The Young Man and the World Part 24

For, look you, our inst.i.tutions invite every man to do his best. There is positively no position which a man of sufficient mind, energy, and character cannot obtain, no reward he cannot win. Everybody, therefore, is literally "putting in his best licks" in America. In other countries there is in comparison a general atmosphere of "what's the use?"--a comparative slumberousness of activity and effort.

Then, again, the American people are made up of the world's boldest spirits and the descendants of such. The Puritans, who gave force, direction, and elevation to our national thought and purpose, were the stoutest hearts, the most productive minds of their time. Their characteristics have not disappeared from their children.

The same is true, generally, but of course in an infinitely lesser degree, of most of our immigrants. Usually it is the nervy and imaginative men who go to a new country. Our own pioneers were endowed with daring and vision. They had the courage and initiative to leave the scarcely warmed beds of their new-made homes and push farther on into the wilderness.

The blue-eyed, light-haired Swede who, among all in his little Scandinavian village, decides to come to America, the Irishman who does the like, are, for the most part, the hopeful, venturesome, self-reliant members of their communities across the sea. The German who turns his face from the Fatherland, seeking a new home half across the world, brings us some of the most vigorous blood in the Kaiser's Empire. Such men believe in better things--have the will to try to get those better things.

Thus, the American Republic is an absorbent of the optimism of the world. We attract to ourselves the children of faith and hope among the common people of other nations. And these are the types we are after. They are the most vital, the least exhausted. I should not want "the flower" of other nations to immigrate to our sh.o.r.es. Nature is through with them, and they must be renewed from below. Do not object to human raw material for our citizenship. One or two generations will produce the finished product.

What says Emerson:

"The lord is the peasant that was, The peasant the lord that shall be.

The lord is hay, the peasant gra.s.s, One dry and one the living tree."

The purpose of our inst.i.tutions is to manufacture manhood.

Make it impossible for the criminal and diseased, the vicious and the decadent, to come to us; bar out those who seek our country merely because they cannot subsist in their own, and you will find that the remainder of our immigrants are valuable additions to our populations.

Don't despise these common people who come to us from other lands.

Don't despise the common people anywhere on earth. The Master did not go to the "first citizens" for His followers. He selected the humblest. He chose fishermen. A promoter of a financial enterprise does not do this. But the Saviour was not a promoter; He was teacher, reformer, Redeemer.

Then, too, consider our imperial location on the globe. If all the minds of all the statesmen who ever lived were combined into one vast intellect of world-wisdom, and if this great composite brain should take an eternity to plan, it could not devise a land better located for power and world-dominance than the American Republic.

On the east is Europe, with an ocean between. This ocean is a highway for commerce and a fluid fortress for defense, an open gateway of trade and a bulwark of peace.

On the west is the Orient, with its mult.i.tude of millions. Between Asia and ourselves is again an ocean. And again this ocean is an invitation to effort and a condition of safety.

The Republic is thus enthroned between the two great oceans of the world. Its seat of power commands both Europe and Cathay.

On the north is slowly building a great people, developing a dominion as imperial as our own. The same speech and blood of kinship make certain the ultimate union with our vital brothers across our northern frontier.

To the south is a group of governments over whom the sheer operation of natural forces is already establishing a sort of American oversight and suzerainty.

Mark, now, our harbors. Behold how cunningly the Master Strategist has placed along our coasts great ports from which communication with the ends of earth naturally radiates.

Consider, too, the sweep of the ocean's currents in relation to this country. Observe the direction and effect of the Gulf Stream, and of the great current of the Pacific seas upon our coasts. Follow on your map the direction of our rivers, and see how nicely Nature has designed the tracery of the Republic's waterways.

In short, ponder over the incomparable position of this America of yours--this home and country of yours--on the surface of the globe.

When you think of it, not only will your mind be uplifted in pride, but you will sink to your knees in prayerful grat.i.tude that the Father has given you such a land, with such opportunities, for your earthly habitation.

Attempt now to estimate our resources. Your mathematics are not equal to it. The available productivity of the Mississippi Valley exceeds the supply of all the fertile regions of fable or history. The country watered by the Columbia or the Oregon surpa.s.ses in wealth-producing power the valleys of the Nile or the Euphrates in ancient times.

Our deposits of coal and iron already under development are equalled nowhere on earth except perhaps by the unopened mines of China; and greater fields of ore and fuel than those which we are now working are known positively to exist within our dominions. The mere indexing of America's material possibilities well-nigh stuns credulity.

But all these are definite and physical things, things you can measure or weigh. More valuable than all of these combined are our American inst.i.tutions and our exalted National ideals.

You can meditate all day on the reasons for pride in your Americanism, and each reason you think of will suggest others. The examples I have given are only hints. Be proud of your Americanism, therefore--earnestly, aggressively, fervently proud of your Americanism.

I like to see patriotism have a religious ardor. It will put you in harmony with the people you are living among, which, I repeat, is the first condition of success.

Also it puts a vigor, manliness, mental productivity into you. Make it a practise, when going to your business or your work each morning, to reflect how blessed a thing it is to be an American, and why it is a blessed thing. Then observe how your backbone stiffens as you think, how your step becomes light and firm, how the very soul of you floods with a kind of sunlight of confidence.

There was a time when each one of that masterful race that lived upon the Tiber's banks in the days of the Eternal City's greatest glory believed that "to be a Roman was greater than to be a king." And the ideals of civic duty were more nearly realized in that golden hour of human history than they had ever been before--or than they have ever been since until now.

Very well, young man. If to be a Roman then was greater than to be a king, what is it to be an American now?

Think of it! To be an American at the beginning of the twentieth century!

Ponder over these eleven words for ten minutes every day. After a while you will begin to appreciate your country, its inst.i.tutions, and the possibilities which both produce.

Realizing, then, that you are an American, and that, after all, this is a richer possession than royal birth, make up your mind that you will be worthy of it, and then go ahead and be worthy of it.

Be a part of our inst.i.tutions. And understand clearly what our inst.i.tutions are. They are not a set of written laws. _American inst.i.tutions are citizens in action._ American inst.i.tutions are the American people in the tangible and physical process of governing themselves.

A book ought to be written describing how our government actually works. I do not mean the formal machinery of administration and law-making at Washington or at our state capitals. These mult.i.tudes of officers and groups of departments, these governors and presidents, these legislatures and congresses, are not the government; they are the instruments of government.

_The people are the government._ What said Lincoln in his greatest utterance? "A government of the people, for the people, _and by the people_," are the great American's words. And Lincoln knew.

The real thing is found at the American fireside. This is the forum of both primary and final discussion. These firesides are the hives whence the voters swarm to the polls. The family is the American political unit. Men and measures, candidates and policies, are there discussed, and their fate and that of the Republic determined. This is the first phase of our government, the first manifestation of our inst.i.tutions.

Then comes the machinery through which these millions of homes "run the government." I cannot in the limited s.p.a.ce of this paper describe this system of the people; the best I can do is to take a type, an example. In every county of every state of the Nation each party has its committee. This committee consists of a man from each precinct in each township of the county. These precinct committeemen are chosen by a process of natural selection. They are men who have an apt.i.tude for marshaling their fellow men.

In the country districts of the Republic they are usually men of good character, good ability, good health, alert, sleepless, strong-willed.

They are men who have enough mental vitality to believe in something.

When they cease to be effective they are dropped, and new men subst.i.tuted by a sort of common consent. There are nearly two hundred thousand precinct committeemen in the United States.

These men are a part of American inst.i.tutions in action. They work all the time. They talk politics and think politics in the midst of their business or their labor. Their casual conversation with or about every family within their jurisdiction keeps them constantly and freshly informed of the tendency of public opinion.

They know how each one of their neighbors feels on the subject of protection, or the Philippines, or civil service, or the currency.

They know the views of every voter and every voter's wife on public men. They understand whether the people think this man honest and that man a mere pretender. The consensus of judgment of these precinct committeemen indicates with fair accuracy who is the "strongest man"

for his party to nominate, and what policies will get the most votes among the people.

This is their preliminary work. When platforms have been formulated and candidates have been chosen, these men develop from the partizan pa.s.sive to the partizan militant. They know those who, in their own party, are "weakening," and by the same token those who are "weakening" in the other party.

They know just what argument will reach each man, just what speaker the people of their respective sections want to hear upon public questions. They keep everybody supplied with the right kind of literature from their party's view-point.

They either take the poll of their precinct or see that it is taken; and that means the putting down in a book the name of each voter, his past political allegiance, his present political inclinations, the probable ballot he will cast, etc.

Not many of these men do this work for money or office. There are too many of them to hope for reward. Primarily they do it because they are naturally Americans, because they have the gift of government, because they like to help "run the show." They are useful elements of our political life, and they are modest. They seldom ask anything for themselves.

They do require, however, that their opinions shall be taken into account as to appointments to office made from their county, and of course they make their opinions felt in all nominating conventions.

Without these men our "American inst.i.tutions" would look beautiful on paper but they would work haltingly. They would move sluggishly. They might even rust, and fall to pieces from decay.

This much s.p.a.ce has been given to the political precinct committeeman because, as I have said, he is a type. He is the man who sees that the "citizen" does not forget his citizenship. This great body of men, fresh from the people, of the people, living among the people, are perpetually renewed from the ranks of the people.

All this occurs, as has been said, by a process of natural selection.

The same process selects from this great company of "workers" county, district, and state committeemen--county, district, and state chairmen. And the process continues until it culminates in our great National committees, headed by masterful captains of popular government, under whose generalship the enormous work of National and state campaigns is conducted.

Very well. If you appreciate your Americanism, young man, show it by being a part of American inst.i.tutions. Be one of these precinct committeemen, or a county committeeman, or a state committeeman, or a worker of some kind. If _you_ do not, a bad man will; and that will mean bad politics and bad government.