spirits and the descendants of such. The Puritans, who gave force,
direction, and elevation to our national thought and purpose, were the
stoutest hearts, the most productive minds of their time. Their
characteristics have not disappeared from their children.
The same is true, generally, but of course in an infinitely lesser
degree, of most of our immigrants. Usually it is the nervy and
imaginative men who go to a new country. Our own pioneers were endowed
with daring and vision. They had the courage and initiative to leave
the scarcely warmed beds of their new-made homes and push farther on
into the wilderness.
The blue-eyed, light-haired Swede who, among all in his little
Scandinavian village, decides to come to America, the Irishman who
does the like, are, for the most part, the hopeful, venturesome,
self-reliant members of their communities across the sea. The German
who turns his face from the Fatherland, seeking a new home half across
the world, brings us some of the most vigorous blood in the Kaiser's
Empire. Such men believe in better things--have the will to try to get
those better things.
Thus, the American Republic is an absorbent of the optimism of the
world. We attract to ourselves the children of faith and hope among
the common people of other nations. And these are the types we are
after. They are the most vital, the least exhausted. I should not want
"the flower" of other nations to immigrate to our shores. Nature is
through with them, and they must be renewed from below. Do not object
to human raw material for our citizenship. One or two generations will
produce the finished product.
What says Emerson:
"The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant the lord that shall be.
The lord is hay, the peasant grass,
One dry and one the living tree."
The purpose of our institutions is to manufacture manhood.
Make it impossible for the criminal and diseased, the vicious and the
decadent, to come to us; bar out those who seek our country merely
because they cannot subsist in their own, and you will find that the
remainder of our immigrants are valuable additions to our populations.
Don't despise these common people who come to us from other lands.
Don't despise the common people anywhere on earth. The Master did not
go to the "first citizens" for His followers. He selected the
humblest. He chose fishermen. A promoter of a financial enterprise
does not do this. But the Saviour was not a promoter; He was teacher,
reformer, Redeemer.
Then, too, consider our imperial location on the globe. If all the
minds of all the statesmen who ever lived were combined into one vast
intellect of world-wisdom, and if this great composite brain should
take an eternity to plan, it could not devise a land better located
for power and world-dominance than the American Republic.
On the east is Europe, with an ocean between. This ocean is a highway
for commerce and a fluid fortress for defense, an open gateway of
trade and a bulwark of peace.
On the west is the Orient, with its multitude of millions. Between
Asia and ourselves is again an ocean. And again this ocean is an
invitation to effort and a condition of safety.
The Republic is thus enthroned between the two great oceans of the
world. Its seat of power commands both Europe and Cathay.
On the north is slowly building a great people, developing a dominion
as imperial as our own. The same speech and blood of kinship make
certain the ultimate union with our vital brothers across our northern
frontier.
To the south is a group of governments over whom the sheer operation
of natural forces is already establishing a sort of American oversight
and suzerainty.
Mark, now, our harbors. Behold how cunningly the Master Strategist has
placed along our coasts great ports from which communication with the
ends of earth naturally radiates.
Consider, too, the sweep of the ocean's currents in relation to this
country. Observe the direction and effect of the Gulf Stream, and of
the great current of the Pacific seas upon our coasts. Follow on your
map the direction of our rivers, and see how nicely Nature has
designed the tracery of the Republic's waterways.
In short, ponder over the incomparable position of this America of
yours--this home and country of yours--on the surface of the globe.
When you think of it, not only will your mind be uplifted in pride,
but you will sink to your knees in prayerful gratitude that the Father
has given you such a land, with such opportunities, for your earthly
habitation.
Attempt now to estimate our resources. Your mathematics are not equal
to it. The available productivity of the Mississippi Valley exceeds
the supply of all the fertile regions of fable or history. The country
watered by the Columbia or the Oregon surpasses in wealth-producing
power the valleys of the Nile or the Euphrates in ancient times.
Our deposits of coal and iron already under development are equalled
nowhere on earth except perhaps by the unopened mines of China; and
greater fields of ore and fuel than those which we are now working are
known positively to exist within our dominions. The mere indexing of
America's material possibilities well-nigh stuns credulity.
But all these are definite and physical things, things you can measure
or weigh. More valuable than all of these combined are our American
institutions and our exalted National ideals.
You can meditate all day on the reasons for pride in your Americanism,
and each reason you think of will suggest others. The examples I have
given are only hints. Be proud of your Americanism,
therefore--earnestly, aggressively, fervently proud of your Americanism.
I like to see patriotism have a religious ardor. It will put you in
harmony with the people you are living among, which, I repeat, is the
first condition of success.
Also it puts a vigor, manliness, mental productivity into you. Make it
a practise, when going to your business or your work each morning, to
reflect how blessed a thing it is to be an American, and why it is a
blessed thing. Then observe how your backbone stiffens as you think,
how your step becomes light and firm, how the very soul of you floods
with a kind of sunlight of confidence.
There was a time when each one of that masterful race that lived upon
the Tiber's banks in the days of the Eternal City's greatest glory
believed that "to be a Roman was greater than to be a king." And the
ideals of civic duty were more nearly realized in that golden hour of
human history than they had ever been before--or than they have ever
been since until now.
Very well, young man. If to be a Roman then was greater than to be a
king, what is it to be an American now?
Think of it! To be an American at the beginning of the twentieth
century!
Ponder over these eleven words for ten minutes every day. After a
while you will begin to appreciate your country, its institutions,
and the possibilities which both produce.
Realizing, then, that you are an American, and that, after all, this
is a richer possession than royal birth, make up your mind that you
will be worthy of it, and then go ahead and be worthy of it.
Be a part of our institutions. And understand clearly what our
institutions are. They are not a set of written laws. _American
institutions are citizens in action._ American institutions are the
American people in the tangible and physical process of governing
themselves.
A book ought to be written describing how our government actually
works. I do not mean the formal machinery of administration and
law-making at Washington or at our state capitals. These multitudes of
officers and groups of departments, these governors and presidents,
these legislatures and congresses, are not the government; they are
the instruments of government.
_The people are the government._ What said Lincoln in his greatest
utterance? "A government of the people, for the people, _and by the
people_," are the great American's words. And Lincoln knew.
The real thing is found at the American fireside. This is the forum of
both primary and final discussion. These firesides are the hives
whence the voters swarm to the polls. The family is the American
political unit. Men and measures, candidates and policies, are there
discussed, and their fate and that of the Republic determined. This is
the first phase of our government, the first manifestation of our
institutions.
Then comes the machinery through which these millions of homes "run
the government." I cannot in the limited space of this paper describe
this system of the people; the best I can do is to take a type, an
example. In every county of every state of the Nation each party has
its committee. This committee consists of a man from each precinct in
each township of the county. These precinct committeemen are chosen by
a process of natural selection. They are men who have an aptitude for
marshaling their fellow men.
In the country districts of the Republic they are usually men of good
character, good ability, good health, alert, sleepless, strong-willed.
They are men who have enough mental vitality to believe in something.
When they cease to be effective they are dropped, and new men
substituted by a sort of common consent. There are nearly two hundred
thousand precinct committeemen in the United States.
These men are a part of American institutions in action. They work all
the time. They talk politics and think politics in the midst of their
business or their labor. Their casual conversation with or about every
family within their jurisdiction keeps them constantly and freshly
informed of the tendency of public opinion.
They know how each one of their neighbors feels on the subject of
protection, or the Philippines, or civil service, or the currency.
They know the views of every voter and every voter's wife on public
men. They understand whether the people think this man honest and that
man a mere pretender. The consensus of judgment of these precinct
committeemen indicates with fair accuracy who is the "strongest man"
for his party to nominate, and what policies will get the most votes
among the people.
This is their preliminary work. When platforms have been formulated
and candidates have been chosen, these men develop from the partizan
passive to the partizan militant. They know those who, in their own
party, are "weakening," and by the same token those who are
"weakening" in the other party.
They know just what argument will reach each man, just what speaker
the people of their respective sections want to hear upon public
questions. They keep everybody supplied with the right kind of
literature from their party's view-point.
They either take the poll of their precinct or see that it is taken;
and that means the putting down in a book the name of each voter, his
past political allegiance, his present political inclinations, the
probable ballot he will cast, etc.
Not many of these men do this work for money or office. There are too
many of them to hope for reward. Primarily they do it because they are
naturally Americans, because they have the gift of government, because
they like to help "run the show." They are useful elements of our
political life, and they are modest. They seldom ask anything for
themselves.
They do require, however, that their opinions shall be taken into
account as to appointments to office made from their county, and of
course they make their opinions felt in all nominating conventions.
Without these men our "American institutions" would look beautiful on
paper but they would work haltingly. They would move sluggishly. They
might even rust, and fall to pieces from decay.
This much space has been given to the political precinct committeeman
because, as I have said, he is a type. He is the man who sees that the
"citizen" does not forget his citizenship. This great body of men,
fresh from the people, of the people, living among the people, are
perpetually renewed from the ranks of the people.
All this occurs, as has been said, by a process of natural selection.
The same process selects from this great company of "workers" county,
district, and state committeemen--county, district, and state
chairmen. And the process continues until it culminates in our great
National committees, headed by masterful captains of popular
government, under whose generalship the enormous work of National and
state campaigns is conducted.
Very well. If you appreciate your Americanism, young man, show it by
being a part of American institutions. Be one of these precinct
committeemen, or a county committeeman, or a state committeeman, or a
worker of some kind. If _you_ do not, a bad man will; and that will
mean bad politics and bad government.
You see, this whole question of good government is right up to _you_.
_You_ are the remedy for bad government, young man--_you_ and not
somebody else, not some theory. So be a committeeman or some sort of a
"worker" in real politics. Help run our institutions _yourself_, or,
rather, be a part of our institutions yourself.
If you have neither the time nor aptitude for such active work, at
least be a citizen. That does not mean merely that you shall go to the
polls to vote. It does not even mean that you shall go to the
primaries only. It means a great deal more than that.
At the very least be a member of an active political club which is
working for your party's success. There are such clubs in most wards
of our cities.
They are the power-houses of our political system. Party sentiment
finds its first public expression there--often it has its beginnings
there in the free conversations which characterize such American
political societies. You will find the "leaders" gathering there, too;
and in the talks among these men those plans gradually take form by
which nominations are made and even platforms are formulated.
These "leaders" are men who, in the practical work of politics,
develop ability, activity, and effectiveness. There is a great deal of
sneering at the lesser political leaders in American politics. They
are called "politicians," and the word is used as a term of reproach,
and sometimes deservedly. But ordinarily these "leaders," especially
in the country districts of the Republic, are men who keep the
machinery of free institutions running.
The influence of no boss or political general can _retain_ a young man
in leadership. Favoritism may give you the place of "local leader";
but nothing but natural qualities can keep you in it. The more we have
of honest, high-grade "local leaders," the better.
Whether you, young man, become one or not, you ought at least to be a
part of the organization, and work with the other young men who are
leaders. But be sure to make one condition to your fealty--require
them to be honest.
"I have no time for politics," said a business man; "it takes all my
time and strength to attend to my business."
That means that he has no time for free institutions. It means that
this "blood-bought privilege" which we call "the priceless American
ballot" is not worth as much to him as the turning of a dollar, or
even as the loss of a single moment's personal comfort.
"Come down to the club to-night; we are going to talk over the coming
campaign," said one man to another in an American city of moderate
size and ideal conditions.
"Excuse me," was the answer; "we have a theater party on hand
to-night."
Yes; but while the elegant gentleman of society enjoys the witty
conversation of charming women, and while the business man is
attending to his personal affairs and nothing else, the other fellows
are determining nominations, and under the direction of able and
creative political captains shaping the policies of parties, and in
the end the fate of the Nation.
Of course that is all right if that is your conception of American
citizenship. But if this is going to be "a government of the people
and by the people," _you_, as one of the people, have got to take part
in it. That means you have got to take part in it _all the time_.
Occasional spasms of violent civic virtue amount to little in their
permanent results. They only scare bad men for a day or two. Their
very ardor soon burns them out. The citizen has got to do more than
that--he has got to take an every-day-and-every-week interest in our
civic life. If he does not, our brave and beautiful experiment in
self-government will surely fail and we shall be ruled not even by a
trained and skilful tyrant, but by a series of coarse and corrupt
oligarchies.
In ancient Israel a certain proportion of the year's produce was given
to the Temple. In like manner, if popular government means anything to
you, you have got to give up a certain portion of your time and money
to _being a part_ of this popular government.
Just this is the most important matter in our whole National life.
Recently there died the greatest master of practical politics America
has produced. Firmly he had kept his steel hand upon his state for
thirty years. A dozen times were mighty efforts made to break his
over-lordship. Each time his resourcefulness, audacity, and genius
confounded his enemies. But finally that undefeated conqueror, Death,
took this old veteran captive.
He left an able successor in his seat of power, but a man without that
prestige of invulnerability which a lifetime of political combat and
victory had given the deceased leader. "Here," said every one, "is an
opportunity to overthrow the machine." Within a few months an election
occurred--not a National election, but one in which the "machine"
might have been crippled.
But, _mirabile dictu_, the "good people," the "reformers," the
"society" and "business" classes, _did not come out to vote_. They not
only formed no plans to set up a new order of things, _they did not
even go to the polls_. Yet these were the descendants of the men who
founded the Nation and who set free institutions in practical
operation.
This shows how American institutions, like everything else, have in
themselves the seeds of death if they are not properly exercised. When
the great body of our citizens become afflicted with civic paralysis,
it is the easiest thing in the world for the strong and resourceful
"boss," by careful selection of his precinct committeemen and other
local workers all over his state, to seize power--legislative,
executive, and even judicial. It has been done more than once in
certain places in this country.
Where it is successful, _the Republic no longer endures_. The people
no longer rule; an oligarchy rules in the name of the people. And
where this is true, the people deserve their fate. And so, young man,
if you do not expect this fate to overtake the entire country, _you_
have got to get right into "the mix of things."
_You_, I say, not some other man, but _you_, _you_, _you_. _You_--you
yourself--YOU are the one who is responsible. Quit your
aloofness. Get out of any clubs and desert all associations which
sneer at active work in ward and precinct. Do not get political
locomotor ataxia.
It was a fine thing that was said by a political leader to a
singularly brilliant young man from college who, with letters of
unlimited indorsement from the presidents of our three greatest
universities, asked for a humble place in the diplomatic service. He
wanted to make that service his career.
"I like your style," said the man whose favor the young fellow was
soliciting. "Your ability is excellent, your recommendations perfect,
your character above reproach, your family a guarantee of your moral
and mental worth. But you have done nothing yet among real men.
"Go back to your home; get out of the exclusive atmosphere of your
perfumed surroundings; join the hardest working political club of
your party in your city; report to the local leader for active work;
mingle with those who toil and sweat.
"Do this until you 'get a standing' among other young men who are
doing things. Thus you will get close to the people whom, after all,
you are going to represent. Also this contact with the sharp, keen
minds of the most forceful fellows in your town will be the best
training you can get for the beginning of your diplomatic career."
"Now let me tell you this," said President Roosevelt to this same
young man: "You may have a small under-secretaryship; but let me tell
you this," said he; "do not take it just yet. You are only out of
college. Take a postgraduate course with the people. Get down to
earth. See what kind of beings these Americans are. Find out from
personal contact.
"If you belong to exclusive clubs, quit them, and spend the time you
would otherwise spend in their cold and unprofitable atmosphere in
mingling with the people, the common people, merchants and street-car
drivers, bankers and working men.
"Finally, when you get your post, do as John Hay did--resign in a
year, or a couple of years, and come home to your own country, and
again for a year or two get down among your fellow Americans. In
short," said he, "be an American, and never stop being an American."
That is it, young man--that is the whole law and the gospel of this
subject. Be an American. And do not be an American of imagination. You
cannot be an American by seeing visions and dreaming dreams. You
cannot be an American by reading about them. Professor Munsterberg's
volume will not make you an American any more than a study of tactics
out of a book will make you a soldier.
It is the field that makes you a soldier. It is marching shoulder to
shoulder with other soldiers that makes you a soldier. It is mingling
with other Americans that makes you an American. Our eighty millions
will make you American. Keep close to them. The soil will make you
American. Keep close to it.
Utilize your enthusiasms. Do not neutralize them by permitting them to
be vague and impersonal. Be for men and against men. Be for policies
and against policies. And remember always that it is far more
important to be for somebody and something than to be against.
There is an excellent though fortunately a small class of citizens in
this and every other country who are never for anybody but always
against somebody. Frequently these men are right in their opposition;
but their force is dissipated because they are habitually negative.
I know of nothing better for a young man's character than that he
should become the admirer and follower of some noted public man. Let
your discipleship have fervor. Permit your youth to be natural. But be
sure that the political leader to whom you attach yourself is worthy
of your devotion.
Usually this will settle itself. Public men will impress you not only
by their deeds, words, and general attitude; but also through a sort
of psychic sense within you which illumines and interprets all they
say and do, and makes you understand them even better than their
spoken words.
This subconscious intelligence which the people come to have of a
public man is seldom wrong.
Somehow or other the people know instinctively those who really are
unselfishly devoted to the Nation's interest. _In the end_ they never
fail to know the man who is honest.
This instinctive estimate of the qualities of mind and soul of public
men will probably select for you the captain to whom you are to give
your allegiance. Be faithful and earnest in your championship of him.
In this way you make your political life personal and human.
You give to the policies in which you believe the warmth and vitality
of flesh and blood. And, best of all, you increase within yourself
human sympathies and devotions, and thus make yourself more and more
one of the people who in due time, in your turn, it may be your duty
to lead, if the qualities of leadership are in you.
This matter of leadership among public men is becoming more and more
important, because personality in politics is meaning more every day.
Obeying generally, then, your instinct as to the public men whom you
intend to follow, subject your choice to the corrective of cold and
careful analysis.