His Opportunities Of
Downfall Are Pretty Constant, It Will Be Seen, When It Is Explained That
If A Measure With
Which he is identified fails in the city council it
becomes his duty to resign, like the prime-minister of
England in the
like case with Parliament, But Mr. Nathan, who is as alien in his name
as in his race and religion, and is known orally to the Romans as Signor
Nahtahn, has not yet been obliged to resign. He has felt his way through
every difficulty, and has not yet been identified with any fatally
compromising measure. In such an extremely embarrassing predicament as
that created by the conflict between the labor unions and the police
early in April, and eventuating in the two days' strike, he knew how to
do the wise thing and the right thing. As to the incident, he held his
hand and he held his tongue, but he went to visit the wounded workmen in
the hospital, and he condoled with their families. He was somewhat
blamed for that, but his action kept for him the confidence of that
large body of his supporters who earn their living with their hands.
It is said that the common Romans do not willingly earn their living
with their hands; that they like better being idle and, so far as they
can, ornamental. In this they would not differ from the uncommon Romans,
the moneyed, the leisured, the pedigreed classes, who reproach them for
their indolence; but I do not know whether they are so indolent as all
that or not. I heard it said that they no longer want work, and that
when they get it they do not do it well - a supposed effect of the
socialism which is supposed to have spoiled their manners. I heard it
said more intelligently, as I thought, that they are not easily
disciplined, and that they cannot be successfully associated in the
industries requiring workmen to toil in large bodies together; they will
not stand that. Also I heard it said, as I thought again rather
intelligently, that where work is given them to do after a certain
model, they will conform perfectly for the first three or four times;
then their fatal creativeness comes into play, and they begin to better
their instruction by trying to improve upon the patterns - that is, they
are artists, not artisans. They must please their fancy in their work or
they cannot do it well. From my own experience I cannot say whether this
is generally or only sometimes true, but I can affirm that where they
delayed or erred in their work they took their failure very amiably. I
never saw sweeter patience than that of the Roman matron who had
undertaken a small job of getting spots out of a garment, and who quite
surpassed me in self-control when she announced, day after appointed
day, that the work was not done yet or not done perfectly; she was
politeness itself.
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