THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST
The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which
perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead,
the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper
is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for
eternity; and that the form of government which prevails is the
expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits
it.--EMERSON.
I
Much water has flowed under the bridge since these papers were
undertaken, and I cheerfully confess that in the course of the year
I have learned a great deal about the West. My observations began at
Denver when the land was still at peace, and continued through the hour
of the momentous decision and the subsequent months of preparation.
The West is a place of moods and its changes of spirit are sometimes
puzzling. The violence has gone out of us; we went upon a war footing
with a minimum amount of noise and gesticulation. Deeply preoccupied
with other matters, the West was annoyed that the Kaiser should so
stupidly make it necessary for the American Republic to give him a
thrashing, but as the thing had to be done the West addressed itself
to the job with a grim determination to do it thoroughly.
We heard, after the election of 1916, that the result was an indication
of the West’s indifference to the national danger; that the Middle
Western people could not be interested in a war on the farther side of
the Atlantic and would suffer any indignities rather than send their
sons to fight in Europe. It was charged in some quarters that the West
had lost its “pep”; that the fibre had softened; that the children and
the grandchildren of “Lincoln’s men” were insensible to the national
danger; and that thoughts of a bombardment of New York or San Francisco
were not disturbing to a people remote from the sea. I am moved to
remark that we of the West are less disposed to encourage the idea
that we are a people apart than our friends to the eastward who often
seem anxious to force this attitude upon us. We like our West and may
boast and strut a little, but any intimation that we are not loyal
citizens of the American Republic, jealous of its honor and security
and responsive to its every call upon our patriotism and generosity,
arouses our indignation.
Many of us were favored in the first years of the war with letters
from Eastern friends anxious to enlighten us as to America’s danger
and her duty with respect to the needs of the sufferers in the wake
of battle. On a day when I received a communication from New York
asking “whether nothing could be done in Indiana to rouse the people
to the sore need of France,” a committee for French relief had just
closed a week’s campaign with a fund of $17,000, collected over the
State in small sums and contributed very largely by school children.
The Millers’ Belgian Relief movement, initiated in the fall of 1914 by
Mr. William C. Edgar, of Minneapolis, publisher of _The Northwestern
Miller_, affords a noteworthy instance of the West’s response to
appeals in behalf of the people in the trampled kingdom. A call was
issued November 4 for 45,000 barrels of flour, but 70,000 barrels
were contributed; and this cargo was augmented by substantial gifts
of blankets, clothing for women and children, and condensed milk.
These supplies were distributed in Belgium under Mr. Edgar’s personal
direction, in co-operation with Mr. Herbert C. Hoover, chairman of the
Commission for the Relief of Belgium.
Many Westerners were fighting under the British and French flags, or
were serving in the French ambulance service before our entrance
into the war, and the opening of the officers’ training-camps in 1917
found young Westerners of the best type clamoring for admission. The
Western colleges and universities cannot be too strongly praised for
the patriotic fervor with which they met the crisis. One president
said that if necessary he would nail up the doors of his college until
the war was over. The eagerness to serve is indicated in the Regular
Army enlistments for the period from June to December, 1917, in which
practically all of the Middle Western States doubled and tripled the
quota fixed by the War Department; and any assumption that patriotism
diminishes the farther we penetrate into the interior falls before
the showing of Colorado, whose response to a call for 1,598 men was
answered by 3,793; and Utah multiplied her quota by 5 and Montana by
7. This takes no account of men who, in the period indicated, entered
training-camps, or of naval and marine enlistments, or of the National
Guard or the selective draft. More completely than ever before the
West is merged into the nation. The situation when war was declared is
comparable to that of householders, long engrossed with their domestic
affairs and heeding little the needs of the community, who are brought
to the street by a common peril and confer soberly as to ways and means
of meeting it.
“The West,” an Eastern critic complains, “appears always to be
demanding something!” The idea of the West as an Oliver Twist with
a plate insistently extended pleases me and I am unable to meet it
with any plausible refutation. The West has always wanted and it will
continue to want and to ask for a great many things; we may only pray
that it will more and more hammer upon the federal counter, not for
appropriations but for things of value for the whole. “We will try
anything once!” This for long was more or less the Western attitude
in politics, but we seem to have escaped from it; and the war, with
its enormous demands upon our resources, its revelation of national
weaknesses, caused a prompt cleaning of the slate of old, unfinished
business to await the outcome.
It is an element of strength in a democracy that its political
and social necessities are continuing; there is no point of rest.
Obstacles, differences, criticism are all a necessary part of the
eternal struggle toward perfection. What was impossible yesterday is
achieved to-day and may be abandoned to-morrow. Democracy, as we have
thus far practised it, is a series of experiments, a quest.
II
The enormous industrial development of the Middle West was a thing
undreamed of by the pioneers, whose chief concern was with the soil;
there was no way of anticipating the economic changes that have been
forced upon attention by the growth of cities and States. Minnesota had
been a State thirteen years when in 1871 Proctor Knott, in a speech in
Congress, ridiculed the then unknown name of Duluth: “The word fell
upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle
murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the
soft, sweet accent of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of
sleeping innocence.” And yet Duluth has become indeed a zenith city of
the saltless seas, and the manufactured products of Minnesota have an
annual value approximating $500,000,000.
The first artisans, the blacksmiths and wagon-makers, and the women
weaving cloth and fashioning the garments for their families in Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, never dreamed that the manufactures
of these States alone would attain a value of $5,500,000,000,
approximately a fifth of the nation’s total. The original social and
economic structure was not prepared for this mighty growth. States in
which the soil was tilled almost wholly by the owners of the land were
unexpectedly confronted with social and economic questions foreign to
all their experience. Rural legislators were called upon to deal with
questions of which they had only the most imperfect understanding.
They were bewildered to find the towns nearest them, which had been
only trading centres for the farmer, asking for legislation touching
working hours, housing, and child labor, and for modifications of local
government made necessary by growth and radical changes in social
conditions. I remember my surprise to find not long ago that a small
town I had known all my life had become an industrial centre where the
citizens were gravely discussing their responsibilities to the laborers
who had suddenly been added to the population.
The preponderating element in the original occupation of the Middle
Western States was American, derived from the older States; and the
precipitation into the Mississippi valley industrial centres of great
bodies of foreigners, many of them only vaguely aware of the purposes
and methods of democracy, added an element of confusion and peril to
State and national politics. The perplexities and dangers of municipal
government were multiplied in the larger cities by the injection into
the electorate of the hordes from overseas that poured into States
whose government and laws had been fashioned to meet the needs of a
homogeneous people who lived close to the soil.
The war that has emphasized so many needs and dangers has sharply
accentuated the growing power of labor. Certain manifestations of
this may no longer be viewed in the light of local disturbances and
agitations but with an eye upon impending world changes. Whatever
the questions of social and economic reconstruction that Europe must
face, they will be hardly less acutely presented in America; and these
matters are being discussed in the West with a reassuring sobriety.
The Industrial Workers of the World has widely advertised itself by
its lawlessness, in recent years, and its obstructive tactics with
respect to America’s preparations for war have focussed attention upon
it as an organization utterly inconsonant with American institutions.
An arresting incident of recent years was the trial, in 1912, in
the United States Court for the District of Indiana, of forty-two
officers and members of the International Association of Structural
Iron Workers for the dynamiting of buildings and bridges throughout the
country. The trial lasted three months, and the disclosures, pointing
to a thoroughly organized conspiracy of destruction, were of the most
startling character. Thirty-eight of the defendants were convicted. The
influence of labor in the great industrial States of the West is very
great, and not a negligible factor in the politics of the immediate
future. What industrial labor has gained has been through constant
pressure of its organizations; and yet the changes of the past fifty
years have been so gradual as to present, in the retrospect, the
appearance of an evolution.
There is little to support an assumption that the West in these
critical hours will not take counsel of reason; and it is an
interesting circumstance that the West has just now no one who may be
pointed to as its spokesman. No one is speaking for the West; the West
has learned to think and to speak for itself. “Organized emotion” (I
believe the phrase is President Lowell’s) may again become a power for
mischief in these plains that lend so amiable an ear to the orator; but
the new seriousness of which I have attempted to give some hint in the
progress of these papers, and the increasing political independence of
the Western people, encourage the belief that whatever lies before us
in the way of momentous change, the West will not be led or driven to
ill-considered action.
In spite of many signs of a drift toward social democracy,
individualism is still the dominant “note” in these Middle Western
States, apart from the industrial centres where socialism has
indisputably made great headway. It may be that American political and
social phenomena are best observed in States whose earliest settlement
is so recent as to form a background for contrast. We have still
markedly in the Mississippi valley the individualistic point of view
of the pioneer who thought out his problems alone and was restrained
by pride from confessing his needs to his neighbors. In a region where
capital has been most bitterly assaulted it has been more particularly
in the pursuit of redress for local grievances. The agrarian attacks
upon railroads are an instance of this. The farmer wants quick and
cheap access to markets, and he favors co-operative elevators because
he has felt for years that the middleman poured too many grains out of
the bushel for his services. In so far as the farmer’s relations with
the State are concerned, he has received from the government a great
many things for which, broadly speaking, he has not asked, notably in
the development of a greater efficiency of method and a widening of
social horizons.
III
When the New Englander, the Southeasterner, and the Pennsylvanian met
in the Ohio valley they spoke a common language and were animated by
common aims. Their differences were readily reconcilable; Southern
sentiment caused tension in the Civil War period and was recognizable
in politics through reconstruction and later, but it was possible
for one to be classed as a Southern sympathizer or even to bear the
opprobrious epithet of copperhead without having his fundamental
Americanism questioned. Counties through this belt of States were named
for American heroes and statesmen--Washington, Franklin, Jefferson,
Hamilton, Marion, Clark, Perry--varied by French and Indian names that
tinkle musically along lakes and rivers.
There was never any doubt in the early days that all who came were
quickly assimilated into the body of the republic, and certainly
there was no fear that any conceivable situation could ever cause
the loyalty of the newly adopted citizen to be questioned. The soil
was too young in the days of Knownothingism and the body of the
population too soundly American for the West to be greatly roused by
that movement. Nevertheless we have had in the West as elsewhere the
political recognition of the race group--a particular consideration for
the Irish vote or the German vote, and in the Northwestern States for
the Scandinavian. The political “bosses” were not slow to throw their
lines around the increasing race groups with a view to control and
manipulation. Our political platforms frequently expressed “sympathy
with the Irish people in their struggle for home rule,” and it had
always been considered “good politics” to recognize the Irish and the
Germans in party nominations.
Following Germany’s first hostile acts against American life and
property, through the long months of waiting in which America hoped
for a continuation of neutrality, we became conscious that the point
of view held by citizens of American stock differed greatly from that
of many--of, indeed, the greater number--of our citizens of German
birth or ancestry. Until America became directly concerned it was
perfectly explicable that they should sympathize with the people,
if not with the government, of the German Empire. The _Lusitania_
tragedy, defended in many cases openly by German sympathizers; the
disclosure of the duplicity of the German ambassador, and revelations
of the insidious activity and ingenious propaganda that had been in
progress under the guise of pacifism--all condoned by great numbers of
German-Americans--brought us to a realization of the fact that even
unto the third and fourth generation the fatherland still exercised
its spell upon those we had accepted unquestioningly as fellow
citizens. And yet, viewed in the retrospect, the phenomenon is not so
remarkable. More than any other people who have enjoyed free access to
the “unguarded gates,” of which Aldrich complained many years ago, the
Germans have settled themselves in both town and country in colonies.
Intermarriage has been very general among them, and their social fife
has been circumscribed by ancestral tastes and preferences. As they
prospered they made frequent visits to Germany, strengthening ties
never wholly broken.
It was borne in upon us in the months following close upon the
declaration of war against Germany, that many citizens of German birth,
long enjoying the freedom and the opportunities of the Valley of
Democracy, had not really been incorporated into the body of American
citizenship, but were still, in varying degrees, loyal to the German
autocracy. That in States we had proudly pointed to as typically
American there should be open disloyalty or only a surly acceptance
of the American Government’s position with reference to a hostile
foreign Power was profoundly disturbing. That amid the perils of war
Americanism should become the issue in a political campaign, as in
Wisconsin last April, brought us face to face with the problem of a
more thorough assimilation of those we have welcomed from the Old
World--a problem which when the urgent business of winning the war
has been disposed of, we shall not neglect if we are wise. Wisconsin
nobly asserted her loyalty, and it should be noted further that her
response in enlistments, in loan subscriptions, in contributions to the
Red Cross and other war benevolences have been commensurate with her
wealth and in keeping with her honorable record as one of the sturdiest
of American commonwealths. The rest of America should know that as
soon as Wisconsin realized that she had a problem with reference to
pro-Germanism, disguised or open, her greatly preponderating number
of loyal citizens at once set to work to deal with the situation. It
was met promptly and aggressively, and in the wide-spread campaign
of education the University of Wisconsin took an important part. A
series of pamphlets, straight-forward and unequivocal, written by
members of the faculty and published by the State, set forth very
clearly America’s position and the menace to civilization of Germany’s
programme of frightfulness.
Governor Philipp, in a patriotic address at Sheboygan in May, on the
seventieth anniversary of Wisconsin’s admission to the Union, after
reviewing the State’s war preparations, evoked great applause by these
utterances:
“There is a great deal said by some people about peace. Don’t you
permit yourselves to be led astray by men who come to you with some
form of peace that they advocate that would be an everlasting disgrace
to the American people. We cannot subscribe to any peace treaty, my
friends, that does not include within its provisions an absolute and
complete annihilation of the military autocracy that we have said to
the world we are going to destroy. We have enlisted our soldiers with
that understanding. We have asked our boys to go to France to do that,
and if we quit short of fulfilling that contract with our own soldiers,
those boys on the battlefield will have given their lives in vain.”
In the present state of feeling it is impossible to weigh from
available data the question of how far there was some sort of
“understanding” between the government at Berlin and persons of German
sympathies in the United States that when _Der Tag_ dawned for the
precipitation of the great scheme of world domination they would stand
ready to assist by various processes of resistance and interference.
For the many German-Americans who stood steadfastly for the American
cause at all times it is unfortunate that much testimony points to
some such arrangement. At this time it is difficult to be just about
this, and it is far from my purpose to support an indictment that is
an affront to the intelligence and honor of the many for the offenses
of scattered groups and individuals; and yet through fifty years
German organizations, a German-language press, the teaching of German
in public schools fostered the German spirit, and the efforts made to
preserve the solidarity of the German people lend color to the charge.
It cannot be denied that systematic German propaganda, either open
or in pacifist guise, was at work energetically throughout the West
from the beginning of the war to arouse sentiment against American
resistance to German encroachments.
Americans of German birth have been controlled very largely by leaders,
often men of wealth, who directed them in their affairs great and
small. This “system” took root in times when the immigrant, finding
himself in a strange land and unfamiliar with its language, naturally
sought counsel of his fellow countrymen who had already learned the
ways of America. This form of leadership has established a curious
habit of dependence, and makes against freedom of thought and action
in the humble while augmenting the power of the strong. It has been
a common thing for German parents to encourage in their children the
idea of German superiority and Germany’s destiny to rule the world.
A gentleman whose parents, born in Germany, came to the Middle West
fifty years ago told me recently that his father, who left Germany to
escape military service, had sought to inculcate these ideas in the
minds of his children from their earliest youth. The sneer at American
institutions has been very common among Germans of this type. Another
young man of German ancestry complained bitterly of this contemptuous
attitude toward things American. There was, he said, a group of men
who met constantly in a German clubhouse to belittle America and
exalt the joys of the fatherland. Their attitude toward their adopted
country was condensed into an oft-repeated formula: “What shall we
think of a people whose language does not contain an equivalent for
_Gemütlichkeit_!”
As part of the year’s record I may speak from direct knowledge of a
situation with which we were brought face to face in Indianapolis, a
city of three hundred thousand people, in a State in which the centre
of population for the United States has been fixed by the federal
census for two decades. Indiana’s capital, we like to believe, is a
typical American city. Here the two tides of migration from the East
and the Southeast met in the first settlement. A majestic shaft in the
heart of the town testifies to the participation of Indiana in all
the American wars from the Revolution; in no other State perhaps is
political activity so vigorous as here. It would seem that if there
exists anywhere a healthy American spirit it might be sought here with
confidence. The phrase “He’s an honest German” nowhere conveyed a
deeper sense of rectitude and probity. Men of German birth or ancestry
have repeatedly held responsible municipal and county offices. And yet
this city affords a striking instance of the deleterious effect of the
preservation of the race group. It must be said that the community’s
spirit toward these citizens was the friendliest in the world; that in
the first years of the European War allowances were generously made for
family ties that still bound many to the fatherland and for pride and
prejudice of race. There had never been any question as to the thorough
assimilation of the greater number into the body of American democracy
until the beginning of the war in 1914.
When America joined with the Allies a silence fell upon those who had
been supporting the German cause. The most outspoken of the German
sympathizers yielded what in many cases was a grudging and reluctant
assent to America’s preparations for war. Others made no sign one way
or the other. There were those who wished to quibble--who said that
they were for America, of course, but that they were not for England;
that England had begun the war to crush Germany; that the stories
of atrocities were untrue. As to the _Lusitania_, Americans had no
business to disregard the warning of the Imperial German Government;
and America “had no right” to ship munitions to Germany’s enemies.
Reports of disloyal speech or of active sedition on the part of
well-known citizens were freely circulated.
German influence in the public schools had been marked for years, and
the president of the school board was a German, active in the affairs
of the National German-American Alliance. The teaching of German in the
grade schools was forbidden by the Indianapolis school commissioners
last year, though it is compulsory under a State law where the
parents of twenty-five children request it. It was learned that “The
Star-Spangled Banner” was sung in German in at least one public school
as part of the instruction in the German language, and this was
defended by German-Americans on the ground that knowledge of their
national anthem in two languages broadened the children’s appreciation
of its beauties. One might wonder just how long the singing of “Die
Wacht am Rhein” in a foreign language would be tolerated in Germany!
We witnessed what in many cases was a gradual and not too hearty
yielding to the American position, and what in others was a refusal to
discuss the matter with a protest that any question of loyalty was an
insult. Suggestions that a public demonstration by German-Americans,
at a time when loyalty meetings were being held by American citizens
everywhere, would satisfy public clamor and protect innocent sufferers
from business boycott and other manifestations of disapproval were met
with indignation. The situation became acute upon the disclosure that
the Independent Turnverein, a club with a handsome house that enrolled
many Americans in its membership, had on New Year’s Eve violated the
government food regulations. The president, who had been outspoken
against Germany long before America was drawn into the war, made public
apology, and as a result of the flurry steps were taken immediately to
change the name of the organization to the Independent Athletic Club.
On Lincoln’s Birthday a patriotic celebration was held in the club. On
Washington’s Birthday _Das Deutsche Haus_, the most important German
social centre in the State, announced a change of its name to the
Athenæum. In his address on this occasion Mr. Carl H. Lieber said:
With mighty resolve we have taken up arms to gain recognition for
the lofty principles of a free people in unalterable opposition to
autocracy and military despotism. Emerging from the mists and smoke
of battle, these American principles, like brilliant handwriting
in the skies, have been clearly set out by our President for the
eyes of the world to see. Our country stands undivided for their
realization. Impartially and unselfishly we are fighting, we feel,
for justice in this world and the rights of mankind.
This from a representative citizen of the second generation
satisfactorily disposed of the question of loyalty, both as to the
renamed organization and the majority of its more influential members.
A little later the Männerchor, another German club, changed its name to
the Academy of Music.
It is only just to say that, as against many evidences of a failure
to assimilate, there is gratifying testimony that a very considerable
number of persons of German birth or ancestry in these States have
neither encouraged nor have they been affected by attempts to diffuse
and perpetuate German ideas. Many German families--I know conspicuous
instances in Western cities--are in no way distinguishable from their
neighbors of American stock. In one Middle Western city a German
mechanic, who before coming to America served in the German army and
is without any illusions as to the delights of autocracy, tells me
that attachment to the fatherland is confined very largely to the more
prosperous element, and that he encountered little hostility among the
humbler people of German antecedents whom he attempted to convince of
the justice of the American position.
The National German-American Alliance, chartered by special act of
Congress in 1901, was one of the most insidious and mischievous
agencies for German propaganda in America. It was a device for
correlating German societies of every character--turnvereins, music
societies, church organizations, and social clubs, and it is said
that the Alliance had 2,500,000 members scattered through forty-seven
American States. “Our own prestige,” recites one of its publications,
“depends upon the prestige of the fatherland, and for that reason
we cannot allow any disparagement of Germany to go unpunished.” It
was recited in the Alliance’s statement of its aims that one of its
purposes was to combat “nativistic encroachments.” I am assured by a
German-American that this use of “nativistic” does not refer to the
sense in which it was used in America in the Know-Nothing period, but
that it means merely resistance to puritanical infringements upon
personal freedom, with special reference to prohibition.
The compulsory teaching of German in the public schools was a frank
item of the Alliance’s programme. In his book, “Their True Faith and
Allegiance” (1916), Mr. Gustavus Ohlinger, of Toledo, whose testimony
before the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate attracted
much attention last February, describes the systematic effort to widen
the sphere of the teaching of German in Western States. Ohio and
Indiana have laws requiring German to be taught upon the petition of
parents. Before the repeal of a similar law in Nebraska last April we
find that in Nebraska City the school board had been compelled by the
courts to obey the law, though less than one-third of the petitioners
really intended to have their children receive instruction in German.
Mr. Ohlinger thus describes the operation of the law in Omaha:
In the city of Omaha ... the State organizer of the Nebraska
federation of German societies visited the schools recently and was
more than pleased with what he found: the children were acquiring a
typically Berlin accent, sung a number of German songs to his entire
approval, and finally ended by rendering “Die Wacht am Rhein” with
an enthusiasm and a gusto which could not be excelled among children
of the fatherland. Four years ago Nebraska had only 90 high schools
which offered instruction in German. To-day, so the Alliance reports,
German is taught in 222 high schools and in the grade schools of
nine cities. Omaha alone has 3,500 pupils taking German instruction.
In addition to this, the State federation has been successful in
obtaining an appropriation for the purchase of German books for the
State circulating library. Germans have been urged to call for such
books, in order to convince the State librarian that there is a
popular demand and to induce further progress in this direction.
These conditions have, of course, passed, and it is for those of us who
would guard jealously our rights, and honestly fulfil our obligations,
as American citizens to see to it that they do not recur. The Alliance
announced its voluntary dissolution some time before its charter was
annulled, but the testimony before the King committee, which the
government has published, will be an important source of material for
the historian of the war. German propaganda and activity in the Middle
West did little for the Kaiser but to make the word “German” an odious
term. “German” in business titles and in club names has disappeared and
German language newspapers have in many instances changed their names
or gone out of business. I question whether the end of the war will
witness any manifestations of magnanimity that will make possible a
restoration of the teaching of German in primary and high schools.
We of the Middle West, who had thought ourselves the especial guardians
of American democracy, found with dismay that the mailed fist of Berlin
was clutching our public schools. In Chicago, where so much time,
money, and thought are expended in the attempt to Americanize the
foreign accretions, the spelling-book used in the fourth, fifth, sixth,
seventh, and eighth grades consisted wholly of word-lists, with the
exception of two exercises--one of ten lines, describing the aptness of
the natives of Central Australia in identifying the tracks of birds and
animals, and another which is here reproduced:
THE KAISER IN THE MAKING
In the _gymnasium_ at Cassel the German _Kaiser_ spent three years of
his boyhood, a _diligent_ but not a _brilliant_ pupil, ranking tenth
among _seventeen candidates_ for the _university_.
Many tales are told of this _period_ of his life, and one of them, at
least, is _illuminating_.
A _professor_, it is said, wishing to curry favor with his royal
pupil, informed him _overnight_ of the chapter in Greek that was to
be made the _subject_ of the next day’s lesson.
The young _prince_ did what many boys would not have done. As soon as
the classroom was _opened_ on the following morning, he entered and
wrote _conspicuously_ on the blackboard the _information_ that had
been given him.
One may say _unhesitatingly_ that a boy capable of such an action has
the root of a fine _character_ in him, _possesses_ that _chivalrous_
sense of fair play which is the nearest thing to a _religion_ that
may be looked for at that age, hates _meanness_ and _favoritism_,
and will, _wherever possible_, expose them. There is in him a
_fundamental_ bent toward what is clean, manly, and aboveboard.
The copy of the book before me bears the imprint, “Board of Education,
City of Chicago, 1914.” The Kaiser’s “chivalrous sense of fair play”
has, of course, ceased to be a matter of public instruction in the
Western metropolis.
“Im Vaterland,” a German reading-book used in a number of Western
schools, states frankly in its preface that it was “made in Germany,”
and that “after the manuscript had been completed it was manifolded and
copies were criticised by teachers in Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria.”
In contrast with the equivocal loyalty of Germans who have sought to
perpetuate and accentuate the hyphen, it is a pleasure to testify to
the admirable spirit with which the Jewish people in these Western
States have repeatedly manifested their devotion to America. Many of
these are of German birth or the children of German immigrants, and yet
I am aware of no instance of a German Jew in the region most familiar
to me who has not warmly supported the American cause. They have not
only given generously to the Red Cross and to funds for French and
Belgian relief, quite independently of their efforts in behalf of
people of their own race in other countries, but they have rendered
most important aid in all other branches of war activities. No finer
declaration of whole-hearted Americanism has been made by any American
of German birth than that expressed (significantly at Milwaukee) by
Mr. Otto H. Kahn, of New York, last January:
Until the outbreak of the war, in 1914, I maintained close and active
personal and business relations in Germany. I was well acquainted
with a number of the leading personages of the country. I served
in the German army thirty years ago. I took an active interest
in furthering German art in America. I do not apologize for, nor
am I ashamed of, my German birth. But I am ashamed--bitterly and
grievously ashamed--of the Germany which stands convicted before the
high tribunal of the world’s public opinion of having planned and
willed war, of the revolting deeds committed in Belgium and northern
France, of the infamy of the _Lusitania_ murders, of innumerable
violations of The Hague conventions and the law of nations, of
abominable and perfidious plotting in friendly countries, and
shameless abuse of their hospitality, of crime heaped upon crime in
hideous defiance of the laws of God and man.
A curious phase of this whole situation is the fact that so many
thousands of Germans who found the conditions in their own empire
intolerable and sought homes in America, should have fostered a
sentimental attachment for the fatherland as a land of comfort and
happiness, and of its ruler as a glorious Lohengrin afloat upon the
river of time in a swan-boat, in an atmosphere of charm and mystery, to
the accompaniment of enchanting music. In their clubs and homes they so
dreamed of this Germany and talked of it in the language of the land
of their illusion that the sudden transformation of their knight of the
swan-boat into a war lord of frightfulness and terror, seeking to plant
his iron feet upon an outraged world, has only slowly penetrated to
their comprehension. It is clear that there has been on America’s part
a failure, that cannot be minimized or scouted, to communicate to many
of the most intelligent and desirable of all our adopted citizens, the
spirit of that America founded by Washington and saved by Lincoln, and
all the great host who in their train--
“spread from sea to sea
A thousand leagues the zone of liberty,
And gave to man this refuge from his past,
Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered.”
IV
In closing these papers it seems ungenerous to ignore the criticisms
with which they were favored during their serial publication. To a
gentleman in Colorado who insists that my definition and use of Folks
and “folksiness” leave him in the dark as to my meaning, I can only
suggest that a visit to certain communities which I shall be glad to
choose for him, in the States of our central basin, will do much for
his illumination. An intimation from another quarter that those terms
as I have employed them originated in Kentucky does not distress me a
particle, for are not we of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois first cousins
of the people across the Ohio? At once some one will rise to declare
that all that is truly noble in the Middle West was derived from the
Eastern States or from New England, and on this question I might
with a good conscience write a fair brief on either side. With one
Revolutionary great-grandfather, a native of Delaware, buried in Ohio,
and another, a Carolinian, reposing in the soil of Kentucky, I should
be content no matter where fell the judgment of the court.
To the complaint of the Chicago lady who assailed the editor for his
provincialism in permitting an Easterner to abuse her city, I demur
that I was born and have spent most of the years of my life within a
few hours of Chicago, a city dear to me from long and rather intimate
acquaintance and hallowed by most agreeable associations. The _Evening
Post_ of Chicago, having found the fruits of my note-book “dull” as to
that metropolis, must permit me to plead that in these stirring times
the significant things about a city are not its clubs, its cabarets,
or its galloping “loop-hounds,” but the efforts of serious-minded
citizens of courage and vision to make it a better place to live in.
The cynicism of those to whom the contemplation of such efforts is
fatiguing, lacks novelty and is only tolerable in so far as it is a
stimulus to the faithful workers in the vineyard.
I have spoken of The Valley of Democracy as being in itself a romance,
and the tale as written upon hill and plain and along lake and river
is well-nigh unequalled for variety and interest in the annals of
mankind. I must plead that the sketchiness of these papers is due
not to any lack of respect for the work of soberer chroniclers, but
is attributable rather to the humility with which I have traversed a
region laboriously explored by the gallant company of scholars who
have established Middle Western history upon so firm a foundation. It
is the view of persons whose opinions are entitled to all respect that
the winning of the West is the most significant and important phase of
American history. Certain it is that the story wherever one dips into
it immediately quickens the heart-beat, and it is a pleasure to note
the devotion and intelligence with which materials for history have
been assembled in all the States embraced in my general title.
The great pioneer collector of historical material was Dr. Reuben Gold
Thwaites, who made the Wisconsin Historical Society the most efficient
local organization of its kind in the country. “He was the first,”
writes Dr. Clarence W. Alvord, of the University of Illinois, “to unite
the State historical agent and the university department of history so
that they give each other mutual assistance--a union which some States
have brought about only lately with great difficulty, while others are
still limping along on two ill-mated crutches.” Dr. Thwaites was an
indefatigable laborer in his chosen field, and an inspiring leader. He
not only brought to light a prodigious amount of material and made it
accessible to other scholars, but he communicated his enthusiasm to a
noteworthy school of historians who have specialized in “sections” of
the broad fertile field into which he set the first plough. Where the
land is so new it is surprising and not a little amusing that there
should be debatable points of history, and yet the existence of these
adds zest to the labors of the younger school of historical students
and writers. State historical societies have in recent years assumed a
new dignity and importance, due in great measure to the fine example
set by Wisconsin under Dr. Thwaites’s guidance.
Frederick Jackson Turner is another historian whose interest in the
West has borne fruit in works of value, and he has established new
points of orientation for explorers in this field. He must always be
remembered as one of the first to appreciate the significance of the
Western frontier in American history, and by his writings and addresses
he has done much to arouse respect for the branch in which he has
specialized. Nor shall I omit Dr. John H. Finley’s “The French in the
Heart of America” as among recent valuable additions to historical
literature. There is a charming freshness and an infectious enthusiasm
in Dr. Finley’s pages, attributable to his deep poetic feeling for the
soil to which he was born. All writers of the history of the Northwest,
of course, confess their indebtedness to Parkman, and it should not be
forgotten that before Theodore Roosevelt became a distinguished figure
in American public life he had written “The Winning of the West,” which
established a place for him among American historians.
A historical society was formed in Indiana in 1830, but as no building
was ever provided for its collection, many valuable records were lost
when the State capitol was torn down thirty years ago. Many documents
that should have been kept within the State found their way to
Wisconsin--an appropriation by the tireless Thwaites of which Indiana
can hardly complain in view of the fact that she has never provided for
the proper housing of historical material. Still, interest in local
history, much of it having an important bearing on the national life,
has never wholly died, and in recent years the _Indiana Historical
Magazine_ and the labors of Jacob P. Dunn, James A. Woodburn, Logan
Esarey, Daniel Waite Howe, Harlow Lindley, and other students and
writers have directed attention to the richness of the local field.
Illinois, slipping this year into her second century of statehood,
is thoroughly awake to the significance of the Illinois country in
Western development. Dr. Alvord, who, by his researches and writings,
has illuminated many dark passages of Middle Western history, has
taken advantage of the centenary to rouse the State to a new sense of
its important share in American development. The investigator in this
field is rewarded by the unearthing of treasures as satisfying as any
that may fall to the hand of a Greek archæologist. The trustees of the
Illinois Historical Library sent Dr. Alvord to “sherlock” an old French
document reported to be in the court-house of St. Clair county. Not
only was this document found but the more important Cahokia papers
were discovered, bearing upon the history of the Illinois country
during the British occupation and the American Revolution. Illinois
has undertaken a systematic survey of county archives, which includes
also a report upon manuscript material held by individuals, and the
centenary is to have a fitting memorial in a five-volume State history
to be produced by authoritative writers.
Iowa, jealous of her history and traditions, has a State-supported
historical society with a fine list of publications to its credit.
Under the direction of the society’s superintendent, Dr. Benjamin F.
Shambaugh, the search for material is thorough and persistent, and
over forty volumes of historical material have been published. The
Iowa public and college libraries are all branches of the society and
depositories of its publications. The Mississippi Valley Historical
Association held its eleventh annual meeting this year in St. Paul to
mark the dedication of the new building erected by the State for the
use of the Minnesota Historical Society.
The wide scope of Western historical inquiry is indicated in the papers
of the Mississippi Valley Association, and its admirable quarterly
review, in which we find monographs by the ethnologist, the specialist
in exploration, and the student of political crises, such as the
Lincoln-Douglas contest and the Greenback movement. Not only are the
older Middle Western States producing historical matter of national
importance but Montana and the Dakotas are inserting chapters that bind
the Mississippi Valley to the picturesque annals of California in a
continuous narrative. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois,
and Indiana have established an informal union for the prosecution of
their work, one feature of which is the preparation of a “finding list”
of documents in Washington. This co-ordination prevents duplication of
labor and makes for unity of effort in a field of common interest.
V
I had hoped that space would permit a review in some detail of
municipal government in a number of cities, but I may now emphasize
only the weakness of a mere “form,” or “system,” where the electorate
manifest too great a confidence in a device without the “follow-up” so
essential to its satisfactory employment; and I shall mention Omaha,
whose municipal struggle has been less advertised than that of some
other Western cities. Omaha was fortunate in having numbered among
its pioneers a group of men of unusual ability and foresight. First a
military outpost and a trading centre for adventurous settlements, the
building of the Union Pacific made it an important link between East
and West, and, from being a market for agricultural products of one of
the most fertile regions in the world, its interests have multiplied
until it now offers a most interesting study in the interdependence and
correlation of economic factors.
Like most other Western cities, Omaha grew so rapidly and was so
preoccupied with business that its citizens, save for the group of
the faithful who are to be found everywhere, left the matter of
local government to the politicians. Bossism became intolerable, and
with high hopes the people in 1912 adopted commission government;
but the bosses, with their usual adaptability and resourcefulness,
immediately captured the newly created offices. It is a fair consensus
of local opinion that there has been little if any gain in economy or
efficiency. Under the old charter city councilmen were paid $1,800; the
commissioners under the new plan receive $4,500, with an extra $500 for
the one chosen mayor. Several of the commissioners are equal to their
responsibilities, but a citizen who is a close student of such matters
says that “while in theory we were to get a much higher grade of public
servants, in fact we merely elected men content to work for the lower
salary and doubled and tripled their pay. We still have $1,800 men in
$4,500 jobs.” However, at the election last spring only one of the city
commissioners was re-elected, and Omaha is hoping that the present
year will show a distinct improvement in the management of its public
business. Local pride is very strong in these Western cities, and from
the marked anxiety to show a forward-looking spirit and a praiseworthy
sensitiveness to criticism we may look confidently for a steady gain in
the field of municipal government.
It is to be hoped that in the general awakening to our imperfections
caused by the war, there may be a widening of these groups of patient,
earnest citizens, who labor for the rationalization of municipal
government. The disposition to say that “as things have been they
remain” is strong upon us, but it is worth remembering that Clough also
bids us “say not the struggle naught availeth.” The struggle goes on
courageously, and the number of those who concern themselves with the
business of strengthening the national structure by pulling out the
rotten timbers in our cities proceeds tirelessly.
Western cities are constantly advertising their advantages and
resources, and offering free sites and other inducements to
manufacturers to tempt them to move; but it occurs to me that
forward-looking cities may present their advantages more alluringly
by perfecting their local government and making this the burden of
their appeal. We shall get nowhere with commission government or the
city-manager plan until cities realize that no matter how attractive
and plausible a device, it is worthless unless due consideration is
given to the human equation. It is very difficult to find qualified
administrators under the city-manager plan. A successful business man
or even a trained engineer may fail utterly, and we seem to be at the
point of creating a new profession of great opportunities for young
men (and women too) in the field of municipal administration. At the
University of Kansas and perhaps elsewhere courses are offered for
the training of city managers. The mere teaching of municipal finance
and engineering will not suffice; the courses should cover social
questions and kindred matters and not neglect the psychology involved
in the matter of dealing fairly and justly with the public. By giving
professional dignity to positions long conferred upon the incompetent
and venal we should at least destroy the cynical criticism that there
are no men available for the positions created; and it is conceivable
that once the idea of fitness has become implanted in a careless and
indifferent public a higher standard will be set for all elective
offices.
VI
No Easterner possessed of the slightest delicacy will read what
follows, which is merely a memorandum for my friends and neighbors
of the great Valley. We of the West have never taken kindly to
criticism, chiefly because it has usually been offered in a spirit of
condescension, or what in our extreme sensitiveness we have been rather
eager to believe to be such. In our comfortable towns and villages we
may admit weaknesses the mention of which by our cousins _in partibus
infidelium_ arouses our deepest ire. We shall not meekly suffer the
East in its disdainful moods to play upon us with the light lash of
its irony; but among ourselves we may confess that at times we have
profited by Eastern criticism. After all, there is no spirit of the
West that is very different from the spirit of the East. Though I only
whisper it, we have, I think, rather more humor. We are friendlier,
less snobbish, more sanguine in our outlook upon public matters, and
have a greater confidence in democracy than the East. I have indicated
with the best heart in the world certain phases and tendencies of our
provinces that seem to me admirable, and others beside which I have
scratched a question-mark for the contemplation of the sober-minded.
I am disposed to say that the most interesting thing about us is our
politics, but that, safely though we have ridden the tempest now and
again, these be times when it becomes us to ponder with a new gravity
the weight we carry in the national scale. Colorado, Illinois, Indiana,
Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin wield
145 votes of the total of 531 in the electoral college; and in 1916 Mr.
Wilson’s majority was only 23. The political judgment of the nation is
likely, far into the future, to be governed by the West. We dare not,
if we would, carry our responsibilities lightly. We have of late been
taking our politics much more seriously; a flexibility of the vote,
apparent in recent contests, is highly encouraging to those of us who
see a hope and a safety in the multiplication of the independents. But
even with this we have done little to standardize public service; the
ablest men of the West do not govern it, and the fact that this has
frequently been true of the country at large can afford us no honest
consolation. There is no reason why, if we are the intelligent, proud
sons of democracy we imagine ourselves to be, we should not so elevate
our political standards as to put other divisions of the republic
to shame. There are thousands of us who at every election vote for
candidates we know nothing about, or for others we would not think of
intrusting with any private affair, and yet because we find their names
under a certain party emblem we cheerfully turn over to such persons
important public business for the honest and efficient transaction of
which they have not the slightest qualification. What I am saying is
merely a repetition of what has been said for years without marked
effect upon the electorate. But just now, when democracy is fighting
for its life in the world, we do well to give serious heed to such
warnings. If we have not time or patience to perform the services
required of a citizen who would be truly self-governing, then the glory
of fighting for free institutions on the battle-fields of Europe is
enormously diminished.
The coming of the war found the West rather hard put for any great
cause upon which to expend its energy and enthusiasm. We need a good
deal of enthusiasm to keep us “up to pitch,” and I shall not scruple
to say that, in spite of our fine showing as to every demand thus
far made by the war, the roll of the drums really found us inviting
the reproach passed by the prophet upon them “that lie upon beds of
ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs
out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall.” Over
and over again, as I have travelled through the West in recent years,
it has occurred to me that sorely indeed we needed an awakening.
Self-satisfaction and self-contemplation are little calculated to
promote that clear thinking and vigorous initiative that are essential
to triumphant democracy. Yes; this may be just as true of East or
South; but it is of the West that we are speaking. I shall go the
length of saying that any failure of democracy “to work” here in
America is more heavily chargeable upon us of these Middle Western
States than upon our fellow Americans in other sections. For here we
are young enough to be very conscious of all those processes by which
States are formed and political and social order established. Our
fathers or our grandfathers were pioneers; and from them the tradition
is fresh of the toil and aspiration that went to the making of these
commonwealths. We cannot deceive ourselves into believing that they did
all that was necessary to perpetuate the structure, and that it is not
incumbent upon us to defend, strengthen, and renew what they fashioned.
We had, like many of those who have come to us from over the sea to
share in our blessings, fallen into the error of assuming that America
is a huge corporation in which every one participates in the dividends
without reference to his part in earning them. Politically speaking, we
have too great a number of those who “hang on behind” and are a dead
weight upon those who bear the yoke. We must do better about this; and
in no way can the West prove its fitness to wield power in the nation
than through a quickening of all those forces that tend to make popular
government an intelligently directed implement controlled by the fit,
and not a weapon caught up and exercised ignorantly by the unfit.
Again, still speaking as one Westerner to another, our entrance into
the war found us dangerously close to the point of losing something
that was finely spiritual in our forebears. I am aware that an
impatient shrug greets this suggestion. The spires and towers of
innumerable churches decorate the Western sky-line, and I accept
them for what they represent, without discussing the efficiency
of the modern church or its failure or success in meeting the
problems of modern life. There was apparent in the first settlers
of the Mississippi valley a rugged spirituality that accounted
for much in their achievements. The West was a lonesome place and
religion--Catholic and Protestant--filled a need and assisted greatly
in making wilderness and plain tolerable. The imagination of the
pioneer was quickened and brightened by the promise of things that
he believed to be eternal; the vast sweep of prairie and woodland
deepened his sense of reliance upon the Infinite. This sense so
happily interpreted and fittingly expressed by Lincoln is no longer
discernible--at least it is not obtrusively manifest--and this seems
to me a lamentable loss. Here, again, it may be said that this is not
peculiar to the West; that we have only been affected by the eternal
movement of the time spirit. And yet this elementary confidence in
things of the spirit played an important part in the planting of the
democratic ideal in the heart of America, and we can but deplore the
passing of what to our immediate ancestors was so satisfying and
stimulating. And here, as with other problems that I have passed with
only the most superficial note, I have no solution, if indeed any be
possible. I am fully conscious that I fumble for something intangible
and elusive; and it may be that I am only crying vainly for the
restoration of something that has gone forever. Perhaps this war came
opportunely to break our precipitate rush toward materialism, and the
thing we were apparently losing, the old enthusiasm for higher things,
the greater leisure for self-examination and self-communion, may come
again in the day of peace.
“There is always,” says Woodberry, “an ideality of the human spirit”
visible in all the works of democracy, and we need to be reminded
of this frequently, for here in the heart of America it is of grave
importance that we remain open-minded and open-hearted to that
continuing idealism which must be the strength and stay of the nation.
Culture, as we commonly use the term, may properly be allowed to
pass as merely another aspect of the idealism “deep in the general
heart of man” that we should like to believe to be one of the great
assets of the West. Still addressing the Folks, my neighbors, I will
temerariously repeat an admission tucked into an earlier chapter,
that here is a field where we do well to carry ourselves modestly.
There was an impression common in my youth that culture of the highest
order was not only possible in the West but that we Westerners were
peculiarly accessible to its benignant influences and very likely to
become its special guardians and apostles. Those were times when life
was less complex, when the spirituality stirred by the Civil War was
still very perceptible, when our enthusiasms were less insistently
presented in statistics of crops and manufactures. We children of those
times were encouraged to keep Emerson close at hand, for his purifying
and elevating influence, and in a college town which I remember very
well the professor of Greek was a venerated person and took precedence
in any company over the athletic director.
In those days, that seem now so remote, it was quite respectable to
speak of the humanities, and people did so without self-consciousness.
But culture, the culture of the humanities, never gained that foothold
in the West that had been predicted for it. That there are few signs
of its permanent establishment anywhere does not conceal our failure
either to implant it or to find for it any very worthy substitute. We
have valiantly invested millions of dollars in education and other
millions in art museums and in libraries without any resulting
diffusion of what we used to be pleased to call culture. We dismiss
the whole business quite characteristically by pointing with pride to
handsome buildings and generous endowments in much the same spirit that
we call attention to a new automobile factory. There are always the
few who profit by these investments; but it is not for the few that we
design them; it is for the illumination of the great mass that we spend
our treasure upon them. The doctrine of the few is the old doctrine of
“numbers” and “the remnant,” and even at the cost of reconstructing
human nature we promised to show the world that a great body of people
in free American States could be made sensitive and responsive to
beauty in all its forms. The humanities still struggle manfully, but
without making any great headway against adverse currents. The State
universities offer an infinite variety of courses in literature and the
fine arts, and they are served by capable and zealous instructors, but
with no resulting progress against the tide of materialism. “Culture,”
as a friend of mine puts it, “is on the blink.” We hear reassuring
reports of the State technical schools where the humanities receive
a niggardly minimum of attention, and these institutions demand our
heartiest admiration for the splendid work they are doing. But
our development is lamentably one-sided; we have merely groups of
cultivated people, just as older civilizations had them, not the great
communities animated by ideals of nobility and beauty that we were
promised.
In the many matters which we of the West shall be obliged to consider
with reference to the nation and the rest of the world as soon as
_Kultur_ and its insolent presumptions have been disposed of, culture,
in its ancient and honorable sense, is quite likely to make a poor
fight for attention. And yet here are things, already falling into
neglect, which we shall do well to scan once and yet again before
parting company with them forever. There are balances as between
materialism and idealism which it is desirable to maintain if the
fineness and vigor of democracy and its higher inspirational values
are to be further developed. Our Middle Western idealism has been
expending itself in channels of social and political betterment, and it
remains to be seen whether we shall be able to divert some part of its
energy to the history, the literature, and the art of the past, not for
cultural reasons merely but as part of our combat with provincialism
and the creation of a broad and informed American spirit.
“Having in mind things true, things elevated, things just, things pure,
things amiable, things of good report--having these in mind, studying
and loving these, is what saves States,” wrote Matthew Arnold thirty
years ago. In the elaboration of a programme for the future of America
that shall not ignore what is here connoted there is presented to
the Middle West abundant material for new enthusiasms and endeavors,
commensurate with its opportunities and obligations not merely as the
Valley of Democracy but as the Valley of Decision.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] The matter has been disposed of by the adoption of a prohibition
amendment to the Federal Constitution.
[B] Kenneth Victor Elliott, of Sheridan, Indiana. He died in battle,
giving his youth and his high hope of life for the America he loved
with a passionate devotion.
[C] Now the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture.
[D] Mr. Thompson was re-elected April 1, 1919, by a plurality of 17,600.
[E] Colonel Roosevelt died January 6, 1919.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.