KM 
 
 American 
 Individualism 
 
 By Herbert Hoover 
 
 A Timely Message to 
 
 the American People 
 
 *' Progress will march if we hold an 
 abiding faith in the intelligence , 
 the initiative, the character^ the 
 courage, and the divine touch in 
 the individual. IVe can safeguard 
 these ends if we give to each indi- 
 vidual that opportunity for which 
 the spirit of America stands. JVe 
 can make a social system as perfect 
 as our generation merits and one 
 that will be received in gratitude 
 by our children." _^ 
 
 [From a keynote paragraph.) 
 
University of California • Berkeley 
 
 Bequest of 
 Marian Allen Williams 
 
AMERICAN 
 INDIVIDUALISM 
 
AMERICAN 
 INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 BY 
 HERBERT HOOVER 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY. PAGE & COMPANY 
 1922 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 AT 
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 
 First Edition 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PA6V 
 
 American Individualism .... 1 
 
 Philosophic Grounds .... 14 
 
 Spiritual Phases 26 
 
 Economic Phases 32 
 
 Political Phases 48 
 
 The Future 63 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/americanindividuOOhoovrich 
 
AMERICAN 
 INDIVIDUALISM 
 
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM. 
 
 WE HAVE witnessed in this last 
 eight years the spread of revolu- 
 tion over one-third of the world. The 
 causes of these explosions lie at far 
 greater depths than the failure of gov- 
 ernments in war. The war itself in its 
 last stages was a conflict of social 
 philosophies — but beyond this the 
 causes of social explosion lay in the 
 great inequalities and injustices of cen- 
 turies flogged beyond endurance by the 
 conflict and freed from restraint by the 
 destruction of war. The urgent forces 
 which drive human society have been 
 plunged into a terrible furnace. Great 
 theories spun by dreamers to remedy 
 the pressing human ills have come to 
 the front of men's minds. Great for- 
 
2 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 mulas came into life that promised to 
 dissolve all trouble. Great masses of 
 people have flocked to their banners in 
 hopes born of misery and suffering. 
 Nor has this great social ferment been 
 confined to those nations that have 
 burned with revolutions. 
 
 Now, as the storm of war, of revolu- 
 tion and of emotion subsides there is 
 left even with us of the United States 
 much unrest, much discontent with the 
 surer forces of human advancement. 
 To all of us, out of this crucible of 
 actual, poignant, individual experience 
 has come a deal of new understanding, 
 and it is for all of us to ponder these 
 new currents if we are to shape our 
 future with intelligence. 
 
 Even those parts of the world that 
 suffered less from the war have been 
 partly infected by these ideas. Beyond 
 this, however, many have had high 
 hopes of civilization suddenly purified 
 
AMERICAN INDIVroUALISM 3 
 
 and ennobled by the sacrifices and 
 services of the war; they had thought 
 t'le fine unity of purpose gained in war 
 would be carried into great unity of 
 action in remedy of the faults of civili- 
 zation in peace. But from concentra- 
 tion of every spiritual and material 
 energy upon the single purpose of war 
 the scene changed to the immense com- 
 plexity and the many purposes of peace. 
 
 Thus there loom up certain definite 
 underlying forces in our national life 
 that need to be stripped of the imagi- 
 nary — the transitory — and a definition 
 should be given to the actual permanent 
 and persistent motivation of our civiliza- 
 tion. In contemplation of these ques- 
 tions we must go far deeper than the 
 superficials of our political and eco- 
 nomic structure, for these are but the 
 products of our social philosophy — the 
 machinery of our social system. 
 
4 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Nor is it ever amiss to review the 
 political, economic, and spiritual princi- 
 ples through which our country has 
 steadily grown in usefulness and great- 
 ness, not only to preserve them from 
 being fouled by false notions, but more 
 importantly that we may guide our- 
 selves in the road of progress. 
 
 Five or six great social philosophies 
 are at struggle in the world for as- 
 cendency. There is the Individualism 
 of America. There is the Individual- 
 ism of the more democratic states of 
 Europe with its careful reservations of 
 castes and classes. There are Com- 
 munism, Socialism, Syndicalism, Cap- 
 italism, and finally there is Autocracy 
 — whether by birth, by possessions, 
 militarism, or divine right of kings. 
 Even the Divine Right still lingers on 
 although our lifetime has seen fully 
 two-thirds of the earth's population, in- 
 
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 5 
 
 eluding Germany, Austria, Russia, and 
 China, arrive at a state of angry dis- 
 gust with this type of social motive 
 power and throw it on the scrap heap. 
 
 All these thoughts are in ferment to- 
 day in every country in the world. They 
 fluctuate in ascendency with times and 
 places. They compromise with each 
 other in daily reaction on governments 
 and peoples. Some of these ideas are 
 perhaps more adapted to one race than 
 another. Some are false, some are 
 true. What we are interested in is 
 their challenge to the physical and 
 spiritual forces of America. 
 
 The partisans of some of these other 
 brands of social schemes challenge us to 
 comparison; and some of their parti- 
 sans even among our own people are 
 increasing in their agitation that we 
 adopt one or another or parts of their 
 devices in place of our tried individual- 
 ism. They insist that our social foun- 
 
6 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 dations are exhausted, that like feudal- 
 ism and autocracy America's plan has 
 served its purpose — that it must be 
 abandoned. 
 
 There are those who have been left in 
 sober doubt of our institutions or are 
 confounded by bewildering catchwords 
 of vivid phrases. For in this welter of 
 discussions there is much attempt to 
 glorify or defame social and economic 
 forces with phrases. Nor indeed should 
 we disregard the potency of some of 
 these phrases in their stir to action. — 
 ''The dictatorship of the Proletariat/' 
 '' Capitalistic nations," "Germany over 
 all/' and a score of others. We need 
 only to review those that have jumped 
 to horseback during the last ten years 
 in order that we may be properly awed 
 by the great social and political havoc 
 that can be worked where the bestial 
 instincts of hate, murder, and destruc- 
 
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 7 
 
 tion are clothed by the demagogue in 
 the fine terms of poUtieal idealism. 
 
 For myself, let me say at the very 
 outset that my faith in the essential 
 truth, strength, and vitality of the 
 developing creed by which we have 
 hitherto lived in this country of ours 
 has been confirmed and deepened by 
 the searching experiences of seven 
 years of service in the backwash and 
 misery of war. Seven years of con- 
 tending with economic degeneration, 
 with social disintegration, with in- 
 cessant political dislocation, with all of 
 its seething and ferment of individual 
 and class conflict, could but impress 
 me with the primary motivation of 
 social forces, and the necessity for 
 broader thought upon their great issues 
 to humanity. And from it all I emerge 
 an individualist — an unashamed in- 
 dividualist. But let me say also that 
 
8 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 I am an American individualist. For 
 America has been steadily developing 
 the ideals that constitute progressive 
 individualism. 
 
 No doubt, individualism run riot, 
 with no tempering principle, would pro- 
 vide a long category of inequalities, of 
 tyrannies, dominations, and injustices. 
 America, however, has tempered the 
 whole conception of individualism by 
 the injection of a definite principle, and 
 from this principle it follows that at- 
 tempts at domination, whether in gov- 
 ernment or in the processes of industry 
 and commerce, are under an insistent 
 curb. If we would have the values of 
 individualism, their stimulation to ini- 
 tiative, to the development of hand and 
 intellect, to the high development of 
 thought and spirituality, they must be 
 tempered with that firm and fixed ideal 
 of American individualism — an equal- 
 
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 9 
 
 ity of opportunity. If we would have 
 these values we must soften its hard- 
 ness and stimulate progress through 
 that sense of service that lies in our 
 people. 
 
 Therefore, it is not the individualism 
 of other countries for which I would 
 speak, but the individualism of Amer- 
 ica. Our individualism differs from 
 all others because it embraces these 
 great ideals: that while we build our 
 society upon the attainment of the indi- 
 vidual^ we shall safeguard to every indi- 
 vidual an equality of opportunity to take 
 that position in the community to which 
 his intelligence^ character^ ability^ and 
 ambition entitle him; that we keep the 
 social solution free from frozen strata of 
 classes; that we shall stimulate effort of 
 each individual to achievement; that 
 through an enlarging sense of respon- 
 sibility and understanding we shall assist 
 him to this attainment; while he in turn 
 
10 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 must stand up to the emery wheel of com- 
 petition. 
 
 Individualism cannot be maintained 
 as the foundation of a society if it looks 
 to only legalistic justice based upon 
 contracts, property, and political equal- 
 ity. Such legalistic safeguards are 
 themselves not enough. In our in- 
 dividualism we have long since aban- 
 doned the laissez faire of the 18th 
 Century — the notion that it is "every 
 man for himself and the devil take the 
 hindmost/' We abandoned that when 
 we adopted the ideal of equality of 
 opportunity — the fair chance of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. We have confirmed its 
 abandonment in terms of legislation, of 
 social and economic justice, — in part 
 because we have learned that it is the 
 hindmost who throws the bricks at our 
 social edifice, in part because we have 
 learned that the foremost are not al- 
 
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 11 
 
 ways the best nor the hindmost the 
 worst — and in part because we have 
 learned that social injustice is the 
 destruction of justice itself. We have 
 learned that the impulse to production 
 can only be maintained at a high pitch 
 if there is a fair division of the product. 
 We have also learned that fair division 
 can only be obtained by certain restric- 
 tions on the strong and the dominant. 
 We have indeed gone even further in 
 the 20th Century with the embrace- 
 ment of the necessity of a greater and 
 broader sense of service and responsibil- 
 ity to others as a part of individualism. 
 
 Whatever may be the case with regard 
 to Old World individualism (and we 
 have given more back to Europe than 
 we received from her) the truth that is 
 important for us to grasp today is 
 that there is a world of difference be- 
 tween the principles and spirit of Old 
 
12 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 World individualism and that which we 
 have developed in our own country. 
 
 We have, in fact, a special social sys- 
 tem of our own. We have made it 
 ourselves from materials brought in 
 revolt from conditions in Europe. We 
 have lived it; we constantly improve 
 it; we have seldom tried to define it. 
 It abhors autocracy and does not argue 
 with it, but fights it. It is not capital- 
 ism, or socialism, or syndicalism, nor a 
 cross breed of them. Like most Amer- 
 icans, I refuse to be damned by any- 
 body's word-classification of it, such as 
 "capitalism," ''plutocracy," "proletar- 
 iat" or "middle class," or any other, or 
 to any kind of compartment that is 
 based on the assumption of some group 
 dominating somebody else. 
 
 The social force in which I am inter- 
 ested is far higher and far more pre- 
 cious a thing than all these. It springs 
 from something infinitely more en- 
 
AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 13 
 
 during; it springs from the one source 
 of human progress — that each individ- 
 ual shall be given the chance and stimu- 
 lation for development of the best with 
 which he has been endowed in heart and 
 mind; it is the sole source of progress; 
 it is American individualism. 
 
 The rightfulness of our individualism 
 can rest either on philosophic, political, 
 economic, or spiritual grounds. It can 
 rest on the ground of being the only 
 safe avenue to further human progress. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC GROUNDS. 
 
 ON THE philosophic side we can 
 agree at once that inteUigence, 
 character, courage, and the divine spark 
 of the human soul are alone the prop- 
 erty of individuals. These do not lie 
 in agreements, in organizations, in in- 
 stitutions, in masses, or in groups. 
 They abide alone in the individual mind 
 and heart. 
 
 Production both of mind and hand 
 rests upon impulses in each individual. 
 These impulses are made of the varied 
 forces of original instincts, motives, and 
 acquired desires. JMany of these are 
 destructive and must be restrained 
 through moral leadership and authority 
 of the law and be eliminated finally by 
 education. All are modified by a vast 
 
 14 
 
PHILOSOPHIC GROUNDS 15 
 
 fund of experience and a vast plant and 
 equipment of civilization which we pass 
 on with increments to each succeeding 
 generation. 
 
 The inherited instincts of self-preser- 
 vation, acquisitiveness, fear, kindness, 
 hate, curiosity, desire for self-expression, 
 for power, for adulation, that we carry 
 over from a thousand of generations 
 must, for good or evil, be comprehended 
 in a workable system embracing our 
 accumulation of experiences and equip- 
 ment. They may modify themselves 
 with time — but in terms of generations. 
 They differ in their urge upon different 
 individuals. The dominant ones are 
 selfish. But no civilization could be 
 built or can endure solely upon the 
 groundwork of unrestrained and unin- 
 telligent self-interest. The problem of 
 the world is to restrain the destructive 
 instincts while strengthening and en- 
 larging those of altruistic character and 
 
16 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 constructive impulse — ^f or thus we build 
 for the future. 
 
 From the instincts of kindness, pity, 
 fealty to family and race; the love of 
 liberty; the mystical yearnings for spir- 
 itual things; the desire for fuller ex- 
 pression of the creative faculties; the 
 impulses of service to community and 
 nation, are moulded the ideals of our 
 people. And the most potent force in 
 society is its ideals. If one were to 
 attempt to delimit the potency of in- 
 stinct and ideals, it would be found that 
 while instinct dominates in our preser- 
 vation yet the great propelling force of 
 progress is right ideals. It is true we 
 do not realize the ideal; not even a 
 single person personifies that realiza- 
 tion. It is therefore not surprising that 
 society, a collection of persons, a neces- 
 sary maze of compromises, cannot 
 realize it. But that it has ideals, that 
 
PHILOSOPHIC GROUNDS 17 
 
 they revolve in a system that makes for 
 steady advance of them is the first 
 thing. Yet true as this is, the day has 
 not arrived when any economic or so- 
 cial system will function and last if 
 founded upon altruism alone. 
 
 With the growth of ideals through 
 education, with the higher realization 
 of freedom, of justice, of humanity, of 
 service, the selfish impulses become less 
 and less dominant, and if we ever reach 
 the millennium, they will disappear in 
 the aspirations and satisfactions of pure 
 altruism. But for the next several 
 generations we dare not abandon self- 
 interest as a motive force to leadership 
 and to production, lest we die. 
 
 The will-o'-the-wisp of all breeds of 
 socialism is that they contemplate a 
 motivation of human animals by al- 
 truism alone. It necessitates a bu- 
 reaucracy of the entire population, in 
 which, having obliterated the eco- 
 
18 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 nomic stimulation of each member, the 
 fine gradations of character and abiUty 
 are to be arranged in relative authority 
 by ballot or more likely by a Tammany 
 HaU or a Bolshevist party, or some 
 other form of tyranny. The proof of 
 the futility of these ideas as a stimula- 
 tion to the development and activity of 
 the individual does not lie alone in the 
 ghastly failure of Russia, but it also 
 lies in our own failure in attempts at 
 nationalized industry. 
 
 Likewise the basic foundations of 
 autocracy, whether it be class govern- 
 ment or capitalism in the sense that a 
 few men through unrestrained control 
 of property determine the welfare of 
 great numbers, is as far apart from the 
 rightful expression of American in- 
 dividualism as the two poles. The will- 
 o'-the-wisp of autocracy in any form is 
 that it supposes that the good Lord en- 
 dowed a special few with all the divine 
 
PHILOSOPHIC GROUNDS 19 
 
 attributes. It contemplates one hu- 
 man animal dealing to the other human 
 animals his just share of earth, of glory, 
 and of immortality. The proof of the 
 futility of these ideas in the develop- 
 ment of the world does not lie alone in 
 the grim failure of Germany, but it lies 
 in the damage to our moral and social 
 fabric from those who have sought eco- 
 nomic domination in America, whether 
 employer or employee. 
 
 We in America have had too much 
 experience of life to fool ourselves into 
 pretending that all men are equal in 
 ability, in character, in intelligence, in 
 ambition. That was part of the clap- 
 trap of the French Revolution. We 
 have grown to understand that all we 
 can hope to assure to the individual 
 through government is liberty, justice, 
 intellectual welfare, equality of oppor- 
 tunity, and stimulation to service. 
 
20 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 It is in maintenance of a society fluid 
 to these human quahties that our in- 
 dividuaUsm departs from the individ- 
 uaKsm of Europe. There can be no 
 rise for the individual through the 
 frozen strata of classes, or of castes, and 
 no stratification can take place in a 
 mass livened by the free stir of its parti- 
 cles. This guarding of our individual- 
 ism against stratification insists not 
 only in preserving in the social solution 
 an equal opportunity for the able and 
 ambitious to rise from the bottom; it 
 also insists that the sons of the success- 
 ful shall not by any mere right of birth 
 or favor continue to occupy their fath- 
 ers' places of power against the rise of 
 a new generation in process of coming 
 up from the bottom. The pioneers of 
 our American individualism had the 
 good sense not to reward Washington 
 and Jefferson and Hamilton with heredi- 
 tary dukedoms and fixtures in landed 
 
PHILOSOPHIC GROUNDS 21 
 
 estates, as Great Britain rewarded 
 Marlborough and Nelson. Otherwise 
 our American fields of opportunity 
 would have been clogged with long 
 generations inheriting their fathers' 
 privileges without their fathers' capac- 
 ity for service. 
 
 That our system has avoided the es- 
 tablishment and domination of class 
 has a significant proof in the present 
 Administration in Washington. Of the 
 twelve men comprising the President, 
 Vice-President, and Cabinet, nine have 
 earned their own way in life without 
 economic inheritance, and eight of 
 them started with manual labor. 
 
 If we examine the impulses that carry 
 us forward, none is so potent for prog- 
 ress as the yearning for individual self- 
 expression, the desire for creation of 
 something. Perhaps the greatest hu- 
 man happiness flows from personal 
 
22 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 achievement. Here lies the great 
 urge of the constructive instinct of 
 mankind. But it can only thrive in a 
 society where the individual has liberty 
 and stimulation to achievement. Nor 
 does the community progress except 
 through its participation in these mul- 
 titudes of achievements. 
 
 Furthermore, the maintenance of 
 productivity and the advancement of 
 the things of the spirit depend upon the 
 ever-renewed supply from the mass of 
 those who can rise to leadership. Our 
 social, economic, and intellectual prog- 
 ress is almost solely dependent upon 
 the creative minds of those individuals 
 with imaginative and administrative 
 intelligence who create or who carry 
 discoveries to widespread application. 
 No race possesses more than a small per- 
 centage of these minds in a single gen- 
 eration. But little thought has ever 
 
PHILOSOPHIC GROUNDS 23 
 
 been given to our racial dependency 
 upon them. Nor that our progress 
 is in so large a measure due to the fact 
 that with our increased means of com- 
 munication these rare individuals are 
 today able to spread their influence 
 over so enlarged a number of lesser 
 capable minds as to have increased 
 their potency a million-fold. In truth, 
 the vastly greater productivity of the 
 world with actually less physical labor 
 is due to the wider spread of their in- 
 fluence through the discovery of these 
 facilities. And they can arise solely 
 through the selection that comes from 
 the free-running mills of competition. 
 They must be free to rise from the 
 mass; they must be given the attraction 
 of premiums to effort. 
 
 Leadership is a quality of the in- 
 dividual. It is the individual alone 
 who can function in the world of in- 
 tellect and in the field of leadership. 
 
24 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 If democracy is to secure its authorities 
 in morals, religion, and statesmanship, 
 it must stimulate leadership from its 
 own mass. Human leadership cannot 
 be replenished by selection like queen 
 bees, by divine right or bureaucracies, 
 but by the free rise of ability, character, 
 and intelligence. 
 
 Even so, leadership cannot, no mat- 
 ter how brilliant, carry progress far 
 ahead of the average of the mass of 
 individual units. Progress of the na- 
 tion is the sum of progress in its in- 
 dividuals. Acts and ideas that lead to 
 progress are born out of the womb of 
 the individual mind, not out of the 
 mind of the crowd. The crowd only 
 feels: it has no mind of its own which 
 can plan. The crowd is credulous, it 
 destroys, it consumes, it hates, and it 
 dreams— but it never builds. It is one 
 of the most profound and important of 
 exact psychological truths that man in 
 
PHILOSOPHIC GROUNDS 25 
 
 the mass does not think but only feels. 
 The mob functions only in a world of 
 emotion. The demagogue feeds on 
 mob emotions and his leadership is the 
 leadership of emotion, not the leader- 
 ship of intellect and progress. Popular 
 desires are no criteria to the real need; 
 they can be determined only by delib- 
 erative consideration, by education, by 
 constructive leadership. 
 
SPIRITUAL PHASES. 
 
 OUR social and economic system 
 cannot march toward better days 
 unless it is inspired by things of the 
 spirit. It is here that the higher pur- 
 poses of individualism must find their 
 sustenance. Men do not live by bread 
 alone. Nor is individualism merely a 
 stimulus to production and the road to 
 liberty; it alone admits the universal 
 divine inspiration of every human soul. 
 I may repeat that the divine spark 
 does not lie in agreements, in organiza- 
 tions, in institutions, in masses or in 
 groups. Spirituality with its faith, its 
 hope, its charity, can be increased by 
 each individual's own effort. And in 
 proportion as each individual increases 
 his own store of spirituality, in that pro- 
 se 
 
SPIRITUAL PHASES 27 
 
 portion increases the idealism of democ- 
 racy. 
 
 For centuries, the human race be- 
 heved that divine inspiration rested in 
 a few. The result was blind faith in 
 religious hierarchies, the Divine Right 
 of Kings. The world has been disillu- 
 sioned of this belief that divinity rests 
 in any special group or class whether it 
 be through a creed, a tyranny of kings 
 or of proletariat. Our individualism 
 insists upon the divine in each human 
 being. It rests upon the firm faith that 
 the divine spark can be awakened in 
 every heart. It was the refusal to com- 
 promise these things that led to the 
 migration of those religious groups who 
 so largely composed our forefathers. 
 Our diversified religious faiths are the 
 apotheosis of spiritual individualism. 
 
 The vast multiplication of voluntary 
 organizations for altruistic purposes are 
 
28 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 themselves proof of the ferment of 
 spirituaUty, service, and mutual re- 
 sponsibility. These associations for 
 advancement of public welfare, im- 
 provement, morals, charity, public opin- 
 ion, health, the clubs and societies for 
 recreation and intellectual advance- 
 ment, represent something moving at 
 a far greater depth than "joining." 
 They represent the widespread aspira- 
 tion for mutual advancement, self- 
 expression, and neighborly helpfulness. 
 Moreover, today when we rehearse our 
 own individual memories of success, we 
 find that none gives us such comfort as 
 memory of service given. Do we not 
 refer to our veterans as service men? 
 Do not our merchants and business 
 men pride themselves in something 
 of service given beyond the price of 
 their goods .^ When we traverse the 
 glorious deeds of our fathers, we today 
 never enumerate those acts that were 
 
SPIRITUAL PHASES 29 
 
 not rooted in the soil of service. Those 
 whom we revere are those who tri- 
 umphed in service, for from them comes 
 the upKft of the human heart and the 
 uphft of the human mind. 
 
 While there are forces in the growth 
 of our individualism which must be 
 curbed with vigilance, yet there are no 
 less glorious spiritual forces growing 
 within that promise for the future. 
 There is developing in our people a new 
 valuation of individuals and of groups 
 and of nations. It is a rising vision of 
 service. Indeed if I were to select the 
 social force that above all others has 
 advanced sharply during these past 
 years of suffering, it is that of service — 
 service to those with whom we come in 
 contact, service to the nation, and ser- 
 vice to the world itself. If we examine 
 the great mystical forces of the past 
 seven years we find this great spiritual 
 force poured out by our people as never 
 
30 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 before in the history of the world — ^the 
 ideal of service. 
 
 Just now we are weakened by the 
 feeling of failure of immediate realiza- 
 tion of the great ideas and hopes that 
 arose through the exaltation of war. 
 War by its very nature sets loose cha- 
 otic forces of which the resultants cannot 
 be foretold or anticipated. The in- 
 sensitiveness to the brutalities of physi- 
 cal violence, and all the spiritual dis- 
 locations of war, have left us, at the 
 moment, poorer. The amount of se- 
 renity and content in the world is 
 smaller. 
 
 The spiritual reaction after the war 
 has been in part the fruit of some 
 illusions during those five years. In 
 the presence of unity of purpose and 
 the mystic emotions of war, many men 
 came to believe that salvation lay in 
 mass and group action. They have 
 seen the spiritual and material mobil- 
 
SPIRITUAL PHASES 31 
 
 ization of nations, of classes, and groups, 
 for sacrifice and service; they have 
 conceived that real human progress can 
 be achieved by working on *Hhe psy- 
 chology of the people" — by the "mass 
 mind"; they yielded to leadership with- 
 out reservation; they conceived that 
 this leadership could continue without 
 tyranny; they have forgotten that per- 
 manent spiritual progress lies with the 
 individual. 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES. 
 
 THAT high and increasing stand- 
 ards of living and comfort should 
 be the first of considerations in public 
 mind and in government needs no 
 apology. We have long since realized 
 that the basis of an advancing civiliza- 
 tion must be a high and growing 
 standard of living for all the people, 
 not for a single class; that education, 
 food, clothing, housing, and the spread- 
 ing use of what we so often term non- 
 essentials, are the real fertilizers of the 
 soil from which spring the finer flowers 
 of life. The economic development of 
 the past fifty years has lifted the gen- 
 eral standard of comfort far beyond the 
 dreams of our forefathers. The only 
 
 32 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES 33 
 
 road to further advance in the standard 
 of Uving is by greater invention, greater 
 ehmination of waste, greater produc- 
 tion and better distribution of com- 
 modities and services, for by increasing 
 their ratio to our numbers and dividing 
 them justly we each will have more of 
 them. 
 
 The superlative value of individual- 
 ism through its impulse to production, 
 its stimulation to invention, has, so 
 far as I know, never been denied. 
 Criticism of it has lain in its wastes but 
 more importantly in its failures of equit- 
 able sharing of the product. In our 
 country these contentions are mainly 
 over the division to each of his share of 
 the comforts and luxuries, for none of 
 us is either hungry or cold or without 
 a place to lay his head- — and we have 
 much besides. In less than four dec- 
 ades we have added electric lights. 
 
34 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 plumbing, telephones, gramophones, au- 
 tomobiles, and what not in wide diffu- 
 sion to our standards of living. Each 
 in turn began as a luxury, each in turn 
 has become so commonplace that sev- 
 enty or eighty per cent, of our people 
 participate in them. 
 
 To all practical souls there is little 
 use in quarreling over the share of each 
 of us until we have something to divide. 
 So long as we maintain our individual- 
 ism we will have increasing quantities 
 to share and we shall have time and 
 leisure and taxes with which to fight 
 out proper sharing of the "surplus." 
 The income tax returns show that 
 this surplus is a minor part of our 
 total production after taxes are paid. 
 Some of this "surplus" must be set 
 aside for rewards to saving for stimula- 
 tion of proper effort to skill, to leader- 
 ship and invention — therefore the dis- 
 pute is in reality over much less than 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES 35 
 
 the total of such "surplus." While there 
 should be no minimizing of a certain 
 fringe of injustices in sharing the results 
 of production or in the wasteful use made 
 by some of their share, yet there is vastly 
 wider field for gains to all of us through 
 cheapening the costs of production and 
 distribution through the eliminating 
 of their wastes, from increasing the 
 volume of product by each and every 
 one doing his utmost, than will ever 
 come to us even if we can think out a 
 method of abstract justice in sharing 
 which did not stifle production of the 
 total product. 
 
 It is a certainty we are confronted 
 with a population in such numbers as 
 can only exist by production attuned 
 to a pitch in which the slightest reduc- 
 tion of the impulse to produce will at 
 once create misery and want. If we 
 throttle the fundamental impulses of 
 man our production will decay. The 
 
36 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 world in this hour is witnessing the 
 most overshadowing tragedy of ten 
 centuries in the heart-breaking hf e-and- 
 death struggle with starvation by a 
 nation with a hundred and fifty millions 
 of people. In Russia under the new 
 tyranny a group, in pursuit of social 
 theories, have destroyed the primary 
 self-interest impulse of the individual 
 to production. 
 
 Although socialism in a nation-wide 
 application has now proved itself with 
 rivers of blood and inconceivable misery 
 to be an economic and spiritual fallacy 
 and has wrecked itself finally upon the 
 rocks of destroyed production and 
 moral degeneracy, I believe it to have 
 been necessary for the world to have 
 had this demonstration. Great theo- 
 retic and emotional ideas have arisen 
 before in the world's history and have 
 in more than mere material bankruptcy 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES 37 
 
 deluged the world with fearful losses of 
 life. A purely philosophical view might 
 be that in the long run humanity has to 
 try every way, even precipices, in find- 
 ing the road to betterment. 
 
 But those are utterly wrong who say 
 that individualism has as its only end 
 the acquisition and preservation of 
 private property — the selfish snatching 
 and hoarding of the common product. 
 Our American individualism, indeed, 
 is only in part an economic creed. It 
 aims to provide opportunity for self- 
 expression, not merely economically, 
 but spiritually as well. Private prop- 
 erty is not a fetich in America. The 
 crushing of the liquor trade without a 
 cent of compensation, with scarcely 
 even a discussion of it, does not bear 
 out the notion that we give property 
 rights any headway over human rights. 
 Our development of individualism shows 
 
38 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 an increasing tendency to regard right 
 of property not as an object in itself, 
 but in the Hght of a useful and neces- 
 sary instrument in stimulation of in- 
 itiative to the individual; not only 
 stimulation to him that he may gain 
 personal comfort, security in life, pro- 
 tection to his family, but also because 
 individual accumulation and owner- 
 ship is a basis of selection to leadership 
 in administration of the tools of in- 
 dustry and commerce. It is where 
 dominant private property is assembled 
 in the hands of the groups who control 
 the state that the individual begins 
 to feel capital as an oppressor. Our 
 American demand for equality of op- 
 portunity is a constant militant check 
 upon capital becoming a thing to be 
 feared. Out of fear we sometimes even 
 go too far and stifle the reproductive 
 use of capital by crushing the initiative 
 that makes for its creation. 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES 39 
 
 Some discussion of the legal limita- 
 tions we have placed upon economic 
 domination is given later on, but it is 
 desirable to mention here certain potent 
 forces in our economic life that are 
 themselves providing their own cor- 
 rection to domination. 
 
 The domination by arbitrary in- 
 dividual ownership is disappearing be- 
 cause the works of today are steadily 
 growing more and more beyond the 
 resources of any one individual, and 
 steadily taxation will reduce relatively 
 excessive individual accumulations. 
 The number of persons in partnership 
 through division of ownership among 
 many stockholders is steadily increas- 
 ing—thus 100,000 to 200,000 partners 
 in a single concern are not uncommon. 
 The overwhelmingly largest portion 
 of our mobile capital is that of our 
 banks, insurance companies, building 
 and loan associations, and the vast 
 
40 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 majority of all this is the aggregated 
 small savings of our people. Thus 
 large capital is steadily becoming more 
 and more a mobilization of the savings 
 of the small holder — the actual people 
 themselves — and its administration be- 
 comes at once more sensitive to the 
 moral opinions of the people in order 
 to attract their support. The directors 
 and managers of large concerns, them- 
 selves employees of these great groups 
 of individual stockholders, or policy 
 holders, reflect a spirit of community 
 responsibility. 
 
 Large masses of capital can only 
 find their market for service or produc- 
 tion to great numbers of the same 
 kind of people that they employ and 
 they must therefore maintain confi- 
 dence in their public responsibilities in 
 order to retain their customers. In 
 times when the products of manufac- 
 ture were mostly luxuries to the aver- 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES 41 
 
 age of the people, the condition of their 
 employees was of no such interest to 
 their customers as when they cater to 
 employees in general. Of this latter, 
 no greater proofs need exist than the 
 efforts of many large concerns directly 
 dependent upon public good will to 
 restrain prices in scarcity — and the 
 very general desire to yield a measure 
 of service with the goods sold. Another 
 phase of this same development in 
 administration of capital is the growth 
 of a sort of institutional sense in many 
 large business enterprises. The en- 
 couragement of solidarity in all grades 
 of their employees in the common 
 service and common success, the sense 
 of mutuality with the prosperity of the 
 community are both vital develop- 
 ments in individualism. 
 
 There has been in the last thirty 
 years an extraordinary growth of organ- 
 
42 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 izations for advancement of ideas in the 
 community for mutual cooperation and 
 economic objectives — the chambers of 
 commerce, trade associations, labor 
 unions, bankers, farmers, propaganda 
 associations, and what not. These are 
 indeed variable mixtures of altruism 
 and self-interest. Nevertheless, in these 
 groups the individual finds an op- 
 portunity for self-expression and parti- 
 cipation in the moulding of ideas, a 
 field for training and the stepping 
 stones for leadership. 
 
 The number of leaders in local and 
 national life whose opportunity to 
 service and leadership came through 
 these associations has become now of 
 more importance than those through 
 the direct lines of political and religious 
 organization. 
 
 At times these groups come into 
 sharp conflict and often enough charge 
 each other with crimes against public 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES 43 
 
 interest. They do contain faults; if 
 they develop into warring interests, if 
 they dominate legislators and intimi- 
 date public officials, if they are to be a 
 new setting of tyranny, then they will 
 destroy the foundation of individual- 
 ism. Our Government will then drift 
 into the hands of timorous medioc- 
 rities dominated by groups until we 
 shall become a syndicalist nation on 
 a gigantic scale. On the other hand, 
 each group is a realization of greater 
 mutuality of interest, each contains 
 some element of public service and 
 each is a school of public responsibility. 
 In the main, the same forces that per- 
 meate the nation at large eventually 
 permeate these groups. The sense 
 of service, a growing sense of respon- 
 sibility, and the sense of constructive 
 opposition to domination, constantly 
 recall in them their responsibilities as 
 well as their privileges. In the end, no 
 
44 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 group can dominate the nation and a 
 few successes in imposing the will of any 
 group is its sure death warrant. 
 
 Today business organization is mov- 
 ing strongly toward cooperation. There 
 are in the cooperative great hopes that 
 we can even gain in individuality, 
 equality of opportunity, and an enlarged 
 field for initiative, and at the same time 
 reduce many of the great wastes of over- 
 reckless competition in production and 
 distribution. Those who either con- 
 gratulate themselves or those who 
 fear that cooperation is an advance 
 toward socialism need neither rejoice 
 or worry. Cooperation in its current 
 economic sense represents the initiative 
 of self-interest blended with a sense of 
 service, for nobody belongs to a co- 
 operative who is not striving to sell his 
 products or services for more or striving 
 to buy from others for less or striving 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES 45 
 
 to make his income more secure. Their 
 members are furnishing the capital for 
 extension of their activities just as ef- 
 fectively as if they did it in corporate 
 form and they are simply transferring 
 the profit principle from joint return 
 to individual return. Their only suc- 
 cess lies where they eliminate waste 
 either in production or distribution — 
 and they can do neither if they destroy 
 individual initiative. Indeed this phase 
 of development of our individualism 
 promises to become the dominant note 
 of its 20th Century expansion. But 
 it will thrive only in so far as it can 
 construct leadership and a sense of 
 service, and so long as it preserves the 
 initiative and safeguards the individu- 
 ality of its members. 
 
 The economic system which is the 
 result of our individualism is not a 
 frozen organism. It moves rapidly 
 
46 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 in its form of organization under the 
 impulse of initiative of our citizens, 
 of growing science, of larger production, 
 and of constantly cheapening distri- 
 bution. 
 
 A great test of the soundness of a 
 social system must be its ability to 
 evolve within itself those orderly shifts 
 in its administration that enable it to 
 apply the new tools of social, economic, 
 and intellectual progress, and to elimi- 
 nate the malign forces that may grow 
 in the application of these tools. When 
 we were almost wholly an agricultural 
 people our form of organization and 
 administration, both in the govern- 
 mental and economic fields, could be 
 simple. With the enormous shift in 
 growth to industry and commerce we 
 have erected organisms that each gene- 
 ration has denounced as Franken- 
 steins, yet the succeeding generation 
 proves them to be controllable and 
 
ECONOMIC PHASES 47 
 
 useful. The growth of corporate organ- 
 izations, of our banking systems, of our 
 railways, of our electrical power, of our 
 farm cooperatives, of our trade unions, 
 of our trade associations, and of a 
 hundred others indeed develops both 
 beneficent and malign forces. The 
 timid become frightened. But our 
 basic social ideas march through the 
 new things in the end. Our dema- 
 gogues, of both radical and standpat 
 breed, thrive on demands for the de- 
 struction of one or another of these 
 organizations as the only solution for 
 their defects, yet progress requires only 
 a guardianship of the vital principles 
 of our individualism with its safeguard 
 of true equality of opportunity in them. 
 
POLITICAL PHASES. 
 
 IT IS not the primary purpose of this 
 essay to discuss our poKtical organ- 
 ization. Democracy is merely the 
 mechanism which individuaHsm in- 
 vented as a device that would carry on 
 the necessary political work of its social 
 organization. Democracy arises out of 
 individualism and prospers through it 
 alone. 
 
 Without question, there exists, al- 
 most all over the world, unprecedented 
 disquietude at the functioning of 
 government itself. It is in part the 
 dreamy social ferment of war emotion. 
 It is in part the aftermath of a period 
 when the Government was everything 
 and the individual nothing, from which 
 there is much stimulation to two schools 
 
 48 
 
POLITICAL PHASES 49 
 
 of thought: one that all human ills can 
 be cured by governmental regulation, 
 and the other that all regulation is a 
 sin. 
 
 During the war, the mobilization of 
 every effort, the destruction of the 
 normal demand and the normal ave- 
 nues of distribution, required a vast 
 excursion over the deadline of individ- 
 ualism in order that we might secure 
 immediate results. Its continuation 
 would have destroyed the initiative 
 of our people and undermined all real 
 progress. We are slowly getting back, 
 but many still aspire to these supposed 
 short cuts to the millennium. 
 
 Much of our discontent takes the 
 form of resentment against the in- 
 equalities in the distribution of the 
 sacrifices of war. Both silently and 
 vocally there is complaint that while 
 some died, others ran no risk, and yet 
 others profited. For these complaints 
 
50 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 there is adequate justification. The 
 facts are patent. However, no conceiv- 
 able human inteUigence would be able 
 to manage the conduct of war so as to 
 see that all sacrifices and burdens should 
 be distributed equitably. War is de- 
 struction, and we should blame war 
 for its injustices; not a social system 
 whose object is construction. The 
 submergence of the individual, how- 
 ever, in the struggle of the race could 
 be but temporary — its continuance 
 through the crushing of individual 
 action and its inequities would, if for 
 no other reason, destroy the founda- 
 tions of our civilization. 
 
 Looked at as the umpire in our social 
 system, our Government has maintained 
 an equality before the law and a devel- 
 opment of legal justice and an authority 
 in restraint of evil instincts that sup- 
 port this social system and its ideals so 
 
POLITICAL PHASES 51 
 
 far as the imperfections of developing 
 human institutions permit. It has gone 
 the greatest distance of any government 
 toward maintaining an equaUty of fran- 
 chise; an equaUty of entrance to pubHc 
 office, and government by the majority. 
 It has succeeded far beyond all others 
 in those safeguards of equality of op- 
 portunity through education, public 
 information, and the open channels of 
 free speech and free press. It is, how- 
 ever, much easier to chart the course 
 of progress to government in dealing 
 with the abstract problems of order, 
 political liberty, and stimulation to 
 intellectual and moral advancement 
 than it is to chart its relations to the 
 economic seas. These seas are new 
 and only partly discovered or explored. 
 Our Government's greatest troubles 
 and failures are in the economic field. 
 Forty years ago the contact of the in- 
 dividual with the Government had its 
 
52 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 largest expression in the sheriff or 
 poHceman, and in debates over poHtical 
 equaUty. In those happy days the 
 Government offered but small inter- 
 ference with the economic life of the 
 citizen. But with the vast develop- 
 ment of industry and the train of 
 regulating functions of the national and 
 municipal government that followed 
 from it; with the recent vast increase 
 in taxation due to the war; — the Govern- 
 ment has become through its relations 
 to economic life the most potent force 
 for maintenance or destruction of our 
 American individualism. 
 
 The entrance of the Government be- 
 gan strongly three decades ago, when 
 our industrial organization began to 
 move powerfully in the direction of con- 
 solidation of enterprise. We found in 
 the course of this development that 
 equality of opportunity and its corol- 
 
POLITICAL PHASES 53 
 
 lary, individual initiative, was being 
 throttled by the concentration of con- 
 trol of industry and service, and thus 
 an economic domination of groups 
 builded over the nation. At this time, 
 particularly, we were threatened with 
 a form of autocracy of economic power. 
 Our mass of regulation of public utili- 
 ties and our legislation against restraint 
 of trade is the monument to our intent 
 to preserve an equality of opportunity. 
 This regulation is itself proof that we 
 have gone a long way toward the 
 abandonment of the "capitalism'' of 
 Adam Smith. 
 
 Day by day we learn more as to the 
 practical application of restrictions 
 against economic and political domina- 
 tion. We sometimes lag behind in the 
 correction of those forces that would 
 override liberty, justice, and equality 
 of opportunity, but the principle is so 
 strong within us that domination of the 
 
54 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 few will not be tolerated. These re- 
 straints must keep pace with the grow- 
 ing complexity of our economic 
 organization, but they need tuning to 
 our social system if they would not take 
 us into great dangers. As we build up 
 our powers of production through the ad- 
 vancing application of science we create 
 new forces with which men may domi- 
 nate — ^railway, power, oil, and what not. 
 They may produce temporary block- 
 ades upon equality of opportunity. 
 
 To curb the forces in business which 
 would destroy equality of opportunity 
 and yet to maintain the initiative and 
 creative faculties of our people are the 
 twin objects we must attain. To pre- 
 serve the former we must regulate that 
 type of activity that would dominate. 
 To preserve the latter, the Government 
 must keep out of production and distri- 
 bution of commodities and services. 
 This is the deadline between our sys- 
 
POLITICAL PHASES 55 
 
 tern and socialism. Regulation to pre- 
 vent domination and unfair practices, 
 yet preserving rightful initiative, are in 
 keeping with our social foundations. 
 Nationalization of industry or business 
 is their negation. 
 
 When we come to the practical prob- 
 lems of government in relation to these 
 economic questions the test lies in two 
 directions: Does this act safeguard an 
 equality of opportunity ? Does it main- 
 tain the initiative of our people.^ For 
 in the first must lie the deadline against 
 domination, and in the second the dead- 
 line in preservation of individualism 
 against socialism. Excluding the tem- 
 porary measures of the war, the period 
 of regulation has now been long enough 
 with us to begin to take stock of its 
 effect upon our social system. It has 
 been highly beneficial, but it has also 
 developed weaknesses in the throttling 
 of proper initiative that require some 
 
56 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 revision. We have already granted 
 relief to labor organizations and to 
 agriculture from some forms of regula- 
 tion. There is, however, a large field 
 of cooperative possibilities far outside 
 agriculture that are needlessly ham- 
 pered. 
 
 The most important of considerations 
 in any attempt to pass judgment upon 
 social systems is whether we maintain 
 within them permanent and continuous 
 motivation toward progress. These 
 forces must be of two orders, one spirit- 
 ual and the other economic. 
 
 We may discover the situation in our 
 own social system either by an analysis 
 of the forces that are today in motion 
 or by noting the strides of progress 
 over the century or over the last ten 
 years. By a consideration of the forces 
 that move us we can see whether our 
 system shows signs of decay, whether 
 
POLITICAL PHASES 57 
 
 its virility is maintained; and by the 
 touchstone of time we can find out 
 whether these forces have been power- 
 ful enough to overcome the malign 
 influences that would lessen the well- 
 being of our system. 
 
 If we should survey the fundamentals 
 of our civilization from the point of 
 view of its progress by the test of time, 
 we can find much for satisfaction and 
 assurance. It is unnecessary to re- 
 count the values of economic individual- 
 ism in stimulation to invention; large 
 constructive vision; intensity in produc- 
 tion with decreased physical effort; 
 our increased standards of living 
 and comfort. It is of course easy to 
 enumerate our great economic progress, 
 but the progress of the social forces that 
 will sustain economic progress is in- 
 finitely more important — for upon them 
 depends the real future of our people. 
 Education in its many phases has made 
 
58 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 much advance. The actual equipment, 
 the character of instruction, the num- 
 bers reached, period of instruction — 
 show improvement with every decade. 
 PubKc opinion has become of steadily 
 increasing potency and reliability in its 
 reaction. The great strides in develop- 
 ment of processes and equipment for 
 production and distribution are being 
 followed by increasing devotion to the 
 human factors in their execution. 
 Moral standards of business and com- 
 merce are improving; vicious city gov- 
 ernments are less in number; invisible 
 government has greatly diminished; 
 public conscience is penetrating deeper 
 and deeper; the rooting up of wrong 
 grows more vigorous; the agencies for 
 their exposure and remedy grow more 
 numerous, and above all is the growing 
 sense of service. Many people confuse 
 the exposure of wrongs which were below 
 the surface with degeneration; their 
 
POLITICAL PHASES 59 
 
 very exposure is progress. Some ac- 
 credit the exposures of failure in our 
 government and business as evidence of 
 standards of a lower order than in 
 some other nations. A considerable 
 experience leads me to the conviction 
 that while we do wash our dirty linen 
 in public most others never wash it. 
 
 It is easy to arraign any existing in- 
 stitution. Men can rightly be critical 
 because things have happened that never 
 ought to happen. That our social 
 system contains faults no one disputes. 
 One can recite the faulty results of our 
 system at great length; the spirit of 
 lawlessness; the uncertainty of employ- 
 ment in some callings; the deadening 
 effect of certain repetitive processes of 
 manufacture; the 12-hour day in a few 
 industries; unequal voice in bargaining 
 for wage in some employment; arrogant 
 domination by some employers and 
 
60 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 some labor leaders; child labor in some 
 states; inadequate instruction in some 
 areas; unfair competition in some in- 
 dustries; some fortunes excessive far 
 beyond the needs of stimulation to ini- 
 tiative; survivals of religious intoler- 
 ance; political debauchery of some 
 cities; weaknesses in our governmental 
 structure. Most of these occur locally 
 in certain regions and certain industries 
 and must cause every thinking person 
 to regret and to endeavor. But they 
 are becoming steadily more local. That 
 they are recognized and condemned is a 
 long way on the road to progress. 
 
 One of the difficulties in social 
 thought is to find the balance of per- 
 spective. A single crime does not mean 
 a criminal community. It is easy to 
 point out undernourished, overworked, 
 uneducated children, children barred 
 from the equality of opportunity that 
 
POLITICAL PHASES 61 
 
 our ideals stand for. It is easy to 
 point out the luxurious petted and 
 spoiled children with favored opportun- 
 ity in every community. But if we 
 take the whole thirty-five millions of 
 children of the United States, it would 
 be a gross exaggeration to say that a 
 million of them suffer from any of these 
 injustices. This is indeed a million 
 too many, but it is the thirty-four 
 million that tests the system with the 
 additional touchstone of whether there 
 are forces in motivation which are 
 insistently and carefully working for 
 the amelioration of the one million. 
 Its by-products of endowed loafers, or 
 hoodlums, at respective ends of the 
 economic scale, are indeed spectac- 
 ular faults. Yet any analysis of the 
 105,000,000 of us would show that we 
 harbor less than a million of either rich 
 or impecunious loafers. If we measure 
 our people by scales of other civilized 
 
62 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 peoples, we also find consolation. We 
 have a distaste for the very expression of 
 "class," but if we would use European 
 scales of "classes" we would find that 
 above their scale of "lower classes" we 
 have in equivalent comfort, morality, 
 understanding, and intelligence fully 
 eighty per cent, of our native-born 
 whites. No European state will lay 
 claim to thirty per cent, of this order. 
 Does this not mean that we have been 
 gaining something.^ 
 
 I do not conceive that any man, or 
 body of men, could ever be capable of 
 drafting a plan that would solve these 
 multiple difficulties in advance. More- 
 over, if we continue to advance we will 
 find new difficulties and weaknesses as 
 the by-product of progress — but to be 
 overcome. 
 
THE FUTURE. 
 
 INDIVIDUALISM has been the pri- 
 mary force of American civihzation 
 for three centuries. It is our sort of 
 individuaKsm that has supplied the 
 motivation of America's political, eco- 
 nomic, and spiritual institutions in all 
 these years. It has proved its ability 
 to develop its institutions with the 
 changing scene. Our very form of 
 government is the product of the in- 
 dividualism of our people, the demand 
 for an equal opportunity, for a fair 
 chance. 
 
 The American pioneer is the epic ex- 
 pression of that individualism, and the 
 pioneer spirit is the response to the 
 challenge of opportunity, to the chal- 
 lenge of nature, to the challenge of life, 
 
 63 
 
64 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 to the call of the frontier. That spirit 
 need never die for lack of something for 
 it to achieve. There will always be a 
 frontier to conquer or to hold as long as 
 men think, plan, and dare. Our Amer- 
 ican individualism has received much 
 of its character from our contacts with 
 the forces of nature on a new continent. 
 It evolved government without official 
 emissaries to show the way; it plowed 
 and sowed two score of great states; 
 it built roads, bridges, railways, cities; 
 it carried forward every attribute of 
 high civilization over a continent. The 
 days of the pioneer are not over. There 
 are continents of human welfare of 
 which we have penetrated only the 
 coastal plain. The great continent of 
 science is as yet explored only on its 
 borders, and it is only the pioneer 
 who will penetrate the frontier in 
 the quest for new worlds to con- 
 quer. The very genius of our insti- 
 
THE FUTURE 65 
 
 tutlons has been given to them by 
 the pioneer spirit. Our individualism 
 is rooted in our very nature. It is 
 based on conviction born of experience. 
 Equal opportunity, the demand for a 
 fair chance, became the formula of 
 American individualism because it is 
 the method of American achievement. 
 After the absorption of the great 
 plains of the West came the era of 
 industrial development with the new 
 complex of forces that it has brought 
 us. Now haltingly, but with more 
 surety and precision than ever before 
 and with a more conscious understand- 
 ing of our mission, we are finding solu- 
 tion of these problems arising from new 
 conditions, for the forces of our social 
 system can compass and comprise these. 
 
 Our individualism is no middle 
 ground between autocracy — ^whether 
 of birth, economic or class origin— and 
 
66 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 socialism. Socialism of different varie- 
 ties may have something to recommend 
 it as an intellectual stop-look-and-listen 
 sign, more especially for Old World 
 societies. But it contains only destruc- 
 tion to the forces that make progress in 
 our social system. Nor does salvation 
 come by any device for concentration 
 of power, whether political or economic, 
 for both are equally reversions to Old 
 World autocracy in new garments. 
 
 Salvation will not come to us out 
 of the wreckage of individualism. 
 What we need today is steady devo- 
 tion to a better, brighter, broader in- 
 dividualism — an individualism that car- 
 ries increasing responsibility and service 
 to our fellows. Our need is not for a 
 way out but for a way forward. We 
 found our way out three centuries ago 
 when our forefathers left Europe for 
 these shores, to set up here a common- 
 wealth conceived in liberty and dedi- 
 
THE FUTURE 67 
 
 cated to the development of individ- 
 uality. 
 
 There are malign social forces other 
 than our failures that would destroy 
 our progress. There are the equal 
 dangers both of reaction and radicalism. 
 The perpetual howl of radicalism is that 
 it is the sole voice of liberalism — that 
 devotion to social progress is its field 
 alone. These men would assume that 
 all reform and human advance must 
 come through government. They have 
 forgotten that progress must come from 
 the steady lift of the individual and 
 that the measure of national idealism 
 and progress is the quality of idealism 
 in the individual. The most trying 
 support of radicalism comes from the 
 timid or dishonest minds that shrink 
 from facing the result of radicalism 
 itself but are devoted to defense ,of 
 radicalism as proof of a liberal mind. 
 
68 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 Most theorists who denounce our in- 
 dividuaKsm as a social basis seem to 
 have a passion for ignorance of its con- 
 structive ideals. 
 
 An even greater danger is the destruc- 
 tive criticism of minds too weak or too 
 partisan to harbor constructive ideas. 
 For such, criticism is based upon the 
 distortion of perspective or cunning 
 misrepresentation. There is never dan- 
 ger from the radical himself until the 
 structure and confidence of society has 
 been undermined by the enthronement 
 of destructive criticism. Destructive 
 criticism can certainly lead to revolution 
 unless there are those willing to with- 
 stand the malice that flows in return 
 from refutation. It has been well said 
 that revolution is no summer thunder- 
 storm clearing the atmosphere. In 
 modern society it is a tornado leaving 
 in its path the destroyed homes of 
 
THE FUTURE 69 
 
 millions with their dead women and 
 children. 
 
 There are also those who insist that 
 the future must be a repetition of the 
 past; that ideas are dangerous, that 
 ideals are freaks. 
 
 To find that fine balance which links 
 the future with the past, whose vision 
 is of men and not of tools, that possesses 
 the courage to construct rather than to 
 criticize — this is our need. There is no 
 oratory so easy, no writing so trenchant 
 and vivid as the phrase-making of criti- 
 cism and malice — there is none so diflS- 
 cult as inspiration to construction. 
 
 We cannot ever afford to rest at ease 
 in the comfortable assumption that 
 right ideas always prevail by some vir- 
 tue of their own. In the long run they 
 do. But there can be and there have 
 been periods of centuries when the 
 world slumped back toward darkness 
 
70 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 merely because great masses of men 
 became impregnated with wrong ideas 
 and wrong social philosophies. The 
 declines of civilization have been born 
 of wrong ideas. Most of the wars of 
 the world, including the recent one, 
 have been fought by the advocates of 
 contrasting ideas of social philosophy. 
 The primary safeguard of American 
 individualism is an understanding of it; 
 of faith that it is the most precious pos- 
 session of American civilization, and 
 a willingness courageously to test every 
 process of national life upon the touch- 
 stone of this basic social premise. De- 
 velopment of the human institutions 
 and of science and of industry have 
 been long chains of trial and error. 
 Our pubhc relations to them and to 
 other phases of our national life can be 
 advanced in no other way than by a 
 willingness to experiment in the rem- 
 edy of our social faults. The failures 
 
THE FUTURE 71 
 
 and unsolved problems of economic 
 and social life can be corrected; 
 they can be solved within our social 
 theme and under no other system. 
 The solution is a matter of will to find 
 solution; of a sense of duty as well as of 
 a sense of right and citizenship. No 
 one who buys "bootleg" whiskey can 
 complain of gunmen and hoodlumism. 
 Humanity has a long road to perfec- 
 tion, but we of America can make sure 
 progress if we will preserve our in- 
 dividualism, if we will preserve and 
 stimulate the initiative of our people, 
 if we will build up our insistence and 
 safeguards to equality of opportunity, 
 if we will glorify service as a part of 
 our national character. Progress will 
 march if we hold an abiding faith in the 
 intelligence, the initiative, the charac- 
 ter, the courage, and the divine touch 
 in the individual. We can safeguard 
 these ends if we give to each individual 
 
72 AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 that opportunity for which the spirit 
 of America stands. We can make a 
 social system as perfect as our genera- 
 tion merits and one that will be re- 
 ceived in gratitude by our children. 
 
 THE END 
 

Of International Importance 
 
 The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page 
 
 By Burton J. Hendrick 
 
 ^T '' ' Here/ I have said to myself again and 
 ^^ again, * here is the voice of America's higher 
 self. Here is a man who has unmistakably ar- 
 rived at that point of view regarding our social 
 and national destinies which all intelligent men 
 will reach by and by/" — Stuart P. Sherman. 
 In Two Volumes 
 
 Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement 
 
 Written from his personal and unpublished material by 
 Ray Stannard Baker 
 
 Here is history. It is now your privilege 
 to read for the first time, the authentic 
 account of what Wilson wanted to do, did, and 
 failed to do. Here is Lloyd George, Clemenceau, 
 Orlando, the secret minutes of the Councils of 
 Four and Ten, the making of Peace at Paris. 
 In Three Volumes 
 
 c