institutions. In that year, for instance, Harvard University received in
all $5,000,000, Columbia University $3,000,000, and Chicago University
over $10,000,000; Yale received $600,000, and the negro institute in
Tuskegee the same amount; Johns Hopkins and the University of
Pennsylvania received about half of a million each. Hospitals and
similar institutions were remembered with $21,726,000; $7,583,000 were
given to public libraries, $3,996,000 for religious purposes, and
$2,927,000 to museums and art collections. Any one who lives in America
knows that this readiness to give is general, from the Carnegies and
Rockefellers down to the working-men, and that it is easy to obtain
money from private purses for any good undertaking.
One sees clearly, again, that the real attraction which the American
feels for money-making does not lie in the having but only in the
getting, from the perfect equanimity, positively amazing to the
European, with which he bears his losses. To be sure, his irrepressible
optimism stands him in good stead; he never loses hope, but is confident
that what he has lost will soon be made up. But this would be no comfort
to him if he did not care much less for the possession than for the
getting of it. The American chases after money with all his might,
exactly as on the tennis-court he tries to hit the ball, and it is the
game he likes and not the prize. If he loses he does not feel as if he
had lost a part of himself, but only as if he had lost the last set in a
tournament. When, a short time ago, there was a terrific crash in the
New York stock market and hundreds of millions were lost, a leading
Parisian paper said: “If such a financial crisis had happened here in
France, we should have had panics, catastrophies, a slump in _rentes_,
suicides, street riots, a ministerial crisis, all in one day: while
America is perfectly quiet, and the victims of the battle are sitting
down to collect their wits. France and the United States are obviously
two entirely different worlds in their civilization and in their way of
thinking.”
As to the estimation of money and its acquirement, France and the United
States are indeed as far apart as possible, while Germany stands in
between. The Frenchman prizes money as such; if he can get it without
labour, by inheritance or dowry, or by gambling, so much the better. If
he loses it he loses a part of himself, and when he has earned enough to
be sure of a livelihood, he retires from money-making pursuits as soon
as possible. It is well known that the ambition of the average Frenchman
is to be a _rentier_. The American has exactly the opposite idea. Not
only does he endure loss with indifference and despise gain which is not
earned, but he would not for any price give up the occupation of making
money. Whether he has much or little, he keeps patiently at work; and,
as no scholar or artist would ever think of saying that he had done
enough work, and would from now on become a scientific or literary
_rentier_ and live on his reputation, so no American, as long as he
keeps his health, thinks of giving up his regular business.
The profession of living from the income of investments is virtually
unknown among men, and the young men who take up no money-making
profession because they “don’t need to,” are able to retain the social
respect of their fellows only by undertaking some sort of work for the
commonwealth. A man who does not work at anything, no matter how rich he
is, can neither get nor keep a social status.
This also indicates, then, that the American does not want his money
merely as a means for material comfort. Of course, wealthy Americans are
becoming more and more accustomed to provide every thinkable luxury for
their wives and daughters. Nowhere is so much expended for dresses,
jewelry, equipages and service, for country houses and yachts, works of
art and private libraries; and many men have to keep pretty steadily at
work year in and year out in order to meet their heavy expenditures. And
the same thing is repeated all down the social scale. According to
European standards, even the working-man lives luxuriously. But, in
spite of this, no person who has really come into the country will deny
that material pleasures are less sought after for themselves in the New
World than in the Old. It always strikes the European as remarkable how
very industrious American society is, and how relatively little bent on
pleasure. It has often been said that the American has not yet learned
how to enjoy life; that he knows very well how to make money, but not
how to enjoy it. And that is quite true; except that it leaves out of
account the main point—which is, that the American takes the keenest
delight in the employment of all his faculties in his work, and in the
exercise of his own initiative. This gives him more pleasure than the
spending of money could bring him.
It is, therefore, fundamentally false to stigmatize the American as a
materialist, and to deny his idealism. A people is supposed to be
thoroughly materialistic when its sphere of interests comprises problems
relating only to the world of matter, and fancies itself to be highly
idealistic when it is mainly concerned with intangible objects. But this
is a pure confusion of ideas. In philosophy, indeed, the distinction
between materialistic and idealistic systems of thought is to be
referred to the importance ascribed to material and to immaterial
objects. Materialism is, then, that pseudo-philosophical theory which
supposes that all reality derives from the existence of material
objects; and it is an idealistic system which regards the existence of
matter as dependent on the reality of thought. But it is mere play on
words to call nations realistic or idealistic on the strength of these
metaphysical conceptions, instead of using the words in their social and
ethical significations. For in the ethical world a materialistic
position would be one in which the aim of life was enjoyment, while that
point of view would be idealistic which found its motive not in the
pleasant consequences of the deed, but in the value of the deed itself.
If we hold fast to the meaning of materialism and idealism in this
ethical sense, we shall see clearly that it is entirely indifferent
whether the people who have these diametrically opposed views of life
are themselves busy with tangible or with intangible things. The man who
looks at life materialistically acts, not for the act itself, but for
the comfortable consequences which that act may have; and these
consequences may satisfy the selfish pleasure as well if they are
immaterial as if they are material objects. It is indifferent whether he
works for the satisfaction of the appetites, for the hoarding up of
treasures, or for the gratification to be found in politics, science,
and art. He is still a materialist so long as he has not devotion, so
long as he uses art only as a means to pleasure, science only as a
source of fame, politics as a source of power; and, in general, so long
as the labour that he does is only the means to an end. But the man who
is an idealist in life acts because he believes in the value of the
deed. It makes no difference to him whether he is working on material or
intellectual concerns; whether he speaks or rhymes, paints, governs, or
judges; or whether he builds bridges and railroad tracks, drains swamps
and irrigates deserts, delves into the earth, or harnesses the forces of
nature. In this sense the culture of the Old World threatens at a
thousand points to become crassly materialistic, and not least of all
just where it most loudly boasts of intellectual wealth and looks down
with contempt on everything which is material. And in this sense the
culture of the New World is growing to the very purest idealism, and by
no means least where it is busy with problems of the natural world of
matter, and where it is heaping up economic wealth.
This is the main point: The economic life means to the American a
realizing of efforts which are in themselves precious. It is not the
means to an end, but is its own end. If two blades of grass grow where
one grew before, or two railroad tracks where there was but one; if
production, exchange, and commerce increase and undertaking thrives,
then life is created, and this is, in itself, a precious thing. The
European of the Continent esteems the industrial life as honest, but not
as noble; economic activities seem to him good for supporting himself
and his family, but his duty is merely to supply economic needs which
are now existing.
The merchant in Europe does not feel himself to be a free creator like
the artist or scholar: he is no discoverer, no maker; and the mental
energy which he expends he feels to be spent in serving an inferior
purpose, which he serves only because he has to live. That creating
economic values can itself be the very highest sort of accomplishment,
and in itself alone desirable, whether or not it is useful for the
person who creates, and that it is great in itself to spread and
increase the life of the national economic organization, has been,
indeed, felt by many great merchants in the history of Europe, and many
a Hanseatic leader realizes it to-day. But the whole body of people in
Europe does not know this, while America is thoroughly filled with the
idea. Just as Hutten once cried: “Jahrhundert, es ist eine Lust, in dir
zu leben: die Wissenschaften und die Künste blühen,” so the American
might exclaim: It is a pleasure to live in our day and generation;
industry and commerce now do thrive. Every individual feels himself
exalted by being a part of such a mighty whole, and the general
intellectual effects of this temper show themselves in the entire
national life.
A nation can never do its best in any direction unless it believes
thoroughly in the intrinsic value of its work; whatever is done merely
through necessity is never of great national significance, and
second-rate men never achieve the highest things. If the first minds of
a nation look down with contempt on economic life, if there is no real
belief in the ideal value of industry, and if creative minds hold aloof
from it, that nation will necessarily be outdone by others in the
economic field. But where the ablest strength engages with idealistic
enthusiasm in the service of the national economic problems, the nation
rewards what the people do as done in the name of civilization, and the
love of fame and work together spur them on more than the material gain
which they will get. Indeed, this gain is itself only their measure of
success in the service of civilization.
The American merchant works for money in exactly the sense that a great
painter works for money; the high price which is paid for his picture is
a very welcome indication of the general appreciation of his art: but he
would never get this appreciation if he were working for the money
instead of his artistic ideals. Economically to open up this gigantic
country, to bring the fields and forests, rivers and mountains into the
service of economic progress, to incite the millions of inhabitants to
have new needs and to satisfy these by their own resourcefulness, to
increase the wealth of the nation, and finally economically to rule the
world and within the nation itself to raise the economic power of the
individual to undreamt-of importance, has been the work which has
fascinated the American. And every individual has felt his co-operation
to be ennobled by his firm belief in the value of such an aim for the
culture of the world.
To find one’s self in the service of this work of progress attracts even
the small boy. As a German boy commences early to write verses or draw
little sketches, in America the young farmer lad or city urchin tries to
come somehow into this national, industrial activity; and whether he
sells newspapers on the street or milks the cow on a neighbour’s farm,
he is proud of the few cents which he brings home—not because it is
money, but because he has earned it, and the coins are the only possible
proof that his activities have contributed to the economic life of his
country. It is this alone which spurs him on and fills him with
ambition; and if the young newspaper boy becomes a great railroad
president, or the farmer’s lad a wealthy factory owner, and both,
although worth their millions, still work on from morning till night
consumed by the thought of adding to the economic life of their nation,
and to this end undertake all sorts of new enterprises, the labour
itself has been, from beginning to end, its own reward. The content of
such a man’s life is the work of economic progress.
Men who have so felt have made the nation great, and no American would
admit that a man who gave his life to government or to law, to art or
science, would be able to make his life at all more significant or
valuable for the ends of culture. This is not materialism. Thus it
happens that the most favoured youths, the socially most competent
talents, go into economic life, and the sons of the best families, after
their course at the university, step enthusiastically into the business
house. One can see merely from ordinary conversation how thoroughly the
value of economic usefulness is impressed on the people. They speak in
America of industrial movements with as much general interest as one
would find manifested in Europe over politics, science, or art. Men who
do not themselves anticipate buying or selling securities in the stock
market, nevertheless discuss the rise and fall of various industrial and
railroad shares as they would discuss Congressional debates; and any new
industrial undertaking in a given city fills the citizens with pride, as
may be gathered from their chance conversations.
The central point of this whole activity is, therefore, not greed, nor
the thought of money, but the spirit of self-initiative. It is not
surprising that this has gone through such a lively development. Just as
the spirit of self-determination was the product of Colonial days, so
the spirit of self-initiative is the necessary outcome of pioneer life.
The men who came over to the New World expected to battle with the
natural elements; and even where nature had lavished her treasures,
these had still to be conquered; the forests must be felled and the
marshes drained. Indeed, the very spot to which the economic world comes
to-day to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase,
the city of St. Louis, which has to-day 8,000 factories, it must not be
forgotten was three generations ago a wilderness.
From the days when the first pioneers journeyed inland from the coast,
to the time, over two hundred years later, when the railroad tracks were
carried over the Rocky Mountains from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean,
the history of the nation has been of a long struggle with nature and of
hard-earned conquests; and for many years this fight was carried on by
men who toiled single-handed, as it were—by thousands of pioneers
working all at once, but far apart. The man who could not hold out under
protracted labour was lost; but the difficulty of the task spurred on
the energies of the strong and developed the spirit of self-initiative
to the utmost. It was fortunate that the men who came over to undertake
this work had been in a way selected for it: for only those who had
resolution had ventured to leave their native hearth-stones. Only the
most energetic risked the voyage across the ocean in those times, and
this desire to be up and doing found complete satisfaction in the New
World; for, as Emerson said: “America is another name for opportunity.”
The heritage of the pioneer days cannot vanish, even under the present
changed conditions. This desire to realize one’s self by being
economically busied is indeed augmented to-day by many other
considerations. Both the political and the social life of the democracy
demand equality, and therefore exclude all social classes, and titles,
and all honourary political distinctions. Now, such uniformity would, of
course, be unendurable in a society which had no real distinctions, and
therefore inevitably such distinguishing factors as are not excluded
come to be more and more important. A distinction between classes on the
basis of property can be met in monarchial countries by a distinction in
title and family, and so made at least very much less important than in
democratic nations. And thus it necessarily comes about that, where an
official differentiation is objected to on principle, wealth is sought
as a means to such discrimination. In the United States, however, wealth
has this great significance only because it is felt to measure the
individual’s successful initiative; and the simple equation between
prosperity and real work is more generally recognized by the popular
mind than the actual conditions justify. Thus it happens also that the
American sets his standard of life high. He wishes in this way to
express the fact that he has passed life’s examination well, that he has
been enterprising, and has won the respect of those around him. This
desire for a high standard of living which springs from the intense
economic enthusiasm works back thereon, and greatly stimulates it once
more.
One of the first consequences of this spirit of initiative is, that
every sort of true labour is naturally respected, and never involves any
disesteem. In fact, one sees continually in this country men who go from
one kind of labour to another which, according to European ideals, would
be thought less honourable. The American is especially willing to take
up a secondary occupation besides his regular calling in order to
increase his income, and this leads, sometimes, to striking contrasts.
Of course there are some limits to this, and social etiquette is not
wholly without influence, although the American will seldom admit it. No
one is surprised if a preacher gives up the ministry in order to become
an editor or official in an industrial organization; but every one is
astonished if he becomes agent for an insurance company; amazed if he
goes to selling a patent medicine, and would be positively scandalized
if he were to buy a beer-saloon.
It is much the same with avocations. If the student in the university
tutors other students, it is quite right; if, during the university
vacation, he becomes bell-boy in a summer hotel, or during the school
year attends to furnaces in order to continue his studies, people are
sorry that he has to do this, but still account him perfectly
respectable; but if, on the other hand, he turns barber or artist’s
model, he is lost, because being a model is passive—it is not doing
anything; and cutting hair is a menial service, not compatible with the
dignity of the student. And thus it is that the social feeling in the
New World practically corrects the theoretical maxims as to the equal
dignity of every kind of labour, although, indeed, such maxims are very
much more generally recognized than in the Old World. And everywhere the
deciding principle of differentiation is the matter of self-initiative.
The broadly manifest social equality of the country, of which we shall
have to speak more minutely in another connection, would be actually
impossible if this belief in the equivalence of all kinds of work did
not rule the national mind. Whether the work brings much or little, or
requires much or little preparation, is thought to be unimportant in
determining a man’s status; but it is important that his life involves
initiative, or that he not merely passively exists.
A people which places industrial initiative so high must be industrious;
and, in fact, there is no profounder impression to be had than that the
whole population is busily at work, and that all pleasures and
everything which presupposes an idle moment are there merely to refresh
people and prepare them for more work. In order to be permanently
industrious, a man has to learn best how to utilize his powers; and just
in this respect the American nation has gone ahead of every other
people. Firstly, it is sober. A man who takes liquor in the early part
of the day cannot accomplish the greatest amount of work. When the
American is working he does not touch alcohol until the end of the day,
and this is as true of the millionaire and bank president as of the
labourer or conductor. On the other hand, the American workman knows
that only a well-nourished body can do the most work, and what the
workman saves by not buying beer and brandy he puts into roast beef. It
has often been observed, and especially remarked on by German observers,
that in spite of his extraordinary tension, the American never overdoes.
The working-man in the factory, for example, seldom perspires at his
work. This comes from a knowledge of how to work so as in the end to get
out of one’s self the greatest possible amount.
Very much the same may be said of the admirable way in which the
Americans make the most of their time. Superficial observers have often
supposed the American to be always in a hurry, whereas the opposite is
the case. The man who has to hurry has badly disposed of his time, and,
therefore, has not the necessary amount to finish any one piece of work.
The American is never in a hurry, but he so disposes his precious time
that nothing shall be lost. He will not wait nor be a moment idle; one
thing follows closely after another, and with admirable precision; each
task is finished in its turn; appointments are made and kept on the
minute; and the result is, that not only no unseemly haste is necessary,
but also there is time for everything. It is astonishing how well-known
men in political, economic, or intellectual life, who are loaded with a
thousand responsibilities and an apparently unreasonable amount of work,
have, by dint of the wonderful disposition of their own time and that of
their assistants, really enough for everything and even to spare.
Among the many things for which the American has time, by reason of his
economical management of it, are even some which seem unnecessary for a
busy man. He expends, for example, an extraordinary large fraction of
his time in attending to his costume and person, in sport, and in
reading newspapers, so that the notion which is current in Europe that
the American is not only always in a hurry, but has time for nothing
outside of his work, is entirely wrong.
This saving of strength by the proper disposal of time corresponds to a
general practicality in every sort of work. Business is carried on in a
business-like way. The banker, whose residence is filled with sumptuous
treasures of art, allows nothing unpractical to come into his office for
the sake of adornment. A certain strict application to duty is the
feeling one gets from every work-room; and while the foreigner feels a
certain barrenness about it, the American feels that anything different
shows a lack of earnestness and practical good sense. The extreme
punctuality with which the American handles his correspondence is
typical of him. Statistics show that no other country in the world sends
so many letters for every inhabitant, and every business letter is
replied to on the same day with matter-of-fact conciseness. It is like a
tremendous apparatus that accomplishes the greatest labour with the
least friction, by means of the precise adaptation of part to part.