wealth, not as a means of actual enjoyment, but as a measure of the
personal capacities that have earned it. Then the whole importance of
the possession is indeed transferred to the possessor. We must again
emphasize the fact that this is the real impulse underlying American
economic life—wealth is the criterion of individual achievements, of
self-initiative; and since the whole nation stretches every nerve in a
restless demonstration of this self-initiative, the person who is more
successful than his neighbours gains necessarily their instinctive
admiration. The wealth won by lucky gambles in stocks, or inherited, or
derived from a merely accidental appreciation of values or by a chance
monopoly, is not respected; but the wealth amassed by caution and
brilliant foresight, by indomitable energy and tireless initiative, or
by fascinating originality and courage, meets with full recognition. The
American sees in such a creator of material wealth the model of his
pioneer virtues, the born leader of economic progress, and he looks up
to him in sincere admiration, and respects him far higher than his
neighbour in the next palace who has accidentally fallen heir to a
tenfold larger sum. It is not the power which wealth confers, but the
power which has conferred wealth, that is respected.
And then there is a more important factor—the respect for that force of
mind which puts wealth, even if it is only a modest amount, in the
service of higher ends. Men have different tastes; one who builds
hospitals may not understand the importance of patronizing the fine
arts; one who supports universities may do very little for the church;
or another who collects sculptures may have no interest in the education
of the negro. But the fundamental dogma of American society is that
wealth confers distinction only on a man who works for ideal ends; and
perhaps the deepest impulse toward the accumulation of wealth, after the
economic power which it confers, is the desire for just this sort of
dignity. And this desire is deeper undoubtedly than the wish for
pleasure, which anyhow is somewhat limited by the outward uniformity of
American life. How far social recognition is gotten by public-spirited
activities and how far social recognition incites men to such activity,
is in any particular case hard to decide. But as a matter of fact, a
social condition has come about in which the _noblesse oblige_ of
property is recognized on all sides, and in which public opinion is more
discriminating as to the social respect which should be meted out to
this or that public deed, than it could be if it were a question of
conferring with the greatest nicety orders and titles of different
values.
The right of the individual to specialize in various directions, to
focus his benefactions on Catholic deaf-mutes or on students of insects,
on church windows, or clay cylinders with cuneiform inscriptions, is
recognized fully. Confident of the good-will of men of property, so many
diverse claims have arisen, that it would be quite impossible for a
single man out of mere general sympathy with civilization to lend a
helping hand in all directions. The Americans esteem just that
carefulness with which the rich man sees to it that his property is
applied according to his personal ideas and knowledge. It is only
thereby that his gifts have a profound personal significance, and are
fundamentally distinguished from sentimental sacrifice or from
ostentatious patronage. Giving is a serious matter, to which wealthy men
daily and hourly devote conscientious labour. A man like Carnegie, whose
useful bequests already amount to more than a hundred million dollars,
could dispose at once of his entire property if he were in a single week
to respond favourably to all the calls which are made on him. He
receives every day hundreds of such letters of request, and gives almost
his entire strength to carrying out his benevolent plans.
And the same is true on a smaller scale of all classes. Every true
American feels that his wealth puts him in a position of public
confidence, and the intensity with which he manifests this conviction
decides the social esteem in which his property is held. The real
aristocrats of wealth in this part of the world are those men whom
public opinion respects both for the gaining and the using of their
property; both factors, in a way, have to be united. The admirable
personal talents which accumulate large properties, and the lofty ideals
which put them to the best uses, may appear to be quite independent
matters, and indeed they sometimes do exclude each other, but the
aristocratic ideal demands the two together. And the Americans notice
when either one is absent; they notice when wealth is amassed in
imposing quantities, but then employed trivially or selfishly; or, on
the other hand, when it is employed for the very highest ends, but in
the opinion of competent men has been accumulated improperly. The public
feels more and more inclined to look into the business methods of men
who make large gifts. The American does not recognize the _non olet_,
and there have often been lively discussions when ill-gotten wealth has
been offered in public benefaction.
Wealth gotten by distinguished enterprise and integrity, and employed
conscientiously and thoughtfully, confers in fact high social
distinction. But it is only one factor among others. A second factor is
family tradition, the dignity of a name long respected for civil
high-mindedness and refinement. A European has only the barest
impression of the great social significance of American genealogies, and
would be surprised to see in the large libraries whole walls of
book-shelves that contain nothing but works on the lineage of American
families. The family tree of the single family of Whitney, of
Connecticut, takes up three thick volumes amounting to 2,700 pages; and
there even exists a thick and handsome volume with the genealogies of
American families of royal extraction. There are not only special papers
devoted to the scientific study of genealogies, but even some of the
large daily papers have a section devoted to this subject. Much of this
is mere curiosity and sport—a fashionable whim, which collects ancestors
much like coins or postage stamps. Although the preserving of family
traditions and an expansive pride in historic lineage do not contradict
democratic principles, yet the interest in pedigree, if it takes real
hold on the public mind, very soon leads to a genuine social
differentiation.
Such differentiation will be superficial at first. If none but
descendants of Puritans who came over in the “Mayflower” are invited to
a set of dances, a spirit of exclusiveness is shown which is indeed
undemocratic; but this sort of thing is in fact only a playful matter in
American society. The large organizations that choose their membership
on the ground of peculiar ancestry make no pretence to special
privileges, and many of them are nothing but philanthropic societies. On
the other hand, if the aristocracy of family were to assume special
rights, it would be no innovation on American soil, because in the
earliest colonial days many of the social differences of English society
were brought over, and the English class spirit did not disappear until
after the Revolution, when the younger sons of English gentlemen no
longer came over to this country. In the South, a considerable spirit of
aristocracy persisted until after the Civil War.
Such superficial differentiation has virtually disappeared to-day. The
mere tinsel of family aristocracy has been torn off, but for this reason
the real importance and achievements of certain families come out all
the more clearly. The representatives of venerable family names are
looked on with peculiar public confidence; and the more the American
nation becomes acquainted with the history of these families, which have
been active on American soil for eight or ten generations, the more it
respects their descendants of the present day.
It is true that conditions are still provincial, and that almost no
family has a national significance. The names of the first families of
Virginia, which are universally revered in the South, are almost unknown
in the North; the descendants of Knickerbocker families, whose very name
must not be mentioned in New York without a certain air of solemnity,
are very much less considered in Baltimore or Philadelphia; and the
western part of the country is naturally still too young to have
established such traditions at all until recently. But the following is
a typical example for the East:
Harvard University is governed by seven men who are chosen to fill this
responsible position, solely because the academic community has profound
confidence both in their integrity and in their breadth of view. And yet
it is no accident that among these seven men, there is not one whose
family has not been of service to the State of Massachusetts for seven
generations. So that, even in such a model democratic community as
Puritan New England, the names of families that have played an important
public part in the middle of the seventeenth century are as much
respected as the old “märkische Adel” in Prussia. And although they are
without the privileges of nobility, the whole dignity of the past is
felt by every educated person to be preserved in such family names.
But the most important factor in the aristocratic differentiation of
America is higher education and culture, and this becomes more important
every day. In speaking of universities, we have carefully explained why
higher culture is less closely connected with the learned professions in
America than in the European countries. We have seen that the learned
professions are fed by professional and very practical schools, which
turn out a doctor, lawyer, or preacher without requiring a broad and
liberal previous training; and how, on the other hand, the college has
been the independent institution for higher culture, and how these two
institutions have slowly grown together in the course of time, so that
the college course has come at length to be the regular preparation for
those who attend professional schools. Now, in considering the social
importance of higher individual culture, we have not to consider the
learned professions, but rather the general college training; and in
this respect we find undoubtedly that common opinion has slowly shifted
toward an aristocratic point of view. The social importance ascribed to
a college graduate is all the time growing.
It was kept back for a long time by unfortunate prejudices. Because
other than intellectual forces had made the nation strong, and
everywhere in the foreground of public activity there were vigorous and
influential men who had not continued their education beyond the public
grammar school, so the masses instinctively believed that insight, real
energy, and enterprise were better developed in the school of life than
in the world of books. The college student was thought of as a weakling,
in a way, who might have many fine theories about things, but who would
never take hold to help solve the great national problems—a sort of
academic “mugwump,” but not a leader. The banking-house, factory, farm,
the mine, the law office, and the political position were all thought
better places for the young American man than the college lecture halls.
And perhaps the unpractical character of college studies was no more
feared than the artificial social atmosphere. It was felt that an ideal
atmosphere was created in the college to which the mind in its best
period of development too readily adapted itself, so that it came out
virtually unprepared for the crude reality of practical life. This has
been a dogma in political life ever since the Presidency of Andrew
Jackson, and almost equally so in economic life.
This has profoundly changed now, and changes more with every year. It is
not a question of identifying the higher culture with the learned
professions, as in Germany—there is no reason for this; and such a point
of view has developed in Germany only by an accident of history. In
America it is still thought that a graduate of one of these
colleges—that is, a man who has gone about as far as the German student
of philosophy in the third or fourth semester—is equal to anybody in
culture, no matter whether he afterward becomes a manufacturer, or
banker, or lawyer, or a philologian. The change has taken place in
regard to what is expected of the college student; distrust has
vanished, and people realize that the intellectual discipline which he
has had until his twenty-second year in the artificial and ideal world
is after all the best training for the great duties of public life, and
that academic training, less by its subject-matter than by its methods,
is the best possible preparation for practical activity.
The man of academic training is the only one who sees things in their
right perspective, and gives them the right values. Even the large
merchant knows to-day that the young man who left college at twenty-two
will be, when he is twenty-seven years of age, generally ahead of his
contemporaries who left school at seventeen and “went to work.” The
great self-made men do indeed say a good deal to comfort those who have
had only a school training, but it may be noted that they send their own
sons to college. As a matter of fact, the leading positions in the
disposal of the nation are almost entirely in the hands of men of
academic training, and the mistrust of the theorizing college spirit has
given place to a situation in which university presidents and professors
have much to say on all practical questions of public life, and the
college graduates are the real supporters of every movement toward
reform and civilization.
All in all, it can no longer be denied that a class of national leaders
has risen above the social life of the masses, and not wholly, as
democracy would really require, by reason of their personal talents. A
wealthy man has a certain advantage by his wealth, the man of family by
his lineage, the man of academic training by the fact that his parents
were able to send him to the university. This is neither plutocracy nor
hereditary aristocracy, nor intellectual snobbery. We have seen that
wealth wins consideration only when well expended, that ancestry brings
no privileges or prerogatives with it, and that an academic education is
not equivalent to merely technical erudition. The personal factor is not
lacking, since we have seen that the rich man must plan his
benefactions, the man of family must play his public part, and that
academic training is in the reach of every young man who will try for
it. The fundamental principles of democracy are therefore not destroyed,
but they are modified. The spirit of self-assertion which calls for
absolute equality is everywhere brought face to face with men who are
superior, whose claims cannot be discounted, and who are tacitly
admitted to belong rightfully to an upper class.
Differentiation, once more, works not merely upward, but also downward;
the public leader pushes himself ahead, and at the same time the great
masses are looking for some one whom they may follow. It is not a matter
of subjection, but of confidence—confidence in men who are recognizedly
better than many others. There can be no doubt that a reaction is going
on throughout America to-day, not against democracy, but against those
opinions which have prevailed in the democracy ever since the days of
the pioneers. A great many people feel instinctively that the time is
ripe to oppose the one-sidedness of domination by the masses; people are
forcibly impressed by the fact that in politics, government, literature
and art, the great achievements are thwarted by vulgar influences, that
the original individual is impressed into the ordinary mould, and that
dilettanteism and mediocrity rule triumphant and keep out the best
talents from public life. People see the tyranny of greed, the reproach
of municipal corruption, the unwholesome influence of a sensational
press and of unscrupulous capital. They see how public life becomes
blatant, irresponsible, and vulgar; how all authority and respect must
disappear if democracy is not to be curbed at any point.
The time has come, a great many feel, in which the moral influence of
authority is needed, and the educational influence of those more
cultivated persons who will not yield to the æsthetic tastes of the
vulgar must be infused into the democracy. The trained man must speak
where the masses would otherwise act from mere caprice; the disciplined
mind must lead where incompetence is heading for blind alleys; the best
minds must have some say and people must be forced to listen, so that
other voices and opinions shall have weight than those that make the
babel of the streets. The eclectic must prevail over the vulgar taste,
and the profound over the superficial, since it is clear that only in
that way will America advance beyond her present stage of development.
America has created a new political world, and must now turn to
æsthetics and culture. Such a reaction has not happened to-day or
yesterday, but has been going on steadily in the last few decades, and
to-day it is so strong as to overcome all resistance. The desire for the
beauty and dignity of culture, for authority and thoroughness, is
creeping into every corner of American life.
The time is already passing which would do away with all discipline and
submission in school and family life; public life brings the trained
expert everywhere into prominence. The disgust at the vulgarity of daily
life, as in the visible appearance of city streets, increases rapidly.
The sense of beauty is everywhere at work; and men of taste, education,
and traditions, rather than the city fathers who are elected by the
rabble, are finally being called to positions of leadership. The
democratic spirit is not crumbling, and certainly the rights of the
masses are not to be displaced by the rights of the better educated and
more æsthetic; but democracy is in a way to be perfected, to be brought
as high as it can be brought by giving a representation to really all
the forces that are in the social organism, and by not permitting the
more refined ones to be suppressed by the weight of the masses. The
nation has come to that maturity where the public is ready to let itself
be led by the best men.
It is true that the public taste still prevails too widely in many
branches of social life; there is too much triviality; too many
institutions are built on the false principles that everybody knows best
what is good for him, and too many undertakings flatter the taste which
they should educate. But opposite tendencies are present everywhere. The
more the economic development of the country is rounded off, the greater
is its demand for social differentiation, for the recognition of certain
influences as superior, for subordination, and for finer organization.
Just as economic life has long since given up free competition, and the
great corporations show admirably that subordination is necessary to
great purposes, and the world of labour has become an army with
strictest discipline and blind allegiance, so in the non-economic world
a tendency toward subordination, individuation, and aristocracy becomes
every moment more evident.
To this tendency there is added the new conception of the state.
Democracy is, from the outset, individualistic. We have seen everywhere
that the fundamental force in this community is the belief of every man
in his own personality and that of others. The state has been the sum
total of individuals, and the state as something more than the
individual has appeared as a bare abstraction. The individual alone has
asserted itself, perfected and guided itself, and taken all the
initiative. And this belief in the person is no less firm to-day; but
another belief has come up. This is a belief in the ethical reality of
the state. Public opinion is still afraid that if this belief increases,
the old confidence in the value of the individual, and therewith of all
the fundamental virtues of American democracy, may be shaken. But the
belief spreads from day to day, and produces its change in public
opinion. Politics are trending as are so many other branches of life;
the emphasis is passing from the individual to the totality. As we have
seen that the Americans adorned their houses before their public
buildings, quite the opposite of what Europeans have done, so they have
given political value to the millions of individuals long before they
laid weight on the one collective will of the state. The men who would
have sacrificed everything rather than cheat their neighbours have had
no conscientious scruples in plundering the state.
It is different to-day. The feeling grows that honour toward the state,
sacrifice for it, and confidence in it are even more important than the
respect for the totality of individuals. These opinions cannot be spread
abroad without having their far-reaching consequences; the state is
visible only in symbols, and its representatives get their significance
by symbolizing not the population, but the abstract state. The
individual representative of government is thus exalted personally above
the democratic level. To fill an office means not merely to do work, but
to experience a broadening of personality, much as that which the priest
feels in his office; it is an enlargement which demands on the other
side respect and subordination. This tendency is still in its
beginnings, and will never be so strong as in Europe, because the
self-assertion of the individual is too lively. Nevertheless, these new
notes in the harmony are much louder and more persistent than they were
ten years ago.
Thus there are many forces which work to check the spirit of
self-assertion; in spite of the liveliest feeling of equality, a social
differentiation is practically working itself out in all American life.
Differences of occupation are, perhaps, the least significant; a
profession which has such a great claim to superiority as, for instance,
that of the army officer in Germany, does not exist in the United
States. Perhaps the legal profession would be looked on as the most
important, and certainly it absorbs a very large proportion of the best
strength of the nation. The high position given the jurist is probably
in good part because, unlike his Continental colleague, as we have
explained at length, he actually takes part in shaping the law. In a
different way the preacher is very greatly respected, but his profession
decreases slowly in attractiveness for the best talents of the country.
The academic professions, on the other hand, have drawn such talent more
and more, and will continue to do so as the distinction grows sharper
between the college teacher and the real university professor. The
pre-eminently reproductive activities are naturally less enticing than
those which are creative, and wherever talent is attracted it quickly
accomplishes great things, and these work to improve the social status
of the profession. The political profession, as such, is far down in the
scale; only governors, senators, and the highest ministerial officials
play an important social part. Of course, one cannot speak of the
especial recognition of mercantile or industrial professions, because
these offer too great a variety of attainment; but certainly their most
influential representatives are socially inferior to none in the
community.