to dominate Nature and put the elements into bondage to man.
Involuntarily all talents apply themselves to material production. No
wonder that men of science no longer study Nature for Nature's sake;
they must perforce put her powers into harness; no wonder that
professors no longer teach knowledge for the sake of knowledge; they
must make their students efficient factors in the industrial world; no
wonder that clergymen no longer preach repentance for the sake of the
kingdom of heaven; they must turn churches into prosperous corporations,
multiplying communicants and distributing Christmas presents by the
gross. Industrial civilization has decreed that statesmanship shall
consist of schemes to make the nation richer, that presidents shall be
elected with a view to the stock-market, that literature shall keep
close to the life of the average man, and that art shall become national
by means of a protective tariff....
"The process of this civilization is simple: the industrial habit of
thought moulds the opinion of the majority, which rolls along, abstract
and impersonal, gathering bulk till its giant figure is selected as the
national conscience. As in an ecclesiastical state of society decrees of
a council become articles of private faith, and men die for homoöusion
or election, so in America the opinions of the majority, once
pronounced, become primary rules of conduct.... The central ethical
doctrine of industrial thought is that material production is the chief
duty of man."
The author goes on to show that the acceptance of this doctrine has
produced in America "_conventional sentimentality_" in the emotional
life, "_spiritual feebleness_" in the religious life, "_formlessness_"
in the social life, "_self-deception_" in the political life, and a
"slovenly" intelligence in all matters outside of business. "We accept
sentimentality," he says, "because we do not stop to consider whether
our emotional life is worth an infusion of blood and vigour, rather than
because we have deliberately decided that it is not. We neglect
religion, because we cannot spare time to think what religion means,
rather than because we judge it only worth a conventional lip service.
We think poetry effeminate, because we do not read it, rather than
because we believe its effect injurious. We have been swept off our feet
by the brilliant success of our industrial civilization; and, blinded by
vanity, we enumerate the list of our exports, we measure the swelling
tide of our national prosperity; but we do not stop even to repeat to
ourselves the names of other things."
This rather sweeping indictment against a whole civilization reminds me
of the way in which one of my students once defined rhetoric.
"Rhetoric," said this candid youth, "is the art of using words so as to
make statements which are not entirely correct look like truths which
nobody can deny."
The description of America given by her sad and angry friend resembles
one of those relentless portraits which are made by rustic
photographers. The unmitigated sunlight does its worst through an
unadjusted lens; and the result is a picture which is fearfully and
wonderfully made. "It looks like her," you say, "it looks horribly like
her. But thank God I never saw her look just like that."
No one can deny that the life of America has developed more rapidly and
more fully on the industrial side than on any other. No one can deny
that the larger part, if not the better part, of her energy and effort
has gone into the physical conquest of nature and the transformation of
natural resources into material wealth. No one can deny that this undue
absorption in one side of life has resulted in a certain meagreness and
thinness on other sides. No one can deny that the immense prosperity of
America, and her extraordinary success in agriculture, manufactures,
commerce, and finance have produced a swollen sense of importance, which
makes the country peddler feel as if he deserved some credit for the
$450,000,000 balance of foreign trade in favour of the United States in
1907, and the barber's apprentice congratulate himself that American
wealth is reckoned at $116,000,000,000, nearly twice that of the next
richest country in the world. This feeling is one that has its roots in
human nature. The very cabin-boy on a monstrous ocean steamship is proud
of its tonnage and speed.
But that this spirit is not universal nor exclusive, that there are some
Americans who are not satisfied--who are even rather bitterly
dissatisfied--with $116,000,000,000 as a statement of national
achievement, the book from which I have quoted may be taken as a proof.
There are still better proofs to be found, I think, in the earnestly
warning voices which come from press and pulpit against the dangers of
commercialism, and in the hundreds of thousands of noble lives which are
freely consecrated to ideals in religion, in philanthropy, in the
service of man's intellectual and moral needs. These services are
ill-paid in America, as indeed they are everywhere, but there is no lack
of men and women who are ready and glad to undertake them.
I was talking to a young man and woman the other day, both thoroughbred
Americans, who had resolved to enter upon the adventure of matrimony
together. The question was whether he should accept an opening in
business with a fair outlook for making a fortune, or take a position as
teacher in a school with a possible chance at best of earning a
comfortable living. They asked my advice. I put the alternative as
clearly as I could. On the one hand, a lot of money for doing work that
was perfectly honest, but not at all congenial. On the other hand, small
pay in the beginning, and no chance of ever receiving more than a modest
competence for doing work that was rather hard but entirely congenial.
They did not hesitate a moment. "We shall get more out of life," they
said with one accord, "if our work makes us happy, than if we get big
pay for doing what we do not love to do." They were not exceptional.
They were typical of the best young Americans. The noteworthy thing is
that both of them took for granted the necessity of _doing something_ as
long as they lived. The notion of a state of idleness, either as a right
or as a reward, never entered their blessed young minds.
In later lectures I shall speak of some of the larger evidences in
education, in social effort, and in literature, which encourage the hope
that the emotional life of America is not altogether a "conventional
sentimentality," nor her spiritual life a complete "feebleness," nor her
intelligence entirely "slovenly." But just now we have to consider the
real reason and significance of the greater strength, the fuller
development of the industrial life. Let us try to look at it clearly and
logically. My wish is not to accuse, nor to defend, but first of all to
understand.
The astonishing industrial advance of the United States, and the
predominance of this motive in the national life, come from the third
element in the spirit of America, _will-power_, that vital energy of
nature which makes an ideal of activity and efficiency. "The man who
does things" is the man whom the average American admires.
No doubt the original conditions of the nation's birth and growth were
potent in directing this will-power, in transforming this energy into
forces of a practical and material kind. A new land offered the
opportunity, a wild land presented the necessity, a rich land held out
the reward, to men who were eager to do something. But though the
outward circumstances may have moulded and developed the energy, they
did not create it.
Mexico and South America were new lands, wild lands, rich lands. They
are not far inferior, if at all, to the United States in soil, climate,
and natural resources. They presented the same kind of opportunity,
necessity, and reward to their settlers and conquerors. Yet they have
seen nothing like the same industrial advance. Why? There may be many
reasons. But I am sure that the most important reasons lie in the soul
of the people, and that one of them is the lack, in the republics of the
South, of that strong and confident will-power which has made the
Americans a nation of hard and quick workers.
This fondness for the active life, this impulse to "do things," this
sense of value in the thing done, does not seem to be an affair of
recent growth in America. It is an ancestral quality.
The men of the Revolution were almost all of them busy and laborious
persons, whether they were rich or poor. Read the autobiography of
Benjamin Franklin, and you will find that he was as proud of the fact
that he was a good printer and that he invented a new kind of stove as
of anything else in his career. One of his life mottoes under the head
of industry is: "Lose no time; be always employed in something useful;
cut off all unnecessary actions." Washington, retiring from his second
term in the presidency, did not seek a well-earned ease, but turned at
once to the active improvement of his estate. He was not only the
richest man, he was one of the best practical farmers in America. His
diary shows how willingly and steadily he rode his daily rounds,
cultivated his crops, sought to improve the methods of agriculture and
the condition and efficiency of his work-people. And this primarily not
because he wished to add to his wealth,--for he was a childless man and
a person of modest habits,--but because he felt "_il faut cultiver son
jardin_."
After the nation had defended its independence and consolidated its
union, its first effort was to develop and extend its territory. It was
little more than a string of widely separated settlements along the
Atlantic coast. Some one has called it a country without an interior.
The history of the pioneers who pushed over the mountains of the Blue
Ridge and the Alleghanies, into the forests of Tennessee and Kentucky,
into the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, and so on to the
broad rolling prairies of the West, is not without an interest to those
who feel the essential romance of the human will in a world of
intractable things. The transformation of the Indian's hunting trail
into the highroad, with its train of creaking, white-topped wagons, and
of the highroad into the railway, with its incessant, swift-rushing
caravans of passengers and freight; the growth of enormous cities like
Chicago and St. Louis in places that three generations ago were a
habitation for wild geese and foxes; the harnessing of swift and mighty
rivers to turn the wheels of innumerable factories; the passing of the
Great American Desert, which once occupied the centre of our map, into
the pasture-ground of countless flocks and herds, and the grain-field
where the bread grows for many nations,--all this, happening in a
hundred years, has an air of enchantment about it. What wonder that the
American people have been fascinated, perhaps even a little intoxicated,
by the effect of their own will-power?
In 1850 they were comparatively a poor people, with only $7,000,000,000
of national wealth, less than $308 _per capita_. In 1906 they had become
a rich people, with $107,000,000,000 of national wealth, more than $1300
_per capita_. In 1850 they manufactured $1,000,000,000 worth of goods,
in 1906 $14,000,000,000 worth. In 1850 they imported $173,000,000 worth
of merchandise and exported $144,000,000 worth. In 1906 the figures had
changed to $1,700,000,000 of merchandise exports and $1,200,000,000 of
imports. That is to say, in one year America sold to other nations six
dollars' worth _per capita_ more than she needed to buy from them.
I use these figures, not because I find them particularly interesting or
philosophically significant, but because the mere size of them
illustrates, and perhaps explains, a point that is noteworthy in the
development of will-power in the American people: and that is its
characteristic spirit of _magnificence_. I take this word for want of a
better, and employ it, according to its derivation, to signify the
desire to do things on a large scale. This is a spirit which is growing
everywhere in the modern civilized world. Everywhere, if I mistake not,
quantity is taking precedence of quality in the popular thought.
Everywhere men are carried away by the attraction of huge enterprises,
immense combinations, enormous results. One reason is that Nature
herself seems to have put a premium upon the mere mass of things. In the
industrial world it appears as if Napoleon were right in his observation
that "God is on the side of the big battalions." Another reason is the
strange, almost hypnotic, effect that number has upon the human mind.
But while the spirit of "the large scale" is gaining all over the world,
among the Americans it seems to be innate and most characteristic.
Perhaps the very size of their country may have had something to do with
this. The habit of dealing with land in terms of the square mile and the
quarter-section, instead of in the terms of the _are_ and the _hectare_;
the subconscious effect of owning the longest river and the largest
lakes in the world may have developed a half-humorous, half-serious
sense of necessity for doing things magnificently in order to keep in
proportion with the natural surroundings. A well-known American wit, who
had a slight impediment in his speech, moved his residence from
Baltimore to New York. "Do you make as many jokes here," asked a friend,
"as you used to make in Baltimore?" "M-m-more!" he answered; "b-b-bigger
town!"
To produce more corn and cotton than all the rest of the world together,
to have a wheat crop which is more than double that of any other
country; to mine a million tons of coal a year in excess of any rival;
to double Germany's output of steel and iron and to treble Great
Britain's output,--these are things which give the American spirit the
sense of living up to its opportunities.
It likes to have the tallest buildings in the world. New York alone
contains more than twenty-five architectural eruptions of more than
twenty stories each. There is an edifice now completed which is 909 feet
in height. One is planned which will be 1000 feet tall, 16 feet taller
than the Eiffel Tower. This new building will not be merely to gratify
(or to shock) the eye like the Parisian monument of magnificence in
architecture. "The Eiffel Tower," says the American, "is not a real
sky-scraper, _gratte-ciel_; it is only a sky-tickler, _chatouille-ciel_;
nothing more than a _jeu d'esprit_ which man has played with the law of
gravitation. But our American tall building will be strictly for
business, a serious affair, the office of a great life-insurance
company." There is a single American factory which makes 1500 railway
locomotives every year. There is a company for the manufacture of
harvesting-machines in Chicago whose plant covers 140 acres, whose
employees number 24,000, and whose products go all over the world.
Undoubtedly it was the desire to promote industrial development that led
to the adoption of the protective tariff as an American policy. The
people wanted to do things, to do all sorts of things, and to do them on
a large scale. They were not satisfied to be merely farmers, or miners,
or fishermen, or sailors, or lumbermen. They wished to exercise their
energy in all possible ways, and to secure their prosperity by learning
how to do everything necessary for themselves. They began to lay duties
upon goods manufactured in Europe in order to make a better market at
home for goods manufactured in America. "Protection of infant
industries" was the idea that guided them. There have been occasional
intervals when the other idea, that of liberty for needy consumers to
buy in the cheapest market, has prevailed, and tariffs have been
reduced. But in general the effort has been not only to raise a large
part of the national income by duties on imports, but also to enhance
the profits of native industries by putting a handicap on foreign
competition.
There can be no question that the result has been to foster the weaker
industries and make them strong, and actually to create some new fields
for American energy to work in. For example, in 1891 there was not a
pound of tin-plate made in the United States, and 1,000,000,000 pounds a
year were imported. The McKinley tariff put on an import duty of 70 per
cent. In 1901 only a little over 100,000,000 pounds of tin-plate were
imported, and nearly 900,000,000 pounds were made in America. The same
thing happened in the manufacture of watches. A duty of 25 per cent on
the foreign article gave the native manufacturer a profit, encouraged
the development of better machinery, and made the American watch tick
busily around the world. Now (1908) the duty is 40 per cent _ad
valorem_.
No one in the United States would deny these facts. No one, outside of
academic circles, would call himself an absolute, unmitigated, and
immediate free-trader. But a great many people, probably the majority of
the Democratic party, and a considerable number in the Republican party,
say to-day that many of the protective features of the tariff have
largely accomplished their purpose and gone beyond it; that they have
not only nourished weak industries, but have also overstimulated strong
ones; that their continuance creates special privileges in the
commercial world, raises the cost of the necessities of life to the poor
man, tends to the promotion of gigantic trusts and monopolies, and
encourages overproduction, with all its attendant evils enhanced by an
artificially sustained market.
They ask why a ton of American steel rail should cost twenty-six or
twenty-seven dollars in the country where it is made, and only twenty
dollars in Europe. They inquire why a citizen of Chicago or St. Louis
has to pay more for an American sewing-machine or clock than a citizen
of Stockholm or Copenhagen pays for the same article. They say that a
heavy burden has been laid upon the common people by a system of
indirect taxation, adopted for a special purpose, and maintained long
after that purpose has been fulfilled. They claim that for every dollar
which this system yields to the national revenue it adds four or five
dollars to the profits of the trusts and corporations. If they are
cautious by temperament, they say that they are in favour of moderate
tariff revision. If they are bold, they announce their adherence to the
doctrine of "tariff for revenue only."
The extent to which these views have gained ground among the American
people may be seen in the platforms of both political parties in the
presidential contest of 1908. Both declare in favour of a reduction in
the tariff. The Republicans are for continued protective duties, with
revision of the schedules and the adoption of maximum and minimum rates,
to be used in obtaining advantages from other nations. The Democrats are
for placing products which are controlled by trusts on the free list;
for lowering the duty upon all the necessaries of life at once; and for
a gradual reduction of the schedules to a revenue basis. The Democrats
are a shade more radical than the Republicans. But both sides are a
little reserved, a little afraid to declare themselves frankly and
unequivocally, a good deal inclined to make their first appeal to the
American passion for industrial activity and prosperity.
Personally I should like to see this reserve vanish. I should like to
see an out-and-out campaign on the protection which our industries need
compared with that which they want and get. It would clear the air. It
would be a campaign of education. I remember what the greatest
iron-master of America--Mr. Andrew Carnegie--said to me in 1893 when I
was travelling with him in Egypt. It was in the second term of
Cleveland's administration, when the prospect of tariff reduction was
imminent. I asked him if he was not afraid that the duty on steel would
be reduced to a point that would ruin his business. "Not a bit," he
answered, "and I have told the President so. The tariff was made for the
protection of infant industries. But the steel business of America is
not an infant. It is a giant. It can take care of itself." Since that
time the United States Steel Corporation has been formed, with a
capitalization of about fifteen hundred million dollars of bonds and
stock, and the import duty on manufactured iron and steel is 45 per cent
_ad valorem_.
Another effect of the direction of American energy to industrial affairs
has been important not only to the United States but to all the nations
of the world. I mean the powerful stimulus which it has given to
invention. People with restless minds and a strong turn for business are
always on the lookout for new things to do and new ways of doing them.
The natural world seems to them like a treasure-house with locked doors
which it is their duty and privilege to unlock. No sooner is a new force
discovered than they want to slip a collar over it and put it to work.
No sooner is a new machine made than they are anxious to improve it.
The same propensity makes a public ready to try new devices, and to
adopt them promptly as soon as they prove useful. "Yankee notions" is a
slang name that was once applied to all sorts of curious and novel
trifles in a peddler's stock. But to-day there are a hundred Yankee
notions without the use of which the world's work would go on much more
slowly. The cotton-gin takes the seeds from seven thousand pounds of
cotton in just the same time that a hand picker formerly needed to clean
a pound and a half. An American harvesting-machine rolls through a
wheat-field, mowing, threshing, and winnowing the wheat, and packing it
in bags, faster than a score of hands could do the work. The steamboat,
the sewing-machine, the electric telegraph, the type-writer, the
telephone, the incandescent light,--these are some of the things with
which American ingenuity and energy have been busy for the increase of
man's efficiency and power in the world of matter. The mysterious force
or fluid which Franklin first drew quietly to the earth with his little
kite and his silken cord has been put to a score of tasks which Franklin
never dreamed of. And in the problem of aerial navigation, which is now
so much in the air everywhere, it looks as if American inventors might
be the first to reach a practical solution.
I do not say that this indicates greatness. I say only that it shows the
presence in the Spirit of America of a highly developed will-power,
strong, active, restless, directed with intensity to practical affairs.
The American inventor is not necessarily, nor primarily, a man who is
out after money. He is hunting a different kind of game, and one which
interests him far more deeply: a triumph over nature, a conquest of time
or space, the training of a wild force, or the discovery of a new one.
He likes money, of course. Most men do. But the thing that he most loves
is to take a trick in man's long game with the obstinacy of matter.
Edison is a typical American in this. He has made money, to be sure; but
very little in comparison with what other men have made out of his
inventions. And what he gains by one experiment he is always ready to
spend on another, to risk in a new adventure. His real reward lies in
the sense of winning a little victory over this secretive world, of
taking another step in the subjugation of things to the will of man.
There is probably no country where new inventions, labour-saving
devices, improved machinery, are as readily welcomed and as quickly
taken up as in America. The farmer wants the newest plough, the best
reaper and mower. His wife must have a sewing-machine of the latest
model; his daughter a pianola; his son an electric runabout or a
motor-cycle. The factories are always throwing out old machinery and
putting in new. The junk-heap is enormous. The waste looks frightful;
and so it would be, if it were not directed to a purpose which in the
end makes it a saving.
American cities are always in a state of transition. Good buildings are
pulled down to make room for better ones. My wife says that "New York
will be a delightful place to live in when it is finished." But it will
never be finished. It is like Tennyson's description of the mystical
city of Camelot:--
"always building,
Therefore never to be built at all."
But unlike Camelot, it is not built to music,--rather to an
accompaniment of various and dreadful noise.