On Washington Street is a very attractive book store, conducted by a blind couple. Man and wife about thirty years of age, both totally blind. The shop is scrupulously clean. If you ask for a book, the proprietor will find it in a miraculous way, provided it is on the shelves. If you are browsing about, picking up a book here or there, he will ask you to read off to him the title, and then tell you the price. Both look happy, contented, and seem prosperous.
I wondered how it had happened that they started in the book business, that both of them were blind; had they been blind before they married or had misfortune overtaken them after their marriage? They’re in a strange and mysterious place, but peaceful and harmonious.
What is the mysterious power directing the fates of small town inhabitants? Who is it who sells them the same style of clothes, induces them to furnish their homes so that they resemble one the other like one egg resembles another egg? Who is it who makes the people talk and think alike? Never permitting an individual thought, or an expression of individual opinion?
Everything and everybody seem to be cut after the same pattern. Unessentials are the important things in their lives, and they miss the joy of living. They have not learned to be their real selves. They have not been given a chance. Someone told me once: “America is a young nation. We are about a hundred years behind Europe. Our people have not developed yet the sense for beauty and art.” It is not so. America of the fifties of the last century knew the best in life, letters and art. But with the first great fortunes made during the early railroad boom some mysterious powers perverted the minds of America systematically; created in them the lust for sensation, for things of the minute. And today people are being fed with theatres and newspapers and libraries and music and styles, that they really do not want.
They are not given a chance. They must take what these mysterious powers somewhere on Wall Street think good for them, or they can stay at home, lose prestige among their fellow-townsmen, suffer in business and be decried ultimately as “bolsheviks,” or “reds.”
A few weeks in Milwaukee or any other town of its size will open your eyes. Milwaukee has grown incredibly since 1914, produced several hundreds of war-millionaires and has the aspects of a most thriving, prosperous city.