_Ideal manliness._—Every community has highest efficiency and best
civilization when each individual member has the largest range of
abilities to meet wants, and the largest range of wants to be met. An
ideal civilization involves the distinct aim of gaining for each mature
person in any association the fullest development of all abilities and all
materials and tools for their use. This is amply illustrated in a family
of well grown, well trained, well educated, trustworthy men and women with
sufficient capital under control to maintain the highest activity of every
personal power and attainment. Childhood and old age must always be
provided for by exertions of those whose abilities are in their prime, and
accidental weakness of every kind is met from the same strength.
Any mature person is best equipped for productive industry when, sound in
both body and mind, he has the accumulated energy of the past for his use
in the shape of capital and hereditary traits, together with skill,
education and established character. Such a man is recognized at once to
have his place among “the heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of
time.” Any people claiming leadership among nations must depend upon its
representatives of such a fully equipped body of men for that leadership.
_From savage to enlightened._—The increasing importance of such full
manliness, as society becomes more complex in both wants and efforts, is
easily seen. In ruder life muscular energy and endurance, with some slight
ingenuity, are sufficient to meet the ruder needs, with some chance of
saving for future wants of a growing family, which will continue the same
round of muscular contest with savage conditions.
The American Indians have given the fairest exhibition of the kind of
welfare which such exertion and accumulation afford. The weak disappear
quickly, because the strong have too little surplus of energy to care for
them. Among those left, both burdens and means of satisfaction are quite
equally distributed, because of essentially equal powers of exertion. But
in older and more civilized communities large portions of the people are
dependent upon the rest for knowledge, ingenuity and skill to keep the
very much larger supply of material needed for maintaining the
civilization. At this stage of progress a man with only muscular
development finds himself entirely dependent upon some one else for the
plans by which all must live. A savage cannot share equally with the wise
man either in the burden of caring for the community or in the welfare
which the community enjoys.
It is easy to see that the relative importance of accumulated wealth in
the shape of capital or of skill or of the character which results from
generations of training, becomes more and more distinct as the community
becomes more developed. Any man, then, who is lacking capital, skill and
morals, or all three, is in some respects like the savage, and will find
his equals among the savages. For this reason a pioneer country affords
opportunity for a youth without skill or personal attainments of any kind
“to grow up with the country;” and the famous advice, “Go west, young man,
go west,” applies strictly to such a youth, and with less and less
directness in proportion as the young man has control of himself and of
accumulated wealth.
A simple diagram (Chart III) may illustrate the progress of civilization
from the general poverty and inefficiency of rude pioneer life to the
power of a thoroughly organized and developed community. The poor man, in
the sense of one whose abilities are undeveloped and who has no visible
means of support, is relatively less able to care for himself in the
enlightened community than in the ruder pioneer life. In this sense, and
this alone, the poor man grows poorer with advancing civilization. This
may easily be seen by comparing a thrifty farming community of today and
all the accumulated stock, machinery and tools of the farms, with the same
community sixty years earlier, when all was practically wilderness. A
strong man with an ax and a hoe could enter the wilderness anywhere and
live nearly as well as any of his neighbors. Such a man in the higher
country life of our times must work for some one else at wages, or must be
supported at public expense. In either case he feels his poverty. At the
same time, the extreme of suffering is less likely to be reached in the
richer community. The poorest man has comforts of which the pioneers never
dreamed. Even a tramp can live on the fat of the land, but not by his own
exertions. The failure of a crop in the pioneer country means starvation
for a large portion of the few inhabitants. A failure in the older
community means suffering for a few in diminished food and clothing, but
all live on the accumulations of the past.
[Chart.]
Chart III. Illustrating the relative importance of labor and saving, in
the progress of civilization from its beginnings in pioneer life.
_Developing civilization._—This essential advantage of accumulating power
in individuals, as civilization advances, is necessarily connected with
the very nature of civilization and growth. As no conceivable device can
make a babe as efficient as a man, so no contrivance, political or social,
can make an undeveloped man equal to a fully developed one.
The intense community of interests in high civilization makes even more
important the individual abilities of each sharer in those interests. For
this reason every device for universal education, development of skill and
strengthening of character, and every check upon deterioration of personal
strength or wisdom or virtue is to be considered. Any neglect of the
individual in his development of personal attainments retards the
development of the community. Any device for the equal distribution of
wealth which does not increase individual thrift in the use of wealth at
least retards the growth of the community, and may very quickly reduce the
power of the community as a whole until it reaches the inefficiency of
savage life.
All true charity, even equity, requires that the object of distribution of
wealth shall be the greater efficiency of each individual. If there shall
ever be a community of individuals gaining equal enjoyment, it will be
made up of those possessing essential equality in personal powers and
attainments, and in accumulated capital as well.