No Classes Here--All Are Workers--Enormous Growth of Cities--Immigration
--Civic Misgovernment--The Farming Population--Individuality and
Self-reliance--Isolation Even in the Grave--The West--The South--The
Negro--Little Reason to Fear for Our Country--American Reverence for
Established Institutions.
In the Old World meaning of the term there are no classes of society
here. There is no condition of life, however low, from which a man may
not aspire and rise to the highest honors and the most enviable
distinction, provided that he has the requisite natural endowments,
favorable opportunities, and the ability and foresight to grasp them. The
materials of which our American population is composed are various in
origin and diverse in their ideas, their creeds, and their aims, but
nevertheless full of vital force and energy, and with a less percentage
of human weeds and refuse than any other nation on the globe. Nearly
everybody is at work, from the manufacturer worth millions, to the tramp
who earns his breakfast in the charity wood-yard. It is disreputable for
any one in vigorous health and years, and even when of ample fortune, to
be without employment, and for this reason rich young men frequently go
through the form of admission to the bar, or of medical graduation, in
order that it may not be said that they are unoccupied. The sons of
wealth who ignore the industrious example of their sires are still too
few in proportion to the multitude, and held in too general contempt, to
more than irritate the social surface. The aristocracy of America is an
aristocracy of workingmen--workingmen whose possessions are valued by the
hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, but still men who work.
* * *
Great cities exert an influence on public affairs unknown half a century
ago. The enormous growth of municipalities may be judged from the fact
that the net municipal expenses of New York City, exclusive of the city's
share of the State debt, interest on the city's bonds, and money acquired
for the payment of some of the bonds at maturity, amount to $33,000,000
annually. On schools alone New York spends this year $5,900,000; Chicago,
$5,500,000, and Brooklyn, $2,500,000. This is the most hope-inspiring
item in municipal budgets. It may mean the salvation of the country.
* * *
The urban population is largely composed of the element known as
"foreign." The sixteen millions of immigrants who have come to the United
States since 1820, have made a deep impress on the Republic. Immigrants
and the descendants of immigrants have been of the greatest value in
developing American resources and building up American States, and the
large majority of citizens of recent alien origin are sincerely attached
to American institutions. In the cities, however, and especially in New
York and Chicago, may be found a class of foreigners who unfortunately
herd together in certain districts, and remain almost as alien to the
American language and to American institutions as when they first landed
on our shores. Even these, however, are not irredeemable, and in the
course of a generation or two their more obnoxious traits will probably
disappear. Freedom of worship and the public school have a curative and
humanizing influence which not even the leprosy bred of centuries of
European despotism and oppression can resist. I am not of those who view
with apprehension or aversion the race of Christ, of David and of the
Maccabees, of Disraeli and of Gambetta. There is no better class of
citizens than the better class of Jews, and it would be a dishonorable
day for our Republic should its gates ever be closed to the victims of
religious intolerance, whatsoever their race or belief.
* * *
The great cities witness almost unceasing strife between what may be
called the political-criminal element on the one side, and patriotism and
intelligence on the other side. Knaves, using bigotry, ignorance and
intimidation as their weapons, manage to control municipal affairs,
except when expelled from office for periods more or less brief by some
sudden spasm of public virtue and indignation, like the revolt in the
city of New York against the Tweed Ring a quarter of a century ago, and
the reform victory in that city two years ago.
The overthrow of Tweed, and the great uprising of 1894 in New York, and
of more recent date in Chicago, prove that the American people, once
fully aroused, can crush, as with the hammer of Thor, any combination of
public plunderers, however powerful. But why should these tremendous
efforts be necessary? Why should not the latent energy which makes them
possible be exerted in steady and uniform resistance to the restless
enemies of pure and popular government?
* * *
The farming population, although largely overshadowed by manufacturing
and commercial interests, is still the anchor of the Republic. In many of
the States the rural vote is predominant, although in the nation as a
whole it is gradually losing ground, owing to the growth of the cities,
the removal of restrictions on the suffrage, and the partial adjustment
of representation to numbers. The most striking features in the character
of the native farmer are individuality and self-reliance. These qualities
have been inherited from ancestors who were compelled _by_ circumstances
to depend upon their own industry for a living, and their own vigilance
and courage for defence, when the treacherous Indian lurked in swamps and
woods, and the father attended Sunday worship with a weapon by his side.
The founders of these States were men who thought for themselves, or they
would not have been exiles for the sake of conscience. Their situation
made them still more indifferent to the opinions and concerns of the
world from which they were divided, while they stood aloof even from
each other, except when common danger drove them to unite for mutual
protection. Their offspring grew up amid stern and secluded surroundings,
and the thoughts and habits of the parent became the second nature of
the child. I have often imagined that in the firm, wary, and reserved
expression on the Yankee farmer's face was photographed the struggle of
his progenitors two centuries ago. This wariness and reserve does not,
as a rule, amount to churlishness. The American, like the English
cultivator, has felt the ameliorating influences of modern civilization,
and while he retains his strong individuality, his intelligence prompts
him to benefit by the opportunities denied to his forefathers.
The dwelling of the American farmer is usually lacking in those tasteful
accessories which add such a charm to the cottage homes of England and
France. Beyond the belt of suburban villas one seldom sees a carefully
tended flower-garden, or an attractive vine. The yard, like the field, is
open to the cattle, and, if there is a plot fenced in, it is devoted, not
to roses and violets, but to onions or peas. The effect is dreary and
uninviting, even though the enclosure may be clean, and the milk-cans
scoured to brilliancy. Again we see in this disregard for the beautiful
the effect of isolation upon the native character, the result of hard
grubbing for the bare needs of existence. The primitive settlers needed
every foot of the land which they laboriously subdued, for some
productive use; they had neither time nor soil to spare for the culture
of the beautiful; and their descendants have inherited the ancestral
disposition to utilize everything, and the ancestral want of taste for
the merely charming in nature. Yet there are gratifying exceptions to the
general rule, and sometimes a housewife may be met who takes pride and
pleasure in her flower-beds. No doubt it was such a wife that the
lonesome old farmer was speaking of one evening, in a group by a roadside
tavern, as the writer passed along. "My wife loved flowers," he
mournfully said, as his weary eyes seemed to look back into the past,
"and I must go and plant some upon her grave."
* * *
The spirit of independence and isolation extends in many of the old
American families even to the tomb. An interesting monograph might be
written on the private graveyards in some parts of the East. Among the
shade-trees surrounding a house on the busy street, in the orchard behind
the farmer's barn, and again in the depth of the wood, a few rude,
unchiseled headstones, perhaps nearly hidden by tangled brush, reveal the
spot where sleep the forefathers of the plantation. I came across such a
burying-ground not long ago. It was far from the traveled highway, far
from the haunts of living men, among trees and grapevines, and blueberry
bushes. The depression in the soil indicated that the perishable remains
had long ago crumbled to dust, while a large hole burrowed in the earth
showed where a woodchuck made its home among the bones of the forgotten
dead. With reverent hand I cleared the leaves from about the primitive
monuments, and sought for some word or letter that might tell who they
were that lay beneath the silver birches, in the silent New England
forest. But the stones, erect as when set by sorrowing friends perhaps
two hundred years ago, bore neither trace nor mark. There were graves
enough for a household, and likely a household was there. It maybe a
father who had fled from Old England to seek in the wilderness a place
where he might worship God according to the dictates of his heart; a
Pilgrim wife and mother, whose gentle love mellowed and softened the
harshness of frontier life, and sons and daughters, cut off before the
growth of commerce tempted the survivors to the town, or the reports of
new and fertile territories induced them to abandon the rugged but not
ungrateful paternal fields. With gentle step, so not to disturb the
sacred stillness of the scene, I turned from the lonely graves, and I
thought as I walked, that these simple tombs in the bosom of nature well
befitted those who had dared the dangers of wild New England for freedom
from the empty forms of a mitred religion.
History can be read in secluded resting-places of the departed. With the
accretion of wealth to the living more care was expended upon the dead,
and enduring slabs of slate, with appropriate engravings, took the place
of the uncouth fragments of rock. With added riches the taste for display
in headstones, as well as in social life, increased, and imported marble
was occasionally used to designate the tombs of prosperous descendants of
the early and impoverished settlers. Not infrequently all three--the
unlettered stone of the first hundred years, the slate of the latter half
of the last century, and the polished and costly marble now so common in
the great public cemeteries--may be seen in one small burying-ground,
bearing mute testimony to the struggles and progress of the occupants.
* * *
It is a fact which bears striking testimony to the masterful qualities of
the native American character that in the Western States, notwithstanding
a vast foreign immigration, the dominant element is of the old colonial
stock. The fortunes of the West are guided by emigrants and the
descendants of emigrants from New England, the Middle and the border
States, and while adopted citizens, nearly all of a desirable class, are
in a majority in many parts of the West, most of the western men and
women also, of national fame, can trace an American pedigree for several
generations. There are notable exceptions to this rule, but they only
illustrate the rule. This condition is due not to any inferiority on the
part of the immigrant population to the average of European
nationalities--for, barring Russia and some southern countries we receive
the cream of European manhood--but to American heredity, to the
inheritance of those endowments which qualify for leadership in a nation
of freemen. The western American is more aggressive and progressive than
his eastern cousin. Just as the New Englander retains many of the
expressions and some of the ways which have become obsolete in Old
England, so the native settler of Kansas, of Iowa, of Nebraska, and even
of the nearer States of Ohio and Illinois, is more like the New Englander
of half a century ago than those who have remained on the ancestral soil.
He has the old Puritan love of learning, and from the humble colleges in
which his more ambitious children are educated go forth the Joshuas and
the Davids of our American Israel. The total yearly expenses of one of
those western colleges would hardly equal the salary of the chief of a
great university, but presidents of the United States are graduated
there.
The western farmer reads and thinks, and perhaps in that clear western
air, as he ploughs the sod of the prairie, and reaps the harvest on his
rude domain, he sees farther into the future than his brother of the
East. Right or wrong in his political views, he is at any rate honest in
them, and if his convictions seem to partake sometimes of the fervor of
the crusader, it should not be forgotten that the spirit of Ossawattomie
Brown yet lives in the land which he saved for freedom; it should not be
forgotten that nearly every western homestead has its grave in the
battlefields of the war which made us one people forever. Making due
allowance for that good-natured raillery which is one of the spices of
existence, it may be truthfully said that anyone who laughs in earnest at
the West calls attention merely to his own shallow conceit. Intelligent
people in the East are studying, not ridiculing the West.
* * *
The recuperative energy displayed by the Southern people has been even
more wonderful and admirable than that exhibited by France after the
German conquest. France was not denuded, as the South was denuded of all
that represents wealth save a fertile soil and the resolution to rise
from the ashes of the past. And the South has risen. I passed through
North Carolina and Virginia just before the close of the war. Recently I
visited the same States, and South Carolina and Georgia for the first
time since the war. What a transformation! But for the genial climate the
busy factories would have recalled New England, while a keen business air
had taken the place of that old-time lassitude which in ante-bellum days
seemed inseparable from the institution of slavery. The Southern people
have all the acuteness of the Yankee, with a genuine bonhomie which
brightens the most ordinary incidents of life. New conditions have called
into play valuable qualities which were torpid until touched by the wand
of necessity. The old families no longer regard honorable toil with
aversion or disdain; on the contrary they are workers, and work is the
passport to respectable recognition. The Southern whites are getting
along very well with the colored people, and look on them as not only
useful, but indispensable to the South. "If the negroes emigrate," said a
prominent business man of Augusta, Ga., to the writer, "I want to
emigrate too." And this is the prevailing sentiment. The negroes, also,
are proving themselves worthy of freedom, although it is not to be
expected that the effects of three centuries of slavery could be
eradicated in three decades of liberty. In looking out for business
rivalry New England would do well to gaze less intently across the
Atlantic and more toward the Yadkin and the Savannah.
* * *
There is little reason to fear for our country. The Union has endured the
severest trials, only to come forth stronger than ever from every ordeal.
Grave questions are presenting themselves for solution, but who can doubt
that the American people have the brain and the vigor to solve them?
Anarchists make no impression here. Notwithstanding the appeals of alien
agitators, Americans remain true to the traditions of the Republic. It is
in this deeply implanted reverence for established institutions that the
hope for the future of America rests. Before it the pestilential vapor of
anarchy, borne across the Atlantic from the squirming and steaming masses
of Europe, disappears like a plague before a purifying flame, and,
whatever may be the outcome of the struggle, in its various forms, now
going on between the upper and lower orders in the mother continent, in
the United States the foundations of society are likely to remain firm
and unsapped.