Our two great journalists of the nineteenth century were Greeley and
Godkin. Though differing in very many respects, they were alike in
possessing a definite moral purpose. The most glorious and influential
portion of Greeley's career lay between the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and the election of Lincoln in 1860, when
the press played an important part in the upbuilding of a political
party which formulated in a practical manner the antislavery sentiment
of the country. Foremost among newspapers was the _New York Tribune_;
foremost among editors was Horace Greeley. Of Greeley in his best days
Godkin wrote: "He has an enthusiasm which never flags, and a faith in
principles which nothing can shake, and an English style which, for
vigor, terseness, clearness, and simplicity, has never been surpassed,
except perhaps by Cobbett."[171]
Greeley and Godkin were alike in furnishing their readers with telling
arguments. In northern New York and the Western Reserve of Ohio the
_Weekly Tribune_ was a political Bible. "Why do you look so gloomy?"
said a traveler, riding along the highway in the Western Reserve during
the old antislavery days, to a farmer who was sitting moodily on a
fence. "Because," replied the farmer, "my Democratic friend next door
got the best of me in an argument last night. But when I get my _Weekly
Tribune_ to-morrow I'll knock the foundations all out from under
him."[172]
Premising that Godkin is as closely identified with _The Nation_ and the
_Evening Post_ as Greeley with the _Tribune_, I shall refer to a
personal experience. Passing a part of the winter of 1886 in a hotel at
Thomasville, Georgia, it chanced that among the hundred or more guests
there were eight or ten of us who regularly received _The Nation_ by
post. Ordinarily it arrived on the Friday noon train from Savannah, and
when we came from our mid-day dinner into the hotel office, there, in
our respective boxes, easily seen, and from their peculiar form
recognized by every one, were our copies of _The Nation_. Occasionally
the papers missed connection at Savannah, and our _Nations_ did not
arrive until after supper. It used to be said by certain scoffers that
if a discussion of political questions came up in the afternoon of one
of those days of disappointment, we readers were mum; but in the late
evening, after having digested our political pabulum, we were ready to
join issue with any antagonist. Indeed, each of us might have used the
words of James Russell Lowell, written while he was traveling on the
Continent and visiting many places where _The Nation_ could not be
bought: "All the time I was without it, my mind was chaos and I didn't
feel that I had a safe opinion to swear by."[173]
While the farmer of the Western Reserve and Lowell are extreme types of
clientele, each represents fairly well the peculiar following of Greeley
and of Godkin, which differed as much as did the personal traits of the
two journalists. Godkin speaks of Greeley's "odd attire, shambling gait,
simple, good-natured and hopelessly peaceable face, and long yellow
locks."[174] His "old white hat and white coat," which in New York were
regarded as an affectation, counted with his following west of the
Hudson River as a winning eccentricity. When he came out upon the
lecture platform with crumpled shirt, cravat awry, and wrinkled coat
looking as if he had traveled for a number of nights and days, such
disorder appeared to many of his Western audiences as nothing worse than
the mark of a very busy man, who had paid them the compliment of
leaving his editorial rooms to speak to them in person, and who had
their full sympathy as he thus opened his discourse, "You mustn't, my
friends, expect fine words from a rough busy man like me."[175]
The people who read the _Tribune_ did not expect fine words; they were
used to the coarse, abusive language in which Greeley repelled attacks,
and to his giving the lie with heartiness and vehemence. They enjoyed
reading that "another lie was nailed to the counter," and that an
antagonist "was a liar, knowing himself to be a liar, and lying with
naked intent to deceive."[176]
On the contrary, the dress, the face, and the personal bearing of Godkin
proclaimed at once the gentleman and cultivated man of the world. You
felt that he was a man whom you would like to meet at dinner, accompany
on a long walk, or cross the Atlantic with, were you an acquaintance or
friend.
An incident related by Godkin himself shows that at least one
distinguished gentleman did not enjoy sitting at meat with Greeley.
During the spring of 1864 Godkin met Greeley at breakfast at the house
of Mr. John A. C. Gray. William Cullen Bryant, at that time editor of
the New York _Evening Post_, was one of the guests, and, when Greeley
entered the room, was standing near the fireplace conversing with his
host. On observing that Bryant did not speak to Greeley, Gray asked him
in a whisper, "Don't you know Mr. Greeley?" In a loud whisper Bryant
replied, "No, I don't; he's a blackguard--he's a blackguard."[177]
In the numbers of people whom he influenced, Greeley had the advantage
over Godkin. In February, 1855, the circulation of the _Tribune_ was
172,000, and its own estimate of its readers half a million, which was
certainly not excessive. It is not a consideration beyond bounds to
infer that the readers of the _Tribune_ in 1860 furnished a goodly part
of the 1,866,000 votes which were received by Lincoln.
At different times, while Godkin was editor, _The Nation_ stated its
exact circulation, which, as I remember it, was about 10,000, and it
probably had 50,000 readers. As many of its readers were in the class of
Lowell, its indirect influence was immense. Emerson said that _The
Nation_ had "breadth, variety, self-sustainment, and an admirable style
of thought and expression."--"I owe much to _The Nation_," wrote Francis
Parkman. "I regard it as the most valuable of American journals, and
feel that the best interests of the country are doubly involved in its
success."--"What an influence you have!" said George William Curtis to
Godkin. "What a sanitary element in our affairs _The Nation_ is!"--"To
my generation," wrote William James, "Godkin's was certainly the
towering influence in all thought concerning public affairs, and
indirectly his influence has certainly been more pervasive than that of
any other writer of the generation, for he influenced other writers who
never quoted him, and determined the whole current of
discussion."--"When the work of this century is summed up," wrote
Charles Eliot Norton to Godkin, "what you have done for the good old
cause of civilization, the cause which is always defeated, but always
after defeat taking more advanced position than before--what you have
done for this cause will count for much."--"I am conscious," wrote
President Eliot to Godkin, "that _The Nation_ has had a decided effect
on my opinions and my action for nearly forty years; and I believe it
has had like effect on thousands of educated Americans."[178]
A string of quotations, as is well known, becomes wearisome; but the
importance of the point that I am trying to make will probably justify
one more. "I find myself so thoroughly agreeing with _The Nation_
always," wrote Lowell, "that I am half persuaded that I edit it
myself!"[179] Truly Lowell had a good company: Emerson, Parkman, Curtis,
Norton, James, Eliot,--all teachers in various ways. Through their
lectures, books, and speeches, they influenced college students at an
impressible age; they appealed to young and to middle-aged men; and they
furnished comfort and entertainment for the old. It would have been
difficult to find anywhere in the country an educated man whose thought
was not affected by some one of these seven; and their influence on
editorial writers for newspapers was remarkable. These seven were all
taught by Godkin.
"Every Friday morning when _The Nation_ comes," wrote Lowell to Godkin,
"I fill my pipe, and read it from beginning to end. Do you do it all
yourself? Or are there really so many clever men in the country?"[180]
Lowell's experience, with or without tobacco, was undoubtedly that of
hundreds, perhaps of thousands, of educated men, and the query he raised
was not an uncommon one. At one time, Godkin, I believe, wrote most of
"The Week," which was made up of brief and pungent comments on events,
as well as the principal editorial articles. The power of iteration,
which the journalist possesses, is great, and, when that power is
wielded by a man of keen intelligence and wide information, possessing a
knowledge of the world, a sense of humor, and an effective literary
style, it becomes tremendous. The only escape from Godkin's iteration
was one frequently tried, and that was, to stop _The Nation_.
Although Godkin published three volumes of Essays, the honors he
received during his lifetime were due to his work as editor of _The
Nation_ and the _Evening Post_; and this is his chief title of fame. The
education, early experience, and aspiration of such a journalist are
naturally matter of interest. Born in 1831, in the County of Wicklow in
the southeastern part of Ireland, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he
was able to say when referring to Goldwin Smith, "I am an Irishman, but
I am as English in blood as he is."[181] Receiving his higher education
at Queen's College, Belfast, he took a lively interest in present
politics, his college friends being Liberals. John Stuart Mill was their
prophet, Grote and Bentham their daily companions, and America was their
promised land. "To the scoffs of the Tories that our schemes were
impracticable," he has written of these days, "our answer was that in
America, barring slavery, they were actually at work. There, the chief
of the state and the legislators were freely elected by the people.
There, the offices were open to everybody who had the capacity to fill
them. There was no army or navy, two great curses of humanity in all
ages. There was to be no war except war in self-defense.... In fact, we
did not doubt that in America at last the triumph of humanity over its
own weaknesses and superstitions was being achieved, and the dream of
Christendom was at last being realized."[182]
As a correspondent of the London _Daily News_ he went to the Crimea. The
scenes at Malakoff gave him a disgust for war which thenceforth he never
failed to express upon every opportunity. When a man of sixty-eight,
reckoning its cost in blood and treasure, he deemed the Crimean War
entirely unnecessary and very deplorable.[183] Godkin arrived in America
in November, 1856, and soon afterwards, with Olmsted's "Journey in the
Seaboard Slave States," the "Back Country," and "Texas," as guidebooks,
took a horseback journey through the South. Following closely Olmsted's
trail, and speaking therefore with knowledge, he has paid him one of the
highest compliments one traveler ever paid another. "Olmsted's work," he
wrote, "in vividness of description and in photographic minuteness far
surpasses Arthur Young's."[184] During this journey he wrote letters to
the London _Daily News_, and these were continued after his return to
New York City. For the last three years of our Civil War, he was its
regular correspondent, and, as no one denies that he was a powerful
advocate when his heart was enlisted, he rendered efficient service to
the cause of the North. The _News_ was strongly pro-Northern, and Godkin
furnished the facts which rendered its leaders sound and instructive as
well as sympathetic. All this while he was seeing socially the best
people in New York City, and making useful and desirable acquaintances
in Boston and Cambridge.
The interesting story of the foundation of _The Nation_ has been told a
number of times, and it will suffice for our purpose to say that there
were forty stockholders who contributed a capital of one hundred
thousand dollars, one half of which was raised in Boston, and one
quarter each in Philadelphia and New York. Godkin was the editor, and
next to him the chief promoters were James M. McKim of Philadelphia and
Charles Eliot Norton. The first number of this "weekly journal of
politics, literature, science, and art" appeared on July 6, 1865.
Financial embarrassment and disagreements among the stockholders marked
the first year of its existence, at the end of which Godkin, McKim, and
Frederick Law Olmsted took over the property, and continued the
publication under the proprietorship of E. L. Godkin & Co. "_The Nation_
owed its continued existence to Charles Eliot Norton," wrote Godkin in
1899. "It was his calm and confidence amid the shrieks of combatants ...
which enabled me to do my work even with decency."[185]
Sixteen years after _The Nation_ was started, in 1881, Godkin sold it
out to the _Evening Post_, becoming associate editor of that journal,
with Carl Schurz as his chief. _The Nation_ was thereafter published as
the weekly edition of the _Evening Post_. In 1883 Schurz retired and
Godkin was made editor-in-chief, having the aid and support of one of
the owners, Horace White. On January 1, 1900, on account of ill health,
he withdrew from the editorship of the _Evening Post_,[186] thus
retiring from active journalism.
For thirty-five years he had devoted himself to his work with
extraordinary ability and singleness of purpose. Marked appreciation
came to him: invitations to deliver courses of lectures from both
Harvard and Yale, the degree of A.M. from Harvard, and the degree of
D.C.L. from Oxford. What might have been a turning point in his career
was the offer in 1870 of the professorship of history at Harvard. He was
strongly tempted to accept it, but, before coming to a decision, he took
counsel of a number of friends; and few men, I think, have ever received
such wise and disinterested advice as did Godkin when he was thus
hesitating in what way he should apply his teaching. The burden of the
advice was not to take the professorship, if he had to give up _The
Nation_.
Frederick Law Olmsted wrote to him: "If you can't write fully half of
'The Week' and half the leaders, and control the drift and tone of the
whole while living at Cambridge, give up the professorship, for _The
Nation_ is worth many professorships. It is a question of loyalty over a
question of comfort." Lowell wrote to him in the same strain: "_Stay_ if
the two things are incompatible. We may find another professor by and by
... but we can't find another editor for _The Nation_." From Germany,
John Bigelow sent a characteristic message: "Tell the University to
require each student to take a copy of _The Nation_. Do not profess
history for them in any other way. I dare say your lectures would be
good, but why limit your pupils to hundreds which are now counted by
thousands?"[187]
As is well known, Godkin relinquished the idea of the college connection
and stuck to his job, although the quiet and serenity of a professor's
life in Cambridge contrasted with his own turbulent days appealed to him
powerfully. "Ten years hence," he wrote to Norton, "if things go on as
they are now I shall be the most odious man in America. Not that I shall
not have plenty of friends, but my enemies will be far more numerous and
active." Six years after he had founded _The Nation_, and one year after
he had declined the Harvard professorship, when he was yet but forty
years old, he gave this humorously exaggerated account of his physical
failings due to his nervous strain: "I began _The Nation_ young,
handsome, and fascinating, and am now withered and somewhat broken,
rheumatism gaining on me rapidly, my complexion ruined, as also my
figure, for I am growing stout."[188]
But his choice between the Harvard professorship and _The Nation_ was a
wise one. He was a born writer of paragraphs and editorials. The files
of _The Nation_ are his monument. A crown of his laborious days is the
tribute of James Bryce: "_The Nation_ was the best weekly not only in
America but in the world."[189]
Thirty-five years of journalism, in which Godkin was accustomed to give
hard blows, did not, as he himself foreshadowed, call forth a unanimous
chorus of praise; and the objections of intelligent and high-minded men
are well worth taking into account. The most common one is that his
criticism was always destructive; that he had an eye for the weak side
of causes and men that he did not favor, and these he set forth with
unremitting vigor without regard for palliating circumstances; that he
erected a high and impossible ideal and judged all men by it; hence, if
a public man was right eight times out of ten, he would seize upon the
two failures and so parade them with his withering sarcasm that the
reader could get no other idea than that the man was either weak or
wicked. An editor of very positive opinions, he was apt to convey the
idea that if any one differed from him on a vital question, like the
tariff or finance or civil service reform, he was necessarily a bad man.
He made no allowances for the weaknesses of human nature, and had no
idea that he himself ever could be mistaken. Though a powerful critic,
he did not realize the highest criticism, which discerns and brings out
the good as well as the evil. He won his reputation by dealing out
censure, which has a rare attraction for a certain class of minds, as
Tacitus observed in his "History." "People," he wrote, "lend a ready ear
to detraction and spite," for "malignity wears the imposing appearance
of independence."[190]
The influence of _The Nation_, therefore,--so these objectors to Godkin
aver,--was especially unfortunate on the intelligent youth of the
country. It was in 1870 that John Bigelow, whom I have just quoted,
advised Harvard University to include _The Nation_ among its
requirements; and it is true that at that time, and for a good while
afterwards, _The Nation_ was favorite reading for serious Harvard
students. The same practice undoubtedly prevailed at most other
colleges. Now I have been told that the effect of reading _The Nation_
was to prevent these young men from understanding their own country;
that, as Godkin himself did not comprehend America, he was an unsound
teacher and made his youthful readers see her through a false medium.
And I am further informed that in mature life it cost an effort, a
mental wrench, so to speak, to get rid of this influence and see things
as they really were, which was necessary for usefulness in lives cast in
America. The United States was our country; she was entitled to our love
and service; and yet such a frame of mind was impossible, so this
objection runs, if we read and believed the writing of _The Nation_. A
man of character and ability, who had filled a number of public offices
with credit, told me that the influence of _The Nation_ had been potent
in keeping college graduates out of public life; that things in the
United States were painted so black both relatively and absolutely that
the young men naturally reasoned, "Why shall we concern ourselves about
a country which is surely going to destruction?" Far better, they may
have said, to pattern after Plato's philosopher who kept out of
politics, being "like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the
storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along."[191]
Such considerations undoubtedly lost _The Nation_ valuable subscribers.
I have been struck with three circumstances in juxtaposition. At the
time of Judge Hoar's forced resignation from Grant's Cabinet in 1870,
_The Nation_ said, "In peace as in war 'that is best blood which hath
most iron in't;' and much is to be excused to the man [that is, Judge
Hoar] who has for the first time in many years of Washington history
given a back-handed blow to many an impudent and arrogant dispenser of
patronage. He may well be proud of most of the enmity that he won while
in office, and may go back contented to Massachusetts to be her most
honored citizen."[192] Two months later Lowell wrote to Godkin, "The
bound volumes of _The Nation_ standing on Judge Hoar's library table, as
I saw them the other day, were a sign of the estimation in which it is
held by solid people and it is they who in the long run decide the
fortunes of such a journal."[193] But _The Nation_ lost Judge Hoar's
support. When I called upon him in 1893 he was no longer taking or
reading it.
It is the sum of individual experiences that makes up the influence of a
journal like _The Nation_, and one may therefore be pardoned the egotism
necessarily arising from a relation of one's own contact with it. In
1866, while a student at the University of Chicago, I remember well
that, in a desultory talk in the English Literature class, Professor
William Matthews spoke of _The Nation_ and advised the students to read
it each week as a political education of high value. This was the first
knowledge I had of it, but I was at that time, along with many other
young men, devoted to the _Round Table_, an "Independent weekly review
of Politics, Finance, Literature, Society, and Art," which flourished
between the years 1864 and 1868. We asked the professor, "Do you
consider _The Nation_ superior to the _Round Table_?"--"Decidedly," was
his reply. "The editors of the _Round Table_ seem to write for the sake
of writing, while the men who are expressing themselves in _The Nation_
do so because their hearts and minds are full of their matter." This was
a just estimate of the difference between the two journals. The _Round
Table_, modeled after the _Saturday Review_, was a feeble imitation of
the London weekly, then in its palmy days, while _The Nation_, which was
patterned after the _Spectator_, did not suffer by the side of its
model. On this hint from Professor Matthews, I began taking and reading
_The Nation_, and with the exception of one year in Europe during my
student days, I have read it ever since.
Before I touch on certain specifications I must premise that the
influence of this journal on a Westerner, who read it in a receptive
spirit, was probably more potent than on one living in the East. The
arrogance of a higher civilization in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
than elsewhere in the United States, the term "wild and woolly West,"
applied to the region west of the Alleghany Mountains, is somewhat
irritating to a Westerner. Yet it remains none the less true that, other
things being equal, a man living in the environment of Boston or New
York would have arrived more easily and more quickly at certain sound
political views I shall proceed to specify than he would while living in
Cleveland or Chicago. The gospel which Godkin preached was needed much
more in the West than in the East; and his disciples in the western
country had for him a high degree of reverence. In the biography of
Godkin, allusion is made to the small pecuniary return for his work, but
in thinking of him we never considered the money question. We supposed
that he made a living; we knew from his articles that he was a
gentleman, and saw much of good society, and there was not one of us who
would not rather have been in his shoes than in those of the richest man
in New York. We placed such trust in him--which his life shows to have
been abundantly justified--that we should have lost all confidence in
human nature had he ever been tempted by place or profit. And his
influence was abiding. Presidents, statesmen, senators, congressmen rose
and fell; political administrations changed; good, bad, and weak public
men passed away; but Godkin preached to us every week a timely and
cogent sermon.
To return now to my personal experience. I owe wholly to _The Nation_ my
conviction in favor of civil service reform; in fact, it was from these
columns that I first came to understand the question. The arguments
advanced were sane and strong, and especially intelligible to men in
business, who, in the main, chose their employees on the ground of
fitness, and who made it a rule to retain and advance competent and
honest men in their employ. I think that on this subject the indirect
influence of _The Nation_ was very great, in furnishing arguments to men
like myself, who never lost an opportunity to restate them, and to
editorial writers for the Western newspapers, who generally read _The
Nation_ and who were apt to reproduce its line of reasoning. When I look
back to 1869, the year in which I became a voter, and recall the
strenuous opposition to civil service reform on the part of the
politicians of both parties, and the indifference of the public, I
confess that I am amazed at the progress which has been made. Such a
reform is of course effected only by a number of contributing causes and
some favoring circumstances, but I feel certain that it was accelerated
by the constant and vigorous support of _The Nation_.
I owe to _The Nation_ more than to any other agency my correct ideas on
finance in two crises. The first was the "greenback craze" from 1869 to
1875. It was easy to be a hard-money man in Boston or New York, where
one might imbibe the correct doctrine as one everywhere takes in the
fundamental principles of civilization and morality. But it was not so
in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where the severe money stringency
before and during the panic of 1873, and the depression after it, caused
many good and representative men to join in the cry for a larger issue
of greenbacks by the government. It required no moral courage for the
average citizen to resist what in 1875 seemed to be the popular move,
but it did require the correct knowledge and the forcible arguments put
forward weekly by _The Nation_. I do not forget my indebtedness to John
Sherman, Carl Schurz, and Senator Thurman, but Sherman and Thurman were
not always consistent on this question, and Schurz's voice was only
occasionally heard; but every seven days came _The Nation_ with its
unremitting iteration, and it was an iteration varied enough to be
always interesting and worthy of study. As one looks back over nearly
forty years of politics one likes to recall the occasions when one has
done the thing one's mature judgment fully approves; and I like to think
that in 1875 I refused to vote for my party's candidate for governor,
the Democratic William Allen, whose platform was "that the volume of
currency be made and kept equal to the wants of trade."
A severer ordeal was the silver question of 1878, because the argument
for silver was more weighty than that for irredeemable paper, and was
believed to be sound by business men of both parties. I remember that
many representative business men of Cleveland used to assemble around
the large luncheon table of the Union Club and discuss the pending
silver-coinage bill, which received the votes of both of the senators
from Ohio and of all her representatives except Garfield. The gold men
were in a minority also at the luncheon table, but, fortified by _The
Nation_, we thought that we held our own in this daily discussion.
In my conversion from a belief in a protective tariff to the advocacy
of one for revenue only, I recognize an obligation to Godkin, but his
was only one of many influences. I owe _The Nation_ much for its
accurate knowledge of foreign affairs, especially of English politics,
in which its readers were enlightened by one of the most capable of
living men, Albert V. Dicey. I am indebted to it for sound ideas on
municipal government, and for its advocacy of many minor measures, such
for instance as the International Copyright Bill. I owe it something for
its later attitude on Reconstruction, and its condemnation of the negro
carpet-bag governments in the South. In a word, _The Nation_ was on the
side of civilization and good political morals.
Confessing thus my great political indebtedness to Godkin, it is with
some reluctance that I present a certain phase of his thought which was
regretted by many of his best friends, and which undoubtedly limited his
influence in the later years of his life. A knowledge of this
shortcoming is, however, essential to a thorough comprehension of the
man. It is frequently said that Godkin rarely, if ever, made a
retraction or a rectification of personal charges shown to be incorrect.
A thorough search of _The Nation's_ columns would be necessary fully to
substantiate this statement, but my own impression, covering as it does
thirty-three years' reading of the paper under Godkin's control,
inclines me to believe in its truth, as I do not remember an instance of
the kind.
A grave fault of omission occurs to me as showing a regrettable bias in
a leader of intelligent opinion. On January 5, 1897, General Francis A.
Walker died. He had served with credit as an officer during our Civil
War, and in two thoughtful books had made a valuable contribution to its
military history. He was superintendent of the United States Census of
1870, and did work that statisticians and historians refer to with
gratitude and praise. For sixteen years he served with honor the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its president. He was a
celebrated political economist, his books being (I think) as well known
in England as in this country. Yale, Amherst, Harvard, Columbia, St.
Andrews, and Dublin conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. Withal he
served his city with public spirit. Trinity Church, "crowded and silent"
in celebrating its last service over the dead body of Walker, witnessed
one of the three most impressive funerals which Boston has seen for at
least sixteen years--a funeral conspicuous for the attendance of a large
number of delegates from colleges and learned societies.
Walker was distinctly of the intellectual elite of the country. But _The
Nation_ made not the slightest reference to his death. In the issue of
January 7, appearing two days later, I looked for an allusion in "The
Week," and subsequently for one of those remarkable and discriminating
eulogies, which in smaller type follow the editorials, and for which
_The Nation_ is justly celebrated; but there was not one word. You might
search the 1897 volume of _The Nation_ and, but for a brief reference in
the April "Notes" to Walker's annual report posthumously published, you
would not learn that a great intellectual leader had passed away. I
wrote to a valued contributor of _The Nation_, a friend of Walker, of
Godkin, and of Wendell P. Garrison (the literary editor), inquiring if
he knew the reason for the omission, and in answer he could only tell me
that his amazement had been as great as mine. He at first looked
eagerly, and, when the last number came in which a eulogy could possibly
appear, he turned over the pages of _The Nation_ with sorrowful regret,
hardly believing his eyes that the article he sought was not there.
Now I suspect that the reason of this extraordinary omission was due to
the irreconcilable opinions of Walker and Godkin on a question of
finance. It was a period when the contest between the advocates of a
single gold standard and the bimetallists raged fiercely, and the
contest had not been fully settled by the election of McKinley in 1896.
Godkin was emphatically for gold, Walker equally emphatic for a double
standard. And they clashed. It is a notable example of the peculiarity
of Godkin, to allow at the portal of death the one point of political
policy on which he and Walker disagreed to overweigh the nine points in
which they were at one.
Most readers of _The Nation_ noticed distinctly that, from 1895 on, its
tone became more pessimistic and its criticism was marked by greater
acerbity. Mr. Rollo Ogden in his biography shows that Godkin's feeling
of disappointment over the progress of the democratic experiment in
America, and his hopelessness of our future, began at an earlier date.
During his first years in the United States, he had no desire to return
to his mother country. When the financial fortune of _The Nation_ was
doubtful, he wrote to Norton that he should not go back to England
except as a "last extremity. It would be going back into an atmosphere
that I detest, and a social system that I have hated since I was
fourteen years old."[194] In 1889, after an absence of twenty-seven
years, he went to England. The best intellectual society of London and
Oxford opened its doors to him and he fell under its charm as would any
American who was the recipient of marked attentions from people of such
distinction. He began to draw contrasts which were not favorable to his
adopted country. "I took a walk along the wonderful Thames embankment,"
he wrote, "a splendid work, and I sighed to think how impossible it
would be to get such a thing done in New York. The differences in
government and political manners are in fact awful, and for me very
depressing. Henry James [with whom he stopped in London] and I talk over
them sometimes 'des larmes dans la voix.'" In 1894, however, Godkin
wrote in the _Forum_: "There is probably no government in the world
to-day as stable as that of the United States. The chief advantage of
democratic government is, in a country like this, the enormous force it
can command in an emergency."[195] But next year his pessimism is
clearly apparent. On January 12, 1895, he wrote to Norton: "You see I am
not sanguine about the future of democracy. I think we shall have a long
period of decline like that which followed (?) the fall of the Roman
Empire, and then a recrudescence under some other form of society."[196]
A number of things had combined to affect him profoundly. An admirer of
Grover Cleveland and three times a warm supporter of his candidacy for
the Presidency, he saw with regret the loss of his hold on his party,
which was drifting into the hands of the advocates of free silver. Then
in December, 1895, Godkin lost faith in his idol. "I was thunderstruck
by Cleveland's message" on the Venezuela question, he wrote to Norton.
His submission to the Jingoes "is a terrible shock."[197] Later, in a
calm review of passing events, he called the message a "sudden
declaration of war without notice against Great Britain."[198] The
danger of such a proceeding he had pointed out to Norton: Our "immense
democracy, mostly ignorant ... is constantly on the brink of some
frightful catastrophe like that which overtook France in 1870."[199] In
1896 he was deeply distressed at the country having to choose for
President between the arch-protectionist McKinley and the free-silver
advocate Bryan, for he had spent a good part of his life combating a
protective tariff and advocating sound money. Though the _Evening Post_
contributed powerfully to the election of McKinley, from the fact that
its catechism, teaching financial truths in a popular form, was
distributed throughout the West in immense quantities by the chairman of
the Republican National Committee, Godkin himself refused to vote for
McKinley and put in his ballot for Palmer, the gold Democrat.[200]
The Spanish-American war seems to have destroyed any lingering hope that
he had left for the future of American democracy. He spoke of it as "a
perfectly avoidable war forced on by a band of unscrupulous politicians"
who had behind them "a roaring mob."[201] The taking of the Philippines
and the subsequent war in these islands confirmed him in his despair. In
a private letter written from Paris, he said, "American ideals were the
intellectual food of my youth, and to see America converted into a
senseless, Old-World conqueror, embitters my age."[202] To another he
wrote that his former "high and fond ideals about America were now all
shattered."[203] "Sometimes he seemed to feel," said his intimate
friend, James Bryce, "as though he had labored in vain for forty
years."[204]
Such regrets expressed by an honest and sincere man with a high ideal
must command our respectful attention. Though due in part to old age and
enfeebled health, they are still more attributable to his
disappointment that the country had not developed in the way that he
had marked out for her. For with men of Godkin's positive convictions,
there is only one way to salvation. Sometimes such men are true
prophets; at other times, while they see clearly certain aspects of a
case, their narrowness of vision prevents them from taking in the whole
range of possibilities, especially when the enthusiasm of manhood is
gone.
Godkin took a broader view in 1868, which he forcibly expressed in a
letter to the London _Daily News_. "There is no careful and intelligent
observer," he wrote, "whether he be a friend to democracy or not, who
can help admiring the unbroken power with which the popular common
sense--that shrewdness, or intelligence, or instinct of
self-preservation, I care not what you call it, which so often makes the
American farmer a far better politician than nine tenths of the best
read European political philosophers--works under all this tumult and
confusion of tongues. The newspapers and politicians fret and fume and
shout and denounce; but the great mass, the nineteen or twenty millions,
work away in the fields and workshops, saying little, thinking much,
hardy, earnest, self-reliant, very tolerant, very indulgent, very
shrewd, but ready whenever the government needs it, with musket, or
purse, or vote, as the case may be, laughing and cheering occasionally
at public meetings, but when you meet them individually on the highroad
or in their own houses, very cool, then, sensible men, filled with no
delusions, carried away by no frenzies, believing firmly in the future
greatness and glory of the republic, but holding to no other article of
faith as essential to political salvation."
Before continuing the quotation I wish to call attention to the fact
that Godkin's illustration was more effective in 1868 than now: then
there was a solemn and vital meaning to the prayers offered up for
persons going to sea that they might be preserved from the dangers of
the deep. "Every now and then," he went on to say, "as one watches the
political storms in the United States, one is reminded of one's feelings
as one lies in bed on a stormy night in an ocean steamer in a head wind.
Each blow of the sea shakes the ship from stem to stern, and every now
and then a tremendous one seems to paralyze her. The machinery seems to
stop work; there is a dead pause, and you think for a moment the end has
come; but the throbbing begins once more, and if you go up on deck and
look down in the hold, you see the firemen and engineers at their posts,
apparently unconscious of anything but their work, and as sure of
getting into port as if there was not a ripple on the water."
This letter of Godkin's was written on January 8, 1868, when Congress
was engaged in the reconstruction of the South on the basis of negro
suffrage, when the quarrel between Congress and President Johnson was
acute and his impeachment not two months off. At about this time Godkin
set down Evarts's opinion that "we are witnessing the decline of public
morality which usually presages revolution," and reported that Howells
was talking "despondently like everybody else about the condition of
morals and manners."[205] Of like tenor was the opinion of an
arch-conservative, George Ticknor, written in 1869, which bears a
resemblance to the lamentation of Godkin's later years. "The civil war
of '61," wrote Ticknor, "has made a great gulf between what happened
before it in our century and what has happened since, or what is likely
to happen hereafter. It does not seem to me as if I were living in the
country in which I was born, or in which I received whatever I ever got
of political education or principles. Webster seems to have been the
last of the Romans."[206]
In 1868 Godkin was an optimist, having a cogent answer to all gloomy
predictions; from 1895 to 1902 he was a pessimist; yet reasons just as
strong may be adduced for considering the future of the country secure
in the later as were urged in the earlier period. But as Godkin grew
older, he became a moral censor, and it is characteristic of censors to
exaggerate both the evil of the present and the good of the past. Thus
in 1899 he wrote of the years 1857-1860: "The air was full of the real
Americanism. The American gospel was on people's lips and was growing
with fervor. Force was worshiped, but it was moral force: it was the
force of reason, of humanity, of human equality, of a good example. The
abolitionist gospel seemed to be permeating the views of the American
people, and overturning and destroying the last remaining traditions of
the old-world public morality. It was really what might be called the
golden age of America."[207] These were the days of slavery. James
Buchanan was President. The internal policy of the party in power was
expressed in the Dred Scott decision and the attempt to force slavery on
Kansas; the foreign policy, in the Ostend Manifesto, which declared that
if Spain would not sell Cuba, the United States would take it by force.
The rule in the civil service was, "to the victors belong the spoils."
And New York City, where Godkin resided, had for its mayor Fernando
Wood.
In this somewhat rambling paper I have subjected Godkin to a severe test
by a contrast of his public and private utterances covering many years,
not however with the intention of accusing him of inconsistency. Ferrero
writes that historians of our day find it easy to expose the
contradictions of Cicero, but they forget that probably as much could
be said of his contemporaries, if we possessed also their private
correspondence. Similarly, it is a pertinent question how many
journalists and how many public men would stand as well as Godkin in
this matter of consistency if we possessed the same abundant records of
their activity?
The more careful the study of Godkin's utterances, the less will be the
irritation felt by men who love and believe in their country. It is
evident that he was a born critic, and his private correspondence is
full of expressions showing that if he had been conducting a journal in
England, his criticism of certain phases of English policy would have
been as severe as those which he indulged in weekly at the expense of
this country. "How Ireland sits heavy on your soul!" he wrote to James
Bryce. "Salisbury was an utterly discredited Foreign Secretary when you
brought up Home Rule. Now he is one of the wisest of men. Balfour and
Chamberlain have all been lifted into eminence by opposition to Home
Rule simply." To Professor Norton: "Chamberlain is a capital specimen of
the rise of an unscrupulous politician." Again: "The fall of England
into the hands of a creature like Chamberlain recalls the capture of
Rome by Alaric." To another friend: "I do not like to talk about the
Boer War, it is too painful.... When I do speak of the war my language
becomes unfit for publication." On seeing the Queen and the Prince of
Wales driving through the gardens at Windsor, his comment was "Fat,
useless royalty;" and in 1897 he wrote from England to Arthur Sedgwick,
"There are many things here which reconcile me to America."[208]
In truth, much of his criticism of America is only an elaboration of his
criticism of democracy. In common with many Europeans born at about the
same time, who began their political life as radicals, he shows his keen
disappointment that democracy has not regenerated mankind. "There is not
a country in the world, living under parliamentary government," he
wrote, "which has not begun to complain of the decline in the quality of
its legislators. More and more, it is said, the work of government is
falling into the hands of men to whom even small pay is important, and
who are suspected of adding to their income by corruption. The
withdrawal of the more intelligent class from legislative duties is more
and more lamented, and the complaint is somewhat justified by the mass
of crude, hasty, incoherent, and unnecessary laws which are poured on
the world at every session."[209]
I have thus far spoken only of the political influence of _The Nation_,
but its literary department was equally important. Associated with
Godkin from the beginning was Wendell P. Garrison, who became literary
editor of the journal, and, who, Godkin wrote in 1871, "has really
toiled for six years with the fidelity of a Christian martyr and upon
the pay of an oysterman."[210] I have often heard the literary criticism
of _The Nation_ called destructive like the political, but, it appears
to me, with less reason. Books for review were sent to experts in
different parts of the country, and the list of contributors included
many professors from various colleges. While the editor, I believe,
retained, and sometimes exercised, the right to omit parts of the review
and make some additions, yet writers drawn from so many sources must
have preserved their own individuality. I have heard it said that _The
Nation_ gave you the impression of having been entirely written by one
man; but whatever there is more than fanciful in that impression must
have arisen from the general agreement between the editor and the
contributors. Paul Leicester Ford once told me that, when he wrote a
criticism for _The Nation_, he unconsciously took on _The Nation's_
style, but he could write in that way for no other journal, nor did he
ever fall into it in his books. Garrison was much more tolerant than is
sometimes supposed. I know of his sending many books to two men, one of
whom differed from him radically on the negro question and the other on
socialism.
It is only after hearing much detraction of the literary department of
_The Nation_, and after considerable reflection, that I have arrived at
the conviction that it came somewhat near to realizing criticism as
defined by Matthew Arnold, thus: "A disinterested endeavor to learn and
propagate the best that is known and thought in the world."[211] I am
well aware that it was not always equal, and I remember two harsh
reviews which ought not to have been printed; but this simply proves
that the editor was human and _The Nation_ was not perfect. I feel safe,
however, in saying that if the best critical reviews of _The Nation_
were collected and printed in book form, they would show an aspiration
after the standard erected by Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold.
Again I must appeal to my individual experience. The man who lived in
the middle West for the twenty-five years between 1865 and 1890 needed
the literary department of _The Nation_ more than one who lived in
Boston or New York. Most of the books written in America were by New
England, New York, and Philadelphia authors, and in those communities
literary criticism was evolved by social contact in clubs and other
gatherings. We had nothing of the sort in Cleveland, where a writer of
books walking down Euclid Avenue would have been stared at as a
somewhat remarkable personage. The literary columns of _The Nation_ were
therefore our most important link between our practical life and the
literary world. I used to copy into my _Index Rerum_ long extracts from
important reviews, in which the writers appeared to have a thorough
grasp of their subjects; and these I read and re-read as I would a
significant passage in a favorite book. In the days when many of us were
profoundly influenced by Herbert Spencer's "Sociology," I was somewhat
astonished to read one week in _The Nation_, in a review of Pollock's
"Introduction to the Science of Politics," these words: "Herbert
Spencer's contributions to political and historical science seem to us
mere commonplaces, sometimes false, sometimes true, but in both cases
trying to disguise their essential flatness and commonness in a garb of
dogmatic formalism."[212] Such an opinion, evidencing a conflict between
two intellectual guides, staggered me, and it was with some curiosity
that I looked subsequently, when the _Index to Periodicals_ came out, to
see who had the temerity thus to belittle Spencer--the greatest
political philosopher, so some of his disciples thought, since
Aristotle. I ascertained that the writer of the review was James Bryce,
and whatever else might be thought, it could not be denied that the
controversy was one between giants. I can, I think, date the beginning
of my emancipation from Spencer from that review in 1891.
In the same year I read a discriminating eulogy of George Bancroft,
ending with an intelligent criticism of his history, which produced on
me a marked impression. The reviewer wrote: Bancroft falls into "that
error so common with the graphic school of historians--the exaggerated
estimate of manuscripts or fragmentary material at the expense of what
is printed and permanent.... But a fault far more serious than this is
one which Mr. Bancroft shared with his historical contemporaries, but in
which he far exceeded any of them--an utter ignoring of the very meaning
and significance of a quotation mark."[213] Sound and scientific
doctrine is this; and the whole article exhibited a thorough knowledge
of our colonial and revolutionary history which inspired confidence in
the conclusions of the writer, who, I later ascertained, was Thomas
Wentworth Higginson.
These two examples could be multiplied at length. There were many
reviewers from Harvard and Yale; and undoubtedly other Eastern colleges
were well represented. The University of Wisconsin furnished at least
one contributor, as probably did the University of Michigan and other
Western colleges. Men in Washington, New York, and Boston, not in
academic life, were drawn upon; a soldier of the Civil War, living in
Cincinnati, a man of affairs, sent many reviews. James Bryce was an
occasional contributor, and at least three notable reviews came from the
pen of Albert V. Dicey. In 1885, Godkin, in speaking of _The Nation's_
department of Literature and Art, wrote that "the list of those who have
contributed to the columns of the paper from the first issue to the
present day contains a large number of the most eminent names in
American literature, science, art, philosophy, and law."[214] With men
so gifted, and chosen from all parts of the country, uniformly
destructive criticism could not have prevailed. Among them were
optimists as well as pessimists, and men as independent in thought as
was Godkin himself.
Believing that Godkin's thirty-five years of critical work was of great
benefit to this country, I have sometimes asked myself whether the fact
of his being a foreigner has made it more irritating to many good
people, who term his criticism "fault-finding" or "scolding." Although
he married in America and his home life was centered here, he confessed
that in many essential things it was a foreign country.[215] Some
readers who admired _The Nation_ told Mr. Bryce that they did not want
"to be taught by a European how to run this republic." But Bryce, who in
this matter is the most competent of judges, intimates that Godkin's
foreign education, giving him detachment and perspective, was a distinct
advantage. If it will help any one to a better appreciation of the man,
let Godkin be regarded as "a chiel amang us takin' notes"; as an
observer not so philosophic as Tocqueville, not so genial and
sympathetic as Bryce. Yet, whether we look upon him as an Irishman, an
Englishman, or an American, let us rejoice that he cast his lot with us,
and that we have had the benefit of his illuminating pen. He was not
always right; he was sometimes unjust; he often told the truth with
"needless asperity,"[216] as Parkman put it; but his merits so
outweighed his defects that he had a marked influence on opinion, and
probably on history, during his thirty-five years of journalistic work,
when, according to James Bryce, he showed a courage such as is rare
everywhere.[217] General J. D. Cox, who had not missed a number of _The
Nation_ from 1865 to 1899, wrote to Godkin, on hearing of his
prospective retirement from the _Evening Post_, "I really believe that
earnest men, all over the land, whether they agree with you or differ,
will unite in the exclamation which Lincoln made as to Grant, 'We can't
spare this man--he _fights_.'"[218]
Our country, wrapped up in no smug complacency, listened to this man,
respected him and supported him, and on his death a number of people
were glad to unite to endow a lectureship in his honor in Harvard
University.
In closing, I cannot do better than quote what may be called Godkin's
farewell words, printed forty days before the attack of cerebral
hemorrhage which ended his active career. "The election of the chief
officer of the state by universal suffrage," he wrote, "by a nation
approaching one hundred millions, is not simply a novelty in the history
of man's efforts to govern himself, but an experiment of which no one
can foresee the result. The mass is yearly becoming more and more
difficult to move. The old arts of persuasion are already ceasing to be
employed on it. Presidential elections are less and less carried by
speeches and articles. The American people is a less instructed people
than it used to be. The necessity for drilling, organizing, and guiding
it, in order to extract the vote from it is becoming plain; and out of
this necessity has arisen the boss system, which is now found in
existence everywhere, is growing more powerful, and has thus far
resisted all attempts to overthrow it."
I shall not stop to urge a qualification of some of these statements,
but will proceed to the brighter side of our case, which Godkin, even in
his pessimistic mood, could not fail to see distinctly. "On the other
hand," he continued, "I think the progress made by the colleges
throughout the country, big and little, both in the quality of the
instruction and in the amount of money devoted to books, laboratories,
and educational facilities of all kinds, is something unparalleled in
the history of the civilized world. And the progress of the nation in
all the arts, except that of government, in science, in literature, in
commerce, in invention, is something unprecedented and becomes daily
more astonishing. How it is that this splendid progress does not drag
on politics with it I do not profess to know."[219]
Let us be as hopeful as was Godkin in his earlier days, and rest assured
that intellectual training will eventually exert its power in politics,
as it has done in business and in other domains of active life.
[171] R. Ogden's Life and Letters of E. L. Godkin, I, 255.
[172] Rhodes's History of the United States, II, 72 (C. M. Depew).
[173] Ogden, II, 88.
[174] _Ibid._, I, 257.
[175] Parton's Greeley, 331, 576; my own recollections; Ogden, I, 255.
[176] Godkin, Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
[177] Ogden, I, 168.
[178] Ogden, I, 221, 249, 251, 252; II, 222, 231.
[179] Letters of J. R. Lowell, II, 76.
[180] _Ibid._, I, 368.
[181] Ogden, I, 1.
[182] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899; Ogden, I, 11.
[183] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
[184] _Ibid._; Ogden, I, 113.
[185] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899; Ogden, I, _passim_;
_The Nation_, June 25, 1885, May 23, 1902.
[186] Ogden, II, Chap. XVII.
[187] Ogden, II, Chap. XI.
[188] _Ibid._, II, 51.
[189] Studies in Contemporary Biography, 372.
[190] Tacitus, History, I, 1.
[191] Republic.
[192] June 23, Rhodes, VI, 382.
[193] Ogden, II, 66.
[194] Ogden, II, 140.
[195] Problems of Modern Democracy, 209.
[196] Ogden, II, 199.
[197] _Ibid._, II, 202.
[198] Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
[199] Ogden, II, 202.
[200] _Ibid._, II, 214.
[201] _Ibid._, II, 238.
[202] _Ibid._, II, 219.
[203] _Ibid._, II, 237.
[204] Biographical Studies, 378.
[205] Ogden, I, 301, 307.
[206] Life and Letters, II, 485.
[207] Random Recollections, _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.
[208] Ogden, II, 30, 136, 213, 214, 247, 253.
[209] Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, 117.
[210] Ogden, II, 51.
[211] Essays, 38.
[212] Vol. 52, p. 267.
[213] Vol. 52, p. 66.
[214] June 25, 1885.
[215] Ogden, II, 116.
[216] _Ibid._, I, 252.
[217] Biographical Studies, 370.
[218] Ogden, II, 229.
[219] _Evening Post_, December 30, 1899.