* I. THE AMERICAN BOOKS A LIBRARY OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP "The American Books" are designed as a series of authoritative manuals, discussing problems of interest in America to-day. THE AMERICAN BOOKS THE AMERICAN COLLEGE BY ISAAC SHARPLESS THE INDIAN TO-DAY BY CHARLES A. EASTMAN COST OF LIVING BY FABIAN FRANKLIN THE AMERICAN NAVY BY REAR-ADMIRAL FRENCH E. CHADWICK, U. S. N. MUNICIPAL FREEDOM BY OSWALD RYAN AMERICAN LITERATURE BY LEON KELLNER (TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY JULIA FRANKLIN) SOCIALISM IN AMERICA BY JOHN MACY AMERICAN IDEALS BY CLAYTON SEDGWICK COOPER THE AMERICAN SCHOOL BY WALTER S. HINCHMAN THE FEDERAL RESERVE BY HENRY PARKER WILLIS (For more extended notice of the series, see the last pages of this book.) The American Books AMERICAN IDEALS BY CLAYTON SEDGWICK COOPER GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1915 Copyright, jp/5, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE CLAYTON SEDGWICK COOPER was born at Hen derson, Jefferson County, New York, in 1869. He was educated at Adams Collegiate Institute, Brown University ( 94), Union and Rochester Theological Seminaries, and has done graduate work at Harvard and Columbia (A. M. Colum bia, 1907). He served as General Secretary of theTwenty- Third Street Young Men s Christian Association, New York City, 1895-98; pastor of the Wash ington Street Baptist Church, Lynn, Mass., 1 898-1 902 ; and College Secretary for Bible Study of the International Young Men s Christian As sociation, 1902-1912. In his work Mr. Cooper has been brought in touch with colleges and college men throughout the United States and Canada; this led to his travelling abroad to study education and religious movements in other lands. He has made two extended trips around the world investigating educational institutions, particularly in England, North Africa, Egypt, India, Malay States, the Philip- 331257 Biographical Note pines, China, Korea, and Japan. He has lectured extensively (for the Pond Lyceum Bureau and independently) on Educational, Oriental, and Religious Topics. He is now co-editor of Edu cational Foundations, New York, and a frequent contributor to magazines and periodicals. Mr. Cooper is also the author of: COLLEGE MEN AND THE BIBLE THE BIBLE AND MODERN LIFE WORLD WIDE BIBLE STUDY Why Go TO COLLEGE? THE MAN OF EGYPT BIBLE STUDY IN THE WORK OF LIFE THE MODERNIZING OF THE ORIENT I am one of those who believe that the real will never find an irremovable basis till it rests on the ideal. James Russell Lowell. I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut. Goethe. PREFACE ELIHU ROOT, speaking not long since before the Union League Club of Philadelphia, said : "The tendencies of a nation are all that count." Tendencies in a nation as in an individual are but the shadows of ideals, consciously or un consciously held in the mind and giving direc- .tion and dynamic to the forces of the will. The difference between men and nations de pends upon their answer to the question, "What makes life worth living?" Find out a country s ideals, and with some certainty you can predict her destiny. Is her ideal the song of the sword ? Weltmacht oder Niedergang ? Then her rewards will be in the terms of the sword, or in brute force. Is her chief and all-absorbing ideal money? Then she must give up hope of reach ing the highest culture of mind and spirit. The things we imagine and admire in the germ cells of our brain inevitably mould us; they become our masters. Ideals are things to be chosen with some care, for whether we know it or not they are the gods before whom we pour out our x PREFACE costliest libations, the idols the light of whose faces colors by reflection or refraction all our worship. It is not altogether the attainment or the non-attainment of our ideals that indicates our progress or our power. Dreams are like ocean horizons they recede at our approach. But if we, like true sailors, keep our ships ever trained toward those high retreating skies regardless of wind and bad weather, we, like they, are pretty sure to sail "beyond the sunset." It has been with the effort to catch some of the inner colors from which the efficient artist hand of the American is painting his national and individual portrait, that I have written the following pages. By looking into the energetic faces of our streaming crowds, as well as by drawing some distinguishing contrasts between ourselves and other nations, I have tried to point out some of the strongest currents in our present idealism, and I have also ventured to indicate here and there an embankment that must be strengthened to restrain the flooding tides threatening our dearest hopes. If I have succeeded in any measure in fixing upon the moving ideal forces that rise so fleet- ingly to the surface in our varied and vast life PREFACE xi and enterprises, it has been largely due to a wide circle of men and women who have afforded me the inestimable opportunity to view our contemporary modern activities through their eyes. The testimony of certain of these people, chosen with some care and representing twenty different states in the Union, I have given in the chapter entitled "An American Symposium." c. s. c. The Red House by the Lake, Westcolang, Pa., August, 191$. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAOF PREFACE ix I. WHAT is AN AMERICAN? 3 1 Personification of Activity 2 A Time-saver 3 An Apostle of Bigness 4 He Wants Money 5 Desire for Success _ II. UTILITARIAN IDEALISTS 33 1 The Strain of Sentiment 2 The Democracy of Idealism 3 Idealism in the New Literature .v 4 Sense of Humor and Reality III. THE SQUARE DEAL BOTH WAYS. . 71 1 Constitutional Rights 2 Square Deal in Business 3 What is Equality? 4 From Business to Brotherhood IV. AMERICAN VERSUS ENGLISH IDEALS . 99 1 The Distinction of Merit 2 Contrast of Feeling and Expression 3 Adaptability 4 Attitude Toward Wealth V, AMERICAN VERSUS ORIENTAL IDEALISM 127 1 Our Eastern Rootage 2 Spiritual Resemblances xiii xiv Contents CHAPTER PAGE 3 Missionary Aims 4 Ideas versus Action 5 Romance and Mysticism VI. EDUCATION THE AMERICAN PASSION . 159 1 Inheritances 2 New England Foundations 3 Utilitarian Drifts 4 Weaknesses 5 The Teacher, the Turning-point VII. IDEALS IN RELIGION 193 1 Is the Church Adequate? 2 American Religious Nature 3 Tolerance 4 Socialized Religion 5 Germany as an Example 6 The Faith of the Individual VIII. ATTITUDE TOWARD THE IMMIGRANT . 229 1 The Avalanche 2 America as an Assimilator 3 Forces at Work 4 Discovery of Talent in the Immi grant IX. THE SHADOW OF SUCCESS .... 253 1 Disregard for Law 2 Business Inefficiency Due to Haste 3 Peace at any Price 4 Love of Display and Extravagance X. AN AMERICAN SYMPOSIUM .... 287 A, i American Ideals as Seen by Amer icans 2 Analysis of One Hundred Answers Concerning American Ideals Contents xv CHAPTER PACK 3 American Weakness as Seen by Con temporary Americans 4 Replies Analyzed 5 The Triumph of Our Ideals XI. AMERICA COMING OF AGE .... 333 1 The Providential Republic 2 At the Beginning of the Enterprise 3 Peace and Humanity the Final Ideals INDEX 355 CHAPTER I WHAT IS AN AMERICAN? The bigger the work, the greater the joy in doing it. The whole-hearted striving and wrestling with difficulties, the laying hold with firm grip and level head in calm resolution of the monster and tugging and toiling and wrestling at it, to-day, to-morrow, and the next day, until it is done it is the soldier s creed of forward, ever forward; it is the man s creed that for this task he has been born. HENRY M. STANLEY. CHAPTER I WHAT IS AN AMERICAN? AMERICA, like Africa, is a land of surprises. To a foreigner, Uncle Sam s citizens have been difficult to analyze, not because they are so many and various, but by reason of their rapidly changing moods. Like the Oriental, who, just as you think you have at last dis cerned his true nature, does something to upset entirely all your calculations, the American has the habit of disarranging the customary char acterizations of the foreigner by unlooked-for manifestat^is of traits as puzzling as they are complex. The perplexity and paradox of the American character has been summarized by two French collaborators, who wrote some years since under the title: "L Oncle Sam Chez Lui"- Formed out of an aggregation of different races, the American people forms a race by itself individ ual, and from many points of view very superior. 3 : 4 } American Ideals It is as ridiculous to say that it is solely Anglo-Saxon as that it is Latin. The American has neither the egotism of the Englishman nor the arrogance of the German, but he possesses their practical sense; he has not the light-heartedness of the Frenchman, but his suppleness; he has not the obsequious politeness of the Italian or the Spaniard, but a profound respect for established institutions. He is a man of surprises. One appreciates and esteems him, one does not judge him. In a sense the problem of disentangling from the intricately woven web of a new and rapidly evolving civilization the inner threads of motive and ideal, is not mitigated by the fact that the attempt is made by an American and not a stranger. The tendency to overlook the obvious, and the ever-present impediment of narrow perspective and lack of detachment, are the almost inevitable accompaniments of an inter pretation, ever so desirously fair, made by one who writes of his own and not an alien land. It may be a solacing compensation to the native expounder to believe that what he loses in landscape he makes up in light, in that illuminating and intuitive understanding rising out of common participation and traditions, almost a prerequisite in the endeavor to pierce What is an American 5 below the external signs of national changes to the elemental nature and vital aims of a race. ^What is an American? The question is saved from ineptitude by our present need to know well its answer. With the guns of Europe reverberating almost in our very ears, with America omnipresent in the hopes and hearts of wellnigh every nation beneath the circling stars, with our forty-eight closely united com monwealths opulent beyond even their fairest dreams, with our great cities struggling in the gestation of millions of as yet unformed alien populations, with scientific and industrial achievements staggering the imagination, with possibilities exceeded by nothing save our prob lems, it is a fit time to know ourselves and our ideals. In the light of our responsibilities, it is en couraging to be able to say that the American is first of all a man of action. He is the person ification of the life dynamic. Activity is the basic law of his being. He is the lover of huge and hard tasks, for these furnish resistance to his energetic will. Obstacles to him, as to Napoleon, are just things to be overcome. Dr. Bowring once wrote to a tyrannous French minister: "Sir, I am calm but energetic." The 6 American Ideals American is seldom calm, but he is invariably energetic. Every active adjective is the epit ome of him enthusiastic inquisitive eager earnest affectionate vivacious loquacious sprightly adaptable acquisitive extrava gant busy hurried zestful. He is the highly vitalized embodiment of the moving life prin ciple, always livingly creative, never static. The citizen of the United States is by nature and by training a business man, and business to him spells busyness. His first and foremost ideal is to work; "immersed in business" is the colloquial phrase. A sickroom to him is a prison, and there is nothing more forlorn be neath the sun than an American business man on an extended holiday. Mr. S. S. McClure in his autobiography has drawn a composite picture of a business man in these Western lands: "At college," he writes, "everything went well with me until Friday night, and then a blank stretched before me. It always seemed a hard pull until Monday. I was never able to lay aside the interests and occupations of my life with any pleasure, and I have always experi enced a sense of dreariness on going into houses where one was supposed to leave them outside. I have never been able to have one set of inter- J What is an American 7 ests to work with and another to play with. This is my misfortune but it is true." Work to the American is more welcome than the flowers in May. Many a man will tell you that he has never stopped working long enough to consider or to formulate his ideals. The American exemplifies Oscar Wilde s epi gram that it s easier to do things than to talk about them. The late president of Chicago University, Dr. William R. Harper, when dying said that he looked forward to the next world as a place where he would have more work to do. The American plans many times the amount of work he can perform and as a conse quence he frequently resembles the old jockey s horse "all action and no go" but he is seldom an idler. Even the rich get nervous prostration and the sanitarium habit in their ceaseless efforts to spend their money for social better ment and in "uplift" activities. The days are not long enough for the American to accomplish; he therefore steams ahead under forced draft, and usually at the top notch of his physical reserve. His play even takes the form of fighting contests, and he has coined the phrase, "speeding up," to express the tightening of the bands on his machines and the ever-increasing 8 American Ideals pressure upon his workmen to keep pace with his engines. The significance of life to him is doing something and doing it strong. He is explosive often, staccato and shrill of speech, since his pace is too fast to cultivate the low notes. His tones are consistent with the crash ing noise of industrial and commercial and city- filled battle that is music in his ears. To live " Diogenically" would be a sheep s paradise, and idle leisure is flat degeneration. In America the non-producer and the idler are brotherly terms, and both are far more damning epithets than the sobriquet, "beachcomber," to the colonizing Britisher. Action with enthusiasm is a biological necessity in this land, and the typical denizen of these United States (as Euro peans say we like to call our country) possesses rather generally what Wordsworth called : "The self-applauding sincerity of a heated mind.* It is because of this active, intense, and closely concentrated note to which the American pitches his song, that he becomes vulnerable to the charge of provincialism and a bored specta tor of the historic and the far-away. The man whose slogan is to "act, act in the living pres ent," cannot be expected to linger long over such headlines as the "Ruins of Timgad," or What is an American 9 the "Memoirs of Potiphar"; these belong to the Past, and he is distinctly a disciple of the Pres ent. Was it not Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes who said that "an American finds it as hard to call back anything over two or three centuries old as a sucking pump to draw up water from the depth of over 33 feet and a fraction!" The point not to be overlooked is that the man who will look blank at the suggestion of neo-Platonism, and wake up when you begin to talk about building a fifty-story skyscraper in nine months, has a marvellous capacity and a striking avidity for present-day motivity. One would not think of characterizing the American as Carlyle pictured Novalis "he sits" but rather in that more moving phrase in which the Scotch apostle of action once wrote to his friend, Henry Inglis: "Diligence, unwearied, steadfast Endeavor: like the stars unhasting, unresting! This is the sceptre with which man rules his Destiny; and though fragile as a reed, removes mountains, spiritual as well as physical." Into every exertion and essay, into every discussion and every dream, the American presses this inherent active im pulse; without it he would be a simulacrum merely of his national or his racial type. It is at io American Ideals times his weakness; it is more often a magic key unlocking for him every storehouse of power and opening doors of deliverance from every dilemma. Closely mixed with the active currents of his blood is the American s penchant for saving time. It is almost a mania in this country where specialists for organizing and eliminating and systematizing have created in these latter days a full-grown profession Efficiency Engi neering, a new vocation of timesaving, a brand- new germ working as methodically and fatally as natural law against the national octopus of waste and extravagance. The idea is popular since it fits the nature of a people who are always striving to get ahead, even ahead of themselves. In a world eminent for its before- handedness and anticipation, where the people read the evening edition of their newspapers at noon, where the Saturday Evening Post is issued on the previous Wednesday, where the Sep tember numbers of the monthly magazines ap pear early in August, the lines of Seneca are appropriate: Who murders Time, He crushes in the bud a power ethereal, Only not adored. What Is an American n The American free translation of these lines reads somewhat more practically than the Ro man original in Benjamin Franklin s working room: "Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions." The " Yankee notions" of our father s days were in the majority of cases time or material saving notions. The inventions of the Yankee sons have enlarged these ideals of time pres ervation until now we sow and reap and gather into barns at the tune of timesaving machinery; we print, we sew, we wash our clothes, we write our letters, we clean our cotton, we light our homes, we talk to our distant friends, we anni hilate space in our subways and on our limited trains, all by timesavers made in America. We have carried our individuality in these inven tions around the world. Not long since I re ceived a letter from a Bedouin chief from the edge of the Lybian desert asking me to buy and send to him five hundred tons of coal for use in his American-made steam machinery now em ployed on thousands of acreage in the Fayoum district of the Nile country. With my own eyes I have seen our country s steam plows and threshers and familiar American harvesters 12 American Ideals not only in the valleys of the Upper Nile, but in the millet fields of India and in the distant islands of the Southern Seas. Any traveller, indeed, can feel the touch of home in the Orient, with the buzz of the Singer sewing machine in his ears always a wonder of time-preserving Yankee genius, as omnipresent in these antip odal lands as is the typewriter, the telephone, the cotton gin, and the Edison incandescent lights. This almost affectionate regard for time, while it may be a secondary aim, is linked intimately with his work and the things he most earnestly desires. The business man wants more time to do business, but he also wishes his saved time to spend on the particular occupations at home or abroad that are nearest his heart. The American is by no means the blind and be nighted hustler he is so frequently painted by the transient stranger; he has as a rule a method in the madness of his plunging, importunate life. He works on the very sensible principle that if a man is ever to get any time for himself, or his family or friends in the swift competitive strug gle of American modernity, he must move quickly and withal save every false motion. He is not made up fundamentally on a pattern What is an American 13 so different from that of the rest of the world of men. The climatic conditions and the prod igality of nature have something to do with his ideas and his ideals. He happens to be born in that section of the universe where clothes are in vogue and where bananas and cocoanuts upon which some people subsist grow sparingly. He has learned, moreover, that the person who is not careful about saving his time is like the man who preserves the like attitude to his money he never has any. In other words, he is determined, however much he may enjoy his work, to get it done and be moving on, and to that worthy end he is eager to employ every friction-removing and time-husbanding device known to the contriving and talented Yankee brain. It is intelligible to the keen observer that quality of work and service are sacrificed at times on this altar of expedition and dispatch idols looming large in the American s eyes. American ideals also gather about big things; they flourish in the atmosphere of immensities. The man in America has discovered that in this Land of Promise it is easier to do the big thing than the small thing. A business man came to me not long ago with the lament that he failed in his undertaking because he had at- 14 American Ideals tempted too small a proposition it only in volved a million dollars "If I had only made it a five-million-dollar scheme/ said he rue fully, "I could have reached the attention of the big financiers." America is a quarter section, not a square foot country. It is the land of the biggest lakes, the longest rivers, the fastest trains, the tallest buildings, the land of the huge corporation, and the spacious farm, and the prodigious industrial enterprise. The inhabitant of this country of bigness feels the urge of these immeasur able interests; therefore his fascination for large figures and enormous scales of measure ment. He feels that he must keep up to the pace of business, or get out of the game, or be run over. One advance step necessitates a longer stride to follow. He must always have his "next." A story is told of an American humorist who stammered. He removed from Baltimore to New York, where he was asked by a friend if he made as many jokes as he used to do in Baltimore. "M-m-more!" he replied. "B-b-bigger town!" It is not altogether edifying to the foreigner to hear the American drifting easily into con versation about his country that produces more What is an American 15 cotton and more corn than all the rest of the earth combined, a wheat crop doubling that of any other nation, or coal mining a million tons yearly in advance of any land under the sun. There are occasions when modesty should restrain even the arithmetic-loving citizen from telling the Englishman that his country trebles the Britisher s production of steel and iron, or confronting the made-in-Germany subject with the particularly unpalatable fact that the United States doubles the Teuton s output in the same commodity; or, for example, when he regales his guest from across the seas by telling him of the factory that turns out 1,50x3 locomotives yearly, or the Chicago Harvester plant that covers nearly a hundred and fifty acres, and employs upward of twenty-five thousand workers. Big and swift business always fascinates the Amer ican mind. The automobile company at the Panama Exposition in San Francisco, assem bling and putting together an automobile every six minutes, never fails of an attentive audience. It is small wonder that the bigness obsessed Yankee gives the impression of having assimi lated the contents of a world almanac, and one understands why as a tourist in other climes his questions naturally take the form of " How 1 6 American Ideals big is it ? How many ? How high ? How long ? How many inhabitants?" or "What did she cost?" This spirit of bigness is contagious. It gets into the blood of the foreigner as truly as it intoxicates the native-born American in the great machine shops and throbbing mills of the Middle West and East, where the whirring of the spindle glands, and the grinding of the steam shovels, and the rattle of the drills upon the skyscrapers, are more enthralling music than the pipes of a great organ of a European cathedral. There is a sense in the American heart of realizing his ideals, and this sense makes the dreamer and the worker one. There is so little space between his visions and his realities that he rarely gets time to become a visionary. As he works in his factory and welds iron to iron, there is something in the air that tells him that the hammers of other tens of thousands like him are ringing on the new anvils of his own land, and though the thought is inarticulate, it is never quite absent from him that the clanging of his machinery is heard around the world. The American has been called provincial, he is noted for the fact that he believes his country can produce and What is an American 17 can do whatever can be produced or accom plished in any land upon the globe. Is he so much deluded in his thinking? Certainly the nation s wealth recently reported by the Bureau of the Census is not intended to discourage his quenchless optimism regard ing materialities. These figures show that the rate of increase from 1904 to 1912 reveals the fact that in the former year the estimated wealth of the country, exclusive of tax-exempted real property, was $100,000,000,000, and in 1912 this wealth had mounted to $175,000,000,000, or an advance of 75 per cent, for eight years, an increase at the rate of 95 per cent, in a decade. This is a progress of material increase surpassing anything heretofore recorded in this country, as it distances any like comparison in any nation beneath the sun. The manufacturer of machinery, as well as the worker with tools and implements, finds a decided stimulus to speeding up his brain and his hand in the realization that the value of manu facturing machinery, tools, and implements, increased from two and one half billion dollars in 1900 to three and one third billion dollars in 1904, and to six and one tenth billion dollars in 1912, thus surpassing the rate of increase 1 8 American Ideals in real estate or in the value of general wealth. The electrical engineer, moreover, and every one of his myriad workers, who never cease to revere the name of Edison, will tell you, with a pride of being a real part of it, that the value of telephone systems increased from four hundred million dollars in 1900 to a figure far above the billion dollar mark in 1912. The manu facturer or the resident who shows you through his electric-light plant will feel something not upon the program as he tells you that the privately owned central electric-light and power stations grew in volume in America be tween the years 1900 and 1912 from four hun dred million dollars to more than two billion, representing one of the most striking develop ments in this scientific age. Why does this invigorate the American or the newly naturalized citizen? It is not simply that he may be able to gloat over his less for tunate brothers in other lands, though at times he reveals an unchastened eagerness to play up his country s material progress. It is be cause he feels that he is an integral part of this opportunity, that he can have a share in this ever more abundant increase. He realizes, in fact, that his share only waits upon his renewed What is an American 19 efforts, his enlarging aim, and his more persist ent patience. He reads the figures of the per capita wealth of his country, which amounted in 1850 to $308 for each inhabitant, and he com pares this with the fact that in 1912 this per capita wealth rose to $1,836 for each inhabitant, or an increase in the eight years from 1904 to 1912 of nearly 50 per cent., or at the rate of about 63 per cent, in a single decade. The whole effect upon him is one of stimulation, and a sense of being in a country that has not stopped, but rather is just crossing the threshold into its real maturity; it impresses him with the sense of youth and limitless resource. It makes him believe not only that what man has done he can do, but as he judges from the achievements before his eyes, he comes to the conclusion that he can do what no man has ever done before by reason of the enlarged opportunities stretching before him. If he has been called a "smiling braggart," it is because of his confident belief in seeming impossibilities. His visions are of deeds that only the bold can conceive. He not only sees the future painted in the terms of a prosperity whose boundaries have not yet been limited, but also in the terms of 2O American Ideals personalities as rich and as miraculous as his country s progress. His contemporary life all about him "shines in the sudden making of splendid names." His association is with men, to use Lowell s phrase, with empires in their brains, crownless empires of social and indus trial progress. He dares with an abandon that includes, not simply the past, but also the co operation of his children and his children s children. He is far less the creature of the moment than is the Britisher who has sighted the limitation of opportunity. He feels the mariner s instinct that " Leagues beyond these leagues there is more sea." There must come a time, perforce, when this irresistible, youthful confidence in great ma terial achievement will be tempered by closer confines. At present, however, the tide is run ning strong out to the sea of unbordered big ness. Because of his devotion to big activities and innumerable timesaving devices, which may be explained by the consideration of his envir oning geography and his success in the scientific subjugation of the universe, the American has What is an American 21 been called of all men everywhere the most thoroughly devoted apostle to the almighty dollar. This has been called the "post-card view" of Americans. It is true and it is not true. Taken alone it is like all such statements, lacking both background, perspective, and at mosphere. To be sure the American likes money, for it is the means toward the accomplishment of his huge desires. If he is peculiar in this respect of wanting money to the Englishman, to the Frenchman, to Germans, Egyptians, Japanese, and Chinese, it is only because he has outstripped certain of these people in the success and rapidity with which he has acquired it; and also because, possibly, of his habit of not being so carefully guarded in the revelation of his ideals in this direction. As a matter of fact, the eco nomic ideal in some form or other, and for some purpose or other, is the underlying aim in every nation, unless we have failed to judge rightly national tendencies as they exist to-day. The "full dinner pail" may not be a cultural phrase, but it is exceedingly elemental in the life of nations; as the old Ettrick shepherd, James Hogg, once remarked, "I defy the utmost power of language to disgust me wi a gude denner." 22 American Ideals That one nation wants money for military and manufacturing purposes, another for com merce, another for artistic or pleasurable satisfactions, or still others for making of their people a world power, or for the chance to worship their ancestors more elaborately, is a matter irrelevant to the common initial aim to get wealth. Outside of a few ignorant fellaheen in the Nile valley and certain East Indian ryots who secrete or bury or melt up English gold for their wives ornaments, by reason of the long memories of Turkish tax oppression, or the natural suspicion of the British Raj whom their isolation and their superstition have prevented them from understanding, I fail to find many hoarders of money for money s sake. To call any people on earth a dollar-worshipping nation, save as dollars signify opportunity to follow their particular ideals, is to bandy words mean- inglessly. Of no people on earth is the reputation of worshipping gold per se further from the fact than the Americans. The enormous material expansion of the country and the consequent amassing of wealth and the free spending of the same has thrown out of balance at times the proper ratio between wealth and the purposes What is an American 23 for which it has been consciously acquired. People at home and abroad have not been slow to raise the danger signals, and a sensitive peo ple have occasionally exhibited signs, outward chiefly, of disparaging the means by which the nation s ideals have been advanced. Mr. Car negie, for example, has talked and written con siderably about the disgrace of dying rich, and Mr. Rockefeller has shown his diary of system atic giving for the edification of young men both withal after the event of great riches. As a proof of the inconsequence of money, it is about as influential in changing private, public, or world opinion on these matters as the wide- eyed wonder of Great Britain that Germany should see the value or necessity of colonies. The average American goes on believing that money is power, power to get more money, yes, and also power to secure the comforts and the necessities of homes and happy fami lies, travel, and enough of leisure to take the grind out of work. In America, as throughout the world, the economic urge is powerful and omnipresent. The citizen sees that the vast majority of family troubles trace their begin nings, if the records of the divorce courts are dependable, to financial struggles and misunder- 24 American Ideals standings regarding money. He finds himself in the relentless grip of the high cost of living in the great cities; he feels the necessity, never before so obligatory, of sending his children to personally supervised private schools which will mitigate in some measure the ever- decreasing attention he has been able to give their moral and social training at home. The rapidly expanding interest in art, music, books, and country life, is a sword of Damocles over his head, whose edge is sharpened by the words, "Get money or I fall!" The well-nigh pro hibitory price of eating and feeing in the first- class city restaurants in order that dancers and fiddlers may live; the price of being sick, the fashion of getting well, the support of the changing season in clothes, the sovereignty of the automobile, and the calamitous fear of being written down to American oblivion under the title of not "looking prosperous" these with many another reason, as strong and as specious, make niggardliness a sin more dif ficult to find in America than cocoanuts in Iceland. It is partially, not wholly, for causes such as these that the rank and file of Ameri cans, unlike the middle-class Englishman or Continentals in their satisfied resignation to What is an American 25 caste or autocratic fixities, feel in their demo cratic training that they have a right to have, and indeed must have, everything or nearly everything that any one else possesses, thus atoning in part for early disadvantages of birth and education. In other words, money is the hand of America s achievement. It is the grade up to her higher mountain. It is not her head nor her heart, but it is one of the mighty means toward her individual and her national strength. Americans are idealists engaged in a practical task, and wealth is one of the rungs in X the ladder by which they mount. At times, look ing at things superficially, it would seem that Americans, like Emerson s sea shells washed clear of the sea, Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. It may seem a sordid estimation of a nation s advance or idealism, and it may bring a patron izing smile to the lips of the cultured Euro pean even to speak of it; that the money ideal gives a fresh brace to the American spirit and an additional spur to his feet for the road ahead, filled for him with ever new and widening vistas 26 American Ideals of accomplishment, personal and national, is simply another way of saying that the spirit of man has always sought means by which he may subdue by his activity and wealth all intractable things. This is to suggest that beyond the sway of the dollar, and only associated with it indirectly, as the painter s brush is connected with the ideal of the picture in the mind of the artist, lies the American s desire for success. This suc cess desire is not measurable in his own mind, if it is in the minds of others who know him only transiently, with a mere sordid accumulation of wealth. Some of the most revered Americans were poor men, and among them have been the nation s most beloved heroes, presidents, generals, educators, physicians, and men of the bar. Shortly before his death I met Jacob Riis in the Middle West, engaged in a laborious lecture tour when his physicians had ordered him to his bed. He was working because his lifelong efforts of building up a sentiment for social betterment of his country s "other half," the less privileged half in this world s goods, had left him little chance or thought for making or saving money. John Muir, who has left a rich legacy to his countrymen, like so many What is an American 27 thousands of writers and American idealists, was poor. He was a close friend of Mr. E. H. Harriman, the multi-millionaire railroad king. One day Mr. Muir surprised his wealthy friend by saying, "Harriman, you know I am a richer man than you are?" 44 Yes?" said Harriman, with a question in his tone. "Because," continued Muir, "I have all the money I want, and you haven t." This was the same Harriman, however, who, \ when he was under fire for certain business \ methods which ceased to be regarded exactly legitimate some years since in the United States, was asked to give explanation to his detractors. He turned in his office chair and swept with his hand the railroad maps that covered the walls, the maps of the Harriman system, piercing the Rockies and opening the East on a straight track to the Golden Gate. "These," said he, "are my explanation!" We are all familiar with the spirit of honor which made Mr. Samuel Clemens (the man whom the nation admires as one of its great literary pioneers, and with whom no one con nects money ideals) buckle down to his arduous lectures and writing at an age when he might have retired gracefully. It was not because 28 American Ideals he wanted money for himself; it was because he had assumed the financial liabilities of a partner, and without money he could not secure that which was dearer to him than gold: the reward of his conscience and the respect of his countrymen. If we could look behind the hard working days of the majority of American men, who spare themselves not at all, beating their way through many a drudging day and working night, we would find at the bottom of the cup of sacrificing toil the lees of successful ambition in their particular vocation. Money! Yes, enough to get on with toward their goal of "making good," but the goal is to do something worth while doing, worth while looking at and talking about. Success is their king of in centive. Why do our European brothers come to America s shores one million strong each year? It is not simply for the better wage and the higher standard of living. Why does the German American rush to the registrar s ofHce to become a naturalized Amer ican citizen? It is not because he is afraid of bullet or shrapnel, but because he does not wish to be forced to return to a country that crushes his individuality, that makes him a What is an American 29 mere cog in the great machinery of a mon archical government, a government that says: "Here are our ideals for you," not "What are your ideals for yourself?" He wants to live in this great country of opportunity that places no check upon effort or achievement, that allows a man to dream dreams and see visions which, if worthy of realization, may take shape before his very eyes. He wants to see his children in a land that fosters growth and amidst a people whose ideals are unhampered by the customs and tra ditions of dead years. The casual observer would say, perhaps thoughtlessly, that America s ideals are activ ity, money, and success. But the person who looks beneath the surface, who takes time to study the American and to search out his inner most motive, will find that money and success even, those words so satirically hurled at the American as being the summum bonum of his existence, are but the strong wings upon which he mounts to greater heights. The Republic itself, with its serried ranges of enlarging pos sibilities for effort and merit, with its ideals of equality and equal opportunity for man, woman, and child, is the concrete expression of that 30 American Ideals dream of freedom to work that slumbers in every man s soul. In this land of democracy the American uses his activity, his money, his suc cess, and his power as means to make his dream come true. He loves his land because he feels that he is a part of it, that he is helping to make it. It has given him not only the things for which he has striven, the things that eye can see and hand can touch, the creature comforts, but it has given him also a voice. Other coun tries reward effort with material success, but leave the worker dumb, an unexpressed atom in the nation s life; but in America the individual may speak. He is a vital force in the making and the moulding of his country s destiny. He is building a house in which his children and his children s children may live in the enjoyment of his enterprise and in the opulence of his liberty. In a sense the American is an arch material ist, but his materialism is like a cloud in a dark day behind which the sun of idealism is always shining. CHAPTER II UTILITARIAN IDEALISTS To me men are what they are, They wear no masks with me. RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. CHAPTER II UTILITARIAN IDEALISTS "I AM a democrat and a dreamer," were the words with which I recently heard one of our prominent Americans characterize himself. He was the head of a large and influential institu tion closely related to contemporary life, an institution in which he had accomplished a work of far-reaching value to a great city. His whole career had been surrounded and well-nigh submerged by a myriad of details worlds re moved from the land of dreams. A casual spectator would have called his service tre mendously useful, but far from the realm of the ideal. Yet I have reason to believe that this man is an idealist a utilitarian idealist. In a land where the word utility is ubiquitous, and in an atmosphere where a dreamer is sup posed to be a visionary, the union of the two in one individual would seem at first to be an irreconcilable anachronism. I believe, notwith standing, that the idealism of the twentieth- 33 34 American Ideals century American is a very real thing, and that it has never been more accurately designated than in a phrase written by Prof. John R. Commons in an article contributed to the Inter collegiate Magazine in 1909: "Utilitarianism is the democracy of idealism." It is this inexplicable idealism in the midst of the practical, the marriage of the imagination with modern applied science, the secularizing of the mind and the human spirit, and the bring ing out of dreams into the light of a democratic day, that distinguishes present-day America. No other country by location or tradition has been so conducive to the drawing out of a use ful idealism, or to making the mystic and the scholar practical and serviceable to the com munity. The vast distribution of wealth, the marvels of scientific exploration and industry, surpassing the wonders of the Egyptians, the strain of the Puritan, all set in an atmosphere of democratic obligation and cooperation, have furnished an alluring and an enchanting field for the development of a quality of idealism heretofore uncommon among men. This tendency uniting ideals with practice and bridging the gulf between dreams and ac tion is seen in a hundred ways, and it is far more Utilitarian Idealists 35 general than is usually appreciated. The word spiritual, for example, is rapidly losing its former pious significance, and is becoming naturalized in the society of other words connected with the higher nature of man in his everyday life. American religion must not simply be good, it must be good for something. We are not so much inclined to say "The Beautiful and the Good," but with Goethe, "The Beautiful is the Good." The scientist for a time seemed to be getting the best of the humanist and the scholar, but there are abundant evidences at present of the secularizing of all education and attaching the specialist in the theories of eco nomics, politics, and social and applied science especially, to the chariot wheels of modern government, modern business, and modern phi lanthropy. Indeed the shuttle runs back and forth with remarkable swiftness and ease between the reaP and the ideal worlds. Ideals in the loftiest reaches of democracy, the purification of polit ical life, both in the nation and the municipality, A \ are becoming regnant without the reformers and the reformed recognizing them as ideals. They often masquerade under the guise of "good government." Ideals of regulation in 36 American Ideals business and trade and the inter-relation of vast corporate concerns, which were like the political party platforms before election, of twenty-five years ago (counsels of perfection to be edited but not executed), have in these days come so near actualization that even the sins of the fathers are being visited upon the children of "big business." When the laws for correction and reform of abuses in trade and organized occu pations do not come fast enough, we form com missions to investigate, and from the inexo rable searchlights of these latter idealizing bodies nothing and no one is exempt, from the biggest insurance company to the biggest re vivalist, and what the investigators miss in details of depravity the newspapers supply. These utilitarian ideals are in fact about the most common and prominent things amongst us at present. As they sweep the ranks of society we do not always call them ideals. As a na tion we abhor the trail of Pharisaism and the semblance of piety. We idealize our character under the head of "standards of conduct," 01 "respectability," but it is fairly safe to say that there is no place on God s footstool where moral ideals of conduct are more universally respected or where the absence of them is more Utilitarian Idealists 37 fatally blighting to reputation or success than in the United States. Strange as it may seem, it is in the person of the American business man, practical, level headed, all business, that this current of the ideal is clearly, often most clearly, seen. His big- heartedness is often in proportion to his blunt directness. Get a bit below the surface and you will find frequently a nature steeped in sentiment. "We do two things exceedingly well," says George Barr McCutcheon, "we dream and we perform." At the call of distress, either at home or abroad, his purse-strings are loosened with a prodigality that marks the fanatic. In his business office he may be as austere as the statue of Memnon, but in his home or in company of his friends he is as full of idealistic feeling and often of romanticism as the East Indian schoolboy. The average American man of affairs, as soon as he gets past the persiflage of group conversa tion to his heart-to-heart talk with you in quiet, will lead you to the little holy of holies of his own personal ideals, to some fine worth-while issue, without which, notwithstanding his dollars, his buildings, and his automobiles, he would be poor indeed. 38 American Ideals We know of two workers in the commercial world who would seem to the chance observer to be wrapt up in business, but who spend their evenings in a private bookbindery where they have gathered some of the fine old manuscripts of the literary world, many of them collected through repeated trips abroad. In the midst of these they spend their evenings, actually making with their own hands beautifully em bossed de luxe bindings for their most loved authors. Do you think that they will talk to you of stocks and bonds, or the price of wheat and steel, when they are free to let themselves go on their heart s main interest? Not for a moment. They only wait to get to the thing that has captured their spiritual satisfactions. I have seen one of them take with reverent hands a volume of Shelley with limp green covers which has cost him many months of evening toil in the bindery near his home. I have seen a light in his eyes that revealed an other man than the one I had known in the business office. It was the real man, the man of an ideal world, who has been able to erect himself above himself and to pour into this thing of beauty and imagination the very soul of him, longing for expression, and only waiting for the Utilitarian Idealists 39 time when his bread-winning hands could bring into existence that in which his spirit delighted. Foreign visitors to America never cease to admire the vast advertising projects of American enterprise, than which nothing more bold and inventive is to be found in the country to-day. It seems at first a sordid thing for a human being to spend his life trying to invent ingenious methods for drawing public attention to the N Sj latest brand of tobacco or to the superior quali- / ties of a new washing powder. Man seems to / have been born for greater things, we say. We pity his humdrum life, but we have seen only one side of it, the utilitarian side. The man is only half revealed to us in his business. Follow with me one of the successful advertising men in New York City to his country home, toward which his heart as well as his steps turn at every possibility of release from business. You enter through gates which are a Japanese torii, like those rising phantomlike from the waters of the inland sea of Japan, facing the sacred island of Miyajima. You follow a wind ing pathway over a graceful bridge, which is a faithful copy of the Red Bridge at Nikko. You pass ponds filled with the purple blooms of the Japanese lotus, from beneath whose spreading 40 American Ideals leaves glimpses are caught of glancing gold fish. At your feet spray dashes from the gray rocks in the brook as the water goes laughing down to the waterfall below, and on the cool night wind there is brought to you the faint tinkle of bells, swaying in the breeze from the pointed roofs of the pagoda seen dimly in the distance, where also a miniature Fujiyama looms darkly as a background. There are gardens filled with azaleas and cherry trees, and great branches of lavender wisteria hang from latticed arbors. Pine trees are sharply silhouetted against the horizon, and Japanese maples show the delicate color of their leaves in the fading glow of sunset. Here a large stone lantern and there a calm bronze Buddha speaks of peace. We enter the house with its quiet courtyards, its curving roofs, its rounded archways, its softly shaded windows, and the smell of tea on the cozy brazier greets the guest as graciously as does the soft-footed, smiling Japanese servant who meets us at the door. From the veranda of this house upon the hillside one can look over the tiny bridges that cross the hurrying streams; he can see the faint outline of the great torii, and as he watches the man who comes to the stone lantern Utilitarian Idealists 41 to place a light therein, the magic land of Nippon seems a vivid dream before his enchanted eyes. All that is lacking to make the dream a reality are the graceful little women in gray silken kimonos with obis of mauve and gold, leading tiny children who rival the birds in the colors of their plumage, their faces alight with laughter as they skip along in their lacquered clogs. In the busy advertising offices in New York there is little or no suggestion of the imagina tion out of which this shining bit of the Sunrise Kingdom has been reproduced; but to those who know America and Americans, it is but one of those significant hints of future promise and capacity which seem to say, "We Americans may appear to the casual observer only busi ness men, with the dollar mark on all our activ ities, but that is because you do not know us. You have not looked into the soul of America, where lies concealed, below the abrupt and sometimes crude exterior, the love for beauty which only waits to reveal itself! " Nor is American idealism always disassociated from the setting of utility. Henry Ford, for example, has led the automobile makers of his country, and in his leadership has made an enormous fortune. What does he do? He 42 American Ideals immediately begins to think of ways by which he can utilize that fortune in the realm of a generous cooperation with his employees. He raises the wages of his men to a figure almost unheard of, even in a land renowned for the high prices paid to skilled labor. He dreams that he sees every workman in his employ with a home of his own, his own bit of garden, his flowers, his children in school instead of in the workshop. He makes the worker who was only a part of his vast machine shop, a mere cog in the wheel, a man. The whole economic American world scoffed at first at the dreams of this arch utilitarian idealist, but this same world is rather proud of Henry Ford s idealism. Its pride exists in the fact that he reveals the dream of human betterment hidden in the heart of every man. Another striking example of the American utilitarian idealist is afforded in the career of the late John Pierpont Morgan, a king of finance and the collector par excellence of the world s treasures of art. The two strains of the prac tical and the ideal were woven together so closely that even the man who was courted alike by the chancelleries of financial Europe and the masters of the world s galleries of art Utilitarian Idealists 43 would have found it difficult to disentangle them. What crisis of the American common wealths was not alleviated, what panic of wealth or of labor was not calmed in the past fifty years of our nation s growth, by the strong and usually unerring business judgment and insight of this man? In many an out-of-the- way curio shop in the Orient, and even in the quaint little Japanese house on the mountain side where an artist of the old Samurai school still carves and paints serenely, I have seen the lover of artistry, as a final sign of his discrimina tion, bring reverently out of a safe hiding-place some bit of choice engraving or metal work with the remark: "I am keeping this for Mr. Morgan!" There are perhaps few men of the present generation who better illustrate the peculiar quality of the idealism of America which even in business sweeps the field with an accuracy of vision that embodies more than intellect, more than scientific knowledge, more than reliance on tradition, than did this remarkable financier. It is a different thing from the German exact ness in the realm of facts; it is also something other than the British "muddling through." It is nearer what Bergson would call intuition, 44 American Ideals which he claims is the method of the creative artist, a greater force than the logic of the mind or the blind leadership of instinct. This in- tuitiveness of the American is the centre and secret of his constructive imagination, it is the genius of pressing straight to the crucial issue, regardless of the custom of yesterday or the abstract thinking of to-day. It is, in the words f Stanton Coit, "the method of the poets." It sees with the eyes of the soul as well as with the eyes of the mind and the teaching of the hand. It is the ardent apostle of present utility, all the utility possible, but behind the useful there is a fixed star that star is idealism. It is the ideal that makes the real possible, that makes it desirable, that gives it reasonableness. It is the ideal that keeps the man working, it is his star of hope. This vision seen in and through his work is the only thing that makes the American s inveterate toil something else than drudgery. Save to the aged clerk with his silver hair, and those destined followers in the race of life whose duties are the bars of habit, work in America is not a "squirrel s wheel. " The English Wesley once said, "I can plod." The American says, "I can plod if I can see something ahead to plod Utilitarian Idealists 45 for." In this country of vast dreams and huge fulfilments idleness is a rusty sword in the \f soul, but work that has no point to it turns the / iron round, and is even more excruciating. The resiliency of the American spirit is pro verbial. It is born of hilltop visions of work that is profitable to do, endeavor that gets one on. Everything must be charged with a more or less useful idealism. A business man said to a clergyman, who urged him to join his church, "If there is anything I can do that will really count, I will come in, but I don t want to join the church just to sit around and sing." The United States is probably the most dis tasteful atmosphere imaginable for the man without a "job"; it is also almost a prison house to the man who feels that his job is not worth while. It is this intuitive sense that he has taken hold of a great work that explains much of the American s enthusiasm and unquench able buoyancy. Dr. Eliot is reported to have i said at one time concerning Mr. Roosevelt, that 1 he had never "grown up." Is it not, however, in I his ever-renewed idealism, in the pushing power-^ of undisillusioned youth, as mighty as it is at times mistaken, in that resistless energy born of new and unfulfilled dreams of human prog- 46 American Ideals ress, that our ex-President typifies the Ameri can spirit? Utilitarian idealism is the reign of a high ideal in the midst of useful labor. It is doing a practical thing with a spiritual motive. It is not simply in the realm of public life and business that this new type of idealism reveals itself; it is clearly seen in modern Ameri can literature. There is a sense in which our contemporary writing appears as it did to Carlyle in London "madder than Bedlam. " In spots it is vapid enough, and if the compari son is with the formal models of certain other centuries, judged by those models at least, it will be weighed in the balances of style and cultural perfection only to be found wanting. It is in its departure from the regular English types and in its refusal to be standardized ac cording to any traditional copy whatsoever, that its distinctive character exists. While no ob- . serving and thoughtful person would presume to take the ring for a considerable mass of our present-day writing, in fiction especially, a literature as devoid of any high ideals as it is raw and specious and unwholesome, a kind of sophisticated small talk that arouses on the printed page the same unspeakable weariness that it does on the street or in the club; yet it is Utilitarian Idealists 47 manifestly unjust to fob off a nation s litera ture with a pedantic wave of the hand because it has its stupid moments. This particular type of quackery in letters has received its meed of attention at the hands of Mr. Owen Wister and many another, and usually with quite sufficient vitriol mixed with the treatment. I do not recall any literary criticism of the kind of books that are cheap at whatever price or in whatever best-selling quantities that has so completely met the situation without waste of words as the "recommendation" for a superficial book given to an agent by Abraham Lincoln. After Lincoln had politely refused to buy the book, being pressed for a testimonial, he wrote the following: "Any one who likes this kind of a book, this is the kind of book he would like." The consideration of our literature, as it grows naturally out of our civilization in the United States, is equally certain to be disappointing if we begin with its ostensibly false alarm lit erature, as it is if we look to find in it six teenth-century figures and stilted utterances of Venetian ladies dressed in silks and panniers and moving in graceful minuets. On the other hand, we can look at our books and writing as belonging peculiarly to new, to 48 American Ideals growing and unfinished institutions of a nation of utilitarian idealists, a nation where canonical writing is no passport to success simply because it is in regulated symmetry to another century. We can see the present literature, like many an other thing American, sailing more or less in a chartless sea, where the only landmark is the real contemporary life all about us; with such point of view, certain things become clear as daylight. From such vantage point we see American writing struggling consciously, or often with an intuitive unawareness, to embody vitally the truth and the insistent sense of reality of our twentieth-century life. It reveals, even in its lower levels, the new sense of social responsibil ity and also the growing psychical sensibility of the people. Even Winston Churchill, one of our modern standard fictionists, has abandoned in his last two novels much of his art, or what we have usually considered to be the grooves of the uniform traditional plot, to go reforming in religion and public morals. The books of Mark Twain, which, as he said when he was alive, sold right along with the Bible, are continuing to do so in ever-renewed editions. If there was ever an American writer who Utilitarian Idealists 49 dressed his ideas in human dress, slashing right and left at every phantom of unreality, laughing with himself and at himself on one page and pointing his moral on the next, if we ever had an author who lighted his torch of idealism at the glowing vital flame of moving vibrant democracy as we know it and feel it all about us, it was the beloved Clemens. With the semblance of Carlyle, but with the lighter smiling American touch and with a "genial precipitation," his cry was: "Down with hollow conventions! Down with historic feudalism which no longer concerns us! Down with medi eval, aristocratic airs! Up with the ideals that lie real and naked at the heart of life! Up with the human! Up with the natural! Up with the idealism of Reality!" Samuel Clemens was our first great utilitarian idealist in literature. Many have since followed in his train, none of them, in the field of story writing, more closely his disciple probably than was O. Henry, who, like Charles Dickens, wandered about the city streets to find his characters, painting them in their working clothes. He appealed at once to the humor and the good-natured disapprobation of his countrymen for the "society" folk, be cause their activities were so funny in their 50 American Ideals uselessness. When at one time, O. Henry, describing the society aspirants as occupying the front seats in the theatre, said, "They were bathed in tears and they were dressed for it," he showed his shining lance of humor, but the hand on the blade was subtle as it was silken \v in its thrust at the masquerade. v In the poetry as in the prose of our contem porary writers this urgent democratic realism can be traced. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, son of a country doctor in Springfield, Illinois, in a fine democratic voice cries that poetry is not to live cloistered and on the hilltops, but to come down and rejoice the hearts of common men. With the hard-handed simplicity of the Middle West, Mr. Lindsay joins a delicacy and an elfin, whimsical humor that takes us by sur prise. His "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty" rediscovers the capacity of the American villager for enjoying beauty and his willingness to accept its sway. Beauty resides by every man s door-sill and hearth stone, says Lindsay. Springfield, Illinois, is as lovely to him as Oxford or Athens. The cynic may ask whether this homely beauty lover has -A been to Oxford or Athens; but whether or not, his message is none the less valuable and in- Utilitarian Idealists 51 tended to stir the heart of the American. As Stevenson says, "the true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. * He has what Joyce Kilmer, another type of modern and effective everyday poet, calls "literary colloquialism," and these men belong to the soil. They bring home the muse to our business and to our bosoms. The fervor of their democratic vision is all to the good. When Lindsay pictures heaven with the court house square of his favorite Illinois towns, he speaks with the voice of the true poet, as does Kilmer when he carries us on the midnight train to the suburbs of New Jersey. Another Illinois man, Edgar Lee Masters, writes the "Spoon River Anthology," in which a village cemetery becomes vocal. The joys (a few) and the sins and degradations (a great many) of Spoon River are detailed with re lentless truth by these voices from undersod a kind of post-mortem on a whole community. The appeal to the burlesque sense is vivid; and yet some of the little sketches (e. g., that of Anne Rutledge, Lincoln s dead sweetheart) are full of beautiful reality. Then there are the writers of "free verse" the vers librists and the imagists who contend 52 American Ideals that their work obeys subtler laws of rhythm and measure, and is in no wise "free." In all these productions the stuff of poetry is present the picture, the emotion, the atmosphere vivid and startling. But it is freakish and often un digested, lacking the musical and metrical polish which still constitutes the externals of poetry to the vast majority of us. These ingenuous and colorful eccentricities are a part of our new tendency though they have not captured the approbation of our sober critics. The truer spoor of our present-day literature lies more closely along the trail of such men as Edwin Markham and Robert Frost in poetry; or Booth Tarkington and Walter Prichard Eaton in fiction and essay. Many names could be enumerated to show that our literary earnest ness is growing more and more tinged with sparkle and play of imagination. Our litera ture to-day reveals, if not all the substance of things hoped for, at any rate the evidence of many things not seen. The excellence of our oldest and most dignified magazines and the fine work they have accomplished in moulding and fixing our democratic literary ambitions and ideals, can hardly be praised highly enough. Henry Mills Alden, whose lifetime of service Utilitarian Idealists 53 as editor of Harper s Magazine lifts him above the possibility of the charge of ultra-radical opinion, has characterized our modern litera ture as "vital altruism," and expressive of the sense of the universal kinship with life, as the ground of the deepest creative charm. "The general tendency of the fiction of our day," writes Mr. Alden, "on whatever level it may reach the popular mind, is toward reality. The general intelligence is ever more and more responsive to the catholic and sympathetic note of that advanced criticism which, while it accepts all of humanity in its real significance the past as well as the present yet resolutely repudiates all formal judgments and set canons or the regulation of life and art, and all prej udices and fixed notions which rest upon tradi tion or upon our own loose thinking," In other worjjs r ^we-^aye--x-rrew literature in America because we__ have -a new humanity. This literature accepts life on its own terms and is not perturbed with the erudite interests of philosophy, history, or treatments upon abstruse phenomena. j^js^jJie^jgoj^^fLthe- plain, andL comrnon life A full of homeliness, whichhas mastered our modern type of writing and given it 54 American Ideals This attempt at the disclosure of life as it is in its naked contemporaneousness, is not un worthy of literary workmanship. It is superior to mere imitation of models that fitted another age, and it is quite as likely to be filled with the warmth and the color of that humanity for which it paints. Even Stevenson, with his unwearied attempts at a style that was more or less an imitation of a period that was dying, is explained by a discerning critic as having his vogue not so much by the form of his writ ing as through the matchless charm of his personality and especially his letters, which reveal without the screen of literary artisanship the heart and soul of the man. When we examine the books that succeed as "best sellers" (which it is said the women of America, who only have sufficient time to read novels, peruse and talk about to their husbands), the popular trend is revealed even in the midst of much that is scarcely worthy of the name of literature. These books, without pretence and frequently without the ability to express in clear phrase or in what Matthew Arnold called "the whole tissue" of their work the ideas that are tumbling over themselves in the minds of the alert and-inv-eHtive- WTirers", do not aim Utilitarian Idealists 55 aboye_theworld,but to get down to the world, into the very thick of life. Thei_r_frequien simple love tales or narrations of melodramatic adventures reflect thernost ordinary details and happenings of daily Jife_ as it is known to the masses. They are almost invariably filled ?nd happy endings, knowing that the American will not endure being tor- tured jtQ__no purpose. There is hardly a touch of the historic as it abounded in Scott, who at one time swept so strongly the popular mind, especially in the South. The length of Fielding and Jane Austin is tabooed as surely as are their intricate and complicated plots and character analysis. To be sure we have had an attempt in recent years to foist upon the public the sordid discussion of the sex question in many of its varied phases. Sometimes there has been the avowed attempt to teach high morality through the nauseating depiction of immorality; sometimes there has been a malignant turn, with scathing and often unsupportable allega tion concerning modern abuses and corporate enterprises. These have marked only a transi tional phase in the swing away from the con ventional writing of the last generation to the more direct and moving contemporary style of 56 American Ideals the present. It has already become unpopular as the issues which the reforming writers bom barded have received attention at the hands of public opinion and the nation s laws. Although this new type of literature is only in its springtime in America, the modern es sayists have caught its spirit and the power of its utilitarian and realistic ideal. This es sayist type is as different from the Emersonian or classic as one can well imagine. It is less Jormal > _rnore jntjjnate, nejghl>gj:jy L jmd it_ talks as folks talk. It does not disregard col loquial ^xprelslons that convey sometimes fuller and quicker meaning than pages of round about argument. The writers of these essays, as well as the authors of the descriptive and factual articles in the magazines, do not make one feel that they are looking at the procession as it goes by and writing about it, but that they are parts of the throng itself, caught in all its multifold implications, and inviting one to join them in the ranks. The very titles of some of these essay books reveal the modern drift "Crowds," "What Men Live By," "The Joyful Road," "Personal Efficiency 5 " all reflecting the fact that through the many channels of literary culture the Ameiian__peopla^are_j3_ar- Utilitarian Idealists 57 interested in the which they may reach a clearer idea of the Qf_the_mdividual in the world of It is by no means a discouraging fact in this connection to read in a recent report of the New York Public Library that 9,516,482 books were taken out for reading in the past twelve months, and 1,267,879 readers were served in the adult reading-rooms. The alert and rapid life of the country is a reason behind these new demands upon its modern literature. It is the age of the "mo vies," the era of the "punch/ These rapid days call for the complete novel in one serial issue of the monthly magazine. One magazine publisher is quoted as saying: "Any story that is worth printing can be told in three thousand words." A weekly which claims a circulation of 1,750,0x30 copies holds before itself as a chief aim the reflection of all things human, in the most concrete, definite tales, never allowing the writer to lose the objective thing in his individual subjective consciousness; it tries to place its weekly speech before the public in language that the average person uses himself and can readily understand without undue meditation. The dusty com- 58 American Ideals placency of the classics and what is known as the "high-brow" type of literature seems to be lacking in the terse and moving qualities de manded in these swift, accomplishing, utilitarian days. The Americanos-passion for sensational news is a j^j^jrfjlnsjre^ He Hke^^_r^ad[^if^rjieople accomplishing great con^mporary^^hievementSy of Goethals ing the Panama Canal, of Orville Wright with his aeroplanes, and McAdoo with his subways. Pictures and biographical sketches of men and women who are doing things fill the pages of magazines and Sunday supplements. Like the Oriental, the American in a _figure_or_in_an anecdote more readily than in a principle. when a college professor, jsaicjj ri at the Knyg pf Princeton remembered his stones and forgot his lectures. Indeed, from one point of vision, the hew literature seems like a kind of sub limated journalism, with a vitality of motive and sympathy and spontaneous communication all its own. If it lacks great scope, historical reserve, and universality of knowledge, it does not lack those dynamic forces that are every where in the air of contemporary endeavor. Utilitarian Idealists 59 To the average reader at least this kind of litera ture seems more desirable than anaemic memoirs and false chivalries that neither "sting men into action nor goad them to the heights of noble passion. * The^literature of the present must be con- ducive of qnirjc apd real and drnrrmtic effect, of humor that is spontaneous and unstudied. The American wants his books like his religion, unobstructed by the mock heroic or the mock sublime. He finds his "garden of humanity" in^the^careers^ and relationships of the_ plain_ people, with problejTT^similar- to his o^n, whose lives frequently are as human, frail, and full of longing as they are genuine and transparent. It is this reflection of human beings, human action, and human feeling that forms the true background for spiritual freedom, for the i ism of realism, and useful objective, which pervades the literature of the American s present day. If his poetry has taken the form of im aginative prose, it is because this form is more readily adjustable to the ever-changing moods and tempers of his everyday life. He who would be great in our contemporary letters must be near enough to life t n f pp l *** nntnr.nl pulse beat and the breath of its moving spirit 60 American Ideals lie must notjive in a worldly? art. He must be. anjciealist, but always an idealist in a_jgal world. ^"Another characteristic of this idealism, re vealed not only in literature but through every vein of the nation s life, is the American s un failing sense of humor the kind of humor that \ Mr. Alden calls "the most distinctive quality \of life the index of its flexibility, of its tender ness, mercy, and forgiveness." | I The Americans are reputed to be the most X /humorous people in the world. Their humor (/rises out of the very intensity of the native mind, and is made wide and free and cosmopoli tan by the constant accessions to the popula tion from many diverse lands. It sprays bits of sunshine across the darkest channels in the life of the nation and the individual. Humor in the United States is another term for that easy going good-nature and geniality which covers, surrounds, and pervades the entire world of work and play, and takes the lines out of the serious ness and rigidness of its incessant activity. The type of humor is big like the western moun tains, and as liberty loving and free as the western plains. The very size of the country seems to make Utilitarian Idealists 6l expansive the native intellect and lead it into that comical exaggeration which is one of the essential features of our broad and not too subtle humor. The universality of this laugh ing sense is always remarked by foreigners. It is found everywhere, in the cabin as in the palace, and the man who has a sense of humor is always an acceptable companion. Many a man has become famous and beloved in America from no other reason than that he made people laugh. The names of Artemus Ward, Bret Harte, Bill Nye, Nast, Mark Twain, and "Josh Billings," are household words, while the present generation is as familiar with Peter Dunne and his Mr. Dooley as with David Harum, and with Bunny of the movies, and a host of comic cartoon heroes of the newspapers. It is the kindliness of the nation s humor that is perhaps most striking. It is not what Alfonse Karr defined as "reason armed," the kind that raises a laugh but leaves a sting behind it; it is more usually the variety that does not wound, but rather sees the incongruous in one s self and in others, and is as genial and good-tempered as the native heart. Indeed, it is not altogether separated from the tearful emotion, and often reminds us of Byron s definition of humor, "a \L 62 American Ideals pendulum betwixt a smile and a tear/ It is used alike by the serious and the frivolous. Those who used to sit under the evangelism of D. L. Moody recall the way in which they were convulsed with laughter in one moment, and the next would feel on their cheek something suspiciously like a tear. Carlyle once said that f the essence of humor was sensibility, warm, . /^tender, fellow feeling with all forms of existence. *" This fits the American variety. One does not look for a humor that could be defined exactly as wit, unless it happens to be exhibited through the Irish-American stock with which we are graciously blessed. It may not reach the highest grades of humor, "wisdom at play," which is often labored and creaking in the wheels. The variety found in Hosea Bigelow, the Knickerbocker History of New York, the stories, the essays, and trenchant criticisms of Messrs. Clemens, Lowell, and Holmes, flows spontaneously from a good sound heart as free and unrestrained as nature herself. The entire literature of the United States is pervaded with this humorous atmosphere, not in epigrams simply, or in terse, easily quoted paragraphs; it is in the whole tissue, and seen no more generally in the older essay writers than Utilitarian Idealists 63 in the newer schools represented by Howells, Crothers, Van Dyke, Agnes Repplier, and Simeon Strunsky. The attempt to exhibit it to stran gers would be difficult and not unlike the effort of the old philosopher who carried about with him a brick as a specimen of the house he wished to sell. American humor has saved many an insipid novel from death at birth. It has made much ordinary writing palatable by its accept able condiment, while the labored and frequently incongruous humor of more sedate writers, the kind that "smells of the lamp," is for that very reason too cumbrous and forced, and fails to carry the crowd with it. This penchant for humor has been largely responsible for the after-dinner speech in which the Yankee is renowned the world over. There are usually a full score of men in the country, types suggested by Messrs. Choate and Depew, whose presence always assures a successful public dinner. To the American, as Charles Lamb once said, "jokes come in with the can dle," and you can easily get attendance at a dinner when a good list of humorous after-din ner speeches is announced. In spite of the fact, as Wendell Phillips once declared, that there were never more than twenty-five original good 64 American Ideals stones, the American shows marvellous ingenu ity in the elaboration of this original supply, and when these give out, he tells stories on himself, and on the toast master, and on his mother-in-law, which subjects are always sure to make a hit in risibilities. Much of the humor clusters about the big ness of the land and the native satisfaction in it, and in essence it turns upon the idea of reality and utility quite as much as does the modern literature. I was riding some years since from Long Beach to Los Angeles, when about midway I discovered a new schoolhouse, which was be ing built, quite by itself, in a big unoccupied field, at least a mile from any dwelling. I asked the native driver why they built that school- house so far away from town, at which the man replied, "Well, you see, the last time we built a schoolhouse, we put it on the edge of the settle ment, and before we got it done the town had grown up to it and passed it. This time we wanted to be sure to keep ahead of the town for a year at least." The story of the old Maine farmer, told by his fellow townsmen, is indicative of the humor aroused in an active people by the unique and Utilitarian Idealists 65 useless specimen of humanity who does not work. The old countryman who spent his time around the stove in the grocery store was asked his occupation, he replied: "I jest set and think and sometimes I jest set." The humor of ancestral glory is brought out and laughed over in such stories as that of the old American family, one of whose progenitors is represented in a picture portrayed as going into Noah s ark with the archives of his famous house under his arm. The pride of family is a never-failing source of amusement to the Amer ican whose dreams are always in front of him rather than behind him, and who fastens his aspirations to the achievements he himself ex pects to accomplish in the future, rather than to the things his ancestors may have done in the past. Exaggeration in extremis is also generally popular in American humor. It is another indication of the excessive ambition of the peo ple toward magnitude. Baron Munchausen would have been most acceptable in America. A man whose imagination can carry him far enough in humorous unveracity of the type displayed by Mark Twain in many of his west ern stories, is always a captivating entertainer. 66 American Ideals / In spite of the fact that the American pos sesses serious ideals and has the moral strain only a bit below the surface, he is the last man to take himself seriously or to allow his fellows to become over-serious or dogmatic. It is one of the saving traits in this country that the entire nation laughs easily and must of neces sity see the small and funny things in the most unforeseen places, mixing gayety with almost every phase of its complex life. The nation s humor at times goes much farther than its creator intended, and becomes a means of caricaturing in a somewhat dispro portionate way the object of its fun; examples in point being the nation-wide quips at Mr. Bryan and Josephus Daniels for their grape- juice theories, and the nation s laugh, so difficult to be forgotten, connected with a comparatively trivial incident of a few over-exuberant women showering their kisses upon a national hero. Mr. Bryan s peace efforts are pictured humor ously by a cartoonist, who draws the ex- Secretary of State with a number of dove s eggs resting in the curls of his hair while the dove disports herself in the background. \ American humor is closely associated with \ Arppriran idealism through its intuition, its spon- i Utilitarian Idealists 67 taneity, and its indispensable service. It brings back the nervous intense native temperament into correct focus. As his activity in gigantic machinations reveals his intellect, as his material successes reveal his power of organization, and his books reveal his desire for reality, the American s humor uncovers his heart, making the nation one in a common humanity, knitting it together in a kinship of good feeling, and keep ing alive the sense of good will. CHAPTER III THE SQUARE DEAL BOTH WAYS They at least believed in the words which made the Declaration immortal: "All men are created equal." I am glad to remember, too, that Lincoln, not many days before he went to join the august assembly of just men made perfect, said to me, "A man who denies to other men equality of rights is hardly worthy of freedom; but I would give even to him all the rights which I claim for myself." JOHN HAY. CHAPTER III THE SQUARE DEAL BOTH WAYS "THE leading business ideal ?" The manu facturer slowly repeated my question after me. He had just returned from a month of travel among the branches of the firm in the Middle West, and it seemed an opportune time to get from him a comprehensive answer. He placed his cigar on the corner of his desk and his eye followed down the lofty corridor of skyscrapers that darkened William Street. "In a word, I should say, the square deal both ways." This man who answered my question was not an apostle of "big business," he was not a socialist, he was not a dreamer. He was a typical business man of moderate means and perhaps somewhat more than the average thoughtfulness. He was of native stock, with out hyphen in his name or his nature, a self- respecting citizen and householder. He was the kind of man who helps to form the great national vertebrae of the United States. 72 American Ideals Was this popular statement of democracy something the man had inherited? Was it a part of that more or less loosely arranged senti ment of equality that floats all too frequently in the atmosphere of the country? What was behind the statement? What did he mean by "the square deal?" The gentlemen of eminence who in the eigh teenth century placed their signatures to that formidable American document which declares that God has created all men equal, and has also endowed them with certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, were not thereby writing history, but rather trying to designate the ideals that were and would be of the new Republic. Some of these men were slave owners, some were men of high birth and gentlemanly breeding, whose financial status was in no sense on a par with the estate of those whom their weighty legislations were to rule. They were not think ing just then of making over their chattels into free men, neither were they consciously intend ing to divide their capital with the less indus trious or less favored early colonists. They were not meditating, we believe, merely the erection of a wall of defence against the prac- The Square Deal Both Ways 73 tical doctrines of traditional English superiority and the Divine right of kings, current in their English motherland. This latter object un doubtedly had considerable weight in both the spirit and the letter of that document created by the members of this first National Congress, our hereditary political doctrinaires; but there was something else deeper and more essentially vital in the minds of these forefathers. The Constitution which was then born was the herald of a new ideal, freshly, daringly, racily seized and embodied; and this ideal was rooted and had already grown in the soil of religious conviction, which is by far the most desperately tenacious rootage from which the ideas of men may spring. It was the sentiment of the square deal intuitively grasped by men who had never dreamed of an industrial civili zation that invented the popular term. It was the fair play and equality sentiment which is American through and through. There are those among our eminent jurists of the present day whose first-hand experiences with the inequalities of the law have seemed at times to disillusion them as to the consistency of these sentiments with the conditions and practices of our twentieth-century life. One of 74 American Ideals our distinguished lawyers has characterized the Constitution as a collection of "literary generalities," while not a few have heard with out unfavorable comment the stock remark that England is more democratic than America, attributing to this statement the meaning that whatever may have been the case one hundred years ago, we are now deluding ourselves with aims and dreams and paper sanctions that have no corresponding realities in modern affairs. In other words, we have lost the trail leading back to these early ideals of real equality and freedom for all men, and the sooner we dispense with the simulacrum of our alleged freedom as exemplified in this eighteenth-century polit ical instrument, the better for our good sense and sincerity. Racial ideals, however, are like the impressions of childhood, indelible, and inclined to become more vivid as we get farther along the road, and feel and see them from the hilltop of life s maturer trials and experiences. The modern Grecian women of true Hellenic extraction still break their urns before their doors at a Greek funeral, even as in those distant days when Athens sat serene and queenly upon the throne of the world. The young westernized Chinese, The Square Deal Both Ways 75 in their Occidental bowlers and frock coats, still return in April to their parental roof tree to do honor to their ancestors, as their fathers did six thousand years before them; while the native Hindu, modern member of the Viceroy s Council in India, passes from his Europeanizecl law chamber at Delhi with traditional ease to the banks of the sacred Mother Ganges, in whose healing flood through years and count less eras his Hindu sires have sought to lave away their earthly pollution. Likewise in America, while we have changed marvellously in many ways, and have grown to maturity since the give-me-liberty-or-give-me- death cry of our forefathers rang through the thirteen sparsely settled states, there is a kind of "old home week" feeling that shivers up and down the Yankee s spine when these pristine "glittering generalities" of "freedom and equal rights" are reexpressed in various modern synonyms like "the square deal," or the "new freedom," or " the rights of the foreigner." Even "women s rights" and "votes for women" do not stagger the American imagination as they seem to paralyze the British soul. "Rights" at tached to anything or anybody is not a word to frighten the inhabitants of the United States. 76 American Ideals There is, moreover, a firm belief that will not down that these early catchwords of our eman cipated North American Commonwealth, writ ten literally in letters of blood on the morning sky of our early revolutionary day, are still shining, and indeed have always been shining through these one hundred and thirty-nine years; and if at times obscured by clouds as thick as they were frightful, there are those who contend that it has needed only the bursting of the storm or a blaze of sun to bring back these letters into fresh and clear vision. The very persistency of the term democracy induces one to believe that despite its many faults and weaknesses it is still a factor to be conjured with in the United States. Dr. H. L. Hastings, in his lectures against Robert Ingersoll, used to begin somewhat as follows: "Mr. Ingersoll has talked and written considerably about The Mistakes of Moses/ He has said so much about these mistakes that we have come to believe that a man whose mistakes men are thinking and talking about at least four thousand years after his death, must have been considerable of a man." With democracy, likewise, the word that has endured so much reproach and condemnation at the The Square Deal Both Ways 77 hands of varied constituencies, the pack-horse for almost everything that people have found disagreeable and unsuccessful in politics, morals, and manners, so much so, indeed, that it has become quite accustomed to any kind of an onslaught; democracy that has been associated with the provincial self-confidence of back woodsmen and Indians, and with ideas and customs long obsolete; democracy that has been called merely a "conceit of singularity" and a descent to the commonplace, according to all historical accounts has seen a good number of years, even before we began to talk about it and dream we had it here in America. We may conclude that it, like Moses, must be in herently a considerable force. Mr. James Russell Lowell, many years ago, near the close of his life, said: I have grown to manhood and am now growing old with the growth of this system of government in my native land, have watched its advances, or what some would call its encroachments, gradual and irresistible as those of a glacier, have been an ear witness to the forebodings of wise and good and timid men, and have lived to see these forebodings belied by the course of events, which is apt to show itself humorously careless of the reputation of prophets. 78 American Ideals When the vials of wrath are all emptied, the citizen of these commonwealths is still a demo crat, and it is still his suspicion, even when he has not thought about it very deeply, that it is a kind of blood heritage, something that it is not much use to fight, since it is so deeply and in tuitively imbedded in the very nature of his life and environment. In fact, if you want to see this Dame Democracy at her best, you only need to stir her up a bit; then she is quite likely to make the easy-going American show his fire, and under these circumstances, it may be re marked, he is probably more certain to think and to hit straight than under any other provoca tion. It is this democratic idealism, both in politics and in general affairs, that seems to the American to be good and sufficient in itself, "with all reason in it but no reason for it." It has been coming out recently in the matter of the drink problem. The question is not de bated as to whether drink is a menace either to the individual or to the nation. This might be quite generally admitted by both drinkers and non-drinkers. The question of earnest debate, here as in England, which will always arise when this matter is broached, concerns the right of the state or the nation to prohibit The Square Deal Both Ways 79 an individual from taking a drink if he wishes to do so. It is the individual s ideal of personal liberty which is menaced, and this is one of the most inviolate sanctities in the American char acter. Russia by a stroke of the pen may prohibit the use of vodka, but President Wilson could no more accomplish such a sweeping change than he could declare war against England if the people did not universally want it or demand it. The Russian peasant has been trained by gener ations of obedience to authority, autocratic and monarchical, never to speak his mind, to take his orders superimposed; consequently he has lost much of his ability as well as perhaps something of his desire for individual expression. He does not know what freedom of speech means, and centuries of oppressive silence have bred not only intellectual inanition, but have also taught him that even if he did speak, his words would be powerless; he is therefore dumb. Not so the American. From the beginning he has been a moving, living unit in his national life and progress. Indeed his life and progress has been made by himself and his neighbor and by none other. The humblest farmer around the stove in the country store feels his sense of 8o American Ideals opportunity and privilege, and voices boldly and dogmatically his sentiments regarding the nation s life, discussing at length all phases of na tional welfare, from the doings of the President in the White House down to the acts of the local constable and roadmaker. He knows, further more, that he counts, that his vote counts on election day, and it would be a foolhardy poli tician who would dare to insinuate that his views were better kept to himself. It happens, therefore, that when you start to tell the average citizen in the United States that his fancied "rights" are but the echo of his father s sentiment, a hollow hereditary thing, or at best they are only what a particular set of men who rule him tell him they can be, he is quite likely to stop his ranting about "privilege" and "prohibition" depriving him of anything inalienable, and remark about his constitutional liberty principles as a certain Englishman once spoke of the British Constitution, "The most wonderful thing about it is that it works" We are inclined to surmise that it works for some of the same reasons, for it must be recalled that our democracy was almost as much English as American at the time of the signing of that important paper in Philadelphia, that "the The Square Deal Both Ways 8l acorn from which it sprang was ripened on the British oak." It has been observed that while England was a monarchy with democratic tend encies, the United States is a democracy with conservative instincts. The American is a democrat for much the same reason that we find unrest in India to-day, for the same reason that we saw the rather im mature Filipino politician, only a brief timesince, watching with bated breath the discussion over the Jones bill. It is because all over the world men have been first of all desirous to have a hand in governing themselves, because "dele gated" powers have always been distasteful to I men of spirit and dreams, and because in a de- \ mocracy there is the inevitable feeling amongst men that they can, if they wish to bestir them selves, change conditions by their votes as well as by that other regnant means in their power, public opinion, so that the modes of life and work environing them will be more to their liking That there will be always and everywhere unrest in democracies and that there will be growing pains in connection with all young independent activities as in every healthy youth, goes without saying. An editor of one 82 American Ideals of our large city dailies, writing of unrest in Canada, has expressed the matter well: Democracy in Canada, as in all the sister colonies and in Great Britain even as in the United States has at times lost its job, become seedy, gone without its regular meals, felt the gnawing of want, the sting of poverty, but through it all it has been its own master. If it has been improvident, wasteful, ex travagant, inefficient, it has at least been free to be all of these, and at liberty to recover from them in its own way. It has not been a tagged, checked, numbered thing; even when hungry and down at the heel and out at the elbow, it has had the satisfaction of knowing that it was itself to blame. It is one of the firmly grounded principles here in the United States that the right of the people to work out their own salvation by means of a somewhat rigid constitution made by the people themselves, and amended to suit the changes in the national growth, rather than by the use of a more flexible form of government manipulated by an autocratic hand above them, forms one of the peculiar advantages of Ameri can citizenship. It has been a privilege so truly ingrained with years of checkered experiences that one would start upon an almost insuperable task, who would try to substitute the "allow- The Square Deal Both Ways 83 ance" for the "wage" in this country, and no conceded values of immediacy in a monarchy in the meeting of unexpected exigencies would for a moment compensate the democratic mind for the loss of his individual sense of participa tion. The very grave difficulties attending the construction of a firm representative state, the wrestling with the knotty problems, and the need of new decisions of fresh issues by an equally responsible electorate, furnish the dust upon which the nation may bite, the exercise by which its faculties are aroused, and make strong appeal to the intense love of the native mind for diffi culty and contest with the unsubdued. It is in the aspiring faith and in the ideal of the betterment of the things that are, which are his by nature, and in the power of bringing the impossible into reality which are the Amer ican s by material experience, that lead him to believe that no form of government other than a democracy can afford his spirit adequate scope. That he has not reached the height of his democratic ideal of equality, either in laws or in the life of business, does not invalidate the ideal in his own mind, and as long as an individ ual or a nation refuses to relinquish its ideal and is ready to fight for it withal, there is in partial 84 American Ideals fulfilment or even in failure something for which to hope. The belief of the average citizen that his national dreams of a Republic with a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," will come true, if not to-day then to-morrow, woven into perfectness on "the roaring loom of Time," is the first and the indispensable requirement, without which any and all means employed would be but the break ing of idle waves upon the shore. It is not only the presence but also the con temporary encouraging results of this demo cratic square-deal principle, as we see it slowly taking shape both in the laws and in the arena of daily affairs, that bring real light and hope to all the troubled story of remedial legislation and labor and business fears. Despite the fact that Utopian democracy is still painted on far-reced ing horizons, despite the selfishness of capital and the equal selfishness of labor, no one, we believe, save the man whose vision is bent by a fatal censoriousness and a settled pessimism, can fail to note the advance in a wide area of our modern activities of the elements of cooperation and integrity belonging to a high and ordered progress. There has been a gain in the last twenty years The Square Deal Both Ways 85 in sympathetic appreciation of the other man s point of view, which is the prime necessity of successful republics. It is more common to-day than it was at one time to hear men saying and acting on the principle laid down by Theodore Parker, who said, "Democracy means not I m as good as you are/ but you re as good as I am." There is a gain in straightforwardness and frankness in business, a gain that has pressed upstream against the ever-swifter cur rent of industrial competition. People individ ually and collectively are becoming increasingly convinced that as the Governor of Pennsylvania said not long ago, "It never pays to be smart, to put one over on the other fellow." The deal that involves injustice to the worker, whether the worker be a child in a mill or a skilled artisan in a machine shop, a clerk or a toiler in a ditch or on a farm, is becoming more and more unpopular and impossible in the fierce light that plays upon it from the press and poli tics as well as from protective labor organiza tion. The uncovering of questionable practices in insurance, industry, railroads, and statecraft have, in the memory even of our youth, aroused a scrutiny of conduct in the wide world of our coeval action that would have rejoiced and 86 American Ideals gladdened the heart of a statesman no farther removed from us than that ardent worker for the age of the Golden Rule in business and na tional affairs John Hay. More honest officials in charge of our money and our ports have been demanded since his day. There are new schemes for the relief of the poor, for the better ment of the aged by pensions, for the economy of the worker s time while at work and the more profitable use of his leisure in his hours of recrea tion, for arbitration in business in lieu of de structive attacks, and in diplomacy, a subject so dear to the heart of Mr. Hay and to which his wise counsels and foundations paved the way. Even a short-memoried man will recall our democratic advances in the nation-wide move ment to give industrial education to our youth in the public schools, in the recent enormous enlargement of free libraries, in the aroused attention given to better rural conditions, in endless philanthropies aimed at the prevention or cure of disease, and in the eugenic and hygi enic laws of national health. What are these if not eloquent expressions of the fact that the cause of the equal chance at life and happiness, the protection of the weak and the training of the strong, the sentiment of The Square Deal Both Ways 87 the square deal in intelligent practice, is still the light to our path and the inspirer of our progress. They are the most potent professions of the belief that the universe was not made for one man or one set of men alone, and that we as a people have not lost sight of those more spacious frontiers of human brotherhood which our great est men have always kept in vision. Square-dealism is coming to mean a very real thing in the United States, something far more useful and practicable than a lawyer s glitter ing generality. To the college boy it means that clean athletics and clean scholarship and clean living are far more likely to bring him recognition and honor among his fellows than their opposites, and that trickery and dissipation that were passed off as cleverness and marks of manliness twenty-five years ago now stamp him as an undesirable in college and load him with an oppressing heritage for a start in life. To the congressman sustained by a rising public opinion in morals of states, the square deal has meant the repeal of the Panama Canal bill, in the interests of a square deal, not for ourselves simply, but also for our national neighbors. To the modern self-respecting business man it has meant an increasing ambition to be well thought 88 American Ideals of by one s business associates, to gain and to hold professional standing, and to maintain one s self-respect in the world of affairs. To the tradesman it signifies the reputation for just dealing, to give for a dollar a dollar s worth, and the growing belief that to make a customer is better than to make a sale. A real estate man put the matter thus: "Most men desire to live so that other men say, his word is as good as his bond. Most of the men I know prefer to have other men think of them as good rather than clever. They may desire to merit both of these qualifications attributed to them, but would prefer the former." The friends of the late Charles Frohman have stated, with justifiable pride in their associate, that a contract was never necessary between him and his workers, that Frohman s word was sufficient. Dr. David Starr Jordan has well summarized the extensive sweep of these present- day ideals, individual and national, when he says that the leading men of the country are looking to see our public life as clean, wholesome, just, and true as the best private life can be. As the wheels of progress are continually turning out new situations in a swiftly moving civilization, we must needs be careful frequently The Square Deal Both Ways 89 to define and redefine what we mean by this attractive and benevolent sounding term equality. Certain of the gravest dangers of the present period in our social and industrial world hang upon the right understanding of what a square deal really signifies for men as for nations. Views on the subject vary widely and stretch all the way from the President s theory of the "new freedom" to the hearsay ideas of a certain recently landed immigrant who was found wiping his shoes on a towel in an East Side hotel, and who, being reprimanded for this rather generous use of the hotel linen, said in a tone of real surprise, "I thought the government furnished these for everybody." A Harvard professor is quoted as interpreting this "born free and equal" clause in the Con stitution as meaning that men are created equal, not that they must remain so which would seem about as far from the real meaning of the original instrument declaring our liberties, as the immigrant s impression that equality and freedom signified that any man could take and use anything he found handy. Dr. Van Dyke expressed the spirit of our national equality more clearly when he said, " It implies that what 90 American Ideals equality exists by creation ought to remain by protection." In other words, the square deal in America gives every man an equal right with any or all competitors to enter the lists for the great prizes of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And it carefully watches the race from the judges stand to see that every contestant gets a fair chance in accordance with the rules of the game. For breaking rules the penalties are supposed to be the same for all; for winners the prizes are sure, regardless of the particular endowment, race or social standard. No doors are barred in any direction as far as opportunity is con cerned, the only condition being that the con testant observe the laws of the contest that he himself helps to make, and prove worthy of his steel. One of our chief justices has avowed that the right to follow any of the common occu pations of life is an inalienable right. The mistake of reformers in various coteries to be found in America at present, equipped with all sorts of eccentric Utopian vagaries and whims, lies frequently in the attempt to make inequalities of capacity and service equalities by the swift stroke of a law: a vain attempt at standardizing possessions without standardizing The Square Deal Both Ways 91 individuals. It is juggling with effects and not taking account of causes. You can equalize rights to work for rewards, but you cannot i equalize the rewards without depriving individ ualism of its spring and virility. A square deal means a square chance to play with the other players, and any forced attempt by laws or society to make the prize winner divide his profits with men on the grand stand has usually been considered in the United States in the nature, not of fair play, but of hold-up. Hold ups in dark streets as well as on Wall Street do occur in America, but they are not favored by the square-deal sentiment, and there is further more a growing tendency to make life disagree able for both kinds of footpads. In brief, the strain of the square-deal sentiment, so far as the law is concerned, is to the effect that the Govern ment will invariably protect a man in his right of an equal chance with his fellows to live and let live. It is the mixing up of political equality with social and industrial equality that causes much of our misunderstanding and dangerous differ ences. Politically the square deal means the chance to vote. In a sense equality has purely a political significance. That men are equal in 92 American Ideals other respects is plainly false. There is a unity of brotherhood that must not be mixed up with an equality of political rights. Equal rights before the law, the rights of protection of life and property, are involved in political democ racy. The equal right to work and succeed, t if one can, is also inherent in industrial democ racy, but this does not carry with it the right 1 either to envy or to snatch away another s suc- cess. The artist who painted the picture and experiences of Cain and Abel reveals the start of Cain to his lower destiny at the moment when he became an enemy to his brother s success with his sacrifices, his flocks, and his ability to please his God. It was not only the sin of covetousness and envy: it was the darker thought that made the lasting mark on Cain, the thought "these things shall not be my brother s." There is a distinct personal as well as polit ical side to equality and the square deal. Suc cess depends not simply upon having a chance to assist in making laws, it also inheres in in dividualism . Business bent, sagacity, common- sense, the absence of too much artistic tempera ment, and the ability to work hard, to keep sober and save, determine eminence in the business or industrial world. A man can be a rich demo- The Square Deal Both Ways 93 crat or a poor democrat, and both may be good democrats. Neither riches nor poverty are dis graces providing you have the ability to think clearly and to discriminate and to get people s points of view. All the square deal in the world, however, cannot make lazy and worthless men equal with active, industrious, and good men. These inequalities are neither social nor political, but personal and abiding. The necessity of distinguishing carefully between the personal right of the individual and the national right of the Government has been brought forcibly to our attention in the condi tions in which we find ourselves at present relative to business. The very ardor with which we have gone reforming and renovating our corporate concerns in America has been inclined to revert upon the people in a shape very much resembling a boomerang. Big busi ness has been investigated so much for and against recently that we find ourselves involved in a nation-wide fear. There is fear on the part of business as to what the Government is going to do, and a corresponding fear on the part of lawmakers as to what business in its large and complicated capacity is going to do. The rail roads are afraid, and with no unjust fear, of the 94 American Ideals Interstate Commerce Commission; the banks are afraid of the Federal Reserve Board and the Comptroller of Currency; the express com panies are afraid of the Postmaster General; and the purveyors of food products show signs of fear of the Department of Agriculture. Now there has sprung up the new Trade Commission, with its inspectors and investigators going far and wide into the details of industry, and it is not strange that our industrial establishments show fear of such agencies. As a consequence of these fears both capital and labor suffer. Business is timid and in vestors sit upon their money bags. Just at present labor seems to be having its innings, and capital is suffering for its former abuses. The president of one of our large life insurance companies has thus succinctly summarized the situation: Our great business development went far beyond the comprehension of the average man. This gave the demagogue his opportunity, and business is now being punished, not alone for its excesses which were many but for its successes, which were great. The remedy for this weakness of our democ racy is identical with that which may be ap- The Square Deal Both Ways 95 plied with general benefit to almost any phase of our national troubled life. It is, in the words of the business man, the square deal both ways. It is the return to the simple but vital means of a better mutual understanding. Ex-President Taft has said that in America unless all are prosperous no one is prosperous. The remark is a significant one and holds much of truth, but the secret of prosperity is at times quite as much a matter of sympathy and appreciation, born of knowledge of the other party s situation, as it is of active energy and indomitable per severance. Professor Palmer of Harvard once said that the characteristic of a true teacher was "an aptitude for vicariousness," the ability not only to realize another man s burden, but also the willingness, if need be, to help him carry it. This may be going beyond the square deal, even the square deal both ways. It goes beyond justice to fellowship, beyond business to brotherhood, but is it not in the light of such high-minded idealism as this that our Declara tion of Independence saw the light? Have not the greatest blessings of democracy been pur chased by sacrifice, even the sacrifice of one s own rights at times, in order to truly retain them in larger and richer possession? CHAPTER IV AMERICAN VERSUS ENGLISH IDEALS A foreign country is a point of comparison where- from to judge our own. EMERSON. CHAPTER IV AMERICAN VERSUS ENGLISH IDEALS IT WAS nearly thirty years ago that Matthew Arnold, after his visit to America, wrote in the "Nineteenth Century," saying that, as he viewed them, our dangers as a nation are "self- glorification and self-deception." These traits he attributes to "the predominance of the com mon and ignoble, born of the predominance of the average man." The search of the English critic for the "sense of elevation was unsatis factory, and reveals among other things the difficulty of the foreigner to get at the real America. Lord Haldane gave utterance some time ago to the thought that the great danger threaten ing a rupture in the relations between Germany and the United Kingdom lay in the fact that owing somewhat to a common origin each nation imagined that it understood the other. The present lamentable blunders shown before the eyes of the world in the mistaking of mo- 99 loo American Ideals tives and ideals of peoples closely united by the ties of blood and marriage, and even with ad joining territories, lead to the conviction that there is something inalienably and racially in herent in the warp and woof of every people, which in a sense is not translatable, especially to a foreigner: something which even the native who feels it intuitively finds it most difficult to express. In spite of the cementing ties between the English and the American, and not withstand ing the usual talk of "motherland," these two countries are, in the realm of national char acteristics and ideals, worlds apart. While one senses certain truth in the criticism of a great English critic like Arnold, even though that criti cism is more than a quarter of a century old, there is yet a feeling that the real atmosphere of America has escaped him. Americans have been well supplied with books written by our cousins across the seas, and have seen themselves as the Britisher sees them in almost every type of inter pretation, ranging all the way from Thackeray and Dickens to H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett. Yet there is always, even in the most tolerant advice-loving Yankee mind, the suspicion that Americans are Americans by reason of the American versus English Ideals IGI innate might of a few distinctive principles ger mane to the nature of things in the United States, and rooted, as one might say, in the subsoil of this Western land principles which are loath to give their color to a transient stranger. Still it is with England that our interests and ideals are more nearly identical than with any other nation, and it is to England that our admiration and respect have gone forth in a multitude of ways, even when we have been unconscious of it, or perhaps rather too proud to admit it. Since, furthermore, we were all Eng lishmen in the beginning, we may be justified in turning to a brief contrasting study of the two people as a means of bringing out more clearly certain of the distinctive traits and ideals of the inhabitants of "the states." It is first needful to remember that the dis tinctions here are traditionally not of aristocra cies, but of merit; not of age and the "sense of elevation" derived from the contemplation of either majesties or monuments (since we have none of these), but primarily the distinctions centring in men and their work. There is, more over, comparatively small respect in America for men of good birth but of bad character or unem- IO2 American Ideals ployed talents. Even the adornments of the artistic connoisseur, and of the idle or "gentle man" class, find here in this land of plain reality little more than curiosity and that kind of re spectful attention given to unusual "specimens." The crowds may line the sidewalks in front of a Fifth Avenue church to watch the wedding procession of a scion of one of the few old families of wealth still left to us; but even a casual study of the faces and a slight analysis of the remarks of the spectators will reveal the abysmal difference between the thoughts called forth by this spectacle on Fifth Avenue and those seemingly uppermost in the minds of the London watchers of nobility on Pall Mall, or at the marriage of the son of a duke or an eminent representative of an old English house. A chief engineer, on the other hand, return ing from his notable labors in connection with the building of the Panama Canal, calls forth a crowd as diverse in character as it is serious and respectful in attention, and the man of deeds is placed upon a pedestal of honor and national regard to which the mere inheritor of wealth or an old family name can never hope to aspire. American versus English Ideals 103 Through reasons more or less evident American ideals gather instinctively about people like Edison, of whom the public never tires of hearing. They like to read how he spends long, sleepless nights working out his latest electrical arrangement, which they are certain will open new windows into a more usable world. The crowd never tires of reading or hearing of Lin coln, whom certain European writers have truth fully said was without "distinction" and who was undoubtedly at times ordinary, even per haps vulgar, both in the speech and manners of his day. But Lincoln visualized that which Americans prize higher than coronets and Nor man blood heart quality and the nation s ideals and reverence cling closely about his memory. His homely wit and kindliness ap pealed to their love of real things, and they keep green his grave with a sentiment as deep as it is disregardful of the lowliness of his early social station and possessions. This is not far from the innate respect felt in the souls of all men everywhere for great hu manity, and in this type of elevated regard the dwellers on the North American continent are second to no people beneath the sun. We would not minimize the need, in this IO4 American Ideals country of magic endeavor and enormous raw material of both heart and hand (material which has not yet had time to be worked into artistic expression), of the erection upon these strong basic traits of a superstructure of gentlemanly manners and a worship of beauty in all its forms. One of our New England writers has pointed out with sagacity that it is a good thing to have self- made men, but for constant association almost any one would prefer men whom civilization of the highest order has had a part in forming. In such matters the American may look, as in deed in many another thing, to the land which gave England and these United States a com mon stock. To come to a more detailed and concrete com parison, one is at once struck at the amazing contrast between the Englishman and American in the realm of feeling and expression. The American is first of all volubly expressive, while \ the Englishman is studiedly reserved. The Britisher is a kind of negationist; he is almost stoically repressive, and frequently inarticulate. John Galsworthy has said that there is no more deceptive person than the Englishman on the face of the globe, his deception being due to his inability as well as his unwillingness to make American versus English Ideals 105 himself understood. The American, on the other hand, is enthusiastic, fluent, and is quite ready usually to examine and to expatiate upon his own inner feelings as well as to make a guess at those of other people. To hide his feelings is second nature to the Englishman. Should his emotions by some unwary chance get the best of him, he is usually ashamed of himself and expects to be laughed at. He deprecates any lapse from his suppressed idealism. The Amer ican feels that some of this is parade, what Robert Louis Stevenson called, "A winking, curled and oiled, ultra-cultural-Oxford-don sort of affectation/ and discounts it accordingly. I was talking with a young man over the omnipresent tea urns at Oxford regarding these matters of English and American traits, when I ventured to suggest that his father (a promi nent Englishman) was a fitting example of the Britisher who had accomplished much work and had not talked much about it. When I began to speak of a book which had pictured this public man with his accomplishments in South Africa, the son waived the matter aside with a deprecat ing gesture,saying,"Oh,thegovernor s all right/ and suddenly turned the conversation to the last cricket match with Cambridge. 106 American Ideals At the Oxford Union, that miniature English world, where, in a manner strange to America, the chief members of Parliament return to pre side at the sessions, helping to keep inviolate the English traits and the attitude of the English mind toward public service, I have heard students called down severely for giving a sug gestion of emotionalism in their speeches. In fact, one student, who in our American judgment had made by far the best presentation of the eve ning, was riddled as to his argument and his side utterly routed, because his opponents had cred ited to him an attempt to play on the feelings of his hearers through an illustration suggestive of "spread eagleism." To the American, accustomed to the public mode of expression in his own land, this show of feeling would have hardly been noticeable, certainly not ob jectionable. Another student demolished his opponent who had been lured into sentiment by saying: "Sir, Mr. - has tried to wring our hearts I submit, Sir, that our hearts refuse to be wrung!" The state papers, as well as the public ad dresses of Englishmen, while on a high level of intellectual reasoning, and exhibiting frequently examples of choice diction, often make dry American versus English Ideals 107 reading for the man who has become familiar with the American type of political presentation. An American politician has observed that the only parallel to the human interest found in the Congressional records filed away upon the dusty shelves in Washington are the "popular" speeches of the members of the House of Com mons, reported in full in the dreary columns of the London Times. A conservative master of one of the old col leges at Cambridge remarked to me that the principle objection he found to Lloyd George (who was at the time delivering speeches in Wales on the land question) was that he re minded him of his namesake Henry George, whose spellbinding characteristics were as unin telligible as they were distasteful to the educated Englishman. The attitude is reflected in the statement of Francis Gribble concerning Jowett, the old Master of Balliol, a man "full of milk of human kindness, but profoundly conscious that milk makes a mess when it boils over, and firmly resolved to prevent that catastrophe by keeping it in a refrigerator." The American is also easily moved and often he is easily convinced. It may be added that he is quite as readily cooled and as readily un- io8 American Ideals convinced. His across-the-seas relative is hard to be convinced, but when his conviction is formed he is a veritable bulldog. One of his countrymen has said in relation to his attitude regarding the present war that when the Eng lishman finally sees and seizes a thing, he takes it with the whole of his weight, and wastes no breath in telling you he has taken hold. The American is friendly and long-suffering. He does not grumble over trifles, and frequently is justly accused of being indifferent to his rights, while the Englishman is the most inveter ate grumbler, especially over little things, to be found extant, and withal the most determined advocate for his common rights, be these rights located in Liverpool, Cairo, Calcutta, or Hong kong. As a chance traveller the Englishman is about as companionable as a stone image and equally communicative. His impermeability is a won der of perfectness. A Danish gentleman who had lived most of his life in an English colony told me of his experience in crossing Russia on the Siberian railroad from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg, a journey of thirteen days, in the same compartment with an Englishman. Their conversation during the entire trip consisted in American versus English Ideals 109 saying "Good morning" when they arose and handing each other the daily papers, for which each one politely thanked the other with a bow. Had these two men been Americans, at the end of the first day there doubtless would have been no subject in all the range between politics, piety, and personalities, that would not have been discussed with fervor and thoroughness. The second day would have doubtless been more difficult in the matter of conversation, since they would have told everything readily acces sible the first day, but for the American, at least, the first day s conversation would have paid for the trip, and not to have expressed himself would have made the journey exquisite boredom. As a tourist, the American is the very epit ome of good nature, geniality, curiosity, and agreeableness. He is a first-class mixer, talks easily, laughs easily, and his bump of inquisi- tiveness, together with his temerity in unearth ing the unearthable, has made him the arch in- vestigator of the world. He goes in where angels fear to tread, and to want to know about any thing is synonymous with finding out. When he is well mannered (and it must be remembered that not all Americans in these days travel on the Cleveland or in Cook parties) we ven- no American Ideals ture to say, even at the risk of being called prej udiced, no world traveller of any nation makes a more charming and obliging comrade. In this relative appraisement of the globe trotting class one must remember the sources from which the different types of English and Americans come. America with its quick results and quick money has foisted into the world of travel thousands of people whose forebears and antecedent opportunities for culture have been far removed from those familiar to the majority of the English sightseers. A manufacturer of machinery, for example, in the Middle West makes an unexpected five thousand dollars, and he immediately thinks of how he can expend it for his family. An early thought is to send his kindly, good-natured, domestically inclined wife, with her little troupe of pretty daughters, who are striving for something that their home town does not afford, to Europe, or possibly on a trip around the world. They take with them their freshness, their vivacity, their overbounding health and optimism and joy in every new sight, and their training which has been of the sort that teaches them to give full vent to their expressions of wonder or disdain. The English tourists, mean while, shrug their aristocratic shoulders and American versus English Ideals in exclaim: "Those horrid Americans!" It is sometimes forgotten that it is only of late years that the people of the same strata in England have been either capable or desirous of extending their knowledge or of gratifying their curiosity with the scenes of foreign lands. The average middle-class Englishman is con tent with his home and fireside, and with good safe 5 per cent, investments on his money. These are more tangible and satisfactory assets in his eyes than the investment in culture for his wife and family. Kindliness and humaneness, the common American traits, are responsible also for the way in which the sorrows and calamities of the world cut our countrymen to the quick. His extremist temperament makes the American prodigal and sometimes foolish with his wealth, he is often as impulsive as he is excessive in his philanthropy. Full of nervous sensi bility, he wears out much mental and physical energy by his neighborliness. The Britisher in contrast is seldom excessive and goes to ex tremes far less frequently. This makes for a certain toughness of nervous fibre that calls in turn for fewer sanitariums in England than in America; this insensibility to the nerve-wrack- H2 American Ideals ing stress and strain of modern competitive existence has caused the Englishman to be pointed out as a good example of the conserva tion of energy; it fits him peculiarly for a war of exhaustion in which the proverbial ability to "muddle through" and take things as they come are rare talents. This trait of repression and staying at home in his own feelings, this inaptitude for sacrificial interest in others, saves energy for the Englishman; it also loses many opportunities for being human, or so it appears in the American s eyes. In the matter of ready adjustment and adaptability, the American easily outstrips his brother of English race. Given the same ideals, the Yankee finds many more means with which to achieve them, since he has fewer binding restrictions upon his working. His lack of idee fixe and freedom-confining traditions leaves him free to move more easily on his bear ings, and makes it possible to get things done with promptness and often while the English man is thinking it over. The American likes taking risks and is a ready apostle of all pro gressive measures. His conservatism, however, is increasingly noticeable along some lines. I was talking recently with the editor of one of American versus English Ideals 113 the large magazines who said it was their policy to publish virtually nothing having to do with current interests in any part of the world. This is quite largely an acquired trait, and conserv atism is naturally of slower rootage and growth in a country where newness, change, and ad vance are attendants of all activities. That a thing is fresh and untried, and heretofore un heard of, is usually an attractive recommenda tion, when to the more cautious Britisher a new thing is intended to arouse hesitation, if not suspicion. A prominent English writer related to me recently an experience which befell him in con nection with an old and very reliable publish ing house in London. A seemingly attractive book proposition, involving a number of volumes relating to a widely popular subject, was pre sented, and one that was afterward accepted with avidity and much success by an American firm. The Londoner called in a member of his company to consider with him the scheme. The method of consideration consisted of looking over a dusty pile of records to discover whether the house had ever engaged in a similar publish ing venture; finding that it had not, the head of the establishment immediately and without 114 American Ideals further deliberation as to the particular merits or demerits of the plan before him rejected the proposal, saying with a thoroughly satisfied and conclusive air: "No, we cannot accept it; we have never undertaken anything like that." Tradition ruled, and contemporary interest lost. A New York publisher was next approached, and his first question, according to the narrator, was, "Is there any similar set of books in exist ence?" When he had made sure that the idea was a new one and after he had consulted with his "men on the road" to find out whether they thought it would appeal to the latest tendency in current demands, he said: "This looks good to us. We will take it. We believe it will make a hit from the start, since it is a new angle of ap proach." And it did, though in England it might have been a dismal failure, and have justified fully the hesitation of the London publisher. It reveals the ever-ready willingness of the American to take a chance on a new thing. This same unreadiness to change from the English manner of doing business has been the reason for more than one British failure in the Far East, as the converse trait of fitting the product to the customer and the latest require- American versus English Ideals 115 ment of the public has spelled success for the American and the German in that region. It is probably au fond the ideal of getting on, the aim of success through adaptation, that is felt in this drift away from any final or ac cepted way of doing things. The middle-class Englishman, constitutionally solid and stolid, is satisfied and quite resigned to his fate of middle-class existence, taking it as a matter of course, and therefore devoting himself to the immediate duties before him. No large dreams or future ambitions blur his eyes. The Amer ican, on the contrary, is never content and is always seeing himself rising out of present mediocrity to leadership and power in the class of business men or stratum of society immediately above him. The Englishman, moreover, is inclined to take his business as a necessary evil, especially the Englishman of the upper classes: a thing to be gotten over as quickly as possible, so that he may get on to something else: golf, shooting, or politics, for which he cares infinitely more than his real work. The American regards his business as his main activity in life; it forms often his di version as well as his daily task; "he is all business" is an expression frequently heard. n6 American Ideals It is the one thing for which he delays his pleasures and recreations and amusements and travel, it is the altar upon which he too often y* immolates matters of intellectual and cultural interests; it is a veritable religion to many, and no man of any other nation, not even the shop- keeping Chinese, worships more loyally or un- intermittingly the captivating gods of trade. It is because of his devotion to business that the European newspaper artists never weary of picturing Uncle Sam as a pork packer mil lionaire and the shrewd Yankee trader with the head of a hog and the octopus body of a trust magnate. We have yet to find a company of foreigners either abroad or at home who fail, after a few moves of the conversation, to bring up the money wraith against the American. Without doubt we have here a subject of strik ing interest close to the nation s idealism and fruitful of marked comparison with English aims. That the American thinks in terms of money, and that wealth bulks large in his esti mate of success, no one closely acquainted with him will deny, but when it comes to a compari son in the matter of the reason for acquiring dollars, we doubt whether he will be found more culpable than the Englishman. American versus English Ideals 117 Certain it is that in conversation the English man has been reared to talk of other things than his income. He has been trained to connect the commercial transaction with a lower order of society and accomplishments than those repre sented by the persons and activities connected with public life, the realm of letters, and especially the careers of his military and colonizing country men on the seas or in distant climes. This contrast between the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United States was brought out humorously by an experience occurring in one of my trips across the Yellow Sea with a Scotchman and his son as travelling companions. The subject of the ever-present thought in the minds of Americans was suggested as usual by my Scottish friend, and with some ardor of con viction I was endeavoring to show him that these were largely incidental accompaniments in the beginnings of the construction of a civiliza tion, and that already there were many indica tions of exchanging this subject of wealth for others in a wide circle of cultural endeavor in which the Americans were beginning to indulge themselves. Things were going along fairly well, when, during a lull in the conversation, an unmistakably Yankee voice cut the atmosphere n8 American Ideals of the comparatively small dining-saloon with the remark, "By the way, what do you have to pay for a porterhouse steak at the Holland House?" The Scotchman looked at me from quizzical eyes, and it is sufficient to say that this ended my argument for the time being. When one turns to the mental consciousness of the two peoples, and this consciousness is closely akin to the spring of their idealism, one finds sharply outlined a few distinguishing features. In the United States it is easier to find persons who are self-conscious and imaginative, and who include the past and the future as well as the present in their introspective sense of themselves. , Many an American is a dreamer, and as much of \ a failure in a practical way as is the speculative Easterner. There is a marked sensitiveness when it comes to the fear of public opinion in regard to his fellows, while the prevalence and the flourishing success of almost every kind of metaphysical or religious sect known on the face of the earth is a mark of his unqualified mental receptiveness. The Englishman, on the contrary, however ^ "Ynucri he may scout the idea of materiality in his } patronizing attitude at times toward his New World cousin, dwells in the realm of facts, and American versus English Ideals 119 often in the atmosphere of a blind practicality, even more than does the American. As a busi ness man, the Englishman is "awfully level headed" and gives the impression to many foreigners of a distressing matter-of-factness. His religion he accepts as he accepts his national consciousness, as a matter of course, and one finds abstract discussions of religion and philos ophy as infrequent and usually distasteful inter lopers in the ordinary English conversation. New religions and anything that approximates to fads and fancies are not readily received in that land of conservatism. To the adaptable and ideal-loving American the popular sentiment welcomes change so rap idly that in some respects it is open to the Frenchman s retort regarding his own people: "I put no faith in any of the laws of literary history, except in that which consists in saying that a fashion succeeding another fails if it is not the absolute converse of that which preceded it." The solidity and imperturbability of the Englishman in contrast is often as unintelligible as it is foreign to the American temperament. It must be remembered, especially as far as the leadership of English thought and action is concerned, that the twenty or more large Eng- I2O American Ideals lish public schools, which have no counterpart on earth, and which train at least one hundred thousand of English youth of each generation, are responsible largely for this uniformity of mentality and this mysteriously cool, critical, and reserved manner. When one appreciates that seven eighths of the important positions, public, professional, administrative, as well as an increasingly large number of notable posts in England s present-day industrial enterprises, are held by the graduates of schools of which Eton, Harrow, and Rugby have been for genera tions the exacting models, there is found at least one reason for the English mind. Here young England learns impartial justice, and acquires the knowledge of how to govern others as well as himself. Here the orderliness and obedience to law, so much needed in the United States just now, becomes second nature to the young Britisher. These schools cultivate the negation of self-consciousness, and are more or less in imical to that type of individualism which the multitudinous vocational schools of America, with their emphasis upon individual aptitude, magnify and develop. The negative philosophy of these schools of England, whose spirit enters so largely into the American versus English Ideals 121 English ideal, has been humorously satirized in a code of ten commandments of the English schoolboy, by a French writer in the "Revue Politique et Parliamentaire": 1. There is only one God, and the Captain of football is his Prophet. 2. My school is the best school in the world. 3. Without big muscles, strong will, and proper collars, there is no salvation. 4. I must wash much, and in accordance with tradition. 5. I must speak the truth even to a master, if he believes everything I tell him. 6. I must play games with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength. 7. To work outside class hours is indecent. 8. Enthusiasm, except for games, is in bad taste. 9. I must look up to the older fellows, and pour contempt on newcomers. 10. I must show no emotion, and not kiss my mother in public. In these training places of English schoolboys there is as little attention given to bothering about one s inner state of consciousness as one can imagine. One teacher told me that he did not want his boys to bother about their souls, but to take care of their bodies and their souls 122 American Ideals would take care of themselves. As a conse quence you will rarely see a high degree of moral or mental sensitiveness on the part of these graduates. They do not brood, neither do they take undue trouble about their future state. Neither do they sit up nights to do original thinking relative to their philosophy of life. They simply accept the traditional forms and go steadily along in the paths their fathers trod. Voluntary religion in the schools and colleges is almost unknown. In a visit to a wide circle of varying types of English institutions recently I found virtually no student-initiated classes for Bible study. In American colleges and uni versities there are in striking contrast each year no less than 40,000 students studying the Bible, for the most part in student-organized and stu dent-led classes. But in spite of the fact that the methods of training are so strikingly different, the English method fits the English mind, and these schools have furnished a marvellous dynamo for forging and moulding Englishmen. As far as mentality is concerned, and idealism in the realm of intellectual imagination, where idealism is particularly regnant, the American holds his own with the Englishman. Prof. American versus English Ideals 123 Gilbert Murray of Oxford, after teaching Ameri can college boys at Amherst for a year, in answer to my question regarding the difference he no ticed among the students of American and Eng lish schools, replied: "The American boy is more alert, usually I think more intellectual; he adapts his knowledge much more readily to the contemporary conditions with which he is closely allied. He lacks, however, the background of knowledge, and especially the knowledge of the classics common among the students of England. He also lacks in a certain reserve, which is one of the notable products of the English public schools." In a peculiar sense this college and schoolboy life of the two nations reflects the countries of which they are a part. The Englishman, re pressive, matter of fact, slow to action but tena cious to the end, drawing his inspirations from staid and sacred traditions of a great Past, takes his whole life more practically and with a self- confidence that often refuses to admit that idealism has part or lot in his thinking. The American, on the other hand, who draws his sentiment and ideals from the shining glory of the present, is not ashamed either of his dreams or his optimism. He has already seen so many 124 American Ideals evidences of his constructive imagination that he is willing to believe the strangest miracles of his mind. By the very expression of his enthusiasm he grows more and more convinced of the possibilities both of his head and of his heart. As the years roll, he will become in creasingly conservative, and the mannerisms of a new world state will be tempered by the gentler arts to which his hand is already becoming accustomed. That he will ever become English either in the spirit or the revelation of his ideals, is not to be expected, for the breath which he draws is filled with a different ozone, for him surely a more ratified and exhilarating air. As the ground beneath his feet stretches away to a continent whose borders only have been touched into life by the magic of his hand, likewise his idealism will grow, and his visions will expand until they are wide enough to match his bound less prairies and deep enough to satisfy his rest less soul. CHAPTER V AMERICAN VERSUS ORIENTAL IDEALISM But often, in the world s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart that beats So wild, so deep, in us; to know Whence our thoughts come, and where whey go. MAX MULLER. CHAPTER V AMERICAN VERSUS ORIENTAL IDEALISM THE French expression, "s orienter"- -"to find one s East " is meaningful in these days of quest and change. This going to the East, not simply on a Pacific Mail steamer, but in one s thought journeys, is more really than we at times appre ciate going back home, for it is from the East we came, bringing with us many of the things we value most highly. The discovery of the Orient has been the be ginning of a loftier idealism for many of the sons of America and Europe. We have learned in our journeys and in our studies that the East has always been a golden wonderland where the Occidental has loved to wander and to read the realities of the ideal world. Max Miiller is only one of many whose spirits have been aroused to higher flights by the contemplation of the glories associated with the Indus and the Ganges, whose shores are opulent with an erudition and imagi- 127 128 American Ideals nation comparing favorably in her golden age with the Augustan period in the West. All the world is debtor to the Aryan thought power, insight, and speculation which trail back through the social and spiritual history of pris tine centuries. Here in the East we find the home of the Sanscrit literature; it is the birth place of religion; it is the "flower field of the soul." In the East we find the greatest ethno logical museum on the planet, the present-day America to the contrary. It is here and here alone that the Occidental finds treasured some of the most precious prizes of humanity, whether we speak of language, of philosophy and my thology, or of those primitive arts and ideals that have cast their light far along the ways trodden by our modern feet. To the East we look for the fatherhood and the motherhood of the most natural of natural religions. Here are the workers in the realm of the most fascinating and transparent romance and love myths, making a jewel casket for humanity more choice and inestimable than the fabled riches of Eastern kings. From the Orient come the thinkers in the region of the highly subtle and serene metaphysics, the framers of some of the most enduring social and moral American versus Oriental Idealism 129 laws; from thence come the seers, the dreamers, and the men who know how to wait. Napoleon once called Egypt the most impor tant land in the world. It was to find the East that Columbus sailed in that vast spiritual ad venture that discovered the Western hemi sphere. Marco Polo and Commodore Perry stirred the Far Eastern pool for the healing of the nations, and the East India Company opened doors through which there have come to us influences that the soul prizes beyond money, riches as incomparable as the undying verse of Sir Edwin Arnold. It is in our present marvellous development of > the features of the outward world, of modern science and industry, of free institutions and international relations, that the East comes to us pleading more strongly than ever for the primal emphasis upon the inward and true / world of historical and spiritual ideas, for the ^ awakening of the slumbering life of religion, and the "things invisible And cast beyond the moon." The East furnishes to present-day America the required analogy and counterpart, if not 130 American Ideals the essential ground work upon which mankind in the practical West must build its super structure of durable idealism, and thereby carry its organic life to higher and higher stages. 5 The Church of England hit upon the spiritual / truth when it built all its churches facing the i East. It is from the East that the wind of the \ spirit blows. When the needle of the religious compass comes ta rest, it points toward the j East. Here lies the magnetic pole. Of all the most pitiable of men is he who has not been willing to learn by sincere respect and careful study the lessons of the great past, lessons that come to us out of the night of time. A nation, especially, standing in the "foremost files of Western time" can only at her peril of soul disregard Asia, with her vast contribution both to the old and to the new of the entire world. To disregard those and that preceding us is usually to disregard or to care little for those or that which are to come. To such an one life is a chain of sand while it ought to be an electric chain, making our hearts tremble and vibrate to the most ancient thought of the past, as well as with the most distant hopes of the future. We are quite generally convinced here in American versus Oriental Idealism 131 America, as Europe has been for generations, of the lofty intellectual education and spiritual elevation derived from Greek thought. Upon it has been based the main education of English youth since the thirteenth century, and its classic and cultural value, even in these hard utilitarian days in America, is never quite lost to view in our schools and literature. Yet we care less about the fact that the springs of the earliest Greek Hebrew and Phoenician writings rose in the wisdom of the ancients, and, in a very literal sense, flowed westward through the "Wise Men of the East."<^Was it not at the Zoroastrian altar that the Ionian sages lighted their torches of philosophy?-* Was it not the conquest of Asia Minor by the Persians that introduced Thales and Anaximenes and Her- aclitus to the Uranian myths and dogmas which were destined to color potently the entire mass of Grecian thought ? And was not the vaunted science of Moorish fame but the tapping of Oriental culture for the modern world? Ill for our learning and ill for our good sense of values if we travel in the Orient and read Eastern literature simply to behold a phantas magoria of tourists and donkey trips along the Nile, revolting superstitions on the Ganges, 132 American Ideals or even a wonderland of sentimental golden color, outlandish customs and legends, of the meanings of which we are often as ignorant as of the real nature of the primeval people whose present external and half westernized civiliza tion appears only to delude and lead us astray. It is only as we begin to sympathize and to study with our imagination and idealism at work, quite as much as our Baedekers and pro vincialism, that we appreciate that much of the difference between our thought and institutions and those of the East consists in name and not/ in substance of belief, and that the land on thought and beauty is linked to our land ofy action and progress by indivisible ties that have no latitude or longitude. We then dis cover that what we have given to the Oriental in machinery and modem innovations has already been repaid us a hundredfold in the coinage of mental, mystical, and spiritual ideas. We have dwelt far too long and too expati- atingly upon the darker and more sensual side of the East in our travel books and reports. We have need to remember that the true spirit of the Orient is seldom if ever revealed through statistical and formal reports of agents polit ical, ecclesiastical, or educational, whose find- American versus Oriental Idealism 133 ings are written all too frequently with the object of influencing a "constituency," or for securing gifts to particular propaganda. We plead for a point of view, and that for our own sake, which will regard the Oriental otherwise than as a heathen smoking cheroots and kiss ing the feet of wooden idols; we plead for a regard and a study of the sages and prophets, especially those of East India, who were men of deep intellectual insight and marvellous vision of the unseen but not unreal world, far in ad vance of many of the mystic saints of the mid dle European ages. These men were taught through generations "to look inward upon them selves, upward to something not themselves, and to see whether they could not understand a little of the true import of that mystery which we call life upon earth. " First, then, in order to learn the message of Eastern idealism to America there is required a sympathetic imagination, a fraternal attitude, a receptive, broad, and as far as possible an unprejudiced religious point of view. Some one has said that clouds are dark to those who are beneath them; but that on the upper side, where the sun shines, they glow with golden splendor. 134 American Ideals We need first of all to localize the Orient. It is not one as the West is one, either in geog raphy or in civilization of the outer and inner man. In this comparison for this particular purpose we would do well to eliminate the Mohammedan sections of North Africa, where advanced thought has largely stagnated, as well as certain parts of the modernized China and Japan, where a different set of impressions as well as a different set of characteristics of mankind appear from those which are found in East India, the very heart of Asia, the Mecca and the mother of idealism. It is in the contrast of these ideals, especially the ideals of the spirit and the religion of India and America, that the sharpest antitheses are induced and the most suggestive thought is aroused. Indian ideals furnish instantly a decided con trast to those current in the United States in their social import. As perhaps no country in the world has the ideal of democracy so deeply ingrained as America, there is no land intrin sically more undemocratic than India in its traditional ideals, and no hierarchy of religion more absolute and rigid than the Brahmin caste. While missionary endeavor has done much to American versus Oriental Idealism 135 prepare the way, the modern and economic and educational advance from the West has been perhaps even a more rapid force in recent years to lessen the social chasm existing between East ern and Western standards of society. Far more than in any European monarchy is it true in India that a man born in a certain grade or partition of society is inevitably imprisoned there regardless of his acts or any possible de- \ velopment. It is one of the first things that the American notices in India, and he cannot understand it, so utterly incompatible is it to his Western ideas of social association. In India in the past, moreover, as in America in the present, idealism has found its foundation in the inherent and eternal forces of nature. The Hindu has gone beyond the face of nature to inquire into its universal and spiritual laws and the genesis of its universal mind; while the American has been busying himself in the sub duing and directing of nature s material and * more easily observed phenomena. The West ern country has concerned herself with the external subjugation of the universe, with the*, "how" of natural law rather than with the "why" of the internal working of this universe. It has been accurately pointed out that the 136 American Ideals religion of India resembles more closely Western science in its methods of procedure, and in that very particular is more unlike Western faith, which until recently has looked askance at the scientist as a contributor to revealed religion. Where American belief says Man, Indian faith says the Universal, or the Absolute, into which man melts for his emancipation. Where the Westerner says Humanity, the Easterner says Vision, and the ultimate aim of its most thought ful leaders, as saints and ascetics, have been with consistent energy to endeavor to see God face to face. The methods also by which the East and West have worked toward their idealism are alike dissimilar. (The East lays small stress on matter. Essentially and eventually it is to him passing and illusory. Buddhism asserts that the chief hindrance in the path of progress to ideals is the obstructing barrier of Desire; the Hindu holds before his eyes the subduing of it, not by chaining it, as would the American, but through the influence of meditation and the continued discipline of reflection and retire ment from the world, to gain over it a spiritual ascendancy. The only lasting peace of the spirit, says the American versus Oriental Idealism 137 Hindu, resides in a gradual but certain drawing apart from all the troublous scenes and ephem eral temporalities of the garish day, until the spirit shall be actually unfettered and the eye clarified to behold perfect knowledge and un sullied purity. While the Bible, in the con ception of the American, leads by service to his ideals, the Vedanta conducts the Indian soul by knowledge, by love, or by emancipated motive, as the case may be. The aim of one is brother hood, the aim of the other is the personal knowl edge of the Universe of God. Each needs the other for completeness. Each is but the half truth of complete and perfected idealism. The New Testament may gain from the Vedas, while without the idealism practical and philanthropic of the Gospel of Jesus, Indian metaphysics is a chartless ship upon a vague and mystic sea. The absence of dependence upon scientific or historical phenomena furnishes a striking char acteristic difference to Western ideas and prog ress. The Indian bases all or chiefly all of his advance upon the unassisted personal thought and experience, unfettered by the impedimenta of past, present, or future materiality. He must escape from the world with its time and sense limitations, and the pathway of his de- 138 American Ideals liverance is by the road of thought. The American contrastingly is working at the domi nation of nature, the force which his Indian brother is deeply engaged in meditating ways to elude. { The Easterner is primarily interested in ideas, :he American in action; the Easterner s forte is sentiment and imagination, the American s eason and science. In the East life is the ideal, while in the West the ideal is more often the living. J The Bengali Hindu is said to be the most unpractical creature on earth; "a dreamer and a great failure" is the description by Sarojini Naidu, the Indian poetess, of her father, who typifies the men of his class; the American business man is known the world over for his practicality and directness, his shrewdness in the bargaining of things material, and he is less frequently a failure, at least from the stand point of the accumulation of wealth. The American depends upon the world of time and practical material foundations. These are the chief stimuli for the awakening and the enlistment of his ideal powers. The Oriental be lieves that in the calm and discipline of medita tion, self-analysis, and synthesis, Truth, the all important thing to be striven for in life, can be American versus Oriental Idealism 139 attained. To the American the most revered term in India, "Saint," is comparatively mean ingless, while the Western idol of industrialism leaves the traditional Hindu mind quite un stirred. The great deeps of India s millions are still Indian, intensely so in their idealism, true to the national ideas and ideals of their forefathers. That which Puritanism gave in morals and faith in America, the Dharma, the National Right eousness of the old Hindu ascetics, accomplished for India. It has given her a bent toward national consciousness well-nigh unintelligible, without study, to Europe or to the United States. To be sure these terms and this spirit are being modified on the surface just now by the invading economic West, which is pressing its way into all the departments of the Eastern world. The outward progress of this modification would lead the superficial observer to believe that the East was becoming West with a bound. I found the Gaekwar of Baroda establishing a system of compulsory education and installing cinematographs throughout Baroda State. I found Brahmins of Bombay organizing an ag ricultural college to which they were planning to send their own sons: almost an unheard-of 140 American Ideals thing in Indian history, to see the thinking class harboring for a moment the idea of soiling their hands with the labor that has always belonged to the lower orders of society. The students also in the five great government universities were found exhibiting almost a mania for learn ing to read and speak English, simply because English is the quickest road to success in government, official, and even in industrial preferment. One of the most prominent heads of a great business enterprise in Calcutta is a Hindu of high caste, but he is wise enough to commit the offices of chief trust and responsi bility in his firm to foreigners, recognizing the limitation of his countrymen, through years of training along philosophical and spiritual lines, to cope with the keen competitive minds and equipment of the Englishman. Nor is this tendency of the Indian to keep away from practical affairs a dead letter, even in the midst of these secularizing tendencies. In the same city in which the things are occurring of which we have been writing I found dozens of the Hindus, who were the best trained intel lectually of the natives whom I met, deliberately planning to give up participation in the active life of affairs in order to go off into an isolated American versus Oriental Idealism 141 place to become Sanyassis, and to devote the entire remainder of their life, in accordance with Indian custom, to meditation and the dis covery of those principles which they believe to be most potent in solving for them the riddle of the spiritual universe. One can hardly conceive of more antipodal contrasts in ideals than those existing for the normal life work in India and in America re spectively. To the Indians for generations life is a matter to be divided into four divisions: first, the life as a child and a student; second, as a householder and the father of a family; third, a partial recluse, leaving the business world, but not necessarily his family ties; and fourth, the ascetic or Sanyassi period when he leaves everything, business, family, all, and re tires to the jungle or the desert with his staff and begging bowl to follow in the footsteps of his most revered national heroes. The American, in sharp contrast, regards his early education simply as a preparation for his business or his professional career, and at the full meridian of his manhood, when the Indian is thinking about leaving the strife of the world, his Western antithesis is enlarging his activities, and beginning to see the fruit of his experience 142 American Ideals and his toil. Later on, should the American leave his much loved activity, which he is in creasingly loath to do, it certainly* is not for purposes of asceticism, but notably for an oppo site reason, in order that he may enjoy the com forts and emoluments of his successful years. The loss to India by this retirement through out the centuries, especially in the economic, commercial, and industrial worlds, of the best brains of the empire, has been untold. That the Indian is this intellectual, and highly gifted, and as one has described him, "a radiant Asiatic personage," with powers of philosophical and mystical thought far in advance of the Westerner, can be easily verified by any one who takes the pains to become acquainted with the upper classes of these remarkable men and women. They constantly impress one with the thought of what would have been possible in India if these talented people had given their attention to industrial enterprises as in America, or to militarism as in Germany. As it is, they afford to our Western eyes, intent upon activity and many-sided business, the example of charac ter and ideals that alone can eventuate from reflection upon the world and man s relation to it, gathering its power and conviction, not from American versus Oriental Idealism 143 test tubes and workshops, machinery and mer chandise, but from meditation and personal experience in first-hand contact with considera tions of the perfect and the true. The question in India is: "What is true for me?" not "What have others found out, or what have scientists observed?" The Hindu s religion and ideals are peculiarly individual, and can never be made second hand or received whole from his an cestors. America, the land of widespread missionary idealism, the country from which millions of dollars go yearly to support American workers in Asia, is not always conscious of the striking contrasts in aims and motives that actuate life in the Eastern and the Western world. It has been doubtless because of these abysmal differ ences in ideals that the success of Western mis sionaries in reaching especially the intellectual element in Eastern civilization has been so surprisingly slow. In India, especially, while hundreds of thousands of the lower classes have been won t> Christianity (and not always for reasons otherwise than economic and the gaining of a higher social standing), the failure of West ern religious idealism among the gifted and leading classes has been as marked almost as 144 American Ideals the despairful efforts to win over the Moslem to the Christian faith. While recent moderniza tion has loosened the faith of the Oriental in certain of his traditional philosophical and relig ious tenets, his wide knowledge and conception of what he considers to be the failure of Chris tianity in Western nations has not induced him to exchange his own faith for that of the for eigner. The bringing of thoughtful, sensible, and more truly unprejudiced missionaries of the tolerant sort into touch with the Oriental in recent years has tended to bring about, it must be noted, both in India and in all Eastern nations, a de cided change in the methods of working, and also a more thorough realization on the part of Americans that the Easterner has grasped his set of religious truths with a devoted intelligence as surprising as it is impregnable to the Western propagandist. Those who have read the autobiography of Dr. John E. Clough, whose successes were as great as his tolerance, will get a glimpse into this growing mental sympathy of our best mis sionary ideals as they have come into contact with Eastern thought. Going out to India as a Baptist missionary to the Telegus from one of American versus Oriental Idealism 145 the new Western colleges, a true American, devoted to his particular and not over-liberal brand of faith, he carried with him the American adaptable energy and the self-confidence, not un touched by American provincialism. He tells how his forty years among the low-caste Matigas and Telegu communities virtually revolution ized his ideas and made over his faith in almost all his original doctrines, save those naked fundamentals relating to the uniqueness of the Christian gospel of brotherly love. "It distressed many thoughtful men and women in Christian lands at that time," he writes, "to think that unless the heathen heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ and accepted it, they would be eternally lost. This was my opinion when I went to India. It formed my missionary motive. I looked upon the Hindus as simply heathen; I wanted to see them converted. As the years passed I grew tolerant, and often told the caste people that if they could not or would not receive Jesus Christ as their Saviour, to serve their own gods faithfully. During my visits to America I sometimes told American audiences that the Hindus were in some respects better than they." With such growing tolerant respect for East erners, Dr. Clough s work experienced a striking 146 American Ideals success, and when he left India for the last time, in 1903, the Telegu mission over which he presided had one hundred missionaries, 50,000 members, and 200,000 adherents. Dr. dough s American power of adjustment, associated with an ever-growing, broader, and deeper love for humanity in the large, which the New Testament teaches all in vain for many propagandists, taught him sympathetic im agination; he caught the true nature of the Indian situation. He learned that by unity and not antipathy a man learns the heart of another race of men; he lost his theology and the usual "heathen" illusions current at home; he became "all things to all men/ and exemplified in an illuminating instance the effective type of missionary idealism of America. It reveals its trend of progress slowly but certainly toward the discovery that when the spirit of man truly aspires Godward, be it under the cold gray skies of the West or beneath the warmer glory of the Southern Cross, there is or should be no East, no West, no dividing sym bolism, no obstructing superior or inferior creed only a vast world soul with restless and insa tiable aspirations reaching up to its Creator and filled with infinite longing for its Eternal Home. American versus Oriental Idealism 147 What Eastern ideals then coincide with American, and in what particular way can we "find our East?" It goes without saying that the first essential is a large ability of re- ceptiveness. We must be ready to see our limitations and be willing, as the Japanese have been, to borrow the best things from other nations. Emerson once said that great genial power comes, not by being original at all, but rather in being altogether receptive. It is in the realm of ideas, rather than things, that we have always been borrowers from the Orient, and ideas are stronger than armies. Even baseless ideas like those on which much of Buddhism rests, with its ceaseless revolving gyrations of reincarnated worlds, moving like dancing dervishes, even these ideas have had already an enormous effect upon Europe and are not absent from our present-day thought. The reflex action of Indian ideas is seen in our acceptance of Oriental art and Asiatic decora tion, while Eastern coloring is now a common place in our country. The attempt of certain religious sects to prove and to exhibit concretely the fact that, through the domination of self by the grasp upon spiritual principles and truth, there can be brought about the rulership of the 148 American Ideals body, sin, and disease, seems to be one of the growing and successful ideas in America. The insistence upon the illusiveness of matter by many religious people is peculiarly suggestive of " Maya," or the "all is illusion" idea of the old Vedanta. Furthermore, if we are to take the interpreta tion of Walt Whitman at the hands of Mr. J. A. Symonds, we are led to the conclusion that this presence of the all-pervading Universal Spirit emphasized in the East is the very core of the Whitman philosophy. These Eastern ideas find also sympathetic reception in the Western world in the realm of our daily life and standards of living. This is not seen so much in their abstract meta physics, for we in America are too much inter ested and impressed by our material successes to be deeply moved by the thought of depend ence upon the universal laws or the spirit behind the Universe. We are rather receptive to the Asiatic quietness and freedom from social restraint, the need of which is already troubling us as a nation. There are repeated indications revealing the fact that Americans are concerned over the loss of thought periods, and the proper adjustment of their leisure time to things that American versus Oriental Idealism 149 are worth while and capable of bringing deep est satisfactions. In our large cities especially, the constant being "on the wheel" of duties and engagements, and the never-ending social obligations, are getting on the nerves of even the restless, action- loving people. They are looking about more eagerly than ever before for a mode of life and ideals of conduct that will liberate them from the slavery of a thousand things they must do and which often they care little about, things with which, in fact, they would not fill their lives were it not conventionally correct and necessitous to contemporary civilization in the United States. The art of being quiet, the habit of contem plation, the will power necessary to fence off one s life for a time to be alone, these are almost lost arts and vanishing ideals in the midst of the present-day exacting city life. It is partly because of the adherence to these endless "duties" of business and social existence that the Oriental of high breeding and culture finds our civilization irksome and in contrast prefers his own. Outside of the requirements of relig ion, and the necessary obedience to the govern ing authorities, the Oriental feels less restraint 150 American Ideals than does the Occidental, and some of our customs would be unsupportable to him, leaving him little time for his favorite occupation of meditation and discussion, requiring intellectual and religious thought. An English writer has quoted from a Turkish gentleman whose dilemma in changing his life from the Near East to Paris reveals somewhat humorously the Oriental s point of view in these matters. It is also a thought-provoking paragraph for our restless, rushing days: What I complain of is the mode of life. I am impressed, not by the official duties, they are easy, Turkey has few affairs but by the social ones. I have had to write fifteen notes this morning all about trifles. In Turkey life is sans gene; if a man calls on you he does not leave a card; if he sends you a nosegay, he does not expect a letter of thanks; if he invites you, he does not require an answer. There are no engagements to be remembered and fulfilled a fortnight afterward. When you wish to see a friend, you know that he dines at sunset; you get into your caique, and row down to him, through the finest scenery in the world. You find him in his garden, smoke his chibouque, talk or remain silent as you like, dine, and return. If you wish to see a Minister, you go to his office; you are not interfered with or even announced; you lift the curtain of his audience room, sit by him on his divan, smoke your American versus Oriental Idealism 151 pipe, tell your story, get his answer, and have finished your business in the time it would take here to make an appointment in half the time that you waste here in an ante-chamber. There is no dressing for dinners nor for evening parties; evening parties, indeed, do not exist. There are no letters to receive or to answer. There is no post hour to be remembered and waited for. Life glides away without trouble. Here everything is troublesome. All enjoyment is destroyed by the forms and ceremonies, which are intended, I suppose, to increase it or to protect it. My Liberal friends here complain of the want of political liberty. What I complain of is the want of social liberty; it is far more important. Few people suffer from a despotism of the government, and those suffer only occasionally. But this social despotism, this despotism of salons, this code of arbitrary little reglements, observances, prohibitions, and exigencies, affects everybody and every day and every hour. We believe it will be possible to find Americans who would not only smile but also supplicate for a taste of Oriental customs that would leave them free from social and oftentimes distressing and time-consuming obligations. The deliver ance from the oppression of being driven al ways by details would bring to the American not passivity or the afternoon temper of the East (who could imagine an American yogi?), but it 152 American Ideals would bring about that precious jewel far too uncommon in America peace of mood. It would deliver many a man from worry by giving him a new perspective and the steadier grasp upon his preemptory task. With the inculca tion of such ideals and customs, all too strange in the United States, there would come a sense of triumph over our work and the ensnaring affiliations that war against the gaining of new forces of will and the attaining to a higher su premacy of spirit of which Americans are truly capable. It would also add to that "inward rest" of which Charles Kingsley has spoken: > I know that what we all want is inward rest, rest of heart and brain. The calm, strong, self-contained, self-denying character which needs no stimulus, for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narcotics, for it has no fits of excitement; it needs no ascetic restraint, for it is strong enough to use God s gift without abusing it. A character, in a word, which is truly temperate, not in drink and food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions. After all, are not ideals of any sort dependent largely upon having time "to think into it," as Sir Isaac Newton once explained the secret of his discoveries. The example of President Wilson, cutting himself free from a round of distracting American versus Oriental Idealism 153 official and social functions, refusing to see office seekers, slipping away alone from the White House, leaving diplomats and politicians, to gether with endless consultations, behind him in order to secure solitude in which to think through high matters of state this example of our chief magistrate has made a deep and whole some impression upon the country: it has raised national respect for the ideals of restraint and thought power, the gifts in which the Oriental excels. There is still one other bond of helpful union existing between Oriental and Occidental ideal ism; it exists in the realm of the imagination and in that bond of mystic feeling which belong alike to both of these antipodal worlds. Idealism, it may be remarked, has small respect for latitudes or points of the compass. While the American would not be denned primarily as a romanticist, neither would he be accused usually of mysticism, yet in both of these elements his nature is rich and inevitably seeking for expression. He lives in a terrestrial and practical world, but poetry and sentiment lurk within him, and only await the awakening touch of strong incident or soul- arousing circumstance. Far more readily than the matter-of-fact Englishman would the Amer- 154 American Ideals lean understand and sympathize with the East Indian. "We worship the Ganges with the water of the Ganges," says the Hindu, "but we must worship." It seems at first glance a far cry from the man who worships the Ganges to the hard- headed business American. With all his urgent aggressiveness, however, and his practicality, so unlike the Easterner, there is an inevitable vein of worship in America, not in terms of the gold standard, but in the language of those elements that have to do with a higher pantheism. It is not difficult to find Americans with a tendency to dream dreams, to feel deeply the passion for beauty in all her myriad forms, and in those highest expressions of mystic and romantic charm which his money is inadequate to pur chase for him. George William Curtis, who dreamed of his castles in Spain in a narrow New York tenement house, is not a solitary type. This idealism of feeling, sentiment, and at times of mysticism is revealed in a hundred ways in America. It takes on well-nigh every form, from the characteristics of the man of my ac quaintance who spends his vacations and every Saturday in the woods, planting seeds whose American versus Oriental Idealism 155 flowering other eyes than his own will see, to the baker whom we know, who plays the harp be cause the artistic side of his nature must have an outlet. To be sure, the average American is a bit chary of talking much about these elements of his nature in a land where everything is so strictly business. But if you get him alone on some long vague walk at night by the sea be neath the stars, you will find the great deeps of his life s loyalties breaking up, and there below all his furious and often premeditated attempts at concealment you will discover the real man of dreams and visions. Here he displays all the subtle charm of youth that is lost in the sense of its own significance. Here he moves about in a mysterious paradise, natural to him, for it is all his own. Here he reveals the man of emo tion, and undefined longings, and a deep sense of the romantic possibilities of life. There is probably no person extant whose vein of mysticism and worship of the things of the spirit lies deeper, or whose interest in things of soulful import can be more easily aroused than is the case with the East Indian; it is our belief that the American in his inherent nature comes next in possession of these subtle characteristics 156 American Ideals of emotion and poetic feeling, which need only time and surcease from his exacting round of pro saic practicalities to be brought to the surface. Many an American aspiration, freed from its restricting bonds, would take up the strain of the Chinese poet as indicative of its most genuine idealism: The Lady Moon is my lover, My friends are the oceans four, The Heavens have roofed me over, And the dawn is my golden door. I would liefer follow the condor Or the seagull soaring from ken, Than bury my Godhead yonder In the dust of the whirl of men. The American one day in the fullness of time will "find his East," and when that hour arrives there will be a betrothal before the eyes of the world between Orient and Occident such as never before was known. CHAPTER VI EDUCATION THE AMERICAN PASSION The theory of education we are attempting to set forth is one that assumes that the activities of life should be evaluated according to a spiritual standard which finds the highest good of man in the perfection of his spiritual nature in nobility of heart and mind, in reverence and awe, in contemplation of the accept ance of duty in strenuous endeavor, in earnest long ing for truth, in appreciation of beauty, in an esti mate of the things of life consistent with the view that what a man is far outweighs what he has, whether of material or intellectual possessions. J. WELTON, D. LITT. University of Leeds. CHAPTER VI EDUCATION THE AMERICAN PASSION DR. CHARLES W. ELIOT, the emeritus American educator and father of schoolmasters, has set before his countrymen this ideal of the educated man: A man of quick perception, broad sympathies, and wide affinities, responsive but independent; self- reliant but deferential, loving truth and candor, but also moderation and proportion; courageous but gentle; not finished, but perfecting. Something of an order to be sure, and also a reminder of the cultural American of Emerson s period rather than of these modern days of scientific educational absorption; but that this or something akin to it has ceased to be the inherent ideal of the nation, consciously or un consciously held, not even those who are most intimately familiar with the manifold and com plex attempts to adjust the new processes of natural science to the ever-changing conditions of daily living, will be swift to deny. 160 American Ideals The educational ideal in America, like many another one, is an inheritance, a strain of blood, and it has woven itself inextricably into the pattern and the product of the Republic. It has become more and more a passion with us, this idea of the right and riches of training; it is a thing we as a nation care for more than we care for money or for power if the sign of such allegiance can be measured by the sacrificial wealth and energy we pour out for its possession. That the "school must save the state" as well as the individual is no empty sentiment in this land. It is history. It is the most profound conviction of experience. It is the chief con cern of American democracy. The schoolhouse that our Pilgrim forefathers placed so promptly beside the church when this new world of the West was born has been repaired; it has been enlarged; but it has never been torn down. Our fathers and our mothers taught in it a mere handful of country school children when their own torch of learning was a tallow dip by night and a few battered textbooks; and to-day 700,000 teachers in the United States follow in their train, and with every equipment known to modernity these are opening the book of knowl edge to 28,000,000 American youth. Education the American Passion 161 For this educational ideal the people of the United States spend yearly $700,000,000 two thirds of this amount upon schools and colleges supported by public funds more wealth than the total for army, navy, pensions, and interest on the public debt taken together. The people of the country have replaced the small New England schoolhouses with school property for which they have expended $1,200,000,000. The public schools with their 20,000,000 of young people have been called "the vital knot * of the social or ganism, and school problems have become almost synonymous with national problems. Truly if America is another word for opportunity, educa tion is the key that the people use with which to translate the term into avenues of utilization. American education draws many of its ideals as well as its vital impulse from its Pilgrim an cestry, and the early settlers of the land decided at the start much of the destiny and the educa tional passion of the nation. They helped to make education in America a firm and almost intuitive conviction that no child or person who wants it, or has for it a desire and capacity, should be denied the chance of schooling. "If a boy in any country village," writes James Russell Lowell, "showed uncommon parts, the clergy- 162 American Ideals man was sure to hear of it. He and the squire and the doctor, if there was one, talked it over, and the boy was sure to be helped onward to college; for next to the five points of Calvinism our ancestors believed in a college education; that is, in the best education that was to be secured. The system, if system it could be called, was a good one, a practical applica tion of the Doctrine of Natural Selection. Ah! how the parents nay, the whole family moiled and pinched that their boy might have the chance denied to them!" The ideal of education, a corner stone of the New England commonwealths, has thus stood historically in the United States for intellectual independence as truly as the Constitution has signified our political freedom. Americans have always believed in the democracy of the mental powers. In these early educational efforts in Massachusetts and Virginia, our forefathers lifted the states out of mere geographical pio neering into the realm of the ideal, the intellec tual, and the abiding. These first educators, with their penchant for individualism, which has grown with the nation s growth, and has made the United States probably the most truly dis tinctive nation on earth as regards the attention given to individual training, started a school sys tem if it could be thus dignified that never Education the American Passion 163 could have eventuated in a fast national caste. In the words of Emerson, these early educational pioneers believed in the " infinitude of the pri vate man." Individualism was the axis upon which American education began to turn and it is distinctively prominent in the latest type of institution. In his first address to the mem bers of the new pioneer class of Stanford, the founder said: "You are the most important factor in this university. It is for your benefit that Stanford has been established." We would no more expect to see in America a prescribed or set nation-wide policy for training the youth than we would look to find here a State church. The United States Bureau of Education at Washing ton, where the Commissioner of Education, a non-political officer of the Government, collects and analyzes educational data and statistics, is only the advisory agent of the nation engaged in the large task of gathering and attempting to standardize and bring unity from a vast output of modern methods, textbooks, and sub jects found in the various types of school admin istration of the states. His work is not by authority, but by influence, and he advises when asked. In America you cannot say, as it is said in Germany, that if you can find out 164 American Ideals what subject the pupils are studying in any given school, you may know what every student of the Empire is studying at that particular hour. The American has been as truly a non conformist in his educational ideals as in his religion, and every state is jealous of its rights in this regard. The educational leaders have stood for an equality of opportunity everywhere, in the great state universities with their free tuition to all the youth of the state as well as in the little free school of the country, where every boy and girl of whatever station or nationality learns the three R s in a single bare room filled with wooden benches. The American has suffered no heredi tary or contemporary executive authority over his instructional life, and his nation-wide faith in the power of education is one of his distinctive traits. His school has always borne the words "free"; it has always been the school for the individual. It was in such a spirit that our first public schools were planted on Dutch, English, and Swiss models in 1621; it was with such freedom that Harvard College, springing from Emmanuel College at Cambridge, England, came into being in 1636. The sign of the persistency of that Education the American Passion 165 liberty-loving ideal, rooted so early in the soil of New England, comes out to-day in many a university conflict for freedom of teaching, as though it were but yesterday that it was enun ciated by our Pilgrim sires. America owes a debt to her ancestor school teachers because of the fact that she stands to day offering the promise and right to every child in the land to become educated, not as a nation wills, but as his own inclination and aptitude determine. The ideal of education in the United States has thus evolved a pronounced practicality, and its slogan, even from the beginning, has been "fitting for life work." Its aim is to learn to apply, to do as well as to know. The modern sweep of this ideal has carried virtually all before it. It has made America the marked country of utilitarian education. When a member of a British Commission came here some years ago to study our educa tion, he made special mention in his report of the University of Wisconsin, because, he said, "it knits together the professions and labors; it makes the fine arts and the anvil one." There are institutions in the United States, small colleges in NewEngland as also in the Mid- 166 American Ideals die West, high schools and private academies, moreover, whose liberally educated instructors are like the present Master of Winchester in England, who said recently that he was "holding on to the classics for dear life." There are to be found here and there both teachers and whole schools refusing to fall into line with the utility ideal of training which is running strong through out the country. Nevertheless, even a casual foreign observer realizes that the education as a whole lies in the realm of the contemporary affairs of the nation, in making "fine arts and the anvil one." Thus the America of the present has added to the curriculum of the English forefathers, who took the torch of learning passing down from Milton, the English Puritans, and the line of "lantern bearers," from Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher and "rare Ben Jonson." This Western land has supplied the growing wealth of the vast near-to-life scientific world. The man of high ideals in education to-day, must be an investigator, he must know how to think for himself in the realm of scientific research. The ideal of the multifold types of education is as comprehensive as are the enterprises of the Commonwealth, and in the words of the old Education the American Passion 167 Bishop Comenius, it is to train generally all who are born men for all which is human (he might have added women also). At one of our oldest universities where, in the thought of one of the early educators, the object was "to make his soul," where every boy was supposed to take the same studies in order to claim at the end of his course his A. B. degree, there was said to be offered in a recent year but one subject, English composition, required for all students; if a youth should try to take all the courses offered by this institution, it has been estimated that he would need to live in college for two hundred years. The educational ideal has been tremendously popularized and its former academic character has changed through the knowledge and applica tion of the natural sciences to a practical end. Actual life is the end and aim, and the life to-day rather than life in the Middle Ages. There is a general belief among the people that the idea of Professor Agassiz, that a speciality is the back bone of an education, was a sane one. It is the feeling that a man becomes competently edu cated by knowing how to do well some one thing. An educational policy that would be popular in an English institution like Eton or Oxford, i68 American Ideals would find itself sailing very slowly against a full stream of industrial modernity in America, and quite against the tide of public opinion which says: "You must teach my boys and girls something practical, something they can use in their future vocations; I want bread and butter studies first, then if there is time they can indulge in a bit of philosophy or language." To the American there must be no cut-off be tween the counting-house and the classroom, no drop curtain between the family of the home and the family of the college. Education co alesces in life. A prominent weekly printed not long ago an article on the subject "Culture and Agricul ture," and the plea is made for culture, not in the terms of the classics or historic consciousness, but in behalf of the ordinary everyday life: "But my plea," says the writer, "is for culture in colleges, and especially in agriculture colleges. Any college has the clue to the way to it. Interest is the beginning any interest. It has been noticed often that graduate students who loafed through their undergraduate years, woke up in the law school or the medical department and worked with interest and ability. Why is that? The answer is obvious. They saw the relation of law or medicine to their life/ Education the American Passion 169 The American university is no respecter of persons. Ezra Cornell sought to found in Ithaca an institution where "any person could j find instruction in any study." The motto ^ seems to be more and more "no favoritism for any study; but to fit the needs of the student applying!" It is safe to say that the mind of man has not yet conceived subjects related to life that are not to-day taught somewhere in the schools of the United States. Compre hension rather than limitation has been the ideal. The three R s have verily become a legion, and twenty-five different subjects are now being taught in the public schools of New York City. Like the accomodating librarian, if he has not got it in stock, the educator will hospitably order it by first post. The story is told of a very much up-to-date college president of "unappeasable energy," who received a call at his office from a young man who wished to study Choctaw, which vanishing language was not in the curriculum. The president is described as saying with some regret, "I am sorry that we have no department for the teaching of Choctaw this morning, but if you will call around this afternoon, we will have one organized for you." 170 American Ideals At one of the prominent state universities in the Middle West, twenty-five students were registered during the last college year in the subject of horse-shoeing. In a large university of multitudinous departments, where the col lege catalogue is almost as bulky as an un abridged dictionary, I was shown about the Dairy Department where a variety of work was being carried on. A young man leading a small calf into the stock-judging lecture room attracted my attention; said unwilling calf was undergoing various kinds of measurements and minute investigation by the student. Upon making bold to ask the university meaning of this procedure, I was solemnly told by the pro fessor in a perfect matter-of-fact tone that the student was " doing original work on the calf." This undergraduate, in fact, was writing his graduating thesis on the subject of "Calf Evolution," and the youth, who was going to be an expert dairyman, having weighed, measured, and otherwise researched this calf twice daily since the animal was born, probably knew more (as I was told) about real calf nature than any man who had ever studied in this department. Our common schools nre becoming Garyized, our high schools vocationalized, and our colleges Education the American Passion 171 humanized after a fashion that neither the old nor new humanists would have quite under stood. The trades of yesterday have become the learned professions and callings of to-day. Applied science like applied Christianity has changed the nation s needs, and with its changed requirements there has come a new set of ideals. The professor is no longer the dreamy, spectacled don, lost in his quiet and delightful speculative studies of theories and literary excellence; he is to-day forming the new twentieth-century ideal ism as an expert scientific or industrial engi neer, or a government-assisting forester, a land expert, a practical mining specialist, or an engi neer of efficiency. Schools and departments for business admin istration, for journalism, architecture, household and domestic economy, agriculture, scien tific education, and a score of specialties of which our forefathers scarcely dreamed in that small Mayflower company of forty-one in the year 1620, have arisen in the ever-enlarging field of modern knowledge. These have helped to alter, not only the method of training, but also the spirit of American educational ideals. Even the older and the traditional subjects like law, theology, medicine, and the philoso- 172 American Ideals phies, have come under the new scientific generalizing processes, and if they have lost in the realm of the theoretic, the mystical, and the literary, they have gained immensely in the field of the useful, the accurate, and the im mediately serviceable. There are some who hold that in this transfer from the deductive to the inductive methods of education, we have become more and not less ideal, that research and scientific investigations of the laboratory, the field and the counting- house, are often "with no ulterior practical purpose/* We are told that the vast number of expert teachers of the new learning, who are spending laborious days and nights in devoted experimentation, with thought of nought save their interest in new discovery, are helping to leaven and idealize the whole lump of modern scientific learning. We hear that there is as much real idealism in the effort to make a perfect cow as in creating a winged Mercury. This new scientific idealism, is in any case one of the most significant and far-reaching in fluences to be noted on the educational horizon in any part of the world at the present time. Its influence has long since left America to sweep, by the power of its example, around Education the American Passion 173 the entire earth. The Egyptian government students surveying the banks of the Nile, the young East Indian agriculturists carrying out the principles of knowledge and method learned in our state universities, as well as the Far East ern youth, in China especially, who are carrying back the models of our scientific training for their new systems of education, have all felt the wave of this practical pulsation. But with all our successes in the education that fits the hand to the work of the moment, there have come insidious dangers in the realm of the student s ideas of mental and spiritual progress. He has gained much over his fore fathers in the machinery of effective educational action; he has lost something in the region of his soul. Educational ideals, like all other things in the higher realm of men s thinking, cling about personalities quite as truly as they associate themselves with principles, and in the school realm it is the personality of the teacher that marks the turning-point in all education. In one of the Hindu sacred books it is asked, "Who are the keepers of the city ? " The answer comes "The teachers!" The crossroads of school existence are at a point where education that 174 American Ideals trains the youth for making a living joins with the path that trains the student for making a life. There is a difference between greatness in engineering and greatness that is of the mind, the character, and the spirit. True edu cation comes from within out not vice versa. Education should have an ideal and a system for the development of trained and skilful arti sans; it should not forget its ideals and its system for the development of the individual as a man. The educators of America are already realiz ing that their task is only half done when they have vocationalized their system; it now must be spiritualized. The school must be the temple of the spirit, or its books, its useful curricula, and highly developed play, jangle hopelessly in a confused utilitarian universe. Every child cometh from afar. He brings with him the infinitude of possibilities in the realm of fellowship, reverence, imitation, purity, and the romance of youth. Pitiful is the teacher who forgets spiritual culture and who leaves that ministry to the clergyman. He has lost his main chance at changing life who fails to re member the individual in the crowd. It is the faculty that makes or mars the university, and Education the American Passion 175 Dr. Gilman of Johns Hopkins was right when he sought for his institution "men, not buildings!" The teacher who has not become internally conscious of the deeper needs of the student as a human being fails even when he seems to suc ceed, and his pupils will bear the mark of his incompetency. I attended recently a meeting of schoolmas ters where one of the teachers spoke on the topic, "The Damage We Do as Teachers." He quoted .the dialogue between Socrates and Protagoras in which Socrates says in substance that it is a serious thing when one goes to get instruction. You can go to the market and buy a fish, he contends, and take it home with you. If you find it is bad, you can throw it away; but if you go to get instruction and find after you get it that it is bad, you can t get rid of it. You must keep it, since it has become a real part of you. There is a growing consensus of opinion that much of the failure of our schools and colleges is due to the failure of the teacher, a failure often to grasp with vividness and with earnestness his distinctive task. The ideals of the teacher are twofold. First of all it is the teacher s vocation to see that the 176 American Ideals student works in the realm of ideas as well as within the region of his vocational tools. The average American boy comes up to the prepara tory school, flabby in power of will, procrastinat ing, inaccurate, frequently with slovenly habits, and a past master in the fine art of wasting time. The school and the college are handicapped at the start in their material. They are weakened by the weakness of moral and spiritual discipline in the American home. "I expect nothing of the next generation of students," said one of our well-known but somewhat despairful public men, " for they have no patience and no persever ance." The modern youth in America is inclined to be easy going; he has not learned to obey. It is no small favor to such an youth to make him work under discipline for four or eight years a discipline that inures him to courage and promp titude in attacking a hard job. English schools accomplish much in this line and English schoolmasters should be studied by American teachers. In the preparatory and public schools especially, there is no babying, no soft measures the boy is supposed to learn endurance, fortitude, and the power to overcome obstacles. It is this ability of the masters of Education the American Passion 177 these English schools like Winchester and Rugby to inculcate a spirit of disregard for circumstances and untoward environment, that has connected British colonization with the playing-grounds and the "forms" of public-school boys in the British Empire. It is this spirit that Henry Newbolt has caught so perfectly in his poem "Vitae Lampada" when he says: And it s not for the sake of a ribboned coat Or the selfish hope of a season s fame, But his Captain s hand on his shoulder smote " Play up! Play up! and play the game! " One hears at Eton the story of Doctor Keate, the famous head master, who one day met a new boy in the schoolyard, and finding the lad crying, asked him what was the matter. "I am cold," said the boy; at which the master an swered, "You must put up with cold, sir! This is no girl s school." Fifteen years later this boy was with the Third Dragoons in India charging at the Sikhs, the best fighting men of the Khalsa. The Sikhs were entrenched in a well-nigh impregnable position, and as the order came to charge, the old Eton boy turned to his superior officer, who was also a graduate of the school on the Thames, and said, "As old Keate would say, this is no girl s school!" with which 178 American Ideals remark he rode to his death in that memorable charge of the battle of Sobraon that gave Lahore to England. There is certain truth in the saying of an American educator that the direct product of English schools is a little indifferent Latin verse, but the by-products are the men who run the Indian Empire. As a Frenchman put it, "culture is what remains after we have forgotten what we have learned." In England this spirit that never says die is not as thoroughly asso ciated with intellectual endeavor in the schools as it might be, but as a force for a fortification of the will and as a guide for a teaching ministry, it commands tremendous respect. After all, what is education ? Is it not the training of the will, to help it choose right voluntarily and without exterior compulsion, making the will proficient in work? Of what good is scientific training or any other kind of training for the mind that does not somehow impart with its precepts the faculty that gets these precepts accomplished? Education is merely a pretty idealism or a passing commercialism without the "will push." Thomas Huxley gave an immortal definition of education when he called it the ability to make a man do the thing he ought to Education the American Passion 179 do when it ought to be done, whether he felt like doing it or not. It is a grave question as to whether our ideals for teaching and training students are intellec tually high enough. Are we preparing in the midst of all of our utilitarian study for the far- sighted and vast hungry intellectual wants that are already beginning to show themselves in the wake of our prodigious industrial prosperity? We are already seeing the turning of the tide in the attitude of our self-made men of yesterday, who are eager to send their sons and daughters to college to be the educated people of to-morrow. Are we considering our obligations to raise them up to citizenship, filled with lofty idealism for the new civilization of the New Freedom which, although now it seems to be a distant spectre with the din of European battle in our ears, is surely coming in the new bright day of larger knowledge and more perfect intellectual and spiritual vision! Our elective systems and great free trade routes of education, our early specializing upon things that happen to be the most locally in teresting to students, our extending areas of play and social amusement, with the multitude of novelties and fads, ranging through the whole 180 American Ideals gamut from hygiene and Montessori to eugenics and schools for automobiling all these combine to make school life in the words of a certain educator "just one big game"- a contemporary dust storm of innumerable activities if we forget the larger emphasis upon the training of the mind and the will. We give the impression of school days and college a trivial and jovial note. The very repetition of the phrase "college boy" is to smile. We make it a four years sentimental journey before the real work of life begins. But college life is not preparation merely; it is life. The careers of our boys begin and get their per manent bent during these days. The youth obtains his mental and moral habits in prepara tory school and in the university. His student enthusiasms, his love of traditions, and that which he calls his college spirit, may be lost later through his geographical or vocational business of life, but his habits persist. Was it not the Duke of Wellington who said, "Habit is ten times nature"? Habits of persistent work should be encouraged and insisted upon in the daily routine, not left to spasmodic dashes just previous to examination, because these habits persist in the man and are carried over into every phase of his succeeding life. Education the American Passion 181 In the United States we have only two insti tutions that really give disciplinarian training for hard work equal to that which the youth is to experience in the competitive struggles in the world. These two institutions are the Military and Naval Academies at West Point and Annap olis. Some years ago I was the guest of the late Col. Charles Lamed, Dean of the West Point faculty, a man who could teach his specialty and also could perceive the significance of that specialty as a means for training the will to work. We were speaking of this matter of in tellectual work as we sat looking at that match less discipline revealed in the West Point dress parade on Sunday afternoon, when Colonel Larned said, "We are tightening up the curricu lum. The boys have too much spare time. Our root principle of education here is to keep the men every minute at something." I had just been talking with a cadet who told me that even before this "tightening" in the curriculum he had less than an hour a day to himself. Such discipline, to be sure, weeds out the weak and the undesirable. It makes education the survival of the fittest in the realm of the self- reliant will. Not every boy can endure physi- 1 82 American Ideals cally or mentally the strain of such discipline, but where one boy is lost to education by over work, a score fall out by reason of easy-going habits, by undue indulgence, or by doing noth ing. Bismarck said that one third of Germany s students dropped out of the race because of dissipation, one third by reason of overwork, while the other third ruled Germany. In the United States we find to-day no such percentage of students failing because of overwork. Even the college jibes against "grinds" and "book sharks" are passing into desuetude because of the absence of examples. As I recall my own experience in college, the severe obligation of hard study did not impress me, in spite of the fact that I was one of the many American youths who are obliged to "work their way through college," which necessarily subtracts considera ble time from the hours which should be given to study. I do not remember any memorable struggle to pass examinations, but I do recall one or two courses that really left their mark upon me because the teacher went upon the principle that effort is in itself the vital part in education. An educational authority who made a considerable study or this matter of required work, makes the astounding statement that "the Education the American Passion 183 average amount of work done by an undergradu ate in a course is less than three and a half hours a week outside the lecture room; more than half the answers from which these results are derived came from men who obtained the grade of A and B (highest grades). " The vir tually unanimous opinion, based upon observa tion and judgment of men who have closely studied this subject in America, is to the effect that the college graduate, whatever else he may gain from his student days, is turned out lacking in concentration, seriousness, and thoroughness, and only "settling down" as a trained and earnest worker when he gets into the professional school. To instil into the student consciousness the sense of hard intellectual effort, the effort with out which there is small joy of achievement, the effort that Professor James called "oxygen to the lungs of youth" this is the teacher s task. The other all-inclusive and even greater task of the teacher is the arousal and development in his students of the life of the spirit. Prof. Henri Bergson in outlining his philos ophy maintains that philosophy will not be come a serious matter until it has done away completely with the method of dogmatic philo- 184 American Ideals sophical systems and has devoted itself to ob servation and experience, "not merely the observation and experience of the outer world, but of the inner world as well." Professor Berg- son also speaks of this inner experience as religious feeling, "the sense of not being alone in this world, the sense of a relationship between the individual and the spiritual source of life." It is difficult to use this word "spiritual" as applied to the teacher and his teaching be cause of the connotation the word has received through our early association with exercises and customs of formal religious training. The teacher in America, moreover, has been as sisted in a measure to omit his responsibility to the spiritual side of student life by the laws of the land. These laws are nowhere more strictly upheld than in their prohibition of any religious teaching in connection with the public- school program. Not even is it permitted to study the book generally conceded to be the most universally accepted model of English, the book which, more than any other literature, has shaped the life and character of the great men of the world. As a consequence the Bible is an undiscovered literature for the average modern student. As one college president Education the American Passion 185 put it, the teacher must leave his religion in the coatroom with his overcoat and rubbers, while the students are left to drink of the water of life outside of the classroom from sanitary drinking cups. This is especially unfortunate, not only be cause it relieves the teacher, already weighed down with many tasks of lesser importance, from the feeling of responsibility for the deeper life of the student; but it also prevents the teacher from becoming a vital interpreter for our youth between science and religion. Al though science has now gained the educational field, it is questionable whether in its rigid experimentation, its cold logic and bigotry oft- times, it is more to be desired as a means of interpreting the inner life than was its oppo nent, dogmatic theology, or its medieval fore runner, philosophical speculation. The teacher s opportunity and in some respects his most divine task lies in the presentation, through his own personality and teaching, of the essential truths of the spiritual world. A teacher of Columbia University has said that this task signifies "the falling in love with imaginary things and living in dreams." Ba con s phrase as applied to the teacher is: "one 1 86 American Ideals whose mind moves in charity, and turns upon the poles of truth." William James, when speaking at one time to teachers, quoted Touch stone s question, "Hast any philosophy in thee, Shepherd?" Continuing, Professor James said that a man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all social mates. It was Dr. Francis Peabody who main tained that the most difficult thing an American student could do would be to go through college and keep his soul alive, while a graduate of one of our New England universities has made confession as follows: "We shall be bound together only by digging deeper into our own spiritual selves and discovering that true kin ship with the deeper selves of others." It is this rich inner spiritual life of the teacher, this utter devotion to Truth, that most capti vates students and carries them past the teacher to the thing taught. Pity the instructor whose students stop with him! Pity the investigator who cannot impart to his learners the ideal of his power! I knew of a teacher in a West ern university whose lecture-room was always crowded with eager young men. Quite often these youths would brecik into spontaneous and sincere applause at the end of his lecture. A Education the American Passion 187 few years ago I met this professor as he was coming out from his classroom. He was like one of other days who came down from the mountain with the skin of his face shining: his countenance was fairly radiant by the passage of the spirit that had gone out of him. The spiritual side of youth, its rich feeling, its nat ural seriousness, its depth of religious possibil ity, its ever-present idealism, had reflected and taken possession of this teacher. He taught by what he felt and what he was, as well as by what he knew. One student described him thus, "I don t remember anything he said, but I remember him." From one hundred college graduates who were asked the chief benefit re ceived from their college or university course, eighty-nine placed first in their reply the in fluence of one or more teachers. There is a true sense in which the teachers in our schools are the best idealizing element in the United States to-day. As a rule they are char acterized by extraordinary self-forgetfulness, and there is no small scorning of delights and living laborious days. No one of them who has really the right to this term teacher has been without the sensation of imparting this spiritual quality to his students, and this has kept him 1 88 American Ideals alive. It has buoyed him up and given him the assurance, as one professor has said, that time is on his side. Although the nation has been slow to recognize the inherent greatness of schoolmastering in this country, as compared with the attitude of the people in Europe and in Japan, there are signs of awakening to the realization that the scholar and the investigator, who rank with the nobles of the earth, should be given opportunity of the highest and widest scope to fulfil their ideal mission. That the profession of the teacher has received a new standing in the United States in the person of Woodrow Wilson, our "Schoolmaster Presi dent," is past denial. The word "veritas" may be written across the shields of our colleges, or it may be carved in the marble and granite of great laboratories; it may be worked upon the fraternal emblems of our student societies; it may be studied for its metaphysical and ethical qualities in the de partments of philosophy, or it may be preached about in college chapels; but if it is not incor porated and vitally embodied in the deep, ear nest spiritual life of the teacher who goes daily in and out before his pupils, it usually fails to take permanent hold of the student s inner life. Education the American Passion 189 Truth indeed is the hand by which men take hold of God, but the hand is invisible until it is revealed by one who has already clasped it. The question of education is at heart a spiritual question, the question first of all of the quality of the teacher, who himself is spiritual, who has seen the gleam of ideal Truth. Like one who was called "Great Teacher," he succeeds, not by carrying a shining light, but by being one. CHAPTER VII IDEALS IN RELIGION To love God and make one s self loved by Him, to love one s neighbors and to make one s self loved by them this is morality and religion; in both the one and the other, love is everything end, beginning, and middle. JOUBERT. CHAPTER VII IDEALS IN RELIGION IN THE course of a recent conversation with an editorial writer of wide experience and perspec tive, relative to ideals and the forces with which to accomplish them, I asked, "What do you think of the church as a present-day agency in behalf of religious ideals?" "The church?" said he with unfeigned surprise, "it is futile its power is virtually gone. It cannot rein state itself in its present form. The only great moulding forces to-day in America are the news papers and the banks, and these are either too self-centred or too thoroughly controlled from outside to be able to meet the deeper considera tions and emergencies of the nation." From this opinion many will differ. It will be called, and justly so, we believe, the view of an extremist who was not thoroughly aware of the tremendously vital work the church is doing in the United States against many odds, and in a period of decided transition from the old 193 194 American Ideals forms to those more nearly consonant with the life of a changed republic. But while this opin ion is not usually so broadly and nakedly stated, it is more generally accepted, unconsciously if not consciously, among a large circle of American men of affairs, than we sometimes appreciate. The inadequacy of the church is especially felt when the question is raised whether the Chris tian faith is indispensable as a saving force or as an adequate requirement for personal guid ance. Hardly a month passes that some of the magazines fail to publish articles by writers who take substantially the position that the church has collapsed as a means for imparting dynamics to the thoughtful and influential classes in the United States. One finds, indeed, though not so commonly save in special coteries in the large cities, a class of ultra-liberals with more or less extreme socialistic tendencies, who speak of the inade quacy of religion in general much as one would refer to the exploded subject of sea gold or witch burning something too utterly old-fashioned and out-of-date to merit even thoughtful con sideration. Even the younger clergy in certain sections reveal not orJy a disbelief in the old forms of theology and the "chains of creeds" as Ideals in Religion 195 Whittier called them, but if one may judge by the things that engage their enthusiastic atten tion, they have lost considerable of their depend ence upon the religion of our forefathers as a means for spiritual and supernatural regeneration of the individual. A Southern bishop not long ago characterized a certain young clergyman in his diocese as preaching somewhat as follows: "Dearly beloved! You must repent as it were, and be converted in a measure; or be damned to a certain extent." Outside of the circle of persons immediately engaged in strictly "church work," or listed among the professional and official religionists, the tendency is to regard formalized religious faith as exemplified in the Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish orders in church, cathedral, or syna gogue, as good enough for those people who want it, but not vitally necessary for the average enterprising American on his busy way to suc cess, and each year less prone to demonstrate his religious ideals by either ecclesiastical or emo tional exercises, far less in the form of dogma. The tendency is to pour out idealism rather in the various forms of public service and the activities associated with family existence devotion to friends, charity, and standards of 196 American Ideals moral rectitude, without associating these with any particularly religious meaning. The second commandment of neighborliness has become more popular as an ideal than the first great commandment of godliness. In a sense the American has exchanged the doctrine of his fathers for a principle of practical conduct which he finds to-day the best policy, which is decid edly ethical but not consciously religious. The average citizen will tell you that religion is by no means non-existent in America, and his explanation resembles the statement of a certain college president, who said on behalf of his university, which had been criticised for some irreligious or liberal tendencies, that there never was a time when the men of his institution were more deeply religious than at the present moment, even if they talked less about it than did the men of a former generation. One also hears frequently that it is not a question of the universality of the existence of religious ideals in America at present which is of chief concern, but rather the mode of their expression. A new set of accessories are needed more truly in keeping with the modern mood. There is less need of rules of prohibition as to what a man must or must not do to Ideals in Religion 197 be a Christian, and more need of a man exhibit ing throughout the whole texture of his life the spirit of Jesus. We demand a different stage scenery to fit our twentieth-century relig ious drama to that which was the accom paniment of our fathers faith. Where the men of the last generation said "doctrine," we say "service." Where they talked about the future and this life as a preparatory period sim ply for another w r orld awaiting the soul with variegated rewards and punishments, we talk about the present, and are chiefly interested in making the world of the moment the best possi ble for every one, getting out of it all that we can with comparatively little concern or thought for another life, regarding which it is quite gen erally conceded we have little or no authoritative evidence or experience to guide us to safe con clusions. In other words, the religion of the present is quite disengaged from the divine path of theological doctrine which was the fore most consideration fifty years ago in America. The country no longer languishes under the restraint of old fears or is it frightened at being shaken over hell, according to the mode of Jonathan Edwards. There is a sense of being to a large degree the architect of one s own fortune. 198 American Ideals Prejudice, especially religious prejudice, is one of the surest marks of failure or weakness. Missionary or professional accounts of religion are taken with a grain of salt, allowance being made for a bias which somewhat negates the conclusions. "In spite of the fact that the writer is a missionary," begins a recent review of a really great book, "he shows a creditable breadth of treatment and a real sympathy with other religions/ The one hundred and sixty- nine different religious denominations, by their very multiplicity, have thrown suspicion upon the unifying and standardizing force of authori tative and official religion. There is, moreover, a decided growth in relig ious tolerance in the United States. It would be expected by any one who knew the early history of America that in the matter of religion especially the freedom principle would be opera tive, the New England anachronisms of witch burning and more recent heresy trials notwith standing. The Constitution of the country, in Article VI, forbids any religious test as a qualifi cation for office, while the first amendment pro hibits Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of reiigion or prohibitory to the free exercise thereof. At least three fourths / b ^^ Ideals in Religion 199 of the constitutions of the various states prohibit the use of taxpayer s funds given for the support of public schools to be used to promote denom inational institutions, or for sectarian instruction in the schools of the land. One finds that few tenets are more universally and unconsciously maintained than that the state as well as the individual must keep "hands off" when it comes to the matter of a man s religious convictions. As long as the individual s religion does not interfere with the manifest and common rights of others, or run counter to the laws of the Re public, he is absolutely free to believe or not to believe, to worship or not to worship. A German in Berlin remarked to me a few years ago in speaking of the alliance of students to religion in that Empire: "You know, we have no heathen in Germany. Every student is a member of the State church from early confirma tion in childhood." A State church in America, however, that would for a moment give the suggestion of in- voluntariness in the matters of religion, is an idea as impossible to conceive at the present time as enforced military service, or the prohi bition of liquor drinking or tobacco smoking by a simple fiat of the Federal Government. In- 200 American Ideals deed, one of the most common objections pastors of churches find presented by parents to the baptism of their children in early youth is that they, as parents, do not think it is fair to the child, or that they have no right to allow the child to take such a step in so important a matter until he is old enough to choose for him self. In religion, as in so many things that in volve individual rights, the person and not the state is the norm. In many cases it may even tuate that the child, grown to manhood, loses his early inclination to choose a place in the ranks of professed religionists but the theory exists quite widely that an unforced selection of reli gion by a youth makes accession to the church many times more valuable than a child member swept into faith at the required wish of the par ents, and who frequently, when grown, is in clined to lay his religious indifference to an unfair advantage taken of him in his boyhood. The necessary loosening of the ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic church in America, as contrasted with its firmer grip upon its mem bership in Spain and Italy particularly, is an evidence not only of the wisdom of the Roman leadership, but also of tne inevitable democracy in the spirit and ideal of American religion. The Ideals in Religion 201 famous edict of William of Orange that "con science is God s province," is still a truism in the United States, and the only people who have ever dared to oppose it in this land were the Puritans of Massachusetts and the Anglicans of Virginia, much to the detriment of their mem ory in later generations. The promiscuous discussions upon things religious exist to-day throughout the country as they never existed before. There is not the wholesale ridicule either of the Bible or of religion that there was in the time of Thomas Paine, who said that he had gone through the Bible as a woodman would go through a forest felling the trees. "The priests may replant them," he said, "but they cannot make them grow." I was struck recently in walking through Times Square to see the popular curb debaters thrusting a youth forcibly into the street, the leader of the company, who was evidently of Jewish extraction, saying in explanation, "This man is a disgrace to his race: he has just said that he didn t believe in God." In a visit a few years ago to one of our large universities I found seven students enrolled in a Bible class, nearly every one of whom professed a different stripe of belief. One said he was a free thinker, 2O2 American Ideals two leaned toward pantheism, there was one Jew, one Catholic, and one Christian. The last man could not be easily classified, and for convenience sake he was called a vegetarian an aggregation of religious tolerance that should cause certain of our forefathers to turn over in their graves. America is frequently spoken of as a country of "isms," and one needs only to pick up the Saturday newspapers, which show the list of services for Sunday worship, to realize the cos mopolitan character of American religion. The advance in the matter of conceded liberty to every form of faith, recognizing not only a man s personal liberty to think for himself, but also conceding generously the same privilege to another, has been specially evident and rapid during the past ten years, since the higher criticism and the great social-service movements have drawn to themselves so many devoted ad herents, both within and without the churches. In spite of the tremendous losses, especially in the realm of ethics, which necessarily accrue from the omission of any teaching of the coun try s book of religion, and in spite of a multitude of attempts to introduce the Bible into the public-school system, this ingrained feeling of Ideals in Religion 203 the right of the individual to be taught only along such lines as accord with the parent s faith, at least until he is old enough to choose for himself, has been too strong to admit of the introduction of any considerable moral or relig ious teaching in the school curricula. Even in social settlements, which are sup ported often largely by church adherents, when one asks, "Why do you not give your young people some religious instruction?" the answer will be forthcoming, "We cannot do it because of the diversities of the religions represented; it would be unfair to teach one faith alone, and the conditions of the work make it impossible to hold services or to give religious instruction in all the beliefs represented by the frequenters of the settlement." The growing tolerance, which is largely a growth of the fair-play principle, is also seen in the decrease of acrid theological discussions, and in some areas in the indifference altogether to matters of theological import. It is not necessarily that the people are growing less religious, but they are certainly becoming less interested in the forms in which the religion of the last generation were encrusted. Many of us can remember how our own fathers became 204 American Ideals red in the face in their Sunday after-dinner discussions of theology, and were quite willing to brand men of different faith as semi-infidels, even going so far as to establish a kind of un conscious weekday boycott, in rural communi ties, of the merchants and artisans who were not fortunate enough to be able to "believe right" or to "be sound" in their views, which meant usually tobelieve as the religious censors believed. It would be difficult to find a woman of the present generation speaking as we once heard an old lady of our grandmother s period re mark, "I like Mary Smith, but if she joined the Methodist church she could never step her foot inside my door again!" We recall vividly our childish memory of our mother blanching before the Sunday discussions of the doctrine of free will, predestination, and infant baptism, and fairly worrying herself ill in trying to invent less belligerent topics of conversation. To-day a Jew, a Baptist, and a Christian Scien tist may dwell and dine together in a peace as perfect and unruffled as that of a June morning. They have learned to emphasize their affirma tions and points of agreement, and to minimize their differences to an extent far greater than was possible even a generation ago. Ideals in Religion 205 Some would say, "so much the worse for our religion, and also for our country s tolerance, if it is responsible for creating such indifference to religion." The greater majority would probably agree with the college president who, after having made attendance at chapel ex ercises voluntary rather than required, was severely criticised by certain religious propa gandists who ironically addressed him, saying, "we understand that you have made God an elective in your college!" The president re plied, "No, but we understand that He has made Himself elective everywhere." Religious toler ance is to-day a commonplace, almost a uni versal, condition in the United States. Whether it is due to this growing spirit of tolerance, or to the additional emphasis upon the secular life of the period, there is a strong drift, growing in volume year by year, toward associating religion with daily life. The na tional feeling is increasing that Sunday religion and church going are not necessarily marks of the kind of religion that is attractive and useful in American eyes. The sanctity of Sunday has decreasing hold upon the majorities, es pecially the kind of Sunday that is different in spirit from the other six days of the week. 206 American Ideals Meanwhile, the elemental needs of the Amer ican heart are changeless through the years, and the country that has always held personal and national righteousness in its deepest thought and as its loftiest ideal, coincident with true worth and achievement of any andevery sort, will not long go religionless. Indeed the American temperament cannot, if it would, eliminate God and the soul, with all that these represent in our composite civilization. As a people we are always somewhere near the mountain of re ligious and spiritual vision, despite the fact that the American will usually stoutly deny that this is his first interest in life. When one gets out of the cities into the coun try and the smaller towns (where one sees religious tendencies as all other tendencies freer from the obstructing media of competitive materialism and abnormal cosmopolitan in fluences, and where one also sees the real nature of the country reflected most truly), the church bulks larger as an institution; it is still the place where the majority of the people find the centre of their social life as well as the fountain of their spiritual interests. Even here, how ever, if one examines the motives of church going and church allegiance, one will find as Ideals in Religion 207 guiding principles the force of habit, public opinion, " respectability," and the sense that somehow, in a way that people do not exactly stop to define, the organization of the church stands for an element of communal good which children and families can ill afford to be with out. The loyalty to sect is much stronger outside the cities, and there is a less noticeable tendency to make service an ideal for the uplift of the community. It is doubtful whether the spiritual life of these churches flows much higher than in the cities; one reason for so thinking resides in the fact that a large number of the rural population moving so rapidly to the large centres fail to ally themselves with city churches, but rather seem to regard the new environment as a welcome opportunity for release from the religious bonds which have held them all too loosely in their deepest desires and interests. Notwithstanding these apparent signs of indifference to church affiliations, the religious ideal is confessedly one of the easiest ideals with which to interest Americans, especially wheTT it is clothed in the right sort of language, and concerns itself, not with external technicalities of doctrine and prohibition, but with the ele- 208 American Ideals mental relationships and realities of everyday life. There are scores of ways by which this religious feeling is moved to the point of wor ship of "Something not ourselves. " The university man, for example, reflects the nation s characteristics in this direction quite accurately. You will often see in a college fraternity a group of students, more or less athletically inclined, standing about a piano on a Sunday afternoon, or on any evening sub sequent to the evening meal, singing college airs, while the ragtime musician of the frater nity pounds out his variations in accordance with his peculiar art. Slowly the sounds melt downward toward the plantation melodies until they frequently reach a deep emotional note in the singing of the college Alma Mater. The bystander noticed the change as this last song was sung in one of these fraternities, and the sentiment appealed to him as not being a thousand miles removed from religious feeling as it welled up in the voices of the singers. Upon asking one of the men later about his sing ing he said, "You know, it s funny, but when we get to that last song, it does something to me way down deep." Seme one has said that a college man s songs and yells are his prayers. V Ideals in Religion 209 We have seen a group of men in a city club, certainly not notable for its religious atmo sphere, so stirred by the singing of the ballad "Oh, Friend of Mine" by a member of an opera company that if some one at its close had said "Let us pray!" the crowd would have bowed its head with no great surprise. After a darkey quartette in a big labor meeting had finished singing the old Southern melody with its plaintive strain, "The Lambs Are Calling Shepherd Feed Thy Sheep" one man was over heard to say, "It wouldn t be hard to have an evangelistic meeting right here and now." All of which goes to show that emotional feeling and religious sentiment flow closely together in the American temperament, and that the church of to-day which substitutes intellectual ad dresses and lectures upon everything from poli tics to war problems, leaving out the great mov ing appeals to the human heart, is not moving nearer but farther away from the deep longings of the American masses. Arguments to prove the religiosity of Ameri cans are needless. It is ours by heritage and by nature. In every stage of the development of the United States we have not been without thought regarding the expression of this idealism 2io American Ideals in some form or other. Sometimes, alas, it has seemed very much like bigotry, again a great tide of evangelism has swept the land, and at another period it has come to the surface in a nation-wide eruption of honesty and moral pur- posefulness or renovation. This ideal has always seemed as natural as it has been needful in the United States, both for the reinforcement of our faltering purposes, the inspiring afresh to personal achievement of character, and also as the medium in which the people might hear the Voice of a higher and invisible power. Some would say that socialism has now be come the religion of a great number. To others church buildings reveal the inclination to wor shipful surroundings with elaborate architec ture and ritual. To many another religion is synonymous with philanthropy, and to others it signifies the dropping of old creeds and the taking up of new ones so varied that even their names would make necessary a new dictionary to ex plain their tenets and their titles. There is probably no limit to be placed upon the hetero geneous expression which this religious motive is capable of taking in a nation made up of so many diverse forces, ard representing so many strains of racial and national ideas and natures Ideals in Religion 211 released in an atmosphere of carefully guarded religious freedom. These mingled ideals and their methods of fulfilment may be grouped under two heads: First, those that aim at the ideal of a new social organism as the surest means of "saving" the people and the state a variety of large and comprehensive socialism finding its arena in multiplied efforts at betterment in restrictive or reform legislation, and in multifold schemes of economic and political readjustment. It is a religion of humanity whose watchword is, "Change the conditions of life, and you will get a world in which the dwellers will find satis factory environment making for their peace and prosperity." Second, there are those ideals which have for a longer time been present in the American consciousness, and which aim not so much at society as at the man himself. They are repre sented by the church and also by many outside the church, and their insistence, differing with times and localities, has been upon the belief that the salvation of the social organism hinges upon the reconstructed and regenerated individ ual. The man, rather than the method, is placed in the foreground. The sin of the per- 212 American Ideals sonal human heart is considered more important to attend than the sin of the nation. Its slogan is, "Change the heart! Efface the wrong in the individual, especially the wish for wrong; give him a right temper, a right desire and disposition, and you will perforce, by the process of indirec tion, make the nation right." Those holding this ideal maintain that any other emphasis is a temporizing and a palliative only, that drives the unscotched evil of the units of the common wealth into other forms of social and corporate unrighteousness. In other words, the religious idealism of America is fairly divided at present between what we may call social service, or socialism in a large catholic sense, saving the world by the strong forces of environment and philanthropy, and Christianity as represented primarily in the Gospel of Christ, which attaches the hopes of a new order to the focussing of attention upon the mind and heart and soul of the individual, attending first of all to Christian character rather than to the manufacture of uplifting surroundings. In the conflict of religious ideals in the United States the present victory seems to lie with the apostles of the service idea. In our philanthropy V Ideals in Religion 213 we have outstripped and amazed the world. While other nations have been stunned by dis aster and famine and the persecution of weaker races, America has started a subscription paper and has raised trainloads and shiploads of sup plies and succor for suffering and oppressed humanity, even while other nations are reading the news of the catastrophe. One needs only to recall the opening of the American heart at the time of such events as the Armenian massa cres, the famines in India, the Galveston and San Francisco and Messina calamities, and especially the present rising up of the nation s generosity in the case of the Belgian and Servian sufferers. Our "Foundations" medical, social, political, peace, and educational, are almost staggering, not only in their number, but in the vast prodi gality of wealth with which they have been established. Our pension systems for old sol diers and for new ones, for professors, for miners, and of late for civilians and artisans, are being established so rapidly that world almanacs are out of date almost before they get into circula tion. The last dozen years have recorded almost a continuous unearthing of evil in all sorts and kinds of organizations and in well-nigh every 214 American Ideals division of the body politic; social, political, and municipal shame of every grade and hue has been unearthed and unloaded by the cartload. We have investigated and reformed almost everything investigable and reformable, rang ing spaciously all the way from insurance com panies to "Sunday" evangelism. Bad tene ments, bad light, bad dance halls, bad sewerage, bad medicine, and bad Mormons all have been under the searchlight. We have spent the cities money on commissions to study streets and statesmanship and sanitation in Europe. We have not neglected our sweatshops and our stockyards, our prisons and our poorhouses, while the "educational" and "social" and "business" drama and melodrama, including everything between white slavery and polygamy, to the degradation of courts and the captains of industry, have been spread before the nation s appalled and wincing eyes. The only end to this vast nation-wide mania of uplift for analysis and reform is the natural ennui and disgust of the populace. There is a lull at present in certain quarters, for even the American gets tired of his own excesses and must have new worlds to con quer. The managers aad stockholders of some of our most shame-mongering periodicals are Ideals in Religion 215 reported as calling a halt on muckrakers and sexual fiction, and even the drama is showing signs of passing out of unwholesome topics into a cleaner air. The ideal, however, of saving society by social revolution and publicity is still running strong in the nation s consciousness. It is a pe riod of social regeneration, and nothing secular or familiar to the light of common day is alien to it. All to what end? Does a thoughtful glance at the results of this highly specialized and so cialized ideal in our modern civilization enspirit us to further advances along this line, or does it suggest more deliberate consideration relative to means for the renovation and uplifting of the modern state? Does Germany, for example, with the cleanest streets of any city in the world, confessedly with the best municipal and educational system, especially with its educational propaganda for the industrial classes, encourage us in the con tinuation of secular religion? Does Germany, to whom we have gone to school in the varied arts of beautification and perfection of environ ments, of street cleaning, of care for defective children, of old-age pensions and of model tene ment houses, and a score of other advances in 216 American Ideals state and school and home does Germany give us hope for saving ourselves and our country through model changes in the social organism? Does she not possess all these externalities of regeneration to a degree of perfection that we or any other nation can hardly expect to equal or surpass? Yet when the real crisis for showing the power and capacity of national ideals in morals or religion occurs, in the real needs of humanity when idealism is driven from its hidden places, this socialized state tears up treaties like "scraps of paper/ she disregards the international safeguards of nations, the only ropes by which the world s civilization can be bound together with hope in moments of crisis; she sweeps through neutral unbelligerent na tions, carrying deadly and inhuman destruction to lives and property, blighting with torturing breath the most sacred sanctions of family and home. This nation, which has grown great through her attention to the outward details of twentieth-century civilization, seems to lose both her head and her heart when her selfish interests are at stake; she throws a shell upon peaceful sleeping hamlets by night, she poisons with death-agonizing gases tiiose she may not kill otherwise; then, as it would seem, in a premedi- Ideals in Religion 217 tated ideal of fright fulness and moral unrestraint she places the capstone on the arch of her ruth less and life-destroying regime by casting tor pedoes at ships loaded with defenceless women and little children, standing apart and listening unresponsive to the anguished shrieks of the drowning, "Just as if Jesus had never lived, As if He had never died." Is it not proof, tragic beyond the reaches of the imagination, that social and highly de veloped environmental councils of perfection, as nearly complete as anywhere on the face of the earth, are as powerless as cobwebs to stay the elemental passions of the untamed and un- emancipated human heart? We ask has Christianity collapsed in this spectacle spread before our eyes in this most deadly of all wars of the world? Is it only left for us to say resignedly, "Evil has won In the horrid feud of ages with the throne. Evil stands on the neck of good, and rules the world alone." 218 American Ideals Do we as Christians despair of Christianity because of scenes and conditions like these? The very question is a travesty on words. It is not Christianity which has collapsed, for the Christian ethic or the Christian spirit have no more to do with the informing and the bringing to fruition of these baneful results than the inquisitorial burning of martyrs had to do with the healing, tolerant spirit of the Man of Galilee. In the words of Teutonic idealism itself, these events are the hallmark of a Napoleonic and not a Christian regime, the practical evidence before the eyes of all men of a religion that makes no pretence at beating "its swords into plowshares," but has accepted hate and might and the religion of valor in its place, the polar antithesis of every principle laid down by the ethic of Jesus. It is the ideal of steel and iron, crushing and trampling into dust the loftiest hopes of the spirit and the soul of man. If there was ever a visible and consummate proof of the saying of a great scientist who was once asked about the "failure of Christianity," and answered, "The failure of Christianity? I have never yet seen Christianity tried," it would seem to be here. Amid all the heart break of these days, if there is any such thing Ideals in Religion 219 still resident on earth as that which Gladstone once called, "A double dose of original sin/ this is a notable example of it. Yet we do not need to go abroad to discover the demolition of ideals that play only on the surface of social organization but fail to reach the roots of human nature, ideals that are the resultant merely of secular and ethical na tionalism. At the enormous expense of money and press notices and a great expenditure of legislative debate and legislation, we pass inter state and various kinds of federal laws, aiming at the restriction of evil-doing among railroad officials, punishing often beyond reason and justice the great carriers of the nation for their mistakes which are as great as their achieve ments. Then before the ink is fairly dry on the statute books, new railroad scandals larger perhaps than any that have yet appeared reveal themselves in unlooked-for directions, with new forms of chicanery and official corruption, and widows and mothers from Portland to New Haven are bereft of their savings, which have gone to fill the deficits of railroad companies, some of whose officials are among our much- lauded philanthropists and apostles of the social izing gospel. 22O American Ideals Is there not need to appreciate with new candor, not simply the inadequacy of exter- nalism as a religion, but also that such ideals are far indeed from the teaching of the Founder of the religious faith under whose banner our country was inaugurated ? This Christian ideal is aimed, not first at the body politic, but at the individual man. It places its stamp, to be sure, upon the command to serve and to minister to our fellowmen. It would be an anachro nism of Christian ideals that would advocate the passing by on the other side of contempo rary Samaritans, saying, "Be ye warmed and clothed," but doing nothing to assist in the process. But even Samaritan tending, accord ing to the principles laid down and acted on by Christ, is not the first or the central ideal of the Christian religion. The first great command ment is the love of man to God, which has been translated as the life of God in the soul of man, and this commandment came before the second, not only in Biblical sequence, but in the entire New Testament emphasis; it comes before it in life, in our twentieth-century life, if the second commandment is to be fully served. Matthew Arnold said that it was by the "spirit and the method of Jesus," and in no other Ideals in Religion 221 way, that religion is to be made permanent in the world. If Christianity is to have a fair trial, if this spirit and method of Jesus is to bear any weight whatsoever upon the lives of men, it must be the individual man rather than his circumstances upon which we must rivet at tention. The man is the maker of his circum stances, and the circumstances have never truly made or decided the course of great manhood. It has been pointed out that pauperism was more common in the first century than it is to-day, far more common, yet the Founder of the Christian faith neither organized nor ad vocated reforms for pauperism; He left no such system of poor laws as we find even in the old Jewish histories of the Old Testament. No one who has travelled in Eastern countries could possibly get the impression that there was no need at present, as in the first century, for atten tion to sanitation and hygiene. Yet the early founders of Christianity gave the matter, as far as we know, little of their regard, in spite of the fact that as far back as the time of Moses, fourteen centuries previous, they had the ex ample of laws of sanitation and all kinds of bodily purifications as matters of legal and religious significance. No one can maintain 222 American Ideals that the silence of the New Testament relative to these matters can be urged on the strength of their being unknown subjects or topics of incon siderable importance to the people or the age. Muhammad, contrariwise, recognized the need of ceaseless ablutions, and made his laws of bathing an inseparable preparation for prayer. But with the intuitive and certain concen tration of great men, we find Christ sweeping by the externalisms of his race, in both secular and religious things alike, to strike at what was to him evidently the core of religion. It was this: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye cleanse the outside of the cup, and of the platter, but within they are full from extortions and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the outside there of may become clean also." It was good men before good measures. It seems a slower process, yet the precepts of our national faith correspond with the intuitive good sense of a vast multitude of Americans when they enjoin us twat we get on faster in the end toward great religious ideals by giving Ideals in Religion 223 our attention first to making men, then laws, and good bodily environment in order. "These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone." Given good men and we must by inherent necessity of natural law have good laws, good schools, and harmonious cooperation between classes. That all the advanced laws, be they relative to tariff and government or to rum or land tax or communism, are nerveless and inadequate for good civilization in the hands of bad men as administrators is a truism, but it has not become sufficiently patent to guide us in our acts. We have left at the side a mighty principle in our great and sensible religion, and have said, contrary to its injunction, u Feedthe man, culture him, give him good morals, and if there is any time left cultivate his soul!" We have reversed the process of our religion. To change a man s clothes and even to fill his stomach without changing his mind and the innermost ideals of his nature is the veriest acme of "poking the fire from the top." It is to lose the true leverage on the things that make the real difference in human nature. It is to put the foreground in the background of national progress. The spiritual man is the chief hope of the 224 American Ideals moral, intellectual, or physically healthy and happy man. In religion the official arbiter is the spiritual consciousness of the individual, as in science it is the intellectual consciousness. Dr. Lyman Abbott once said, " Christ did not begin with the bottom of the man and work up to the top, he began with the top of the man and worked down toward the bottom." This was also the method of Socrates: "All good and evil/ the old Greek said, "whether in the body or in human nature, originate in the soul and overflow from thence, as from the head into the eye. And, therefore, if the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul: that is the first thing." The Christian ethic and gospel, if it can once get tried, is the epitome of the highest religious idealism an idealism that draws a man s spirit from above to the vision of his own profitable individual perfection, a perfection that is worked out through the stimulus of the vision of God. This ideal has been in the background of American civilization for a long time, but there was never a period when it needed a more vig orous restatement. Emerson s whole message gathers around the iuea that the institution is but the lengthened shadow of a man. That Ideals in Religion 225 church and that devoted pastor and all those everywhere who have refrained from prostituting the high message aimed at a renewed, reverential, and divine manhood, to the merely temporary expedients of a socialized and non-spiritual opportunism these are the nation s bulwark of power. Count Okuma in speaking of the politics of his nation said to me, "The great need in Japan to-day is to spiritualize our politics." Likewise in America, there is upon us even now the mo ment when not only our country but the nations of the world bid us gather up our broken idols and half dreams of social and political progress, not abandoning the new and helpful order of service, but reinspiring it, breathing through it the true spirit of the Founder of the religion which has not really lost amongst us individ ual or national respect for its reality and power. CHAPTER VIII ATTITUDE TOWARD THE IMMIGRANT The bulk of the Americans don t get as yet any real sense of his portentous multitude. H. G. WELLS. CHAPTER VIII ATTITUDE TOWARD THE IMMIGRANT THE present European war and its subsequent results in the national and social mobility of the nations of the world bring to our grave atten tion the ideals America holds relative to the 10,500,000 immigrants who have landed in the United States since the opening of the twentieth century, and to the future attitude we shall take regarding this vast flood of alien power and possibility. Of these enormous accessions, added so quickly to the lower strata of our social life, less than 15 per cent, had $50 between them and starvation when they reached our shores. Four out of every five have no trade, and more than seven million of the peoples of Slav, Latin, and Asiatic blood are coagulated in crowded indus trial centres where the traditional ideals of European life, in many cases the antitheses of those of America, are left to germinate almost untouched save by the incitements of the labor agitator. Only to consider, however superfici- 229 230 American Ideals ally, the fact that at present the male workers of foreign parentage outnumber the workers of native parentage, and that this flood of popula tion eclipses our native-born birth rate, is to suggest the enormity of our problem in Ameri canizing these members of fifty-six different immigrant nationalities. The questions these figures arouse are almost legion. There are those that involve education, safeguarding of womanhood and childhood, re spect and obedience to law,, naturalization and citizenship, foreign government subsidies, class legislation, exclusion by government, and a score of theories of service and betterment, some of which are in successful operation, but which as a whole are lacking in coherence and in unity to a common goal. The problem might natu rally lead men like Mr. H. G. Wells, who take a hurried glance at these congeries of peoples and opinions regarding them, to say, "I could not make them understand the apprehension with which this huge dilution of the American people with profoundly ignorant foreign peasants filled me." We must consider this problem in the light of our past experience as-well as with our eyes on the present and the future. Attitude Toward the Immigrant 231 Since the year 1845 there has been proceeding a migration to the United States far beyond any thing the world has known since the fifth and seventh centuries, when in Europe and Western Asia the Slavic and Teutonic tribes migrated to the Roman Empire. The migration began even as far back as 1820, when the English settlers came in comparatively small numbers, about 20,000 per annum, to the last year when an avalanche of 1,000,000 persons landed on our hospitable shores. The Bureau of Immigration reveals the ad dition of 1,250,000 between the years 1845 anc ^ 1855, fr m Ireland, while the total Irish immi gration between 1820 and 1909 was 4,218,107, a vast Celtic wave in number equal to the entire population of Ireland in the year 1909. The coming of Germans to America began in 1852, and in the year 1909 reached a total of 5,320,312 persons of Teuton stock who looked to the New World for their future home. Next came the Scandinavians, beginning in 1856 with a strong current of migration reaching in 1909 a total of 1,896,139 souls. It was not until 1880 that the stronger tide of immigration set in from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and in 1882 from Italy and Russia, 232 American Ideals From the year 1890 Central and Southern Eu rope have led the van of these new Americans, and their total in 1907 numbered 1,285,000, and altogether between the years of 1900 and 1909 there were 8,000,000 additions to the American population from this section of Europe. With this latter influx also there came new elements in both race and religion, and in some respects these peoples have furnished the most intricate problems of assimilation. Furthermore, there is the record of far greater growth by the birth rate than among the native- born Americans. In certain states this rate is three times that of the dwellers of native stock. In the year 1910 more than half of the white population of the country was foreign or children of foreigners, and in that year we find that twice as many offspring were born to foreigners as to the native population. If the present rate and proportionate addition from the various nations of the earth continues, it has been esti mated that in the year 1950 at least three fourths of the population of the United States will be of foreign extraction. At first sight this would seem to mean an almost impossible task of Americanization. There are large considerations which mitigate Attitude Toward the Immigrant 233 the seeming huge problem of absorption. One aid lies in the fact that with this new prospective population of 1950, certainly one half will con sist of the emigration from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, and the process of assimilating these people of more or less kindred interests in religion, and in some cases likeness of government and racial tradi tions, is much easier than is the case with some of the races of Southern Europe and Asiatic lands. Of these latter there will be, according to the present ratio of immigration, enormous as it seems, but about 20 or 25 per cent, of the total incomers. It is also to be remembered that the birth rate is declining among the second generation of foreigners, and that there is also a depletion of the foreign reserve in certain coun tries. The conditions arising as a result of the present war no one can surely predict. That each of the nations now engaged in the conflict will be more ready than perhaps ever before to offer inducements to hold their people at home to assist in filling up the broken lines of workers so hideously shattered by the war we are now witnessing seems probable. Even if these people of the Old World should come to us in greater numbers than ever, those who know best the 234 American Ideals growing needs of this land for labor of all kinds, and also recognize the increasing number of ameliorating and educative agencies at work to care for the stranger within our gates, are not as apprehensive of the results as are some of our fleeting visitors. There is, moreover, the past ability of this country to bring this foreign material into new adaptation to our institutions and life in a manner indubitably rapid and unique. No foreigner can quite understand it, and many an American does not stop to reason out the matter or to explain the suddenness with which the leaven of Americanism begins to mold the im migrant when it gets a chance at him in com paratively small groups or individually. The story is told of two Irish and English immigrants coming into New York Harbor on the Fourth of July. When the Englishman remarked to his fellow prospective American, "What is that noise we hear?" the Irishman replied, "We re celebratin the day we licked ye." The atmos phere of public opinion, the newspaper in its varied languages, and the willingness of the new comer to be transformed as soon as possible for his own good, are all coi*ducive to a quick stamp ing process in the stimulating environment of a Attitude Toward the Immigrant 235 progressive civilization. That the American type has become more or less fixed, and that the hordes of immigrants have in the past not been able to radically or suddenly sweep it out of existence, is a reason for the belief that it will stand the test of the years ahead with perhaps even greater tax upon its powers. The dangers, however, are great enough even at the best, both to the immigrant himself, be ginning anew with the loosened restraints, his national habits and his priest left behind, feeling himself often "a tossing atom in a seething crowd," and also to the Republic from the congested and often unattended masses of peasants from Europe thrown into a swarm of industrial or mining laborers, losing their guid ing stars of the Old World before they even glimpse the orbits around which their new world is swinging. The hope of a successful solution of this vexed problem lies in something more than the "eternal vigilance" that passively believes we can some how accomplish the miraculous by our wonderful civilization. A great many of the people of this country must begin to feel a new and a different kind of obligation to the foreigner if we are really to succeed in making him what he 236 American Ideals may become in this land of opportunity. It means ever-increasingGovernment attention and official sympathy in rules and laws executed for individuals as well as for a herd at Ellis Island; it means a vastly enlarged program of education for adults as for children. It involves meeting the foreigner at the water s edge and following him closely into every state and construction camp of his industrial work-a-day world; it means more personal attention to his social and religious and sentimental nature than we have yet even meditated; it means that large numbers of our people must give up a life work to the study and service needed to prepare these eager and often able men and women, whom we do not know except under the somewhat demeaning title of "immigrant," to take their citizenship papers with a new sense of obligation to become un-hyphenated and unequivocal adherents to their adopted citizenship. Surveys and Immigration Commissions and Americanization Days and "Civic Rituals * are good, but they will of themselves fail to Ameri canize the foreigner. The two things that are imperatively needed at present are new and truer beliefs in the character and accomplish ment of the new citizen on the part of native- Attitude Toward the Immigrant 237 born American men and women, and in the second place actual workers rather than theo rists about work. I quote from a letter written to me by Dr. Peter Roberts, one of the men who has pioneered much of the splendid service at the port cities, and who has also assisted in the preparation of the foreigner, even as far back as his homeland and embarking point, for the new conditions awaiting him: The great need as relating to the immigrant is that American-born men may understand and fully comprehend the meaning of democracy. Prejudice against the foreigner is too common, indifference to his well-being is prevalent, and in scores of com munities a practical program for the assimilation of immigrants is an impossibility because of the pre judice of Americans. To remove this antipathy, to convince the native born that the immigrant has possibilities if he is only given a chance, is the great work that needs to be done to-day in America. The second great need is to convince the govern ment of every state where the immigration problem is acute, as well as the Federal Government, that it is unjust to tax the alien without investing in him something that will make him a good citizen of the United States. I do not see how patriotic Americans who know the need of immigrants can complacently contemplate a fund of ten millions of dollars taken 238 American Ideals out of the pockets of poor immigrants coming to this country, and not demand that this fund be used for the education and the assimilation of the alien. A sympathetic effort is also needed to induce aliens who have been in the country five or more years to become identified with the nation. There is need of a modification of the law admitting aliens to natural ization, giving an opportunity to character, amount of property accumulated, and record of industrial efficiency in any reliable plant to count in the ex amination. It is a mistake to believe that aliens seeking entrance into our family are desirable if only they can write their names, read English, and know something about our Constitution. The putting of these ideas and many others relative to the foreigner into active operation, in some parts of our land at least, gives hope of a wider nation-wide service for alien adults as well as for children of foreigners. The work of the Educational Alliance for the Jews from Russia, Galicia, and Poland is notable by its emphasis upon the family life of the immigrants, and also by its attention to religious instruction, which it is a peril to omit when dealing with the aliens. The Young Men s Christian Association is teaching 30,000 immigrants in classes, and is reaching ten times this number through its lectures and entertainments. The Association Attitude Toward the Immigrant 239 has also thirteen European secretaries serving immigrants in foreign ports, and twelve secre taries are at work with immigrants in the North American ports. The enlistment of one thou sand college students, most of them in engineer ing courses in our universities, as volunteer teachers and helpers among these newly arrived peoples, is also to be credited to the work of the Young Men s Christian Associations. It is in the large cities especially that Amer ican ideals are most alarmingly threatened by the mass of undigested foreign elements. There is 72 per cent, of the immigrant population now in the cities of our country, drawn there largely by the opportunities of industrial work. In New York, for example, 58 per cent, of its males of voting age were born on foreign soil, and only 38 per cent, of this immigrant popula tion is naturalized. In other words, we have as our "naturalization problem" in the American metropolis 510,702 men who are not held by citizenship from the engagement in a score of things inimical to good government, if not tending toward violent socialism and some thing resembling anarchy if their leadership is sufficiently unscrupulous. The need of grappling with the problem by the 240 American Ideals forces of an entire city and the success attendant upon such unified activity are revealed in the excellent work which is now being accomplished in the city of Cleveland through the leadership of the Cleveland Immigration League, which has been the means of bringing into being a Municipal Immigration Bureau as a part of the Division of Employment in the Department of Public Welfare. The Immigration League composed of representatives of the Board of Education, public libraries, headworkers of settlement houses, superintendents of various city missionary societies, secretaries of the Young Men s and Young Women s Christian Associations, together with the officers of foreign societies, judges and clerks of the courts of naturalization, and professors in the local universities took upon itself the ideal, "to assist the immigrant to solve his own problem/ This League found various agencies doing good work along separate and almost entirely inde pendent lines, with no definite program for the entire city. Its efforts have been successful in increasing by 200 per cent, the attendance in the citizenship classes of the "coming Ameri can" in this city whure 74.8 per cent, of the population are foreign born. In the study of Attitude Toward the Immigrant 241 the question the League found certain condi tions existing in connection with the arrival of immigrants at the railroad stations, and in the treatment of these people by different organiza tions calling for the cooperation of the municipal forces of the city, and in 1913 the Municipal Immigration Bureau was formed and joined with the League in five branches of activity. Depot work has developed until 12,426 foreigners have been met in a single year at the station and assisted in finding proper location. A suggestive hint in connection with the work has been the statement of the cab drivers who have borne witness that their revenue, largely through overcharges to these people, ignorant of our cus toms, has been decreased about 75 per cent. The employment work has had the cooperation of the State Industrial Commission and main tains a State-Cities Free Labor Exchange, and the Municipal Employment Bureau which has cared for the foreign labor has been brought into connection with the Municipal Civil Service Law. A Department of Information and Complaints has issued an "Immigrant Guide" of twenty- seven pages published in nine foreign languages, the demand for which calls for two editions totaling 70,000 copies. This department has 242 American Ideals investigated and settled in a single year 887 cases of complaint against steamship agencies, notaries public, private employment bureaus, and similar institutions which have preyed upon these new citizens. In education, where perhaps the greatest ad vance and the strategic point of influence is to be found, a plan of cooperation formed in con nection with the Board of Education has brought about special training courses for teachers in methods of instruction to immigrants and the en largement of the elementary public night schools, with an increase in these schools of 44 per cent. The opportunities have been increased for naturalization through night sessions at the clerk s office of naturalization which has meant the saving of from $2 to $6 per applicant on account of opening the possibilities to apply at night rather than lose a day s work. During the year 1914, i>574 immigrants applied to this agency for their naturalization papers, and 2,960 certificates of naturalization as diplomas were issued to newly naturalized citizens at the citizenship receptions. Not least important is the course on methods held every week in the offices of the Immigration Bureau where social workers, together with Attitude Toward the Immigrant 243 those interested in the subject, speak and make reports and discuss matters in connection with a systematic publicity campaign now being carried on through the newspapers. It is with such agencies which are beginning to assist on a large scale the immigrant to under stand the country to which he has joined his allegiance, as well as to aid the American to se cure the point of view of the immigrant, that we must look for the solution of this large problem. An idea of the way in which individuals are de voting virtually a life work to the assistance of these people is brought out by the following which I quote from a letter from Mr. W. P. Waller, who is at present the General Secretary of the Young Men s Christian Association in Akron, Ohio, and who began his investigation and work for the foreigner in the city of Cam bridge, Massachusetts: During the last fiscal year we had enrolled 1,525 scholars. The average age of these men was about twenty-five. Over 152 were aided in taking out their final citizenship papers, which makes a total of 300 in the last two years. I find that the men who apply for their papers are entirely ignorant of American history, the character of our great men, and other essential features which are so necessary to be under stood if our nation is to be truly a democratic one. 244 American Ideals On the other hand, I find that every one of them is most eager to learn these facts. There is a decidedly independent spirit among them, and with the right kind of instruction and development of public sym pathy toward them, I am certain that they should prove of very great value to the strength of the na tion. The attitude of the American people toward the immigrant has been one of indifference, and some times worse than that an attitude of disdain. We have relegated them to live in the worst sections of our cities; we have placed upon them the most menial labors of our commonwealths. In fact, we have disregarded almost all of the laws which we know must be obeyed in order to produce clean, strong, moral beings. To my question to Mr. Waller regarding the problem of increasing immigration and its dangers, he replied: The problem of immigration is an economic one, and I believe the economic conditions will control the ebb and flow. In any case, America should bear its share of the world s burden. In relation to what the immigrant has done for New England and our country generally I quote the following: New England is rapidly becoming farmed by immigrants. Native Americans left New England Attitude Toward the Immigrant 245 soil practically on the "junk heap." The Italians, Portuguese, and many men from Southeastern Europe have taken up the work discarded by Ameri cans and are making grass to grow where weeds flourished, trees to bloom where old decayed trunks marred the horizon. This speaks volumes for the value of the immigrant. If we turn to industry, or to our great transcontinental railways, we cannot see a single mile of track, a single car, a single train in motion, without realizing, if we are thoughtful, that in a very large measure the immigrant has made possible this great progress by reason of his willing ness to work under conditions that the ordinary American workman would refuse to accept. Quite apart from our great mass of immigrants from Central and Southern Europe, whom we consider only as "hewers of wood and drawers of water, " there is a smaller but most important contingent that we should recognize for the sake of the artistic values which they bring to us. While visiting in old Nuremburg I was watch ing one day a famous wood carver lovingly fashioning the wooden draperies on the statue of a Madonna. When he had finished the deli cate work, which revealed the developed talent of a lifetime of devoted artisanship, he turned and said, "You are from America; I have a son in America." I asked him what his son was 246 American Ideals doing. "He is working in a furniture factory," said he, "fitting the arms upon chairs. He is not happy in that new land fitting arms to chairs because he is the son and the grandson and the great-grandson of wood carvers in Old Nurem- burg." The old German s words raised in my mind the query, "Are we making the most of our im migrants of artistic inheritance?" In these times of specialists and machine-made articles, in a period when an immigrant is so rapidly converted into a cog in the wheel of our vast industrial enterprises, are we not forgetful that some of these men, at least, are bringing to us the heritage of great talent, which is slowly being crushed beneath the wheels of our materialistic Juggernaut. We ask why the old Florentine goldsmiths were the greatest in the world, why Bernini has never been surpassed as a worker in gold and silver? These Florentine craftsmen took the crude material and, with their own creative hands, formed it into the object of their dream. They saw not only the beginning but the finished product of their hands. It had the effect upon them that the finished poem has upon the soul and the mind of the poet. Just as truly as the Attitude Toward the Immigrant 247 poet would have found it impossible to have created his masterpiece if to him had been the privilege of making the first two lines only while other men added their allotted lines, none of them seeing the finished poem as his own, likewise the creative soul of the modern work man is scarcely stirred by his piecemeal work; it results in machine-made product and an ambitionless and machinelike man. Not all, to be sure, not indeed even more than a small qualitative minority of these thousands who annually seek American shores from their ancient fatherlands are equipped either by their inheritance or training to take the chisel, the brush, or the hammer in creative, artistic hands. Yet no one has watched that endless stream of humanity flowing through the gates of Ellis Island almost any day, without dis covering here and there in the dreamy eyes of the Jew, the Slav, or the Latin, the sleeping capacity of a great artist or a great workman along individually constructive lines. That he does not at present find opportunity for the expression of that which is most truly germane to his aptitude and ideals in the heterogeneous herding in twentieth-century American indus tries goes without saying. 248 American Ideals The lines of Robert Haven Schauffler, in his "Scum of the Earth," may be pondered with benefit: Mercy for us who dare despise Men in whose loins our Honor lies; Mothers of men who shall bring to us The glory of Titian, the grandson of Huss; Children in whose frail arms shall rest Prophets arid singers and saints of the West. Newcomers all from the eastern seas, Help us incarnate dreams like these, Forget, and forgive, that we did you wrong. Help us to father a nation, strong In a comradeship of an equal birth, In the wealth of the richest bloods of earth. In these days when we are meeting these new citizens with so many various plans for training, is it not worth while to consider the possibilities found in this material for a school as yet un heard of, a school in which the results of age-long genius of Europe and Asia may be garnered for fresh and larger achievements? This genius would be expressed in forms diverse from that in which it was revealed in the Old World; it would be adapted natu r ally to the life and en vironment and institutions of the New World. Attitude Toward the Immigrant 249 To disregard it or to crush it by our constantly accelerated processes of industrial activity is as certainly to deprive the individual of his prime incentive as it is to rob America of one of the richest assets to be derived from the stranger en tering our gates. CHAPTER IX THE SHADOW OF SUCCESS I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue; the Roman word is better, "impedimenta," for as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue; it cannot be spared, and left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory; of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit. BACON. CHAPTER IX THE SHADOW OF SUCCESS IT MIGHT seem inopportune to treat of the weak nesses of a nation when the stones of that nation s building are still leaping to find their places in the unfinished structure, and while the sha dows of our forefathers are still lying upon our path. As it is, however, in the moving, easily changed growth of youth, while his faults and follies are entangled with his virtues, before age has given the set to habits, that one finds both attraction and possibility; so in national life we do well to test the structure material while it is still in hand, choosing and refusing as we build. Here, as in other phases of American history, the secret of her failures lies imbedded in her success; her failures are the shadows of her success. The hour of prosperity is the hour of danger in the United States; it is the hour in which to consider such weaknesses as easy-going complacency trusting in a kind of shadowy optimism and a blind sense of luck the in- 253 254 American Ideals difference to the inner light and the worship of contemporaneousness placing action in the room of merit seeking the wrong goal and be coming proud of the secondary thing sordid ideals of spending the perils of the vacant mind idealizing of pleasure and forgetting the finesse of life through the preoccupation of the hunt: these are shadows falling across our pres ent-day prosperity. The weakness of American idealism gathers about those dangers which are inclined to inhere in republics where the government is decided by majority suffrage. Among the most prominent of these national inclinations is the tendency to break down the respect for law and vested authority; this is followed at times by the evasion of the laws of the land, providing it can be done safely. As an old Pennsylvania farmer put it, "It s all right to get the best of the railroad, providing you don t get caught at it." It is a trait that re sembles somewhat the Oriental s deceit, which in the East is regarded as a virtue and a mark of cleverness as long as it works, but is instantly despised when it fails to delude. It must be recognized, however, that in con sideration of the scale upon which democracy The Shadow of Success 255 is being tried in the United States, a far more extensive scale than that upon which republics have heretofore existed in any part of the world, the faults of indifference and a lack of responsi bility relative to law and order, though often alarming, are not sufficiently widespread or fla grant to make Americans despair of their cure. In fact, one only needs to get his fingers dusty a bit in the examination of the history even of the past fifty years to become convinced that we are making progress in the matter of respect for law. Some of the things of the dead past are the "Night Riders"; the famous terrorizing Ku-Klux Klan; the Western train brigandage, led by such outlaws as the notorious Jesse James; the "Molly McGuire" conspiracy of Pennsylvania; and the fearsome blood feuds of Kentucky, where even in the ten years as recent as 1880 to 1890 it is stated that fifty members of a single family met their death in one unlaw ful murder following another in the trail of barbarous revenge. The "Pinkertons," who even in the memory of this generation numbered one thousand armed men, were called upon by different states to protect industries and quell disturbances where the arm of the law was then inadequate these and many other examples 256 American Ideals suggestive of a primitive state of authority have passed largely into oblivion in the evolution of the American Republic into a firmer and more truly law-abiding democracy. In spite of these encouraging facts, notwith standing the satisfaction that the ruffianlike sheriff of twenty-five years ago, with his swash buckler cowboys, is chiefly a reality in our melo dramatic moving pictures, the germ of disregard for law has not been entirely eradicated; the snake of sedition, forthat it truly is, has not been killed even if it has been scotched; we are not out of the woods even though we can see the light in the clearing. Ex-President Taft, speaking at Yale in 1906, said, "I grieve to say that the administration of the criminal law is in nearly all the states of the Union a disgrace to our civilization/ And again in the year 1906, Mr. Taft reiterated his convictions in these words before the Pennsyl vania State Bar Association: No one can examine the statistics of crime in this country and of successful prosecutions without realizing that the administration of the criminal law is a disgrace to our civilization, and without tracing to this condition, as a moving and overwhelming cause for them, the horrible lynchings that are com- The Shadow of Success 257 mitted the country over, with all the danger of in justice and exhibition of fiendish cruelty which such occurrences involve. Not only is this feeling of uncertainty relative to the sense of responsible citizenship shared by many of the most far-sighted American jurists and business men, whose position affords op portunities to judge of our failures, but James Bryce, than whom no foreigner has been more astute or sympathetic in his close scrutiny of the governing agencies of the United States, in his "American Commonwealth" sums up his discussions of our shortcomings with these words: This inquiry has shown us that of the faults tra ditionally attributed to democracy one only is fairly chargeable on the United States; that is to say, is manifested there more conspicuously than in the constitutional monarchies of Europe. This is the disposition to be lax in enforcing laws disliked by any large part of the population, to tolerate breaches of public order, and to be too indulgent to offenders generally. While such things as the Thaw, the Becker, and the Frank cases, with their long drawn-out and uncertain litigation, their often sickening 258 American Ideals detail, confront us; while such abominable acts as the murder of Frank still occur; while it is still necessary to call out the Government troops to quell Colorado mine troubles; while gunmen still get their victims with amazing frequency in perhaps the best policed city in the country, it must be realized that there is something inherently weak down below the surface of these abnormal expressions of dis order, some failure in the sense of citizenship in the general body of which these enormities are but the sad symptoms. Were further contemporary signs of our political unhealthfulness needed we might con sider the inadequacy of the suffrage laws in certain of the Gulf States relative to the negro; the corruption in the State of Florida in recent years by a financier who was confessedly in control of certain divisions of the state legisla ture for his personal advantage; the connivance of both officials and people in recent matters of racing, speculations in stocks, railroads, and department stores; in the dead letter condition of certain liquor laws, and especially the trav esty of alleged execution of drinking legislation in some of the "prohibition states," where the very mention of the word "prohibition" is to The Shadow of Success 259 cause a laugh, so inadequate is it thought to be to stop by law the sale of spirits. When a governor of the Empire State is impeached for crooked practices, and when another governor is called to make the fight of his political career on the plain issue of the enforcement of laws that are already on the state statutes regarding horse racing and betting, is there not afforded evidence somewhat incontrovertible that the law is not an authority par excellence in the American mind? There is also the drift toward a laxity of discipline and blundering service in many an institution of public character. In our stores and on our street conveyances we find a lack of respect and careful attention to details on the part of overworked employees. In our post offices, in our railroad ticket offices, in restaurants and hotels, one could pick up a volume of testimony and witness to the fact that, through hurry or heedlessness or the grow ing sway of professionalism in public and busi ness affairs, the sense of personal responsibility is weakened. Europeans are sure to accuse us of the trait of being long-suffering to the point of weakness, and the newspapers and public officials of many a land supposedly less jealous 260 American Ideals of its rights, would be flooded with letters of complaint for breaches of service to be expected as a matter of course from servants of the people in public institutions. There is a feeling all too common that it is in no wise dishonorable to do the daily task with the eye on the clock rather than with a pride of workmanship soaring above the feeling of "getting home." Men will tell you that it needs a stand-up fight to get orders out on time in many a business house, and the man is best served who makes the most determined and unceasing demands for immediacy. A prom inent builder told me recently that he was out of pocket hundreds of dollars yearly by reason of the necessity of sending back workmen to finish incomplete or faulty construction. There is a tendency to undertake more work than the firm can do well, and this fills the air with a constant sense of pushing on to the next job, and depending upon the owner to "make a kick," which he is usually obliged to do if he is to receive quid pro quo for his money. It is needless to point out the fatal twist in the self- respecting sense of responsibility which this doing of work so that It will pass, yet not so well but that much of it will need doing over, The Shadow of Success 261 gives to the workman. It is making the stand ard of service depend, not upon excellence of work, but upon the good nature of Americans. That labor organizations have been partially responsible for this lack of personal obligation in one s work, making an eight-hour day rather than a perfect product the norm of their activi ties, is probably true. That the previous grind of the sweatshop and the inhuman dominance of wealth in vast trusts and huge impersonal industrial organizations was the prior cause of this sordid emphasis of the trades unions, is also true. Meanwhile the "dear public" pays the piper for the absence in many a phase of our life of the consideration due to the average house holder and citizen. There is running through the democracy, as a counter to the feeling that we are often imposed upon, the idea that a nation gets as good government and service as it de serves; anyhow, that we are making our own institutions, political as well as private and pub lic; and this satisfaction closes our mouths when we would speak out against the cajolery of the politician and the vexing incompetency of the tradesman. Behind this somewhat unconscious sense that 262 American Ideals we can change things if we will, there is a dis inclination in the United States to stir up trouble and a not pronounced sympathy with those who are too forward in pointing out weaknesses. We have in the American a temperament of quick emotionalism and one that is ready to take up with the last and best new thing wherever he finds it, moving about without let or hin drance in many spheres of his freedom; but yet in respect to the toleration of abuses he is one of the most lenient and conservative of persons. As a rule he finds it is a safe working policy to bear the ills he knows rather than flying to ills he knows not of, which may exist quite likely on the other side of his protest. He resembles his countryman, Josh Billings, who said that if when walking in the woods he encountered a snake hole, he invariably turned out and went some distance around, saying to himself, "That hole belongs to that snake." In this shunning of disagreeable responsi bility the American is not unlike the China man, who if he drag a drowning man out of the water, according to the usage of the land, he would be accused quite likely of having tried to murder the man, aiid if he were fortunate enough to escape with his head, he would prob- The Shadow of Success 263 ably have to assume the man s future support. The dweller in the United States dislikes to get into trouble if he can avoid it; hence he often takes the easiest way, becoming a first- class example of unconcerned, even if pained, indifference. Furthermore, has he not the news papers? and is there anything in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth that the American newspaper fails to make public, and in such a wealth and luxury of detail and itemization as to almost relieve the ordi nary individual of duty for the delayed and delinquent processes of law and order! Another shadow of our American idealism is in the region of that good that becomes the enemy of the best; I refer to the peace-at-any- price talk and activity, especially to the attempt to enlist our youth in a kind of anti-enlistment sentiment savoring considerably of fanaticism if it misses being called by a stronger word. While the weakness of the Republic in the enforcement of laws is due to the citizen s easy going belief in the democratic order of which he feels himself an integral part, this extreme advocacy of peace on any terms is a distinct foe to the spirit of self-respecting and vibrant democracy. It not only smacks of treason to 264 American Ideals the spirit of devotion to law, but it is an egre gious misconception of the condition of advance of human nature. It is a blind attempt to legislate into being a state or condition which must first exist in the human heart, having its secret and propelling cause far below all our ingenious panaceas. No sane and worthy citizen wants anything but peace among the nations, as we all want peace between capital and labor; but as in the latter case we very sensibly recognize the limiting media in which industrial peace must be brought about the unregenerate nature of man in the former matter we go about our Utopian peace tinker ing as though evil and wrong-doing were ghosts of a distant generation, long since laid by what we are pleased to call modern civilization. As a sad matter of fact, while it has accom plished much in changing and reforming the outside of the nature of the twentieth-century man, civilization has not changed radically the inside of him, and unfortunately, or sometimes fortunately, it is the inner man that determines the existence of peace or war. It is not to sup port or to approve of an evil to acknowledge its existence, but to fail to face the fact that hu manity writes its history in one long story of The Shadow of Success 265 struggle, not unmixed in any long period with bloodshed, is both to be ignorant of the past, and what is more to the point just now, it is to neglect to recognize the constitution of mankind in its present reactions. The fight against sin and wrong, as we see it, is the most common act of humanity and its trail runs red across all the life of men. All literature and all civilization we know or care about is colored by it both in its sacred and secular phases. It was by the memory of their battles that Pericles and De mosthenes adjured the Athenians. Did not Horace boast that he had been a soldier, non sine gloria ? Milton in one of his most sublime sonnets said, "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. " Our very hymns and sacred chants are war songs, and the Book "our mothers read" is filled with injunctions to "fight the good fight of faith," and to follow those heroes who sailed through bloody seas to win the prize. One of the most popular hymns of our American youth is, "The Son of God Goes Forth to War." We may dream peace and pray devoutly for peace on earth and good will be tween men, but at the same time we must not shut our eyes to facts as they are, nor would we be sensible peacemakers if we deluded ourselves 266 American Ideals into thinking that we can sweep into the light of a new and younger day, before the shadows of conflict and belief in war have been driven from the inner shrines of human thinking. If we are at all impressed by recent events we will find it difficult to evade the fact that in the hearts of a good number of the races of men there is still a considerable of that commodity originally known as moral depravity, however optimistically we may feel and act in our peace conferences. As between ourselves as individ uals, so between ourselves as nations, certain things will yield to arbitration and measures more or less peaceful; but there are other things deeply rooted in the obstinacy of the human heart, that are as difficult to settle without recourse to physical pressure in our nation, where men are supposed to see alike, as they are to adjudicate between nations with whom ideals vary widely, and add to the barriers to peace. Why did we not arbitrate our differences with England in the period of the War of the Revolu tion ? Because we could not ; human nature was against us. England could not arbitrate with Germany in 1914; human nature on both sides and on all sides was too strong for them, and until we get considerable closer to the millen- The Shadow of Success 267 nium than we are at present, we must count on this doughty and often most perverse antagonist to large unselfish purposes, expressed in the little word that Henry Drummond once said had wandered out of theology into life, the word of three burning letters S-I-N. The shadow of this small word still looms dark and ominous across the attempted successes of mankind, and they reckon ill who forget it and try to railroad us into havens of world peace. I am reminded of an incident told of a devoted missionary who had experienced indifferent success in winning the heathen natives of a dis tant island to his faith, when one day he chanced upon the passage, "Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods, ask them not again. " As a last resort, the good missionary tried this method of preach ing. The natives came to his home admiring his pictures and his books and his furniture, and seeing his willingness, carried them all away until the poor man had virtually nothing left. He then sat down in his house and waited. The next day the removers of the goods returned bringing them all back and, according to the account, this was the beginning of a great re vival in the obdurate heathen community. A 268 American Ideals seemingly strong argument for peace-at-any- price! The only reason that this method of mis sionary propaganda has not become general in difficult heathen sections, lies in the sequel of this incident, which was told me in the region of this event. The missionary, according to the report, removed to another field and tried the same thing, but in this case the heathen kept the furniture. There is no conclusive evidence that volun tary self-sacrifice and unprotected rights are as yet current or common commodities among nations wanting property belonging to others. In a conversation with a British member of the Government of India, as we sat comfortably at the dinner of some foreign guests in Delhi, I proceeded to ask the stock question, whether England would ever give back India to the East Indian? The Englishman replied with a know ing wink, "Of course we shall give India back. Didn t we give back America to you?" Far be it from me to join the ranks of the jingoists or to delude myself into thinking that in our long history of peace-loving policies any large portion of the inhabitants of these United States have lost their pristine loyalty and devo tion to their highest sei^se of patriotism. Even our youth are old enough to remember the sight The Shadow of Success 269 of thousands of peace-desiring men ready to rush to arms at the insult to our flag, crowding "the road of death as to a festival." I would be the last to advocate the exchange of our vic tories of peace in the realm of industrial advance for a nation of ironclads and ever-absorbing at tention upon fortresses and militarism, which breed the madness of the ruffian and the bully among nations and men. But I would add my voice against those who would set before our nation a soft peace-at-any- price ideal, for this means when it is grown a weak passivity in the presence of wrong and oppression. It means the loss of power to have a part in the great neutral counsels of mankind; it is also a travesty on any great religion. Out side the comparatively small and uninfluential Eastern mystics and medieval saints who have solved the problem of peace in the world by giv ing it up and leaving the earth for the monastery, outside the visionaries and the sentimentalists, the high-minded religious souls of the world have recognized the inevitable necessity of fighting evil with weapons best suited to its demolition, since they have discerned it as the causal agency of unhappiness and the enemy of every advance of man to durable peace. The 270 American Ideals Christian Scriptures in their wide sweep and plain injunction give warrant for the use at times of the weapons of the children of "dark ness" when the issue is drawn against the down- treading of the weak and the innocent, and the ruthless violation of homes and firesides. That there are times when war has a greatness of its own, and when to die fighting is better than to live safe, when for the truth we ought to die, is the truism of both history and religion. America is too great a nation to be satisfied with peace that involves dishonor, or a laying down of weapons against unrighteousness. Such peace would choke her. It would stifle the very breath of her lofty and democratic independence for which our fathers died. There are things far more corrosive and crushing than war for a principle. There are things more poi soning to a nation than poisoned gas; one of them is breathing a poisoned patriotism, buying peace with a shattered self-respect. There is a fighting spirit all shining with honor, that in the high phrase of the English poet, Blameless in victory stands * * * Shines with immaculate hands; Stains not peace with a scar. The Shadow of Success 271 We want untarnished peace, and when one distant day, universal peace "shall lie like a shaft of light across the lands, and like a line of beams athwart the sea," we are disposed to believe that our large free land will have added some ray to that brightness, not by refusing a hand over the darkness to the oppressed, but by her valiant championship of the Rights of Man, and by saving others, saving herself, keeping in life or in death the sovereign integrity of her own soul. Another shadow casting itself more or less ominously over our remarkable successes is the money delusion, as represented in the tendency to display and extravagant spending. It is almost inevitable that the rapid accumulation of wealth, united with the excitability and the love of the picturesque in the American character, should induce among certain portions of the population a condition of self-indul gence and the desire to show off in the realm of material prosperity. In this inclination toward extravagance and striving for effect, the rich especially go the Oriental one better. In a recent account of a wedding, described in the columns of one of the steadiest metro politan newspapers, we are regaled with two 2J2 American Ideals long columns under such headlines as the fol lowing: $500,000 in Gifts at Wedding. Bishop officiates before 600. Six Hundred of Society Attend. Ceremony in Palm Room. The Bridal Procession. The Wedding Gifts. The words standing out in the account of the proceedings are "the great estate that extends over 4,000 acres/ "emergency dispatchers of fice" "fourteen mounted Deputy Sheriffs pa trolled the estate" "gifts of guests amounting to $300,000." The father s wedding gift to his son, the account goes on, was a check for $200,000. "The bride s cake towered several feet in height." Among the splendid presents noted were "a superb string of pearls" "a magnificent stomacher of diamonds" "dia mond sapphire brooch," etc. Then after the narration of what the guests and participants wore, in words defying translation, we hear about the private cars that carried off the couple and the glowing description of their summer home at the seashore, the denouement consisting of a detailed list of the "society people" present The Shadow of Success 273 an inventory resembling the complete roster of the "Social Register." The Arcadian simplicity of John Alden and Priscilla would be somewhat jarred by such a wedding, removing to a distant limbo of misty forgetfulness the days of Cotton Mather and the era of "plain living and high thinking." The democratic nature of this profuse occasion is suggested withal by the fact that the daughter of a big tobacco merchant weds with the son of an old family in Philadelphia, where if any where in the United States blood is revered. But what objection should any one have to rich people spending their money freely? Does it not put gold into circulation? And does it not give employment to all sorts of dressmakers, flower sellers, and hordes of artisans and work ing folk of various classes? Rich men in a community are an asset and inducements are justly held out to them, especially by smaller cities and towns because of the benefit their wealth will bring to the community. No sane person can have a quarrel with wealth when it is used with a touch of communal or unselfish interest. Were it not for the fact that money exists in large quantities, many an ideal ist and apostle of art and letters would starve. 274 American Ideals Material is the basis of the larger growing ideal ism of America, and without it there can be little hope of progress in a democratic state. It is the extravagant and vain and unpro ductive use of wealth, "riches wriggling in the grass of inexperience," as Clement of Alex andria said two thousand years ago, that forms the menace to any country. This employment of money on "importunate inutilities" more than offsets any temporary economic advances it may give to a handful of traders or artisans by the baneful influence that the display ideal exerts on people who do not stop to think. A showy and costly wedding occasion in the United States is on much the same plane with the vast picturesque durbar of an East Indian prince, whose resplendent line of gayly and richly caparisoned elephants, jeweled carpets, and ruby necklaces are a studied game to delude the native with exhibitions of grandeur. They are both caterers to the cult of the second best, they are both representations of demi-god worship with the real gods of the higher civiliza tion in the far background. The Indian prince uses them to impress the subjects with his power of sovereignty o T ;er them, as the English used the great and carefully planned durbar at The Shadow of Success 275 Delhi, when King George visited India, with deliberate purpose of making an indenture on the show-loving mind of the native concern ing the ruler s ability to rule. The difference between the English durbar and a flamboyant and costly American show in a great marriage or a gorgeous society event, is that in one case the money is spent with a deliberate purpose to deceive the natives, and in the other it is an attempt to fool one s self or one s immediate friends. The object of the one was the reduc tion of a nation to tractability beneath the hand of a governing race; the object of the other is to add to the personal vanity and the spirit of self-indulgence, which are usually quite sufficient before the event. The bane of spending in America for physical splendor lies in its effect upon the rank and file, as well upon the lowered ideals of the rich, since the American is dazzled by the display of wealth as truly as is the East Indian. When a prom inent man in the public eye pays $37,000 a year for his apartments, as a certain official of the government is said to do; when another busi ness man of wealth spends thousands of dollars to fit up with costly decorations and furnishings brought from abroad a suite of fifteen rooms in 276 American Ideals one of the most expensive hostelries on Fifth Avenue, rooms which he seldom uses except for show purposes and elaborate dinners to his friends; when a score or two of rich families spend millions to keep up palatial residences in various parts of the country, some of which are hardly visited in a year; when a certain lady pays $25,000 merely for the redecoration of her hotel apartments, from which she removed in less than six months; and when with like reck lessness money is poured out like water by the old and the nouveau riche alike, to purchase things whose values have been inflated by shop keepers and hotel restaurants and automobile firms to suit this penchant for the vainglorious tastes of the people of wealth there is certain to be a reactive effect upon a naturally imitative people. It is partly at least because of this example of heedlessness or recklessness with money that we find the middle class mortgaging their homes and their life insurance policies, and loading themselves with burdens of debt that only a miracle in the turn of Fortune s wheel can ever relieve. This lack of true appreciation of the meaning of wealth sets up in our country an artificial standard for places in which to eat and The Shadow of Success 277 to recreate, for streets in which to dwell, and for clothes to wear, that permeates more or less all grades of our city life. Even the wage-earner receives a fillip from this mania of spending and wanting to show others that we spend, this lust of display that filters down through the various ranks of so ciety. The attempt to appear prosperous is a deadly germ in America. Who of us does not know clerks who spend a week s wages on a theatre and the after exercises thereof, simply because the young man is determined that his lady may not call him "cheap," or because he does not have the nerve to be sensible? Our shop girls and working youth in the stores and banks dress so well as to make distinctions between the poor and well-to-do scarcely recog nizable so far as outward appearances go. A whole year s savings goes, often with an easy abandon, for the best room at a fashionable hotel by the seaside in order that the clerk may be able to say, "I stopped at the Marlborough- Blenheim," or "I spent my holiday at Palm Beach." A man and his wife came from London re cently to reside in New York for business pur poses. I asked them concerning the things 278 American Ideals that first and most deeply impressed them. They answered, "the lack of class distinction/ When I pressed for an answer as to how this lack of class distinction revealed itself they said, "For example, we go back and forth every day in the Broadway subway. We cannot tell the class of the people travelling in the subway with us each day by their dress or bearing, with the exception of the laborer. One of the first things that we noted was that every one wore silk stockings, which would be an unheard-of ex travagance for the same class of people in England." This inability of the Englishman to discern differences in the strata of our society from out ward appearances is shared by Americans them selves. Recently I was introduced to a woman who, by her charming appearance and gracious manners and faultless dress, gave all the ap pearance of descent from generations of breeding and culture. I was astonished when told that she was the daughter of a railroad engineer, her brothers were brakemen on the railroad, and her mother was a simple ordinary working- man s wife. It was also found that the whole family had sacrificed themselves far beyond their means in order that their pretty daughter The Shadow of Success 279 might have a chance of a marriage in a grade above that of her class (not unlike the Chinese who bind one daughter s feet in order that she may become a "lady" and have the chance of an advantageous marriage, even though the family wait upon her and sacrifice many of the actual necessities of life). The result of this attempt at display, in order to achieve a stratum of society above them can not be otherwise than detrimental as a rule to people s ideals of lasting value and the aims of doing good work. Extravagance and ineffi ciency always go hand in hand. Living for appearance, whatever the motive, soon breeds working for appearance. Where a man s heart is, thither his thought and the cunning of his hand are inevitably directed. Upon such aspir ants for showy elevation, debts are inclined to sit more lightly with every passing year. As one young man said, "Why, you know I should never have any money if I paid my debts"; or as another frequenter of the races said to his friend: "Stop at the best hotel always; if you win a lot of money, you don t care; if you lose, a little more don t count." The man on a comfortable salary gets the fever of spending, or his wife gets the fever for him, the gregarious influences 280 American Ideals of his set of acquaintances get too strong for his power of resistance, and the story is the same the world over mortgages, " business troubles," and overdrafts on bank and on friends. If the crash does not come publicly it is sure to come privately in the shape of habits of borrowing from one to pay another, and the arrival, sooner or later, at the "What s-the-use" stage of exist ence, where the "deceitfulness of riches" gets its toll in the coin of a man s loss of the sovereign possession self-respect. In the words of one of Dickens characters, "Income, one pound; expenditure, one pound, no shillings, ha penny: result misery. Income, one pound: expenditure, nineteen shillings, eleven pence ha penny: result happiness." The display germ that is to-day a simple toy, a harmless bit of spending because a man "owes it to himself and family," to-morrow is the soul- crushing experience of debt that soon grows into that monster of irresponsibility and despair, the "world-owes-me-a-living" feeling, and this is personal suicide. It is to the country where still the great ma jority of the people live that we must look for the redeeming and steadying factors in this rage of spending. It is to the rural districts that we The Shadow of Success 281 must go to find the permanent ideals of the sim ple life still regnant. If it is true that the soul of a people lives at home in the country dis tricts, we may not be discouraged for urban America. To be in debt in the country in the United States is still a disgrace, and the farm mortgage is still the thing that is not talked about as a meritorious incumbrance. It is in the smaller cities, in the little towns, and in the agricultural caste of America that one finds many of the above conditions absolutely re versed, and the pride of not buying unless you can "pay down" is one of the commonest char acteristics. There is certain to be a reaction from this lust of the eyes and the pride of that life that money can buy. The metropolis will never rule the country in this respect of money recklessness and money extravagance. The laws of happiness, of experience, and of good sense are all against it. The American, even in the cities, is showing signs dp disgust and boredom over this frenzied use of ealth. He is getting out of the city to the country home and a little patch of land with flowers and vegetables to "Love s contentment more than wealth," and even though the place be humble and the sacrifice of commuting is 282 American Ideals heavy, it is one of the sure signs of better times in this money delusion. People are learning that the lure of Broadway becomes less vivid in relation to the distance we place between it and our calmer, simpler satisfactions. Slowly but cer tainly we are learning that, as Browning would say, there is a star that is below Saturn, there are some things that are not worth the candle, even though they are attractive and bear the dollar mark, things that never can compare with A simple, guileless, childlike man, Content to live where life began. The people of America are too great a folk to be permanently captured by the thing, however splendid, that is second best. The mere empty display of wealth is too insignificant as an ideal to hold for long the imagination of a people of great capacity for the values of more durable and dignified satisfaction. America can never be a "peacock alley" through and through. There are reasons both traditional and inherent that prevent. The citizens of the United States may be deluded in their transitional evolution by the domination of the obvious and by the glitter of the jewels in the flashing material The Shadow of Success 283 crown. But they will never be satisfied with a part of life, or with an imitation that crumples in the hand that grasps it. Wu Ting-fang once said to me, speaking of the Chinese race, "We are a commonsense people. We love peace." He drew a pen picture then of the dweller in the United States as well as the inhabitant of the Middle Kingdom. The vulgar display of money is not sensible, and in the end it is the enemy to peace, individual as well as national. Its results enslave and hamper the national spirit which, in Lincoln s phrase, is "conceived in liberty." It is second-rate; it is partial; it is un-American. Therefore, for the vast majority, extravagance and waste cannot cast their shadows permanently on the ideals of the country. CHAPTER X AN AMERICAN SYMPOSIUM But money is only a means; it presupposes a man to use it. * * * It is always better policy to learn an interest than to make a thousand pounds; for the money will soon be spent, or perhaps you may feel no joy in spending it; but the interest remains imperish able and ever new you have thrown down a barrier which concealed significance and beauty. The blind man has learned to see. The prisoner has opened a window in his cell and beholds enchanting prospects, he will never again be a prisoner as he was; he can watch clouds and changing seasons, ships on the river, travellers on the road, and the stars at night; happy prisoner! his eyes have broken jail! ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. CHAPTER X AN AMERICAN SYMPOSIUM MATTHEW ARNOLD in one of his essays in criti cism referred to the difficulty inherent in the task one undertakes when he tries "to pull out a few more stops" in that powerful but at pres ent somewhat narrow-toned organ, the modern Englishman. "I have always sought," he con tinued, "to stand by myself and to compromise others as little as possible." Likewise in a book in which the author at tempts to set forth opinions relative to such illusive matters as a people s ideals, one would hesitate to take upon himself the responsibility of standing for any one s opinion other than his own. Since, however, my convictions concern ing certain American ideals have been greatly strengthened by the witness of a wide circle of Americans from various walks of life and from diverse sections of the country, I have planned in this chapter to present a brief symposium upon Americanideals as seenbyAmericans themselves. 287 288 American Ideals One hundred men were asked the following question: "What in your opinion are the lead ing ideals of the men with whom you most fre quently associate?" The following are among the replies received. A governor of a large Eastern state said: 1. Personal code in public service. 2. A higher education for the masses to save our Democracy. 3. A rumless nation. 4. The application of business efficiency to public service. 5. It never pays to be smart i. e. "to put one over" on the other fellow. 6. Revival of religious belief in men of affairs. A mayor in a Middle West city replied: 1 . An institutional expression of the humanitarian philosophy which is distinctive of American thought within the last ten years. 2. Some solution of the problem presented by the larger leisure which industrial development has brought, with the feeling that upon the use which we learn to make of this leisure will depend the soundness and sweetness of the development of our national life. 3. The creation of a national philosophy which will have the will to justice as a substitute for the An American Symposium 289 will power which has been tried and led us apparently to disaster. From a college president on the Pacific Coast: To leave things better than one found them. To alleviate human distress. To protect the weak. To give each his chance. The president of a New York bank answered as follows: The ideals of the men of whom I see most are generally to live helpful lives and to build for pos terity on foundations in which as much of the good in past experience is included and as much as possible of the bad eliminated. Furthermore, most of the men I know are conducting themselves in their business life as though they were bearing a great measure of public responsibility and had a great duty devolving upon them in the way of public serv ice. This, I know, sounds idealistic and Utopian, but it is not. It is the truth, as I see it from day to day. From the president of the graduating class (1915) at the University of California: The men of California are dominated by the great Western spirit of freedom. Ours is a land of promise and of opportunity. This may sound like real-estate 290 American Ideals advertising, but I assure you it is sincere. Contrary to the belief of most of our Eastern brothers, the men of California have not set up the dollar as their God and standard. It is true our boys are inspired by the successes of their parents, and each one longs to be independent, and to secure enough means to take the grind out of work. I think I am right when I say that the majority of the seniors who are graduat ing from the eight colleges of our University this spring have in mind, (1) Achievement in the line in which they have specialized. (2) Financial success which will make them socially and economically independent. (3) By no means least because last, I believe that we look toward the establishment of true, loyal, American homes. An American playwright says: My intimate acquaintanceship is made up largely of one class, ideally speaking. Most of the men I know are either doing, or trying to do, something that will add to the sum total of the world s beauty. In other words they are artists of some sort, potential or actual. A travelling secretary of the College Young Men s Christian Associations in the South: Certainly one of the Heals of Americans is effi ciency which is rather a broad term, but it means real An American Symposium 291 capacity to do the thing which one has in hand. I question very much whether cultural ideals have a very large sway in the minds of the great majority of the people. I am not a pessimist in any sense, yet I do feel keenly that we have elevated the dollar into an entirely undeserved place and the man who is able to get money has much larger position thrust upon him than his capacity really warrants. How ever, I do believe that there is growing in the hearts of a great many people in America the belief in what might be called a democratic culture; that is, a larger cultural life for the whole people. . . . One s heart bleeds when he thinks how little we really appreciate the sacredness and value of the in dividual person which is a sign of all real Democracy. This reveals a weak place in our national life which is not peculiar to us our false valuation of humanity. We value men because of position, money, etc., whereas we ought to value them for their character and for the essence of personality that lies within them. I am not at all sure but that straightforwardness and the square deal is one of the real ideals of America . . . this is about as fine an ideal as we could possibly have. A prominent magazine editor: Our ideals are Honesty and integrity. Intellectual achievement. 292 American Ideals Beauty in art and music as a solace in life. Domestic happiness. Service to one s fellows. Confidence in the great mission of our Democ racy. From a real-estate man: It is difficult to define precisely what an ideal is. If it mean a standard of taste which one has toward masterpieces in every department of human en deavor, then I should reply that tastes differ so widely that it will be impossible to answer the question. If, on the other hand, by ideal is meant the thought of personal achievement which each man has for himself, I should say that the chief aspiration of most of the men I know is to produce by their life s work something of permanent value to the world, and to have their names associated or identified with that achievement. In other words, to do something worth while and to be known by others as doing it. What particular things men desire to do are governed by their capabilities and temperament. If by ideal is meant the kind of personal conduct a man would choose for himself, most of the men I know desire to so live that they will both satisfy their own consciences, and meet all reasonable criti cism of their fellowmen. Most men desire to so live that other men will say: "His word is as good as his bond." It seems to me that most of the men I know prefer to have other mei* think of them as good rather than clever. They may desire to have both An American Symposium 293 of these qualifications attributed to them, but would prefer the former. A New York clergyman says: The men with whom I most frequently associate, although not constituting a very large number, are fairly representive of the rank and conditions of American society. In trying to imagine what a composite photograph of my circle would reveal, I believe that the prevailing ideals would be self- reliance quick action big results. Education must be directed to "practical ends" how to build a fifty- story skyscraper in a year. Along with this a feeling of unrest; that "bigness" is not greatness, and that life is not expressed entirely in terms of the five senses. Witness Booth Tarkington s "The Turmoil"; a groping, therefore, toward the spiritual not to say the religious. Social service, literary clubs, musical societies, art classes, and free libraries, in dicate a strong tendency even where they are merely affectation. A physician writes: During the past ten years I have observed a de cided rise in the tide of professional self-respect. At various physicians associations and conventions there is purposefulness and conviction for greater things. The possession of basic principles proved by modern research and clinical experience has so clarified the minds of the professional leaders that the 294 American Ideals true spirit of the reformer is evident. The ideal seems little short of absolute perfection. Fifteen years ago it was publicly averred that the mercenary spirit dominated the profession. It is my observa tion that this spirit is on the wane. A librarian of a New England university: The men with whom I associate most are college professors. They very seldom talk about their ideals. The inner life of men in our generation is very much less self-conscious than that of their fathers even. I wonder if I can say more of them as a whole than that they are chiefly occupied with their daily work, with providing for their families, and with living up to the standards of their social and profes sional class. In external matters do we not now say Social standards" or "standards of living," where a few years ago men said "ideals?" Aren t ideals what we give the right of way in our daily lives, regardless of what we profess? A consulting engineer writes: The American ideal is activity and energy, readi ness to change, demanding improvements of living ^conditions, freedom of rule, independence of action, y and willingness to correct wrong and to see future possibilities. Development of women is an American ideal. This means more than suffrage. Recognition of laborers rights to participate in An American Symposium 295 profits is an ideal that is coming fast into large rec ognition. Its proper and wide adoption and opera tion would solve the so-called problem of capital vs. labor and would probably replace socialism in this country. Making money is the ideal that is attached to us by many foreigners who do not distinguish nor under stand the underlying motives. The fact that an American takes the greatest interest and pleasure in conducting his business and working out new problems makes his progress in inventions, discov eries, new appliances, free from the thought of plodding or the sordid making of money; therefore, if the American does not get pleasure out of his business, he is quite sure to neglect it, and reveals thereby that money-making is not his ideal. Travel, comprising the desire for knowledge and understanding of all other peoples of the world, is undoubtedly an American ideal. It has been incul cated possibly by a desire for change of scene. It is an expression of the underlying spirit that has formed and made the United States of America, and when intelligently indulged, it results in the broadening of thought and a development of ideals that cannot come so easily and readily in any other way. Head master of a large school for boys: As I meet men to-day, not only those in my own profession, but business men men who are in the stress and strain of active business life in our cities I am impressed with the change in ideals as compared 296 American Ideals with those of twenty years ago. It seems to me that underneath all the desire to accumulate wealth, which is common enough to-day, is a very deep- seated desire to be of real service in the world. Only a month ago I heard one of the leading business men of America tell how he took over a large publishing enterprise chiefly because it seemed to him to afford an opportunity to accomplish some good, as well as to make some money. That seems to me typical of the ideals of a very large proportion of the better and more successful business men of to-day. I am quite sure that it is the ideal of men in my own profession. The editor of a Socialist paper sent to me what he considered to be the chief ideals of a dozen people with whom he was closely associated: Adventure, a free personal life, revolutionary ad justment of social conditions. Destruction of established forms of coercion. Personal artistic achievement; the achievement of a more sane and liberal social life. Spread of knowledge concerning economic evolu tion, and increase of effort in line with that knowl edge. More personal freedom, more self-expression, less responsibility. Personal artistic achievement, self-knowledge, hap piness in personal relationships. Furthering of social revolution. An American Symposium 297 Personal artistic achievements; personal happiness in human relations. Social fair play; self-expression. Discovery in the field of art. Personal artistic achievement. Service in behalf of artistic freedom and social revolution. Self-expression; artistic achievement; freedom from responsibility. Readjustment of economic arrangements. The editor who sent these characterizations of his friends added this footnote. : Reading these over, I realize that they seem very much alike. But ! A prominent publisher: While it is true that wealth and success figure conspicuously among many of the men of America, I am not inclined to accept these as the controlling ideal. Big business, great wealth, and success are closely related to the unlimited resources and extent of the country; and the men of our country, seeing the door of opportunity, knocked persistently until it responded. But beneath the surface of these material things there are to be found finer concep tions and ideals, freedom, justice, large-heartedness, humor, optimism, and an abiding faith in the people. Nowhere has the peace ideal met with a finer re- 298 American Ideals sponse than in America, and the men with whom I have had the honor to associate impress me as stand ing more for honor and justice than for success and wealth. The search for "the more abundant life" is more in evidence in America than almost anywhere else. Of course, it is only too true that in that search gross mistakes have been made, and will be made until the end of the chapter. Yet it is marvel lous how the ideal of self-government has entered more and more into the life of the American people, taking on larger forms as the needs of the people demanded it. The vice-president of a Boston savings bank: Imagination, working with and expressing itself in material resources. Morgan was more of an idealist and artist in finance than in his collection of "objects of art." His satisfaction was in power rather than in delight in owning something that others couldn t own, rather than in the beauty of the objects themselves. Our captains of industry are idealists up to a certain point, for they have vision and they create. Who now will rear the structure on the foundations they have so magnificently laid? Our poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, archi tects, are moved to the expression of energy rather than to the creation of beauty something that satisfies of itself by virtue of its eternal Tightness and harmony. Social and political reform points immediately to the amelioration of physical conditions: better An American Symposium 299 housing, higher wages, more comforts, and increased efficiency, honesty in officials, as involving less waste of the taxpayer s money. Does reform look for ward also to the release of the human spirit for the enjoyment of the "things that are more excellent?" We have the materials and the conditions of a great civilization, but our civilization is not great. What are the ideals, and with whom are they to be found, which shall achieve a spiritual end at all com mensurate with the material means? A well-known author and traveller: The spirit of brotherhood and a thoroughly genuine interest in fellowmen. My experience, especially in city clubs for men, leads me to conclude that this feeling is keener in America than in the countries of Europe where I have lived and travelled. I think the American man is peculiarly sensitive to the rights and feelings of his fellows. Keen interest in truly democratic movements and factors in social adjustment. I think our men really want to be brought into larger and more sympathetic participation in the activities of our civilization. A really knightly attitude toward women. A growing spirit of tolerance in matters of religion and social usages and personal habits. From a professor in Columbia University: My associates are mostly students and teachers. The ideal of scholarship, the enlargement of knowl- 300 American Ideals edge, is very powerful with the University professors, and perhaps equally powerful is the less definable professional ideal the personal qualities that belong to a scholar and a gentleman. Students, too (mine are all graduate students), share in these ideals and also in the astonishingly powerful ideal of education. It seems to me that the faith in education is really connected with the growing faith in our power to better things an idealism which glorifies human energy. Hence the zeal to make money, to improve one s social station, to get an education, to be of service to others. These all rest on a profound faith in the power of human energy to create a better world. With educated women, there is no doubt that the ideal of a freer and more variegated life for women is nowadays very much alive. I think it has its roots in that same confidence in the ability of the human being to make the world over. A Wall Street financier and vice-president of a large trust company: I think that the leading ideals of the men with whom I associate are in general the ethics of Wall Street, where a man s word is of greater value than anywhere else in the country. I feel, too, that their attitude has become much less provincial than hereto fore, and that often the good of the country, the state, and business at large is considered by them more than individual profit. An American Symposium 301 A well-known Jewish scientist: This question is difficult to answer as it really refers to the innermost thoughts of men. What appears on the surface may be an inclination toward world peace and charity, refinement and culture. I am afraid that, however, under the surface, the real mo tives are still selfishness and self-gratification, effi ciency for the purpose of personal success, ease of life, and pleasure. I do not think that what goes un der the name of charity is genuine in most instances. I find, even among my friends, that they are more ready to spend ten dollars on self-gratification than one dollar on public welfare from truly altruistic motives. A schoolmaster said: Selecting twelve close friends, representing teach ing, business, law, medicine, the ministry, and farm ing, I discover them to be animated by the following ideals: Public service without thought of personal gain 9 Thrift 6 Personal advancement, per se 4 Wealth, that is, the accumulation of money for the sake of family or for self 5 Generosity, of time and interest, as well as of money 3 Advancement of the profession as a science 6 302 American Ideals A farmer in northern New York: I do not know as I understand exactly what you mean by "ideals," but the things I am trying to live up to are: I want to give my boy and my girl as good an edu cation as they can get, for I didn t have the chance when I was a boy to study. I want to be looked up to in my church and my community as a man who pays his debts and whose word can be trusted. I want my work to be well done. When I shovel a path in the snow I try to shovel it wide and clean, and when I plow a furrow I try to make it straight and deep. I want a home free from debt and enough money for myself and wife to live on when we can t work no more. The president of one of the largest life insur ance companies: In business To succeed. Success means more than mere money; it means the power to advance methods and thereby benefit others. Socially An utter contempt for "society" as that word is usually applied. No especial social program that does not aim directly at intellectual quickening and social betterment. An American Symposium 303 A lawyer in a large city of the Middle West writes : I have picked out fifteen men with whom I am closely enough acquainted to feel that I can interpret to some extent the ideals which seem to me to dominate them. 1. Wealthy man. Head of large manufacturing business. Accumulation of money. Position of social and financial power. 2. Head of large manufacturing business, national in scope. Accumulation of money. Personal serv ice to a limited extent. 3. Minor officer in large corporation. Accumu lation of money. Social position. 4. Head of moderate-sized local business. Accu mulation of money. Social position. 5. Assistant to business man just mentioned. Accumulation of money. Proper education and rearing of family. 6. Agent working on commission. Accumulation of money to spend on personal pleasure. Married, but does not want family. 7. Agent working on commission. Money enough to get married. 8. Travelling man. Accumulation of money for realization of high-grade family life. (Wants to be able to stay at home.) 9. Prominent lawyer. Community service, na tionally and locally, to the point of self-sacrifice. 10. Lawyer. Accumulation of money for per sonal pleasure. 304 American Ideals 11. Physician. Money enough to retire from practice and go into farming and dairying on a large scale. 1 2. Chief executive of social-service organization. Community service, and a happy family life. 13. Minister. Service. 14. An old man whose chief aim is to live, and who devotes all of his time and money to this one end. 15. A working man. Money to properly bring up and educate his family. The ideals given above are what I would call " leading." Of course, there are less prominent ideals in all these cases which are more altruistic. The above replies give a somewhat compre hensive idea of the ideals that exist in the minds of Americans of widely different classes. Space would not permit presenting the answers of the entire one hundred witnesses as to the character of the ideals regnant in America, but the following summary of answers of the one hundred men who replied is significant. "What are the leading ideals of the men with whom you most frequently associate?" The following ideals were mentioned : No. timei mentioned To be of service to one s fellows 46 To make money for selfish enjoyment or personal power 28 An American Symposium 305 No. times mentioned The search for truth and justice, intellectual achievement, to contribute to human knowl edge 24 To provide fora family, domestic happiness, and education of children 22 Efficiency, self-reliance n Honesty, integrity, fair play the square deal 11 Confidence in Democracy and its institutions . 9 To attain reputation and high professional stand ing i. e., personal ambition 8 Deeper religious life 8 Tolerance in religious, social, and personal mat ters; greater freedom of the individual . . 8 Love of beauty (art, music, literature, etc.) and the creation of beauty. . ... 6 Chivalry toward women and protecting of the weak 3 Education of the masses 2 Prohibition 2 The answers summarized in the table just given represented the opinions of persons living in twenty different states of the Union. The call ings and positions represented by the one hun dred persons answering were as follows: Law, Engineering, Medicine, Business (in various divisions: Real Estate, Insurance, Advertising, Clerks, Agents, Managers, Manufacturers, Trades- 306 American Ideals men), Artists, Clergy, Educators, Professors, Col lege Presidents, State Governor, Congressman, Librarian, Actor, Poet, City Officials, Secretaries and Heads of Social and Religious Societies, Musician, Undergraduates, Playwright, Authors, Travellers, Scientists, Publishers, Missionaries, Newspapermen and Editors, Farmers, Principals of Academies and High Schools, Bankers, Miners, a Multimillionaire, and a Travelling Salesman. It is possible that the person reading and studying the aims suggested by this circle of Americans may get the impression that we are inclined to be unduly optimistic. In order that there might be a balanced picture of the idealism existing in the minds of the average and rep resentative American citizen, I added another question which was also answered by the same one hundred men. This question read as fol lows: " "What do you consider to be the chief points of weakness in our contemporary American life?" I append some of the answers received. From the president of a large college for girls: Laxness in honor; slackness of moral fibre when not on parade; willingness to .shirk the labor of honest detail; in a word, a willingness to dodge obligation. An American Symposium 307 Out of this comes our attitude toward law, which is no further advanced than a schoolboy s, who plays hookey if he can. From a New England author: Speaking now of my countrymen in general narrowness of vision; self-indulgence; "cheapness of soul"; deference to success regardless of how it was won; ease in Zion, or rather in its hinterland; the Narcissus-like self-contemplation of that poor creature the "man in the street"; lack of thorough ness; lack of respect for the intellect; just now a sense of world importance without a corresponding sense of world responsibility; all this is helped on by a lack of an acknowledged moral aristocracy. This from a poet : Lack of responsibility in public affairs. Toleration of dishonesty. Want of thoroughness and discipline. Complacency with cheap ideals of comfort, luxury, and fashion. Failure to understand the functions of intellectual influences. Need of constructive imagination A bank examiner considered the following to be our chief points of weakness: Materialistic tendencies. Striving for effect at the expense of any or all ideals. 308 American Ideals Lack of simplicity. Lack of serious application to present or future problems. Loss of early ideals through the breaking up of what formerly constituted "Home Life." Lack of interest in religious thought. A prominent member of an American Peace Society said: The tolerance of liquor as a factor in society. The failure to know and to understand other na tions. The heedless waste of national resources. The dominance of money and the neglect to guard the interest of_the_peoplejfrom_it j The belief that the state should help people in doing what they ought to do for themselves. The belief that the state should go beyond its cardinal duties of justice, sanitation, education, and peace. In all these regards I believe that America has a better record than any other large nation. A popular author said that American s weak nesses consist of Inability to properly use their leisure hours, due to lack of education in the refined pleasures of life music, literature, painting, etc. Lack of free outdoor activity; failure to develop basal fundamental muscles, and the growing tend- An American Symposium 309 ency to participate passively rather than actively in manual sports (they prefer to "see" athletics rather than to participate in athletics. Consequently the danger of muscular degeneration and over-stimulus of the brain). Disregard of laws of personal hygiene and matters of sanitation. Intemperance in the matter of over eating, undersleeping, and "bibbing" alcoholic bever- >ages. Perhaps a lack of independence in thought and | feeling; undue desire to do as the others of their , group do; the "keeping up with Lizzie" sort of living / and consequent luxuries and their improper valua- jtion. A shoe manufacturer in Massachusetts con sidered the shadows of our ideals to be the fol lowing: Unemployment. It is not creditable to our civil ization that better arrangements have not been made for the systematic utilization of the brain and muscle labor of the race. "Theearth brings forth abundantly," in accordance with God s primeval ordinance, but human methods of developing and distributing that product are haphazard, and a part of the population get too much, and a part none at all. A tendency to waste and extravagance both in private life and in the government of the city, the state, and the nation. This involves carelessness 3io American Ideals about the future and probable eventual embarrass ment, and it breeds radicalism in private and public policy. If we are thoughtless about the day after to-morrow and come to grief, while our neighbor is forethoughtful and prosperous, we are inclined to resent his advantage and to seek in some way to penalize him. Note certain phases of the otherwise laudable labor movement, and also the demoralizing tendency toward class legislation. A professor and editor writes: It seems to me that the greatest defect of the body politic in our land is too little devotion to civic duties combined with the tendency to adhere too closely to party lines or to yield too readily to the claim of party allegiance. As I compare our own civic, state, and national politics and that of say England, I find a great gap. The government of Birmingham or Manchester is a century in advance of that of New York or Philadelphia so far as an intelligent comprehension of the needs of a great population is concerned, or so far as wise measures go to meet these needs. Were our own citizens fired with the will to do their parts in understanding the funda mental requirements of political administration, to exercise soberly the duty and right of choosing those administrators, and then of following them up to see that they " administered" properly, our politics would be cleaner and more effective. I would like to see our leisure class, the so-called "idle rich," engaged more earnestly in the study and pursuit of economics An American Symposium 311 and the higher politics. Whatever may be said of the English aristocracy, it has furnished a line of ably equipped men to work in state offices, on the bench, in diplomacy, and elsewhere. A radical change is coming over the ideas of the distribution of wealth. We shall surely learn, are indeed in some small degree already putting it into practice, to distribute wealth more equably. Capital must have its due return, so must labor. Profit- sharing has come to stay. It must grow in extent of application. On the other hand, the levelling of the incompetent and the competent laborers as im plied by some past labor movements has not and cannot justify itself. "A fair day s labor for a fair day s wage" is as imperative in requirement as is "A fair wage for a fair day s labor." The maxim of the old Chinese sage must govern in the industrial world. He used the single word, "reciprocity." That must be fired with the Christ spirit, realization of a universal brotherhood, a brotherhood that is not enfeebled by its universality, but rather enriched by its expansiveness; this seems to me to be the key to the world s betterment. A clergyman in St. Louis: The chief points of weakness in our contemporary American life are (a) in social life, shallowness, the building of social relations upon artificial things such as ancestry, money, etc. (b) Intellectually, the lack of thoroughness. People do not think. They trust newspapers, often clothing them with infallibility. 312 American Ideals In religion the same is true. There is a woful lack of intelligence on religious matters, not only outside of religious circles, but among members of churches. This downright ignorance is responsible for the growth of all sorts of fads in religion, (c) Lack of ethical enthusiasm. This is seen in industrial rela tions, business transactions, social ideals, religious life, and everywhere else. I do not think that the United States is any worse off than any other country. Indeed, I believe the contrary. From a college president in Ohio: 1. Lack of forethought. 2. Too great fondness for physical comfort and physical splendor. 3. Indisposition to think hard and to read good Lack of individuality or the presence of the to follow the fashion. 5. Too great fondness for the picturesque. 6. A newspaper press without proper sense of responsibility. 7. Disregard of properly constituted authority. The secretary of a national missionary society of one of the larger denominations has this to say: Failure to read strong, vigorous, wholesome books, especially the Bible. An American Symposium 313 Tendency to look upon the college course more as a pleasure than as a source of intellectual profit. Living beyond one s means and trying to keep up two or more establishments when one is sufficient. Tendency to untruthfulness and to lower grad ually the standards of daily conduct. A pride in past achievements, and mistaking move ment for progress, while gradually the whole life is running on the down grade. A teacher in the University of Michigan: To me, as a foreigner, the weakness (no less than the strength) of contemporary American life asserts itself very distinctly, the more that the process is unconscious. Folk live far too much in the moment: they stop to reflect too seldom. Above all, they tend to postpone the really serious things of life under the supposition that, till a certain material or economic plane has been reached, this postponement is safe. I take it that this is due in a large measure to the one main characteristic in which the residents of the United States agree a political outlook. This makes for compromise; but it hides the fact that compromise, even if thoroughly viable, leaves the fundamental questions of principle untouched. And principle cannot be determined except by close attention to thinking, and by serious study of the permanent things. The result is that, as concerns these most serious affairs, we rush blindly at a con clusion when stress arises, and pay ourselves with makeshifts. 314 American Ideals A secretary of the Young Men s Christian Association in the West: To be more afraid of being caught than we are afraid of wrongdoing. To mistake an outward veneer of pretence for a deep-rooted inner life. Too much time is given to the hurry and bustle of life and not enough to its best values. The home and home life as such receives too little attention for our own best good. Mistaking acquaintances for friends underesti mating the value of true friendship. Depending too much upon outside entertainment rather than trying to develop such a life as will make one s self good company for others as well as for one s self. A university president in California states his opinion: Our chief national failing is made up of a union of fussiness, nervousness, hurry; "keeping up with the times"; reading the latest novel; seeing a little of everything, just enough to talk about it; general thin ness due to admiration of versatility; "government" by bluff, a natural result of shallow equipment. A multimillionaire mine owner thinks that our weaknesses consist of Extravagance and inefficiency. The Americans of formergenerations have been the most efficient people An American Symposium 315 in the world and in many respects they are so yet, but I think there has been a great decrease in this respect in the American people during the past two generations. This is probably mainly due to educa tion and association with other inefficient people. Aside from our technological and so-called voca tional educational institutions, the education fur nished seems to be much like giving a young man or a young woman a box of tools, and without instruc tions how to use them, expect them to build wagons, furniture, houses, etc. I think there has been some change for the better in this respect during recent years, but the ordinary education seems to be con fined to furnishing the tools and allowing the student to find out how to use them as he may. In former generations so much was done at home that young people growing up unconsciously became thoroughly acquainted with all practical matters relating to life and the human effort required in carrying on the affairs of life; but during the past two generations the factory system has developed so rapidly that now nearly everything is made in fac tories, and young people get little or no practical in struction at home. I have had many college men apply to me for posi tions who did not know how to get in and out of the office decently, and who did not know how to do a single thing that was of any practical benefit to any one. Such education as they had received seemed to be actually a detriment, and I am glad to see a tend ency toward a more practical effort in this direction. 316 American Ideals A clergyman in a large Eastern city, believes that: The chief points of weakness in our contemporary life are: First, shallow spiritual experience without ideas and with poverty-stricken ideals. Second, a_gregariousness. which seems to render the individual incapable of thinking, doing, or being for himself as an individual. Third, an absurd reverence for external signs of prosperity. ""Fourth, the absence of a sense of moral obligation in relation to the ordinary affairs of everyday people. Fifth, a growing attempt to make social and exter nal conditions a substitute for internal Christianity. Sixth, a pernicious activity which has made repose, serenity, inwardness of life, practically impossible. Seventh, a puerile lowering of the standards of virility to the level of little children. The editor of one of the most widely circu lated American weeklies considers our chief points of failure: The supreme worship of wealth and the struggle to attain it, the principal flaw in our character as a people. In this struggle there is almost always too great a sacrifice. . Were wealth sought in reasonable measure, it would bring comfort and enjoyment; but the common tendency is to seek it, not for rational An American Symposium 317 uses, but as a means for acquiring still more. There is no country in the world where we find so many men of middle age still engrossed in making money. Other lands have their leisure class, who have with drawn, to some extent at least, from the active struggle in order that they may study those graces that give refinement and nobility to age, and which furnish opportunities for helping those who are be ginning the battle in stress and difficulties. Wealth, rightly considered, is a stewardship which should carry with it a wide recognition of our responsibility. Fortunately, this recognition is steadily growing. I think Andrew Carnegie was right when he said that the time was coming when it would be considered a disgrace for an American to die rich. The really wise and good man should be his own executor. Another outstanding element of weakness in our social and business life is the widely prevalent lack of appreciation of the Golden Rule. Selfishness and indifference lead to many hard and cruel situations. If the Christ spirit were within us, even in small measure, we would give greater attention to our busi ness methods. There would be less misrepresenta tion, less driving of close bargains, less exploiting of employees, less of the evils of drudgery and child labor in a word, less selfishness. The application of the simple rule of Christ s teaching would help us to think more of our neighbor than we do, and to give more consideration to the rights of others. We are intent in everything we undertake, so full of the sheer love of the battle that we show little or no mercy. 318 American Ideals The president of the graduating (1915) class at the University of Wisconsin writes: The chief weakness in our public life at present, as it appears to me, is the feeling that if I don t do a thing some one else will. Few men in public life are taking a share in doing a thing for which they are not directly responsible, and too many are not doing the things for which they are directly respon sible. The unpleasant thing about our private life in America is that it is difficult to have a private life under present conditions. The citizen as a private individual is a slave to public opinion, and conse- [uently does not dare to do what he thinks best or wisest if that thing excites comment. A New York banker: I feel that present political consideration makes it difficult for individuals confidently to go into new ventures or to look forward to future prosperity, and that this unrest and tendency toward socialism is at the bottom of the present depression and lack of employment. A Boston banker: The passion for "getting on," with accompanying failure to see what one is getting on toward. Pride in power and in the ownership of things. Too great reliance on the finality of material. The lust for spending ami having others know that one spends. An American Symposium 319 Too much confidence in the necessary and fore ordained greatness of the United States. Failure to relate ideals to practical conduct, to realize the one and to transfigure the other. A congressman: Extravagance in living. Most Americans prefer to spend money rather than not to spend it, and therefore very many spend money foolishly, and upon things which were better not purchased. The feeling that what we do ought to meet the approval of other nations, for example, rather than our own approval. This is because as a nation and as individuals we are stillrather more vain than proud. Editor of an educational magazine: From the standpoint of the best interests of the country I regard the greatest weakness and the greatest source of danger to be the tendency to main tain "solidarity" among various classes. "The solidarity of women"- - "the solidarity of Roman Catholics"- "the solidarity of the German Irish- Italian vote." The future of the Democracy de mands that we shall work together and not stand apart, preserving and abetting social, racial, religious antagonisms. Another weakness is a tendency on the part of a large number of Americans to leave important re sponsibilities to the few. Too little understanding of public questions and the workings of practical 320 American Ideals politics. Too little real interest in the public school. Too little comprehension of the causes of social un rest. While things go well with us we are not inclined to concern ourselves with the real problems of the day. Headmaster of a boys academy in Penn sylvania: If the spirit of high honor prevailed throughout the nation, even in the. far corners of the same, as it prevails in the lives of many of the best men I know, our nation would be the most nearly ideal nation on the face of the earth. A well-known New Jersey city official states that our weaknesses are Selfishness insincerity jealousy. Tendency to destroy rather than to construct. Too little attention given individually to the seri ous side of life. Ignorance concerning our public life and officials outside of knowledge gathered from the newspapers. Too busy to live up to what we know is right. Entertainment receives more consideration than education. A high-school principal: One of the chief weaknesses is an absence of tenacity and a dearth of purpose. An American Symposium 321 There is also too little of abstract philosophical thinking on any subject. A religious director of six thousand university students: One weakness is that of indulgence. Our life is crammed these days with opportunities for relaxing; the picture show, the ball game, the theatre, the novel, and the canoe grip the lives of a great many and absorb their best energies. * * * * I firmly believe that there are more men of exalted religious type in our colleges and universities than anywhere else in the world. A public official in Cleveland, Ohio: A belief in our national good luck which makes us assume rather light-heartedly that America can not help turning out well, and, therefore, indisposes us to the labor of making it turn out well. Our tolerance of such evils as sensational newspa pers, debasing dramatic exhibitions, and overemo- tional motion picture shows. These are probably due to our not having yet solved the problem of leisure. The head of a New York publishing house says that our weaknesses are A tendency to subordinate everything to making money and dancing, and to getting up societies for the reformation of everything. 322 American Ideals An author of wide repute finds three failures in our ideals: Excessive popular influence in politics. Lack of information about European affairs. Too much self-confidence and complaisance. A leading sociologist writes: The chief point of weakness is the identifying of success in life with money-making or ordinary com mercial success. This comes from the past ascend ancy of business men in shaping the ideals of Americans. Although within the last ten years the revelations of business morals have weakened some what this ascendancy, nevertheless, even to-day, the public gives too much heed to the business class and too little to such champions of permanent value, as poets, artists, thinkers, educators, social workers, physicians, eugenists, economists, and geologists. A second point of weakness is the excessive rever ence on the part of the Courts for the rights of prop erty in cases in which the management of property comes into conflict with the life, wealth, or happiness of human beings, with the interest of society, or with the vitality of the race. A professor in Baylor University, Texas, con- sidersourneed of improvement to lie in relation to The disintegrating factors of selfishness and com petition over against the necessity of the community An American Symposium 323 spirit, the brotherly life, and the outward expression of it in organized cooperation. The secretary of a large foundation fund con siders that our failures consist in Personal preferment and pleasures at any cost. The refusal of so many to think, to face the facts, and to come to a wise attitude toward life and to a determination of well-thought-out ideals. The president of the Board of Education in an Eastern city: I believe that we are too greatly disposed to depend on an optimistic belief in our ability to handle almost any question, no matter how limited our knowledge or experience may be. The thorough and painstak ing effort and specialized knowledge of which we have seen recent examples in other nations, are not, in my opinion, sufficiently valued by our people. The head of a large military academy in the Middle West reports our failures in the follow ing directions: Rural depopulation and urban congestion. Race suicide of the fittest and overbreeding by the unfit. Mental superficiality as manifested by a lack of thoroughness in almost every line of work, by the patronage of cheap literature, cheap music, degrading 324 American Ideals plays, and the almost total eclipse of the inner man. As a result of this mental superficiality the preva lence of half-baked and prejudiced opinions on mat ters of local or national importance and almost total ignorance of the great thoughts of the past. An analysis of the answers of one hundred men as to the chief points of weakness in our contemporary American life, from which the preceding quotations have been taken, reveals the following facts : (The table below gives the number of times the designated weaknesses were mentioned.) No. times mentioned Materialism, dominance of money, worship of bigness, deference to material success ... 27 Want of thoroughness, superficiality . ... 20 Extravagance and wastefulness 16 Self-indulgence and complacency . . . . 15 Lack of perspective and ignorance of foreign nations 14 Lack of public responsibility generally ... 13 Breaking up of home life and lack of home train ing for children 9 Shallowness in religion 8 Evasion of law when possible without being caught 8 Lack of respect for intellect 6 An American Symposium 325 No. times mentioned Class legislation and class solidarity ... 5 Imitativeness, lack of independence ... 4 Exaggerated opinion of the greatness of the United States 4 Intemperance in liquor, eating, etc 3 Love of display 3 Lack of education for liberal leisure .... 2 Irresponsible journalism 2 Unemployment 2 " Organizations" for everything 2 Unequal distribution of wealth I Danger of our mixed population I The conclusion forced upon us by these testi monies is that while we have not yet attained our ideals as a people, we have become increas ingly conscious of them. Our civilization has not reached the highest greatness, but it con tains the elements of that greatness. Our men and women are not as yet full statured, but they are growing. These trenchant words of some of our best types of Americans remind us that democracy is still an earth spirit struggling often with indifferent success to lift itself above the petty intrigues of politicians, and rising only occasion ally to the "vision splendid" of fraternal equality and sure justice. We are still the worshippers 326 American Ideals of physical force and material rewards. Our idols have feet of clay. Our courts still mete out limping justice. Our education drives itself into the grooves of money and the making of a living rather than the building of strong man hood and womanhood. We still fill the air of our modern Babylons with the strident cries of sensual satisfactions, and we barter our birth right for a mess of pottage that only adds to our fleshly hunger and fails to feed our famishing souls. Our much vaunted civilization proves to be all too frequently in hours of crisis an un substantial dream, and like our religion it is too often but a thin cloak to cover the naked ness and selfish sordidness of perverse and pride- filled hearts. No thoughtful student of our times is blind enough to delude himself into sublime ease of mind and spirit, even while beholding our philanthropies, our pensions, and our peace policies that bedeck the outward surface of our modernity. No one who hears the confused wrangling of labor at Bayonne and in many a mining and industrial camp will wrap the man tle of self-sufficiency aHout him and cry, "We are the People! Wisdom and virtue will die with us!" Our finest progress toward the sense An American Symposium 327 of Beauty and inward Power is but, in the words of Tennyson, The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds. Our ideals are too far from realization to per mit of boasting; they are not as yet fixed guiding stars. Yet I venture to say that no one can read these frank and earnest answers of contempo rary Americans, residing in widely separated areas and employed in diverse callings, without \ feeling that underneath even the most pessi- T" mistic of them there runs a sense, not of failing, but of succeeding, even if slowly, in the perfect ing of our life of business and public and private institutions. The private letters that accom panied these witnesses abound in faith and hope. The very consciousness of the unattained y/ ideals that our weaknesses exemplify are the surest signs of encouragement. The ideals of a people are always the forerunners of their practice, and when a higher ideal is sighted or taken in place of a lower one, the change in practice is sure to follow. Modern Christians do not always (as ancient pagans did not) exhibit the graces of mercy and 328 American Ideals brotherly love; but the members of the present- day Christian civilization in America feel what men in the old Roman age did not feel that in the failure to rise to the loftiest height of social cooperation with their fellows they are dropping below the standards of true men. The ideal of "service" easily leads all others in the above answers. The danger of the old pagan civiliza tion, which placed brute force and violence, above brotherhood and the constructive arts of peace, lay not merely in its deeds of violence but in its admiration and worship of such exter nal agencies as the true ideals of greatness. Spiritual ideals did not have a chance even in the mind. It is here that America is learning the first great lesson in national and individual idealism the grasping of the truth that physical domi nance and the vulgar, selfish pursuit of money as an end in itself are not the highest manifesta tions of power. The man who delves into the American motives will find this in general to be true. This is a long step in idealism. To be sure many of the brutish and sordid relics of paganism and barbarism are yet evident among us and seem quite deeply rooted in human na ture; but these do not survive in our admiration An American Symposium 329 or approval, and I believe that they are gradually losing their influence over our thought the centre from which all action springs. This is the triumph of American idealism. Even the man who has not attained to his ideals finds them ever present in the anticipation of his heart. He sees them realized in others and admires them from afar: and here in America we have a remarkable tendency to be come what we admire. We are, as a nation, great enough to admire the character of Lincoln and to revere his name more and more as the days of our years go by. We are increasingly conscious of that high-mindedness and states manlike bearing exhibited by the almost ideal Secretary of State, John Hay; and more than one of late has remarked with peculiar pride these qualities of devotion to humanity s cause shining so transparently in the life of Lincoln, and the choice, thoughtful culture of Mr. Hay, appearing together in the acts and habits of our President, Woodrow Wilson. The final aim of all great ideals is to make great men. That cause is strong, as Lowell has said, which has not a multitude but one strong man behind it. It should be the high aim of our American idealism to lift the nation above its 330 American Ideals weakness and frailty by the production of men of quality, men of larger mental mould, men of firmer moral fibre, men who, whether storms or sunshine come, can be depended upon to say as did Seneca s pilot: "O Neptune: you may save me if you will; you may sink me if you will; but whatever happens, I shall keep my rudder true/ CHAPTER XI AMERICA COMING OF AGE Forever alive, forever forward, Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, tur bulent, feeble, dissatisfied, Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, re jected by men, They go! They go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go, But I know that they go toward the best toward something great. WALT WHITMAN. The United States will never see fifty again; nor a hundred. We are full grown. OWEN WISTER. CHAPTER XI AMERICA COMING OF AGE GEORGE WADE, the sculptor, once said: I could tell an American immediately, not by manner, walk, or clothes, or anything external, but by the peculiar expression of his eye. It is an ex pression I find hard to analyze. It is a look which seems to embrace the future rather than the present or the past. The American has the open-eyed look of confident anticipation. Emerson was not the only one who has called America another term for opportunity. Many a prophet has seen envisaged on this Western con tinent an all-encompassing future civilization, a land of promise without parallel, the country of the new hope. " Borne over the Atlantic," cried the prophetic Carlyle in his warning to Europe, "to the closing ear of Louis, king by the grace of God, what sounds are these muffled, ominous, new in our centuries? Boston Harbor is black with un- 333 334 American Ideals expected tea; behold a Pennsylvania congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill, Democ racy announcing, in rifle volleys death-winged, under her star banner, to the tune of Yankee- doodle-do, that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will envelop the whole world!" Prophecy has been made history and America has become of age. Her Alps are passed; her Italy lies before her. With face still shining in youthful hope and unquenched optimism, America yet belongs to the Party of the Present, but she is becoming interested in the Party of the Future. America has been called a Providential re public. By the nature of an unseen and often unappreciated cosmic force she has been in evitably urged far ahead of the dreams of her founders. The processes of the years have gradually widened her boundaries. To the south came Texas and New Mexico and the French lands where Napoleon had dreamed of making a new empire in the West for France. Later in a hundred days of war, which we at the time could scarcely understand, the West Indies became America s southern boundaries. It was as if propelled by this irresistible force of destiny that Lewis and Clarke forged their way America Coming of Age 335 through the western wilderness and "planted our banners by the shores of the Peaceful Sea." Then the nation that never dreamed of conquest found Alaska as her child in the frozen North, and her star of empire was to lead her yet farther, even toward the Eastern sunrise, until her West became East, and the eagle in her flight found her stepping-stones upon the isles of the Pacific and in distant Southern Seas. It was not by chance that the hand of Jefferson wrote with intuitive fingers an instrument of "delegated powers" that has served as chart and compass over these new and untried waters. A Greater Hand moved the pen whose writing has served so well to guide a new race of men in their purposed destiny. Theodore Roosevelt, in a memorable address with which he dedicated the St. Louis Exposition, said, "As is so often the case in nature, the law of development of a living organism showed itself in its actual workings to be wiser than the wisdom of the wisest." This new republic, carved out of the unknown, the unexpected, is no longer an experiment. It has been tried by war and by peace, by adversity and by prosperity. American ideals are facts for which men have dared to die. 336 American Ideals Here she has shown her capacity, not only to tame a wilderness and to irrigate deserts, but also to govern successfully ICXD,OOO,OOO of the most diverse populations known on the face of the earth. Here she has settled once for all time her union of states in a dolorous but de livering civil war. She has gone out to the uttermost parts of the earth with her commerce and her colonists. By adhering through many a conflict to sound economics, she has estab lished her financial credit on a basis as firm and trustworthy as that of any nation beneath the sun. Her home industries are attended by a prosperity at once both the envy and the emula tion of her national neighbors. She has built through the Isthmus of Panama a waterway as unprecedented in its conception and construction as it is, in its equal access to all the world, sig nificant of human serviceableness. Scarcely an achievement known to modern science is a novelty in America. Already the United States has revealed herself as her own most sedulous policeman, and her reforms of herself have been as startling as the perils they foreshadowed have been ominous. She has raised up great men, great political parties, great schools, and great colleges. She has become the fostering America Coming of Age 337 mother of some of the finest charities, the great est railroads, and the most prodigious manu facturing and business corporations extant. In this vast world drama of modernity enacted before the eyes of men there pass indescribable scenes filled with laborers, technicians, capital ists, builders of cities and tunnels, makers of lit erature and laws, seers and saints of a new world of imagination and religion, and a pro cession well-nigh endless of strong, intrepid youth. It is a story of enchantment, this shining record of progress and freedom of America com ing of age. These things of the hand and the mind and spirit she has accomplished "without an ally and without an enemy" among the nations. She stands to-day upon the hilltop, and they that look upon her achievements are like them that dream. With such unexampled growth, with a face still radiant with the light of her morning, America is to-day entering upon a new period the period of maturity. Livingstone, at the end of his daring and successful discoveries in the heart of the Dark Continent, said: "The end of the exploration is the beginning of the enter- 338 American Ideals prise." It is with some such feeling that the American, rich in his unexpressed idealism, cap able in the realm of his spirit and imagination as in the sphere of his material world, faces the light of a new era. There is a sense in which every hour in a nation s progress is a critical hour, a sense in which every day is doomsday. In a philosophical mind every hour marks the end of an era, and every year sets its sign on a new order of ages. In a certain sense a country is always passing through a transition period, and the rapidity with which the life of yesterday coalesces with the life of to-day in this strangely progressive land has often puzzled and baffled the contem porary prophet and historian who has endeavored to restrict America within distinctive epochs. But there come times in the career of nations as of individuals, so plain that he who runs may read, when there is a necessary cleavage between the past and the future, and when a people, especially, are pressed forward as by a dynamic force into a new and inevitable destiny. One of these moments was recorded when these United States swept forward alone into a strange world of political responsibility that memorable hour of transfer of national leader- America Coming of Age 339 ship from British to American hands. Another fixed and unforgettable point of duration marked the day when over the martyred form of Lincoln the North and the South clasped hands of un divided citizenship. And when the Book of History is fully written there will be at least one other turning of the tide in America there portrayed. It will be the painting of the days our eyes are now beholding, when the thunder of cannon and the hiss of torpedoes are rever berating in the ears of a war-maddened world, and America almost alone stands apart, the fateful spectator and arbiter of this "Iliad of woes/ In these days of changing and tangled destiny in the life of European nations, when the United States is called upon to bear back to Europe some light from the torch which was kindled there and which has brightened into a steady flame in America s hand, in these hours when the country s ideals and institutions and men are put to the test as perhaps never before, we must perforce choose our path with a fresh directive eye; we must stamp our present period with a new reappraisement. What ideals now emerging must emerge, if we are true to ourselves, to awaken our present energies, to give tonic and timbre to our future 340 American Ideals hopes? What sleeping, inarticulate dreams are being rudely disturbed and dragged forcibly out into the light of common day by this doomful cataclysm of war? If we mistake not, they are the ideals and the dreams that prefigure America s coming of age. They are the ideas and the convictions which will foreshadow the new creative idealism of the inner spirit of America, rising out and above the foundations of her vast material conquests and growing life. Mr. A. E. Zimmern, the don of Oxford, in his essay entitled "Seven Months in America," calls America "a state of mind." It is in a change of this American "state of mind," or perhaps in an opening of an untried or unoccu pied portion of it, the part that lies in the realm of the spirit and the resources of the higher understanding, that she is to see herself in these new days of her richer maturity. America is facing a mighty test of her ideals. The spirit of Democracy, which at the centre is brother hood, or meant to be, is on trial. The informing and vital breath of the country s religion will be fanned into new flame or will be withered by these days. The voice of the nation s con science, which is the voice of God, will be heard afresh, and there will be a new soul s awakening. America Coming of Age 341 Those in America who have been turning their new and leisured thought to art, to literature, or to the putting of their moral and spiritual house in order, will find in the massive events of these heart-stirring hours meanings that are not found in pictures or books or written on our altar cloths. There are two great words frequently heard in the United States these days, standing for two of the inherent ideals of the nation: these words are Peace and Humanity. These words stand for aims deeply embedded in the original life of the nation; they belong to our first traditions; they breathe the atmosphere of the real and essential existence of America which is rooted in a spirit of equal justice and flowers in humanitarian sympathy on the high levels of man s brother hood with man. It is for the revelation and the incarnate expression of these great ideals that all our previous history has prepared the way. It was to find an arena for this wider and larger sense of humanity that our early forefather pioneers in New England, in Virginia, and the South, "under such sullen and averted stars," laid the forests and built their homes and schools in this western hemisphere. It has been in 342 American Ideals prelude to these ideals, these higher and far- sweeping dreams of the human spirit and imagination, that the later sons of the West have enlarged the borders of their agriculture, and have forged out their enormous scientific devel opments in steam machinery, in electrical, economic, and political advance. It is for such ideals that the Republic finds its material civil ization a meaningful ministrant and without which all its splendid wealth and earthly re sources are as pointless as the tinkling of a tem ple bell. Into this new idealism of a world made peaceful for the sake of its most precious prod ucts the members of the human race our country has been slowly moving, and the wars of the nations have accelerated the wheels of its progress. Why is America at the daybreak of a new period of her constructive history predisposed and pledged to peace? Why is the ideal of be ing the peacemaker among the nations attrac tive in her eyes? It is because we came first to these western shores as searchers for this spiritual, peaceful inheritance; it is because deep in the inner consciousness of Americans there has always persisted the dim realization that if we lose this ideal, notwithstanding all the America Coming of Age 343 opulence of our power and wealth, we shall be poor indeed. "Peace and Liberty" these are America s sovereign words. They have been the watchwords of our greatest leaders. Washington said: "My first wish is to see this plague of mankind (war) banished from the earth. We have experienced enough of its evils in this country to know that it must not be wan tonly or unnecessarily entered upon." Grant had reason to understand the full signif icance of his words when, out of a heart weary with war, he cried: "Let us have peace!" The phrase of Sherman, "War is hell!" has become an epigram in the country, as trite as it is true, and stands in the common sentiment beside the prayer of the dying Lincoln that "this mighty scourge of war might speedily pass away." The name of one of America s most honored states men, John Hay, is associated inextricably with the Golden Rule policy of peace and good will, both at home and abroad, the ideal of men of quality. In his address before the Press Parlia ment of the World at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis in 1904, Mr. Hay uttered words pregnant with the national idealism and worthy to be framed above the desk of every newspaper editor in this and in every land: 344 American Ideals ft If the press of the world would adopt and per sist in the high resolve that war should be no more, the clangor of arms would cease from the rising of the sun to its going down, and we could fancy that at last our ears, no longer stunned by the din of armies, might hear the morning stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy." No nation has followed more devotedly in the wake of its statesmen s ideals in pioneering the causes of arbitration; no nation has poured out its money more lavishly in the interests of per manent peace. Even when there is no peace in the sight of men, the American sees it afar off and seeks it sometimes almost blindly, be cause his wish is the measure of his mind. In this regard a nation s ideal, like that of a man, is estimated by what he wants quite as much as by what he gets. In the United States the sign of peace is a watermark of the racial consciousness. It belongs to us as truly as do our industries, it is the pledge and the prerequisite of our indus tries the eternal condition without which American freedom is not. It is with such heritage at home, and with strains of indebtedness to other nations we too seldom pause to consider, that we are bound and America Coming of Age 345 indissolubly enmeshed in the peace and progress of mankind. It is sometimes overlooked both by our foreign neighbors and our own people that we did not begin in America. Many of our insti tutions came as it were by enchantment, full statured in their transfer from the old to this new world. The "clouds of glory" of American spiritual life trail far back into distant Asia. Many of the roots of romance and insight, many a strain of thought and tradition, followed to its source would reach to France and Spain and England, whose children brought their visions and their culture Americaward. When the hard, steel-like face of the seemingly ma terialistic American lights up before the admi ration of the beautiful, the chivalrous; when the warm tones of emotional feeling sweep the heartstrings of the practical business man, it is a strain of the Latin temperament that is speaking, it says to those who are most intent: "You must be a great and spiritual land, Amer ica, for you are the offspring of all that is most excellent in this Old World from which you have drawn your life. You must be great for your own sake, and also for us who are to be more and more dependent upon you for that eternal spring of youth, and that priceless gift of peace 346 American Ideals with liberty of which you are the embodiment among the nations." But it is not the full story of America s coming of age to repeat that she has been conceived and nourished and has grown to maturity in the atmosphere of peace. There is another and even a more fundamental ideal for which this land is renowned. A greater word than peace to the new western world is this word Hu manity. It is for humanity, not in the abstract, not merely in the masses, not in the form of nations entirely, but in the concrete human in dividual that America is to be more and more a specialist. There is no peace of nations where there is no peace in the heart of the individuals who compose those nations. There is no unity worthy of the name in monarchy or democracy where there is no harmony and disciplined power in the units who unite. America can never be truly great and truly free, she can never expect peace to reign within her borders, nor can she dream of peacemaking around the world, until she awakens anew to the thought that the institution is but the elongated shadow of the man; that the body corporate can advance no farther than the body individual has advanced, and that the secret of any lasting renown among America Coming of Age 347 the races of men resides in the degree in which great ideals and high convictions have caught fire in the souls of individual men men one by one. This is the high business of democracy, this individualism of the private soul, this rivet ing the strength of the nation to the disciplined wills and the enlarged hearts of persons, who are more potent than policies. This is building the national temple with the "living stones" of human personalities who have been awakened to the superb consciousness and eternal dignity of themselves. That nation that strengthens its individuals strengthens itself, and in the surest manner possible. It is the most unfail ing patriotism that anchors its hope not in chancelleries, nor in admiralties, but in the inflexible purposes of righteousness in the hearts and consciences of the great men and women whom individual patriotism has made. To draw an illustration from the pages of celestial wisdom, there was a time in the days of the King Josiah when the imperial splendor of Judah seemed about to take precedence over the private life of the individual. The nation, the masses, the armies, the government, and the material power were more and more. The people, dazzled with the glory of might and 348 American Ideals things, cried: "The days of our David have returned." Before the eyes of the little Jewish Kingdom there passed only visions splendid of promised lands and political power for the na tion. The man was lost in the crowd. Suddenly there comes a crash. The king falls upon the bloody field of Megiddo, Judah as a nation goes to pieces, is carried captive to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. On the banks of the Chebar where the captive people were set to work, after the blast of imperialism and material worship had passed, we are shown that for the first time in their history the God of ancient Judaism began to speak to each in dividual, to address not the nation but the person man by man. Heretofore the Jew had said: "These messages are not for me, they are for the nation; our God is too political to be personal, too zealous for the mass to care for me." The very sense of loyalty to the nation, the working for the matchless splendor of Judah, had obscured the rights of the individual soul. In their exile, in their disassociation from corporate satisfactions, they found their souls. It is somewhat thus that one discovers, here and there atleast,inthe United States a tendency to pass out of the "age of arithmetic" into the America Coming of Age 349 age of the adornment of the individual spirit. Even our socialized service has been, like Judah s patriotism, an obstacle to the development of those individual ideals without which no na tional ideal is meaningful. America has all the conditions of a great civilization, but it must be remembered that in the highest sense her civilization is not yet great, she has not achieved the full use of her wings. There is indication that the people who have seen with clear eyes during these days of world war, noting the fact that great materiali ties or great aristocracies are not synonymous with great humanities, are perceiving that a high civilization can never be truly defined in terms of physical armament or by such words as bulk, and size, and far, and near. Great states, like great individuals, belong to that "remote concentration" that believes and stakes all upon the sovereignty of great ideas, of larger education, of unbounded belief in individualism and peace among men. Upon her material and vast industrial bases America, grown to maturity, must now build carefully and faithfully her thought life, her life of the international and individual mind. To learn to think straightly and dispassion- 3 O American Ideals ately, to add knowledge to knowledge, and to supplement her resistless energy by disciplined restraint, is the new and peculiar opportunity of America coming of age. The United States in its youth has learned the lesson purchased by its own blood, that no people permanently will endure the subjugation of their rightful liberty that freedom, real and not fanciful, old and also new, and always fresh and heaven-born, is the one and only force that will unite in undying cause the souls of men. She has yet to learn, at least in its larger and finer scope, that the only element in which freedom can freely live and move and have its being, is that of the larger universal mind to which the independence of the in dividual minds have contributed each a share. Freedom is the ideal of America, and Wisdom must be Freedom s guiding spirit. America is coming of age in a period of un exampled opportunity in world affairs. Her fancied isolation has been rudely shattered. The present world conflict, with its earth-shak ing influences, already by its tremendous effect upon our economic, industrial, and emotional life, has awakened the nation at a destined America Coming of Age 351 moment to the fact that we can no longer exist on a continent apart, but that we have become by the arbitrament of time and tragedy of circumstance a part and parcel of world respon sibility. In her young manhood America is summoned to cultivate an aptitude for altruism, and her future as a great or small civilization hangs upon her present choice. Henceforth, if we are to make the gift of our forefathers -that sacred deposit of freedom meaningful, we must be ready with foresight and wisdom heretofore unsummoned to take our burden of world obligation, as well as to prepare to care for the enlarging interests that are our own. The nation s calamity howlers and the sword rattlers who have been crying out during the past years for armament have doubtless caught transient gleams of this new order of America s respon sibility, and even though their remedies have been so clumsily presented, they demand our consideration. Now, furthermore, these are joined by wiser and more numerous cooperators who are drawing a sword never before dreamed of in America, whose banner carries no spread- eagleism, no mere selfish slogan of "America for Americans," save as such battle-cry may be needful against unprecedented attacks upon our 352 American Ideals homes and firesides. These leaders of the new order are the apostles of a wider perspective. President Wilson has spoken the words of their Magna Charta in his already famous Philadel phia address: It is sometimes possible to be so right as not to have to fight for our rights. It is thus that we match the patriotism of our youth with the wisdom of our manhood, and gain the seerlike capacity to see beyond the moment, beyond passion, beyond hurt feelings, beyond the domination of the temporal. This new America is not the cowardly America; it is the America sobering with her age^ rising in her stirrups, so to speak, using the eyes of her mind as well as the vigor of her national spurs, look ing across the hilltop the nation refusing to be stampeded because she "sees things steadily and sees them whole." Our fathers brought to our shores from Europe in their frail sailing ships a precious endowment with which to inform and to actuate the young republic. They were the ideals of political and religious freedom. These ideals America Coming of Age 353 have not yet been fully perfected in our hands, but they have been fostered and extended in a legion of ways among our own citizenship, as well as among those who have sought homes on our shores. These ideals have per meated all our institutions. They have made an atmosphere for American hopes and Amer ican enterprises. We of to-day may be called upon in the new morning of America s maturity, in the very dawn of her spiritual strength, as the unhostile representatives of her wealth and insight, to send back to Europe this priceless spirit of idealism, not in the terms of battleships, but in the language of brotherhood, not wearing the insignia of world power, but clothed in the shining garments of Peace. THE END INDEX INDEX Abbott, Dr. Lyman, regarding religion .... 224 Achievement, American desire for S 8 Activity, law of American being 45 Agassiz, Professor, Ideas on Education .... 167 Akron, Ohio, immigration classes 243 Alden, Henry Mills 52,60 America Defined by Oxford don 34 Growth of 334 New period 337 Opportunity and world affairs 35 Wealth per inhabitant l?> l8 Materialistic 3 American Active temperament 5 Adaptability II2 Analyzed by Frenchman 3 Anticipating IO Bigness attractive I3 61, 64 Business man 37 Civilization 349 Contrasted with Britisher, 8, 2O, 8l, IOI, 104, 115, 118 Contrasted with East Indian . . 58,128,134,136 Economics 336 European rootage 345 Expansive imagination 124 357 358 Index American Continued PAGB Geniality 60, 67 Humor 14, 60 Humanitarian ideals 103,111 Industry 15 Latin temperament -345 Love of difficulties 83 Love of money 21,116 Love of new things 112, 113, 118 Maturity of 333 Mysticism 153 Poor Men 26 Providential Republic 334 Religious temperament 206 Steam machinery 1 1 Symposium 287 Timesavers 12 Traditions 342 Annapolis, Naval Academy 181 Arbitration 266, 267 Aristocracy, in England and United States . . . 102 Arnold, Matthew, criticisms of America and Eng land 99, 220, 287 Art, present day tendencies 341 Asia, influence on Occident 130 Austen, Jane 55 Austro-Hungarian immigration 231 B Bacon regarding wealth 251 Banker of Boston regarding civilization . . . 298 Banks as moulding forces 193 Baroda, Gaekwar of 139 Bayonne, labor troubles 326 Index 359 PAGE Bedouin chief n Bergson, philosophy of 43, 183 Best sellers 54 Bible study in colleges and schools .... 122, 184 Bible versus Vedanta 137 Billings, Josh - .... 262 Birthrate 232 Bismarck regarding German youth 182 Books, circulation of in New York Public Library . 57 Books on America by Englishmen 100 Bowring, Doctor, quoted 5 British commission on education 165 British failure in Far East 114 Broadway and the simple life . 282 Brotherhood, Cain and Abel example .... 92 Bryce, James, on lax enforcement of laws . . . 257 Bryan, W. J., pictured by cartoons 66 Buddhism 136, 147 Business Business men too influential, says sociologist . 322 Better understanding needful 95 Fear 94 Troubles 280 C California undergraduate writes 289 Carlyle, quoted concerning literature, humor, and prophecy 9, 46, 62, 333 Carnegie 23 Catholic church 200 Charities 337 Chinese responsibility 262 Chinese ancestor worship 75 360 Index PAGE Chinese poet, quoted 156 Citizenship and the colleges 179 Christianity and war 217, 221 Christianity for the individual . . . . 212, 220 Church, contemporary opinion of .... 193, 199 Churchill, Winston 48 City, church life 207 Clemens, S 27, 62 Clough, John E., autobiography .... 144, 145 Clergyman on national tendencies 293 Clement of Alexandria regarding riches .... 274 Columbia University, teacher quoted .... 299 Comenius, Bishop ideal of education . . . . 167 Columbus sailed to find East 129 Core of Christian religion 222 Coit, Stanton 44 Culture and agriculture 168 Commons, Prof. John R 34 Cornell, Ezra, foundation idea of university . . . 169 Constitution, American 72, 73, 198 Constitution, British 80 Cleveland Immigration League described . . . 240 Country life, attraction of 281 Culture defined by Frenchman 178 D Dairy Department in university, research work . 170 Daniels, Josephus 66 Debts, disgrace of in country sections .... 281 Democracy Lincoln s idea 69 Square deal 71, 74 Universal desire for 81 Index 361 Democracy Continued PACK In Canada 82 Gain in respect for law 85 Dependent on sacrifice and brotherhood . 95, 340 Utopian vagaries relative to 90 Denominations, religious, number of 197 Dharma, its place in India 139 Dickens, receipt for happiness 280 Discipline, lacking in public institutions . . . 259 Drama 214 Drink problem 78, 288 Drummond, Henry 267 E East India, heart of Asia 134 Eaton, Walter Prichard 52 Edison, Thomas A 12, 103 Education An American passion 157 Classical 166 Coalescing with life 168 Cost of 161 Definition of 178 Educational Alliance 238 Growth of 160 Industrial 86,315 Intellectual independence 162 Practical 165 Spiritual culture 174 Teachers 173 Variety of 169 Vocational 171 Waywardness of 173 362 Index PAGE Edwards, Jonathan 197 Efficiency engineering 10 Eliot, Charles W., concerning Mr. Roosevelt . . 45 definition of educated man 159 Emerson, quoted 25, 97, 147, 163 Egyptian Government students 173 Engineer tells of professional aims 293 English versus American ideals 81, 108, 268 Ellis Island immigrants 247 Equality, educational, political, and social 74, 89, 91, 164 Essay writers 56, 62, 63 Ettrick Shepherd 21 Extravagance 271, 272 Spending for show 275 Spending leading to inefficiency 279 Testimony of Congressman 319 Testimony of multimillionaire 314 F Fair play ideal 73 Family pride 65 Farmer writes of his views 302 Fear as a national menace to prosperity 93 Fiction, present day 46 Fielding 55 Fifth Avenue 276 Filipino politicians 81 First National Congress 73 Florentine goldsmith 246 Ford, Henry 41 Franklin, Benjamin, quoted II Freedom, the uniting force of 350 Free schools 164 Index 363 PAGE Frohman, Charles, honesty of 88 Frost, Robert 52 G Galsworthy, John 104 Gary plan of education 170 George, Lloyd, political speeches 107 Germany 23 Example of social religion 215 Immigration from 231 State church 199 Uniformity of education 164 Gilman, Daniel C, ideal of education 175 Gladstone regarding original sin 219 Goethe _^. . . 35 Goethals and Panama Canal 58 Governor, State, regarding national tendencies . . 288 Government compared with England . . . . 310 popular influence 322 Grant, U. S., ideas of peace 343 Grecian women and racial traditions .... 74 Greek thought contribution to America . . . . 131 Gobble, Francis, concerning Jowett 107 H Habits, definition of 180 Haldane, Lord, on international understanding . . 99 Harper, William R 7 Harriman, E. H 27 Hasting, H. L., lecturer 76 Hay, John, quoted 69, 86, 344 Headmaster points out change of ideals .... 296 Henry, O 49 364 Index PAGE Hindu versus American religion 136 Hindu at Ganges 75 Holmes, O. W 9 Honor, spirit of, needed 320 Humanity, ideals of 341,346 Humor, American type 60-67 Huxley, Thomas, definition of education . . . 178 I Ideals Accomplishment 30 American versus Oriental 127 Bigness 13 Business 7 1 Church, Christian 193, 224 Democratic 78 Display of wealth 282 Economic 21 Education 172, 174 Existing in thought 329 Importance of ix Individual regeneration 211 Leisure 308 Liberty 79 Missionary 143 Peace and humanity 341 Public responsibility 289 Racial 74 Religious 193 Seen by Americans 288 Self-indulgence 307 Service ~ 212 Social uplift 211 Success . 26 Index 365 Ideals Continued PAGE Summarized 304-305 Timesaving 12 Unfulfilled 84 Weakness of 254 Immigrant, attitude toward 229 Agencies 234 Hope of problem 235 Number of 229-233 Artistry among 246 Ingersoll, Robert 76 India Division of life 141 Millet fields 12 Mother of Idealism 134 Ruled by 178 Individualism Christian 220 Decides equality 92 Importance of 346 Intemperance 309 Interstate Commerce Commission 94 j James, Professor, on effort and philosophy . .183, 186 Japanese gardens 39 Jefferson, writer of "delegated power" .... 335 Jewish kingdom 347-348 Jewish scientist on tendency of nation .... 301 Jordan, David Starr, regarding progress of democracy 88 Joubert, definition of religion 191 K Karr, Alfcnse 61 Keate, Doctor, story of at Eton 177 366 Index PAGE Kilmer, Joyce 51 Kingsley, Charles, on "Peace of Mood" . ... 152 King George in India 275 Labor conditions 309 Lamb, Charles, after-dinner speech 63 Larned, Colonel, regarding West Point curriculum . 181 Latin temperament 345 Laws and religion 223 Lack of respect for 254, 256, 306 Taft on criminal law 256 Lawyer in West gives result of investigation . . 303 Lewis and Clarke 334-335 Liberality of young clergyman 195 Liberty, religious 302 Librarian regarding "social standing" .... 294 Life insurance president regarding business ideals . 302 Lincoln, Abraham His heart quality 103 Prayer regarding war 343 Relative to books 47 Lindsay, N. V 5 Literature, contemporary 46, 299 Realistic ideals of 56 Livingstone, explorer, quoted 337 Londoner s view of working classes .... 277-278 Lowell, J. R., quoted relative to democracy and education 62, 77, 161 Lynchings 256 Index 367 M PAGE McClure, S. S., devotion to business 6 McCutcheon, George Barr, quoted 57 Magazine editor regarding ideal 292 Maine farmer, incident of 64 Markham, Edwin 52 Masters, E. L 51 Material prosperity, display of 271, 307 Mayflower company 171 Milnes, Richard Monckton 31 Milton quoted on peace and war 265 Missionaries in India 44, 143 a unique method 267 Moody, D. L 62 Morgan, J. P 42 Muckraking 55>2i5 Muir, John 26 Muhammad, religious laws 222 Multimillionaire mine owner on national failures . 314 Miiller, Max, quoted 125 Municipal Immigration Bureau, Cleveland, Ohio . 241 Murray, Prof. Gilbert, contrasting English and American students 123 N Naidu, Sarojini 138 Napoleon Attitude to obstacles 5 Dreams of new France in the United States . 334 In Egypt 129 Napoleonic not Christian 218 Nationality, difficult of translation 100 Nationalization . 28 368 Index PAGE New Jersey official relative to our contemporary life . 320 Newspapers As present forces 193 Publicity agents 263 John Hay s address to the Press 344 Newton, Sir Isaac, quoted 152 New York, immigration problem 239 Nuremburg, old wood carver of 245 O Okuma, Count, interview concerning needs of Japan 225 Orange, William of 201 Orient Becoming westernized 139 Brahmin caste rigid 134 Home of "things invisible" 129 Interchange of ideas necessary 132 Mysticism similar to that of Americans . . 154 Sympathetic imagination needful .... 133 Oriental versus American 127, 274 Oriental 58,131 Oxford repression 105 Oxford Union debates 106 P Palmer, Professor, quoted 95 Panama-Pacific Exposition 15 Isthmus of 336 Canal Bill 87 Parker, Theodore, definition of Democracy ... 85 Participation of people in making laws .... 80 Past, necessary to regard 130 Index 369 PAGE Pastors relative to admission of church members . 200 Peace Victories of 265 Ideals of 341 Unstained 270 Peace-at-any-price, foe to democracy . . . 263, 269 Peabody, Francis, quoted 1 86 Pennsylvania State Bar Association 256 Personality .... 188 Perspective, need of 318 Philanthropy 213 Phillips, Wendell 63 Physician s estimate of profession 294 Pilgrim ancestry, educational influence .... 161 Pinkertons 255 Playwright quoted 290 Poet, ideals of 307 Poetry, contemporary 50-52 Preparatory schools, character of boys . . . . 176 Press Parliament, John Hay s address .... 343 Princeton 58 Prohibition laws 258 Public schools, English 120-121 Public opinion 79 Publicity as a means of saving the State . . . . 215 Publisher regarding American aims 297 Q Quietness the gift of Asia 148 R Railroad officials 219 Real-estate man s ideals 292 370 Index PAGE Reform movements and weakness of same . . 213, 321 Religion American versus Eastern 136 College 196-208 Discussion of 201, 206 Defined 191 Temperament of people 210 Social betterment 211 "Rights" 75, 108 Riis, Jacob 26 Rockefeller, J. D 23 Roberts, Dr. Peter, on immigration 237 Root, Elihu xi Roosevelt, Theodore 45>335 Russia, vodka legislation 79 S Sanyassis 141 Scandinavian immigration 231 SchaufHer, R. H., poem quoted 248 Schoolmaster, giving summary of ideals of France . 301 School discipline 181 Scott, W 55 Self-made men 104 Seneca s pilot quoted 330 Service, public 195, 213, 289 Settlements, social 203 Social betterment as an ideal 211 Socialism as a religion and danger 210, 318 Socialist editor summarizes ideals 296 Socrates ~ 224 Square deal sentiment in college and everyday affairs . .... .71, 87, 88 Index 371 PACE Stanford, Senator, founding university . . . . 163 Stanley, Henry M I Stevenson, R. L., quoted regarding style, English, and money 54, 105, 287 Sunday, attitude toward 200 Success, as an ideal 26, 253 Symonds, J. A., regarding Whitman philosophy . 148 Symposium, an American 285 T Taft, ex-President, on prosperity and criminal law 95, 256 Tarkington, Booth 52 Teachers Needed 173 Obligation of 175 of Columbia 185 Science and religion 185 Students opinion of 187 Twofold work 175 Theology versus science 197 Times Square incident 201 Tolerance, growth of, etc 198, 203, 205, 262 Turkish description of social duties 150 Twain, Mark, quoted 27, 48, 65 U United States Bureau of Education . . . . . 163 United States Her unique periods 338, 339 Her obligation 339 Her responsibility to Europe 353 University of Michigan professor on national weak ness 313 372 Index V PAGE Van Dyke, Henry , 89 Vice-president of trust company on Wall Street ideals 300 Vitae Lampada, Henry Newbolt s poem . . . .177 "Votes for Women" . . 75 W Wade, George, characterizing Americans . . . 333 Waller, W. P., on immigration 243 War and Christianity 217 War dependent on human nature 264 place in civilization 265 Washington on peace 343 Weaknesses in contemporary life 306-324 Wealth High cost of living 24 Love of money and display 21,283 Menace of 273 Testimony by editor of large weekly paper . . 216 Wellington, Duke of, on habits 180 Wells, H. G., on immigrants 227, 230 Welton, J., on theory of education 157 Wesley 44 West Point Academy 181 Whitman, Walt, regarding Americans . . . . 331 Wilde, Oscar 7 Wilson, Woodrow, quoted and referred to 58, 79, 152, 329, 352 Winchester schoolmaster testimony .... 166 Wister, Owen, regarding literary criticism and Amer ica 47>33i Wordsworth, quoted Work, hours of, in college 183 Index 373 PAGE World affairs, American opportunity in . . . . 351 Wu Ting Fang, characterization of Chinese . . 283 Y Yankee humor and notions 11,13,63 Yellow Sea incident with Scotchman . . . . 117 Young Men s Christian Association Acting secretary quoted 243 Witness of officials in West and South . 290, 314 Work and classes for immigrants .... 238 Z Zimmern, A. E., defines America 340 The American Books A Library of Good Citizenship TO vote regularly and conscientiously and never to have been arrested for disorder is not the be-all and end-all of good citi zenship. The good citizen is he or she who bears an active hand in cleansing and making merry the black spots of the neighborhood; who cher ishes a home however small; who takes an increasingly intelligent interest in all that con tributes to the country s welfare, and feels a keenly patriotic hope for the future of the nation. For such citizens THE AMERICAN BOOKS are designed a series of small volumes on current American problems. The keynote of the series will be the discussion of distinctively American movements and questions connected with the future prosperity of the United States. The series was planned long before the great war, but it has derived added importance from the position which that great struggle has given America on the face of the globe. The United States, standing aloof from the suicidal blood shed of the Old World, has necessarily become the peaceful arbiter of the earth s destinies and the flywheel to keep the world s industry re volving. An inquiry into the meaning and tendency of American civilization to-day is thus not only a matter of interest but of patriotic duty. The publishers wish THE AMERICAN BOOKS to be a series of brief, authoritative manuals which will attempt to lay bare some of the problems that confront us to-day ; written in popular terms that will inspire rather than discourage the casual reader. The series should prove not only of great interest to all American citizens who wish to aid in solving their country s pressing prob lems, but to every foreigner visiting this country who seeks an interpretation of the American point of view. The publishers wish THE AMERICAN BOOKS to be written by the best men, and to this end they seek the widest publicity for the plan. They will be glad to receive suggestions as to appro priate titles for inclusion in the series and will welcome authoritative MSS submitted from any quarter. In particular they submit the plan to the consideration of the American colleges where the problems of the country are being studied. In science, literature, business, politics, in the arts of war and the arts of peace, the publishers will seek writers who have stood for fearless achievement or equally fearless failure, who will build up A LIBRARY OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP. (For complete list of volumes in this series see opposite title page.) THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. T. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. JAN 28 1948 REC D LD 1 2 7 1965 2 4 REC D 65-3 P 26 -6640 RC0 16)476 \O Jb/IJU 331257 E /& UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY