Turmoil

Booth Tarkington

Description

Booth Tarkington is one of an elite group of only three writers who have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature more than once. The novel The Turmoil is the first entry in the 'Growth' trilogy of books that focus on the social and economic upheaval brought about by the Industrial Revolution.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775453321
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE TURMOIL
A NOVEL
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BOOTH TARKINGTON
 
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The Turmoil A Novel First published in 1915 ISBN 978-1-775453-32-1 © 2011 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX Chapter XXX Chapter XXI Chapter XXXII Chapter XXXIII
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To Laurel.
Chapter I
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There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty andwonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The strangermust feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be uponhim instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breatheit, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here betterloved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligentlytended streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the fleckedand grimy citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools ofdust, and if he should decline at any time to inhale the smoke he hasthe meager alternative of suicide.
The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and moreriches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swellingprodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trainedto one tune: "Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sellWealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall bedirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean—but Iwill get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shallbe dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!" And yet itis not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants ishasty riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the four winds, forwealth is in the smoke.
Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, noheaving, grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborlypeople who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole, muchof the same type. It was a leisurely and kindly place—"homelike," itwas called—and when the visitor had been taken through the State Asylumfor the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery from alittle hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good burgherswere given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in surreys fora family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were very poor; theair was clean, and there was time to live.
But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here aselsewhere—a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soiland labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove themountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all goodAmerican hearts—Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.
In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profoundlonging for size. Year by year the longing increased until it becamean accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger!Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing becamea mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coaxthem here! Bribe them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but getthem! Shout them into coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind ofpeople; all kinds of people! We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag!Kill the fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness ispatriotism and honor! Bigness is love and life and happiness! Bigness isMoney! We want Bigness!
They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, andslowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quickyears went by. White people came, and black people and brown peopleand yellow people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands andthousands, multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster thanthey could die. From the four quarters of the earth the people came,the broken and the unbroken, the tame and the wild—Germans, Irish,Italians, Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh, English, French, Swiss, Swedes,Norwegians, Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews, Dalmatians, Armenians,Rumanians, Servians, Persians, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese, Turks, andevery hybrid that these could propagate. And if there were no Eskimosnor Patagonians, what other human strain that earth might furnish failedto swim and bubble in this crucible?
With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began toroar and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn underthe tread of hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look ofthe faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a cockneytype began to emerge discernibly—a cynical young mongrel barbaricof feature, muscular and cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashionedapparently in imitation of the sketches drawn by newspaper comedians.The female of his kind came with him—a pale girl, shoddy and a littlerouged; and they communicated in a nasal argot, mainly insolences andelisions. Nay, the common speech of the people showed change: inplace of the old midland vernacular, irregular but clean, and notunwholesomely drawling, a jerky dialect of coined metaphors began tobe heard, held together by GUNNAS and GOTTAS and much fostered by thepublic journals.
The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a nucleus,and spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and in itsvitals, like benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in the bodyof a man, missions and refuges offered what resistance they might to thesaloons and all the hells that cities house and shelter. Temptationand ruin were ready commodities on the market for purchase by theventuresome; highwaymen walked the streets at night and sometimeskilled; snatching thieves were busy everywhere in the dusk; whilehouse-breakers were a common apprehension and frequent reality. Lifeitself was somewhat safer from intentional destruction than it was inmedieval Rome during a faction war—though the Roman murderer was morelike to pay for his deed—but death or mutilation beneath the wheels layin ambush at every crossing.
The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it didnot matter much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians.Law-making was a pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more.Singular fermentation of their humor, they even had laws forbiddingdangerous speed. More marvelous still, they had a law forbidding smoke!They forbade chimneys to smoke and they forbade cigarettes to smoke.They made laws for all things and forgot them immediately; thoughsometimes they would remember after a while, and hurry to make new lawsthat the old laws should be enforced—and then forget both new and old.Wherever enforcement threatened Money or Votes—or wherever it was toomuch to bother—it became a joke. Influence was the law.
So the place grew. And it grew strong.
Straightway when he came, each man fell to the same worship:
Give me of thyself, O Bigness: Power to get more power! Riches to get more riches! Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more! Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself, O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory! And there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
Chapter II
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The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan TrustCompany was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been thebiggest builder and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke. Hehad come from a country cross-roads, at the beginning of the growth, andhe had gone up and down in the booms and relapses of that period; buteach time he went down he rebounded a little higher, until finally,after a year of overwork and anxiety—the latter not decreased by achance, remote but possible, of recuperation from the former in thepenitentiary—he found himself on top, with solid substance underhis feet; and thereafter "played it safe." But his hunger to get wasunabated, for it was in the very bones of him and grew fiercer.
He was the city incarnate. He loved it, calling it God's country, as hecalled the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish. Andwhen soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. "It'sgood! It's good!" he said, and smacked his lips in gusto. "Good, cleansoot; it's our life-blood, God bless it!" The smoke was one of hisgreat enthusiasms; he laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives whocalled to beg his aid against it. "Smoke's what brings your husbands'money home on Saturday night," he told them, jovially. "Smoke may hurtyour little shrubberies in the front yard some, but it's the catarrhalclimate and the adenoids that starts your chuldern coughing. Smoke makesthe climate better. Smoke means good health: it makes the people washmore. They have to wash so much they wash off the microbes. You gohome and ask your husbands what smoke puts in their pockets out o' thepay-roll—and you'll come around next time to get me to turn out moresmoke instead o' chokin' it off!"
It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflectionin it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, andunquenchably optimistic. From the deepest of his inside all the way outhe believed it was the finest city