By Gregory Clark, September 2, 1922.
On the Midway, everybody is a moron.
A moron, according to the psychologists, is “a high grade imbecile, with the mental age of a child of eleven years.”
Aside from the fact that this is a dirty crack at boys and girls of eleven, it is a pretty good description of the Midway.
Mind you, we are not asseverating (quaint Victorian word) that everyone who goes into the Midway is a moron. Our point is that as soon as he enters the Midway he becomes a moron – a high grade imbecile with a mental age of eleven.
Is it the bright paint, the gaudy canvas, the barking barkers, the primitive music that throws a spell over us and reduces us to morons? Or is it the psychic effect of a mob, whose massed personality overwhelms the individual personality, and reduces all for the moment to a common level of intelligence?
There is something decidedly spooky about the Midway.
Observe what happens to this large, thick, masterful looking man. He is the president and general manager of a flourishing manufacturing business. He is an officer of the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association. His golf handicap is four. His poker handicap is nil. He has a hundred and thirty cases in his cellar and is practically a teetotaller. In a word, he is a successful man.
Yet, look at him.
He is the bear cat of a party of four – his wife, another thick gentleman and wife. No young ‘uns in the party.
His collar is wilted. He has just consumed. a hot dog in three bites, and is hollering “C’mon, c’mon!” to the others, and is pointing to the Ferris wheel.
His face is red. There is a dab of mustard on his coat. His shoes are dusty, his clothes awry. Little would you think that to-morrow morning, with a flirt of his pen, he can close a factory employing four hundred men, or raise the price of washing machines. He acts like a boy of eleven. He looks like a high grade imbecile. He is, temporarily, a moron.
Or this lady, here, with the attractive white hair and the eyes the color of polished mahogany. Would you think she was one of the eight intellectual women of Toronto? Would you suspect that she has raised a family of three already prominent lawyers and is the vice-president of nineteen women’s organizations?
Her specialty to-day is freaks. She has been into every side show from the glass blowers to the wild west show. But her passion is freaks. She has had her fortune told by means of a paper out of a glass tube, but she has been in to see the gen-oo-wine Siamese twins three times. She goes in no spirit of mockery, but with the idea of getting an eye-full in those hot brown eyes, as thrilled as any girl of eleven. As a matter of fact, she is eleven. She is a moron.
Here is a boy scout in mufti who has wheedled his dad to the shooting gallery. The boy has fired two full rounds – fifty cents. Then a peculiar expression overspreads dad’s face, as he picks up the rifle.
I’ll shoot a few,” he says.
Dong, clatter, pink, go the targets as dad unlimbers.
“Give me another dozen,” says dad.
And another, and another.
“Hey, dad, what about me?” cries the boy scout in mufti, forgetting for the moment the creed of the scout.
Dad looks at his son as if he had never seen him before. Then a look of puzzled recognition comes into his face. He pays for another dozen each.
“I’ll shoot the top row, you take the bottom,” says dad to his son. “Bet I can beat you.”
Boy against man? Not at all. They are evenly matched, Dad has become a moron. He is only eleven.
But enough of individual cases.
Look at the swarm. They are all morons – we are all morons. Our mouths are slightly open. Our eyes shine. We move about erratically, irresolutely, aimlessly. We are children of eleven. Morons.
But no! Alone, aloof, there in the crush go a few superior bodies, ill as ease, marking us with amazement, a mild contempt.
Poor creatures, they are fixed forever at the age of forty or fifty, or whatever their age is.
Of your charity, pity them that cannot become morons for a day!
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