The Great Accident

There are two kinds of people: small-town folks, and others. The others are inclined to think of the people of the small towns as men and women of narrow horizons and narrow interests and a vast ignorance of such important things as cocktails. But, as a matter of fact, the people who dwell in the little mid-western cities and towns are your real cosmopolites. They know their own country, east, west, north and south, at firsthand. The reason for this is simple. When a city dweller goes to the country, he is careful to remain a city dweller; but when a small-town man goes to the city, he becomes a city man for as long as he is within the city’s gates. Your Bostonian knows Boston, has a smattering of New York, and a talking acquaintance with London. Your New Yorker knows New York--perhaps; and he desires to know nothing else. But the men and women of Hardiston, for example, know New York, and they know Boston--and they prefer Hardiston with a steadfast and unshakable preference.

This little town of Hardiston--it is really no town at all, since the last census showed it with a population above the five thousand mark, and so entitled it to be called a city--stands on a plateau above Salt Creek, and it is overlooked by a circle of hills, and at three corners of the town the gaunt, black iron furnaces stand sentry at the gates. The hills, of clay and iron ore and conglomerate rock, are pink with apple blossoms in the spring; and in the fall the hardwood growth which clothes them where the orchards have not yet spread presents a dazzle of reds and yellows that blind the eye with their splendor. It is a rich and fertile country, with well-watered bottom lands; and Hardiston town and Hardiston county have a past, a present and a future.

The past goes back to the Indians and beyond. Salt Creek won its name by no mere chance. There have always been traces of salt in its water; and in the ancient days, the Indians used to come to a riffle below where Hardiston now stands and boil the water for this salt. There was a big encampment here; and the tribes came from all over Ohio, and from Kentucky, and farther, too, to boil salt and take it home with them. They brought Daniel Boone here once; and you may still see, to the north of Hardiston, a crumbling precipice of sand conglomerate over which Boone is said to have jumped in making his escape. Also, at the foot of that sandy bluff, you may dig in an ash bed twenty feet deep, and find the skeletons of Indian braves, buried there beneath the campfires, with perhaps an arrow head of flint between their ribs.

When the whites came in, they took up the making of salt where the Indians left off. The state recognized the industry, and chartered it. But at last cheaper salt came in, and the salt boilers found themselves with their occupation gone. So, seeking about them for work for their hands to do, they discovered black coal in the hills, and rusty brown ore; and they digged the coal and the ore and made iron. It was good iron; none better in the world; and it commanded the highest prices in any market.

The county was all undershot with coal; the hills were crowned with iron. Twenty years ago, every valley in the county had its gaunt tipple and its pile of crumbling slack; and every road was dotted with the creaking, rusty wagons that hauled the ores to the furnaces in Hardiston. To-day, much of the coal is gone; and the ore has vanished. But the furnaces fetch ore from Superior, and smelt it into heavy pigs of iron; and their roar is eternal about the comfortable little town.

A stranger, coming to Hardiston, is inclined to think the place is dead; but the town has a deceptive vitality. It is true the brick yard is gone, and the occasional imported industry usually dies after a brief and uneventful life. It is true the big hotel that was, ten years ago, the finest in a dozen counties, goes now from bankruptcy to bankruptcy without a struggle. And Morgan & Robinson’s dry-goods store has shrunk from three floors to one; and the interurban traction that used to run half-hourly between Hardiston and the B. & O. main line has given place to a dirty, jerky train that makes two trips a day. The car tracks along Broadway and Main have been ripped up, and the fine brick paving on these streets bids fair to endure forever, for lack of traffic that would give it wholesome wear and tear.

But the town is not dead; it is only sleeping. You may see signs of the awakening in the apple blossoms on the hills. These Hardiston hills produce apples of a surprising excellence, and some day the Hardiston apple will be as famous as the Hardiston iron was in the past. But for the present the town sleeps, a gorged slumber. For Hardiston is rich. There are three banks, and each has more than a million in deposits. Hardiston folk have made money; they have built themselves homes, they have bought themselves automobiles, they have sent their boys and girls to college, and now--save for an occasional trip into the outer world, there is little more for them to do. But the money is there; it feeds the prosperity of three or four moving-picture houses, half a dozen soda fountains, and two sporadic theaters; it fattens the purses of a street carnival or so every year, and it delights the heart of every circus that comes to Hardiston County.

It is a friendly town, a gay little town. People make their own good times, and many of them. And the stranger is always made welcome within their gates. Every one is quite honestly fond of Hardiston and proud of it. When you go there, the Chamber of Commerce does not buttonhole you and demand a factory. That is not Hardiston’s way; and besides, there is no Chamber of Commerce. No, when you go there, Hardiston does not ask you to do something for Hardiston; Hardiston tries to do something for you. For instance, it invites you out to the house for supper. And you go, and are glad you went.

Perhaps it is because of this taste for friendliness that Hardiston loves politics so ardently. Politics, after all, corrupt it as you will, is the art of making and keeping friends. Hardiston County, and the Congressional district of which it is the heart, form one of the prime political battle grounds of the state. Summer and winter, year in, year out, politics in Hardiston goes on. The county officials in the Court House, when their work is out of the way, tilt back their chairs about the most capacious cuspidor and talk politics; the men of the town gather at the Smoke House, or on the hotel corner, and talk politics; the farmers, driving to town, stop every man they meet upon the road and canvass the political situation. Even the women, at their bridge clubs and their sewing circles and their reading clubs--Hardiston is full of clubs--talk politics over their cards or their sewing, or after the paper on Browning has been read.

Hardiston politics is very like politics everywhere; it has not much to do with platforms and principles, and it has a great deal to do with men. In a political way, Congressman Amos Caretall was the biggest man in Hardiston County. And so the home-coming of Congressman Caretall, on the eve of the mayoralty election, was a matter that furnished talk for all the town.