THE AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY
Here, in brief compass, are laid down the general principles upon which a
nation must rely for the raising of its standard of human excellence. In
general, we are convinced that the Super Race is possible.
Specifically--and here is the next point--there are more possibilities for
the development of the Super Race in the United States to-day than there
have been in any nation of the past; or than there are in any nation of
the present. The Super Race is America's distinctive opportunity.
The factors which may play so significant a part in establishing a Super
Race in the United States are here set down in an order which permits of
sequential treatment--
1. Natural resources.
2. The stock of the dominant races.
3. Leisure.
4. The emancipation of women.
5. The abandonment of war.
6. A knowledge of race making.
7. A knowledge of Social Adjustment.
8. A widespread educational machinery.
Natural resources are an indispensable element in national progress. A
congenial climate is a pre-requisite to social development. No permanently
successful civilization can be erected on the shores of Hudson Bay, or in
the torrid heat of the Amazon Valley. The temperate zones, with their
variable climate, and their wide range of vegetable products, seem to
provide the foundation for the successful civilizations of the immediate
future. No less necessary to civilization are harbors for the maintenance
of commerce; and an abundance of minerals, the sinews of industry; and
most important of all, fertile agricultural land.
In its possession of these natural resources, the United States is
unexcelled. Its climate, while generally temperate, varies sufficiently to
give an excellent range of products; harbors and rivers are abundant;
forests and minerals are scattered everywhere; and the agricultural land,
rich and well watered, is as extensive and as potentially productive as
any equivalent area in the world. So far as natural resources provide a
basis for a Super Race, the United States occupies a position of almost
unique prominence.
The stock of the dominant races may or may not be a cant phrase.
Notwithstanding the effective work done by Ripley in his _Races of
Europe_,[19] an impression still prevails that certain races are, from
their racial characteristics, specially fitted to dominate others.
Woodruff, in his _Expansion of Races_,[20] takes this view, strongly
urging the claim of the northwestern European to the distinction of world
ruler. Whether race be a matter of supreme or of little concern, in
determining the development of a Super Race, the United States possesses
an admirable blending of the western European peoples who now occupy the
dominant position in the commercial and military affairs of the world. If
racial stock be a matter of no importance, it requires no emphasis; if, on
the other hand, it be a significant factor in the creation of the Super
Race, then the United States holds an enviable position in its racial
qualities.
Thus the raw materials of nation building--the natural resources and the
racial qualities, are possessed by the United States in generous
abundance. Has our use of them tended toward the development of the Super
Race?
Leisure is an opportunity for the pursuit of a congenial avocation. It
must be carefully differentiated from the idleness with which it is so
often considered synonymous. Satan still finds mischief for idle hands.
The man who idles in leisure time is as likely now as ever in the past to
find himself breaking several of the commandments. Leisure merely provides
an opportunity for free choice. Unwisely used, it leads to individual
dissipation and social degeneracy. Wisely employed, it is a most
important means for the promotion of social progress.
Most of the great things of the world have been done in leisure time. A
poet cannot create, nor can a mechanic devise, if he is forced during
twelve hours each day to struggle for the bare necessities of life. A
study of the lives of those who have made notable achievements in art,
science, literature, and diplomacy shows that they were free, for the most
part, from the bread and butter struggle. They had estates, they were the
recipients of pensions, but they did not submit to the soul-destroying
monotony of repeating the same task endlessly through the long reaches of
a twelve hour day.
Primitive society demands the service of even its immature members.
Children are adults before their childhood is well begun. Civilization,
recognizing the possibility of self preservation through lengthened youth,
has said to the child "Play."
Long youth means long life. Play time--leisure--for the youth is the bone
and sinew of a high standard maturity. Leisure in youth for play, leisure
in mature life for reflection and creation--these are two of the most
precious gifts of civilization to social progress.
The United States has led the nations in providing opportunity for leisure
time. Labor saving devices have been brought to a higher perfection there
than in any other part of the world. Nowhere are children kept longer from
assuming the responsibilities of adult life; in few countries is the
workday shorter for adults.
Probably no other people in the world can supply themselves with the
necessaries of life in so short a working time as can the inhabitants of
the United States. If every able bodied adult engaged for five hours each
day in gainful activity, enough economic goods could be created to provide
all the necessaries and many of the comforts of life. The leisure obtained
through American industry, if rightly directed, may provide for every
child born a thorough education--an ample opportunity to express the
qualities which are latent in him--and a thorough preparation for life.
The emancipation of women is another force which may be directed toward
the improvement of race qualities. Women bear the race in their bodies; at
least half of the qualities of the offspring are inherited from them; as
mothers, they educate the children during the first six years of their
lives, and then, as school teachers and mothers they play the leading part
in education until the children reach the age of twelve or fourteen. The
youth of the race is in women's keeping. They shape the child clay. The
twig is bent, the tree is inclined by women's hands.
The emancipation of woman means her individualization. Both in primitive
custom and in early law her individuality is merged in that of the man.
"Wives," wrote Paul, "be obedient unto your husbands, for this is the
law." Mohammedan women wear veils that they may not be seen; Chinese women
bind their feet that they may not escape; the women of continental Europe
spend their lives in ministering to the comfort of their liege lords. They
are dependent--almost abject. From such a sowing, what must be the
reaping? Into the hands of these subject creatures, men have committed
the training of their sons.
Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit? If women are inferior to men,
can they be worthy to train their future superiors--their sons? If they
are of a lower mentality than men, how is it that, in the school as well
as in the home, men have given into their hands the power to shape the
destinies of the race?
Would you have your sons trained by a free man or by a slave? Do noble
civic ideals flow from a citizen of a free commonwealth, or from the
subjects of a despot? Only the woman who is a human being, with power and
freedom to choose, may teach the son of a free man. Emancipation has given
to women the power of choice.
The women of America have been partially emancipated. In some states, they
may vote, sue for divorce, collect their own wages, hold property, and
transact business. Everywhere they are filling the high schools and
colleges; participating in industry and entering the professions. American
women are independent beings--distinctive units in a great organic
society.
In so far as the qualities of the Super Man are developed and perfected by
the teachings of women, they will be more effectually rounded by the
emancipated woman than by the serf. The mothers of America are prepared to
teach their sons and daughters because they have been taught to think the
noblest thoughts and do the strongest things.
The abandonment of war removes one of the most destructive forces of the
past, because war has always tended to eliminate the best of every race.
In the flower of their manhood, the noblest died on the field of
battle--their lives uncompleted; their tasks unfinished--leaving, perhaps,
no offspring to bear their qualities in the succeeding generation.
Although the law of nature is the survival of the fittest, "In the red
field of human history the natural process of selection is often
reversed."[21] The best perish in war, leaving the less fit to carry
forward the affairs of state, and to propagate. "The man who is left
holds in his grasp the history of the future,"[22] and if, as is
frequently the case, he is the one least fitted to survive, the race is
constantly breeding from the unfit rather than from the fit. Where the
human harvest is bad, the nation must perish. So long as war persisted, so
long as the best left their bones on the battle field, while the worst
left their descendants to man the state, a bad human harvest was
inevitable. War ate into the heart of national vitality by destroying the
nation's best blood.
War, however, has practically ceased. The movement for peace, in which the
United States, both by precept and practice, is a leader, stands as one of
the signal achievements of the new century. The abandonment of war has
laid a basis for the Super Race by permitting the most fit to live and to
hand on their special qualities to coming generations.
In the United States, as elsewhere in the civilized world, the science of
race making has recently undergone great development. While the movement
began in England, it has spread rapidly, until at the present time its
significance is universally recognized by scientists. The principles of
artificial selection have been applied in the creation of vegetable and
animal prodigies; the knowledge of biologic and selective principles is
wide-spread; and the educated men and women of the United States generally
understand the potency of these forces.
Important steps have already been taken to prevent the propagation of the
unfit. Born criminals are in some states deprived of the power of
reproduction; in most of the states, the marriage of diseased persons is
prohibited; here and there attempts have been made to prohibit the
marriage of any suffering from a transmissible defect. On the other hand,
mentally defective persons are being segregated in institutions--guarded
against the dangers which beset the men and particularly the women of weak
mind. During the past two decades great strides have been made in
educating the American public to a higher standard of health and
efficiency. Though the science of race making, as such, has not been
given a prominent place in public discussion, the principles on which race
making is based have formed an important element in public education. The
desire to make a Super Race in America is as yet in its infancy, but the
ground has been thoroughly prepared, and a foundation laid upon which such
a super-structure of desire for race making can be speedily and
effectively erected.
Meanwhile, the science of Social Adjustment has occupied the most
prominent place in American thought. If the American people have
under-emphasized Eugenics they have over-emphasized Social Adjustment.
From ocean to ocean, the country has been swept, during the past three
decades, by a whirlwind of legislation directed toward the adjustment of
social institutions to human needs. Trusts, factories, food, railroads,
liquor selling and a hundred other subjects have been kept in the
foreground of public attention. The American people might almost plead
guilty to adjustment madness.
From the foundation of the earliest colonies, the basis, in theory at
least, was laid for the development of the individual. The colonists
believed in the worth-whileness of men, they lived in an age of natural
philosophy; they were the products of an effort to secure religious and
political freedom; they therefore emphasized the individual conscience,
and the right of the individual to think and act for himself. Each
individual was a man, to be so regarded, and so honored. Their new life
was a hard one. Nature presented an aspect on the rocky, untilled New
England coast different from that in the civilized countries of the old
world. There was but one way to meet these new conditions--the individual
must carve out his own future.
Throughout the United States, the watchword of the people has been
opportunity. Without opportunity, the people perish--hence opportunity
must stand waiting for each succeeding generation. In the turmoil of
commercial life, in the ebb and flow of the immigrant tide, the reality
has been frequently lost; yet the ideal of opportunity remains as firmly
rooted as ever.
The worth-whileness of men, the social control of the environment, and a
free opportunity for the development of the individual constitute the
basis for social advance in the United States. The ideal is firmly rooted;
the possibility of its realization is an everpresent reality.
With a boundless wealth of natural resources; bulwarked by the stock of
the dominant races; with abundant leisure; granting freedom and
individuality to women; foregoing war; cognizant of the principles of race
making; Social Adjustment and of Education, the American nation is thrown
into the foreground, as the land for the development of the Super Race.
The American people have within their grasp the torch of social progress.
Can they carry it in the van, lighting the dark caverns of the future? Can
they develop a race of men who shall set a standard for the world--men of
physical and mental power, efficient, broadly sympathetic, actuated by the
highest ideals, striving toward a vision of human nobleness?
The answer rests with this and the succeeding generations. Given ten
talents of opportunity, are we as a nation worthy to be made the rulers
over ten cities? Provided with the raw stuff of a Super Race, can we mold
it into "A mightier race than any that has been?" The past worked with
things: the present works with men. "We stand at the verge of a state of
culture, which will be that of the depths, not, as heretofore, of the
surface alone; a stage which will not be merely a culture through mankind,
but a culture of mankind. For the first time the great fashioners of
culture will be able to work in marble instead of, as heretofore, being
forced to work in snow."[23] Bulwarked by this pregnant thought, and
assured by Ruskin that, "There is as yet no ascertained limit to the
noblesse of person and mind which the human creature may attain," we press
forward confidently, advocating and practicing those measures which will
create the energy, mental grasp, efficiency, sympathy and vision of the
Super Man and the Super Race.
Footnotes:
[1] JOHN RUSKIN, _Unto this Last_--Essay II.
[2] WILLIAM B. YEATS, _Poetic Works_, Vol. II, p. 407. Macmillan Co., N. Y.
[3] FREDERICK NIETZSCHE, _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, pp. 5-296. Macmillan
Co., N. Y.
[4] CARL SNYDER, _The World Machine_. New York, Longmans, Green & Co.,
1907.
[5] PRESTONIA MANN MARTIN, _Is Mankind Advancing?_ New York, Baker &
Taylor Co., 1911.
[6] G. BERNARD SHAW, _Man and Super Man_, p. 218-219. N. Y., Brentano's.
[7] HERBERT SPENCER, _The Data of Ethics_. Para. 97. N. Y., D. Appleton &
Co., 1893.
[8] SAML. Z. BATTEN, _The Redemption of the Unfit_, American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 14, p. 242 (1909).
[9] FRANCIS GALTON, _Memoirs of My Life_, p. 311. N. Y., E. P. Dutton,
1909.
[10] ARNOLD WHITE, _Efficiency and Empire_, p. 97. London, Methuen & Co.,
1901.
[11] W. C. & C. D. WHETHAM, _The Family and the Nations_, p. 85. N. Y.,
Longmans, 1909.
[12] GUSTAVE MICHAUD, _Shall We Improve Our Race_, The Popular Science
Monthly, Vol. 72, p. 77 (1908).
[13] J. A. THOMPSON, _Heredity_, p. 331. N. Y., G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908.
[14] GUSTAVE MICHAUD, _Shall We Improve Our Race?_ Popular Science
Monthly, Vol. 72, p. 77 (1908).
[15] J. ARTHUR THOMPSON, _Heredity_, p. 308. N. Y., G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1908.
[16] LESTER F. WARD, _Applied Sociology_, pp. 224-282. Boston, Ginn & Co.,
1906.
[17] For a more complete statement of the problem, see _Social
Adjustment_, SCOTT NEARING, New York: Macmillan Company, 1911.
[18] ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, _Virginibus Puerisque_.
[19] WM. Z. RIPLEY, _Races of Europe_. N. Y., D. Appleton & Co., 1899.
[20] C. E. WOODRUFF, _The Expansion of Races_. N. Y., Rebman, 1909.
[21] D. S. JORDAN, _The Human Harvest_, p. 54. Boston, American Unitarian
Association, 1907.
[22] _Ibid_, p. 48.
[23] ELLEN KEY, _Love and Marriage_, p. 53. N. Y., Putnam, 1911.