construction and development engaged the attention of the Westerners as
they occupied prairies and Great Plains and mountains. Democracy and
capitalistic development did not seem antagonistic.
With the passing of the frontier, Western social and political ideals
took new form. Capital began to consolidate in even greater masses, and
increasingly attempted to reduce to system and control the processes of
industrial development. Labor with equal step organized its forces to
destroy the old competitive system. It is not strange that the Western
pioneers took alarm for their ideals of democracy as the outcome of the
free struggle for the national resources became apparent. They espoused
the cause of governmental activity.
It was a new gospel, for the Western radical became convinced that he
must sacrifice his ideal of individualism and free competition in order
to maintain his ideal of democracy. Under this conviction the Populist
revised the pioneer conception of government. He saw in government no
longer something outside of him, but the people themselves shaping their
own affairs. He demanded therefore an extension of the powers of
governments in the interest of his historic ideal of democratic society.
He demanded not only free silver, but the ownership of the agencies of
communication and transportation, the income tax, the postal savings
bank, the provision of means of credit for agriculture, the construction
of more effective devices to express the will of the people, primary
nominations, direct elections, initiative, referendum and recall. In a
word, capital, labor, and the Western pioneer, all deserted the ideal of
competitive individualism in order to organize their interests in more
effective combinations. The disappearance of the frontier, the closing
of the era which was marked by the influence of the West as a form of
society, brings with it new problems of social adjustment, new demands
for considering our past ideals and our present needs.
Let us recall the conditions of the foreign relations along our borders,
the dangers that wait us if we fail to unite in the solution of our
domestic problems. Let us recall those internal evidences of the
destruction of our old social order. If we take to heart this warning,
we shall do well also to recount our historic ideals, to take stock of
those purposes, and fundamental assumptions that have gone to make the
American spirit and the meaning of America in world history.
First of all, there was the ideal of discovery, the courageous
determination to break new paths, indifference to the dogma that because
an institution or a condition exists, it must remain. All American
experience has gone to the making of the spirit of innovation; it is in
the blood and will not be repressed.
Then, there was the ideal of democracy, the ideal of a free
self-directing people, responsive to leadership in the forming of
programs and their execution, but insistent that the procedure should be
that of free choice, not of compulsion.
But there was also the ideal of individualism. This democratic society
was not a disciplined army, where all must keep step and where the
collective interests destroyed individual will and work. Rather it was a
mobile mass of freely circulating atoms, each seeking its own place and
finding play for its own powers and for its own original initiative. We
cannot lay too much stress upon this point, for it was at the very heart
of the whole American movement. The world was to be made a better world
by the example of a democracy in which there was freedom of the
individual, in which there was the vitality and mobility productive of
originality and variety.
Bearing in mind the far-reaching influence of the disappearance of
unlimited resources open to all men for the taking, and considering the
recoil of the common man when he saw the outcome of the competitive
struggle for these resources as the supply came to its end over most of
the nation, we can understand the reaction against individualism and in
favor of drastic assertion of the powers of government. Legislation is
taking the place of the free lands as the means of preserving the ideal
of democracy. But at the same time it is endangering the other pioneer
ideal of creative and competitive individualism. Both were essential and
constituted what was best in America's contribution to history and to
progress. Both must be preserved if the nation would be true to its
past, and would fulfil its highest destiny. It would be a grave
misfortune if these people so rich in experience, in self-confidence and
aspiration, in creative genius, should turn to some Old World discipline
of socialism or plutocracy, or despotic rule, whether by class or by
dictator. Nor shall we be driven to these alternatives. Our ancient
hopes, our courageous faith, our underlying good humor and love of fair
play will triumph in the end. There will be give and take in all
directions. There will be disinterested leadership, under loyalty to the
best American ideals. Nowhere is this leadership more likely to arise
than among the men trained in the Universities, aware of the promise of
the past and the possibilities of the future. The times call for new
ambitions and new motives.
In a most suggestive essay on the Problems of Modern Democracy, Mr.
Godkin has said:
M. de Tocqueville and all his followers take it for granted
that the great incentive to excellence, in all countries in
which excellence is found, is the patronage and encouragement
of an aristocracy; that democracy is generally content with
mediocrity. But where is the proof of this? The incentive to
exertion which is widest, most constant, and most powerful in
its operations in all civilized countries, is the desire of
distinction; and this may be composed either of love of fame
or love of wealth or of both. In literary and artistic and
scientific pursuits, sometimes the strongest influence is
exerted by a love of the subject. But it may safely be said
that no man has ever labored in any of the higher colleges to
whom the applause and appreciation of his fellows was not one
of the sweetest rewards of his exertions.
What is there we would ask, in the nature of democratic
institutions, that should render this great spring of action
powerless, that should deprive glory of all radiance, and put
ambition to sleep? Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that
one of the most marked peculiarities of democratic society, or
of a society drifting toward democracy, is the fire of
competition which rages in it, the fevered anxiety which
possesses all its members to rise above the dead level to
which the law is ever seeking to confine them, and by some
brilliant stroke become something higher and more remarkable
than their fellows? The secret of that great restlessness
which is one of the most disagreeable accompaniments of life
in democratic countries, is in fact due to the eagerness of
everybody to grasp the prizes of which in aristocratic
countries, only the few have much chance. And in no other
society is success more worshiped, is distinction of any kind
more widely flattered and caressed.
In democratic societies, in fact, excellence is the first
title to distinction; in aristocratic ones there are two or
three others which are far stronger and which must be stronger
or aristocracy could not exist. The moment you acknowledge
that the highest social position ought to be the reward of the
man who has the most talent, you make aristocratic
institutions impossible.
All that was buoyant and creative in American life would be lost if we
gave up the respect for distinct personality, and variety in genius, and
came to the dead level of common standards. To be "socialized into an
average" and placed "under the tutelage of the mass of us," as a recent
writer has put it, would be an irreparable loss. Nor is it necessary in
a democracy, as these words of Godkin well disclose. What is needed is
the multiplication of motives for ambition and the opening of new lines
of achievement for the strongest. As we turn from the task of the first
rough conquest of the continent there lies before us a whole wealth of
unexploited resources in the realm of the spirit. Arts and letters,
science and better social creation, loyalty and political service to the
commonweal,--these and a thousand other directions of activity are open
to the men, who formerly under the incentive of attaining distinction by
amassing extraordinary wealth, saw success only in material display.
Newer and finer careers will open to the ambitious when once public
opinion shall award the laurels to those who rise above their fellows in
these new fields of labor. It has not been the gold, but the getting of
the gold, that has caught the imaginations of our captains of industry.
Their real enjoyment lay not in the luxuries which wealth brought, but
in the work of construction and in the place which society awarded them.
A new era will come if schools and universities can only widen the
intellectual horizon of the people, help to lay the foundations of a
better industrial life, show them new goals for endeavor, inspire them
with more varied and higher ideals.
The Western spirit must be invoked for new and nobler achievements. Of
that matured Western spirit, Tennyson's Ulysses is a symbol.
". . . I am become a name
For always roaming with an hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known . . .
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch, where thro'
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
* * * * *
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a shining star
Beyond the utmost hound of human thought.
. . . Come my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the Western stars until I die
* * * * *
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."
FOOTNOTES:
[290:1] Commencement Address, University of Washington, June 17, 1914.
Reprinted by permission from _The Washington Historical Quarterly_,
October, 1914.
XII
SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY[311:1]
The transformations through which the United States is passing in our
own day are so profound, so far-reaching, that it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that we are witnessing the birth of a new nation in
America. The revolution in the social and economic structure of this
country during the past two decades is comparable to what occurred when
independence was declared and the constitution was formed, or to the
changes wrought by the era which began half a century ago, the era of
Civil War and Reconstruction.
These changes have been long in preparation and are, in part, the result
of world-wide forces of reorganization incident to the age of steam
production and large-scale industry, and, in part, the result of the
closing of the period of the colonization of the West. They have been
prophesied, and the course of the movement partly described by students
of American development; but after all, it is with a shock that the
people of the United States are coming to realize that the fundamental
forces which have shaped their society up to the present are
disappearing. Twenty years ago, as I have before had occasion to point
out, the Superintendent of the Census declared that the frontier line,
which its maps had depicted for decade after decade of the westward
march of the nation, could no longer be described. To-day we must add
that the age of free competition of individuals for the unpossessed
resources of the nation is nearing its end. It is taking less than a
generation to write the chapter which began with the disappearance of
the line of the frontier--the last chapter in the history of the
colonization of the United States, the conclusion to the annals of its
pioneer democracy.
It is a wonderful chapter, this final rush of American energy upon the
remaining wilderness. Even the bare statistics become eloquent of a new
era. They no longer derive their significance from the exhibit of vast
proportions of the public domain transferred to agriculture, of
wildernesses equal to European nations changed decade after decade into
the farm area of the United States. It is true there was added to the
farms of the nation between 1870 and 1880 a territory equal to that of
France, and between 1880 and 1900 a territory equal to the European area
of France, Germany, England, and Wales combined. The records of 1910 are
not yet available, but whatever they reveal they will not be so full of
meaning as the figures which tell of upleaping wealth and organization
and concentration of industrial power in the East in the last decade. As
the final provinces of the Western empire have been subdued to the
purposes of civilization and have yielded their spoils, as the spheres
of operation of the great industrial corporations have extended, with
the extension of American settlement, production and wealth have
increased beyond all precedent.
The total deposits in all national banks have more than trebled in the
present decade; the money in circulation has doubled since 1890. The
flood of gold makes it difficult to gage the full meaning of the
incredible increase in values, for in the decade ending with 1909 over
41,600,000 ounces of gold were mined in the United States alone. Over
four million ounces have been produced every year since 1905, whereas
between 1880 and 1894 no year showed a production of two million ounces.
As a result of this swelling stream of gold and instruments of credit,
aided by a variety of other causes, prices have risen until their height
has become one of the most marked features and influential factors in
American life, producing social readjustments and contributing
effectively to party revolutions.
But if we avoid those statistics which require analysis because of the
changing standard of value, we still find that the decade occupies an
exceptional place in American history. More coal was mined in the United
States in the ten years after 1897 than in all the life of the nation
before that time.[313:1] Fifty years ago we mined less than fifteen
million long tons of coal. In 1907 we mined nearly 429,000,000. At the
present rate it is estimated that the supply of coal would be exhausted
at a date no farther in the future than the formation of the
constitution is in the past. Iron and coal are the measures of
industrial power. The nation has produced three times as much iron ore
in the past two decades as in all its previous history; the production
of the past ten years was more than double that of the prior decade.
Pig-iron production is admitted to be an excellent barometer of
manufacture and of transportation. Never until 1898 had this reached an
annual total of ten million long tons. But in the five years beginning
with 1904 it averaged over twice that. By 1907 the United States had
surpassed Great Britain, Germany, and France combined in the production
of pig-iron and steel together, and in the same decade a single great
corporation has established its domination over the iron mines and steel
manufacture of the United States. It is more than a mere accident that
the United States Steel Corporation with its stocks and bonds
aggregating $1,400,000,000 was organized at the beginning of the present
decade. The former wilderness about Lake Superior has, principally in
the past two decades, established its position as overwhelmingly the
preponderant source of iron ore, present and prospective, in the United
States--a treasury from which Pittsburgh has drawn wealth and extended
its unparalleled industrial empire in these years. The tremendous
energies thus liberated at this center of industrial power in the United
States revolutionized methods of manufacture in general, and in many
indirect ways profoundly influenced the life of the nation.
Railroad statistics also exhibit unprecedented development, the
formation of a new industrial society. The number of passengers carried
one mile more than doubled between 1890 and 1908; freight carried one
mile has nearly trebled in the same period and has doubled in the past
decade. Agricultural products tell a different story. The corn crop has
only risen from about two billion bushels in 1891 to two and
seven-tenths billions in 1909; wheat from six hundred and eleven million
bushels in 1891 to only seven hundred and thirty-seven million in 1909;
and cotton from about nine million bales in 1891 to ten and three-tenths
million bales in 1909. Population has increased in the United States
proper from about sixty-two and one-half millions in 1890 to
seventy-five and one-half millions in 1900 and to over ninety millions
in 1910.
It is clear from these statistics that the ratio of the nation's
increased production of immediate wealth by the enormously increased
exploitation of its remaining natural resources vastly exceeds the ratio
of increase of population and still more strikingly exceeds the ratio of
increase of agricultural products. Already population is pressing upon
the food supply while capital consolidates in billion-dollar
organizations. The "Triumphant Democracy" whose achievements the
iron-master celebrated has reached a stature even more imposing than he
could have foreseen; but still less did he perceive the changes in
democracy itself and the conditions of its life which have accompanied
this material growth.
Having colonized the Far West, having mastered its internal resources,
the nation turned at the conclusion of the nineteenth and the beginning
of the twentieth century to deal with the Far East to engage in the
world-politics of the Pacific Ocean. Having continued its historic
expansion into the lands of the old Spanish empire by the successful
outcome of the recent war, the United States became the mistress of the
Philippines at the same time that it came into possession of the
Hawaiian Islands, and the controlling influence in the Gulf of Mexico.
It provided early in the present decade for connecting its Atlantic and
Pacific coasts by the Isthmian Canal, and became an imperial republic
with dependencies and protectorates--admittedly a new world-power, with
a potential voice in the problems of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
This extension of power, this undertaking of grave responsibilities in
new fields, this entry into the sisterhood of world-states, was no
isolated event. It was, indeed, in some respects the logical outcome of
the nation's march to the Pacific, the sequence to the era in which it
was engaged in occupying the free lands and exploiting the resources of
the West. When it had achieved this position among the nations of the
earth, the United States found itself confronted, also, with the need of
constitutional readjustment, arising from the relations of federal
government and territorial acquisitions. It was obliged to reconsider
questions of the rights of man and traditional American ideals of
liberty and democracy, in view of the task of government of other races
politically inexperienced and undeveloped.
If we turn to consider the effect upon American society and domestic
policy in these two decades of transition we are met with palpable
evidences of the invasion of the old pioneer democratic order. Obvious
among them is the effect of unprecedented immigration to supply the
mobile army of cheap labor for the centers of industrial life. In the
past ten years, beginning with 1900, over eight million immigrants have
arrived. The newcomers of the eight years since 1900 would, according to
a writer in 1908, "repopulate all the five older New England States as
they stand to-day; or, if properly disseminated over the newer parts of
the country they would serve to populate no less than nineteen states of
the Union as they stand." In 1907 "there were one and one-quarter
million arrivals. This number would entirely populate both New Hampshire
and Maine, two of our oldest States." "The arrivals of this one year
would found a State with more inhabitants than any one of twenty-one of
our other existing commonwealths which could be named." Not only has the
addition to the population from Europe been thus extraordinary, it has
come in increasing measure from southern and eastern Europe. For the
year 1907, Professor Ripley,[316:1] whom I am quoting, has redistributed
the incomers on the basis of physical type and finds that one-quarter of
them were of the Mediterranean race, one-quarter of the Slavic race,
one-eighth Jewish, and only one-sixth of the Alpine, and one-sixth of
the Teutonic. In 1882 Germans had come to the amount of 250,000; in 1907
they were replaced by 330,000 South Italians. Thus it is evident that
the ethnic elements of the United States have undergone startling
changes; and instead of spreading over the nation these immigrants have
concentrated especially in the cities and great industrial centers in
the past decade. The composition of the labor class and its relation to
wages and to the native American employer have been deeply influenced
thereby; the sympathy of the employers with labor has been unfavorably
affected by the pressure of great numbers of immigrants of alien
nationality and of lower standards of life.
The familiar facts of the massing of population in the cities and the
contemporaneous increase of urban power, and of the massing of capital
and production in fewer and vastly greater industrial units, especially
attest the revolution. "It is a proposition too plain to require
elucidation," wrote Richard Rush, Secretary of the Treasury, in his
report of 1827, "that the creation of capital is retarded rather than
accelerated by the diffusion of a thin population over a great surface
of soil."[317:1] Thirty years before Rush wrote these words Albert
Gallatin declared in Congress that "if the cause of the happiness of
this country were examined into, it would be found to arise as much from
the great plenty of land in proportion to the inhabitants which their
citizens enjoyed as from the wisdom of their political institutions."
Possibly both of these Pennsylvania financiers were right under the
conditions of the time; but it is at least significant that capital and
labor entered upon a new era as the end of the free lands approached. A
contemporary of Gallatin in Congress had replied to the argument that
cheap lands would depopulate the Atlantic coast by saying that if a law
were framed to prevent ready access to western lands it would be
tantamount to saying that there is some class which must remain "and by
law be obliged to serve the others for such wages as they pleased to
give." The passage of the arable public domain into private possession
has raised this question in a new form and has brought forth new
answers. This is peculiarly the era when competitive individualism in
the midst of vast unappropriated opportunities changed into the
monopoly of the fundamental industrial processes by huge aggregations of
capital as the free lands disappeared. All the tendencies of the
large-scale production of the twentieth century, all the trend to the
massing of capital in large combinations, all of the energies of the age
of steam, found in America exceptional freedom of action and were
offered regions of activity equal to the states of all Western Europe.
Here they reached their highest development.