Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

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One American town hung before the entrance to its main street the placard:

THE BIGGEST SMALL TOWN IN THE UNITED STATES

This description – the biggest small town – splendidly suits Schenectady, and, as a matter of fact, also the majority of American towns that have risen around large factories, grain elevators, or oil wells. It is the same as the other small towns, with its business centre and residential part, with its Broadway or Main Street, but only bigger in length and

width. As a matter of fact, it is a large city. It has much asphalt, brick, and many electric lights, probably more than Rome, and certainly it is bound to have more electric refrigerators than Rome, and more washing machines, vacuum cleaners, baths, and automobiles. But this city is exceedingly small spiritually, and in that regard it could very well dispose of itself in one of our little lanes.

In this city where, with amazing skill, are manufactured the smallest and the largest electrical machines that have ever existed in the world, from an egg-beater to electric generators for the Boulder Dam Hydroelectric Station on the Colorado River, the following incident happened:

A certain engineer fell in love with the wife of another engineer. It ended with her divorcing her husband and marrying the man she loved. The entire big small town knew that this was an ideally pure romance, that the wife had not been unfaithful to her husband, that she patiently waited for the divorce. The American god himself, as demanding as a new district attorney, could not have found any fault. The newly-weds began to lead a new life, happy in the thought that their tribulations were over. As a matter of fact, their tribulations were only beginning. People stopped going to their home, people ceased to invite them out. Everybody turned away from them. It was a real boycott, the more devastating because it happened in a big small town, where the principal recreation consists of calling and receiving callers for a game of bridge or poker. Essentially, all these people who drove the young couple out of their midst were in their heart of hearts quite indifferent to the problem of who lives with whom, but – a decent American must not get divorced. That is indecent. All this led to the driving out of town of the man who permitted himself to fall in love with a woman and to marry her. It was a good thing that at that time there was no depression and he could easily find another job.

The society of a town which grew up around a large industrial enterprise and is entirely connected with its interests, or rather with the interests of the bosses of the enterprise, is invested with a terrible power. Officially a man is never dismissed because of his convictions. In America one is free to profess any views, any beliefs. He is a free citizen. However, let him try not to go to church or let him try to praise communism, and something will happen whereby he will stop working in the big little town. He himself will not even notice how it happened. The people who will get rid of him themselves do not believe in God, but they go to church. It is indecent to refrain from going to church. As for communism, that is something for dirty Mexicans, Slavs, and Negroes. It is no business for Americans.

In Schenectady we stopped at a hotel that provided three kinds of. Water – hot, cold, and iced – and went for a walk through the city. It was only about ten o’clock in the evening, yet there were almost no pedestrians. Against the kerbs stood dark automobiles. At the left of the hotel was a deserted field overgrown with grass. It was quite dark there. Beyond the field, on the roof of a six-story building, a sign lit up and went outslowly – G.E. – General Electric Company. It was like the monogram of an emperor. But never did emperors have such might at their disposal as these electrical gentlemen who have conquered Asia, Africa, who have firmly implanted their trade-mark over the Old and the New World, for everything in the world which is in any way connected with electricity is in the end connected with General Electric.

Beyond the hotel on the principal thoroughfare wavered strips of light. There a feverish automobile life was on. But here was an excellent concrete road running around the field, which was dark and deserted. There was not even a sidewalk here. It seemed that the builders of the road thought it improbable that there could be found people in the world who would approach the office of the General Electric on foot instead of driving up in an automobile.

Opposite the office was a glass booth on wheels attached to an ancient trucklike automobile. In it sat an elderly, moustached man. He was selling popcorn, a roasted corn which bursts open in the form of white boutonnieres. On the counter glowed a gasoline flare with three bright wicks. We tried to guess what popcorn was made of.

“This is corn,” the vendor said unexpectedly in Ukrainian Russian. “Can’t you see? It’s ordinary corn. But where are you from that you speak Russian?” “From Moscow.” “No fooling?” “No.”

The popcorn vendor became quite excited and walked out of his booth. “Well, now, let’s see – are you here as delegates from the Soviet government,” he asked, “or did you come here to work, to perfect yourselves?”

We explained that we were merely travelling.

“I see, I see. Just taking a look at how things are going in our United States?”

We stood a long time at the glass booth, eating popcorn and listening to the vendor’s story, which was full of English words.

This man had come to the United States some thirty years ago from a small village in the government ofVolhynia. Now this little village is in Polish territory. At first he worked in mines, digging coal. Then he was a labourer on a farm. Then workers were being hired for the locomotive works in Schenectady, so he went to work in the locomotive works.

“That’s how my life passed, like one day,” he said sadly. But now for six years he had been without work. He sold everything he had. He was evicted from his home.

“I have a Pole as my manager. We sell popcorn together.”

“Do you earn much?”

“Why, no, hardly enough for dinner. I’m starving. My clothes – you can see for yourself what they’re like. I haven’t anything to wear for going out into the street.”

“Why don’t you go back to Volhynia?”

“It is even worse there. People write it’s very bad. But tell me how is it with you, in Russia? People say different things about you. I simply don’t know whom to believe and whom to disbelieve.”

We found out that this man who had left Russia in the dim past attentively follows everything that is said and written in Schenectady about his former homeland.

“Various lecturers come here,” he said, “and speak at the high school. Some are for the Soviet government, others are against it. And whoever speaks for theSoviet government, they write bad things about him, very bad. “For example, Colonel Cooper spoke well about theSoviet government, so they wrote about him that he sold out. Got two million for it. A millionaire farmer returned and praised the Soviet state farms. It was said that they built a special Soviet state farm for him. Not long ago a woman school teacher from Schenectady went to Leningrad,lived there, and then came back and praised Russia. Even about her they said that she left a boy friend there, that she loves him, and that is why she doesn’t want to say anything against the Soviet government.” “But what do you think yourself?”

“What difference does it make what I think – would anybody ask me? I only know one thing – I’m going to the dogs here in Schenectady.”

He looked at the slowly glowing initials of the electric rulers of the world and added:

“They have built machines. Everything is made with machines. The working man hasn’t a chance to live.”

“What do you think – what should be done so that the working man may live an easier life?”

“Break up and destroy all machines!” replied the vendor of popcorn firmly and with conviction.

More than once in America we heard talk of destroying machines. This may seem incredible, but in a land where the building of machines has reached the point of virtuosity, where the national genius has expressed itself in the invention and production of machines which replace completely and improve many times the labour of man – it is precisely in this country that you hear talk that would seem insane even in a madhouse.

Looking at this vendor, we involuntarily remembered a New York cafeteria on Lexington Avenue where we used to go for lunch every day. There at the entrance used to stand a pleasant girl in an orange calico apron, marcelled and rouged (she undoubtedly had to be up at six in the morning in order to have time to arrange her hair), who distributed punch tickets. Six days later, in the very same place, we saw a metal machine doing the work of the girl automatically – and at the same time it gave off pleasant chimes, which, of course, one could not very well expect from the girl We remembered also the story we heard in New York of a certain Negro who worked on a wharf as a controller, counting bales of cotton. The work suggested to him the idea of inventing a machine that would count the bales. He invented such a machine. His boss took advantage of this invention gladly, but dismissed the Negro, who henceforth was jobless.

The next day we visited the factories of the General Electric. We are not specialists; therefore, we cannot describe the factories as they deserve to be described. We don’t want to give the reader an artistic ornament instead of the real thing. We ourselves would read with pleasure a description of these factories made by a Soviet engineer. We did, however, carry away from there an impression of high technical wisdom and organization.

In the laboratories we saw several of the best physicists in the world, who sat at their work with their coats off. They are working for the General Electric Company. The company doesn’t give them very much money – not more than twenty thousand dollars a year. Such salaries are received only by the most prominent scientists. There are few of these people. But there are no limits to the means necessary for experiment and investigation. If a million is needed, they’ll give a million. That is why the company has managed to get the best physicists in the world. No university can give them such opportunities for research as they receive here in a factory laboratory.

But then, everything that these idealists invent remains the property of the firm. The scientists advance science. The firm makes money.

At a luncheon in a cosy and beautiful engineers’ club, several of the engineers, to our great surprise, expressed thoughts that reminded us very much of what theunemployed vendor of popcorn had been saying. Naturally they were not expressed in such primitive form, but the essence remained the same.

“Too many machines! Too much technique! The machines are responsible for the difficulties that confront the country.”

This was said by people who themselves produce all kinds of remarkable machines. Perhaps they were already foreseeing the moment when the machine will deprive of work not only workers but even themselves, the engineers.

Toward the end of the luncheon we were introduced to a thin and tall grey-haired gentleman on whose cheeks played a healthy tomato-coloured flush. He proved to be an old friend of Mr. Adams’s. Little fat Adams and his friend whacked each other’s shoulders for a long time, as if they wanted to beat the dust out of each other’s coats.

“Gentlemen,” the beaming Mr. Adams told us, “I present to you Mr. Ripley. You can get a lot of good out of this man if you want to understand the meaning of American electrical industry. But, but! You must ask Mr. Ripley to show you his electric house.”

We asked.

“Very well,” said Mr. Ripley. “I will show you my electric house.”

And Mr, Ripley asked us to follow him.

13. Mr. Ripley’s Electric House

MR. RIPLEY led us to the entrance of his little house and asked us to press the button of an electric bell.

Instead of the usual bell we heard melodic sounds as if issuing from a music-box’. The door opened by itself, and we found ourselves in the anteroom.

Mr. Ripley walked up to a box hanging on the wall, opened a small door with an accustomed gesture, and showed us an electric machine.