Pittsburgh stands on the edge of the valley of the new democracy. It has
put its plates along every path. There is hardly a village of any size
from the Alleghanies to the Rockies that it has not laid some claim to by
its strips of steel. There is hardly a stream of any size that it has not
claimed by a bridge. It has, indeed, the spirit of Celoron, in other body,
still planting monuments of France's renewal of possession, wherever the
steel rails and girders and plates from the Pittsburgh mills have been
carried. And Pittsburgh is but one of the renewed cities which encompass
the eastern half of the valley where once stretched the chain of French
forts futile in defense but powerful in prophecy.
When we see the American city, even through the eyes of Walt Whitman, that
poet of democracy, it seems a desperate hope that is left her: "Are there,
indeed, men here in the city," he asks, "worthy the name? Are there
athletes? Are there perfect women to match the generous material
luxuriance? Is there a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners? Are
there crops of fine youths and majestic old persons? Are there arts worthy
freedom and a rich people? Is there a great moral and religious
civilization--the only justification of a great material one? Confess that
to severe eyes, using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sort of dry
and flat Sahara appears, these cities crowded with petty grotesques,
malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics.
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