national boundary into Canadian wheat fields eager to find farms for
their children, although under an alien flag. And finally the government
has taken to itself great areas of arid land for reclamation by costly
irrigation projects whereby to furnish twenty-acre tracts in the desert
to settlers under careful regulation of water rights. The government
supplies the capital for huge irrigation dams and reservoirs and builds
them itself. It owns and operates quarries, coal mines and timber to
facilitate this work. It seeks the remotest regions of the earth for
crops suitable for these areas. It analyzes the soils and tells the
farmer what and when and how to plant. It has even considered the rental
to manufacturers of the surplus water, electrical and steam power
generated in its irrigation works and the utilization of this power to
extract nitrates from the air to replenish worn-out soils. The pioneer
of the arid regions must be both a capitalist and the protege of the
government.
Consider the contrast between the conditions of the pioneers at the
beginning and at the end of this period of development. Three hundred
years ago adventurous Englishmen on the coast of Virginia began the
attack on the wilderness. Three years ago the President of the United
States summoned the governors of forty-six states to deliberate upon the
danger of the exhaustion of the natural resources of the nation.[279:1]
The pressure of population upon the food supply is already felt and we
are at the beginning only of this transformation. It is profoundly
significant that at the very time when American democracy is becoming
conscious that its pioneer basis of free land and sparse population is
giving way, it is also brought face to face with the startling outcome
of its old ideals of individualism and exploitation under competition
uncontrolled by government. Pioneer society itself was not sufficiently
sophisticated to work out to its logical result the conception of the
self-made man. But the captains of industry by applying squatter
doctrines to the evolution of American industrial society, have made the
process so clear that he who runs may read. Contests imply alliances as
well as rivalries. The increasing magnitude of the areas to be dealt
with and the occurrences of times of industrial stress furnished
occasion for such unions. The panic of 1873 was followed by an
unprecedented combination of individual businesses and partnerships into
corporations. The panic of 1893 marked the beginning of an extraordinary
development of corporate combinations into pools and trusts, agreements
and absorptions, until, by the time of the panic of 1907, it seemed not
impossible that the outcome of free competition under individualism was
to be monopoly of the most important natural resources and processes by
a limited group of men whose vast fortunes were so invested in allied
and dependent industries that they constituted the dominating force in
the industrial life of the nation. The development of large scale
factory production, the benefit of combination in the competitive
struggle, and the tremendous advantage of concentration in securing
possession of the unoccupied opportunities, were so great that vast
accumulations of capital became the normal agency of the industrial
world. In almost exact ratio to the diminution of the supply of
unpossessed resources, combinations of capital have increased in
magnitude and in efficiency of conquest. The solitary backwoodsman
wielding his ax at the edge of a measureless forest is replaced by
companies capitalized at millions, operating railroads, sawmills, and
all the enginery of modern machinery to harvest the remaining
trees.[280:1]
A new national development is before us without the former safety valve
of abundant resources open to him who would take. Classes are becoming
alarmingly distinct: There is the demand on the one side voiced by Mr.
Harriman so well and by others since, that nothing must be done to
interfere with the early pioneer ideals of the exploitation and the
development of the country's wealth; that restrictive and reforming
legislation must on no account threaten prosperity even for a moment. In
fact, we sometimes hear in these days, from men of influence, serious
doubts of democracy, and intimations that the country would be better
off if it freely resigned itself to guidance by the geniuses who are
mastering the economic forces of the nation, and who, it is alleged,
would work out the prosperity of the United States more effectively, if
unvexed by politicians and people.
On the other hand, an inharmonious group of reformers are sounding the
warning that American democratic ideals and society are menaced and
already invaded by the very conditions that make this apparent
prosperity; that the economic resources are no longer limitless and
free; that the aggregate national wealth is increasing at the cost of
present social justice and moral health, and the future well-being of
the American people. The Granger and the Populist were prophets of this
reform movement. Mr. Bryan's Democracy, Mr. Debs' Socialism, and Mr.
Roosevelt's Republicanism all had in common the emphasis upon the need
of governmental regulation of industrial tendencies in the interest of
the common man; the checking of the power of those business Titans who
emerged successful out of the competitive individualism of pioneer
America. As land values rise, as meat and bread grow dearer, as the
process of industrial consolidation goes on, and as Eastern industrial
conditions spread across the West, the problems of traditional American
democracy will become increasingly grave.
The time has come when University men may well consider pioneer ideals,
for American society has reached the end of the first great period in
its formation. It must survey itself, reflect upon its origins, consider
what freightage of purposes it carried in its long march across the
continent, what ambitions it had for the man, what role it would play in
the world. How shall we conserve what was best in pioneer ideals? How
adjust the old conceptions to the changed conditions of modern life?
Other nations have been rich and prosperous and powerful. But the United
States has believed that it had an original contribution to make to the
history of society by the production of a self-determining,
self-restrained, intelligent democracy. It is in the Middle West that
society has formed on lines least like those of Europe. It is here, if
anywhere, that American democracy will make its stand against the
tendency to adjust to a European type.
This consideration gives importance to my final topic, the relation of
the University to pioneer ideals and to the changing conditions of
American democracy. President Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation has
recently declared that in no other form of popular activity does a
nation or State so clearly reveal its ideals or the quality of its
civilization as in its system of education; and he finds, especially in
the State University, "a conception of education from the standpoint of
the whole people." "If our American democracy were to-day called to give
proof of its constructive ability," he says, "the State University and
the public school system which it crowns would be the strongest evidence
of its fitness which it could offer."
It may at least be conceded that an essential characteristic of the
State University is its democracy in the largest sense. The provision in
the Constitution of Indiana of 1816, so familiar to you all, for a
"general system of education ascending in regular gradations from
township schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis
and equally open to all," expresses the Middle Western conception born
in the days of pioneer society and doubtless deeply influenced by
Jeffersonian democracy.
The most obvious fact about these universities, perhaps, lies in their
integral relation with the public schools, whereby the pupil has pressed
upon him the question whether he shall go to college, and whereby the
road is made open and direct to the highest training. By this means the
State offers to every class the means of education, and even engages in
propaganda to induce students to continue. It sinks deep shafts through
the social strata to find the gold of real ability in the underlying
rock of the masses. It fosters that due degree of individualism which is
implied in the right of every human being to have opportunity to rise in
whatever directions his peculiar abilities entitle him to go,
subordinate to the welfare of the state. It keeps the avenues of
promotion to the highest offices, the highest honors, open to the
humblest and most obscure lad who has the natural gifts, at the same
time that it aids in the improvement of the masses.
Nothing in our educational history is more striking than the steady
pressure of democracy upon its universities to adapt them to the
requirements of all the people. From the State Universities of the
Middle West, shaped under pioneer ideals, have come the fuller
recognition of scientific studies, and especially those of applied
science devoted to the conquest of nature; the breaking down of the
traditional required curriculum; the union of vocational and college
work in the same institution; the development of agricultural and
engineering colleges and business courses; the training of lawyers,
administrators, public men, and journalists--all under the ideal of
service to democracy rather than of individual advancement alone. Other
universities do the same thing; but the head springs and the main
current of this great stream of tendency come from the land of the
pioneers, the democratic states of the Middle West. And the people
themselves, through their boards of trustees and the legislature, are in
the last resort the court of appeal as to the directions and conditions
of growth, as well as have the fountain of income from which these
universities derive their existence.
The State University has thus both a peculiar power in the directness of
its influence upon the whole people and a peculiar limitation in its
dependence upon the people. The ideals of the people constitute the
atmosphere in which it moves, though it can itself affect this
atmosphere. Herein is the source of its strength and the direction of
its difficulties. For to fulfil its mission of uplifting the state to
continuously higher levels the University must, in the words of Mr.
Bryce, "serve the time without yielding to it;" it must recognize new
needs without becoming subordinate to the immediately practical, to the
short-sightedly expedient. It must not sacrifice the higher efficiency
for the more obvious but lower efficiency. It must have the wisdom to
make expenditures for results which pay manifold in the enrichment of
civilization, but which are not immediate and palpable.
In the transitional condition of American democracy which I have tried
to indicate, the mission of the university is most important. The times
call for educated leaders. General experience and rule-of-thumb
information are inadequate for the solution of the problems of a
democracy which no longer owns the safety fund of an unlimited quantity
of untouched resources. Scientific farming must increase the yield of
the field, scientific forestry must economize the woodlands, scientific
experiment and construction by chemist, physicist, biologist and
engineer must be applied to all of nature's forces in our complex modern
society. The test tube and the microscope are needed rather than ax and
rifle in this new ideal of conquest. The very discoveries of science in
such fields as public health and manufacturing processes have made it
necessary to depend upon the expert, and if the ranks of experts are to
be recruited broadly from the democratic masses as well as from those of
larger means, the State Universities must furnish at least as liberal
opportunities for research and training as the universities based on
private endowments furnish. It needs no argument to show that it is not
to the advantage of democracy to give over the training of the expert
exclusively to privately endowed institutions.
But quite as much in the field of legislation and of public life in
general as in the industrial world is the expert needed. The industrial
conditions which shape society are too complex, problems of labor,
finance, social reform too difficult to be dealt with intelligently and
wisely without the leadership of highly educated men familiar with the
legislation and literature on social questions in other States and
nations.
By training in science, in law, politics, economics and history the
universities may supply from the ranks of democracy administrators,
legislators, judges and experts for commissions who shall
disinterestedly and intelligently mediate between contending interests.
When the words "capitalistic classes" and "the proletariate" can be used
and understood in America it is surely time to develop such men, with
the ideal of service to the State, who may help to break the force of
these collisions, to find common grounds between the contestants and to
possess the respect and confidence of all parties which are genuinely
loyal to the best American ideals.
The signs of such a development are already plain in the expert
commissions of some States; in the increasing proportion of university
men in legislatures; in the university men's influence in federal
departments and commissions. It is hardly too much to say that the best
hope of intelligent and principled progress in economic and social
legislation and administration lies in the increasing influence of
American universities. By sending out these open-minded experts, by
furnishing well-fitted legislators, public leaders and teachers, by
graduating successive armies of enlightened citizens accustomed to deal
dispassionately with the problems of modern life, able to think for
themselves, governed not by ignorance, by prejudice or by impulse, but
by knowledge and reason and high-mindedness, the State Universities will
safeguard democracy. Without such leaders and followers democratic
reactions may create revolutions, but they will not be able to produce
industrial and social progress. America's problem is not violently to
introduce democratic ideals, but to preserve and entrench them by
courageous adaptation to new conditions. Educated leadership sets
bulwarks against both the passionate impulses of the mob and the
sinister designs of those who would subordinate public welfare to
private greed. Lord Bacon's splendid utterance still rings true: "The
learning of the few is despotism; the learning of the many is liberty.
And intelligent and principled liberty is fame, wisdom and power."
There is a danger to the universities in this very opportunity. At first
pioneer democracy had scant respect for the expert. He believed that "a
fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can do it for him."
There is much truth in the belief; and the educated leader, even he who
has been trained under present university conditions, in direct contact
with the world about him, will still have to contend with this inherited
suspicion of the expert. But if he be well trained and worthy of his
training, if he be endowed with creative imagination and personality, he
will make good his leadership.
A more serious danger will come when the universities are fully
recognized as powerful factors in shaping the life of the State--not
mere cloisters, remote from its life, but an influential element in its
life. Then it may easily happen that the smoke of the battle-field of
political and social controversy will obscure their pure air, that
efforts will be made to stamp out the exceptional doctrine and the
exceptional man. Those who investigate and teach within the university
walls must respond to the injunction of the church, "_Sursum
corda_"--lift up the heart to high thinking and impartial search for
the unsullied truth in the interests of all the people; this is the holy
grail of the universities.
That they may perform their work they must be left free, as the pioneer
was free, to explore new regions and to report what they find; for like
the pioneers they have the ideal of investigation, they seek new
horizons. They are not tied to past knowledge; they recognize the fact
that the universe still abounds in mystery, that science and society
have not crystallized, but are still growing and need their pioneer
trail-makers. New and beneficent discoveries in nature, new and
beneficial discoveries in the processes and directions of the growth of
society, substitutes for the vanishing material basis of pioneer
democracy may be expected if the university pioneers are left free to
seek the trail.
In conclusion, the university has a duty in adjusting pioneer ideals to
the new requirements of American democracy, even more important than
those which I have named. The early pioneer was an individualist and a
seeker after the undiscovered; but he did not understand the richness
and complexity of life as a whole; he did not fully realize his
opportunities of individualism and discovery. He stood in his somber
forest as the traveler sometimes stands in a village on the Alps when
the mist has shrouded everything, and only the squalid hut, the stony
field, the muddy pathway are in view. But suddenly a wind sweeps the fog
away. Vast fields of radiant snow and sparkling ice lie before him;
profound abysses open at his feet; and as he lifts his eyes the
unimaginable peak of the Matterhorn cleaves the thin air, far, far
above. A new and unsuspected world is revealed all about him. Thus it is
the function of the university to reveal to the individual the mystery
and the glory of life as a whole--to open all the realms of rational
human enjoyment and achievement; to preserve the consciousness of the
past; to spread before the eye the beauty of the universe; and to throw
wide its portals of duty and of power to the human soul. It must honor
the poet and painter, the writer and the teacher, the scientist and the
inventor, the musician and the prophet of righteousness--the men of
genius in all fields who make life nobler. It must call forth anew, and
for finer uses, the pioneer's love of creative individualism and provide
for it a spiritual atmosphere friendly to the development of personality
in all uplifting ways. It must check the tendency to act in mediocre
social masses with undue emphasis upon the ideals of prosperity and
politics. In short, it must summon ability of all kinds to joyous and
earnest effort for the welfare and the spiritual enrichment of society.
It must awaken new tastes and ambitions among the people.
The light of these university watch towers should flash from State to
State until American democracy itself is illuminated with higher and
broader ideals of what constitutes service to the State and to mankind;
of what are prizes; of what is worthy of praise and reward. So long as
success in amassing great wealth for the aggrandizement of the
individual is the exclusive or the dominant standard of success, so long
as material prosperity, regardless of the conditions of its cost, or the
civilization which results, is the shibboleth, American democracy, that
faith in the common man which the pioneer cherishes, is in danger. For
the strongest will make their way unerringly to whatever goal society
sets up as the mark of conceded preeminence. What more effective agency
is there for the cultivation of the seed wheat of ideals than the
university? Where can we find a more promising body of sowers of the
grain?
The pioneer's clearing must be broadened into a domain where all that is
worthy of human endeavor may find fertile soil on which to grow; and
America must exact of the constructive business geniuses who owe their
rise to the freedom of pioneer democracy supreme allegiance and devotion
to the commonweal. In fostering such an outcome and in tempering the
asperities of the conflicts that must precede its fulfilment, the nation
has no more promising agency than the State Universities, no more
hopeful product than their graduates.
FOOTNOTES:
[269:1] Commencement Address at the University of Indiana, 1910.
[270:1] [Printed from an earlier version; since published in his "Songs
from Books," p. 93, under the title, "The Voortrekker." Even fuller of
insight into the idealistic side of the frontier, is his "Explorer," in
"Collected Verse," p. 19.]
[279:1] Written in 1910.
[280:1] Omissions from the original are incorporated in later chapters.
XI
THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS[290:1]
True to American traditions that each succeeding generation ought to
find in the Republic a better home, once in every year the colleges and
universities summon the nation to lift its eyes from the routine of
work, in order to take stock of the country's purposes and achievements,
to examine its past and consider its future.
This attitude of self-examination is hardly characteristic of the people
as a whole. Particularly it is not characteristic of the historic
American. He has been an opportunist rather than a dealer in general
ideas. Destiny set him in a current which bore him swiftly along through
such a wealth of opportunity that reflection and well-considered
planning seemed wasted time. He knew not where he was going, but he was
on his way, cheerful, optimistic, busy and buoyant.
To-day we are reaching a changed condition, less apparent perhaps, in
the newer regions than in the old, but sufficiently obvious to extend
the commencement frame of mind from the college to the country as a
whole. The swift and inevitable current of the upper reaches of the
nation's history has borne it to the broader expanse and slower
stretches which mark the nearness of the level sea. The vessel, no
longer carried along by the rushing waters, finds it necessary to
determine its own directions on this new ocean of its future, to give
conscious consideration to its motive power and to its steering gear.
It matters not so much that those who address these college men and
women upon life, give conflicting answers to the questions of whence and
whither: the pause for remembrance, for reflection and for aspiration is
wholesome in itself.
Although the American people are becoming more self-conscious, more
responsive to the appeal to act by deliberate choices, we should be
over-sanguine if we believed that even in this new day these
commencement surveys were taken to heart by the general public, or that
they were directly and immediately influential upon national thought and
action.
But even while we check our enthusiasm by this realization of the common
thought, we must take heart. The University's peculiar privilege and
distinction lie in the fact that it is not the passive instrument of the
State to voice its current ideas. Its problem is not that of expressing
tendencies. Its mission is to create tendencies and to direct them. Its
problem is that of leadership and of ideals. It is called, of course, to
justify the support which the public gives it, by working in close and
sympathetic touch with those it serves. More than that, it would lose
important element of strength if it failed to recognize the fact that
improvement and creative movement often come from the masses themselves,
instinctively moving toward a better order. The University's graduates
must be fitted to take their places naturally and effectually in the
common life of the time.