The Spirit of America Part 6

Understand, I am not now condemning this state of affairs, nor am I defending it. That is not my business. I am simply trying to describe it. How is it to be reconciled with the spirit of fair play? I do not know. Perhaps reconciliation is impossible. But a partial understanding of the facts is possible, if you take into account _the doctrine of inferior races_.

This doctrine is not held or defended by all Americans. Some on religious grounds, some on philosophic grounds, would deny it. But on the ma.s.s of the people it has a firm, though in part an unrecognized, hold. They believe--or perhaps feel would be a better word--that the white race has an innate superiority to the coloured races. From this doctrine they have proceeded to draw conclusions, and curiously enough they have put them in the form of fair play. The Indians were not to be admitted to citizenship because they were the wards of the nation. The negroes were better off under slavery because they were like children, needing control and protection. They must still be kept in social dependence and tutelage because they will be safer and happier so. The Orientals are not fit for a share in American citizenship, and they shall not be let in because they will simply give us another inferior race to be taken care of.

I do not propose to discuss the philosophical consistency of such arguments. It is difficult to imagine what place Rousseau would have found for them in his doctrine of the state of nature and the rights of man.

The truth is that the Spirit of America has never been profoundly impressed with the idea of philosophical consistency. The Republic finds herself face to face not with a theory but with a condition. It is the immense ma.s.s of the African population that creates the difficulty for America. She means to give equal civil rights to her nine million negroes. She does not mean to let the black blood mix with the white.

Whatever social division may be necessary to prevent this immense and formidable adulteration must be maintained intact.

Here, it seems to me, is the supreme test which the Spirit of America has to meet. In a certain sense the problem appears insoluble because it involves an insoluble race. But precisely here, in the necessity of keeping the negro race distinct, and in the duty of giving it full opportunity for self-development, fair play may find the occasion for a most notable and n.o.ble triumph.

I have left but a moment in which to speak of the influence of the kind of democracy which exists in America upon social conditions. In a word: it has produced a society of natural divisions without closed part.i.tions, a temper of independence which shows itself either as self-a.s.sertion or self-respect according to the quality of the man, and an atmosphere of large opportunity which promotes general good humour.

In America, as elsewhere, people who have tastes and capacities in common consort together. An uneducated man will not find himself at ease in the habitual society of learned men who talk princ.i.p.ally about books.

A poor man will not feel comfortable if he attempts to keep company with those whose wealth has led them to immerse themselves in costly amus.e.m.e.nts. This makes cla.s.ses, if you like, ranks, if you choose to call them so.

Moreover you will find that certain occupations and achievements which men have generally regarded with respect confer a kind of social distinction in America. Men who have become eminent in the learned professions, or in the army or navy, or in the higher sort of politics; men who have won success in literature or the other fine arts; men who have done notable things of various kinds,--such persons are likely to know each other better and to be better known to the world than if they had done nothing. Furthermore there are families in which this kind of thing has gone on from generation to generation; and others in which inherited wealth, moderate or great, has opened the way to culture and refinement; and others in which newly acquired wealth has been used with generosity and dignity; and others in which the mere ma.s.s of money has created a noteworthy establishment. These various people, divided among themselves by their tastes, their opinions, and perhaps as much as anything else by their favourite recreations, find their way into the red book of _Who's Who_, into the blue book of the Social Register.

Here, if you have an imaginative turn of mind, you may discover (and denounce, or applaud, or ridicule) the beginnings of an aristocracy.

But if you use that word, remember that it is an aristocracy without legal privilege or prerogative, without definite boundaries, and without any rule of primogeniture. Therefore it seems to exist in the midst of democracy without serious friction or hostility. The typical American does not feel injured by the fact that another man is richer, better known, more influential than himself, unless he believes that the eminence has been unfairly reached. He respects those who respect themselves and him. He is ready to meet the men who are above him without servility, and the men who are beneath him without patronage.

True, he is sometimes a little hazy about the precise definition of "above" and "beneath." His feeling that all the doors are open may lead him to act as if he had already pa.s.sed through a good many of them.

There is at times an "I-could-if-I-would" air about him which is rather disconcerting.

There are great differences among Americans, of course, in regard to manners, ranging all the way from the most ba.n.a.l formality to the most exquisite informality. But in general you may say that manners are taken rather lightly, too lightly, perhaps, because they are not regarded as very real things. Their value as a means of discipline is often forgotten. The average American will not blush very deeply over a social blunder; he will laugh at it as a mistake in a game. But to really hurt you, or to lower his own independence, would make him feel badly indeed.

The free-and-easy atmosphere of the streets, the shops, the hotels, all public places, always strikes the foreigner, and sometimes very uncomfortably. The conductor on the railway car will not touch his hat to you; but, on the other hand, he does not expect a fee from you. The workman on the street of whom you ask a question will answer you as an equal, but he will tell you what you want to know. In the country the tone of familiarity is even more marked. If you board for the summer with a Yankee farmer, you can see that he not only thinks himself as good as you are, but that he cultivates a slightly artificial pity for you as "city folks."

In American family life there is often an absence of restraint and deference, in school and college life a lack of discipline and subordination, which looks ugly, and probably is rather unwholesome. One sometimes regrets in America the want of those tokens of respect which are the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

But, on the other hand, there is probably more good feeling, friendliness, plain human kindness, running around loose in America than anywhere else in the world. The sense of the essential equality of manhood takes away much of the sting of the inequalities of fortune. The knowledge of the open door reduces the offence of the stairway. It is pleasant and wholesome to live with men who have a feeling of the dignity and worth of their own occupations.

Our letter-carrier at Princeton never made any difference in his treatment of my neighbour President Cleveland and myself. He was equally kind to both of us, and I may add equally cheerful in rendering little friendly services outside of his strict duty. My guides in the backwoods of Maine and the Adirondacks regard me as a comrade who curiously enough makes his living by writing books, but who also shows that he knows the real value of life by spending his vacation in the forest. As a matter of fact, they think much more of their own skill with the axe and paddle than of my supposed ability with the pen. They have not a touch of subservience in their manner or their talk. They do their work willingly. They carry their packs, and chop the wood, and spread the tents, and make the bed of green boughs. And then, at night, around the camp-fire, they smoke their pipes with me, and the question is, Who can tell the best story?

IV

WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH

IV

WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH

The Spirit of America is best known in Europe by one of its qualities,--_energy_. This is supposed to be so vast, so abnormal, that it overwhelms and obliterates all other qualities, and acts almost as a blind force, driving the whole nation along the highroad of unremitting toil for the development of physical power and the acc.u.mulation of material wealth.

_La vie intense_--which is the polite French translation of "the strenuous life"--is regarded as the unanimous choice of the Americans, who are never happy unless they are doing something, and never satisfied until they have made a great deal of money. The current view in Europe considers them as a well-meaning people enslaved by their own restless activity, bound to the service of gigantic industries, and captive to the adoration of a golden idol. But curiously enough they are often supposed to be unconscious both of the slavery and of the idolatry; in weaving the shackles of industrious materialism they imagine themselves to be free and strong; in bowing down to the Almighty Dollar they ignorantly worship an unknown G.o.d.

This European view of American energy, and its inexplicable nature, and its terrible results, seems to have something of the fairy tale about it. It is like the story of a giant, dreadful, but not altogether convincing. It lacks discrimination. In one point, at least, it is palpably incorrect. And with that point I propose to begin a more careful, and perhaps a more sane, consideration of the whole subject.

It is evidently not true that America is ignorant of the dangers that accompany her immense development of energy and its application in such large measure to material ends. Only the other day I was reading a book by an American about his country, which paints the picture in colours as fierce and forms as flat as the most modern of French decadent painters would use.

The author says: "There stands America, engaged in this superb struggle to dominate Nature and put the elements into bondage to man.

Involuntarily all talents apply themselves to material production. No wonder that men of science no longer study Nature for Nature's sake; they must perforce put her powers into harness; no wonder that professors no longer teach knowledge for the sake of knowledge; they must make their students efficient factors in the industrial world; no wonder that clergymen no longer preach repentance for the sake of the kingdom of heaven; they must turn churches into prosperous corporations, multiplying communicants and distributing Christmas presents by the gross. Industrial civilization has decreed that statesmanship shall consist of schemes to make the nation richer, that presidents shall be elected with a view to the stock-market, that literature shall keep close to the life of the average man, and that art shall become national by means of a protective tariff....

"The process of this civilization is simple: the industrial habit of thought moulds the opinion of the majority, which rolls along, abstract and impersonal, gathering bulk till its giant figure is selected as the national conscience. As in an ecclesiastical state of society decrees of a council become articles of private faith, and men die for h.o.m.oousion or election, so in America the opinions of the majority, once p.r.o.nounced, become primary rules of conduct.... The central ethical doctrine of industrial thought is that material production is the chief duty of man."

The author goes on to show that the acceptance of this doctrine has produced in America "_conventional sentimentality_" in the emotional life, "_spiritual feebleness_" in the religious life, "_formlessness_"

in the social life, "_self-deception_" in the political life, and a "slovenly" intelligence in all matters outside of business. "We accept sentimentality," he says, "because we do not stop to consider whether our emotional life is worth an infusion of blood and vigour, rather than because we have deliberately decided that it is not. We neglect religion, because we cannot spare time to think what religion means, rather than because we judge it only worth a conventional lip service.

We think poetry effeminate, because we do not read it, rather than because we believe its effect injurious. We have been swept off our feet by the brilliant success of our industrial civilization; and, blinded by vanity, we enumerate the list of our exports, we measure the swelling tide of our national prosperity; but we do not stop even to repeat to ourselves the names of other things."

This rather sweeping indictment against a whole civilization reminds me of the way in which one of my students once defined rhetoric.

"Rhetoric," said this candid youth, "is the art of using words so as to make statements which are not entirely correct look like truths which n.o.body can deny."

The description of America given by her sad and angry friend resembles one of those relentless portraits which are made by rustic photographers. The unmitigated sunlight does its worst through an unadjusted lens; and the result is a picture which is fearfully and wonderfully made. "It looks like her," you say, "it looks horribly like her. But thank G.o.d I never saw her look just like that."

No one can deny that the life of America has developed more rapidly and more fully on the industrial side than on any other. No one can deny that the larger part, if not the better part, of her energy and effort has gone into the physical conquest of nature and the transformation of natural resources into material wealth. No one can deny that this undue absorption in one side of life has resulted in a certain meagreness and thinness on other sides. No one can deny that the immense prosperity of America, and her extraordinary success in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and finance have produced a swollen sense of importance, which makes the country peddler feel as if he deserved some credit for the $450,000,000 balance of foreign trade in favour of the United States in 1907, and the barber's apprentice congratulate himself that American wealth is reckoned at $116,000,000,000, nearly twice that of the next richest country in the world. This feeling is one that has its roots in human nature. The very cabin-boy on a monstrous ocean steamship is proud of its tonnage and speed.

But that this spirit is not universal nor exclusive, that there are some Americans who are not satisfied--who are even rather bitterly dissatisfied--with $116,000,000,000 as a statement of national achievement, the book from which I have quoted may be taken as a proof.

There are still better proofs to be found, I think, in the earnestly warning voices which come from press and pulpit against the dangers of commercialism, and in the hundreds of thousands of n.o.ble lives which are freely consecrated to ideals in religion, in philanthropy, in the service of man's intellectual and moral needs. These services are ill-paid in America, as indeed they are everywhere, but there is no lack of men and women who are ready and glad to undertake them.

I was talking to a young man and woman the other day, both thoroughbred Americans, who had resolved to enter upon the adventure of matrimony together. The question was whether he should accept an opening in business with a fair outlook for making a fortune, or take a position as teacher in a school with a possible chance at best of earning a comfortable living. They asked my advice. I put the alternative as clearly as I could. On the one hand, a lot of money for doing work that was perfectly honest, but not at all congenial. On the other hand, small pay in the beginning, and no chance of ever receiving more than a modest competence for doing work that was rather hard but entirely congenial.

They did not hesitate a moment. "We shall get more out of life," they said with one accord, "if our work makes us happy, than if we get big pay for doing what we do not love to do." They were not exceptional.

They were typical of the best young Americans. The noteworthy thing is that both of them took for granted the necessity of _doing something_ as long as they lived. The notion of a state of idleness, either as a right or as a reward, never entered their blessed young minds.

In later lectures I shall speak of some of the larger evidences in education, in social effort, and in literature, which encourage the hope that the emotional life of America is not altogether a "conventional sentimentality," nor her spiritual life a complete "feebleness," nor her intelligence entirely "slovenly." But just now we have to consider the real reason and significance of the greater strength, the fuller development of the industrial life. Let us try to look at it clearly and logically. My wish is not to accuse, nor to defend, but first of all to understand.

The astonishing industrial advance of the United States, and the predominance of this motive in the national life, come from the third element in the spirit of America, _will-power_, that vital energy of nature which makes an ideal of activity and efficiency. "The man who does things" is the man whom the average American admires.

No doubt the original conditions of the nation's birth and growth were potent in directing this will-power, in transforming this energy into forces of a practical and material kind. A new land offered the opportunity, a wild land presented the necessity, a rich land held out the reward, to men who were eager to do something. But though the outward circ.u.mstances may have moulded and developed the energy, they did not create it.

Mexico and South America were new lands, wild lands, rich lands. They are not far inferior, if at all, to the United States in soil, climate, and natural resources. They presented the same kind of opportunity, necessity, and reward to their settlers and conquerors. Yet they have seen nothing like the same industrial advance. Why? There may be many reasons. But I am sure that the most important reasons lie in the soul of the people, and that one of them is the lack, in the republics of the South, of that strong and confident will-power which has made the Americans a nation of hard and quick workers.

This fondness for the active life, this impulse to "do things," this sense of value in the thing done, does not seem to be an affair of recent growth in America. It is an ancestral quality.

The men of the Revolution were almost all of them busy and laborious persons, whether they were rich or poor. Read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and you will find that he was as proud of the fact that he was a good printer and that he invented a new kind of stove as of anything else in his career. One of his life mottoes under the head of industry is: "Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions." Washington, retiring from his second term in the presidency, did not seek a well-earned ease, but turned at once to the active improvement of his estate. He was not only the richest man, he was one of the best practical farmers in America. His diary shows how willingly and steadily he rode his daily rounds, cultivated his crops, sought to improve the methods of agriculture and the condition and efficiency of his work-people. And this primarily not because he wished to add to his wealth,--for he was a childless man and a person of modest habits,--but because he felt "_il faut cultiver son jardin_."

After the nation had defended its independence and consolidated its union, its first effort was to develop and extend its territory. It was little more than a string of widely separated settlements along the Atlantic coast. Some one has called it a country without an interior.

The history of the pioneers who pushed over the mountains of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, into the forests of Tennessee and Kentucky, into the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, and so on to the broad rolling prairies of the West, is not without an interest to those who feel the essential romance of the human will in a world of intractable things. The transformation of the Indian's hunting trail into the highroad, with its train of creaking, white-topped wagons, and of the highroad into the railway, with its incessant, swift-rushing caravans of pa.s.sengers and freight; the growth of enormous cities like Chicago and St. Louis in places that three generations ago were a habitation for wild geese and foxes; the harnessing of swift and mighty rivers to turn the wheels of innumerable factories; the pa.s.sing of the Great American Desert, which once occupied the centre of our map, into the pasture-ground of countless flocks and herds, and the grain-field where the bread grows for many nations,--all this, happening in a hundred years, has an air of enchantment about it. What wonder that the American people have been fascinated, perhaps even a little intoxicated, by the effect of their own will-power?

In 1850 they were comparatively a poor people, with only $7,000,000,000 of national wealth, less than $308 _per capita_. In 1906 they had become a rich people, with $107,000,000,000 of national wealth, more than $1300 _per capita_. In 1850 they manufactured $1,000,000,000 worth of goods, in 1906 $14,000,000,000 worth. In 1850 they imported $173,000,000 worth of merchandise and exported $144,000,000 worth. In 1906 the figures had changed to $1,700,000,000 of merchandise exports and $1,200,000,000 of imports. That is to say, in one year America sold to other nations six dollars' worth _per capita_ more than she needed to buy from them.