initiative in every single co-operator. Nothing is more characteristic
of this economic body than the intensity with which each workman—taking
the word in its broadest sense—thinks and acts for himself. In this
respect, too, outsiders often misunderstand the situation. One hears
often from travellers in America that the country must be dwarfing to
the intelligence of its workmen, because it uses so much machinery that
the individual workman comes to see only a small part of what is being
done in the factory and, so to say, works the same identical lever for
life. He operates always a certain small part of some other part of the
whole. Nothing could be less exact, and a person who comes to such a
conclusion is not aware that even the smallest duties are extremely
complex, and that, therefore, specialization does not at all introduce
an undesirable uniformity in labour. It is specialization on the one
hand which guarantees the highest mastery, and on the other lets the
workman see even more the complexity of what is going on, and inspires
him to get a full comprehension of the thing in hand and perhaps to
suggest a few improvements.
Any man who is at all concerned with the entire field of operations, or
who is moving constantly from one special process to another, can never
come to that fully absorbed state of the attention which takes
cognizance of the slightest detail. Only the man who has concentrated
himself and specialized, learns to note fine details; and it is only in
this way that he becomes so much a master in his special department that
any one else who attempts to direct him succeeds merely in interfering
and spoiling the output. In short, such a workman is face to face with
intricate natural processes, and is learning straight from nature. It is
in the matter of industrial technique exactly as in science. A person
not acquainted with science finds it endlessly monotonous, and cannot
understand how a person should spend his whole life studying beetles or
deciphering Assyrian inscriptions. But a man who knows the method of
science realizes that the narrower a field of study becomes, the more
full of variety and unexpected beauties it is found to be. The triumph
of technical specialization in America lies just in this. If a single
man works at some special part of some special detail of an industrial
process, he more and more comes to find in his narrow province an
amazing intricacy which the casual observer looking on cannot even
suspect; and only the man who sees this complexity is able to discover
new processes and improvements on the old. So it is that the specialized
workman is he who constantly contributes to perfect technique, proposes
modifications, and in general exercises all the intelligence he has, in
order to bring himself on in his profession. Just as we have seen how
the spirit of self-determination which resides at the periphery of the
body politic has been the peculiar strength of American political life,
so this free initiative in the periphery, this economic resourcefulness
of the narrow specialists, is the peculiar strength of all American
industry.
The spirit of self-initiative does not know pettiness. Any one who goes
into economic life merely for the sake of what he can get out of it,
thinks it clever to gain small, unfair profits; but whosoever views his
industry in a purely idealistic spirit, and really has some inner
promptings, is filled with an interest in the whole play—sees an
economic gain in anything which profits both capital and labour, and
only there, and so has a large outlook even within his narrow province.
The Americans constantly complain of the economic smallness of Europe,
and even the well-informed leaders of American industry freely assert
that the actual advance in American economic culture does not lie in the
natural resources of the country, but rather in the broad, free
initiative of the American people. The continental Europeans, it is
said, frustrate their own economic endeavours by being penny-wise and
observant of detail in the wrong place, and by lacking the courage to
launch big undertakings. There is no doubt that it was the lavishness of
nature which firstly set American initiative at work on a broad scale.
The boundless prairies and towering mountains which the pioneers saw
before them inspired them to undertake great things, and to overlook
small hindrances, and in laying out their first plans to overlook small
details. American captains of industry often say that they purposely pay
no attention to a good many European methods, because they find such
pedantic endeavour to economize and to achieve minute perfections to be
wasteful of time and unprofitable.
The same spirit is found, as well, in fields other than the industrial.
When the American travels he prefers to pay out round sums rather than
to haggle over the price of things, even although he pays considerably
more thereby than he otherwise would. And nothing makes him more angry
than to find that instead of stating a high price at the outset, the
person with whom he is dealing ekes out his profit by small additional
charges. This large point of view involves such a contempt of petty
detail as to astonish Europeans. Machines costing hundreds of thousands
of dollars, which were new yesterday, are discarded to-day, because some
improvement has been discovered; and the best is everywhere found none
too good to be used in this magnificent industrial system. If the outlay
is to correspond to the result, there must be no parsimony.
A similar trait is revealed in the way in which every man behaves toward
his neighbour. It is only the petty man who is envious, and envy is a
word which is not found in the American vocabulary. If one’s own
advantage is not the goal, but general economic progress, then the
success of another man is almost as great a pleasure as one’s own
success. It is for the American an æsthetic delight to observe, and in
spirit to co-operate with economic progress all along the line; and the
more others accomplish the more each one realizes the magnificence of
the whole industrial life. Men try to excel one another, as they have to
do wherever there is free competition; and such rivalry is the best and
surest condition for economic progress. Americans use every means in
their power to succeed, but if another man comes out ahead they neither
grumble nor indulge in envy, but rather gather their strength for a new
effort. Even this economic struggle is carried on in the spirit of
sport. The fight itself is the pleasure. The chess-player who is
checkmated in an exciting game is not sorry that he played, and does not
envy the winner.
This conviction, that one neither envies nor is envied, whereby all
competitive struggle comes to be pervaded with a certain spirit of
co-operation, ennobles all industrial activities, and the immediate
effect is a feeling of mutual confidence. The degree to which Americans
trust one another is by no means realized on the European Continent. A
man relies on the self-respect of his commercial associates in a way
which seems to the European mind almost fatuous, and yet herein lies
just the strength and security of the economic life of this country.
It is interesting, in a recently published harangue against the Standard
Oil Company, to read what a high-handed, Napoleonic policy Rockefeller
has pursued, and then, in the midst of the fierce accusations, to find
it stated that agreements involving millions of dollars and the economic
fate of thousands of people were made merely orally. All his
confederates took the word of Rockefeller to be as good as his written
contract, and such mutual confidence is everywhere a matter of course,
whether it is a millionaire who agrees to pay out a fortune or a street
urchin who goes off to change five cents. Just as public, so also
commercial, affairs get on with very few precautions, and every man
takes his neighbour’s check as the equivalent of money. The whole
economic life reveals everywhere the profoundest confidence; and
undoubtedly this circumstance has contributed, more than almost anything
else, to the successful growth of large organizations in America.
The spirit of self-initiative goes out in another direction. It makes
the American optimistic, and so sure of success that no turn of fortune
can discourage him. And such an optimism is necessary to the man who
undertakes great enterprises. It was an undertaking to cross the ocean,
and another to press on from the coast to the interior; it was an
undertaking to bring nature to terms, to conjure up civilization in a
wild country, and to overcome enemies on all hands; and yet everything
has seemed to succeed. With the expansion of the country has grown the
individual’s love of expansion, his delight in undertaking new
enterprises, not merely to hold his own, but to go on and to stake his
honour and fortune and entire personality in the hope of realizing
something as yet hardly dreamed of. Any Yankee is intoxicated with the
idea of succeeding in a new enterprise; he plans such things at his desk
in school, and the more venturesome they are the more he is fascinated.
Nothing is more characteristic of this adventurous spirit than the way
in which American railroads have been projected. In other countries
railroads are built to connect towns which already exist. In America the
railroad has created new towns; the engineer and capitalist have not
laid their tracks merely where the land was already tilled, but in every
place where they could foresee that a population could support itself.
At first came the railroad, and then the men to support it. The freight
car came first, and then the soil was exploited and made to supply the
freight. Western communities have almost all grown up around the railway
stations. To be sure, every railway company has done this in its own
interest, but the whole undertaking has been immediately productive of
new civilization.
Any person who optimistically believes that a problem has only to be
discovered in order to be solved, will be sure to develop that
intellectual quality which has always characterized the American: the
spirit of invention. There is no other country in the world where so
much is invented. This is shown not merely in the fact that an enormous
number of patents is granted every year, but also where there is nothing
to patent, the Yankee exercises his ingenuity every day. From the
simplest tool up to the most complicated machine, American invention has
improved and perfected, and made the theoretically correct practically
serviceable as well. To be sure, the cost of human labour in a thinly
settled country has had a great influence on this development; but a
special talent also has lain in this direction—a real genius for solving
practical problems. Every one knows how much the American has
contributed to the perfection of the telegraph, telephone, incandescent
light, phonograph and sewing-machine, to watch-making machinery, to the
steamboat and locomotive, the printing-press and typewriter, to
machinery for mining and engineering, and to all sorts of agricultural
and manufacturing devices. Invention and enterprise are seen working
together in the fact that every new machine, with all its improvements,
goes at once to every part of the country. Every farmer in the farthest
West wants the latest agricultural machinery; every artisan adopts the
newest improvements; in every office the newest and most approved
telegraphic and telephonic appliances are used; in short, every man
appropriates the very latest devices to further his own success. Of
course, in this way the commercial value of every improvement is greatly
increased, and this encourages the inventor to still further
productiveness. It so happens that larger sums of money are lavished in
perfect good faith in order to solve certain problems than any European
could imagine. If an inventor can convince a company that his principle
is sound, the company is ready to advance millions of dollars for new
experiments until the machine is perfected.
The extraordinarily wide adoption of every invention does not mean that
most inventions are made by such men as Edison and Bell and their
colleagues. Every factory workman is quite as much concerned to improve
the tools which his nation uses, and every artisan at his bench is busy
thinking out this or that little change in a process or method; and many
of them, after their work, frequent the public libraries in order to
work through technical books and the Patent Reports. It is no wonder
that an American manufacturer, on hearing that a new machine had been
discovered in Europe, conservatively declared that he did not know what
the machine was, but knew for sure that America would improve on it.
Only one consequence of the spirit of self-initiative remains to be
spoken of—the absolute demand for open competition. In order to exercise
initiative, a man must have absolutely free play; and if he believes in
the intrinsic value of economic culture, he will be convinced that free
play for the development of industrial power is abstractly and entirely
right. This does not wholly exclude an artificial protection of certain
economic institutions which are weak—as, for instance, the protection of
certain industries by means of a high tariff—so long as in every line
all men are free to compete with one another. Monopoly is the only
thing—because it strangles competition—which offends the instinct of the
American; and in this respect American law goes further than a European
would expect. One might suppose that, believing as they do in free
initiative, Americans would claim the right of making such industrial
combinations as they liked. When several parallel railroads, which
traverse several states and compete severely with one another, finally
make a common agreement to maintain prices, they seem at first sight to
be exercising a natural privilege. The traffic which suffers no longer
by competition is handled at a less expense by this consolidation, and
so the companies themselves and the travelling public are both
benefited. But the law of the United States takes a different point of
view. The average American is suspicious of a monopoly, even when it is
owned by the state or city; he is convinced from the beginning that the
service will in some way or other be inferior to what it would be under
free competition; and most of all, he dislikes to see any industrial
province hedged in so that competitors are no longer free to come in.
The reason why the trusts have angered and excited the American to an
often exaggerated degree is, that they approach perilously near to being
monopolies.
This spirit of self-initiative under free competition exists, of course,
not alone in individuals. Towns, cities, counties, and states evince
collectively just the same attitude; the same optimism and spirit of
invention and initiative, and the same pioneer courage, inspire the
collective will of city and state. Especially in the West, various
cities and communities do things in a sportsmanlike way. It is as if one
city or state were playing foot-ball against another, and exerting every
effort to win: and here once more there is no petty jealousy. It was
from such an optimistic spirit of enterprise, certainly, that the city
of St. Louis resolved to invite all the world to its exposition, and
that the State of Missouri gave its enthusiastic approval and support to
its capital city. The sums to be laid out on such bold undertakings are
put at a generous figure, and no one asks anxiously whether he is ready
or able to undertake such a thing, but he is fascinated by the thought
that such an industrial festival around the cascades of Forest Park,
near the City of St. Louis, will stimulate the whole industrial life of
the Mississippi Valley. One already sees that Missouri is disposed to
become a Pennsylvania of the West, and to develop her rich resources
into a great industry.
We must not suppose, in all this, that such a spirit of initiative
involves no risk, or that no disadvantages follow into the bargain. It
may be easily predicted that, just by reason of the energy which is so
intrinsic to it, self-initiative will sometime overstep the bounds of
peace and harmony. Initiative will become recklessness, carelessness of
nature, carelessness of one’s neighbour, and, finally, carelessness of
one’s self.
A reckless treatment of nature has, in fact, characterized the American
pioneer from the first. The wealth of nature has seemed so
inexhaustible, that the pioneers found it natural to draw on their
principal instead of living on their income. Everywhere they used only
the best which they found; they cut down the finest forests first, and
sawed up only the best parts of the best logs. The rest was wasted. The
farmers tilled only the best soil, and nature was dismantled and
depleted in a way which a European, who is accustomed to precaution,
finds positively sinful. And the time is now passed when this can go on
safely. Good, arable land can nowhere be had for nothing to-day; the
cutting down of huge forests has already had a bad effect on the
rainfall and water supply, and many efforts are now being made to atone
for the sins of the past by protecting and replanting. Intensive methods
are being introduced in agriculture; but the work of thoughtful minds
meets with a good deal of resistance in the recklessness of the masses,
who, so far as nature is in question, think very little of their
children’s children, but are greedy for instant profits.
The man, moreover, who ardently desires to play an important part in
industry is easily tempted to be indifferent of his fellows. We have
shown that an American is not jealous or distrustful of them, that he
gives and expects frankness, and that he respects their rights. But when
he once begins to play, he wants to win at any cost; and then, so long
as he observes the rules of the game, he considers nothing else; he has
no pity, and will never let his undertaking be interfered with by
sentimental reasons. There is no doubt at all that the largest American
industrial enterprises have ruined many promising lives; no doubt that
the very men who give freely to public ends have driven their chariots
over many industrial corpses. The American, who is so incomparably
good-natured, amiable, obliging, and high-minded, admits himself that he
is sharp in trade, and that the American industrial spirit requires a
sort of military discipline and must be brutal. If the captain of
industry were anxiously considerate of persons’ feelings, he would never
have achieved industrial success any more than a compassionate and
tearful army would win a victory.
But the American is harder on himself than on any one else. We have
shown how, in his work, he conserves his powers and utilizes them
economically; but he sets no bounds to the intellectual strain, the
intensity of his nervous activities, and only too often he ruins his
health in the too great strain which brings his success. The bodies of
thousands have fertilized the soil for this great industrial tree—men
who have exhausted their power in their exaggerated commercial
ambitions. The real secret of American success is that, more than any
other country in the world, she works with the young men and uses them
up. Young men are in all the important positions where high intellectual
tension is required.
In other directions, too, the valuable spirit of self-initiative shows
great weaknesses and dangers. The confidence which the American gives
his neighbour in business often comes to be inexcusable carelessness. In
reading the exposures made of the Ship-Building Trust, one sees how,
without a dishonest intent, crimes can actually be committed merely
through thoughtless confidence. One sees that each one of the great
capitalists here involved relied on the other, while no one really
investigated for himself.
There is another evil arising from the same intense activity, although,
to be sure, it is more a matter of the past than of the future. This is
the vulgar display of wealth. When economic usefulness is the main
ambition, and the only measure of success is the money which is won, it
is natural that under more or less primitive social conditions every one
should wish to attest his merits by displaying wealth. Large diamonds
have then much the same function as titles and orders; they are the
symbols of successful endeavour. In its vulgar form all such display is
now virtually relegated to undeveloped sections of the country. In the
parts where culture is older, where wealth is in its second or third
generation, every one knows that his property is more useful in the bank
than on his person.
In spite of this, the nation expends an unduly large part of its profits
in personal adornment, in luxuries of the toilet, in horses and
carriages and expensive residences. The American is bound to have the
best, and feels himself lowered if he has to take the second best. The
most expensive seats in an auditorium are always the best filled, and
the opera is thinly attended only when it is given at reduced prices. It
is just in the most expensive hotels that one has to engage a room
beforehand. Everywhere that expenditure can be observed by others, the
American would rather renounce a pleasure entirely than enjoy it in a
modest way. He wants to appear everywhere as a prosperous and
substantial person, and therefore has a decided tendency to live beyond
his means. Extravagance is, therefore, a great national trait.
Everything, whether large or small, is done with a free hand. In the
kitchen of the ordinary man much is thrown away which the European
carefully saves for his nourishment; and in the kitchens of the
government officials a hundred thousand cooks are at work, as if there
were every day a banquet. Even when the American economizes he is
fundamentally extravagant. His favourite way of saving is by buying a
life insurance policy; but when one sees how many millions of dollars
such companies spend in advertising and otherwise competing with one
another, and what prodigious amounts they take in, one cannot doubt that
they also are a means of saving for wealthy men, who, after all, do not
know what real economy is.
If the whole outward life is pervaded by this pioneer spirit of
self-initiative, there is another factor which is not to be overlooked;
it is the neglect of the æsthetic. Any one who loves beauty desires to
see his ideal realized at the present moment, and the present itself
becomes for him expressive of the past, while the man whose only desire
is to be active as an economic factor looks only into the future. The
bare present is almost valueless, since it is that which has to be
overcome; it is the material which the enterprising spirit has to shape
creatively into something else. The pioneer cannot be interested in the
present as a survivor of the past; it shows to him only that which is to
do, and admonishes his soul to prepare for new achievement. On Italian
soil one’s eye is offended by every false note in the general harmony.
The present, in which the past still lives, fills one’s consciousness,
and the repose of æsthetic contemplation is the chief emotion. But a man
who rushes from one undertaking to another seeks no unity or harmony in
the present; his retina is not sensitive to ugliness, because his eye is
forever peering into the future; and if the present were to be complete
and finished, the enterprising spirit would regret such perfection and
account it a loss—a restriction of his freedom, an end to his creation.
It would mean mere pleasure and not action. In this sense the American
expresses his pure idealism in speaking of the “glory of the imperfect.”
The Italian is not to be disparaged for being unlike the American and
for letting his eye rest on pleasing contours without asking what new
undertakings could be devised to make reality express his own spirit of
initiative. One must also not blame the American if he does not
scrutinize his vistas with the eye of a Florentine, if he is not
offended by the ugly remains of his nation’s past, the scaffolding of
civilization, or if he looks at them with pride, noting how restlessly
his countrymen have stuck to their work in order to shape a future from
the past. In fact, one can hardly take a step in the New World without
everywhere coming on some crying contrast between mighty growth and the
oppressive remains of outgrown or abortive activities. As one comes down
the monumental steps of the Metropolitan Museum, in which priceless
treasures of art are collected, one sees in front of one a wretched,
tumbled-down hut where sundry refreshments are sold, on a dirty
building-lot with a broken fence. It looks as if it had been brought
from the annual county fair of some remote district into this wealthiest
street of the world.