A Traveler From Altruria - Class Distinctions and The Gap Between Rich and Poor

Class Distinctions and The Gap Between Rich and Poor

The social differences in America are shown by having the rich of the society staying at a luxurious resort near the farms of workers in a lower class. Howell admits that the farmers are not fit to associate with those at the resort because their manners are not good enough. This story is dealing with social protest.According to Twelvemough, the successful people become wealthy or powerful because of "their talents, their shrewdness, their ability to seize an advantage and turn it into their own account."

Right from the first moment of his stay at the fashionable summer hotel it becomes evident that Mr Homos's behaviour is fundamentally different from that of the other guests. He insists on carrying his own luggage, at busy times helps waiters in the restaurant do their job, and chats easily with employees, which makes him rather popular among them but at the same time embarrasses his host:

It was quite impossible to keep him from bowing with the greatest deference to our waitress; he shook hands with the head-waiter every morning as well as with me; there was a fearful story current in the house, that he had been seen running down one of the corridors to relieve a chambermaid laden with two heavy water-pails which she was carrying to the rooms to fill up the pitchers. This was probably not true; but I myself saw him helping in the hotel hay-field one afternoon, shirt-sleeved like any of the hired men. He said that it was the best possible exercise, and that he was ashamed he could give no better excuse for it than the fact that without something of the kind he should suffer from indigestion. It was grotesque, and out of all keeping with a man of his cultivation and breeding. He was a gentleman and a scholar, there was no denying, and yet he did things in contravention of good form at every opportunity, and nothing I could say had any effect with him.

Homos further points out that he considers it strange if people perform exercise in order to stay fit if all they would have to do is participate in manual labour. By doing so, they would at the same time relieve the burden of those who regularly work with their hands. ("To us, exercise for exercise would appear stupid. The barren expenditure of force that began and ended in itself, and produced nothing, we should—if you will excuse my saying so—look upon as childish, if not insane or immoral.")

Generally, Homos is surprised to find that neither Mr Twelvemough, the novelist, nor any of his acquaintances—a professor, a businessman, a manufacturer, a banker, and a clergyman—has any social relations whatsoever to people from the working classes or to any of the country people who permanently live in the area where they themselves just spend a few weeks each summer. The only contact Mrs Makely, the businessman's wife, can claim is occasional charitable visits to an old country woman now confined to her bed. At one point even the minister ruefully admits that there are no manual labourers in his congregation ("I suppose they have their own churches").

Homos draws the conclusion that Americans differentiate between political and economic equality, noting that they may have the former but that they certainly do not enjoy the latter.

In Howell's writing he focuses not only on the social injustices but also the economic injustices in society. There is an obvious dissatisfaction with society, yet he still approves of the society as a whole. Howell makes it clear that Altruria's society is better than America's because of its lack of money and class. The belief is that if men acknowledge their commonalities and work for each other, they will dispense with differences of rank and class. He believes that men should treat each other as equals. There is a need for reforms.