American Sketches Part 3

So, ignoring the peculiar enslavements of democracy, forgetting the temptations to which the n.o.blest republic is exposed, they proclaim a monopoly of the sovereign virtue, and cast a cold eye of disdain upon the tradition of older countries. The author of 'Triumphant Democracy,'

for instance, a.s.serts that he "was denied political equality by his native land." We do not know for what offence he was thus heavily punished, and it is consoling to reflect that the beloved Republic has made him "the peer of any man." It has not made any other man his peer.

He is separated far more widely by his wealth from the workmen, whom he patronises, than the meanest day-labourer in England from the dukes to whom he is supposed to bend the knee; and if Mr Carnegie's be the fine flower of American Liberty, we need hardly regret that ours is of another kind.

In Jefferson's despite, men are not made free and equal by the frequent repet.i.tion of catchwords, and it is by a fine irony that America, which prides itself upon a modern spirit, should still be swayed by a foolish superst.i.tion, more than a century old, that the cant of Liberty and Equality, uttered by a slave-owner in 1776, should still warp its intelligence. "I don't know what liberty means," said Lord Byron, "never having seen it;" and it was in candour rather than in experience that Byron differed from his fellows. Nor has any one else seen what eluded Byron. A perfectly free man must be either uncivilised or decivilised--a savage stronger than his fellows or an undetected anarch armed with a bomb, A free society is a plain contradiction, for a society must be controlled by law, and law is an instant curtailment of Liberty. And, if you would pursue this chimera, it is not in a democracy that you are likely to surprise it. Liberty is a prize which will always escape you in a mob. The supremacy of the people means the absolute rule of the majority, in deference to which the mere citizen must lay aside all hope of independence. In life, as in politics, a democratic minority has no rights. It cannot set its own pace; it cannot choose its own route; it must follow the will of others, not its own desire; and it is small comfort to the slave, whose chains gall him, that the slave-driver bears the name of a free man.

Liberty, in brief, is a private, not a public, virtue. It has naught to do with extended franchises or forms of government. The free man may thrive as easily under a tyranny as in a republic. Is it not true Liberty to live in accord with one's temperament or talent? And as the best laws cannot help this enterprise, so the worst cannot hinder it.

You will discover Liberty in Russia as in America, in England as in France,--everywhere, indeed, where men refuse to accept the superst.i.tions and doctrines of the mob. But the Americans are not content to possess the Liberty which satisfies the rest of the world.

With characteristic optimism they boast the possession of a rare and curious quality. In Europe we strive after Freedom in all humility of spirit, as after a happy state of mind. In America they advertise it--like a patent medicine.

America's view of Patriotism is distinguished by the same ingenious exaggeration as her view of Liberty. She has as little doubt of her Grandeur as of her Freedom. She is, in brief, "G.o.d's own country,"

and in her esteem Columbus was no mere earthly explorer; he was the authentic discoverer of the Promised Land. Neither argument nor experience will ever shake the American's confidence in his n.o.ble destiny. On all other questions uncertainty is possible. It is not possible to discuss America's supremacy. In arms as in arts, the United States are unrivalled. They alone enjoy the blessings of civilisation.

They alone have been permitted to combine material with moral progress.

They alone have solved the intricate problems of life and politics. They have the biggest houses, the best government, and the purest law that the world has ever known. Their universities surpa.s.s Oxford and Cambridge, Paris and Leipzig, in learning, as their Churches surpa.s.s the Churches of the old world in the proper understanding of theology. In brief, to use their own phrase, America is "It," the sole home of the good and great.

Patriotism such as this, quick in enthusiasm, simple in faith, may prove, if properly handled, a national a.s.set of immeasurable value. And in public the Americans admit no doubt. Though they do not hesitate to condemn the boodlers who prey upon their cities, though they deplore the corrupt practices of their elections, they count all these abuses as but spots upon a brilliant sun. A knowledge of his country's political dishonesty does not depress the true patriot. He is content to think that his ideals are as lofty as their realisation is remote, and that the triumph of graft is as nothing compared with a n.o.ble sentiment. The result is that the Americans refuse to weaken their national prestige by the advertised cannibalism which is so popular in England. They are for their country, right or wrong. They do not understand the anti-patriot argument, which was born of the false philosophy of the eighteenth century, and which has left so evil a mark upon our political life.

To them the phenomenon which we call Pro-Boerism is not easily intelligible. They take an open pride in their country and their flag, and it seems certain that, when they stand in the presence of an enemy, they will not weaken their national cause by dissension.

This exultant Patriotism is the more remarkable when we reflect upon what it is based. The love of country, as understood in Europe, depends upon ident.i.ty of race, upon community of history and tradition. It should not be difficult for those whose fathers have lived under the same sky, and breathed the same air, to sacrifice their prosperity or their lives to the profit of the State. In making such a sacrifice they are but repaying the debt of nurture. To the vast majority of Americans this sentiment, grafted on the past, can make no appeal. The only link which binds them to America is their sudden arrival on alien soil. They are akin to the Anglo-Saxons, who first peopled the continent, neither in blood nor in sympathy. They carry with them their national habits and their national tastes. They remain Irish, or German, or Italian, with a difference, though they bear the burden of another State, and a.s.sume the privileges of another citizenship. But there is no mistake about their Patriotism. Perhaps those shout loudest who see the Star-spangled Banner unfurled for the first time, and we are confronted in America with the outspoken expression of a sentiment which cannot be paralleled elsewhere on the face of the globe.

They tread the same ground, these vast hordes of patriots, they obey the same laws,--that is all. Are they, then, moved by a spirit of grat.i.tude, or do they feel the same loyalty which animates a hastily gathered football team, which plays not for its honour but for the profit of its manager? Who shall say? One thing only is certain: the Patriotism of the cosmopolites, if it be doubtful in origin, is by no means doubtful in expression. On every Fourth of July the Americans are free to display the love of their Country, and they use this freedom without restraint.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast, from Vermont to Mexico, the Eagle screams aloud. She screams from early morn to dewy eve. And there is nothing to silence her screaming save the explosion of innumerable crackers, the firing of countless pistols.

For this day the youth of America is given full licence to shoot his inoffensive neighbours, and, if he will, to commit the happy despatch upon him-self. The next morning the newspapers chronicle the injuries which have been inflicted on and by the boys of New York, for the most part distinguished by foreign names, with the cold accuracy bred of long habit. And while the boys prove their patriotism by the explosion of crackers, their fathers, with equal enthusiasm, devote themselves to the waving of flags. They hold flags in their hands, they carry them in their b.u.t.tonholes, they stick them in their hats, they wear them behind their ears. Wherever your eye is cast, there are flags to dazzle it, flags large and flags small, an unbroken orgie of stars and stripes.

It is, in fact, the Guy Fawkes Day of America. And who is the Guy? None other than George III. of blessed memory. For the Fourth of July has its duties as well as its pleasures, and the chief of its duties is the public reading of the Declaration of Independence. In every town and hamlet Jefferson's burning words are proclaimed in the ears of enthusiastic citizens. It is pointed out to a motley crowd of newly arrived immigrants that George, our king, of whom they had not heard yesterday, was unfit to be the ruler of a free people. And lest the inestimable benefit of Jefferson's eloquence should be lost to one single suddenly imported American, his declaration is translated into Yiddish for the benefit of those to whom English is still an unknown tongue. In a voice trembling with emotion, the orator a.s.sures the starving ill-clad Pole and the emaciated Bohemian that all men are free and equal; and so fine is the air of the Great Republic that this proposition, which refutes itself, is firmly believed for the moment by the penniless and hungry. And when the sun sets, and darkness enwraps the happy land, fireworks put a proper finish upon the national joy, and the favourite set-piece represents, as it should, a n.o.ble-hearted Yankee boy putting to flight a dozen stout red-jackets of King George.

Humour might suggest that the expression of Patriotism is a trifle overdone. Perhaps also a truce might be made with King George, who, if he be permitted to look from the shades upon a country which his Ministers lost, must surely smile at this immortality of resentment. But to the stranger, who witnesses this amazing carnival for the first time, two reflections occur. In the first place, the stranger cannot but be struck by the perfect adaptation of Jefferson's rodomontade to an expected purpose. Although that eminent Virginian, at the highest point of his exaltation, did not look forward to the inrush of foreigners which is overwhelming his country, there is a peculiar quality in his words, even when translated into Yiddish, which inspires an inexplicable enthusiasm. In the second place, the stranger is astounded at the ingenuity which inspires a crowd, separated by wide differences of race, speech, and education, with a sudden sympathy for a country which is not its own.

And when the last crackers are exploded, and the last flag is waved, what is left? An unreasoning conviction, cherished, as I have said, by a foreign population, that America is the greatest country on earth. What the conviction lacks in sincerity it gains in warmth of expression, and if America be ever confronted by an enemy, the celebrations of the Fourth of July will be found not to have been held in vain. Where there is no just bond of union, a bond must be invented, and Patriotism is the most notable invention of the great Republic. To have knit up all the nations of the earth in a common superst.i.tion is no mean achievement, and it is impossible to withhold a fervent admiration from the rhetoric which has thus attained what seemed, before its hour, the unattainable.

But in this cosmopolitan orgie of political excitement the true-born American plays but a small part. He has put the drama on the stage, and is content to watch the result. If a leader be needed in a time of stress, the man of Anglo-Saxon blood will be ready to serve the country, which belongs more intimately to him than to those who sing its praises with a noisy clatter. Meanwhile he lets the politicians do their worst, and watches the game with a careless indifference. Even if he loves his country, his love does not persuade him to self-sacrifice. You may measure his patriotism by the fact that, if he does venture upon a political career, his friends know not which they should do--praise him or condole with him. "Isn't it good of So-and-so?" we constantly hear; "he has gone into politics." And with the approval is mixed a kindly, if contemptuous, sorrow. The truth is, that the young American of gentle birth and leisured ease hates to soil his hands with public affairs.

His ambition does not drive him, as it drives his English cousin, into Parliament. He prefers to pursue culture in the capitals of Europe, or to urge an automobile at a furious pace across the sands. And the inaction of the real American is America's heaviest misfortune. So long as politics are left to the amateurs of graft, so long will Freedom be a fiction and Patriotism a piece of mere lip-service. Wealth is not wanting; brains are not wanting; energy is not wanting. Nothing is wanting save the inclination to s.n.a.t.c.h the control of the country from the hands of professional politicians. And until this control be s.n.a.t.c.hed, it is idle to speak of reform. The Const.i.tution of the United States is, we are told, a perfect Const.i.tution. Its perfection is immaterial so long as Tammany on the one hand and the Trusts on the other conspire to keep it of no effect--a mere paper thing in a museum.

The one thing needful is for men with clean hands and wise heads to govern their States, to stand for Congress, to enter the Senate, to defend the munic.i.p.alities against corruption. And when this is done, the Declaration of Independence may safely be forgotten, in the calm a.s.surance that it is better to spend one day in the service of patriotism than to fire off a thousand crackers and to dazzle the air with stars and stripes innumerable.

THE MILLIONAIRE.

The millionaire, or the multi-millionaire, if the plainer term be inadequate to express his lofty condition, is the hero of democratic America. He has won the allegiance and captured the imagination of the people. His antics are watched with envy, and described with a faithful realism of which statesmen are thought unworthy. He is hourly exposed to the camera; he marches through life attended by a bodyguard of faithful reporters. The trappings of his magnificent, if vulgar, existence are familiar to all the readers of the Sunday papers. His silver cars and marble palaces are the wonder of a continent. If he condescend to play golf, it is a national event. "The Richest Man on Earth drives from, the Tee" is a legend of enthralling interest, not because the hero knows how to drive, but because he is the richest man on earth. Some time since a thoughtless headline described a poor infant as "The Ten-Million-Dollar Baby," and thus made his wealth a dangerous incubus before he was out of the nursery. Everywhere the same tale is told. The dollar has a power of evoking curiosity which neither valour nor lofty station may boast.

Plainly, then, the millionaire is not made of common day. Liquid gold flows in his veins. His eyes are made of precious jewels. It is doubtful whether he can do wrong. If by chance he does, it is almost certain that he cannot be punished. The mere sight and touch of him have a virtue far greater than that which kings of old claimed for themselves. He is at once the en-sample and the test of modern grandeur; and if, like a Roman emperor, he could be deified, his admiring compatriots would send him to the skies, and burn perpetual incense before his tomb.

Though all the millionaires of America are animated by the same desire,--the collection of dollars,--they regard their inestimable privileges with very different eyes. Mr Carnegie, for instance, adopts a sentimental view of money. He falls down in humble worship before the golden calf of his own making. He has pompously formulated a gospel of wealth. He piously believes that the millionaire is the greatest of G.o.d's creatures, the eloquent preacher of a new evangel. If we are to believe him, there is a sacred virtue in the ceaseless acc.u.mulation of riches. It is the first article in his creed, that the millionaire who stands still is going back, from which it follows that to fall behind in the idle conflict is a cardinal sin. A simple man might think that when a manufacturer had made sufficient for the wants of himself and his family for all time he might, without a criminal intent, relax his efforts. The simple man does not understand the cult. A millionaire, oppressed beneath a mountain of gold, would deem it a dishonour to himself and his colleagues if he lost a chance of adding to the weight and substance of the mountain.

Mr Carnegie, then, is inspired not by the romance but by the sentiment of gold. He cannot speak of the enormous benefits conferred upon the human race by the vast inequalities of wealth and poverty without a tear. "Millionaires," he says, "can only grow amid general prosperity."

In other words, if there be not millions in the country the millionaire cannot put his hand upon them. That is obvious enough. His second text cannot be so easily accepted. "Their wealth is not made," he a.s.serts dogmatically, "at the expense of their countrymen." At whose expense then is it made? Does Mr Carnegie vouch for the probity of all his colleagues? Does he cover with the aegis of his gospel the magnates of the Standard Oil Company, and that happy firm which, with no other advantage than a service of cars, levies toll upon the fruit-growers of America? Was the Steel Combine established without inflicting hardships upon less wealthy rivals? An answer to these simple questions should be given before Mr Carnegie's second text be inscribed upon the walls of our churches. It is not enough to say with Mr Carnegie that trusts obey "the law of aggregation." You need not be a Socialist to withhold your approval from these dollar-making machines, until you know that they were not established upon ruin and plunder. Even if the millionaire be the self-denying saint of modern times, it is still possible to pay too high a price for his sanct.i.ty and sacrifice.

It is the favourite boast of the sentimental millionaire that he holds his wealth in trust for humanity,--in other words, that he has been chosen by an all-wise Providence to be the universal almsgiver of mankind. The arrogance of this boast is unsurpa.s.sable. To be rich is within the compa.s.s of any man gifted or cursed with an acquisitive temperament. No one may give to another save in humbleness of spirit.

And there is not a millionaire in America who does not think that he is fit to perform a delicate duty which has eluded the wise of all ages.

In this matter Mr Carnegie is by far the worst offender. He pretends to take his "mission" very seriously. He does not tell us who confided the trust of philanthropy to him, but he is very sure that he has been singled out for special service. It is his modest pleasure to suggest a comparison with William Pitt. "He lived without ostentation and he died poor." These are the words which Mr Carnegie quotes with the greatest relish. How or where Mr Carnegie lives is his own affair; and even if he die poor, he should remember that he has devoted his life, not to the service of his country, but to the ama.s.sing of millions which he cannot spend. It is obvious, therefore, that the n.o.ble words which Canning dedicated to the memory of Pitt can have no meaning for him, and he would be wisely guided if he left the names of patriots out of the argument.

Mr Carnegie's choice of an epitaph is easily explained. He is wont to a.s.sert, without warrant, that "a man who dies rich dies disgraced." He does not tell us how the rich man shall escape disgrace. Not even the master of millions, great and good as he is reputed to be, knows when his hour comes. There is a foresight which even money cannot buy. Death visits the golden palace of the rich and the hovel of the poor with equal and unexpected foot. The fact that Mr Carnegie is still distributing libraries with both hands seems to suggest that, had he been overtaken during the last twenty years, he would not have realised his ideal. There is but one method by which a rich man may die poor, and that is by disenc.u.mbering himself of his wealth the very day that it is acquired. And he who is not prepared for this sacrifice does but waste his breath in celebrating the honour of a pauper's grave.

As there is no merit in living rich, so there is no virtue in dying poor. That a millionaire should desert his money-bags at his death is not a reproach to him if they be honestly filled. He has small chance of emptying them while he is on the earth. But Mr Carnegie has a reason for his aphorism. He aspires to be a philosopher as well as a millionaire, and he has decided that a posthumous bequest is of no value, moral or material. "Men who leave vast sums," says he, "may fairly be thought men who would not have left it at all had they been able to take it with them." On such a question as this the authority of Mr Carnegie is not absolute. Let the cobbler stick to his last. The millionaire, no doubt, is more familiar with account-books than with the lessons of history; and the record of a thousand pious benefactors proves the worth of wise legacies. Nor, indeed, need we travel beyond our own generation to find a splendid example of wealth honourably bestowed. The will of Cecil Rhodes remains a tribute to the generosity and to the imagination of a great man, and is enough of itself to brush aside the quibbles of Mr Carnegie.

The sentiment of "doing good" and of controlling great wealth leads rapidly to megalomania, and Mr Carnegie cannot conceal the pride of omniscience. He seems to think that his money-bags give him the right to express a definite opinion upon all things. He has distributed so many books, that perhaps he believes himself master of their contents. Though he has not devoted himself to politics or literature, he is always prepared to advise those who give themselves to these difficult arts.

He has discovered that Greek and Latin are of no more practical use than Choctaw--which is perfectly true, if the useless money-bag be our _summum bonum_. With the indisputable authority of a man who keeps a large balance at his bank, he once dismissed the wars of the Greeks as "petty and insignificant skirmishes between savages." Poor Greeks! They did not pay their bills in dollars or buy their steel at Pittsburg. The chief article in his political creed is that monarchy is a crime. In his opinion, it is a degradation to kiss the King's hand. "The first man who feels as he ought to feel," says Mr Carnegie, "will either smile when the hand is extended at the suggestion that he could so demean himself, and give it a good hearty shake, or knock his Royal Highness down." In the same spirit of st.u.r.dy "independence" he urged the United States some years since to tax the products of Canada, because she "owes allegiance to a foreign power founded upon monarchical inst.i.tutions." "I should use the rod," says the moneybag, "not in anger, but in love; but I should use it." Fortunately, it is not his to use; and his opinions are only memorable, since the country which he insults with his words is insulted also by his gifts. We may make too great a sacrifice in self-esteem, even for the boon of free libraries.

And with a hatred of monarchy Mr Carnegie combines a childlike faith in the political power of money. Though his faith by this should be rudely shaken, he clings to it as best he may. Time was when he wished to buy the Philippines, and present them, a free gift, to somebody or other.

Now he thinks that he may purchase the peace of the world for a round sum, and sees not the absurdity of his offer. Even his poor attempt to bribe the English-speaking peoples to forget their spelling-books was a happy failure, and he still cherishes an illusion of omnipotence. At the opening of his Inst.i.tute at Pittsburg he was bold enough to declare that his name would be known to future ages "like the name of Harvard." He might remember that Harvard gave not of his abundance. He bequeathed for the use of scholars a scholar's books and a scholar's slender savings, and he won a gracious immortality. Mr Carnegie, in endowing education, is endowing that which he has publicly condemned. Desiring to teach the youth of his country how to become as wealthy as himself, he has poured contempt upon learning. He has declared that "the college-made" man had "little chance against the boy who swept the office." He is to be found, this victim of an intellectual ambition, in the salaried cla.s.s, from which the aspiring millionaire is bidden to escape as quickly as possible by the customary methods of bluff and bounce. Why, then, if Mr Carnegie thinks so ill of colleges and universities does he inflict his millions upon them? He has known "few young men intended for business who were not injured by a collegiate education." And yet he has done his best to drive all the youth of Scotland within the gates of the despised universities, and he has forced upon his own Pittsburg the gift of "free education in art and literature." Is it cynicism, or vain inconsequence?

Cynicism, probably. The man who, having devoted his whole career to the acc.u.mulation of superfluous wealth, yet sings a paean in praise of poverty, is capable of everything. "Abolish luxury, if you please,"--thus he rhapsodises,--"but leave us the soil upon which alone the virtues and all that is precious in human character grow,--poverty, honest poverty!" Has he shed the virtues, I wonder; or is he a peculiarly sanctified vessel, which can hold the poison of wealth without injury?

Of all millionaires, Mr Carnegie is at once the least picturesque and the most dangerous. He is the least picturesque, because he harbours in his heart the middle-cla.s.s ambition of philanthropy. He would undertake a task for which he is manifestly unfit, in the spirit of provincial culture. For the same reason he is the most dangerous. He is not content to squander his immense wealth in race-horses and champagne. He employs it to interfere with the lives of others. He confers benefits with a ready hand which are benefits only when they are acquired by conquest.

Of a very different kind is Mr Thomas W. Lawson. He, too, is a millionaire. He, too, has about him all the appurtenances of wealth. His fur-coats are mythical. He once paid 30,000 dollars for a pink. "He owns a palace in Boston," says his panegyrist, "filled with works of art; he has a six-hundred acre farm in Cape Cod, with seven miles of fences; three hundred horses, each one of whom he can call by name; a hundred and fifty dogs; and a building for training his animals larger than Madison Square Garden." These eloquent lines will prove to you more clearly than pages of argument the native heroism of the man. He was scarce out of his cradle when he began to ama.s.s vast sums of money, and he is now, after many years of adventure, a king upon Wall Street. He represents the melodrama of wealth. He seems to live in an atmosphere of mysterious disguises, secret letters, and masked faces. His famous contest with Mr H. H. Rogers, "the wonderful Rogers, the master among pirates, whom you have to salute even when he has the point of his cutla.s.s at the small of your back and you're walking the plank at his order," was conducted, on Mr Lawson's part, in the spirited style of the old Adelphi. "Mr Rogers' eyes snapped just once," we are told, on a famous occasion; but Mr Lawson was not intimidated. "I held myself together," he says proudly, "with closed hands and clinched teeth."

Indeed, these two warriors have never met without much snapping of eyes and closing of hands and clinching of teeth. Why they snapped and closed and clinched is uncertain. To follow their operations is impossible for an outsider, but Mr Lawson always succeeds in convincing you that on the pretence of money-making he is attacking some lofty enterprise. He would persuade you that he is a knight-errant of purity. "Tremendous issues" are always at stake. The heroes of Wall Street are engaged in never-ending "battles." They are "fighting" for causes, the splendour of which is not dimmed in Mr Lawson's lurid prose. They have Americanised the language of ancient chivalry, until it fits the operations of the modern market. They talk of honour and of "taking each other's word,"

as though they had never stooped to dollars in their lives. But of one thing you may be sure--they are always "on hand when a new melon is cut and the juice runs out."

Like the knights of old, they toil not neither do they spin. They make nothing, they produce nothing, they invent nothing. They merely gamble with the savings of others, and find the business infinitely profitable.

Yet they, too, must cultivate the language of sentiment. Though the world is spared the incubus of their philanthropy, they must pretend, in phrase at least, that they are doing good, and their satisfaction proves that nothing so swiftly and tranquilly lulls the conscience to sleep as the dollar. But, as the actor of melodrama falls far below the finished tragedian, the heroes of the Street, typified by Mr Lawson, are mere bunglers compared with the greatest millionaire on earth--John D.

Rockefeller. We would no more give him the poor t.i.tle of "Mr" than we would give it to Shakespeare. Even "Rockefeller" seems too formal for his grandeur. Plain "John D." is best suited to express the admiration of his worshippers, the general fame that shines like a halo about his head. He is Plutus in human guise; he is Wealth itself, essential and concrete. A sublime unselfishness has marked his career. He is a true artist, who pursues his art for its own sake. Money has given him nothing. He asks nothing of her. Yet he woos her with the same devotion which a lover shows to his mistress. Like other great men, Rockefeller has concentrated all his thoughts, all his energies, upon the single object of his desire. He has not chattered of things which he does not understand, like Mr Carnegie. He has resolutely refrained from Mr Lawson's melodramatic exaggeration. Money has been the G.o.d of his idolatry,--"_Dea Moneta_, Queen Money, to whom he daily offers sacrifice, which steers his heart, hands, affections--all."

His silence and his concentration give him a picturesqueness which his rivals lack. He stands apart from the human race in a chill and solitary grandeur. He seeks advertis.e.m.e.nt as little as he hankers after pleasure.

The Sunday-school is his dissipation. A suburban villa is his palace. He seldom speaks to the world, and when he breaks his habit of reticence it is to utter an aphorism, perfect in concision and cynicism. "Avoid all honorary posts that cost time"--this was one of his earliest counsels to the young. "Pay a profit to n.o.body" is perhaps his favourite maxim.

"Nothing is too small, for small things grow," is another principle which he formulated at the outset of his career. "I have ways of making money that you know nothing of," he once told a colleague, and no one will doubt the truth of his a.s.sertion. It is said that when he was scarce out of his teens he would murmur, with the hope of almost realised ambition, "I am bound to be rich, bound to be rich, bound to be rich." He imposed upon all those who served him the imperative duty of secrecy. He was unwilling that any one should know the policy of the Trust. "Congress and the State legislature are after us," he once said.

"You may be subpoenaed. If you know nothing, you can tell nothing. If you know about the business, you might tell something which would ruin us." The mere presence of a stranger has always been distasteful to him.

The custom of espionage has made him suspect that others are as watchful as himself. He has been described erroneously as a master of complicated villainy. He is, for evil or for good, the most single-minded man alive. He looks for a profit in all things. Even his devotion to the Sunday-school is of a piece with the test. "Put something in," says he, speaking of the work, "and according as you put something in, the greater will be your dividends of salvation."

His triumphant capture of the oil trade is a twice-told tale. All the world knows how he crushed his rivals by excluding their wares from the rail-roads, which gave him rebates, and then purchased for a song their depreciated properties. At every point he won the battle. He laid stealthy hands upon the pipe-lines, designed to thwart his monopoly, as he had previously laid hands upon the railway lines. He discovered no new processes, he invented no new methods of transport. But he made the enterprise of others his own. The small refiner went the way of the small producer, and the energy of those who carried oil over the mountains helped to fill Rockefeller's pocket. The man himself spared no one who stood between him and the realisation of his dream. Friends and enemies fell down before him. He ruined the widow and orphan with the same quiet cheerfulness wherewith he defeated the compet.i.tors who had a better chance to fight their own battle. The Government was, and is, powerless to stay his advance. It has inst.i.tuted prosecutions. It has pa.s.sed laws directed at the Standard Oil Company. And all is of no avail. Before cross-examining counsel, in the face of the court, Rockefeller maintains an impenetrable silence. He admits nothing. He confesses nothing. "We do not talk much," he murmurs sardonically; "we saw wood." A year ago it was rumoured that he would be arrested when he returned to America from Europe. He is still at large. The body of a multi-millionaire is sacred.

He is master of the world's oil, and of much else beside. Having won the control of one market, he makes his imperial hand felt in many another.

His boast that "money talks" is abundantly justified. The power of money in making money is the only secret that the millionaires of America discover for themselves. The man who makes a vast fortune by the invention or manufacture of something which the people thinks it wants, may easily take a pride in the fruit of his originality. The captains of American industry can seldom boast this cause of satisfaction. It is theirs to exploit, not to create. The great day in Mr Carnegie's life was that on which "the mysterious golden visitor" came to him, as a dividend from another's toil. Mr Rockefeller remembers with the greatest pleasure the lesson which he learned as a boy, "that he could get as much interest for $50, loaned at seven per cent, as he could earn by digging potatoes ten days." The lesson of Shylock is not profound, but its mastery saves a world of trouble. Combined with a light load of scruples, it will fill the largest coffers; and it has been sufficient to carry the millionaires of America to the highest pinnacle of fame.

In other words, the sole test of their success is not their achievement, but their money-bags. And when, with cynical egoism, they have collected their unnumbered dollars, what do they do with them? What pleasures, what privileges, does their wealth procure? It is their fond delusion that it brings them power. What power? To make more money and to defy the laws. In England a wealthy man aspires to found a family, to play his part upon the stage of politics, to serve his country as best he may, and to prepare his sons for a like honourable service. The American millionaire does not share this ambition. Like Mr Rockefeller, he avoids "honorary posts." If he were foolish enough to accept them, he would not be loyal to the single desire of adding to his store. Perhaps we may best express his triumph in terms of champagne and oysters, of marble halls and hastily gathered collections. But even here the satisfaction is small. The capacity of the human throat is limited, and collections, made by another and partially understood, pall more rapidly than orchid-houses and racing-stables.

This, then, is the tragedy of the American multi-millionaires. They are doomed to carry about with them a huge load of gold which they cannot disperse. They are no wiser than the savages, who hide and h.o.a.rd their little heaps of cowrie-sh.e.l.ls. They might as well have filled their treasuries with flint-stones or sc.r.a.ps of iron. They muster their wealth merely to become its slave. They are rich not because they possess imagination, but because they lack it. Their bank-books are the index of their folly. They waste their years in a vain pursuit, which they cannot resist. They exclude from their lives all that makes life worth living, that they may acquire innumerable specimens of a precious metal. Gold is their end, not the gratification it may bring. Mr Rockefeller will go out of the world as limited in intelligence, as uninstructed in mind, as he was when he entered it. The lessons of history and literature are lost upon him. The joys for which wise men strive have never been his.

He is the richest man on earth, and his position and influence are the heaviest indictment of wealth that can be made. His power begins and ends at the curbstone of Wall Street. His painfully gathered millions he must leave behind. Even the simple solace of a quiet conscience is denied to the most of his cla.s.s. Is there one of them who is not haunted in hours of depression by the memory of b.l.o.o.d.y strikes, of honest men squeezed out, of rival works shut down?

In a kind of dread they turn to philanthropy. They fling from their chariots bundles of bank-notes to appease the wolves of justice.

Universities grow ign.o.bly rich upon their hush-money. They were accurately described three centuries ago by Robert Burton as "gouty benefactors, who, when by fraud and rapine they have extorted all their lives, oppressed whole provinces, societies, &c., give something to pious uses, build a satisfactory almshouse, school, or bridge, &c, at their last end, or before perhaps, which is no otherwise than to steal a goose and stick down a feather, rob a thousand to relieve ten." If America were wise she would not accept even the feather without the closest scrutiny. Money never loses the scent of its origin, and when the very rich explain how much they ought to give to their fellows, they should carry back their inquiry a stage farther. They should tell us why they took so much, why they suppressed the small factory, why they made bargains with railways to the detriment of others, why they used their wealth as an instrument of oppression. If their explanation be not sufficient, they should not be permitted to unload their gold upon a stricken country; they should not buy a cheap reputation for generosity with money that is not their own.

It may be said that the millionaire decrees the punishment for his own crimes. That is true enough, but the esteem in which America holds him inflicts a wrong upon the whole community. Where Rockefeller is a hero, a false standard of morals is set up. For many years he has preached a practical sermon upon the text, "The end justifies the means." How great are the means! How small the end! He has defended his harshest dealings on the ground that "it is business," and so doing has thrown a slur upon the commerce of his country. And, worse than this, the wonder and curiosity which cling about the dollar have created a new measure of life and character. A man is judged not by his attainments, his courage, his energy, but by his wealth. It is a simple test, and easily applied.

It is also the poorest encouragement for the civic virtues. In England we help to correct the vulgarity of wealth by the distribution of t.i.tles, and a better aid than this could not be devised. Though the champions of democracy, who believe in equality of names as devoutly as in inequality of wealth, deem this old-fashioned artifice a shameful crime, it is not without its uses. It suggests that public service is worth a higher distinction than a ma.s.s of money. And, t.i.tles apart, it is happily not in accord with the traditions of our life to regard the rich man and the poor man as beings of a different clay and a different destiny. We may still echo without hypocrisy the words of Ben Jonson, "Money never made any man rich, but his mind."

THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

To the English traveller in America the language which he hears spoken about him is at once a puzzle and a surprise. It is his own, yet not his own. It seems to him a caricature of English, a phantom speech, ghostly but familiar, such as he might hear in a land of dreams. He recognises its broad lineaments; its lesser details evade, or confuse, him. He acknowledges that the two tongues have a common basis. Their grammatical framework is identical. The small change of language--the adverbs and prepositions,--though sometimes strangely used in America, are not strange to an English ear. And there the precise resemblance ends.

Accent, idiom, vocabulary give a new turn to the ancient speech. The traveller feels as though he were confronted with an old friend, tricked out in an odd suit of clothes, and master of a new pose and unaccustomed gesture.