well-wielded boss's whip, but at the sacrifice of initiative and
invention. Moreover, remove the whip, and the efficiency quickly goes to
pieces. On the other hand, the efficiency achieved by voluntary effort
and free cooperation comes much more slowly, but it lasts. Moreover, it
develops, hand in hand, with initiative and invention.
The negro, doubtless, has never been so generally efficient as before
the civil war, in the South, under the overseer's whip; yet every negro
who, to-day, has character enough to save up and buy a mule and an acre
of ground, tills it with a consistent and permanent effectiveness of
which slave labor is never capable. In the one case, moreover, there is
the average economic result, in the other, the gradual development of
manhood.
Organize a factory on the feudal lines so prevalent in current industry.
Get a strong, dominating superintendent and give him autocratic
authority. Quickly he will show results. Always, however, there is the
danger of strikes, and if the strong hand falters, the organization
disintegrates. On the other hand, let a corporation take its artisans
into its confidence, give each a small proportionate share in the annual
earnings. Each worker will feel increasingly that the business is his
business. He will take pride in his accomplishment. Gradually he will
attain efficiency, and work permanently, without oversight, with a
consistent earnestness no boss's whip ever attained,
The experience of the National Cash Register Company at Dayton, Ohio,
proves this. The experiments of Henry Ford are a step toward the same
solution. So, in lesser measure, is the plan of the Steel trust to
permit and encourage its employees to purchase annually its stock,
somewhat below the current market price, giving a substantial bonus if
the stock is held over ten years.
If you wish an illustration on a larger scale, consider the mass
formation tactics of the German soldiers, in contrast to the individual
courage, initiative and action of the French. There are the two types
of efficiency in sheerest contrast, but beyond is always the question of
their effect on manhood. France has saved and regenerated her soul; but
Germany--?
Further, the breakdown of paternalistically achieved efficiency has been
evident in Germany's utter failure to understand the mind of other
peoples, particularly of democracies. She had voluminous data, gathered
by the most atrociously efficient spy system ever developed, yet she
utterly misread the mind of France, England and the United States. The
same break-down is evident in Germany's failure in colonization in
contrast to England's success.
For offensive war, it must be admitted, the efficiency under the boss's
whip will go further. For defensive war, or war for high moral aims, it
is desirable that the individual soldier should think for himself,
respond to the high appeal. Thus for such warfare the efficiency of
voluntary effort and cooperation is superior. An autocracy would better
rule its soldiers by a military caste; there can be no excuse for such
in a democracy. Thus, the utmost possible fraternization of officers
and men is desirable, and social snobbery, the snubbing of officers who
come up from the ranks, and other anachronistic survivals, should be
stamped out, as utterly foreign to what should be the spirit of the
military arm of democracy.
Further, in estimating the two types, one must remember that paternalism
may exercise its power in secret and that it accomplishes much in the
dark. Democracy, on the other hand, is afflicted and blessed with
pitiless publicity. Thus its evils are all exposed, it washes all its
dirty linen in public; but the main thing is to get it clean.
When it comes to invention and initiative, as already indicated,
democracy has the advantage, immediately, as in the long run. We are
the most inventive people on earth, and that quality is a direct result
of our democratic individualism. It is a significant fact that most of
the startling inventions used in this War were made in America--but
_developed and applied in Germany._ There, again, are evident the
contrasting results of the two types of social organization. The
indefatigably industrious and docile German mind can work out and apply
the inventions furnished it, with marvelous persistency and
effectiveness, under paternal control. We have the problem of achieving
by voluntary effort and cooperation a persistent thoroughness in working
out the ideas and inventions that come to us in such abundant measure.
The path of democracy is education.
XIX
THE SOLUTION FOR DEMOCRACY
When we say that the path of democracy is education, we do not mean that
there is an easy solution of its problem. There is no patent medicine
we can feed the American people and cure it of its diseases. There is
no specific for the menaces that threaten. Eternal vigilance and effort
are the price, not only of liberty, but of every good of man. Let
things alone, and they get bad; to keep them good, we must struggle
everlastingly to make them better. Leave the pool of politics unstirred
by putting into it ever new individual thought and ideal, and how
quickly it becomes a stagnant, ill-smelling pond. Leave a church
unvitalized, by ever fresh personal consecration, and how quickly it
becomes a dead form, hampering the life of the spirit. Leave a
university uninfluenced by ever new earnestness and devotion on the part
of student and teacher, and how soon it becomes a scholastic machine,
positively oppressing the mind and spirit.
There is a true sense in which the universe exists momentarily by the
grace of God. Take light away, and you have darkness. Take darkness
away, and you have not necessarily light; you might have chaos. Take
health away, and you have disease. Take disease away, and you have not
necessarily health; you may have death. Take virtue away, and you have
vice. Take vice away, and you have not necessarily virtue; you might
have negative respectability. Thus it is the continual affirmation of
the good that keeps the heritage of yesterday and takes the step toward
to-morrow.
Nevertheless, if there is no easy solution of the problem, there are
certain big lines of attack. If we are right in our diagnosis, that the
problem of democracy is a problem of education, then our whole system of
education, for child, youth and adult, should be reconstructed to focus
upon the building of positive and effective moral personality.
American education began as a subsidiary process. Children got organic
education in the home, on the farm, in the work shop. They went to
school to get certain formal disciplines, to learn to read, write and
cipher and to acquire formal grammar. With the moving into the cities,
the industrial revolution and the entire transformation of our life, the
school has had to take over more and more of the process of organic
education. If children fail to get such education in the school, they
are apt to miss it altogether.
With this entire change in the meaning of the school, old notions of its
purpose still survive. Probably no one is so benighted to-day as to
imagine that the chief function of the school is to fill the mind with
information; but there are many who still hold to the tradition that the
chief purpose of education is to sharpen the intellectual tools of the
individual for the sake of his personal success. This notion is a
misleading survival, for tools are of value only in terms of the
character using them. The same equipment may serve, equally, good or
bad ends. Only as education focusses on the development of positive and
effective moral character can it aid in solving the problem of
democracy.
Need it be added that this does not mean teaching morals and manners to
children, thirty minutes a day, three times a week? That is a minor
fragment of moral education. It means that all phases of the process--
the relation of pupil and teacher, school and home, the government and
discipline, the lessons taught in every subject, the environment, the
proportioning of the curriculum, of physical, emotional and intellectual
culture--all shall be focussed and organized upon the one significant
aim of the whole--_character_.
Further, if education is to overcome the menaces and solve the dilemma
of democracy, it must be carried beyond childhood and youth and outside
the walls of academic institutions. The ever wider education of adult
citizenship is indispensable to the progress and safety of democracy. It
is one of the glaring illustrations of the inefficiency of our democracy
that there are still communities where school boards build school houses
with public money, open them five or six hours, five days in the week,
and refuse to allow them to be opened any other hour of the day or
night, for a civic forum, parents' meeting, public lecture or other
activity of adult education; and yet we call ourselves a practical
people! Surely, in a democracy, the state is as vitally interested in
the education of the adult citizen as of the child.
Herein is the significance of those various extensions of education,
developing and spreading so widely to-day. University-extension and
Chautauqua movements, civic forums, free lectures to the people by
boards of education and public libraries, summer schools, night schools
for adults--all are illustrations of this movement, so vital to the
progress of democracy. Through these instrumentalities the popular
ideal may be elevated, the public mind may be trained to more logical
and earnest thought, citizenship may be made more serious and
intelligent, and finally a most helpful influence may be exerted on the
academic institutions themselves. It is an easily verifiable truth that
any academic institution that builds around itself an enclosing
scholastic wall, refuses to go outside and serve and learn in the larger
world of humanity, in the long run inevitably dies of academic dry rot.
In the endeavor to solve the problem of democracy cannot we do more than
we have done hitherto in cultivating reverence for moral leadership--the
quality so much needed in democracy at the present hour? This may be
achieved through many aspects of education, but especially through
contact with noble souls in literature and history. History, above all,
is the great opportunity, and, from this point of view, is it not
necessary to rewrite our histories: instead of portraying solely
statesmen and warriors, to fill them with lofty examples of leadership
in all walks of life?
Women as well as men: for surely ideals of both should be fostered. A
colleague, interested in this problem, recently took one of the most
widely used text-books of American history, and counted the pages on
which a woman was mentioned. Of the five hundred pages, there were
four: not four pages devoted to women; but four mentioning a woman.
What does it mean: that women have contributed less than one part in a
hundred and five to the development of American life? Surely no one
would think that. What, then, are the reasons for the discrepancy?
There are several, but one may be mentioned: men have written the
histories, and they have written chiefly of the two fields of action
where men have been most important and women least, war and
statesmanship. Surely, however, if American history is to reveal the
American spirit, exercise the contagion of noble ideals and develop
reverence for true moral leadership, it must present types of both
manhood and womanhood in all fields of action and endeavor.
One who has stood with Socrates in the common criminal prison in Athens
and watched him drink the hemlock poison, saying "No evil can happen to
a good man in life or after death," who has heard the oration of Paul on
Mars Hill or that of Pericles over the Athenian dead, who has thrilled
to the heroism of Joan of Arc and Edith Cavell, the noble service of
Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale, the high appeal of Helen Hunt
Jackson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who has heard Giordano Bruno
exclaim as the flames crept up about him, "I die a martyr, and
willingly," who has responded to the calm elevation of Marcus Aurelius,
the cosmopolitan wisdom of Goethe, the sweet gentleness of Maeterlinck's
spirit and the titan dreams of Ibsen, can scarcely fail to appreciate
the brotherhood of all men and to learn that reverence for the true
moral leader, that dignifies alike giver and recipient.
XX
TRAINING FOR MORAL LEADERSHIP
Since the path of democracy is education, moral leadership is more
necessary to it, than in any other form of society; yet there are
exceptional obstacles to its development. We speak of "the white light
that beats upon a throne": it is nothing compared to the search light
played upon every leader of democracy. With our lack of reverence, we
delight in pulling to pieces the personalities of those who lead us.
Thus it is increasingly difficult to get men of sensitive spirit to pay
the price of leadership for democracy.
Is it not possible to do more than we have done, consciously to develop
such leadership? Where is it trained? In life, the college and
university, the normal school, the schools of law, medicine and
theology. Yes, but if not one boy and girl in ten graduates from the
high school, surely we want one man and woman in ten to fulfill some
measure of moral leadership, and the high school is directly concerned
with the task of furnishing such leadership for American democracy.
If that is true, is it not a pity that the high school is so largely
dominated from above by the demand of the college upon the entering
freshman? It is not to be taken for granted that the particular regimen
of studies, best fitting the student to pass the entrance examinations
of a college or university, is the best possible for the nine out of ten
students, who go directly from the high school into the world, and must
fulfill some measure of moral leadership for American democracy. The
presumption is to the contrary. College professors are human--some of
them. They want students prepared to enter as smoothly as possible into
the somewhat artificial curricula of academic studies they have
arranged. The Latin professor wishes not to go back and start with the
rudiments of his subject, as the professor of mathematics with the
beginnings of Algebra and Geometry. The result is they demand of the
high school what fits most smoothly into their scheme.
Now if it is not possible to serve equally the needs of both groups,
would it not be better to neglect the one tenth of the students, going
on to college, even assuming they are the pick of the flock, which they
are not always? They have four more years to correct their mistakes and
round out their culture. If any one must be subordinated, it would be
better to neglect them, and focus upon the needs of the nine out of ten,
who go directly from the high school into life and have not another
chance; yet there are states in the Union, where it is possible for a
committee of the state university at the top to say to every high school
teacher in the state, "Conform to our requirements, or leave the state,
or get out of the profession." The threat, moreover, has been carried
out more than once.
That situation is utterly wrong. We want organization of the
educational system, with each unit cooperating with the next higher, but
if education is to solve the problem of democracy and furnish moral
leadership for American life, we want each unit to be free, first of
all, to serve its own constituency to the best of its power. The
problem is not serious for the big city high school, with its multiplied
elective courses, but for the small rural or town high school, with its
limited corps of teachers and its necessarily fixed courses, the burden
is onerous indeed.
Is the American college and university doing all that it might do in
cultivating moral leadership for American democracy? The last decades
have seen an astounding and unparalleled development of higher education
in America. In the old days, the college was usually on a
denominational foundation. It was supported by the dollars and pennies
of earnest religionists who believed that education was necessary to
religion and morality. The president was generally a clergyman of the
denomination; he taught the ethics course, and all students were
required to take it. There was compulsory chapel attendance, and once a
day the entire student body gathered together to listen to some moral
and religious thought.
Then came the immense expansion of higher education. Courses were
multiplied and diversified. Universities were established or endowed by
the state. Academies became colleges, and colleges, universities.
Institutions were generally secularized. Compulsory chapel attendance
was rightly abandoned. Each department served its own interest apart.
Until to-day certain of our great universities are not unlike vast
intellectual department stores, with each professor calling his goods
across the counter, and the president, a sort of superior floorwalker,
to see that no one clerk gets too many customers. It is an impressive
illustration of what has happened to our higher institutions that, in
certain of them, the one regular meeting place of the entire student
body in a common interest, is the bleachers by the athletic field. One
continues to believe in college athletics, in spite of the frequent
absurdities and worse, done in their name; only if the numbers of those
playing the game and those exercising only their lungs and throats from
the bleachers, were reversed, better all-round athletic education would
result. Is it not, however, a trenchant criticism on the situation in
our higher education, that so often the one common interest should be in
something that is, at least, aside from the main business of the
institution?
Moreover, no institution can rightly serve democracy, unless it is
itself democratic. Thus the growth of an aristocratic spirit in our
colleges and universities is an ominous sign. For instance, it is still
true that any boy or girl, with a sound body and a good mind and no
family to support, can get a college education. Money is not
indispensable: it is possible to work one's way through. Will this
always be true? One wonders. It is significant that it is easiest to
work your way through college, and keep your self-respect and the
respect of your fellows, in the small, meagerly endowed college on the
frontier. It is most difficult, with a few exceptions one gladly
recognizes, in the great, rich universities of the East. What does that
mean?
Straws show the tide: it was announced some time ago by the president of
one of our richest and oldest universities that henceforth scholarships
in that institution would be given solely on the basis of intellectual
scholarship, as tested by examination; and applause went up from the
alumni all across the country; yet what does it mean? It means that the
boy who has to work on a threshing machine, sell books to an
unsuspecting public, or do some other semi-honorable work all summer to
get back into college in the Fall, cannot pass those examinations
equally with a rich man's son of equal mind, who can take a tutor to the
seashore or the mountains and coach up all summer. Thus foundations,
established by well-meaning people to help poor boys self-respectingly
through college, become intellectual prizes for those who do not need
them. That is all wrong.
Take the special student problem. When a college or university is
founded, it needs students: they are the life-blood of the institution.
Really all that is needed to make a college is a teacher and some
students: buildings are not indispensable, but students the school must
have. Thus it is apt to keep its bars down and its entrance
requirements flexible. Special students, often mature men and women,
who are not prepared to pass the freshman examinations, are admitted on
the recommendation of heads of d epartments, to special courses they are
well fitted to take. Students are admitted freely, and then sifted out
afterward, if they prove unworthy of their opportunity: not a bad
method, by the way.
A dozen years pass, and the institution wants to become respectable.
It is just as with the individual: the man, at first, is absorbed in
money-getting, and when he has it, yearns for respectability. Now
getting respectable, for a college or university, is called "raising the
standard of scholarship." Let this not be misunderstood: painstaking,
infinitely laborious, accurate scholarship is a noble aim, well worth
the consistent effort of a lifetime; but there are two sides to raising
the standard of scholarship. Does an educational institution exist for
the sake of its reputation, or to serve its constituency? If it seeks
to advance its reputation at the expense of its fullest and best service
to those who need its help, is it not recreant to its duty and
opportunity?
Well, in the mood cited, the institution raises and standardizes its
entrance-requirements and generally excludes special students. One
readily sees why: it is much easier to work with the regularly prepared
freshman, he fits much more smoothly and comfortably into the machinery
of the institution. Many a wise teacher will admit, nevertheless, that
the best students he ever taught and the ones whose lives he is proudest
of having influenced, were often men and women, thirty, forty, fifty
years of age--teachers who suddenly realized that the ruts of their
calling had become so deep they could no longer see over them, ministers
awakening to the fact that they had given all their store and must get a
new supply, business men aware of a call to another field of action--
working with a consistent earnestness the average fledgling freshman
cannot imagine--he is not old enough; yet generally the tendency is to
exclude such students, unless they will go back and do the arduous, and
often for them useless, work of preparing to pass the examinations for
entrance to the freshman class. That, too, is all wrong.
The American college and university stands to-day at the parting of the
ways: this generation will largely determine its future. If the
American college and university ever becomes a social club for the sons
and daughters of the rich, an institution making it easy for them to
secure business and professional opportunity and advancement, to the
exclusion of their poorer fellows, it may be as necessary to
disestablish the foundations of our great universities, as statesmen in
Europe thought it necessary to disestablish the monastic foundations at
the close of the middle age. They, too, began as educational
institutions. If, on the other hand, the American college and university
remains true to its task, if it keeps its doors open and its spirit
democratic, if it seeks to render ever larger service to the great
public and to develop moral leadership for American democracy, then,
indeed, it will go ever forward upon its noble path.
XXI
DEMOCRACY AND SACRIFICE
We have seen the conflict of ideas in the War: the German philosophy
that man exists for the state, the contrasting idea of democracy that
the state exists for man. We may well ask why any institution should be
regarded as sacred, except as it has the adventitious sacredness, coming
from time, convention and hoary tradition. It was said long ago that
"the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath," and the
statement may be universalized. Every institution on earth--marriage,
the family, education, the church, the state--was made for man and not
man for the institution. Humanity must always be the end. Why should
we perpetuate any institution that does not serve life? Kant voiced the
principle in his second imperative of duty: "Always treat humanity,
whether in thine own person or that of any other, as an end withal, and
never as a means only." Kant was a Prussian philosopher: one wonders
what he would have thought of the "Kanonen-Futter" theory of manhood!