And so, after making ten thousand miles, we found ourselves in the capital of the United States.

Washington, with its comparatively low government buildings, its gardens, its monuments, its broad streets, looks somewhat like Vienna, somewhat like Berlin, somewhat like Warsaw, somewhat like all the capitals. And only automobiles remind one that this city is located in America. Here there is an automobile for every two persons, but there is not a single permanent theatre for the entire population of five hundred thousand. Having looked over George Washington's house in Mount Vernon, having visited sessions of Congress, and having been at the grave of the Unknown Soldier, we discovered that there was really nothing else to see. Only the President remained to be seen. In America that is not so difficult.

Democratism in relations between people, the democratism of daily intercourse, is quite strongly developed in America and reaches quite far at times.

Twice a week, at ten o'clock in the morning, the President of the United States receives journalists. We managed to come to such a reception. It takes place in the White House. We walked into the reception room. There stood a large round table made of sequoia wood. It was a gift made to one of the former presidents. There was no cloakroom, so the incoming journalists laid their overcoats on that table, and when there was no more room on the table, they began laying them on the floor. Gradually about a hundred people gathered. They smoked, talked aloud, and looked impatiently at the small white door, behind which, apparently, the President of the United States was sequestered.

We were advised to stand as close as possible to the door, so that as people were being admitted to the President we would find ourselves in front; otherwise, it might so happen that behind the backs of the journalists we would not see anything. With the skill of experienced street-car fighters, we pushed ahead. Before us were only three men. They were greyish and quite respectable gentlemen.

The reception hour struck, but the journalists were not yet admitted. Then the greyish gentlemen, at first quietly but then louder, began to rap on the door. They were knocking to be admitted to the President of the United States, just as some assistant director might rap on the door of an actor to remind him of his entrance cue. They knocked laughingly, but still they knocked.

Finally, the door opened and the journalists, crowding each other, rushed ahead. We ran with the rest of them. The cavalcade raced across the corridor, then, passed through a large empty room. In that room we easily outstripped the panting grey-haired gentlemen and were the first to run. into the next room.

Before us in the depths of a circular private study—on the walls of which hung old lithographs depicting Mississippi steamers, and in the small niches of which stood models of frigates—at a medium-sized writing-desk, a smoking cigarette in his hand, and Chekhovian pince-nez on his large handsome nose, sat Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States. Behind his back twinkled the stars and stripes of two national flags.

Questions began. The correspondents asked them, the President answered.

All of this ritual was, of course, somewhat conditional. Everybody knows that the President will not disclose any particular secrets to the journalists. Certain questions the President answered seriously and quite extensively, parried some with a jest (it is not so easy, of course, twice a week to get off with a. joke against a hundred pushing journalists), to still others he replied that he would discuss them the next time.

Roosevelt's large handsome face looked tired. Only the day before the Supreme Court had vetoed the AAA, Roosevelt's law regulating farmers' sowing of crops, one of the pivots of his programme.

The questions and answers took up half an hour. When a pause came, the President looked quizzically at the people gathered there. This was understood to be a signal for a general retreat. There resounded a helter-skelter "Good-bye, Mr. President!" and everyone departed. And Mr. President remained alone in his circular study among the frigates and the star-spangled banners.

Millions of people, old and young, who compose the great American nation, an honest, boisterous, talented people, who have a somewhat too great respect for money but who are hard-working, can do anything they like according to the Constitution, for they are the masters of the country. They can even take Morgan himself, John Pierpont Morgan himself, and call him out for questioning in a senatorial commission and ask him severely:

"Mr. Morgan, didn't you pull the United States into the World War because of the mundane interests of your personal enrichment?"

The people can ask that. But this is how Mr. Morgan answers-—we heard him ourselves.

And on that occasion, too, everything was very democratic.

The entrance to the hall where the Senate Commission was sitting was free. Again you were free to do with your overcoat what you liked—put it on the floor, or shove it under the chair on which you were sitting.

At one end of a small hall were chairs for the public; at the other end, a table at which the questioning was proceeding. The table was covered with neither red nor green cloth. It was a long polished table. Everything was very simple. Right beside the billionaire, on the floor, lay his thick and no longer new brief-case. Morgan was surrounded by his lawyers and advisers. They were numerous. Grey and pink-cheeked, fat and bald-headed, or young with piercing eyes—they were all armed with facts, information, documents, folios, and folders. All this band of Morgan's braves felt quite unconstrained.

In the chair was Senator Nye, his face thin, inspired, almost Russian. (A Russian shirt would suit him very well.) The interrogation was carried on by Senator Clark, round-faced and gay. It was at once evident that he enjoyed questioning John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.

"Junior" was almost seventy years old. He was a huge and obese old man in a long dark coat. On the back of Morgan's apoplectic head was visible the grey fuzz of a chick. He was calm. He knew that nothing untoward would happen to him. He would be asked a question, he would look at his lawyers, the latter would begin to dig frantically in their books and would prompt the answer to him.

It was an amazing spectacle. Several score of advisers whispered something into Morgan's ear, shoved little papers to him, prompted him, helped him. It was not Morgan speaking, it was his billions speaking. And when money talks in America, it always talks authoritatively. After all, America's favourite saying is:

"He looks like a million dollars."

Indeed, a million dollars looks very good.

And Morgan, in his long dark coat resembling an old fat hawk, looked like several billions.

For being summoned to the Senate Commission, the person subpoenaed is entitled to daily pay, the normal government daily pay for expenses. John Pierpont Morgan, Jr., took that money. He took advantage of all the rights which a democratic constitution gave him.

Morgan received everything he was entitled to under the Constitution —even a little more. But what did the people get?

On the territory of the United States live more than a hundred and twenty million people.

Thirteen million of them have not had work for several years. Together with their families they make up one-fourth of the population of the entire country. Yet economists insist that on the territory of the United States right now, even today, it would be possible to feed a billion people.

46 They and We

OUR JOURNEY came to an end. Within two months we had been in twenty-five states and several hundred towns, we had breathed the dry air of deserts and prairies, and crossed the Rocky Mountains, had seen Indians, had talked with the young unemployed, with the old capitalists, with radical intellectuals, with revolutionary workers, with poets, with writers, with engineers. "We had examined factories and parks, had admired roads and bridges, had climbed up the Sierra Nevadas and descended into the Carlsbad Caves. We had travelled ten thousand miles.