Notes on My Journey Through America and Canada

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Engels may have written these notes in the second half of September 1888, when sailing on the City of New York from America, where he had spent over a month (August 17 to September 19, 1888) together with Eleanor MarxAveling, Edward Aveling and his friend Carl Schorlemmer. They travelled from New York to Boston, nearby towns, and the Niagara Falls, and took a voyage across Lake Ontario stopping over in Canada. Judging by the concise form of the notes, Engels probably intended to write an article about the trip. However, this plan was never carried out. The fragment "Impressions of a Journey Round America" (see this volume, pp. 584-86) is only the beginning of this work.

Primitiveness. “CIVILISED COUNTRY.”

Furniture.— Manners—Boston cabs. Hotel organisation, STAGE COACHES, 17th-century travel. Alongside hypermodern features— even in rooms. Window fastenings—roller blinds—keys—double locks.

Country of unexpected contrasts: more railways than roads and the latter appalling—GOOD PLANK ROAD—ELEVATED RAILWAYS above and dreadful pavement below—log cabins but carpets and pianos inside—indeed, even the bourgeois Yankees and the feudal Canadians alongside them—the idyllic Hoboken and insects close to New York.

Publicness of life, in contrast to England. Only bedrooms private, and even these scarcely so (fanlights, ventilation).— HALL, OFFICE, WRITING ROOM, LADIES’ PARLORS; heaters make it unnecessary to keep rooms closed even in winter, and so it does not exist. LOAFING ABOUT in the hotels.

Greeks in Rome in the last days of the republic.

Religion—their theory, to be grasped historically. GO-AHEAD NATION—pushing past, not being able to see anyone walking or standing in front of them. Even in Boston, and worst there on account of the narrow streets—women too.

Spitting—privies—hypocrisy about drink not only in PROHIBITION STATES—nobody drinks in public—prudery—ROOSTER and ROACHES.

Opposite to Canada.—French Canadians really detached from France by the Revolution and have preserved the feudalism guaranteed by the conquest—they are going to ruin—Falls opposite Niagara—empty houses, bridges, etc.—Emigration to New England, where they replace the Chinese.—English Canadians also slow, even in Toronto much dilapidation.

The Americans unable to enjoy.

The Americans unable to walk—either rush or loaf.

Provincials.

Foundation the old solid petty bourgeois, small townsman and small peasant of the 17th-18th centuries. He is everywhere unmistakable with his wooden fashion, but also forms the solid foundation amidst wild speculation, just like the Swiss, to whom a certain resemblance.

Obtrusiveness of American manners: Doctor, City of Berlin

Get up early.

New York—harbour—beauty.— Natural setting for the centre of capitalist production—and how this destiny is fulfilled. First evening impression, dazzling, pavements, dirt, noise, horrible. By day even more ugliness—telegraph poles, overhead railways, signs crossways, company signs, architecture hidden, throngs of people, carriages, TRAMS and ELEVATED far above London, ugly, disfigured, everywhere advertisements, obtrusiveness. Croupier type. Haggard appearance of the people, even the women. Shops dazzling compared with London, and in greater numbers. This the gateway to the promised land. Ghastly noises at sea and on land. Noise from the carts, one makes more than ten in Europe. All aesthetics trampled underfoot as soon as momentary profit comes in view.

Horses like the people: elements of a good stock, not yet ready. Mostly lighter than in England—in Canada, on the other hand, thoroughly English type.

Résumé: capitalist production is overexploitation. Adirondacks forest devastation—nowhere else timber forest either (Isle of Gnats perhaps excepted).

Railways poor, slow, stopping train, delay and wait in Buffalo, incomprehensibly long halt at the stations; few trains per day; long bends, hence the long carriages (cf. street corner tracks in New York—ELEVATED), rolling, due to elasticity of the beams and the trembling, sea-sickness.

Americans no nation. 5-6 different types, held together by the need for cohesion forged in the Civil War, and the feeling that they have in them the making of the greatest nation of the 20th century.

Genuinely capitalist:

Business is concluded in a strictly businesslike manner. No tips. Anyone who gives them in situations where we would consider them unavoidable is then thoroughly exploited as a GREENHORN.

The parvenu—national character.

Educated persons commonly display great self-possession, others at least show confidence and ASSURANCE to the point of importunity.