1^ ^ UC-NRLF 57 - Western Hemisphere irx the World of To-Morrow FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDING^ The Western Hemisphere in the World of To-Morrow The Western Hemisphere in the World of To-Morrow By FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDINGS, LL. D. Professor of Sociology and the History of Civili- zation in Columbia University New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1915, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY *^^: New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 31 Paternoster Square £dinbuigh: iao Princes Street Preface IT was inconceivable that the American nations could escape their share of loss and suffering caused by the titanic clash of differing civilizations in Europe, and it is unthinkable that these nations are not to play a significant part in the reconstructed world of to-morrow. It is well worth our while at the present moment to look over our inherit- ance and our program. The material here broken up for the read- er's convenience into short chapters was prepared and delivered as a lecture, under the auspices of the New York Peace Society, at -^Eolian Hall, New York, March 25, 1915. F. H. G. New York, July, igis. 345215 Contents I. The Mingling Place of Races . . 9 II. Inheritance and Experiment . .21 III. The Discovery of Social Efficiency 34 IV. Getting On Without Kings . .41 V. Trying Out a World Society . . 46 THE MINGLING PLACE OF RACES AN instinct as old as life compels us to speculate upon the world of to-mor- row. Our forecast may go astray, and the plans that we make for posterity may serve only to amuse the children of our children ; but that does not matter. Nature sacrifices the individual to the race, and the individual man sacrifices himself, hoping that his state or nation may live. It is the race- perpetuating instinct, reinforced by the na- tion-defending habit, which projects our thought into the future, and if we neither shape nor understand the future to such an extent as we imagine, we at least influence the present by our outlooking vision. For the world of to-day is a product not only of the past. In a measure it is controlled and shaped by our interest in the world of to-morrow. When we undertake to explain the world of to-day by cosmic evolution and by his- tory, we discover that one part of our present world, the Western Hemisphere, is a creation 9 10 THE MINGLING PLACE OF EACES of the past in a special sense. Its features are unique, its character is distinctive. And when we attempt to picture the world of to- morrow, we find ourselves influenced by a conviction that this highly individualized Western Hemisphere is to play an important part. Reacting upon our inheritance from the past and upon our interests of to-day, this conviction is a factor of no mean im- portance in our politics here and now. The Eastern Hemisphere is the great land area of the earth. The Western Hemi- sphere is the vast "glad water of the dark blue sea " where Byron's pirate roamed and Kipling's Three Decker drifted. It is given over now to other uses— which the pirate foresaw and the adventurer lived to lament — because it is divided into oceans by a land strip from the Arctic to the Antarctic Sea. Contracted near the middle point to a narrow isthmus, this island, as long as the world, includes the two continents of North and South America. Cut through by the Panama Canal, the isthmus has become a focal point upon which converge routes of communication from every port of the eastern and the western coasts of both Americas, from every port of the Asian or eastern coasts of the Eastern Hemisphere, and from THE MINGLING PLACE OP EACES 11 every port of the western or European coasts. There meet the flag-bearing liners of the nations, as heretofore individual merchants have met at the gates of the cities, one after another supreme, from Babylon to New York. No great effort of imagination is needed to see that the American continents so situated must receive the impact of more than ocean waves from both sides of the world. These impacts from east and west alike, of which we are becoming conscious to-day, began millions of years ago. The vegetation and the animal life of both North and South America are a medley of species to which both Asia and Europe have contributed. The human population of these continents probably is derived entirely from the Eastern Hemisphere, but it came by more than one route. Possibly in very early ages of dis- persion, a primitive folk made its way by the islands of the southern seas to the western coasts of South America. Perhaps before the ice age in Europe the flint-chipping peo- ple of the valleys of the Seine and of the Thames made their way across Iceland and Greenland into eastern North America. Much later probably came the stream of im- migration from the northern Asian coasts by way of Behring Straits to the western coasts 12 THE MINGLING PLACE OP EACES and interior valleys west and east of the Rocky Mountains. The merest mention of facts like these is enough to show that from early geological time and by reason of its geographical posi- tion, the land area of the Western Hemi- sphere was predestined to be the home and mingling place of varied forms of life, above all of many racial and minor ethnic varieties of the human race. By no possibility could North and South America be like north- eastern Asia, the home of a great homoge- neous stock or even, like the Baltic regions of Europe, the home of a stock approximately homogeneous. The accidents of history — if history includes accidents — might conceivably have worked against the influences of geographical posi- tion, but they did not. They might have sent to these continents explorers and colo- nists of one variety only of the miscellaneous white stocks that make up Europe's popula- tion. Had Portugal been a sovereign people of many millions, she might have followed up her initial advantage and held the new world as a part of her imperial domain. Spain in turn, or Holland, or France, might have succeeded to the control of all the Americas if in the days of their greatness THE MINGLING PLACE OP RACES 13 they had been nations in the modern sense of the word with capital and population to spare. But the day of the populous and economically developed nation had not then arrived, and therefore Portugal, Spain and France, top-heavy military enterprises, in turn asserting authority in the Western Hemisphere, sent only small companies of their white subjects to exploit its treasures. By comparison with the later English col- onization these early contributions of white blood to a future American population seem insignificant, and often have been described as negligible. They were not negligible in fact. They ^ere important enough to make Portuguese nd Spanish the languages of one of the continents, to make Spanish and French traditions a factor in the mental evolution of one-half of the other. The English folk who in their turn came to North America were true colonists, as the historians are fond of saying, but it is easier to overestimate their numbers than it is to exaggerate their influence. If it were possi- ble to determine how many of the inhabitants of the United States and the Canadas are to-day predominantly English in blood and how many are predominantly French, we might be surprised. It is true that the two and 14 THE MINGLING PLACE OP EACES a quarter millions of the Province of Quebec look small by comparison with the twenty-six millions of the North Atlantic section of the United States, not to mention the population of the rest of North America north of the Rio Grande. It is true that the Huguenot im- migration to the middle and southern states in the last quarter of the seventeenth century was inconsiderable by comparison with the stream of English colonists into Massachu- setts and Virginia, but we have no means of knowing what was the relative fecundity of the French and the English stocks in the hundred years before our first national census was taken. We can only say that the strain of French blood was probably larger in 1 789 than the enumerations show. Dutch, Swedes, Scotch, Irish and Palati- nate Germans also were considerable elements in our population before the opening of the nineteenth century. If then no later immigration movement had influenced the white population of North America after 1800, it yet would have been much too miscellaneous then and now to be described as a homogeneous stock. As all the world knows, the later immigra- tion movement, beginning about 1820 and continuing until the outbreak of the European THE MINGLING PLACE OF RACES 15 war now in progress, has brought to the United States an Irish population comparable with the population of Ireland ; German and Scandinavian populations large enough to constitute great nations ; and, latterly, millions of Italians, Hungarians, Slavs and other ethnic stocks from southeastern Europe. To-day the white population of North America is as variegated as the white population of Europe itself. The accidents of history, however, did not end with migrations that commingled all kinds of white blood in America, and to ac- cidents were added perversities. The most remarkable action of man's deliberate choice that history records introduced upon both of these continents a racial element which in the natural course of human migration might never have found its way hither. When the white man had exterminated entire tribal groups of red men, and had driven others to reservations, and might therefore have had a continent to himself, he purposely introduced through African slavery a race more unlike himself than the red man was, and which has multiplied until now it numbers in the United States alone more than ten millions of indi- viduals. If the miscellaneousness of our white popu- 16 THE MINGLING PLACE OF RACES lation and the introduction here of a black population to live side by side with the white can by any stretching of the meaning of words be called accidents and perversities of history, the remaining features of our popu- lation phenomena cannot be. They are in- evitable consequences of our geographical position already described. An aboriginal or so-called Indian stock developed here from elements both European and Asian, immensely ancient and later, was not destined to disappear, leaving no trace, as was confidently prophesied at the moment of white conquest and occupation. Not only is the Indian factor the basis of the South American, Central American and Mexican population at the present hour, but in the United States and in Canada it persists and probably will increase. In Canada, it is much mixed with white blood, in the United States less so, but in Canada and the United States together, if we may believe the eth- nologists and the census experts, there are probably now more individuals of pure or mixed Indian blood than lived on this conti- nent at the time of its discovery by Columbus. Finally, as one more inevitable incident in the anthropological evolution of mankind, must we describe the coming in these later THE MINGLING PLACE OP EACBS 17 decades of a new and civilized Asian element to our western coasts. Chinese and Japanese immigration has been restricted by treaty and legislation, but not prevented. The in- creasing pressure of population in the Asian empires will beyond doubt continue to pro- duce a succession of migratory movements, from the impact of which we cannot expect altogether to escape, however strictly we deal, by governmental or other action, with the problem presented. To sum up our observations at this point, it appears that the continents of the Western Hemisphere were predestined by causes that go back to early geological eras to be the meeting and mingling places of all the races and nationalities of the earth. In other areas relatively homogeneous stocks have devel- oped and may continue to dwell ; but in North and South America there will be pro- duced a population in composition and char- acteristics different from any existing else- where. It will be a hybrid of elements more diverse than have hitherto been combined. Generations far in the future will know, what it is impossible for us to know, or with much confidence to predict, whether the qualities of such a race will be on the whole inferior or all in all superior to the qualities of the 18 THE MINGLING PLACE OP EACES more homogeneous stocks that have bred in the world hitherto. Biologists and anthro- pologists differ in opinion upon the conse- quences of extensive admixture of parent stocks. Generally they hold that very close inbreeding is deleterious. Generally too they believe that panmixia, or the indiscriminate mingling of heredities, also makes for de- terioration. Within what limits cross-breed- ing produces stocks that with adequate sta- bility have also plasticity, variability and adaptiveness, is not yet determined. The available evidence rather strongly supports the presumption that hybrids pro- duced by the crossing of varieties much alike are vigorous, adaptive and competent. They produce large numbers of gifted men and achieve noteworthy things in politics, in- dustry, invention, science and art. Quite different, apparently, are hybrids produced by the crossing of widely dissimilar varieties or races. These often show incompetency or worse characteristics. More doubt, how- ever, attaches to this second conclusion than .o the one about the excellence of the similar- variety hybrid. Whether, after elimination of weak and ineffective crosses, hybrids of dissimilar races may become valuable new varieties is for practical purposes the most THE MINGLING PLACE OP EACES 19 important question of anthropology. The answer to it will be given by American evi- dence chiefly. However this last matter may turn out, there is one big and reassuring fact to which no uncertainty attaches. We cannot say that any one national variety of the Euro- pean white race, the English for example, is certainly predominant in North America — it is not predominant in the Western Hemi- sphere as a whole. But a group of white stocks, nearly related and similar in funda- mental traits, certainly is predominant throughout the vast area north of the bound- ary line between Mexico and the United States. This group comprises the stocks from the British Isles, the French, the Bel- gians, Germans, Hollanders, Danes and Scandinavians, the peoples, in short, of northwestern Europe. To some extent, the people in process of evolution from the amalgamation of these stocks will be affected by the admixture of elements from southern and eastern Europe. The North American population therefore will be a product of the cross-breeding of all the varieties of the white race, Baltic, Mediterranean, Alpine and Danubian. There is every reason to expect that this new people will be numerically pre- 20 THE MINGLING PLACE OF EACES ponderant in the Western Hemisphere. For in certain regions of South America also, the Argentine for example, it is being evolved as in the United States. The proportions in which the factors combine, however, are somewhat different in the southern continent. On the whole then, it is reasonably certain that while the Western Hemisphere will pres- ently exhibit a great number of interesting hybrids for the anthropologist to study, the numerically ascendant and controlling popu- lation will be a vigorous and gifted people of European extraction. n INHERITANCE AND EXPERIMENT THUS far we have been considering phenomena of heredity as they are produced in the Americas, and as they probably will play a part in the world of to-morrow. Over against the biological facts of heredity and interacting with them in social evolution are the facts of habit, of acquisition, the social inheritance. Hereditary nature, including instinctive reactions to environment, a man is born with. Instincts are his race equip- ment. His habits he acquires during his own short lifetime, beginning in early in- fancy. He learns them. Also by learning, including activities of imagination and rea- soning he acquires a fund of ideas. These acquisitions, however, are determined for him by his social environment, supplement- ing his natural or geographical environment. The social environment in turn is created by historical events, supplemented by more or less extensive and varied contacts with the peoples of other parts of the world. 21 22 INHEEITANCE AND EXPERIMENT The geographical situation of these con- tinents has therefore been significant for the mental and social life of the Western Hemi- sphere, as for its racial character and quality. The same conditions that made the West- ern Hemisphere the meeting and the min- gling place of races and nationalities have made it the assembling ground of languages and ideas, and of those complexes of ideas which we call arts, religions, economic enter- prises, political theories and public policies. Here is the arena of struggle, in which languages, ideas, faiths and policies contend on a scale hitherto unknown and unimagined, and where, little by little, certain languages win supremacy and certain ideas become ascendant. It is predominantly these mental and moral products of American life which seem destined to exert influence upon the world of to-morrow. Of the many languages that have found their way to these continents, four, namely Portuguese, Spanish, French and English, are still important. Portuguese and French are probably destined to become relatively unimportant. The long rivalry will be be- tween Spanish, south of the Rio Grande, and English, north. Whether one or the other of these tongues will in the far future give INHEEITANCE AND EXPEEIMENT 23 way before the other no wise man will venture to predict. We can only say that since the Norman conquest of England, the English language has made its way into various parts of the world with a persistency and an energy unexampled. It is spoken now by more than one hundred and sixty million persons. That its supremacy in America may make it the world language of the future is at least a possibility. We come to a consideration of ideas and complexes of ideas, of their relative influence and probable effect. America was discovered by Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church from the first made diligent use of its new opportunity. South America, Central America and Mexico were completely brought under Catholic re- ligious influence. The story of the Jesuit relations in North America is not only one of the longest, it is also one of the most picturesque and interesting chapters in the history of the continent. Even New Eng- land, which we think of as for generations the home of Protestantism, was the scene of Catholic activity before the Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod. A French expedition under de Monts planted a colony upon Neutral Island in the Saint Croix River in 1604, and 24 INHERITANCE AND EXPERIMENT in 1608 Jesuits established on Mount Desert Island a settlement which was joined in 16 13 by a number of fishermen. Both settlements were destroyed by Sir Samuel Argall who forcibly removed the inhabitants to James- town, Virginia, as prisoners. The extreme southwestern parts of the United States, wholly Catholic at first, are largely so now ; while the Catholic parts of Canada remain among the most loyal adherents of the Church. Nevertheless Protestantism became ascend- ant not only in North America, but in a sense in the Western Hemisphere, because it was the faith of those colonists who most rapidly accumulated wealth and most effect- ively organized political power. Moreover, it was the non-conformist and dissenting Protestants, the radicals of Protestantism, who imparted distinctive quality to the religious life of the United States. There is an element in our population which is fond of claiming that one group of non-conforming Protestants in particular, namely the Puritans of New England, exerted a wider and more enduring influence upon our habits of thought, our moral standards, our habits of life and our ideals than any other. If this claim is not pressed too far it may be admitted ; but it is INHERITANCE AND EXPERIMENT 25 important to remember that the religious zeal of New England and the New Eng- lander's habit of independent thinking in religious matters have had other conse- quences also. Some of them have brought troublesome complications into our political development; others have influenced our intellectual and social life. North America has been a fertile soil for the development of new religions, conspicuous among them Mormonism and Christian Science, and these can usually be traced to New England sources. Also it is necessary to remember that new forces are now altering both the relative ex- tent and the relative influence of Protestant- ism and Catholicism in the religious life of North America. Not only in the great cities of the North, once almost wholly Protestant, has the Catholic Church increased its mem- bership and influence with amazing rapidity, but in town after town of rural New England the cross of the Catholic Church overlooks the white spire of the Congregational struc- ture. Whatever may be the future of Protestant- ism in North America, and quite certainly it will be both qualitatively and quantitatively different from its past, it has set going in- 26 INHERITANCE AND EXPERIMENT fluences that will persist. Farthest reaching of these perhaps is American interest in non- Christian peoples and their destinies. This interest is unique, and it must be understood by one who would seriously study the prob- able future relations between America and the Eastern Hemisphere. It is distinct from commercial interest, and more than once it has been antagonistic to both business and political policies. It is well backed up by knowledge. Probably it is not exaggeration to say that nowhere else have so many aver- age individuals really known so much about the people of other lands, their social organi- zation, their way of life, their religious ideas, as in America. Mixed with error, of course, this knowledge has been fostered by mis- sionary zeal and has been disseminated through missionary agencies. That the zeal itself is humanitarian is proven by radical changes in the character of missionary activity in recent years. With the decay of theology, with the increase of scientific knowledge, with the gaining of a truer knowledge of the peoples with whom the missionaries have laboured, effort has been diverted in a measure from the older purpose to convert the heathen, to newer tasks of secular education, medical service, INHEEITANCE AND EXPEEIMENT 27 sanitation and the betterment of economic conditions. The zeal itself persists, and the practical politician who supposes that our re- lations with the so-called backward peoples will be determined altogether by commercial and political developments, does not know the thought and the feeling of millions of our so-called plain Americans who have votes, and whose relation to public opinion and na- tional policy is not negligible. It was humane feeling fortified by the moral earnestness of Puritanism and fired by missionary ardour that carried forward the anti-slavery movement and began the work of negro education, and that has con- tributed a powerful moral support to a liberal immigration policy. In short, it has been a specific kind of humanitarianism, it has been a missionary humanitarianism of Puritan antecedents that has established in the senti- ment, opinion and policy of the people of the United States the doctrine, or the dogma, if that is a better word for it, of the equality and the brotherhood of human beings of all nationalities and of all races. The Puritan town communities of New England began the most persistent and probably the most important experiment ever made in the popular control of practical 28 INHEEITANCE AND EXPERIMENT morals. Ancient and modern nations alike have brought within the scope of their crimi- nal law a great many acts which properly are sins or vices rather than crimes. But outside of the United States the inclusion of sins and vices among the mala prohibita of statute law has been at the dictation of a rul- ing class which has held itself superior in character and intelligence, as in wealth and in power. The object has been to impose upon the governed rules that would ensure not only social order and general well-being, but also the supremacy of the dominant es- tate. In the Puritan towns of Massachusetts Bay there was a dominating group, but it was not a ruling class intrenched in privilege, and as the community became miscellaneous and democratic the habit of making private conduct an affair of public concern persisted. I am not aware that this transfer of power to dictate morals from the classes and the potentates to the masses has ever been de- scribed as a revolution. It did not come with observation, and the violent took noth- ing by storm ; but it was a revolution in fact, one of the most momentous revolutions in history. Its consequences have been and are far reaching. They are seen now in every commonwealth of the Union. Year INHERITANCE AND EXPERIMENT 29 upon year legislatures busy themselves with all possible questions of individual behaviour. Throughout the length and breadth of the nation the whole public has become censor and arbiter. Motives have changed to some extent. Industrialism prevails now, and the efficiency idea is applied to personal conduct as to shop and office methods. So the sweep of the prohibition movement, to cite a con- spicuous instance, is not to be accounted for by any one thought or conviction. Religious and moral zeal have entered into it ; but so also have economic and political considera- tions. The important fact to remember is that this and all related developments of social control through the organs of govern- ment are manifestations of a popular purpose and an essentially democratic method which had their first important tryout in the Puritan town communities of New England. These observations upon our zeal to en- lighten and our determination to walk up- rightly bring us to a necessary word upon the American experiment in education. Re- ligious convictions and moral intentions have been in all lands until recently the propulsive forces of education. The American public school therefore has hitherto been identified with Protestantism, as the parochial school 30 INHEEITANCB AND EXPERIMENT with Catholicism. But with the broadening of Protestantism into democracy and the Catholic contention that democracy in things secular is compatible with loyalty to the Church in matters of faith, the public school, and the higher educational institutions im- posed upon it, have become an expression of the democratic demand for equality of oppor- tunity. That it is the duty of the state to give to every child a decent start in life is the reason that ninety-nine voters out of a hundred would now assign, if questioned why taxpayers should provide not only ele- mentary instruction but also high schools and normal schools, agricultural colleges, special training and vocational schools, and state universities. Yet because the public school has his- torically been associated with Protestantism, it has been in a sense a challenge to the Catholic Church to establish parochial schools. On the other hand, since it has necessarily been undenominational, the public school has afforded excuse for the establishment of de- nominational schools by various Protestant sects. And because it has been a centre of assimilation and an effective influence for equality and fraternity, the public school has offered reason for the establishment of costly INHEEITANCE AND EXPEEIMENT 31 private schools by the rich and socially am- bitious. It may confidently be predicted that no one of these diversions of interest and re- sources, nor all of them together, will seri- ously limit the further development of our vast scheme of public education in the United States. The democratic forces are strong. The vitalizing of instruction by developing it from the child's relation to economic occupa- tion and to society with attention to voca- tional guidance and to citizenship promises to create a type of public school that will so appeal to all classes, to men of all moral and religious preferences, that it will have the common and enthusiastic support of the whole community. It will not sacrifice the spontaneous nature of the child to formalism, nor destroy convictions in the interest of a system. It will not level and equalize by cutting ofi[ natural superiority, but it will es- tablish values based upon capacities and abilities, rather than upon the adventitious circumstances of birth, wealth and social con- nection. The social forces operative in American life that so far we have considered are ener- gies of collective endeavour. They express and they strengthen community of interest 32 INHEEITANCE AND EXPERIMENT They create solidarity. Contending with them are individualistic impulses, grown strong and assertive in America, through two centuries of frontier experiences. The spirit of adventure that entered into discovery and colonization could not spend itself quickly or easilyc It has seemed ex- haustless and even now is little abated. It carried the young men of the seaboard set- tlements westward along the valleys of the James and the Cumberland, the Mohawk and the Susquehanna. Beyond the Alleghanies, through the valleys of the Ohio and the Mis- sissippi, across the plains and the Great Basin to the coasts of the West, they made their way, pioneers, self-sufficient, each man de- pendent upon his rifle and himself. Eman- cipated from the good and the bad of com- munity life, he and his progeny became im- patient of social restraint. A spirit developed in them antagonistic to any communal pur- pose to regulate individual conduct in the interest of the social whole. They created a new type of democracy, the individualistic ; almost we might call it the frontier anarch- istic. Its character and tendency were re- vealed to the Atlantic coast communities in the war of 1812, and politically it came into power with the election of Andrew Jackson INHERITANCE AND EXPERIMENT 33 and the organization of the Jacksonian Democracy, different from the Jeffersonian Democracy in almost everything but name. From the frontier character and its tend- encies have sprung much of that individual initiative, and that self-reliance which have created the American industrial system and to a great extent have controlled American political policies. In all the world there never has been anything quite comparable to the individualistic, voluntary organization of business enterprise in America. It has built a railway system greater than any rail- way system constructed with all the resources of government in the Old World. It has created industrial corporations and federa- tions of corporations larger and more power- ful than any one of half of the nations of the earth. At times i '• has well-nigh become the sovereign back of and controlling the consti- tutional polity of the United States. Ill THE DISCOVERY OF SOCIAL EFFICIENCY HE who has observed the intent and the tendency of the two great groups of influences that now have been indicated — who has discriminated the soli- daristic and the individuaHstic forces in America — is prepared to understand the nature and to estimate the value of another characteristically American contribution to social progress. On a scale unprecedented, the will of the individual to follow his own intent in all the freedom of wilderness or plain has been asserted. On a scale not less vast the will of the democratic community to control and to regulate in the interest of general well-being has been manifested. It has created a social pressure quite as strong and a public regulation as extended as one may find in any imperial state. So it ap- pears that we are working out perhaps for the world a decisive experiment in the conflict between organized societary power and a determined individualism. 34 DISCOVEEY OF SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 35 Is the experiment presumably constructive ? Will it probably bring about a higher or- ganization of human activities than any hitherto known ? Will it make social control effective for the production of efficiency rather than for the restraint of enthusiasm and initiative ? Will it in the end create the finest type of that individuality which is a different thing from egotistic and lawless individualism ? Perhaps most Americans still have confused ideas upon the subject of social responsibility. They think of better- ment programs now as socialism, now as newfangled reforms, now as an overgrowth of philanthropy, and now as mere mischiev- ous meddling. They " suppose " that they *' ought " to be interested in tenement house commissions, anti-tuberculosis committees, laws in restraint of the labour of children and women, workmen's compensation laws, minimum wage laws, plans for the preven- tion of unemployment, schemes for the relief of destitution and measures for the ameliora- tion of poverty. These things are, indeed, aspects of betterment, but in themselves they do not suggest the correlation of betterment with efficiency, and of efficiency with a grow- ing sense of both public and private re- sponsibility. That this linking up of both 36 DISCOVERY OF SOCIAL EFFICIENCY responsibility and efficiency with the general welfare, and of the collective phase with the individual phase of all these things is the real significance of any betterment program worthy of the name began to dawn upon us with the outbreak of the European war. Then with quick apprehension the American mind grasped the enormous importance of the social efficiency program which Germany since the chancellorship of Prince Bismarck has remorselessly been putting into effect. Are we then to accept a German view of public responsibility for universal efficiency, and in this matter, at least, become the imitator rather than the originator and exemplar? Perhaps so much chastening of our pride would be good for us, but whether that be so or no, the facts of history preclude the possibility. It is time that Americans were reminded that this social-responsibility- efficiency-and-betterment idea, destined more and more to occupy the attention of serious men and women of every continent, is not a German invention, and not the product of any other European nationality. "In spite of all temptations to belong to other nations,'' the man who scientifically developed it and experimentally tried it out was an American. Next after Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin DISCOVEEY OF SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 37 Franklin he was, I think, the greatest Ameri- can. No one else in our history can make out, all things considered, quite so good a claim to the third place. But while Edwards and Franklin are remembered, Benjamin Thompson has been forgotten. The story of his early life in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and of the circum- stances which led to his residence in Eng- land is romantically interesting, but too long for repetition here. Born in Woburn, Massa- chusetts, in 1753, a country school teacher, proficient in mathematics and physics, com- bining executive ability with intellectual power, at thirty years of age he was a Fellow of the Royal Society, had held the office of Under Secretary of State in the British gov- ernment, was a lieutenant colonel in the British army, and had received the honour of knighthood. Honourably retired from the army with half pay for life, he received per- mission to enter the service of the Elector of Bavaria. Given full power and a free hand he began at once a work of social construc- tion—of economic and moral synthesis-— which was new in conception and in method, an invention (as truly as the products of synthetic chemistry or of synthetic biology are inventions) of a master mind, gifted with 38 DISCOVEEY OF SOCIAL EFFICIENCY imagination, and disciplined in scientific habit. The military establishment was reorgan- ized. New tactics were introduced, new arms and ordinance were provided. This measure of safety achieved, Thompson turned his attention to economic conditions. He drained and improved the waste land about Munich. He introduced new breeds of cattle and horses. He constructed improved dwell- ings for the working classes and provided for them a practical education, the education that now, after a hundred years of half-hearted interest, we in America are beginning to or- ganize under the names ** industrial training " and *' vocational guidance." All this was preparation ; then the big task was attacked and achieved. The whole land of Bavaria swarmed with beggars, vagabonds and thieves, the wastage of long years of war. Thompson made the assumption that organ- ized society should undertake their rehabil- itation and discipline. He removed them from the cities, where they tended to congre- gate, and provided work for them, but he did not stop there, with a comfortable sense of duty done. He saw to it that the unem- ployed and the vagabonds not only had work, but that they learned how to work, DISCO VEEY OF SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 39 that they became self-respecting workers, morally no less than economically reformed. In fine, he achieved the so-called impossible : he made the inefBcient efficient and self-sup- porting ; he abolished and thenceforth pre- vented the evils of idleness, vagabondage and pauperism in Bavaria. So was created one-half, the non-political half, of Kultur, that wondrous thing which all the world is now invited to admire. The other half, the political half of Kultur, is a philosophy and a habit, a habit of obeying without question or protest a state conceived as absolute, supreme above the moral law as above statute and decision. Kultur was not made in Germany. The political half of it as everybody knows was made in Italy, and was formulated by Machiavelli. The non-polit- ical half of it, the social efficiency half, which all the world will yet adopt and profit by, was made in Massachusetts by Puritan faith, con- science, frugality and toil, and was taken to Bavaria by Benjamin Thompson. In recognition of his services Thompson was made a member of the Bavarian Council of State, Commander-in-Chief of the General Staff, and Chief of the Regency in the ab- sence of the Elector. In 1790 the Elector became Vicar General of the Empire and 40 DISCOVERY OF SOCIAL EFFICIENCY made Thompson a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. In loyal memory of the New Hamp- shire town of Rumford, now Concord, where he had taught school, Thompson chose the designation Count Rumford. Returning for a time to London, he founded the Royal In- stitution and made Sir Humphrey Davy its Professor of Chemistry. In 1802 he removed to Paris and two years later married the widow of the chemist Lavoisier. The re- maining years until his death in 1814 were spent at Auteiul in completing those first ex- perimental demonstrations which he had be- gun before 1798 of the fact and the law of the conservation of energy upon which the science of modern physics rests. Such are among the ideas, the practical purposes, the effective methods and the dis- coveries that America thus far has contributed to the advancement of mankind. Is it neces- sary to say in so many words that they are not the ideas, the discoveries, the purposes and the methods that make for war? They are constructive and socializing. They make for peace. IV GETTING ON WITHOUT KINGS TWO more of our American ideas re- main to be named, and these also make for peace. Perhaps they are more interesting to the multitude than are those upon which we have dwelt thus far ; they are more often talked about and more importance is generally attached to them. It would be hard to prove that they are more important in fact. Beginning with the United States, imitated by the South and Central American coun- tries and by Mexico, America has abolished kings and hereditary rank. It is republican in name, in part republican in fact. By some among us name is taken for fact and a mag- ical virtue is assumed to reside in republican forms. By others among us, an imperfect realization of republican ideals is taken as proof that republican forms are in themselves of no value. Somewhere between these ex- tremes of opinion the truth may probably be found. 41 42 GETTING ON WITHOUT KINGS It is not a small thing that the peoples of two continents have been able to get on without kings quite as well, all things con- sidered, as the people of the Eastern Hemi- sphere have been getting on with kings. So long as people can get on without kings, even if at times they -get on badly, they are keeping open the possibilities of social evo- lution. One of two things necessarily hap- pens in the circumstances. Either the people in general feel responsibility, and organize effective cooperation, in which case they create the republican state, not as a mere form, but as a great reality ; or, failing to do these things, they attach themselves to one or another political adventurer who under- takes to impose his rule and to organize a government. This is dictatorship, and it is by no means necessarily better than the rule of an absolute monarch, but it has one ad- vantage. It is the outcome of a struggle which closely resembles the struggle for ex- istence in the natural world. The dictator falls before an abler rival. Something closely akin to natural selection goes on, and per- haps no other process could so rapidly de- velop political consciousness and political ability in a people not yet ready for true self- government. In a crude way, the people GETTING ON WITHOUT KINGS 43 solve their own problems. From their own loins they generate their aristocracies of re- sourceful men, intellectual men, artists and inventors. They are not subject, they are not vassal, they are not under an imposed tutelage. Their sense of responsibility may be undeveloped, but it is not being wantonly destroyed. Moreover, kings and the system of heredi- tary privilege which upholds and in turn profits by them, are products of age-long militarism. Kings and nobilities have lived by militarism and have accepted it as a di- vinely appointed scheme of things. Almost every king that has lived has expected a de- cisive war in his reign to perpetuate his name and his glory. He has planned for it, and largely has lived for it. To expect world peace while kings continue to reign is to look for the incredible. The desire for peace, the hope and the expectation that peace may one day be the normal order of civilized man- kind are products of popular politics. The interests of democracies, even of nominal re- publics, are the interests of peace. So, even if we cannot say that the Americas through- out their length are altogether republican in fact, if we must admit that they are not yet in any good sense of the word completely 44 GETTING ON WITHOUT KINGS democratic, they at least have cut loose from kings and have emerged from the old world atmosphere of war. Increasingly they will voice the demand for peace. Last among these interesting and perhaps fateful complexes of ideas that have arisen and energetically developed in America must be named that indefinite but vital and per- sisting policy which shapes the political re- lations of the Western Hemisphere to the rest of the world. This policy is more than the Monroe Doctrine. Of the strict import of that doctrine, as it is related to diplomatic history and to international law, the layman may not speak. But back of the doctrine are ideas and purposes that are a common pos- session of the American people. About it have gathered intentions and sentiments that are active forces in public opinion and in legislation. Traditions older than the Mon- roe Doctrine are factors. Chief among these is our historical attitude towards entangling alliances with European nations, which was advised in Washington's farewell address. While, therefore, our popular reaction to questions of foreign policy is variable within limits, its general character and intent are certain. So far as these essentials go, it can be summed up in homely phrase. We have GETTING ON WITHOUT KINGS 45 much good business to attend to. We have no desire to meddle with our neighbours. We assume that they do not wish to annoy us or to interfere with us. In particular we deprecate political interference by one hemi- sphere in the affairs of the other. But world- wide commercial intercourse, freedom of travel, the interchange of thought, generous response to any call for help in time of calamity we think of as matters of course, in all proper ways to be extended. In a word, we say that the proper attitude of nations towards one another is like the proper attitude of individuals towards one another in good society. Diligent in busi- ness, they should observe a gracious courtesy towards one another, not interfering, not offering too much advice ; profiting by help- ful interchange in business, in thought, in friendship, they should cooperate, as oppor- tunity offers, to further the progress of man- kind. V TRYING OUT A WORLD SOCIETY CAN generalizations be drawn from the foregoing inventory of the material and spiritual resources of the West- ern Hemisphere, its contributions, its char- acter and intentions ? Is there clear indica- tion of the part which this Hemisphere is to have in the world of to-morrow ? Perhaps I In this area of anthropological and social experimentation, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere for three centuries have been working out by a trial and error process the conceptions, the forms, the habits, the pur- poses and the policies of a world society. Here are all races, all nationalities. They meet and mingle not on ideally equal terms, but in a closer approximation to equality of opportunity, with a better knowledge of one another, with less of prejudice, on the whole, than ever before in human history. Casting ofi hereditary rule and the tutelage of heredi- tary aristocracies, these composite peoples have here permitted a relatively untrammeled 46 TEYING OUT A WOELD SOCIETY 47 struggle of political forces, confident that in the long run the fit survive and that the people acquire political consciousness and aptitude. Refusing to acknowledge them- selves creatures of an absolute state, they have created the responsible state^ authorita- tive and strong, but subject like themselves to the moral law and a decent regard for the opinions of mankind. Respecting them- selves and attentive to their own affairs, they respect all nations and are respected. Free and secure in the responsible state, multitudes of human beings in America have learned to rely on themselves, to assume in- itiative, to organize and to achieve. They have learned the imperative necessity of edu- cation and enlightenment. They have de- veloped individual and cooperative efficiency. They are awakening to the possibilities of a social democracy in which opportunity for all shall be embraced by most, in which every individual shall be assured of safety if he be not himself reckless, of competence if he will earn it, of friendship if he will accept it, of appreciation if he make contribution however small to the well-being of mankind. So reacting and so organized, the peoples of America are making prodigious economic strides. Their industries have grown beyond 48 TEYING OUT A WORLD SOCIETY precedent. Now they export commodities. Soon they will export capital. They will share in the financial control of world affairs. Then the Western Hemisphere not only will wish peace ; it will have the power to make its wish effective. Printed in the United States of America Ttobookisdaeond.elastd«e|«^^ Iiid9A70-2PW6 BEC'DLD jm^llz^ LD2lA-60w-3,'70 (N5382sl0)476-A-3. neneral Library . f^jt^ '.lift -K -■ tv2^-v 4-