The Turmoil | Page 3

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The Turmoil. A novel by Booth Tarkington 1915.
To Laurel.

There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The
stranger must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will
be upon him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he
must breathe it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here
better loved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the
negligently tended streets incessantly press home the point, and so do
the flecked and grimy citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the

whirlpools of dust, and if he should decline at any time to inhale the
smoke he has the meager alternative of suicide.
The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
riches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
prodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained
to one tune: "Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sell
Wealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall be
dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean--but I will
get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shall be
dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!" And yet it is
not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants is hasty
riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the four winds, for
wealth is in the smoke.
Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no
heaving, grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly
people who had understanding of one another, being, on the whole,
much of the same type. It was a leisurely and kindly place--"homelike,"
it was called--and when the visitor had been taken through the State
Asylum for the Insane and made to appreciate the view of the cemetery
from a little hill, his host's duty as Baedeker was done. The good
burghers were given to jogging comfortably about in phaetons or in
surreys for a family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich; few were
very poor; the air was clean, and there was time to live.
But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
elsewhere--a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil
and labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the
mountains, and emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good
American hearts--Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.
In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound longing
for size. Year by year the longing increased until it became an
accumulated force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be
Bigger! Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their
longing became a mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger!
Get people here! Coax them here! Bribe them! Swindle them into

coming, if you must, but get them! Shout them into coming! Deafen
them into coming! Any kind of people; all kinds of people! We must be
Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag! Kill the fault-finder! Scream and bellow to
the Most High: Bigness is patriotism and honor! Bigness is love and
life and happiness! Bigness is Money! We want Bigness!
They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick
years went by. White people came, and black people and brown people
and yellow people; the negroes came from the