AMERICAN IDEALS
[Illustration] AND OTHER ESSAYS [Illustration]
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Author of “The Winning of the West,” “The Wilderness
Hunter,” “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,” etc.
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY
GEN. FRANCIS VINTON GREENE
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1904
COPYRIGHT 1897
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
TO
HENRY CABOT LODGE
_October 1897_
[Illustration]
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Few names are more widely known at the present moment than that
of Theodore Roosevelt, so that in one sense any introduction is
superfluous. But in this sense he is known chiefly as the “Rough Rider”
of the Santiago campaign; whereas those who read these books will see
that his experience as a volunteer officer in the war with Spain is
only one incident in a life which has been singularly varied in thought
and accomplishment and useful in many fields.
Roosevelt was born in New York City, October 27, 1858. On his father’s
side he is descended from a Dutch emigrant of the seventeenth century
and the intermediate generations have been prudent, hard-working,
successful merchants, prominent at all times in the commercial and
social life of New York. His father’s mother was from Pennsylvania,
of Irish stock. His own mother was from Georgia, a daughter of James
Dunwoodie Bullock, whose family was of Scotch and Huguenot origin, and
had been prominent in public life in the South.
During his childhood, Roosevelt was in such bad health that it was
doubtful if he would ever grow to manhood, and his robust strength
and extraordinary capacity for physical endurance were not acquired
until after his outdoor life in the West. He was educated at private
schools in New York City, whence he went to Harvard University in
1876, graduating in the usual course in 1880. His tastes were for
literary work, but the very year after leaving college he was elected
to the Legislature as a representative of one of the City Assembly
districts; and in the same fashion that has since characterized him,
he plunged at once into the thick of the fight as an ardent reformer,
particularly with reference to legislation affecting New York City.
His youth and lack of experience were more than counterbalanced by his
earnestness and aggressive energy, so that he speedily became a power
which had to be recognized. He was the leader of his party while it
was in the minority, and when it was in the majority he was Chairman
of the Committee on Cities. He served three terms in the Legislature,
and during that time introduced and carried through more important city
legislation than was ever brought about by any one assemblyman. It was
all directed by one central purpose, namely, to put an end to boards
and commissions with their opportunities for “trades” and “deals,” to
restrict the powers of the Board of Aldermen, who were notoriously
corrupt, and to concentrate responsibility in the Mayor and single
heads of departments, who could be held accountable; in other words,
to effect the transformation from what was suitable for town-meeting
government in New England or New Holland one or two centuries ago to
what was required for the complicated cosmopolitan metropolis of the
nineteenth century.
While in the Legislature he still found time for literary work, and
in 1882 wrote _The Naval War of 1812_, which told the story of our
glorious successes on the sea; it was written at a period when our
merchant marine was in decadence, our navy at its lowest ebb, and
public interest in the subject almost wholly lost. It was not without
its effect on the rebuilding of the navy which began two years
later, which fortunately for us had already reached such a splendid
development before 1898, and which is still in progress.
In 1884, severe domestic affliction and ill-health caused Roosevelt
to abandon his work in New York and go to Wyoming. He invested a
considerable part of what he inherited from his father in a cattle
ranch, and intended and expected to remain in the West for many years.
The wild, outdoor life fascinated him, and it brought him health and
strength; in spite of defective eyesight, he became a good shot, and
was particularly fond of hunting big game--where the other fellow had
an even chance; and the peculiar characteristics of the cowboy, since
called cow-puncher, appealed alike to his sense of humor and his love
of fair play. After he returned to live in the East, his fondness for
hunting took him to the plains or mountains for his vacation every
year; and his hunting experiences are charmingly described in two
volumes, _Hunting Trips of a Ranchman_ (1885) and _The Wilderness
Hunter_ (1893). Senator Wolcott, in his speech notifying Roosevelt of
his nomination for the Vice-Presidency, playfully referred to these
hunting stories with the remark that “now that you are our candidate
they will all be believed”; but anyone who enjoys or admires manly
sport--such as requires courage, endurance, hardship, and a contest
with animals which are superior to man in strength or speed--will take
the stories on faith, regardless of political belief.
Cattle raising did not prove financially successful, though Roosevelt
kept his ranch until 1896. He returned to New York in 1886, married
again, and once more plunged into political life. A mayor of New
York was to be elected that year. Abram S. Hewitt had received the
nomination from Tammany Hall and other Democrats; Henry George was
the candidate of the Socialists; the Republican party decided to put
forward a candidate, and selected Roosevelt. There was but little
chance of his election, but he made a most energetic canvass, speaking
in three or four places every night during the latter part of the
campaign. Hewitt was elected, George being second, and Roosevelt third,
with a vote of about 60,000 out of a total of 220,000.
The next three years were devoted almost wholly to literary and
historical work. The upbuilding of the great West is one of the great
world movements, in some respects the most important fact of the
century now closing. Roosevelt began writing the story of it in 1886,
under the title of _The Winning of the West_; the first two volumes
appearing in 1889, the third in 1894, and the fourth in 1896. Each
volume describes a distinct period and is complete in itself. The last
carried the story through the Louisiana Purchase. The history has been
interrupted by the Spanish War and the engrossing duties of the office
of Governor of New York; but it is hoped that the leisure hours of a
Vice-President and the facilities of the libraries in Washington will
afford the time and opportunity for its completion. Readers of the four
volumes already published will understand the reasons why Roosevelt
has such an extraordinary hold upon the sentiment and sympathy of the
Western people. They will see that, although born and bred in the great
city of the East, he realizes that the bone and sinew of this country,
its strength and the sources of its wealth, are in the wide valley
between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains. Its origin and growth
have been studied by him in every detail; he has participated enough
in its life thoroughly to understand it, and he is in close touch and
accord with its aspirations for the future.
In 1889, Roosevelt was appointed by President Harrison a member of the
Civil Service Commission at Washington and soon became its president,
retaining that office until the spring of 1895. A thorough believer
in the principle of merit instead of favor in selecting and promoting
appointees for the thousands of minor offices in the public service,
he entered with his usual combativeness upon the task of enforcing the
law for carrying this principle into effect. For six years, under his
guidance, this was a fighting commission, not hesitating to grapple
with any Cabinet officer or members of Congress, irrespective of their
party affiliations, who tried to nullify or repeal the law. The result
was the extension of the Civil Service rules to more than 50,000
government employés who were not protected by them in 1889.
In 1894 there was a union of all parties in New York City who were
opposed to Tammany Hall, and W. L. Strong was elected Mayor. He invited
Roosevelt to join his administration as head of one of the departments;
first, as head of the Street-Cleaning Department, which he declined
for lack of special knowledge; and second, as head of the Police
Department, which he accepted. Some of his friends in Washington urged
him not to accept the place on the ground that it was beneath his
dignity; others urged him with even more vehemence to accept it, partly
because of the good work he could do for New York in putting this
department on an honest basis, and partly because of the opportunity
it would afford him of getting on the firing-line in the contest for
good government in cities. He held this office for two years, and
though subjected to much criticism from certain quarters for enforcing
the liquor-license law, yet it can be said, in a word, that during
his administration he placed the department on a thoroughly efficient
basis, broke up the organized system of blackmail which had hitherto
prevailed in the department, and gained the affectionate admiration of
the members of the force to an extent which has never been equalled by
any Police Commissioner before or since.
During the three years from 1894 to 1897 he wrote the greater part of
the essays on political subjects which are printed in the volumes of
_American Ideals_. In these will be found his whole theory of politics,
based on honesty, courage, never-ending hard work, and fair play; and
coupled with these a certain measure of expediency which, without
sacrificing principle, strives to get things done, and to accept the
second best if what he considers the first best is not attainable;
realizing that in a government of universal suffrage many minds must be
consulted and a majority of them brought to the same conclusion before
anything can be accomplished.
When President McKinley took office in 1897, he offered Roosevelt
the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and it was promptly
accepted. He had been only a few months in office before he reached
certain conclusions, to wit: that a war with Spain was inevitable, that
it was desirable, and that he should take an active part in it. He
did everything that lay in his power during the nine months preceding
April, 1898, to see that the Navy was prepared for the struggle, and
how well he succeeded the officers of Dewey’s and Sampson’s fleets and
the Bureau Chiefs in the Navy Department are always abundantly able and
willing to testify to. As war drew near he began to make his plans
for his own part in it. He at first endeavored to obtain a commission
in one of the National Guard regiments in New York which he felt sure
would volunteer for the war, but this for various reasons being not
practicable, he determined to raise a regiment of volunteer cavalry in
the West. His friends in Washington did everything to dissuade him from
this project: his wife was ill, his little children were dependent on
him, and it was urged that he could render far more valuable service in
the Navy Department than in the field. But his purpose was inflexible.
On account of his lack of experience in technical military details,
he asked his friend, Dr. Leonard Wood, an army surgeon who had had
much experience in Indian fighting in Arizona, to take the position
of Colonel, he taking that of Lieutenant-Colonel. He persuaded the
President to authorize the raising of the 1st U. S. Volunteer Cavalry
on this basis. In about thirty days from the issuing of this authority
the regiment was recruited, uniformed, drilled, armed, equipped, and
transported to Tampa, Florida, ready for duty. The story of the Rough
Riders is a household word from Maine to Arizona and from Oregon to
Florida. As told by Roosevelt himself, it has been read by millions of
readers. It is the most picturesque story in our military annals. In
the first skirmish, after landing on Cuban soil, Wood was promoted to
the rank of Brigadier-General, and Roosevelt was left in command of the
regiment. It owed its origin to him, and he was associated with it
from start to finish.
In September, 1898, the Republican State Convention met to nominate
a candidate for Governor of New York. Roosevelt was then with his
regiment at Montauk Point, about to be mustered out of service. He was
nominated, and at once entered upon a vigorous campaign. The party was
then suffering from criticism on account of its alleged mismanagement
of the canals, and in the opinion of the best judges any other
candidate would have been defeated. Roosevelt was elected by about
20,000 majority.
His election was doubtless due to his services in the war with Spain,
but these contributed little or nothing to his qualifications for the
office. These were found in his experience in the State Legislature,
in the Civil Service Commission, the Police Department, and the Navy
Department, an experience which had given him an intimate knowledge of
the practical working of municipal, state, and national governments;
and above all, to his fearless honesty and tireless energy in devotion
to sound principles of administration. During his two years of office
as Governor, he has set a standard which the people of New York will
not soon allow to be lowered. He has put through a first-class Civil
Service law, he has framed and carried through legislation in regard
to the difficult question of taxation, based on a new principle which
is perfectly equitable, is particularly suited to modern conditions,
and when modified in details to such extent as experience shall
demonstrate to be necessary will be accepted by all; he has honestly
and economically administered the canals, and has caused the canal
question to be carefully studied so as to bring out all the essential
facts upon which its solution must be based; he has resolutely refused
to appoint any unfit man to office, although usually ready to accept
a suitable man when recommended by the Republican organization, which
includes the greater part of the voters in the party; he has appointed
commissions to study the educational system, the tenement-house
question, and a revision of the Charter of the great city of New York.
His appointees, from top to bottom, have been of the very highest type;
from the foundation of the State there have been no higher.
Many of his measures are in a half-finished condition. The Republicans
of New York would, beyond question, have renominated and re-elected
him to carry them to completion. But at this stage the Republicans of
the United States with singular unanimity have called him away from
New York, against his personal wishes and judgment, to take part in
national affairs and to aid President McKinley in carrying out those
policies which during the last four years have brought such prosperity
at home and such greatness abroad. He has yielded his judgment to
theirs, and cheerfully accepted the call.
He has six children--Alice Lee, Theodore, Kermit, Ethel Carow,
Archibald Bullock, and Quentin. His home is at Sagamore Hill, Oyster
Bay, Long Island.
In these pages the people of this land can read the thoughts that have
been spun out by his brain during the last eighteen years, and can see
what manner of man he is. They believe him to be honest, fearless,
straightforward, a tireless worker, experienced in the administration
of city, state, and national affairs, a careful student and writer of
his country’s history, an American in every fibre, a man who holds his
life at his country’s service whenever a war is on during his lifetime.
In reading these books their belief in him will be justified and
confirmed.
FRANCIS V. GREENE.
NEW YORK, July 16, 1900.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PREFACE
It is not difficult to be virtuous in a cloistered and negative way.
Neither is it difficult to succeed, after a fashion, in active life,
if one is content to disregard the considerations which bind honorable
and upright men. But it is by no means easy to combine honesty and
efficiency; and yet it is absolutely necessary, in order to do any work
really worth doing. It is not hard, while sitting in one’s study, to
devise admirable plans for the betterment of politics and of social
conditions; but in practice it too often proves very hard to make any
such plan work at all, no matter how imperfectly. Yet the effort must
continually be made, under penalty of constant retrogression in our
political life.
No one quality or one virtue is enough to insure success; vigor,
honesty, common sense,--all are needed. The practical man is merely
rendered more noxious by his practical ability if he employs it
wrongly, whether from ignorance or from lack of morality; while the
doctrinaire, the man of theories, whether written or spoken, is useless
if he cannot also act.
These essays are written on behalf of the many men who do take an
actual part in trying practically to bring about the conditions for
which we somewhat vaguely hope; on behalf of the under-officers in that
army which, with much stumbling, halting, and slipping, many mistakes
and shortcomings, and many painful failures, does, nevertheless,
through weary strife, accomplish something toward raising the standard
of public life.
We feel that the doer is better than the critic and that the man who
strives stands far above the man who stands aloof, whether he thus
stands aloof because of pessimism or because of sheer weakness. To
borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play
fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that success can only
come to the player who “hits the line hard.”
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAGAMORE HILL,
_October, 1897_.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--AMERICAN IDEALS 1
II.--TRUE AMERICANISM 15
III.--THE MANLY VIRTUES AND PRACTICAL POLITICS 35
IV.--THE COLLEGE GRADUATE AND PUBLIC LIFE 47
V.--PHASES OF STATE LEGISLATION 63
VI.--MACHINE POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY 102
VII.--SIX YEARS OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 134
VIII.--ADMINISTERING THE NEW YORK POLICE FORCE 160
IX.--THE VICE-PRESIDENCY AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896 189
X.--HOW NOT TO HELP OUR POORER BROTHER 214
XI.--THE MONROE DOCTRINE 228
XII.--WASHINGTON’S FORGOTTEN MAXIM 247
XIII.--NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 271
XIV.--SOCIAL EVOLUTION 303
XV.--THE LAW OF CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 329
XVI.--[1]REFORM THROUGH SOCIAL WORK 355
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Reprinted through the courtesy of the S. S. McClure Co.
AMERICAN IDEALS
[Illustration]
I
AMERICAN IDEALS[2]
In his noteworthy book on _National Life and Character_, Mr. Pearson
says: “The countrymen of Chatham and Wellington, of Washington and
Lincoln, in short the citizens of every historic state, are richer by
great deeds that have formed the national character, by winged words
that have passed into current speech, by the examples of lives and
labors consecrated to the service of the commonwealth.” In other words,
every great nation owes to the men whose lives have formed part of its
greatness not merely the material effect of what they did, not merely
the laws they placed upon the statute books or the victories they won
over armed foes, but also the immense but indefinable moral influence
produced by their deeds and words themselves upon the national
character. It would be difficult to exaggerate the material effects
of the careers of Washington and of Lincoln upon the United States.
Without Washington we should probably never have won our independence
of the British crown, and we should almost certainly have failed to
become a great nation, remaining instead a cluster of jangling little
communities, drifting toward the type of government prevalent in
Spanish America. Without Lincoln we might perhaps have failed to keep
the political unity we had won; and even if, as is possible, we had
kept it, both the struggle by which it was kept and the results of this
struggle would have been so different that the effect upon our national
history could not have failed to be profound. Yet the nation’s debt
to these men is not confined to what it owes them for its material
well-being, incalculable though this debt is. Beyond the fact that we
are an independent and united people, with half a continent as our
heritage, lies the fact that every American is richer by the heritage
of the noble deeds and noble words of Washington and of Lincoln. Each
of us who reads the Gettysburg speech or the second inaugural address
of the greatest American of the nineteenth century, or who studies
the long campaigns and lofty statesmanship of that other American who
was even greater, cannot but feel within him that lift toward things
higher and nobler which can never be bestowed by the enjoyment of mere
material prosperity.
It is not only the country which these men helped to make and helped
to save that is ours by inheritance; we inherit also all that is best
and highest in their characters and in their lives. We inherit from
Lincoln and from the might of Lincoln’s generation not merely the
freedom of those who once were slaves; for we inherit also the fact of
the freeing of them, we inherit the glory and the honor and the wonder
of the deed that was done, no less than the actual results of the deed
when done. The bells that rang at the passage of the Emancipation
Proclamation still ring in Whittier’s ode; and as men think over the
real nature of the triumph then scored for humankind their hearts shall
ever throb as they cannot over the greatest industrial success or over
any victory won at a less cost than ours.
The captains and the armies who, after long years of dreary campaigning
and bloody, stubborn fighting, brought to a close the Civil War have
likewise left us even more than a reunited realm. The material effect
of what they did is shown in the fact that the same flag flies from
the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande, and all the people of the United
States are richer because they are one people and not many, because
they belong to one great nation and not to a contemptible knot of
struggling nationalities. But besides this, besides the material
results of the Civil War, we are all, North and South, incalculably
richer for its memories. We are the richer for each grim campaign, for
each hard-fought battle. We are the richer for valor displayed alike by
those who fought so valiantly for the right and by those who, no less
valiantly, fought for what they deemed the right. We have in us nobler
capacities for what is great and good because of the infinite woe and
suffering, and because of the splendid ultimate triumph.
In the same way that we are the better for the deeds of our mighty men
who have served the nation well, so we are the worse for the deeds and
the words of those who have striven to bring evil on the land. Most
fortunately we have been free from the peril of the most dangerous
of all examples. We have not had to fight the influence exerted over
the minds of eager and ambitious men by the career of the military
adventurer who heads some successful revolutionary or separatist
movement. No man works such incalculable woe to a free country as
he who teaches young men that one of the paths to glory, renown,
and temporal success lies along the line of armed resistance to the
Government, of its attempted overthrow.
Yet if we are free from the peril of this example, there are other
perils from which we are not free. All through our career we have had
to war against a tendency to regard, in the individual and the nation
alike, as most important, things that are of comparatively little
importance. We rightfully value success, but sometimes we overvalue
it, for we tend to forget that success may be obtained by means which
should make it abhorred and despised by every honorable man. One
section of the community deifies as “smartness” the kind of trickery
which enables a man without conscience to succeed in the financial
or political world. Another section of the community deifies violent
homicidal lawlessness. If ever our people as a whole adopt these
views, then we shall have proved that we are unworthy of the heritage
our forefathers left us; and our country will go down in ruin.
The people that do harm in the end are not the wrong-doers whom all
execrate; they are the men who do not do quite as much wrong, but who
are applauded instead of being execrated. The career of Benedict Arnold
has done us no harm as a nation because of the universal horror it
inspired. The men who have done us harm are those who have advocated
disunion, but have done it so that they have been enabled to keep their
political position; who have advocated repudiation of debts, or other
financial dishonesty, but have kept their standing in the community;
who preach the doctrines of anarchy, but refrain from action that will
bring them within the pale of the law; for these men lead thousands
astray by the fact that they go unpunished or even rewarded for their
misdeeds.
It is unhappily true that we inherit the evil as well as the good
done by those who have gone before us, and in the one case as in the
other the influence extends far beyond the mere material effects. The
foes of order harm quite as much by example as by what they actually
accomplish. So it is with the equally dangerous criminals of the
wealthy classes. The conscienceless stock speculator who acquires
wealth by swindling his fellows, by debauching judges and corrupting
legislatures, and who ends his days with the reputation of being among
the richest men in America, exerts over the minds of the rising
generation an influence worse than that of the average murderer or
bandit, because his career is even more dazzling in its success, and
even more dangerous in its effects upon the community. Any one who
reads the essays of Charles Francis Adams and Henry Adams, entitled
“A Chapter of Erie,” and “The Gold Conspiracy in New York,” will read
about the doings of men whose influence for evil upon the community is
more potent than that of any band of anarchists or train robbers.
There are other members of our mercantile community who, being
perfectly honest themselves, nevertheless do almost as much damage as
the dishonest. The professional labor agitator, with all his reckless
incendiarism of speech, can do no more harm than the narrow, hard,
selfish merchant or manufacturer who deliberately sets himself to
keep the laborers he employs in a condition of dependence which will
render them helpless to combine against him; and every such merchant or
manufacturer who rises to sufficient eminence leaves the record of his
name and deeds as a legacy of evil to all who come after him.
But of course the worst foes of America are the foes to that orderly
liberty without which our Republic must speedily perish. The reckless
labor agitator who arouses the mob to riot and bloodshed is in the last
analysis the most dangerous of the workingman’s enemies. This man is
a real peril; and so is his sympathizer, the legislator, who to catch
votes denounces the judiciary and the military because they put down
mobs. We Americans have, on the whole, a right to be optimists; but it
is mere folly to blind ourselves to the fact that there are some black
clouds on the horizon of our future.
During the summer of 1894, every American capable of thinking must at
times have pondered very gravely over certain features of the national
character which were brought into unpleasant prominence by the course
of events. The demagogue, in all his forms, is as characteristic an
evil of a free society as the courtier is of a despotism; and the
attitude of many of our public men at the time of the great strike
in July, 1894, was such as to call down on their heads the hearty
condemnation of every American who wishes well to his country. It
would be difficult to overestimate the damage done by the example and
action of a man like Governor Altgeld of Illinois. Whether he is honest
or not in his beliefs is not of the slightest consequence. He is as
emphatically the foe of decent government as Tweed himself, and is
capable of doing far more damage than Tweed. The Governor, who began
his career by pardoning anarchists, and whose most noteworthy feat
since was his bitter and undignified, but fortunately futile, campaign
against the election of the upright judge who sentenced the anarchists,
is the foe of every true American and is the foe particularly of every
honest workingman. With such a man it was to be expected that he
should in time of civic commotion act as the foe of the law-abiding
and the friend of the lawless classes, and endeavor, in company with
the lowest and most abandoned office-seeking politicians, to prevent
proper measures being taken to prevent riot and to punish the rioters.
Had it not been for the admirable action of the Federal Government,
Chicago would have seen a repetition of what occurred during the Paris
Commune, while Illinois would have been torn by a fierce social war;
and for all the horrible waste of life that this would have entailed
Governor Altgeld would have been primarily responsible. It was a
most fortunate thing that the action at Washington was so quick and
so emphatic. Senator Davis of Minnesota set the key of patriotism at
the time when men were still puzzled and hesitated. The President and
Attorney-General Olney acted with equal wisdom and courage, and the
danger was averted. The completeness of the victory of the Federal
authorities, representing the cause of law and order, has been perhaps
one reason why it was so soon forgotten; and now not a few shortsighted
people need to be reminded that when we were on the brink of an almost
terrific explosion the governor of Illinois did his best to work to
this country a measure of harm as great as any ever planned by Benedict
Arnold, and that we were saved by the resolute action of the Federal
judiciary and of the regular army. Moreover, Governor Altgeld, though
pre-eminent, did not stand alone on his unenviable prominence. Governor
Waite of Colorado stood with him. Most of the Populist governors of
the Western States, and the Republican governor of California and the
Democratic governor of North Dakota, shared the shame with him; and
it makes no difference whether in catering to riotous mobs they paid
heed to their own timidity and weakness, or to that spirit of blatant
demagogism which, more than any other, jeopardizes the existence of
free institutions. On the other hand, the action of the then Governor
of Ohio, Mr. McKinley, entitled him to the gratitude of all good
citizens.
Every true American, every man who thinks, and who if the occasion
comes is ready to act, may do well to ponder upon the evil wrought by
the lawlessness of the disorderly classes when once they are able to
elect their own chiefs to power. If the Government generally got into
the hands of men such as Altgeld, the Republic would go to pieces in
a year; and it would be right that it should go to pieces, for the
election of such men shows that the people electing them are unfit to
be entrusted with self-government.
There are, however, plenty of wrong-doers besides those who commit
the overt act. Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who
sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a
more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible
to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing
a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses--whether
these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or
to allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive idleness
and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of high social
position, foreign or native, for his daughter. Such a man is only
the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a
college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are
also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless
of the workingmen, whom they oppress, and of the state, whose existence
they imperil. There are not very many of them, but there is a very
great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type,
and, just in so far as they do so approach, they are curses to the
country. The man who is content to let politics go from bad to worse,
jesting at the corruption of politicians, the man who is content to
see the maladministration of justice without an immediate and resolute
effort to reform it, is shirking his duty and is preparing the way for
infinite woe in the future. Hard, brutal indifference to the right,
and an equally brutal shortsightedness as to the inevitable results of
corruption and injustice, are baleful beyond measure; and yet they are
characteristic of a great many Americans who think themselves perfectly
respectable, and who are considered thriving, prosperous men by their
easy-going fellow-citizens.
Another class, merging into this, and only less dangerous, is that of
the men whose ideals are purely material. These are the men who are
willing to go for good government when they think it will pay, but
who measure everything by the shop-till, the people who are unable to
appreciate any quality that is not a mercantile commodity, who do not
understand that a poet may do far more for a country than the owner
of a nail factory, who do not realize that no amount of commercial
prosperity can supply the lack of the heroic virtues, or can in itself
solve the terrible social problems which all the civilized world is now
facing. The mere materialist is, above all things, short-sighted. In a
recent article Mr. Edward Atkinson casually mentioned that the regular
army could now render the country no “effective or useful service.”
Two months before this sapient remark was printed the regular army
had saved Chicago from the fate of Paris in 1870 and had prevented
a terrible social war in the West. At the end of this article Mr.
Atkinson indulged in a curious rhapsody against the navy, denouncing
its existence and being especially wrought up, not because war-vessels
take life, but because they “destroy commerce.” To men of a certain
kind, trade and property are far more sacred than life or honor, of
far more consequence than the great thoughts and lofty emotions,
which alone make a nation mighty. They believe, with a faith almost
touching in its utter feebleness, that “the Angel of Peace, draped
in a garment of untaxed calico,” has given her final message to men
when she has implored them to devote all their energies to producing
oleomargarine at a quarter of a cent less a firkin, or to importing
woollens for a fraction less than they can be made at home. These
solemn prattlers strive after an ideal in which they shall happily
unite the imagination of a green-grocer with the heart of a Bengalee
baboo. They are utterly incapable of feeling one thrill of generous
emotion, or the slightest throb of that pulse which gives to the world
statesmen, patriots, warriors, and poets, and which makes a nation
other than a cumberer of the world’s surface. In the concluding page of
his article Mr. Atkinson, complacently advancing his panacea, his quack
cure-all, says that “all evil powers of the world will go down before”
a policy of “reciprocity of trade without obstruction”! Fatuity can go
no farther.
No Populist who wishes a currency based on corn and cotton stands in
more urgent need of applied common sense than does the man who believes
that the adoption of any policy; no matter what, in reference to our
foreign commerce, will cut that tangled knot of social well-being
and misery at which the fingers of the London free-trader clutch as
helplessly as those of the Berlin protectionist. Such a man represents
individually an almost imponderable element in the work and thought
of the community; but in the aggregate he stands for a real danger,
because he stands for a feeling evident of late years among many
respectable people. The people who pride themselves upon having a
purely commercial ideal are apparently unaware that such an ideal
is as essentially mean and sordid as any in the world, and that no
bandit community of the Middle Ages can have led a more unlovely life
than would be the life of men to whom trade and manufactures were
everything, and to whom such words as national honor and glory,
as courage and daring, and loyalty and unselfishness, had become
meaningless. The merely material, the merely commercial ideal, the
ideal of the men “whose fatherland is the till,” is in its very essence
debasing and lowering. It is as true now as ever it was that no man
and no nation shall live by bread alone. Thrift and industry are
indispensable virtues; but they are not all-sufficient. We must base
our appeals for civic and national betterment on nobler grounds than
those of mere business expediency.
We have examples enough and to spare that tend to evil; nevertheless,
for our good fortune, the men who have most impressed themselves upon
the thought of the nation have left behind them careers the influence
of which must tell for good. The unscrupulous speculator who rises to
enormous wealth by swindling his neighbor; the capitalist who oppresses
the workingman; the agitator who wrongs the workingman yet more deeply
by trying to teach him to rely not upon himself, but partly upon the
charity of individuals or of the state and partly upon mob violence;
the man in public life who is a demagogue or corrupt, and the newspaper
writer who fails to attack him because of his corruption, or who
slanderously assails him when he is honest; the political leader who,
cursed by some obliquity of moral or of mental vision, seeks to produce
sectional or social strife--all these, though important in their day,
have hitherto failed to leave any lasting impress upon the life of
the nation. The men who have profoundly influenced the growth of our
national character have been in most cases precisely those men whose
influence was for the best and was strongly felt as antagonistic to the
worst tendency of the age. The great writers, who have written in prose
or verse, have done much for us. The great orators whose burning words
on behalf of liberty, of union, of honest government, have rung through
our legislative halls, have done even more. Most of all has been done
by the men who have spoken to us through deeds and not words, or whose
words have gathered their especial charm and significance because they
came from men who did speak in deeds. A nation’s greatness lies in its
possibility of achievement in the present, and nothing helps it more
than the consciousness of achievement in the past.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _The Forum_, February, 1895.
[Illustration]
II
TRUE AMERICANISM[3]
Patriotism was once defined as “the last refuge of a scoundrel”;
and somebody has recently remarked that when Dr. Johnson gave this
definition he was ignorant of the infinite possibilities contained
in the word “reform.” Of course both gibes were quite justifiable,
in so far as they were aimed at people who use noble names to cloak
base purposes. Equally of course the man shows little wisdom and a
low sense of duty who fails to see that love of country is one of the
elemental virtues, even though scoundrels play upon it for their own
selfish ends; and, inasmuch as abuses continually grow up in civic life
as in all other kinds of life, the statesman is indeed a weakling who
hesitates to reform these abuses because the word “reform” is often on
the lips of men who are silly or dishonest.
What is true of patriotism and reform is true also of Americanism.
There are plenty of scoundrels always ready to try to belittle
reform movements or to bolster up existing iniquities in the name of
Americanism; but this does not alter the fact that the man who can do
most in this country is and must be the man whose Americanism is most
sincere and intense. Outrageous though it is to use a noble idea as
the cloak for evil, it is still worse to assail the noble idea itself
because it can thus be used. The men who do iniquity in the name of
patriotism, of reform, of Americanism, are merely one small division of
the class that has always existed and will always exist,--the class of
hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always prompt to steal the
watchwords of righteousness and use them in the interests of evil-doing.
The stoutest and truest Americans are the very men who have the least
sympathy with the people who invoke the spirit of Americanism to aid
what is vicious in our government or to throw obstacles in the way of
those who strive to reform it. It is contemptible to oppose a movement
for good because that movement has already succeeded somewhere else,
or to champion an existing abuse because our people have always been
wedded to it. To appeal to national prejudice against a given reform
movement is in every way unworthy and silly. It is as childish to
denounce free trade because England has adopted it as to advocate
it for the same reason. It is eminently proper, in dealing with the
tariff, to consider the effect of tariff legislation in time past upon
other nations as well as the effect upon our own; but in drawing
conclusions it is in the last degree foolish to try to excite prejudice
against one system because it is in vogue in some given country, or to
try to excite prejudice in its favor because the economists of that
country have found that it was suited to their own peculiar needs. In
attempting to solve our difficult problem of municipal government it is
mere folly to refuse to profit by whatever is good in the examples of
Manchester and Berlin because these cities are foreign, exactly as it
is mere folly blindly to copy their examples without reference to our
own totally different conditions. As for the absurdity of declaiming
against civil-service reform, for instance, as “Chinese,” because
written examinations have been used in China, it would be quite as
wise to declaim against gunpowder because it was first utilized by the
same people. In short, the man who, whether from mere dull fatuity or
from an active interest in misgovernment, tries to appeal to American
prejudice against things foreign, so as to induce Americans to oppose
any measure for good, should be looked on by his fellow-countrymen with
the heartiest contempt. So much for the men who appeal to the spirit
of Americanism to sustain us in wrong-doing. But we must never let our
contempt for these men blind us to the nobility of the idea which they
strive to degrade.
We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils
to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have
the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and the virtue to do them. But
we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves
to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.
Our nation is that one among all the nations of the earth which holds
in its hands the fate of the coming years. We enjoy exceptional
advantages, and are menaced by exceptional dangers; and all signs
indicate that we shall either fail greatly or succeed greatly. I
firmly believe that we shall succeed; but we must not foolishly blink
the dangers by which we are threatened, for that is the way to fail.
On the contrary, we must soberly set to work to find out all we can
about the existence and extent of every evil, must acknowledge it to
be such, and must then attack it with unyielding resolution. There are
many such evils, and each must be fought after a separate fashion;
yet there is one quality which we must bring to the solution of every
problem,--that is, an intense and fervid Americanism. We shall never be
successful over the dangers that confront us; we shall never achieve
true greatness, nor reach the lofty ideal which the founders and
preservers of our mighty Federal Republic have set before us, unless we
are Americans in heart and soul, in spirit and purpose, keenly alive
to the responsibility implied in the very name of American, and proud
beyond measure of the glorious privilege of bearing it.
There are two or three sides to the question of Americanism, and two
or three senses in which the word “Americanism” can be used to express
the antithesis of what is unwholesome and undesirable. In the first
place we wish to be broadly American and national, as opposed to being
local or sectional. We do not wish, in politics, in literature, or in
art, to develop that unwholesome parochial spirit, that over-exaltation
of the little community at the expense of the great nation, which
produces what has been described as the patriotism of the village,
the patriotism of the belfry. Politically, the indulgence of this
spirit was the chief cause of the calamities which befell the ancient
republics of Greece, the mediæval republics of Italy, and the petty
States of Germany as it was in the last century. It is this spirit of
provincial patriotism, this inability to take a view of broad adhesion
to the whole nation that has been the chief among the causes that have
produced such anarchy in the South American States, and which have
resulted in presenting to us, not one great Spanish-American federal
nation stretching from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, but a squabbling
multitude of revolution-ridden States, not one of which stands even
in the second rank as a power. However, politically this question of
American nationality has been settled once for all. We are no longer
in danger of repeating in our history the shameful and contemptible
disasters that have befallen the Spanish possessions on this continent
since they threw off the yoke of Spain. Indeed there is, all through
our life, very much less of this parochial spirit than there was
formerly. Still there is an occasional outcropping here and there; and
it is just as well that we should keep steadily in mind the futility
of talking of a Northern literature or a Southern literature, an
Eastern or a Western school of art or science. Joel Chandler Harris is
emphatically a national writer; so is Mark Twain. They do not write
merely for Georgia or Missouri or California any more than for Illinois
or Connecticut; they write as Americans and for all people who can
read English. St. Gaudens lives in New York; but his work is just as
distinctive of Boston or Chicago. It is of very great consequence that
we should have a full and ripe literary development in the United
States, but it is not of the least consequence whether New York, or
Boston, or Chicago, or San Francisco becomes the literary or artistic
centre of the United States.
There is a second side to this question of a broad Americanism,
however. The patriotism of the village or the belfrey is bad, but the
lack of all patriotism is even worse. There are philosophers who assure
us, that in the future, patriotism will be regarded not as a virtue
at all, but merely as a mental stage in the journey toward a state of
feeling when our patriotism will include the whole human race and all
the world. This may be so; but the age of which these philosophers
speak is still several æons distant. In fact, philosophers of this
type are so very advanced that they are of no practical service to
the present generation. It may be, that in ages so remote that we
cannot now understand any of the feelings of those who will dwell in
them, patriotism will no longer be regarded as a virtue, exactly as
it may be that in those remote ages people will look down upon and
disregard monogamic marriage; but as things now are and have been for
two or three thousand years past, and are likely to be for two or
three thousand years to come, the words “home” and “country” mean a
great deal. Nor do they show any tendency to lose their significance.
At present, treason, like adultery, ranks as one of the worst of all
possible crimes.