are feeling that earnestness is not necessarily power, zeal is not
mastery, and that success means little if the judgment is pronounced by
those who are partial to the winners. The triumph in industrial
competition is no honour if it consists in bidding under the market
price. In fact, it is not merely a question of the division of labour,
but a fundamental change in the character of the labour. An impartial
observer of the achievements of American women as teachers or as
university students, in professional life or social reform or any other
public capacity, is forced to admire the performance, and even to
recognize certain unique merits; but he has to admit that it is a
special sort of work, and different from the achievements of men. The
emancipation of the American woman and her higher education, although
carried almost to the last extreme, give not the slightest indication
even yet that woman is able to accomplish in the intellectual field the
same that man accomplishes. What she does is not inferior, but it is
entirely different; and the work which, in all other civilized
countries, is done by men cannot in the United States be slipped into
the hands of women without being profoundly altered in character.
The feminine mind has the tendency to unify all ideas, while a man
rather separates independent classes. Each of these positions has
advantages and drawbacks. The immediate products of the feminine
temperament are tactfulness and æsthetic insight, sure instincts,
enthusiasm, and purity; and, on the other hand, a lack of logical
consecutiveness, a tendency to over-hasty generalization,
underestimation of the abstract and the deep, and an inclination to be
governed by feeling and emotion. Even these weaknesses may be beautiful
in domestic life and attractive in the social sphere; they soften the
hard and bitter life of men. But women have not the force to perform
those public duties of civilization which need the harder logic of man.
If the entire culture of the nation is womanized, it will be in the end
weak and without decisive influence on the progress of the world.
The intellectual high life in colleges and universities, which seems to
speak more clearly for the intellectual equality of women, brings out
exactly this difference. That which is accomplished by the best women’s
colleges is exemplary and admirable; but it is in a world which is,
after all, a small artificial world, with all rough places smoothed over
and illumined with a soft light instead of the hard daylight. Although
in the mixed universities women often do better than men, it is not to
be forgotten that the American lecture system, with its many
examinations, puts a higher value on industry, attention, and good-will
than on critical acumen or logical creativeness. It cannot be denied
that, even a short time since, the American university cultivated in
every department the spirit of learning rather than of investigation—was
reproductive rather than productive—and that the more recent development
which has laid the emphasis on productive investigation has gone on for
the most part in the leading Eastern universities, such as Harvard,
Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton, where women are still not
admitted, while the Western universities, and most of all the state
universities, which are found only in the West, where women are in a
majority, belong in many respects to the old type. To be sure, there are
several American women whose scientific work is admirable, and to be
classed with the best professional achievements of the country; but they
are still rare exceptions. The tendency to learn rather than to produce
pervades all the great masses of women; they study with extraordinary
zeal up to the point where critical production should begin, and there
they are all too apt to stop. And unless one persistently looks at the
very few exceptions, one would hardly assert that the true spirit of
science could unfold and grow if American women were to be its only
guardians.
This distinction is much plainer in the lower walks of life. The
half-educated American man refrains from judging what is beyond his
scope; but an American woman who has scarcely a shred of education looks
in vain for any subject on which she has not firm convictions already at
hand, and her influence upon public opinion—politics always apart—spins
a web of triviality and misconception over the whole culture. Cobwebs
are not ropes, and a good broom can sweep them down; but the arrogance
of this feminine lack of knowledge is the symptom of a profound trait in
the feminine soul, and points to dangers springing from the domination
of women in intellectual life. In no other civilized land is scientific
medicine so systematically hindered by quack doctors, patent medicines,
and mental healing; the armies of uneducated women protect them. And in
no other civilized land are ethical conceptions so worm-eaten by
superstitions and spiritualistic hocus-pocus; hysterical women carry the
day. In no other country is the steady and sound advance of social and
pedagogical reform so checked by whimsies and short-lived innovations,
and good sound work held back by the partisans of confused ideas; here
the women work havoc with their social and pedagogical alarms.
This does not mean, however, that a good deal of the work of American
women is not better done by them than it would be by the men. In the
first place, there is no doubt that the assistance of women in teaching
has had very happy results on American culture. When it was necessary to
tame the wild West of its pioneer roughness and to introduce good
manners, the milder influence of women in the school-room was far more
useful than that of men could have been; and so far as it is a question
of making over the immigrant children of the large cities into young
Americans, the patient woman teacher is invaluable. And the drama of the
school-room is played in other more public places; in a thousand ways
the participation of women in public life has refined and toned down
American culture and enriched and beautified it, but not made it
profounder or stronger. Woman’s inborn dilettanteism works too often for
superficiality rather than profundity.
And it is indubitable that this undertaking of the burdens of
intellectual culture by woman has been necessary to the nation’s
progress—a kind of division of labour imperatively indicated by the
tremendous economic and political duties which have preoccupied the men.
No European country has ever had to accomplish economically,
technically, and politically, in so short a time, that which the United
States has accomplished in the last fifty years in perfecting its
civilization. The strength of the men has been so thoroughly enlisted
that intellectual culture could not have been developed or even
maintained if the zeal and earnestness of women had not for a time taken
up the work. But is this to be only for a time? Will the man bethink
himself that his political and economic one-sidedness will in the end
hurt the nation? This is one of the greatest questions for the future of
this country. It is not a question of woman’s retrograding or losing any
of her splendid acquirements; no one could wish that this fine
intellectuality, this womanly seriousness, this desire for a meaning in
her life should be thoughtlessly sacrificed, nor that the sisters and
the mothers of the nation should ever become mere dolls or domestic
machines. Nothing of this should be lost or needs to be lost. But a
compensatory movement must be undertaken by the men of the country in
order to make up for amateurish superficiality and an inconsequential
logic of the emotions.
In itself, the intellectual domination of the women will have the
tendency to strengthen itself, the more the higher life bears the
feminine stamp. For by so much, men are less attracted to it. Thus the
number of male school teachers becomes smaller all the time, because the
majority of women teachers makes the school more and more a place where
a man does not feel at home. But other factors in public opinion work
strongly in the opposite direction; industrial life has made its great
strides, the land is opened up, the devastations of the Civil War are
repaired, internal disturbances have yielded to internal unity,
recognition among the world powers has been won, and within a short time
the wealth of the country has increased many fold. It will be a natural
reaction if the energies of men are somewhat withdrawn from industry and
agriculture, from politics and war, and once more bestowed on things
intellectual. The strength of this reaction will decide whether the
self-assertion of the American women will, in the end, have been an
unalloyed blessing to the country or an affliction. Woman will never
contribute momentously to the culture of the world by remaining
intellectually celibate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
_Aristocratic Tendencies_
In the caricatures of the American which are so gladly drawn by the
European, and so innocently believed in, there is generally, beside the
shirt-sleeved clown who bawls “equality” and the barbarian who chases
the dollar, the rich heiress bent on swapping her millions for a
coronet. The longing for bankrupt suitors of undoubted pedigree is
supposed to be the one symptom of any social aspiration, which the
Yankee exhibits. The American begs leave to differ. He is not surprised
that the young American woman of good family, with her fine intellectual
freshness and her faculty of adaptation, should be sought out by men of
all nations; nor is he filled with awe if there are some suitors of
historic lineage among the rest. But the day is long gone in which such
marriages are looked on as an enviable piece of good fortune for the
daughter of any American citizen. Even the newspapers lightly smile at
such marriages to a title, and they are becoming less and less frequent
in the really best circles of American society. Besides, no such cheap
and superficial aspirations are really indicative of aristocratic
tendencies. The American is, by principle, very far from making his way
into the international aristocracy of Europe, and he neither does nor
will he ever attempt any artificial imitation of aristocratic
institutions.
It is a capital mistake to suppose that the American, put face to face
with European princedom, forgets or tries to hide his democracy.
Aristocratic institutions, particularly those of England, interest him
as a bit out of history; he seeks such social contact just as he wanders
through quaint castles, without wishing thereby to transfer his own
country house on the Hudson into a decaying group of walls and turrets.
He takes an æsthetic pleasure in the brilliancy of courts, the pomp of
military life, the wealth and colour of symbols; and, quite
independently of that, he feels indeed a lively interest in certain
fascinating figures of European politics—most of all, perhaps, in the
German Kaiser. But whether his interest is historical, æsthetic, or
personal, it is never accompanied by any feeling of inferiority to the
persons who represent these aristocratic institutions. When Prince
Henry, on his visit to the New World, quickly won the hearts of
Americans as a man, there was nothing in the tone or accent of the
greetings addressed to him which was out of accord with the fundamental
key of democracy. The dinner speakers commenced their speeches in the
democratic fashion, which is always first to address the presiding host:
“Mr. Mayor, your Royal Highness.”
At the same time the peculiarly democratic contempt for things
monarchical is disappearing, too; the cultivated American feels
increasingly that every form of state has arisen from historic
conditions, and that one is not in and for itself better than another.
He feels that he is not untrue to his republican fatherland in attesting
his respect for crowned heads. He shows most of all his respect, because
it is just the friendly, neighbourly intercourse which makes possible a
relation of mutual recognition. Democracy is itself the gainer by giving
up the absurd pose of looking down on aristocracy. Thus it happens that,
of recent years, even native-born Americans have sometimes received
European orders. They know well enough that it will not do to wear the
button-hole decoration on American soil, but they feel it to be
ungracious to decline what is offered in a friendly spirit; unless,
indeed, it is a politician who wishes to accentuate and propagate a
certain principle. Democracy feels sure enough of itself to be able to
accept a courtesy which is offered, with equal courtesy; but nobody
supposes, for a moment, that European monarchical decorations have any
magic to exalt a man above his democratic equality. Indeed, the feeling
of entire equality, and the belief in a mutual recognition of such
equality, are almost the presupposition of modern times, and only in
Irish mass-meetings do we still hear protests against European tyranny.
This much is sure: America shows not the slightest tendency to become
aristocratic by imitating the historic aristocracies of Europe.
There are many who seem to believe that, therefore, the only aristocracy
of America consists in the clique of multi-millionaires which holds its
court in Newport and Fifth Avenue. The whole country observes their
follies and eccentricities; their family gatherings are described at
length by the press, quite as any court ceremonies are described in
European papers; and to be taken into this sacred circle is supposed to
be the life ambition of industrious millionaires. Many Americans who are
under the influence of the sensational press would probably agree with
this; and, judging by outward symptoms, one might in fact suppose that
these Crœsuses along the Cliff-walk at Newport were really the
responsible social leaders of America. This must seem very contemptible
to all who look on from a distance, for everything which the papers tell
to the four winds of heaven about these people is an insult to real and
sound American feeling. The fountains of perfumery, the dinners on
horseback, the cotillons where the favours are sun-bursts of real
gems—in short, the senseless throwing away of wealth in the mere
interests of rivalry and without even any æsthetic compensations, cannot
profoundly impress a nation of pioneers.
On looking more closely, one sees that the facts are not so bad, and
that the penny-a-liners rather than the multi-millionaires are
responsible for such sensational versions. In fact, in spite of many
extravagances, there is a great deal of taste and refinement in those
very circles; much good sense, an appreciation of true art, honest
pleasure in sport, especially if it is on a grand scale; polished
address, accomplished elegance in costume, and at table a hospitality
which proudly represents a rich country. In the matter of style and
address, these people are in fact leaders, and deserve to be. Their
society, it is true, is less interesting than that of many very much
more modest circles; but the same is true throughout the world of those
people who make pleasure their sole duty in life. Their ostentatious
enjoyments display much less individuality, and are more along
prescribed lines, than those of European circles which live in a
comparable luxury—a fact which is due largely to the universal
uniformity of fashion that prevails in every class of Americans, and
that is too little tolerant of individual picturesqueness. In spite of
all this, neither diplomatic Washington, nor intellectual Boston, nor
hospitable Baltimore, nor conservative Philadelphia, nor indomitable
Chicago, nor cosmopolitan San Francisco, can point to any collection of
persons which, in that world where one is to be amused expensively at
any cost, is better qualified to take the lead than just the Four
Hundred of New York and Newport.
And yet there is a fundamental error in the whole calculation. It is
simply not true that these circles exercise any sort of leadership for
the nation, or have become the starting-point of a New World
aristocracy. The average American, if he is still the true Puritan, is
outraged on reading of a wedding ceremony where more money is spent on
decorating the church than the combined yearly salaries of thirty school
teachers, or of the sons of great industrial leaders wasting their days
in drinking cocktails and racing their automobiles. If, on the other
hand, he is a true city-bred man, he takes a considerable pleasure in
reading in the newspaper about the design and equipment of the latest
yacht, the decorations in the ball-room of the recently built palace, or
about the latest divorce doings in those elect circles. The two sorts of
readers—that is, the vexed and the amused—agree only in one
thing;—neither of them takes all this seriously from the national point
of view. The one is outraged that in his large, healthy, and
hard-working country, such folderol and licentiousness are gaped at or
tolerated. And the other is pleased that his country has become so rich
and strong as to be able to afford such luxuriousness and extravagance;
he looks on quizzically as at a vaudeville theatre, but even he does not
take the actors in this social vaudeville the least bit seriously. The
one accounts this clique a sort of moral slum, and the other a quickly
passing and interesting froth; and both parties overestimate the
eccentric whimsies and underestimate the actual constant influence of
these circles in improving the taste for art and in really refining
manners. But this clique is accounted a real aristocracy merely by
itself and by the tradesmen who purvey to it.
In spite of this, American society is beginning to show important
differentiations. It is not a mere sentimental and fanciful aristocracy,
trying to imitate European monarchianism, and it is not the
pseudo-aristocracy dancing around the golden dinner-set; it is an
aristocracy of leading groups of people, which has risen slowly in the
social life of the nation, and now affords the starting-point of a
steadily increasing individuation of social layers. The influence of
wealth is not absent here, but it is not mere wealth as such which
exalts these people to the nobility; nor is the historical principle of
family inheritance left out of account, although it is not merely the
number of one’s identifiable ancestors that counts. It is, most of all,
the profounder marks of education and of personal talent. And out of the
combination of all these factors and their interpenetration proceed a
New World group of leaders, which has in fact a national significance.
If one were to name a single person who should typically represent this
new aristocracy, it would be Theodore Roosevelt. In the year 1649, Claes
Roosevelt settled in New Netherlands, which is now New York, and from
generation to generation his sturdy descendants have worked for the
public good. James Roosevelt, the great-grandfather of the President,
gave his services without remuneration to the Continental Army in the
war for independence; the grandfather left the largest part of his
fortune to charitable purposes; and the father was tirelessly active in
furthering patriotic undertakings during the Civil War. And as this
family inherited its public spirit, so also it inherited substance and a
taste for sport and social life.
Now this product of old family traditions has been greatly influenced by
the best intellectual culture of New England. Theodore Roosevelt is
distinctly a Harvard graduate; all the elements of his nature got new
strength from the classic world of Harvard. The history of his nation
has been his favourite study, and he has written historical treatises of
great breadth of view. Therewith he possesses a strong talent for
administration, and has advanced rapidly by reason of his actual
achievements. And thus education, public service, wealth, and family
traditions have combined to make a character which exalts this man
socially much higher than the Presidential office alone could do.
McKinley was in some ways greater, perhaps—but in McKinley’s world there
was no third dimension of aristocratic differentiation; it was a flat
picture, where one might not ask nor expect any diversification in the
other dimension. Roosevelt is the first aristocrat since many years, to
come into the White House.
Aristocratic shadings can occur in a country that is so firmly grounded
in democracy only when the movement goes in both directions, upward and
downward, and when it evolves on both sides. If it were a question on
the one side of demanding rights and forcing credence in pretentious
display, and on the other side of demanding any sort of submission from
less favoured persons or assigning them an inferior position, the whole
effort would be hopeless. The claim to prerogative which is supported by
an ostentation calculated to hypnotize the vulgar and a corresponding
obsequiousness of the weak, can do nothing more than perhaps to preserve
aristocracy after it has taken deep historic root. But such a degenerate
form cannot be the first stage of aristocracy in a new country. When a
new aristocracy is formed, it must boast not of prerogatives, but of
duties, and the feeling of those not included cannot be one of
inferiority, but of confidence. And this is the mood which is growing in
America.
Such duties are most clearly recognized by wealth, and wealth has
perhaps contributed most to begin the aristocratic differentiation in
American society; but it has not been the wealth which goes into
extravagant display or other arrogant demonstration, but the wealth
which works toward the civilized advance of the nation. However much it
may contradict the prejudices of the Old World, wealth alone does not
confer a social status in America. Of course, property everywhere makes
independence; but so long as it remains merely the power to hire things
done, it creates no social differentiation. The American does not regard
a man with awe because he stands well with trades-people and
stock-brokers, but discriminates sharply between the possessions and the
possessor. In his business life he is so accustomed to dealing with
impersonal corporations, that the power to dispense large sums of money
gives a man no personal dignity in his eyes. Just in the Western cities,
where society centres about questions of money much more than in the
East, the notion of property differentiation between men is developed
least of all so far as it concerns social station. The mere circumstance
that one man has speculated fortunately and the other unfortunately,
that the real estate of one has appreciated and of the other
deteriorated in value, occasions no belief in the inner difference of
the two men; the changes are purely economic, and suggest nothing of a
social difference.
At most there is a certain curiosity, since property opens up a world of
possibilities to a man; and he is considerably scrutinized by his
neighbours to see what he will do. In this sense especially in the small
and middle-sized cities, the local magnates are the centre of public
interest, just as the billionaires are in large cities. But to be the
object of such newspaper curiosity does not mean to be elevated in the
general respect. The millionaire is in this respect very much like the
operatic tenor; or, to put it less graciously, the hero of the last
poisoning case. It is the more a question of a mere stimulation to the
public fancy, since in reality the differences are surprisingly small.
If one looks away from the extravagant eccentricities of small circles,
the difference in general mode of life is on the whole very little in
evidence. The many citizens in the large American city who have a
property of five to ten million dollars seem to live hardly differently
from the unfortunate many who have to get on with only a simple million.
On the other hand, the average man with a modest income exerts all his
strength to appear in clothing and social habits as rich as possible. He
does not take care to store up a dowry for his children, and he lays by
little because he does not care to become a bond-holder; he would rather
work to his dying day, and teach his children while they are young to
stand on their own feet. So it happens that the differences which
actually exist are very little in evidence; the banker has his palace
and his coach, and his wife wears sealskin; but his shoe-maker has also
his own house, his horse and buggy, and his wife wears a very good
imitation of seal—which one has to rub against in order to recognize.