THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE
BY HERBERT CROLY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
* * * * *
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1909. Reprinted
June, 1910; April, 1911; March, 1912.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
Dedicated
TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE
DAVID GOODMAN CROLY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE?
CHAPTER II
THE FEDERALISTS AND THE REPUBLICANS
CHAPTER III
THE DEMOCRATS AND THE WHIGS
CHAPTER IV
SLAVERY AND AMERICAN NATIONALITY
CHAPTER V
THE CONTEMPORARY SITUATION
CHAPTER VI
REFORM AND THE REFORMERS
CHAPTER VII
RECONSTRUCTION; ITS CONDITIONS AND PURPOSES
CHAPTER VIII
NATIONALITY AND DEMOCRACY
CHAPTER IX
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND ITS NATIONAL PRINCIPLES
CHAPTER X
A NATIONAL FOREIGN POLICY
CHAPTER XI
PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION--PART I
CHAPTER XII
PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION--PART II
CHAPTER XIII
CONCLUSIONS--THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NATIONAL PURPOSE
INDEX
THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE
CHAPTER I
I
WHAT IS THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE?
The average American is nothing if not patriotic. "The Americans are
filled," says Mr. Emil Reich in his "Success among the Nations," "with
such an implicit and absolute confidence in their Union and in their
future success that any remark other than laudatory is inacceptable to
the majority of them. We have had many opportunities of hearing public
speakers in America cast doubts upon the very existence of God and of
Providence, question the historic nature or veracity of the whole fabric
of Christianity; but never has it been our fortune to catch the
slightest whisper of doubt, the slightest want of faith, in the chief
God of America--unlimited belief in the future of America." Mr. Reich's
method of emphasis may not be very happy, but the substance of what he
says is true. The faith of Americans in their own country is religious,
if not in its intensity, at any rate in its almost absolute and
universal authority. It pervades the air we breathe. As children we hear
it asserted or implied in the conversation of our elders. Every new
stage of our educational training provides some additional testimony on
its behalf. Newspapers and novelists, orators and playwrights, even if
they are little else, are at least loyal preachers of the Truth. The
skeptic is not controverted; he is overlooked. It constitutes the kind
of faith which is the implication, rather than the object, of thought,
and consciously or unconsciously it enters largely into our personal
lives as a formative influence. We may distrust and dislike much that is
done in the name of our country by our fellow-countrymen; but our
country itself, its democratic system, and its prosperous future are
above suspicion.
Of course, Americans have no monopoly of patriotic enthusiasm and good
faith. Englishmen return thanks to Providence for not being born
anything but an Englishman, in churches and ale-houses as well as in
comic operas. The Frenchman cherishes and proclaims the idea that France
is the most civilized modern country and satisfies best the needs of a
man of high social intelligence. The Russian, whose political and social
estate does not seem enviable to his foreign contemporaries, secretes a
vision of a mystically glorified Russia, which condemns to comparative
insipidity the figures of the "Pax Britannica" and of "La Belle France"
enlightening the world. Every nation, in proportion as its nationality
is thoroughly alive, must be leavened by the ferment of some such faith.
But there are significant differences between the faith of, say, an
Englishman in the British Empire and that of an American in the Land of
Democracy. The contents of an Englishman's national idea tends to be
more exclusive. His patriotism is anchored to the historical
achievements of Great Britain and restricted thereby. As a good patriot
he is bound to be more preoccupied with the inherited fabric of national
institutions and traditions than he is with the ideal and more than
national possibilities of the future. This very loyalty to the national
fabric does, indeed, imply an important ideal content; but the national
idealism of an Englishman, a German, or even a Frenchman, is heavily
mortgaged to his own national history and cannot honestly escape the
debt. The good patriot is obliged to offer faithful allegiance to a
network of somewhat arbitrary institutions, social forms, and
intellectual habits--on the ground that his country is exposed to more
serious dangers from premature emancipation than it is from stubborn
conservatism. France is the only European country which has sought to
make headway towards a better future by means of a revolutionary break
with its past; and the results of the French experiment have served for
other European countries more as a warning than as an example.
The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to
historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an
ideal national Promise. The Land of Democracy has always appealed to its
more enthusiastic children chiefly as a land of wonderful and more than
national possibilities. "Neither race nor tradition," says Professor
Hugo Münsterberg in his volume on "The Americans," "nor the actual past,
binds the American to his countrymen, but rather the future which
together they are building." This vision of a better future is not,
perhaps, as unclouded for the present generation of Americans as it was
for certain former generations; but in spite of a more friendly
acquaintance with all sorts of obstacles and pitfalls, our country is
still figured in the imagination of its citizens as the Land of Promise.
They still believe that somehow and sometime something better will
happen to good Americans than has happened to men in any other country;
and this belief, vague, innocent, and uninformed though it be, is the
expression of an essential constituent in our national ideal. The past
should mean less to a European than it does to an American, and the
future should mean more. To be sure, American life cannot with impunity
be wrenched violently from its moorings any more than the life of a
European country can; but our American past, compared to that of any
European country, has a character all its own. Its peculiarity consists,
not merely in its brevity, but in the fact that from the beginning it
has been informed by an idea. From the beginning Americans have been
anticipating and projecting a better future. From the beginning the Land
of Democracy has been figured as the Land of Promise. Thus the
American's loyalty to the national tradition rather affirms than denies
the imaginative projection of a better future. An America which was not
the Land of Promise, which was not informed by a prophetic outlook and a
more or less constructive ideal, would not be the America bequeathed to
us by our forefathers. In cherishing the Promise of a better national
future the American is fulfilling rather than imperiling the substance
of the national tradition.
When, however, Americans talk of their country as the Land of Promise, a
question may well be raised as to precisely what they mean. They mean,
of course, in general, that the future will have something better in
store for them individually and collectively than has the past or the
present; but a very superficial analysis of this meaning discloses
certain ambiguities. What are the particular benefits which this better
future will give to Americans either individually or as a nation? And
how is this Promise to be fulfilled? Will it fulfill itself, or does it
imply certain responsibilities? If so, what responsibilities? When we
speak of a young man's career as promising, we mean that his abilities
and opportunities are such that he is likely to become rich or famous or
powerful; and this judgment does not of course imply, so far as we are
concerned, any responsibility. It is merely a prophecy based upon past
performances and proved qualities. But the career, which from the
standpoint of an outsider is merely an anticipation, becomes for the
young man himself a serious task. For him, at all events, the better
future will not merely happen. He will have to do something to deserve
it. It may be wrecked by unforeseen obstacles, by unsuspected
infirmities, or by some critical error of judgment. So it is with the
Promise of American life. From the point of view of an immigrant this
Promise may consist of the anticipation of a better future, which he can
share merely by taking up his residence on American soil; but once he
has become an American, the Promise can no longer remain merely an
anticipation. It becomes in that case a responsibility, which requires
for its fulfillment a certain kind of behavior on the part of himself
and his fellow-Americans. And when we attempt to define the Promise of
American life, we are obliged, also, to describe the kind of behavior
which the fulfillment of the Promise demands.
The distinction between the two aspects of America as a Land of Promise
made in the preceding paragraph is sufficiently obvious, but it is
usually slurred by the average good American patriot. The better future,
which is promised for himself, his children, and for other Americans, is
chiefly a matter of confident anticipation. He looks upon it very much
as a friendly outsider might look on some promising individual career.
The better future is understood by him as something which fulfills
itself. He calls his country, not only the Land of Promise, but the Land
of Destiny. It is fairly launched on a brilliant and successful career,
the continued prosperity of which is prophesied by the very momentum of
its advance. As Mr. H.G. Wells says in "The Future in America," "When
one talks to an American of his national purpose, he seems a little at a
loss; if one speaks of his national destiny, he responds with alacrity."
The great majority of Americans would expect a book written about "The
Promise of American Life" to contain chiefly a fanciful description of
the glorious American future--a sort of Utopia up-to-date, situated in
the land of Good-Enough, and flying the Stars and Stripes. They might
admit in words that the achievement of this glorious future implied
certain responsibilities, but they would not regard the admission either
as startling or novel. Such responsibilities were met by our
predecessors; they will be met by our followers. Inasmuch as it is the
honorable American past which prophesies on behalf of the better
American future, our national responsibility consists fundamentally in
remaining true to traditional ways of behavior, standards, and ideals.
What we Americans have to do in order to fulfill our national Promise is
to keep up the good work--to continue resolutely and cheerfully along
the appointed path.
The reader who expects this book to contain a collection of patriotic
prophecies will be disappointed. I am not a prophet in any sense of the
word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing
mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism. To conceive the better
American future as a consummation which will take care of itself,--as
the necessary result of our customary conditions, institutions, and
ideas,--persistence in such a conception is admirably designed to
deprive American life of any promise at all. The better future which
Americans propose to build is nothing if not an idea which must in
certain essential respects emancipate them from their past. American
history contains much matter for pride and congratulation, and much
matter for regret and humiliation. On the whole, it is a past of which
the loyal American has no reason to feel ashamed, chiefly because it has
throughout been made better than it was by the vision of a better
future; and the American of to-day and to-morrow must remain true to
that traditional vision. He must be prepared to sacrifice to that
traditional vision even the traditional American ways of realizing it.
Such a sacrifice is, I believe, coming to be demanded; and unless it is
made, American life will gradually cease to have any specific Promise.
The only fruitful promise of which the life of any individual or any
nation can be possessed, is a promise determined by an ideal. Such a
promise is to be fulfilled, not by sanguine anticipations, not by a
conservative imitation of past achievements, but by laborious,
single-minded, clear-sighted, and fearless work. If the promising career
of any individual is not determined by a specific and worthy purpose, it
rapidly drifts into a mere pursuit of success; and even if such a
pursuit is successful, whatever promise it may have had, is buried in
the grave of its triumph. So it is with a nation. If its promise is
anything more than a vision of power and success, that addition must
derive its value from a purpose; because in the moral world the future
exists only as a workshop in which a purpose is to be realized. Each of
the several leading European nations is possessed of a specific purpose
determined for the most part by the pressure of historical
circumstances; but the American nation is committed to a purpose which
is not merely of historical manufacture. It is committed to the
realization of the democratic ideal; and if its Promise is to be
fulfilled, it must be prepared to follow whithersoever that ideal may
lead.
No doubt Americans have in some measure always conceived their national
future as an ideal to be fulfilled. Their anticipations have been
uplifting as well as confident and vainglorious. They have been
prophesying not merely a safe and triumphant, but also a better, future.
The ideal demand for some sort of individual and social amelioration has
always accompanied even their vainest flights of patriotic prophecy.
They may never have sufficiently realized that this better future, just
in so far as it is better, will have to be planned and constructed
rather than fulfilled of its own momentum; but at any rate, in seeking
to disentangle and emphasize the ideal implications of the American
national Promise, I am not wholly false to the accepted American
tradition. Even if Americans have neglected these ideal implications,
even if they have conceived the better future as containing chiefly a
larger portion of familiar benefits, the ideal demand, nevertheless, has
always been palpably present; and if it can be established as the
dominant aspect of the American tradition, that tradition may be
transformed, but it will not be violated.
Furthermore, much as we may dislike the American disposition to take the
fulfillment of our national Promise for granted, the fact that such a
disposition exists in its present volume and vigor demands respectful
consideration. It has its roots in the salient conditions of American
life, and in the actual experience of the American people. The national
Promise, as it is popularly understood, has in a way been fulfilling
itself. If the underlying conditions were to remain much as they have
been, the prevalent mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism
might retain a formidable measure of justification; and the changes
which are taking place in the underlying conditions and in the scope of
American national experience afford the most reasonable expectation that
this state of mind will undergo a radical alteration. It is new
conditions which are forcing Americans to choose between the conception
of their national Promise as a process and an ideal. Before, however,
the nature of these novel conditions and their significance can be
considered, we must examine with more care the relation between the
earlier American economic and social conditions and the ideas and
institutions associated with them. Only by a better understanding of the
popular tradition, only by an analysis of its merits and its
difficulties, can we reach a more consistent and edifying conception of
the Promise of American life.
II
HOW THE PROMISE HAS BEEN REALIZED
All the conditions of American life have tended to encourage an easy,
generous, and irresponsible optimism. As compared to Europeans,
Americans have been very much favored by circumstances. Had it not been
for the Atlantic Ocean and the virgin wilderness, the United States
would never have been the Land of Promise. The European Powers have been
obliged from the very conditions of their existence to be more
circumspect and less confident of the future. They are always by way of
fighting for their national security and integrity. With possible or
actual enemies on their several frontiers, and with their land fully
occupied by their own population, they need above all to be strong, to
be cautious, to be united, and to be opportune in their policy and
behavior. The case of France shows the danger of neglecting the sources
of internal strength, while at the same time philandering with ideas
and projects of human amelioration. Bismarck and Cavour seized the
opportunity of making extremely useful for Germany and Italy the
irrelevant and vacillating idealism and the timid absolutism of the
third Napoleon. Great Britain has occupied in this respect a better
situation than has the Continental Powers. Her insular security made her
more independent of the menaces and complications of foreign politics,
and left her free to be measurably liberal at home and immeasurably
imperial abroad. Yet she has made only a circumspect use of her freedom.
British liberalism was forged almost exclusively for the British people,
and the British peace for colonial subjects. Great Britain could have
afforded better than France to tie its national life to an over-national
idea, but the only idea in which Britons have really believed was that
of British security, prosperity, and power. In the case of our own
country the advantages possessed by England have been amplified and
extended. The United States was divided from the mainland of Europe not
by a channel but by an ocean. Its dimensions were continental rather
than insular. We were for the most part freed from alien interference,
and could, so far as we dared, experiment with political and social
ideals. The land was unoccupied, and its settlement offered an
unprecedented area and abundance of economic opportunity. After the
Revolution the whole political and social organization was renewed, and
made both more serviceable and more flexible. Under such happy
circumstances the New World was assuredly destined to become to its
inhabitants a Land of Promise,--a land in which men were offered a
fairer chance and a better future than the best which the Old World
could afford.
No more explicit expression has ever been given to the way in which the
Land of Promise was first conceived by its children than in the "Letters
of an American Farmer." This book was written by a French immigrant,
Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur before the Revolution, and is informed by
an intense consciousness of the difference between conditions in the Old
and in the New World. "What, then, is an American, this new man?" asks
the Pennsylvanian farmer. "He is either a European or the descendant of
a European; hence the strange mixture of blood, which you will find in
no other country....
"He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great
_Alma Mater_. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race
of men, whose labors and prosperity will one day cause great changes in
the world. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the
progress of his labor; this labor is founded on the basis of
_self-interest_; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children,
who before in vain demanded a morsel of bread, now fat and frolicsome,
gladly help their father to clear those fields, whence exuberant crops
are to arise to feed them all; without any part being claimed either by
a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord.... The American is a
new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new
ideas and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile
dependence, penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very
different nature rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American."
Although the foregoing is one of the first, it is also one of the most
explicit descriptions of the fundamental American; and it deserves to be
analyzed with some care. According to this French convert the American
is a man, or the descendant of a man, who has emigrated from Europe
chiefly because he expects to be better able in the New World to enjoy
the fruits of his own labor. The conception implies, consequently, an
Old World, in which the ordinary man cannot become independent and
prosperous, and, on the other hand, a New World in which economic
opportunities are much more abundant and accessible. America has been
peopled by Europeans primarily because they expected in that country to
make more money more easily. To the European immigrant--that is, to the
aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of
American life--the Promise of America has consisted largely in the
opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity.
Whatever else the better future, of which Europeans anticipate the
enjoyment in America, may contain, these converts will consider
themselves cheated unless they are in a measure relieved of the curse of
poverty.
This conception of American life and its Promise is as much alive to-day
as it was in 1780. Its expression has no doubt been modified during
four generations of democratic political independence, but the
modification has consisted of an expansion and a development rather than
of a transposition. The native American, like the alien immigrant,
conceives the better future which awaits himself and other men in
America as fundamentally a future in which economic prosperity will be
still more abundant and still more accessible than it has yet been
either here or abroad. No alteration or attenuation of this demand has
been permitted. With all their professions of Christianity their
national idea remains thoroughly worldly. They do not want either for
themselves or for their descendants an indefinite future of poverty and
deprivation in this world, redeemed by beatitude in the next. The
Promise, which bulks so large in their patriotic outlook, is a promise
of comfort and prosperity for an ever increasing majority of good
Americans. At a later stage of their social development they may come to
believe that they have ordered a larger supply of prosperity than the
economic factory is capable of producing. Those who are already rich and
comfortable, and who are keenly alive to the difficulty of distributing
these benefits over a larger social area, may come to tolerate the idea
that poverty and want are an essential part of the social order. But as
yet this traditional European opinion has found few echoes in America,
even among the comfortable and the rich. The general belief still is
that Americans are not destined to renounce, but to enjoy.
Let it be immediately added, however, that this economic independence
and prosperity has always been absolutely associated in the American
mind with free political institutions. The "American Farmer" traced the
good fortune of the European immigrant in America, not merely to the
abundance of economic opportunity, but to the fact that a ruling class
of abbots and lords had no prior claim to a large share of the products
of the soil. He did not attach the name of democracy to the improved
political and social institutions of America, and when the political
differences between Great Britain and her American colonies culminated
in the Revolutionary War, the converted "American Farmer" was filled
with anguish at this violent assertion of the "New Americanism."
Nevertheless he was fully alive to the benefits which the immigrant
enjoyed from a larger dose of political and social freedom; and so, of
course, have been all the more intelligent of the European converts to
Americanism. A certain number of them, particularly during the early
years, came over less for the purpose of making money than for that of
escaping from European political and religious persecution. America has
always been conventionally conceived, not merely as a land of abundant
and accessible economic opportunities, but also as a refuge for the
oppressed; and the immigrant ships are crowded both during times of
European famine and during times of political revolution and
persecution.
Inevitably, however, this aspect of the American Promise has undergone
certain important changes since the establishment of our national
independence. When the colonists succeeded in emancipating themselves
from political allegiance to Great Britain, they were confronted by the
task of organizing a stable and efficient government without encroaching
on the freedom, which was even at that time traditionally associated
with American life. The task was by no means an easy one, and required
for its performance the application of other political principles than
that of freedom. The men who were responsible for this great work were
not, perhaps, entirely candid in recognizing the profound modifications
in their traditional ideas which their constructive political work had
implied; but they were at all events fully aware of the great importance
of their addition to the American idea. That idea, while not ceasing to
be at bottom economic, became more than ever political and social in its
meaning and contents. The Land of Freedom became in the course of time
also the Land of Equality. The special American political system, the
construction of which was predicted in the "Farmer's" assertion of the
necessary novelty of American modes of thought and action, was made
explicitly, if not uncompromisingly, democratic; and the success of this
democratic political system was indissolubly associated in the American
mind with the persistence of abundant and widely distributed economic
prosperity. Our democratic institutions became in a sense the guarantee
that prosperity would continue to be abundant and accessible. In case
the majority of good Americans were not prosperous, there would be grave
reasons for suspecting that our institutions were not doing their duty.
The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they
were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no
farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free
institutions. The amelioration promised to aliens and to future
Americans was to possess its moral and social aspects. The implication
was, and still is, that by virtue of the more comfortable and less
trammeled lives which Americans were enabled to lead, they would
constitute a better society and would become in general a worthier set
of men. The confidence which American institutions placed in the
American citizen was considered equivalent to a greater faith in the
excellence of human nature. In our favored land political liberty and
economic opportunity were by a process of natural education inevitably
making for individual and social amelioration. In Europe the people did
not have a fair chance. Population increased more quickly than economic
opportunities, and the opportunities which did exist were largely
monopolized by privileged classes. Power was lodged in the hands of a
few men, whose interest depended upon keeping the people in a condition
of economic and political servitude; and in this way a divorce was
created between individual interest and social stability and welfare.
The interests of the privileged rulers demanded the perpetuation of
unjust institutions. The interest of the people demanded a revolutionary
upheaval. In the absence of such a revolution they had no sufficient
inducement to seek their own material and moral improvement. The theory
was proclaimed and accepted as a justification for this system of
popular oppression that men were not to be trusted to take care of
themselves--that they could be kept socially useful only by the severest
measures of moral, religious, and political discipline. The theory of
the American democracy and its practice was proclaimed to be the
antithesis of this European theory and practice. The people were to be
trusted rather than suspected and disciplined. They must be tied to
their country by the strong bond of self-interest. Give them a fair
chance, and the natural goodness of human nature would do the rest.
Individual and public interest will, on the whole, coincide, provided no
individuals are allowed to have special privileges. Thus the American
system will be predestined to success by its own adequacy, and its
success will constitute an enormous stride towards human amelioration.
Just because our system is at bottom a thorough test of the ability of
human nature to respond admirably to a fair chance, the issue of the
experiment is bound to be of more than national importance. The American
system stands for the highest hope of an excellent worldly life that
mankind has yet ventured,--the hope that men can be improved without
being fettered, that they can be saved without even vicariously being
nailed to the cross.
Such are the claims advanced on behalf of the American system; and
within certain limits this system has made good. Americans have been
more than usually prosperous. They have been more than usually free.
They have, on the whole, made their freedom and prosperity contribute to
a higher level of individual and social excellence. Most assuredly the
average Americanized American is neither a more intelligent, a wiser,
nor a better man than the average European; but he is likely to be a
more energetic and hopeful one. Out of a million well-established
Americans, taken indiscriminately from all occupations and conditions,
compared to a corresponding assortment of Europeans, a larger proportion
of the former will be leading alert, active, and useful lives. Within a
given social area there will be a smaller amount of social wreckage and
a larger amount of wholesome and profitable achievement. The mass of the
American people is, on the whole, more deeply stirred, more thoroughly
awake, more assertive in their personal demands, and more confident of
satisfying them. In a word, they are more alive, and they must be
credited with the moral and social benefit attaching to a larger amount
of vitality.
Furthermore, this greater individual vitality, although intimately
connected with the superior agricultural and industrial opportunities of
a new country, has not been due exclusively to such advantages.
Undoubtedly the vast areas of cheap and fertile land which have been
continuously available for settlement have contributed, not only to the
abundance of American prosperity, but also to the formation of American
character and institutions; and undoubtedly many of the economic and
political evils which are now becoming offensively obtrusive are
directly or indirectly derived from the gradual monopolization of
certain important economic opportunities. Nevertheless, these
opportunities could never have been converted so quickly into
substantial benefits had it not been for our more democratic political
and social forms. A privileged class does not secure itself in the
enjoyment of its advantages merely by legal intrenchments. It depends
quite as much upon disqualifying the "lower classes" from utilizing
their opportunities by a species of social inhibition. The rail-splitter
can be so easily encouraged to believe that rail-splitting is his
vocation. The tragedy in the life of Mr. J.M. Barrie's "Admirable
Crichton" was not due to any legal prohibition of his conversion in
England, as on the tropic island, into a veritable chief, but that on
English soil he did not in his own soul want any such elevation and
distinction. His very loyalty to the forms and fabric of English life
kept him fatuously content with the mean truckling and meaner
domineering of his position of butler. On the other hand, the loyalty of
an American to the American idea would tend to make him aggressive and
self-confident. Our democratic prohibition of any but occasional social
distinctions and our democratic dislike to any suggestion of authentic
social inferiority have contributed as essentially to the fluid and
elastic substance of American life as have its abundant and accessible
economic opportunities.
The increased momentum of American life, both in its particles and its
mass, unquestionably has a considerable moral and social value. It is
the beginning, the only possible beginning, of a better life for the
people as individuals and for society. So long as the great majority of
the poor in any country are inert and are laboring without any hope of
substantial rewards in this world, the whole associated life of that
community rests on an equivocal foundation. Its moral and social order
is tied to an economic system which starves and mutilates the great
majority of the population, and under such conditions its religion
necessarily becomes a spiritual drug, administered for the purpose of
subduing the popular discontent and relieving the popular misery. The
only way the associated life of such a community can be radically
improved is by the leavening of the inert popular mass. Their wants must
be satisfied, and must be sharpened and increased with the habit of
satisfaction. During the past hundred years every European state has
made a great stride in the direction of arousing its poorer citizens to
be more wholesomely active, discontented, and expectant; but our own
country has succeeded in traveling farther in this direction than has
any other, and it may well be proud of its achievement. That the
American political and economic system has accomplished so much on
behalf of the ordinary man does constitute the fairest hope that men
have been justified in entertaining of a better worldly order; and any
higher social achievement, which America may hereafter reach, must
depend upon an improved perpetuation of this process. The mass of
mankind must be aroused to still greater activity by a still more
abundant satisfaction of their needs, and by a consequent increase of
their aggressive discontent.
The most discriminating appreciation, which I have ever read, of the
social value of American national achievement has been written by Mr.
John B. Crozier; and the importance of the matter is such that it will
be well to quote it at length. Says Mr. Crozier in his chapter on
"Reconstruction in America," in the third volume of his "History of
Intellectual Development": "There [in America] a natural equality of
sentiment, springing out of and resting on a broad equality of material
and social conditions, has been the heritage of the people from the
earliest times.... This broad natural equality of sentiment, rooted in
equal material opportunities, equal education, equal laws, equal
opportunities, and equal access to all positions of honor and trust, has
just sufficient inequality mixed with it--in the shape of greater or
less mental endowments, higher or lower degrees of culture, larger or
smaller material possessions, and so on--to keep it sweet and human;
while at the same time it is all so gently graded, and marked by
transitions so easy and natural, that no gap was anywhere to be
discovered on which to found an order of privilege or caste. Now an
equality like this, with the erectness, independence, energy, and
initiative it brings with it, in men, sprung from the loins of an
imperial race is a possession, not for a nation only, but for
civilization itself and for humanity. It is the distinct raising of the
entire body of a people to a higher level, and so brings civilization a
stage nearer its goal. It is the first successful attempt in recorded
history to get a healthy, natural equality which should reach down to
the foundations of the state and to the great masses of men; and in its
results corresponds to what in other lands (excepting, perhaps, in
luxury alone) has been attained only by the few,--the successful and the
ruling spirits. To lose it, therefore, to barter it or give it away,
would be in the language of Othello 'such deep damnation that nothing
else could match,' and would be an irreparable loss to the world and to
civilization."
Surely no nation can ask for a higher and more generous tribute than
that which Mr. Crozier renders to America in the foregoing quotation,
and its value is increased by the source from which it comes. It is
written by a man who, as a Canadian, has had the opportunity of knowing
American life well without being biased in its favor, and who, as the
historian of the intellectual development of our race, has made an
exhaustive study of the civilizations both of the ancient and the modern
worlds. Nothing can be soberly added to it on behalf of American
national achievement, but neither should it be diminished by any
important idea and phrase. The American economic, political, and social
organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material
prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and
this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and
to civilization.
III
HOW THE PROMISE IS TO BE REALIZED
In the preceding section I have been seeking to render justice to the
actual achievements of the American nation. A work of manifest
individual and social value has been wrought; and this work, not only
explains the expectant popular outlook towards the future, but it
partially determines the character as distinguished from the continued
fulfillment of the American national Promise. The better future,
whatever else it may bring, must bring at any rate a continuation of the
good things of the past. The drama of its fulfillment must find an
appropriate setting in the familiar American social and economic
scenery. No matter how remote the end may be, no matter what unfamiliar
sacrifices may eventually be required on its behalf, the substance of
the existing achievement must constitute a veritable beginning, because
on no other condition can the attribution of a peculiar Promise to
American life find a specific warrant. On no other condition would our
national Promise constitute more than an admirable but irrelevant moral
and social aspiration.
The moral and social aspiration proper to American life is, of course,
the aspiration vaguely described by the word democratic; and the actual
achievement of the American nation points towards an adequate and
fruitful definition of the democratic ideal. Americans are usually
satisfied by a most inadequate verbal description of democracy, but
their national achievement implies one which is much more comprehensive
and formative. In order to be true to their past, the increasing comfort
and economic independence of an ever increasing proportion of the
population must be secured, and it must be secured by a combination of
individual effort and proper political organization. Above all, however,
this economic and political system must be made to secure results of
moral and social value. It is the seeking of such results which converts
democracy from a political system into a constructive social ideal; and
the more the ideal significance of the American national Promise is
asserted and emphasized, the greater will become the importance of
securing these moral and social benefits.
The fault in the vision of our national future possessed by the ordinary
American does not consist in the expectation of some continuity of
achievement. It consists rather in the expectation that the familiar
benefits will continue to accumulate automatically. In his mind the
ideal Promise is identified with the processes and conditions which
hitherto have very much simplified its fulfillment, and he fails
sufficiently to realize that the conditions and processes are one thing
and the ideal Promise quite another. Moreover, these underlying social
and economic conditions are themselves changing, in such wise that
hereafter the ideal Promise, instead of being automatically fulfilled,
may well be automatically stifled. For two generations and more the
American people were, from the economic point of view, most happily
situated. They were able, in a sense, to slide down hill into the valley
of fulfillment. Economic conditions were such that, given a fair start,
they could scarcely avoid reaching a desirable goal. But such is no
longer the case. Economic conditions have been profoundly modified, and
American political and social problems have been modified with them. The
Promise of American life must depend less than it did upon the virgin
wilderness and the Atlantic Ocean, for the virgin wilderness has
disappeared, and the Atlantic Ocean has become merely a big channel. The
same results can no longer be achieved by the same easy methods. Ugly
obstacles have jumped into view, and ugly obstacles are peculiarly
dangerous to a person who is sliding down hill. The man who is
clambering up hill is in a much better position to evade or overcome
them. Americans will possess a safer as well as a worthier vision of
their national Promise as soon as they give it a house on a hill-top
rather than in a valley.
The very genuine experience upon which American optimistic fatalism
rests, is equivalent, because of its limitations, to a dangerous
inexperience, and of late years an increasing number of Americans have
been drawing this inference. They have been coming to see themselves
more as others see them; and as an introduction to a consideration of
this more critical frame of mind, I am going to quote another
foreigner's view of American life,--the foreigner in this case being an
Englishman and writing in 1893.
"The American note," says Mr. James Muirhead in his "Land of Contrasts,"
"includes a sense of illimitable expansion and possibility, an almost
childlike confidence in human ability and fearlessness of both the
present and the future, a wider realization of human brotherhood than
has yet existed, a greater theoretical willingness to judge by the
individual than by the class, a breezy indifference to authority and a
positive predilection for innovation, a marked alertness of mind, and a
manifold variety of interest--above all, an inextinguishable hopefulness
and courage. It is easy to lay one's finger in America upon almost every
one of the great defects of civilization--even those defects which are
specially characteristic of the civilization of the Old World. The
United States cannot claim to be exempt from manifestations of economic
slavery, of grinding the faces of the poor, of exploitation of the weak,
of unfair distribution of wealth, of unjust monopoly, of unequal laws,
of industrial and commercial chicanery, of disgraceful ignorance, of
economic fallacies, of public corruption, of interested legislation, of
want of public spirit, of vulgar boasting and chauvinism, of snobbery,
of class prejudice, of respect of persons, and of a preference of the
material over the spiritual. In a word, America has not attained, or
nearly attained, perfection. But below and behind, and beyond all its
weakness and evils, there is the grand fact of a noble national theory
founded on reason and conscience." The reader will remark in the
foregoing quotation that Mr. Muirhead is equally emphatic in his
approval and in his disapproval. He generously recognizes almost as much
that is good about Americans and their ways as our most vivacious
patriotic orators would claim, while at the same time he has marshaled
an army of abuses and sins which sound like an echo of the pages of the
_London Saturday Review_. In the end he applies a friendly dash of
whitewash by congratulating us on the "grand fact of our noble national
theory," but to a discerning mind the consolation is not very consoling.
The trouble is that the sins with which America is charged by Mr.
Muirhead are flagrant violations of our noble national theory. So far as
his charges are true, they are a denial that the American political and
economic organization is accomplishing the results which its traditional
claims require. If, as Mr. Muirhead charges, Americans permit the
existence of economic slavery, if they grind the face of the poor, if
they exploit the weak and distribute wealth unjustly, if they allow
monopolies to prevail and laws to be unequal, if they are disgracefully
ignorant, politically corrupt, commercially unscrupulous, socially
snobbish, vulgarly boastful, and morally coarse,--if the substance of
the foregoing indictment is really true, why, the less that is said
about a noble national theory, the better. A man who is a sturdy sinner
all the week hardly improves his moral standing by attending church on
Sunday and professing a noble Christian theory of life. There must
surely be some better way of excusing our sins than by raising aloft a
noble theory of which these sins are a glaring violation.
I have quoted from Mr. Muirhead, not because his antithetic
characterization of American life is very illuminating, but because of
the precise terms of his charges against America. His indictment is
practically equivalent to the assertion that the American system is not,
or at least is no longer, achieving as much as has been claimed on its
behalf. A democratic system may permit undefiled the existence of many
sins and abuses, but it cannot permit the exploitation of the ordinary
man by means of unjust laws and institutions. Neither can this
indictment be dismissed without argument. When Mr. Muirhead's book was
written sixteen years ago, the majority of good Americans would
assuredly have read the charge with an incredulous smile; but in the
year 1909 they might behave differently. The sins of which Mr. Muirhead
accused Americans sixteen years ago are substantially the sins of which
to-day they are accusing themselves--or rather one another. A numerous
and powerful group of reformers has been collecting whose whole
political policy and action is based on the conviction that the "common
people" have not been getting the Square Deal to which they are entitled
under the American system; and these reformers are carrying with them a
constantly increasing body of public opinion. A considerable proportion
of the American people is beginning to exhibit economic and political,
as well as personal, discontent. A generation ago the implication was
that if a man remained poor and needy, his poverty was his own fault,
because the American system was giving all its citizens a fair chance.
Now, however, the discontented poor are beginning to charge their
poverty to an unjust political and economic organization, and reforming
agitators do not hesitate to support them in this contention. Manifestly
a threatened obstacle has been raised against the anticipated
realization of our national Promise. Unless the great majority of
Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the
better American future will be dangerously compromised.
The conscious recognition of grave national abuses casts a deep shadow
across the traditional American patriotic vision. The sincere and candid
reformer can no longer consider the national Promise as destined to
automatic fulfillment. The reformers themselves are, no doubt, far from
believing that whatever peril there is cannot be successfully averted.
They make a point of being as patriotically prophetic as the most
"old-fashioned Democrat." They proclaim even more loudly their
conviction of an indubitable and a beneficent national future. But they
do not and cannot believe that this future will take care of itself. As
reformers they are bound to assert that the national body requires for
the time being a good deal of medical attendance, and many of them
anticipate that even after the doctors have discontinued their daily
visits the patient will still need the supervision of a sanitary
specialist. He must be persuaded to behave so that he will not easily
fall ill again, and so that his health will be permanently improved.
Consequently, just in so far as reformers are reformers they are obliged
to abandon the traditional American patriotic fatalism. The national
Promise has been transformed into a closer equivalent of a national
purpose, the fulfillment of which is a matter of conscious work.
The transformation of the old sense of a glorious national destiny into
the sense of a serious national purpose will inevitably tend to make the
popular realization of the Promise of American life both more explicit
and more serious. As long as Americans believed they were able to
fulfill a noble national Promise merely by virtue of maintaining intact
a set of political institutions and by the vigorous individual pursuit
of private ends, their allegiance to their national fulfillment remained
more a matter of words than of deeds; but now that they are being
aroused from their patriotic slumber, the effect is inevitably to
disentangle the national idea and to give it more dignity. The
redemption of the national Promise has become a cause for which the good
American must fight, and the cause for which a man fights is a cause
which he more than ever values. The American idea is no longer to be
propagated merely by multiplying the children of the West and by
granting ignorant aliens permission to vote. Like all sacred causes, it
must be propagated by the Word and by that right arm of the Word, which
is the Sword.
The more enlightened reformers are conscious of the additional dignity
and value which the popularity of reform has bestowed upon the American
idea, but they still fail to realize the deeper implications of their
own programme. In abandoning the older conception of an automatic
fulfillment of our national destiny, they have abandoned more of the
traditional American point of view than they are aware. The traditional
American optimistic fatalism was not of accidental origin, and it cannot
be abandoned without involving in its fall some other important
ingredients in the accepted American tradition. Not only was it
dependent on economic conditions which prevailed until comparatively
recent times, but it has been associated with certain erroneous but
highly cherished political theories. It has been wrought into the fabric
of our popular economic and political ideas to such an extent that its
overthrow necessitates a partial revision of some of the most important
articles in the traditional American creed.
The extent and the character of this revision may be inferred from a
brief consideration of the effect upon the substance of our national
Promise of an alteration in its proposed method of fulfillment. The
substance of our national Promise has consisted, as we have seen, of an
improving popular economic condition, guaranteed by democratic political
institutions, and resulting in moral and social amelioration. These
manifold benefits were to be obtained merely by liberating the
enlightened self-interest of the American people. The beneficent result
followed inevitably from the action of wholly selfish motives--provided,
of course, the democratic political system of equal rights was
maintained in its integrity. The fulfillment of the American Promise was
considered inevitable because it was based upon a combination of
self-interest and the natural goodness of human nature. On the other
hand, if the fulfillment of our national Promise can no longer be
considered inevitable, if it must be considered as equivalent to a
conscious national purpose instead of an inexorable national destiny,
the implication necessarily is that the trust reposed in individual
self-interest has been in some measure betrayed. No preëstablished
harmony can then exist between the free and abundant satisfaction of
private needs and the accomplishment of a morally and socially desirable
result. The Promise of American life is to be fulfilled--not merely by a
maximum amount of economic freedom, but by a certain measure of
discipline; not merely by the abundant satisfaction of individual
desires, but by a large measure of individual subordination and
self-denial. And this necessity of subordinating the satisfaction of
individual desires to the fulfillment of a national purpose is attached
particularly to the absorbing occupation of the American people,--the
occupation, viz.: of accumulating wealth. The automatic fulfillment of
the American national Promise is to be abandoned, if at all, precisely
because the traditional American confidence in individual freedom has
resulted in a morally and socially undesirable distribution of wealth.
In making the concluding statement of the last paragraph I am venturing,
of course, upon very debatable ground. Neither can I attempt in this
immediate connection to offer any justification for the statement which
might or should be sufficient to satisfy a stubborn skeptic. I must be
content for the present with the bare assertion that the prevailing
abuses and sins, which have made reform necessary, are all of them
associated with the prodigious concentration of wealth, and of the power
exercised by wealth, in the hands of a few men. I am far from believing
that this concentration of economic power is wholly an undesirable
thing, and I am also far from believing that the men in whose hands this
power is concentrated deserve, on the whole, any exceptional moral
reprobation for the manner in which it has been used. In certain
respects they have served their country well, and in almost every
respect their moral or immoral standards are those of the great majority
of their fellow-countrymen. But it is none the less true that the
political corruption, the unwise economic organization, and the legal
support afforded to certain economic privileges are all under existing
conditions due to the malevolent social influence of individual and
incorporated American wealth; and it is equally true that these abuses,
and the excessive "money power" with which they are associated, have
originated in the peculiar freedom which the American tradition and
organization have granted to the individual. Up to a certain point that
freedom has been and still is beneficial. Beyond that point it is not
merely harmful; it is by way of being fatal. Efficient regulation there
must be; and it must be regulation which will strike, not at the
symptoms of the evil, but at its roots. The existing concentration of
wealth and financial power in the hands of a few irresponsible men is
the inevitable outcome of the chaotic individualism of our political and
economic organization, while at the same time it is inimical to
democracy, because it tends to erect political abuses and social
inequalities into a system. The inference which follows may be
disagreeable, but it is not to be escaped. In becoming responsible for
the subordination of the individual to the demand of a dominant and
constructive national purpose, the American state will in effect be
making itself responsible for a morally and socially desirable
distribution of wealth.
The consequences, then, of converting our American national destiny into
a national purpose are beginning to be revolutionary. When the Promise
of American life is conceived as a national ideal, whose fulfillment is
a matter of artful and laborious work, the effect thereof is
substantially to identify the national purpose with the social problem.
What the American people of the present and the future have really been
promised by our patriotic prophecies is an attempt to solve that
problem. They have been promised on American soil comfort, prosperity,
and the opportunity for self-improvement; and the lesson of the existing
crisis is that such a Promise can never be redeemed by an indiscriminate
individual scramble for wealth. The individual competition, even when it
starts under fair conditions and rules, results, not only, as it should,
in the triumph of the strongest, but in the attempt to perpetuate the
victory; and it is this attempt which must be recognized and forestalled
in the interest of the American national purpose. The way to realize a
purpose is, not to leave it to chance, but to keep it loyally in mind,
and adopt means proper to the importance and the difficulty of the task.
No voluntary association of individuals, resourceful and disinterested
though they be, is competent to assume the responsibility. The problem
belongs to the American national democracy, and its solution must be
attempted chiefly by means of official national action.
Neither can its attempted solution be escaped. When they are confronted
by the individual sacrifices which the fulfillment of their national
Promise demands, American political leaders will find many excuses for
ignoring the responsibility thereby implied; but the difficulty of such
an attempted evasion will consist in the reënforcement of the historical
tradition by a logical and a practical necessity. The American problem
is the social problem partly because the social problem is the
democratic problem. American political and social leaders will find that
in a democracy the problem cannot be evaded. The American people have no
irremediable political grievances. No good American denies the
desirability of popular sovereignty and of a government which should
somehow represent the popular will. While our national institutions may
not be a perfect embodiment of these doctrines, a decisive and a
resolute popular majority has the power to alter American institutions
and give them a more immediately representative character. Existing
political evils and abuses are serious enough; but inasmuch as they have
come into being, not against the will, but with the connivance of the
American people, the latter are responsible for their persistence. In
the long run, consequently, the ordinary American will have nothing
irremediable to complain about except economic and social inequalities.
In Europe such will not be the case. The several European peoples have,
and will continue to have, political grievances, because such grievances
are the inevitable consequence of their national history and their
international situation; and as long as these grievances remain, the
more difficult social problem will be subordinated to an agitation for
political emancipation. But the American people, having achieved
democratic institutions, have nothing to do but to turn them to good
account. In so far as the social problem is a real problem and the
economic grievance a real grievance, they are bound under the American
political system to come eventually to the surface and to demand express
and intelligent consideration. A democratic ideal makes the social
problem inevitable and its attempted solution indispensable.
I am fully aware, as already intimated, that the forgoing interpretation
of the Promise of American life will seem fantastic and obnoxious to the
great majority of Americans, and I am far from claiming that any reasons
as yet alleged afford a sufficient justification for such a radical
transformation of the traditional national policy and democratic creed.
All that can be claimed is that if a democratic ideal makes an express
consideration of the social problem inevitable, it is of the first
importance for Americans to realize this truth and to understand the
reasons for it. Furthermore, the assumption is worth making, in case the
traditional American system is breaking down, because a more highly
socialized democracy is the only practical substitute on the part of
convinced democrats for an excessively individualized democracy. Of
course, it will be claimed that the traditional system is not breaking
down, and again no absolute proof of the breakdown has been or can be
alleged. Nevertheless, the serious nature of contemporary American
political and economic symptoms at least pointedly suggests the
existence of some radical disease, and when one assumes such to be the
case, one cannot be accused of borrowing trouble, I shall, consequently,
start from such an assumption, and make an attempt to explain
contemporary American problems as in part the result of the practice of
an erroneous democratic theory. The attempt will necessarily involve a
brief review of our political and economic history, undertaken for the
purpose of tracing the traditional ideas of their origin and testing
them by their performances. There will follow a detailed examination of
current political and economic problems and conditions--considered in
relation both to the American democratic tradition and to the proposed
revision thereof. In view of the increasing ferment of American
political and economic thought, no apology is necessary for submitting
our traditional ideas and practices to an examination from an
untraditional point of view. I need scarcely add that the untraditional
point of view will contain little or no original matter. The only
novelty such an inquiry can claim is the novelty of applying ideas, long
familiar to foreign political thinkers, to the subject-matter of
American life. When applied to American life, this group of ideas
assumes a somewhat new complexion and significance; and the promise of
such a small amount of novelty will, I trust, tempt even a disapproving
reader to follow somewhat farther the course of the argument.