention at Columbus — letters too full to begin to quote from them. ‘I’m simply having the time of my life . . . everyone is here.’ In a talk when he was asked to fill in the last minute, he put forward ‘two arguments why tradeunions alone could not be depended on to bring desirable changes 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.’

Along in January he worked his thesis tip 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.’

If only the time had been longer, —if only the Book could have been finished, — for he had a great message. He was working 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.

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 start in the following morning. It seemed an ideal opportunity. Between that Seattle call and his death there were eight universities, some of them the biggest in the country, which wished Carl 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, all the way from managing a large mine to doing research in Europe. He had come into his own.

In May we sold our loved hill-nest in Berkeley and started north, stopping for a three-months’ vacation — our first real vacation since we had been married — at Castle Crags, where, almost ten years before, we had spent the first five days of our honeymoon before going into southern Oregon.

III

Then, like a bolt from the blue, came the fateful telegram from Washington, D.C. — labor difficulties in construction-work at Camp Lewis — would he report there at once as government mediator.

Oh! the Book, the Book — the Book that was to be finished without fail before the new work at the University of Washington began! Perhaps he would be back in a week! Surely he would be back in a week! So he packed just enough for one week, and off he went. One week — ! When, after four weeks, there was still no let up in his mediation duties, — in fact, they increased, — I packed up the family and we left for Seattle.

His trip to Camp Lewis threw him at once into the midst of the lumber difficulties of the Northwest, which lasted for months. The big strike In the lumber industry was on when he arrived. He wrote, ‘It is a strike to better conditions. The I.W.W. are only the display feature. The main body of opinion is from a lot of unskilled workers who are sick of the filthy bunk-houses and rotten grub.’

He wrote later of a conference with the big lumbermen, and of how they would not stay on the point but ‘roared over the I.W.W. I told them that condemnation was not a solution, or businesslike, but what we wanted was a statement of how they were to open their plants. More roars; more demands for troops, etc. I said I was a college man, not used to business, but if business men had as much trouble as this keeping to the real points involved, give me a faculty analysis. They laughed over this and got down to business, and in an hour lined up the affair in mighty good shape.’

Each letter would end, ‘By three days at least, I should start back. I am getting frantic to be home.’ Home, for the Parkers, was always where we happened to be then. Castle Crags was as much home as any place had ever been. We had moved fourteen times in ten years — of the eleven Christmases we had together, only two had been in the same place. There were times when ‘home’ was the Pullman car. It made no difference. One of the strange new feelings I have to get used to is the way I now look at places to live in. It used to be that Carl and I, in passing the littlest bit of a hovel, would say, ‘We could be perfectly happy in a place like that, could n’t we? Nothing makes any difference if we are together.’ But certain kinds of what we called ‘cuddly’ houses used to make us catch our breath to think of the extra joy it would be living together tucked away in there. Now, when I pass a place that looks like that, I have to drop down some kind of a trap-door in my brain and not think at all until I get well by it.

Labor conditions in the Northwest grew worse, strikes more general, and finally Carl wrote that he just must be indefinitely on the job. ‘I am so homesick for you that I feel like packing up and coming. I literally feel terribly. But with all this feeling, I don’t see how I can. Not only have I been telegraphed to stay on the job, but the situation is growing steadily worse. Last night my proposal — eight-hour day, nonpartisan complaint and adjustment board, suppression of violence by the state — was turned down by the operators in Tacoma. President Suzzallo and I fought for six hours, but it went down. The whole situation is drifting into a state of incipient, sympathetic strikes.’

Later, ‘This is the most bull-headed a flair, and I don’t think it is going to get anywhere.’ Later, ‘Things are not going wonderfully in our mediation. Employers demanding everything and men granting much, but not that.’ Later, ‘Each day brings a new crisis. Gee, labor is unrestful . . . and gee, the pigheadedness of bosses! Human nature is sure one hundred per cent psychology.’

Also he wrote, referring to the general situation at the University and in the community, ‘Am getting absolutely crazy with enthusiasm over my job here. ... It is too vigorous and resultful for words.’ Later, ‘The mediation . . . blew up to-day at 4 P.M. and now a host of nice new strikes show on the horizon. . . . There are a lot of fine operators, but some hard shells.’ Again, ‘Gee, I’m learning. And talk about material for the Book!’

An article appeared in one of the New York papers recently, entitled, ‘How Carleton H. Parker Settled Strikes.’

It was under his leadership that, in less than a year, twenty-seven disputes which concerned government work in the Pacific Northwest were settled, and it was his method to lay the basis for permanent relief as he went along. . . .

Parker’s contribution was in the method he used. . . . Labor leaders of all sorts would flock to him in a bitter, weltering mass, mouthing the set phrases of classhatred they use so effectually in stirring up trouble. They would state their case. And Parker would quietly deduce the irritation points that seemed to stand out in the jumbled testimony.

Then it would be almost laughable to the observer to hear the employer’s side of the case. Invariably it was just as bitter, just as unreasoning, and just as violent, as the statement of their case by the workers. Parker would endeavor to find, in all this heap of words, the irritation points of the other side. . . .

But when a study was finished, his diagnosis made, and his prescription of treatment completed, Parker always insisted on carrying it straight to the workers. And he did not just tell them results. He often took several hours, sometimes several meetings of several hours each. In these meetings he would go over every detail of his method, from start to finish, explaining, answering questions, meeting objections with reason. And he always won them over. But, of course, it must be said that he had a tremendously compelling personality that carried him far.

In one of Carl’s letters from Seattle he had written, ‘The Atlantic Monthly wants me to write an article on the I.W.W.!!’ So the first piece of work he had to do after we got settled was that. We were tremendously excited, and never got over chuckling at some of the moss-grown people we knew about the country, who would feel outraged at the Atlantic Monthly stooping to print stuff by that young radical. And on such a subject! How we tore at the end to get the article off on time! The stenographer from the University came about two one Sunday afternoon. I sat on the floor up in the guest-room and read the manuscript to her, while she typed it off. Carl would rush down more copy from his study on the third floor, and I’d go over it while Miss Van Doren went over what she had typed. Then the reading would begin again. We hated to stop for supper, all three of us were so excited to get the job done. It had to be at the post-office that night by eleven, to arrive in Boston when promised. At ten-thirty it was in the envelope, three limp people tore for the car, we put Miss Van Doren on, — she was to mail the article on her way home, — and Carl and I, knowing this was an occasion for a treat if ever there was one, routed out a sleepy drugstore clerk and ate the remains of his Sunday ice-cream supply.

I can never express how grateful I am that that article was written and published before Carl died. The influence of it ramified in many and the most unexpected directions. I am still hearing of it. We expected condemnation at the time. There probably was plenty of it, but only one condemner wrote. On the other hand, letters streamed in by the score, from friends and strangers, bearing the general message, ‘God bless you for it!’

I am reminded here of a little incident that took place just at this time. An I.W.W. was to come out to have dinner with us — some other friends, faculty people, also were to be there. About noon the telephone rang. Carl went. A rich Irish brogue announced, ‘R— can’t come to your party tonight.’ ‘Why is that?’ ‘He’s pinched. An’ he wants t’ know, can he have your Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to read while he’s in jail.’

And also, I am forever grateful that Carl had his experience at the University of Washington before he died. He left the University of California a young assistant professor, just one rebellious morsel in a huge machine. He found himself in Washington, not only head of the Department of Economics and Dean of the College of Commerce and a power on the campus, but a power in the community as well. He was working under a president who backed him in everything to the last ditch, who was keenly interested in every ambition he had for making a big thing of his work. He at last could see Introductory Economics given as he wanted to have it given — realizing at the same time that his plans were in the nature of an experiment. The two textbooks used the first semester were McDougall’s Social Psychology and Wallas’s Great Society.. During part of the time he pinned the front page of the morning newspaper on the blackboard, and illustrated his subjectmatter by an item of news of that very day.

His theory of education was that the first step in any subject was to awaken a keen interest and curiosity in the student: for that reason he felt that pure theory in economics was too difficult for any but seniors or graduates — given too soon, it tended only to discourage. He allowed no note-taking in any of his courses, insisted on discussion by the class no matter how large it was, planned to do away with written examinations as a test of scholarship, substituting instead a short oral diseussion with each student individually, grading them ‘passed’ and ‘not passed.’ As it was, owing to the pressure of government work, he had to resort to written tests. The proportion of first sections in the final examination, which was difficult, was so large that Carl was sure the reader must have marked too leniently and looked over the papers himself. His results were the same as the reader’s, and he felt that they could justifiably be used as some proof of his theory that, if a student is interested in the subject, you cannot keep him from doing good work.

Besides being of real influence on the campus, he had the respect and confidence of the business world, both labor and capital, and in addition he stood as the representative of the government in labor-adjustments and disputes. And — it was of lesser consequence, but oh, it did matter — we had money enough to live on !! We had made ourselves honestly think that we had just about everything we wanted on what we got, plus lectures, in California. But once we tasted of the new-found freedom of truly enough; once there was gone forever that stirring around to pick up a few extra dollars here and there to make both ends meet; once we knew for the first time the satisfaction and added joy that come from some responsible person to help with the housework — we felt we were soaring through life with our feet hardly touching the ground.

Instead of my spending most of the day in the kitchen and riding herd on the young, we had our dropped-straightfrom-heaven Mrs. Willard. And just see what that meant. Every morning at nine I left the house with Carl, and we walked together to the University. As I think now of those daily walks, armin-arm, rain or shine, I’d not give up the memory of them for all creation. Carl would go over what he was to talk about that morning in Introductory Economics, — how it would have raised the hair of the orthodox Economics I teacher, — and of course we always talked more or less of what marvelous children we possessed. Carl would begin, ‘Tell me some more about the June-Bug!’

He went to his nine o’clock, I to mine. After my ten-o’clock class, and on the way to my eleven-o’clock lecture, I always ran in to his office a second, to gossip a moment over what mail he had that morning, and how things were going generally. Then, at twelve in his office again, ‘Look at this telegram that just came in.’ ‘How shall I answer Mr.—’s letter about that job?’ And then home together — not once a week, but every day. Afternoons, except the three afternoons when I played hockey, I was at home; but always there was a possibility that Carl would ring up about five: ‘I am at a meeting down-town. Can’t get things settled, so we continue this evening. Run down and have supper with me, and perhaps, who knows, a Bill Hart film might be around town!’

I do wish my Carl could have experienced those joys financial a little longer. It was so good while it lasted! And it was only just starting. Every new call he got to another university was at a salary from one to two thousand dollars more than what we were getting, even at Seattle. It looked as if our days of financial scrimping were forever by. We even discussed a Ford! Nay, even a four-cylinder Buick! And every other Sunday we had fricasseed chicken, and always, always a frosting on the cake. For the first two months in Seattle we felt as if we ought to have company at every meal. It did not seem right to sit down to food as good as that with just the family present. Every other Sunday night we had the whole Department and their wives to Sunday supper — sixteen of them. Oh, dear! oh, dear! money does make a difference. We grew more determined than ever to see that more people in the world should get more of it.

IV

Seattle, as I look back on it, meant the unexpected — in every way. We could never count on anything from one day to the next — a strike here, an arbitration there, government orders for this, some investigation needed for that. It was harassing, it was wearying. But always every few days there would be that telephone ring I grew both to dread and love. For as often as it said, ‘I’ve got to go to Tacoma,’ it also said, ‘You Girl, put on your hat and coat this minute and come down-town while I have a few minutes off — we ’ll have supper together, anyhow.’ And the feeling of the courting days never left us — that almost, sharp joy of being together again when we just locked arms for a block and said almost nothing — nothing to repeat. And the good-bye that always meant a wrench, always, though it might mean being together within a few hours. And always the waving from the one on the back of the car to the one standing on the corner. Nothing, nothing, ever got tame. After ten years, if Carl ever found himself a little early to catch the train for Tacoma, say, though he had said goodbye but a half an hour before and was to be back that evening, he would find a telephone-booth and ring up to say — perhaps — that he was glad he had married me! And I think of two times we met accidentally on the street in Seattle, — it seemed something we could hardly believe, — all the world, the war, commerce, industry, stopped while we tried to realize what had happened.

One evening I was scanning some article on marriage, by the fire in Seattle — it was one of those rare times when Carl too was at home and going over lectures for the next day. It held that, to be successful, marriage had to be an adjustment — a giving in here by the man, there by the woman. And I said to Carl, ‘If that is true you must have been doing all the adjusting: I never have had to give up or fit in or relinquish one little thing, so you’ve been doing it all.’

He thought for a moment, then answered, ‘ You know, I’ve heard that too, and wondered about it. For I know I’ve given up nothing, made no “adjustments.” On the contrary, I seem always to have been getting more than any human being has any right to count on.’

It was that way, even to the merest details — such as both liking identically the same things to eat, seasoned the identical way. We both liked to do the identical things, without a single exception. Perhaps one exception — he had a fondness in his heart for firearms that I could not share. Though we rarely could pass one of these shootinggalleries without trying our luck at five cents for so many turns — at clay pigeons or rabbits whirling around on whatnots; but that was as wild as I ever wanted to get with a gun. We liked the same friends without exception, the same books, the same pictures, the same music. He wrote once, ‘We (the two of us) love each other, like to do things together (absolutely anything), don’t, need or want anybody else, and the world is ours.’

As soon as the I.W.W. article was done, Carl had to begin on his paper to be read before the Economic Association just after Christmas in Philadelphia. That was fun working over. ‘Come up here and let me read you this!’ And we’d go over that much of the paper together. Then more reading to Miss Van Doren, more correctings, finally finishing it just the day before he had to leave. But that was partly because he had to leave earlier than expected. The government had telegraphed him to go on to Washington to mediate a threatened longshoremen’s strike. Carl worked harder over the longshoremen than in any other single labor difficulty, not excepting the eighthour day in lumber. Here again I do not feel free to go into details. The matter was finally, at Carl’s suggestion, taken to Washington.

On his way he stopped off in Spokane to talk with the lumbermen east of the mountains. There, at a big meeting, he was able to put over the eight-hour day. The Wilson Mediation Commission was in Seattle at the time. Felix Frankfurter telephoned out his congratulations to me and said, ‘We consider it the single greatest achievement of its kind since the United States entered the war.’ The papers were full of it, and excitement ran high. President Wilson was telegraphed to by the Labor Commission, and he in turn telegraphed back his pleasure. In addition, the East Coast lumbermen agreed to Carl’s scheme of an employment manager for their industry, and detailed him to find a man for the job while he was in the East.

Then at Philadelphia came the most telling event of our economic lives — Carl’s paper before the Economic Association on ‘Motives in Economic Life.’ A little later I saw one of the big men who was at that meeting, and he said, ‘I don’t see why Parker is n’t spoiled. He was the most talked-about man at the Convention.’ Six publishing houses wrote out after that paper, to see if he could enlarge it into a book. Somehow it did seem as if now more than ever the world was ours. We looked ahead into the future and wondered if it could seem as good to anyone as it seemed to us. It was almost too good — we were dazed a bit by it. It is one of the things I just cannot let myself ever think of — that future and the plans we had. Anything I can ever do now would still leave life so utterly dull by comparison.

One of the days in Seattle I think of the most was about a month before the end. The father of a great friend of ours died, and Carl and I went to the funeral one Sunday afternoon. We got in late, so stood in a corner by the door and held hands, and seemed to own each other especially hard that day. Afterwards we prowled around the streets, talking of funerals and old age. Most of the people there that afternoon were gray-haired — the family had lived in Seattle for years and years and these were the friends of years and years back.

Carl said, ‘That is something we can’t have when you and I die — the old, old friends that have stood by us year in and year out. It is one of the phases of life you sacrifice when you move around at the rate we do. But in the first place neither of us wants a funeral, and in the second place we feel that moving gives more than it takes away — so we are satisfied.’

Then we talked about our own old age — planned it in detail. Carl declared, ’I want you to promise me faithfully you will make me stop teaching when I am sixty. I have seen too much of the tragedy of men hanging on and on and students and education being sacrificed because the teacher has lost his fire — has fallen behind in the parade. I feel now as if I’d never grow old — that does n’t mean that I won’t. So no matter how strong I may be going at sixty, make me stop — promise.’

Then we discussed our plans — by that time the children would be looking out for themselves, very much so, and we could plan as we pleased. It was to be England — some suburb outside of London where we could get into big things, and yet where we could be peaceful and by ourselves, and read and write, and have the young economists traveling out to spend week-ends with us; and then we could keep our grandchildren while their parents wore traveling in Europe! Five weeks from that day he was dead!

V

There is a path I must take daily to my work at college, which passes through the University of California Botanical Garden. Every day I must brace myself for it, for there, growing along the path, is a clump of old-fashioned morning glories. Always, from the time we first came back to teach in Berkeley and passed along that same path to the University, we planned to have morning glories like those, — the odor came to meet you yards away, — growing along the path to the little home we would at last settle down in when we were old. We used to remark always when we saw pictures in the newspapers of So-and-so on their ‘golden anniversary,’ and would plan about our own ‘golden-wedding day’ — old age together always seemed so good to think about. There was a time when we used to plan to live in a lighthouse, way out on some point, when we got old. It made a strong appeal, it really did. We planned many ways of growing old; not that we talked of it often, — perhaps twice a year, — but always, always it was, of course, together. Strange how neither of us ever dreamed that one would grow old without the other.

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

Oh, it was so true that we packed into ten years the happiness that could normally be considered to last a lifetime— a long lifetime. Sometimes it seems almost as if we must have guessed it was to end so soon, and lived so as to crowd in all of joy we could while our time together was given us. I say so often that I stand right now the richest woman in the world — why talk of sympathy? I have our three precious marvelously healthy children; I have perfect health myself; I have all and more than I can handle of big, ambitious, maturing plans, with a chance to see them carried out; I have enough to live on, and — greatest of all — almost fifteen years of perfect memories. And yet, — to hear a snatch of a tune and know the last time you heard it you were together, — perhaps it was the very music they played as you left the theatre arm-in-arm that last night; to put on a dress you have not worn for some time and remember that when you had it on last it was the night you went, just the two of you, to Blanc’s for dinner; to meet unexpectedly some friend, and think that the last time you saw him it was that night when you two, strolling with hands clasped, met him on Second Avenue accidentally and chatted on the corner; to come across a necktie in a trunk, to read a book he had marked, to see his handwriting — perhaps just the address on an old baggage-check — Oh, one can sound so much braver than one feels! And then, because you have tried so hard to live up to the pride and faith he had in you, to be told, ‘You know I am surprised that you have n’t taken Carl’s death harder. You seem to be just the same exactly.'

When Carl returned from the East in January, he was more rushed than ever — his time more filled than ever with strike-mediations, street-car arbitrations, cost-of-living surveys for the government, conferences on lumber production. In all he had mediated twenty-six strikes, sat on two arbitration boards, made three cost-of-living surveys for the government. (Mediations did gall him — he grew intellectually impatient over this eternal patching-up of what he was wont to call ‘a rotten system.’ Of course, he saw the waremergency need of it just then, but what he wanted to work on was, why were mediations ever necessary? What social and economic order would best insure absence of friction?)

On the campus, work piled up. He had promised to give a course on Employment Management, especially to train men to go into the lumber industries with a new vision. Each big company east of the mountains was to send a representative. It was also open to seniors in college, and a splendid group it was, almost everyone pledged to take up employment management as their vocation on graduation — no fear that they would take it up with a capitalist bias.

Then, — his friends and I had to laugh, it was so like him, — the afternoon of the morning he arrived, he was in the thick of a scrap on the campus over a principle he held to tenaciously — the abolition of the one-year modernlanguage requirement for students in his college. To use his own expression, he ‘went to the bat on it,’ and at a faculty meeting that afternoon it carried. He had been working his little campaign for a couple of months, but in his absence in the East the other side had been busy. He returned just in time for the fray. Everyone knows what a farce one year of a modern language is at college — even several of the language teachers themselves were frank enough to admit it. But it was an academic tradition! I think the two words that upset Carl most were ‘efficiency’ and ‘tradition’ — both being used too often as an excuse for practices that did more harm than good. And the word ‘blame’ or not so much the word as the act. Of all the useless occupations a person could indulge in, he felt ‘blaming’ someone as utterly unproductive as anything one could conceive. Especially did he revolt at blaming persons or groups, — such as the I.W.W., for instance,— where he felt so strongly that they were a product of a certain social and economic environment, and under the circumstances — given the known antecedents — could not act otherwise. By the same reasoning he refused to blame the capitalist as such.

VI

And then came one Tuesday, the fifth of March. He had his hands full all morning with the continued threatened upheavals of the longshoremen. About noon the telephone rang: threatened strike in all the flour-mills — Dr. Parker must come at once. (I am reminded of a description which was published of Carl as a mediator: ‘ He thought of himself as a physician and of an industry on strike as the patient. And he did not merely ease the patient’s pain with opiates. He used the knife and tried for permanent cures.’) I finally reached him by telephone — his voice sounded tired for he had had a very hard morning. By one o’clock he was working on the flour-mill situation. He could not get home for dinner. About midnight he appeared, having sat almost twelve hours steadily on the new flour difficulty. He was ‘all in,’ he said.

The next, morning, one of the rare instances in our years together, he said he did not feel like getting up. But there were four important conferences that day to attend to, besides his work at college. He dressed, ate breakfast, then said he felt feverish. His temperature was 102. I made him get back into bed — let all the conferences on earth explode. The next day his temperature was 105. ‘ This has taught us our lesson — no more living at this pace. I don’t need two reminders that I ought to call a halt.’ Thursday, Friday, and Saturday he lay there, too weary to talk, not able to sleep at all nights; the doctor coming regularly but unable to tell just what the trouble was, other than a ‘breakdown.’ Saturday afternoon he felt a little better — we planned then what we would do when he got well. The doctor had said he should allow himself at least a month before going back to college. One month given to us! ‘Just think of the writing I can get done, being around home with my family!'

There was an article for Taussig, half done, to appear in the Quarterly Journal of Economics — a more technical analysis of the I.W.W. than had appeared in the Atlantic Monthly; he had just begun a review for the American Journal of Economics of Hoxie’s Trade Unionism; then he was full of ideas for a second article he had promised the Atlantic, ‘Is the United States a Nation?’ ‘And think of being able to see all I want of the June-Bug!’

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

It is a very terrifying experience — to see for the first time a person in a delirium and have that person be the one you love most on earth. All night long I sat there trying to quiet him — it was always some mediation, some committee of employers, he was attending. He would say, ‘I am so tired — can’t you people come to some agreement so that I can go home and sleep?’ At first I would say, ‘Dearest, you must be quiet and try to go to sleep.’ ‘But I can’t leave the meeting!’ He would look at me in such distress. So I learned my part, and each new discussion he would get into I would suggest, ‘Here’s Will Ogburn just come — he’ll take charge of the meeting for you. You come home with me and go to sleep.’ So he would introduce Will to the gathering, and add, ‘Gentlemen, my wife wants me to go home with her and go to sleep — good-bye.’ For a few moments he would be quiet. Then, ‘Oh, my Lord, something to investigate! What is it this time?’ I would cut in hastily, ‘The government feels next week will be plenty of time for this investigation.’ He would look at me seriously. ‘ Did you ever know the government to give you a week’s time to begin ? ’ Then, ‘ Telegrams — more telegrams — nobody keeps their word, nobody.’

About six o’clock in the morning I could wait no longer and called the doctor. He pronounced it pneumonia, — an absolutely different case from any he had ever seen, — no sign of it the day before though it was what he had been watching for all along. Every hospital in town was full. A splendid nurse came at once to the house — ‘the best nurse in the whole city,’ the doctor announced with relief.

Wednesday afternoon the crisis seemed to have passed. That whole evening he was himself, and I — I was almost delirious from sheer joy. To hear his dear voice again just talking naturally! He noticed the trained nurse for the first time. He was jovial happy. I am going to get some fun out of this now!’ he smiled. ‘And, oh, won’t we have a time, my girl, while I am convalescing!’ And we planned the rosiest weeks anyone ever planned.

Thursday the nurse shaved him — he not only joked and talked like his dear old self— he looked it as well. (All along he had been cheerful — always told the doctor he was ‘feeling fine’ — never complained about anything. It amused the doctor so one morning, when he was leaning over listening to Carl’s heart and lungs, while he lay in more or less of a doze and partial delirium. A twinkle suddenly came into Carl’s eye: ‘You sprung a new necktie on me this morning, did n’t you?’ he said. Sure enough, it was new.)

Thursday morning the nurse was preparing things in another room for his bath, and I was with Carl. The sun was streaming in through the windows, and my heart was too contented for words. He said, ‘Do you know what I’ve been thinking of so much this morning? I’ve been thinking of what it must be to go through a terrible illness, and not have someone you loved desperately around. I say to myself all the while, “Just think, my girl was here all the time — my girl will be here all the time!” I’ve lain here this morning and wondered more than ever what good angel was hovering over me the day I met you.’

I put this in because it is practically the last thing he said before delirium came on again, and I love to think of it. He said really more than that —

In the morning he would start calling for me early. The nurse would try to soothe him for a while, then would get me. I wanted to be in his room at night, but they would not let me: there was also an unborn life to be thought of those days. As soon as I reached his bed, he would clasp my hand and hold it, oh, so tight. ‘I’ve been groping for you all night — all night why don’t they let me find you?' Then, in a moment, he would not know I was there. Daytimes I had not left him five minutes, except for my meals. Several nights they had finally let me be by him, anyway.

Saturday morning for the first time since the crisis the doctor was encouraged — ‘Things are really looking up,’ and ‘You go out for a few moments in the sun!'

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

The nurse went out that afternoon. ‘He’s doing nicely,’ was the last thing she said. She had not been gone half an hour, — it was just two-fifteen, I was lying on her bed watching Carl, when he called, ‘Buddie, I’m going — come hold my hand.'

Oh, my God — I dashed for him, I clung to him, I told him he could not, must not go — we needed him too terribly, we loved him too much to spare him. I felt so sure of it, I said, ‘Why, my love is enough to keep you here!'

He would not let me leave him to call the doctor. I just knelt there holding both his hands with all my might, talking, talking, telling him we were not going to let him go. And then at last the color came back into his face, he nodded his head a bit and said, ‘I’ll stay,’ very quietly. Then I was able to rush for the stairs and tell Mrs. Willard to telephone for the doctor.

Three doctors we had that afternoon. They reported the case ‘ Dangerous but not absolutely hopeless’—his heart, that had been so wonderful all along, had given out. That very morning the doctor had said, ‘I wish my pulse was as strong as that!’ and there he lay — no pulse at all. They did everything — our own doctor stayed till about ten, then left with Carl resting fairly easily — he lived only a block away.

About one-thirty the nurse had me call the doctor again. I could see things were going wrong. Once Carl started to talk rather loud. I tried to quiet him and he said, ‘Twice I’ve pulled and fought and struggled to live just for you [one of the times had been during the crisis] — let me just talk if I want to. I can’t make the fight a third time — I m so tired.’ Before the doctor could get there, he was dead.

With our beliefs what they were, there was only one thing to be done. We had never discussed it in detail, but I felt absolutely sure I was doing as he would have me do. His body was cremated, without any service whatsoever — just one of his brothers and a great friend present. The next day the two men scattered his ashes out on the waters of Puget Sound. I feel it was as he would have had it.

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

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