almost welcomed as an invitation to improve them. A fire laid the
business portion of Baltimore in ashes a few years ago. Before the
smoke had dispersed, the Baltimoreans were saying, "Now we can have
wider streets and larger stores." An earthquake shook San Francisco to
pieces. The people were stunned for a little while. Then they rubbed the
dust out of their eyes, and said, "This time we shall know how to build
better."
The high stimulation of will-power in America has had the effect of
quickening the general pace of life to a rate that always astonishes and
sometimes annoys the European visitor. The movement of things and people
is rapid, incessant, bewildering. There is a rushing tide of life in the
streets, a nervous tension in the air. Business is transacted with swift
despatch and close attention. The preliminary compliments and courtesies
are eliminated. Whether you want to buy a paper of pins, or a thousand
shares of stock, it is done quickly. I remember that I once had to wait
an hour in the Ottoman Bank at Damascus to get a thousand francs on my
letter of credit. The courteous director gave me coffee and delightful
talk. In New York the transaction would not have taken five
minutes,--but there would have been no coffee nor conversation.
Of course the rate of speed varies considerably in different parts of
the country. In the South it is much slower than in the North and the
West. In the rural districts you will often find the old-fashioned
virtues of delay and deliberation carried to an exasperating point of
perfection. Even among the American cities there is a difference in the
rapidity of the pulse of life. New York and Chicago have the name of the
swiftest towns. Philadelphia has a traditional reputation for a calm
that borders on somnolence. "How many children have you?" some one asked
a Chicagoan. "Four," was his answer; "three living, and one in
Philadelphia."
I was reading only a few day ago an amusing description of the
impression which the American _pas-redoublé_ of existence made upon an
amiable French observer, M. Hugues Le Roux, one of the lecturers who
came to the United States on the Hyde foundation. He says:--
"Everywhere you see the signs of shopkeepers who promise to do a
lot of things for you '_while you wait_.' The tailor will press
your coat, the hatter will block your hat, the shoemaker will mend
your shoe,--_while you wait_. At the barber shops the spectacle
becomes irresistibly comic. The American throws himself back in an
arm-chair to be shaved, while another artist cuts his hair; at the
same time his two feet are stretched out to a bootblack, and his
two hands are given up to a manicure....
"If 'Step lively' is the first exclamation that a foreigner hears
on leaving the steamship, 'Quick' is the second. Everything here
is quick. In the business quarter you read in the windows of the
restaurants, as their only guarantee of culinary excellence, this
alluring promise: 'Quick lunch!'...
"The American is born 'quick'; works 'quick'; eats 'quick';
decides 'quick'; gets rich 'quick'; and dies 'quick.' I will add
that he is buried 'quick.' Funerals cross the city _au triple
galop_."
So far as it relates to the appearance of things, what the philosopher
would call the phenomenal world, this is a good, though slightly
exaggerated, description. I have never been so fortunate as to see a man
getting a "shave" and a "hair-cut" at the same moment; and it seems a
little difficult to understand precisely how these two operations could
be performed simultaneously, unless the man wore a wig. But if it can be
done, no doubt the Americans will learn to have it done that way. As for
the hair-cutter, the manicure, and the bootblack, the combination of
their services is already an accomplished fact, made possible by the
kindness of nature in placing the head, the hands, and the feet at a
convenient distance from one another. Even the Parisian barbers have
taken advantage of this fact. They sell you a bottle of hair tonic at
the same time.
It is true that the American moves rapidly. But if you should infer from
these surface indications that he is always in a hurry, you would make a
mistake. His fundamental philosophy is that you must be quick sometimes
if you do not wish to be hurried always. You must condense, you must
eliminate, you must save time on the little things in order that you
may have more time for the larger things. He systematizes his
correspondence, the labour of his office, all the details of his
business, not for the sake of system, but for the sake of getting
through with his work.
Over his desk hangs a printed motto: "This is my busy day." He does not
like to arrive at the railway station fifteen minutes before the
departure of his train, because he has something else that he would
rather do with those fifteen minutes. He does not like to spend an hour
in the barber-shop, because he wishes to get out to his country club in
good time for a game of golf and a shower-bath afterward. He likes to
have a full life, in which one thing connects with another promptly and
neatly, without unnecessary intervals. His characteristic attitude is
not that of a man in a hurry, but that of a man concentrated on the
thing in hand in order to save time.
President Roosevelt has described this American trait in his familiar
phrase, "the strenuous life." In a man of ardent and impetuous
temperament it may seem at times to have an accent of overstrain. Yet
this is doubtless more in appearance than in reality. There is probably
no man in the world who has comfortably gotten through with more work
and enjoyed more play than he has.
But evidently this American type of life has its great drawbacks and
disadvantages. In eliminating the intervals it is likely to lose some of
the music of existence. In laying such a heavy stress upon the value of
action it is likely to overlook the part played by reflection, by
meditation, by tranquil consideration in a sane and well-rounded
character.
The critical faculty is not that in which Americans excel. By this I do
not mean to say that they do not find fault. They do, and often with
vigour and acerbity. But fault-finding is not criticism in the true
sense of the word. Criticism is a disinterested effort to see things as
they really are, to understand their causes, their relations, their
effects. In this effort the French intelligence seems more at home, more
penetrating, better balanced than the American.
Minds of the type of Sainte Beuve or Brunetière are not common, I
suppose, even in France. But in America they are still more rare. Clear,
intelligent, thoroughgoing, well-balanced critics are not much in
evidence in the United States; first, because the genius of the country
does not tend to produce them; and second, because the taste of the
people does not incline to listen to them.
There is a spirit in the air which constantly cries, "Act, act!"
"Let us still be up and doing."
The gentle voice of that other spirit which whispers, "Consider, that
thou mayest be wise," is often unheard or unheeded.
It is plain that the restless impulse to the active life, coming from
the inward fountain of will-power, must make heavy drafts upon its
source, and put a severe strain upon the channels by which it is
conveyed. The nerves are worn and frayed by constant pressure. America
is the country of young men, but many of them look old before their
time. Nervous exhaustion is common. Neurasthenia, I believe, is called
"the American disease."
Yet, curiously enough, it was in France that the best treatment of this
disease was developed, and one of the most famous practitioners, Dr.
Charcot, died, if I mistake not, of the complaint to the cure of which
he had given his life. In spite of the fact that nervous disorders are
common among Americans, they do not seem to lead to an unusual number of
cases of mental wreck. I have been looking into the statistics of
insanity. The latest figures that I have been able to find are as
follows: In 1900 the United States had 106,500 insane persons in a
population of 76,000,000. In 1896 Great Britain and Ireland had 128,800
in a population of 37,000,000. In 1884 France had 93,900 in a population
of 40,000,000. That would make about 328 insane persons in 100,000 for
Great Britain, 235 in every 100,000 for France, 143 in every 100,000
for America.
Nor does the wear and tear of American life, great as it may be, seem to
kill people with extraordinary rapidity. As a matter of fact, M. Le Roux
was led away by the allurements of his own style when he wrote that the
American "dies quick." In 1900 the annual death-rate per 1000 in Austria
was 25, in Italy 23, in Germany 22, in France 21, in Belgium 19, in
Great Britain 18, and in the United States 17. In America the average
age at death in 1890 was 31 years; in 1900 it was 35 years. Other
things, such as climate, sanitation, hygiene, have to be taken into
account in reading these figures. But after making all allowance for
these things, the example of America does not indicate that an active,
busy, quick-moving life is necessarily a short one. On the contrary,
hard work seems to be wholesome. Employed energy favours longevity.
But what about the amount of pleasure, of real joy, of inward
satisfaction that a man gets out of life? Who can make a general
estimate in a matter which depends so much upon individual temperament?
Certainly there are some deep and quiet springs of happiness which look
as if they were in danger of being choked and lost, or at least which do
not flow as fully and freely as one could wish, in America.
The tranquil pleasure of the household where parents and children meet
in intimate, well-ordered, affectionate and graceful fellowship--the
_foyer_, as the best French people understand and cherish it--is not as
frequent in America as it might be, nor as it used to be. There are
still many sweet and refreshing homes, to be sure. But "the home" as a
national institution, the centre and the source of life, is being
crowded out a little. Children as well as parents grow too busy for it.
Human intercourse, also, suffers from the lack of leisure, and
detachment, and delight in the interchange of ideas. The average
American is not silent. He talks freely and sometimes well, but he
usually does it with a practical purpose. Political debate and business
discussion are much more in his line than general conversation. Thus he
too often misses what Montaigne and Samuel Johnson both called one of
the chief joys of life,--"a good talk." I remember one morning, after a
certain dinner in New York, an acquaintance who was one of the company
met me, and said, "Do you know that we dined last night with thirty
millions of dollars?" "Yes," I said, "and we had conversation to the
amount of about thirty cents."
Popular recreations and amusements, pleasures of the simpler kind such
as are shared by masses of people on public holidays, do not seem to
afford as much relaxation and refreshment in America as they do in
Germany or France. Children do not take as much part in them. There is
an air of effort about them, as if the minds of the people were not
quite free from care. The Englishman is said to take his pleasure sadly.
The American is apt to take his strenuously.
Understand, in all this I am speaking in the most general way, and of
impressions which can hardly be defined, and which certainly cannot be
mathematically verified. I know very well that there are many exceptions
to what I have been saying. There are plenty of quiet rooms in America,
club-rooms, college-rooms, book-rooms, parlours, where you will find the
best kind of talk. There are houses full of children who are both
well-bred and happy. There are people who know how to play, with a free
heart, not for the sake of winning, but for the pleasure of the game.
Yet I think it true that a strong will-power directed chiefly to
industrial success has had a hardening effect upon the general tone of
life. Unless you really love work for its own sake, you will not be very
happy in America. The idea of a leisure class is not fully acclimatized
there. Men take it for granted that there must be something useful for
them to do in the world, even though they may not have to earn a
living.
This brings me to the last point of which I wish to speak: the result of
will-power and work in the production of wealth, and the real status of
the Almighty Dollar in the United States.
The enormous increase of wealth has been accompanied by an extraordinary
concentration of it in forms which make it more powerful and impressive.
Moody's _Manual of Corporation Statistics_ says that there are four
hundred and forty large industrial, franchise, and transportation
trusts, of an important and active character, with a floating capital of
over twenty billion dollars. When we remember that each of these
corporations is in the eye of the law a person, and is able to act as a
person in financial, industrial, and political affairs, we begin to see
the tremendous significance of the figures.
But we must remember also that the growth of individual fortunes and of
family estates has been equally extraordinary. Millionnaires are no
longer counted. It is the multi-millionnaires who hold the centre of the
stage. The _New York World Almanac_ gives a list of sixteen of these
families of vast wealth, tracing the descent of their children and
grandchildren with scrupulous care, as if for an _Almanach de Gotha_. I
suppose that another list might be made twice as large,--three or four
times as large,--who knows how large,--of people whose fortune runs up
into the tens of millions.
These men have a vast power in American finance and industry, not only
by the personal possession of money, but also through the control of the
great trusts, railroads, banks, in which they have invested it. The
names of many of them are familiar throughout the country. Their comings
and goings, their doings, opinions, and tastes are set forth in the
newspapers. Their houses, their establishments, in some cases are
palatial; in other cases they are astonishingly plain and modest. But
however that may be, the men themselves, as a class, are prominent, they
are talked about, they hold the public attention.
What is the nature of this attention? Is it the culminating rite in the
worship of the Almighty Dollar? No; it is an attention of curiosity, of
natural interest, of critical consideration.
The dollar _per se_ is no more almighty in America than it is anywhere
else. It has just the same kind of power that the franc has in France,
that the pound has in England: the power to buy the things that can be
bought. There are foolish people in every country who worship money for
its own sake. There are ambitious people in every country who worship
money because they have an exaggerated idea of what it can buy. But the
characteristic thing in the attitude of the Americans toward money is
this: not that they adore the dollar, but that they admire the energy,
the will-power, by which the dollar has been won.
They consider the multi-millionnaire much less as the possessor of an
enormous fortune than as the successful leader of great enterprises in
the world of affairs, a master of the steel industry, the head of a
great railway system, the developer of the production of mineral oil,
the organizer of large concerns which promote general prosperity. He
represents to them achievement, force, courage, tireless will-power.
A man who is very rich merely by inheritance, who has no manifest share
in the activities of the country, has quite a different place in their
attention. They are entertained, or perhaps shocked, by his
expenditures, but they regard him lightly.
It is the man who does things, and does them largely, in whom they take
a serious interest. They are inclined, perhaps, to pardon him for things
that ought not to be pardoned, because they feel so strongly the
fascination of his potent will, his practical efficiency.
It is not the might of the dollar that impresses them, it is the might
of the man who wins the dollar magnificently by the development of
American industry.
This, I assure you, is the characteristic attitude of the typical
American toward wealth. It does not confer a social status by itself in
the United States any more than it does in England or in France. But it
commands public attention by its relation to national will-power.
Of late there has come into this attention a new note of more searching
inquiry, of sharper criticism, in regard to the use of great wealth.
Is it employed for generous and noble ends, for the building and
endowment of hospitals, of public museums, libraries, and art galleries,
for the support of schools and universities, for the education of the
negro? Then the distributer is honoured.
Is it devoted even to some less popular purpose, like Egyptian
excavations, or polar expeditions, or the endowment of some favourite
study,--some object which the mass of the people do not quite
understand, but which they vaguely recognize as having an ideal air?
Then the donor is respected even by the people who wonder why he does
that particular thing.
Is it merely hoarded, or used for selfish and extravagant luxury? Then
the possessor is regarded with suspicion, with hostility, or with
half-humorous contempt.
There is, in fact, as much difference in the comparative standing of
multi-millionnaires in America as there is in the comparative standing
of lawyers or politicians. Even in the same family, when a great
fortune is divided, the heir who makes a good and fine use of the
inheritance receives the tribute of affection and praise, while the heir
who hoards it, or squanders it ignobly, receives only the tribute of
notoriety,--which is quite a different thing. The power of
discrimination has not been altogether blinded by the glitter of gold.
The soul of the people in America accepts the law of the moral dividend
which says _Richesse oblige_.
Here I might stop, were it not for the fact that still another factor is
coming into the attitude of the American people toward great wealth,
concentrated wealth. There is a growing apprehension that the will-power
of one man may be so magnified and extended by the enormous accumulation
of the results of his energy and skill as to interfere with the free
exercise of the will-power of other men. There is a feeling that great
trusts carry within themselves the temptation to industrial oppression,
that the liberty of individual initiative may be threatened, that the
private man may find himself in a kind of bondage to these immense and
potent artificial personalities created by the law.
Beyond a doubt this feeling is spreading. Beyond a doubt it will lead to
some peaceful effort to regulate and control the great corporations in
their methods. And if that fails, what then? Probably an effort to make
the concentration of large wealth in a few hands more difficult if not
impossible. And if that fails, what then? Who knows? But I think it is
not likely to be anything of the nature of communism.
The ruling passion of America is not equality, but personal freedom for
every man to exercise his will-power under a system of self-reliance and
fair play.
V
COMMON ORDER AND SOCIAL COÖPERATION
V
COMMON ORDER AND SOCIAL COÖPERATION
It is a little strange, and yet it seems to be true, that for a long
time America was better understood by the French than by the English.
This may be partly due to the fact that the French are more idealistic
and more excitable than the English; in both of which qualities the
Americans resemble them. It may also be due in part to the fact that the
American Revolution was in a certain sense a family quarrel. A prolonged
conflict of wills between the older and the younger members of the same
household develops prejudices which do not easily subside. The very
closeness of the family relation intensifies the misunderstanding. The
seniors find it extremely difficult to comprehend the motives of the
juniors, or to believe that they are really grown up. They seem like
naughty and self-confident children. A person outside of the family is
much more likely to see matters in their true light.
At all events, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Dr.
Samuel Johnson was calling the Americans "a race of convicts, who ought
to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging," and
declaring that he was willing to love all mankind _except the
Americans_, whom he described as "Rascals--Robbers--Pirates," a
Frenchman, named Crèvecoeur, who had lived some twenty years in New
York, gave a different portrait of the same subject.
"What then is the American," he asks, "this new man? He is either a
European or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of
blood which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you
a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch,
whose son married a Frenchwoman, and whose present four sons have now
wives of four different nations.... Here individuals of all nations are
melted into a new race of men whose labours and posterity will one day
cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims,
who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences,
vigour, and industry which began long since in the East. They will
finish the great circle."
This is the language of compliment, of course. It is the saying of a
very polite prophet; and even in prophecy one is inclined to like
pleasant manners. Yet that is not the reason why it seems to Americans
to come much nearer to the truth than Dr. Johnson's remarks, or Charles
Dickens's _American Notes_, or Mrs. Trollope's _Domestic Manners of the
Americans_. It is because the Frenchman has been clear-sighted enough
to recognize that the Americans started out in life with an inheritance
of civilized ideals, manners, aptitudes, and powers, and that these did
not all come from one stock, but were assembled from several
storehouses. This fact, as I have said before, is fundamental to a right
understanding of American character and history. But it is particularly
important to the subject of this lecture: _the sentiment of common
order_, and the building-up of a settled, decent, sane life in the
community.
Suppose, for example, that a family of barbarians, either from some
native impulse, or under the influence of foreign visitors, should begin
to civilize themselves. Their course would be slow, irregular, and often
eccentric. It would alternate between servile imitation and wild
originality. Sometimes it would resemble the costume of that Australian
chief who arrayed himself in a stove-pipe hat and polished boots and was
quite unconscious of the need of the intermediate garments.
But suppose we take an example of another kind,--let us say such a
family as that which was made famous fifty years ago by a well-known
work of juvenile fiction, _The Swiss Family Robinson_. They are
shipwrecked on a desert island. They carry ashore with them their
tastes, their habits, their ideas of what is desirable and right and
fitting for decent people in the common life. It is because their souls
are not naked that they do not wish their bodies to become so. It is
because there is already a certain order and proportion in their minds
that they organize their tasks and their time. The problem before them
is not to think out a civilized existence, but to realize one which
already exists within them, and to do this with the materials which they
find on their island, and with the tools and implements which they save
from their wrecked ship.
Here you have precisely the problem which confronted the Americans. They
began housekeeping in a wild land, but not as wild people. An English
lady once asked Eugene Field of Chicago whether he knew anything about
his ancestors. "Not much, madam," he replied, "but I believe that mine
lived in trees when they were first caught." This was an illustration of
conveying truth by its opposite.