More romantic even than the sky-scraper finished and occupied is the sky-scraper in process of construction.  From no mean height, listening to the sweet drawl of the steam-drill, I have watched artisans like dwarfs at work still higher, among knitted steel, seen them balance themselves nonchalantly astride girders swinging in space, seen them throwing rivets to one another and never missing one; seen also a huge crane collapse under an undue strain, and, crumpling like tinfoil, carelessly drop its load onto the populous sidewalk below.  That particular mishap obviously raised the fear of death among a considerable number of people, but perhaps only for a moment.  Anybody in America will tell you without a tremor (but with pride) that each story of a sky-scraper means a life sacrificed.  Twenty stories—­twenty men snuffed out; thirty stories—­thirty men.  A building of some sixty stories is now going up—­sixty corpses, sixty funerals, sixty domestic hearths to be slowly rearranged, and the registrars alone know how many widows, orphans, and other loose by-products!

And this mortality, I believe, takes no account of the long battles that are sometimes fought, but never yet to a finish, in the steel webs of those upper floors when the labor-unions have a fit of objecting more violently than usual to non-union labor.  In one celebrated building, I heard, the non-unionists contracted an unfortunate habit of getting crippled; and three of them were indiscreet enough to put themselves under a falling girder that killed them, while two witnesses who were ready to give certain testimony in regard to the mishap vanished completely out of the world, and have never since been heard of.  And so on.  What more natural than that the employers should form a private association for bringing to a close these interesting hazards?  You may see the leading spirit of the association.  You may walk along the street with him.  He knows he is shadowed, and he is quite cheerful about it.  His revolver is always very ready for an emergency.  Nobody seems to regard this state of affairs as odd enough for any prolonged comment.  There it is!  It is accepted.  It is part of the American dailiness.  Nobody, at any rate in the comfortable clubs, seems even to consider that the original cause of the warfare is aught but a homicidal cussedness on the part of the unions....  I say that these accidents and these guerrillas mysteriously and grimly proceeding in the skyey fabric of metal-ribbed constructions, do really form part of the poetry of life in America—­or should it be the poetry of death?  Assuredly they are a spectacular illustration of that sublime, romantic contempt for law and for human life which, to a European, is the most disconcerting factor in the social evolution of your States.  I have sat and listened to tales from journalists and other learned connoisseurs till—­But enough!

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