didn't waste much time over that. In a few moments he was
enthusiastically telling of the new projects he had formed. "We must not
look back, but forward," he told his friends. "We have followed one
road. It is blocked. Very well, we will follow another."
That's the kind of man Cavour was. You forgot that he was a European
statesman. When you saw him with his coat off, drinking ice-water and
talking about the future, you felt toward him just as you would toward a
first-rate American who was of Presidential size.
Now, I'm not saying that there's any more realism to the square inch in
a Life of Cavour than in a Life of Napoleon III. It would take as much
labor on the part of a biographer to tell what Napoleon III really was
as to tell what Cavour really was--perhaps more. But you come up against
the law of supply and demand. You can't get around that. There isn't
much inquiry for Napoleon, now that his boom is over.
The way Thayer figured it was, I suppose, something like this. It would
take eight or ten years to assemble the materials for a first-rate
biography such as he wished to make. If he chose Napoleon there would be
steady deterioration in the property, and when the improvements were put
on there would be no demand. If he put the same work on Cavour, he would
get the unearned increment. I think he showed his sense.
Of course the biographer has the advantage of you in one important
particular. He knows how his story is coming out In a way, he's betting
on a certainty. Now you, as I judge, don't know how your story is coming
out, and if it doesn't come out, all you have to do is to say that is
the way you meant it to be. You cut off so many square feet of reality,
and let it go at that. Now that is very convenient for you, but from the
reader's point of view, it's unsatisfactory. It mixes him up, and he
feels a grudge against you whenever he thinks how much better he might
have spent his time than in following a plot that came to nothing. You
see you are running up against that same law of supply and demand. There
are so many failures in the world that the market is overstocked with
them. There is a demand for successes.
When I was in an old house which I took on the foreclosure of a mortgage
the other day, I came upon a little old novel, of a hundred years ago.
It was the sentimental kind that you despise. It was called "Alonzo and
Melissa," which was enough to condemn it in your eyes. But the preface
seemed to me to have some sense.
The author says: "It is believed that this story contains no indecorous
stimulants, nor is it filled with inexplicated incidents imperceptible
to the understanding. When anxieties have been excited by involved and
doubtful events, they are afterwards elucidated by their consequences.
In this the writer believes that he has generally copied Nature."
I have a feeling that those inexplicated incidents in your novel might
have been elucidated by their consequences if you had chosen a person
whose actions were of the kind to have some important consequences. In
tying up to an inconsequential person you lost that chance.
I don't mean to discourage you, because I believe you have it in you to
make a novel that would be as interesting as half the biographies that
are written. But you must learn a trick from the successful biographers,
and not invest in second-rate realities. The best is none too good. You
have to exercise judgment in your initial investment.
Now, if I were going to build a realistic novel, and had as much skill
in detail as you have, and as much intellectual capital to invest, I
would go right down to the business centre, so to speak, and invest in a
really valuable piece of reality; and then I would develop it. The first
investment might seem pretty steep, but it would pay in the end. If you
could get a big man, enthusiastic over a big cause, in conflict with big
forces, and bring in a lot of worth-while people to back him up, and
then bring the whole thing to some big conclusion, you would have a
novel that would be as real as the biographies I have been reading, and
as interesting. I think it would be worth trying.
Respectfully yours,
R.S. LANDMANN.
P.S. If you don't feel that you can afford to make such a heavy
investment as I have suggested, why don't you put your material into a
short story?
TO A CITIZEN OF THE OLD SCHOOL
Our talk last night set me to thinking. It was the first time during all
the years of our acquaintance that I had ever heard you speak in a
discouraged tone. You have always been healthy to a fault, and your
good-humor has been contagious. Especially has it been pleasant to hear
you talk about the country and its Manifest Destiny.
I remember, some years ago, how merrily you used to laugh about the
"calamity-howler," whose habitat at that time was Kansas. The farmers of
Kansas were not then as prosperous as they are now. When several bad
years came together they didn't like it, and began to make complaints.
Their raucous cries you found very amusing.
The calamity-howler, being ignorant of the laws of political economy and
of the conditions of progress, did not take his calamities in the spirit
in which they were offered to him by the rest of the country. He did not
find satisfaction in the thought that other people were prosperous
though he was not. Instead of acting reasonably and voting the straight
ticket from motives of party loyalty, he raised all sorts of irrelevant
issues. He treated Prosperity as if it were a local issue, instead of a
plank in the National Platform.
Now, all this was opposed to your good-natured philosophy of progress.
You were eminently practical, and it was a part of your creed never to
"go behind the returns." As to Prosperity, it was "first come, first
served." In this land of opportunity the person who first sees an
opportunity should take it, asking no questions as to why he came by it.
It is his by right of discovery.
You were always a great believer in the good old American doctrine of
Manifest Destiny. This was a big country and destined to grow bigger. To
you bigness was its own excuse for being. Optimism was as natural as
breathing. It was manifest destiny that cities and corporations and
locomotives and armies and navies and national debts and daily
newspapers, with their Sunday supplements, and bank clearances and
tariffs and insurance companies and the price of living should go up. It
was all according to a beautiful natural law, "as fire ascending seeks
the sun." Besides these things, it was manifest destiny that other
things not so good should grow bigger also,--graft and slums and foolish
luxury. They were all involved in the increasing bigness of things.
Sometimes you would grumble about them, but in a good-natured way, as
one who recognized their inevitability. Just as you said, boys will be
boys, so you said, politicians will be politicians, and business is
business. If one is living in a growing country he must not begrudge the
cost of the incidentals.
In your talk there was a cheerful cynicism which amazed the
slower-witted foreigner. You talked of the pickings and stealings of
your elected officers as you would of the pranks of a precocious
youngster. It was all a part of the day's growth. Yet you were really
public-spirited. You would have sprung to arms in a moment if you had
thought that your country was in danger or that its institutions were
being undermined.
Your good-natured tolerance was a part of your philosophy of life. It
was bound up in your triumphant Americanism. You were a hero-worshipper,
and you delighted in "big men." The big men who gained the prizes were
efficient and unscrupulous and unassuming; that is, they never assumed
to be better than their neighbors. They looked ahead, they saw how
things were going, and went with them. And on the whole, things, you
believed, were going well. Though they were not scrupulously just, these
big men were generous, and were willing to give away what they had
acquired. Though grasping, they were not avaricious. They grasped things
with the strong prehensile grasp of the infant, rather than with the
clutch of the miser. They took them because they were there, and not
because they had any well-defined idea as to whether they belonged to
them or not.
These big men were very likable. They were engrossed in big projects,
and they were doing necessary work in the development of the country.
They naturally took the easiest and most direct methods to get at
results. They would not go out of the way to corrupt a legislature any
more than they would go out of the way to find a range of mountains. But
if the mountain stood in the way of the railroad, they would go through
it regardless of expense. If the legislature was in their way, they
would deal with it as best they could. They were willing to pay what it
cost to accomplish a purpose which they believed was good.
Their attitude toward the Public was one which you did not criticize,
for it seemed to you to be reasonable. The Public was an abstraction,
like Nature. We are all under the laws of Nature. But Nature doesn't
mind whether we consciously obey or not. She goes her way, and we go
ours. We get all she will let us have. So with the Public. The Public
was not regarded as a person or as an aggregate of persons, it was the
potentiality of wealth. They never thought of the Public as being
starved or stunted, or even as being seriously inconvenienced because of
what they took from it, any more than they thought of Nature being the
poorer because of the electricity which they induced to run along their
wires. A public franchise was a plum growing on a convenient tree. A
wise man would wait till it was ripe and then, when no one was looking,
would pick it for himself The whole transaction was a trial of wits
between rival pickers. A special privilege, according to this view,
involved no special obligations; it was a reward for special abilities.
Once given, it was property to be enjoyed in perpetuity.
This was the code of ethics which you, in common with multitudes of
American citizens, accepted. You have yourself prospered. Indeed, things
had gone so well with you in this best of all countries that any
fundamental change seemed unthinkable.
But that a change has come seems evident from your conversation last
night. All that fine optimism which your friends have admired seemed to
have deserted you. There was a querulous note which was strangely out of
keeping with your usual disposition. It was what you have been
accustomed to stigmatize as un-American. When you discussed the present
state of the country, you talked--you will pardon me for saying it--for
all the world like a calamity-howler.
The country, you said, is in a bad way, and it must be awakened from its
lethargy. After a period of unexampled prosperity and marvelous
development, something has happened. Just what it is you don't really
know, but it's very alarming. Instead of working together for
Prosperity, the people are listening to demagogues, and trying all sorts
of experiments, half of which you are sure are unconstitutional. The
captains of industry who have made this the biggest country in the world
are thwarted in their plans for further expansion.
There are people who are criticizing the courts, and there are courts
which are criticizing business enterprises that they don't understand.
There are so-called experts--mere college professors--who are tinkering
the tariff. There are over-zealous executives who are currying favor
with the crowd by enforcing laws which are well enough on the statute
books, but which were never meant to go further. As if matters were not
bad enough already, there are demagogues who are stirring up class
feeling by proposing new laws. Party loyalty is being undermined, and
the new generation doesn't half understand the great issues which have
been settled for all time. It is rashly interested in new issues. For
the life of you, you say, you can't understand what these issues are.
New and divisive questions which lead only to faction are propounded so
that the voters are confused. The great principle of Representative
Government, on which the Republic was founded, is being attacked.
Instead of choosing experienced men to direct public policy, there is an
appeal to the passions of the mob. The result of all this agitation is
an unsettlement that paralyzes business. The United States is in danger
of losing the race for commercial supremacy. Germany will forge ahead of
us. Japan will catch us. Socialism and the Yellow Peril will be upon us.
The Man on Horseback will appear, and what shall we do then?
I did not understand whether you looked for these perils to come
together, or whether they were to appear in orderly succession. But I
came to the conclusion that either the country is in a bad way, or you
are. You will pardon me if I choose the latter alternative, for I too am
an optimistic American, and I like to choose the lesser of two evils. If
there is an attack of "hysteria," I should like to think of it as
somewhat localized, rather than having suddenly attacked the whole
country.
Now, my opinion is that the American people were never minding their own
business more good-humoredly and imperturbably than at the present
moment. They have been slowly and silently making up their minds, and
now they are beginning to express a deliberate judgment. What you take
to be the noise of demagogues, I consider to be the sober sense of a
great people which is just finding adequate expression.
You seem to be afraid of an impending revolution, and picture it as a
sort of French Revolution, a destructive overturn of all existing
institutions. But may not the revolution which we are passing through be
something different,--a great American revolution, which is being
carried through in the characteristic American fashion?
Walt Whitman expresses the great characteristic of American history:
"Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars."
It is this mass movement, slow at first, but swift and irresistible when
the mass has come to consciousness of its own tendency, which has always
confounded astute persons who have been interested only in particulars.
It is a movement like that of the Mississippi at flood-time. The great
river flows within its banks as long as it can. But the time comes when
the barriers are too frail to hold back the mighty waters. Then the
river makes, very quickly, a channel for itself. You cannot understand
what has happened till you take into account the magnitude of the river
itself.
Now, the successful man of affairs, who has been intent on the incidents
of the passing day, is often strangely oblivious of the mass movements.
You, for example, are disturbed by the unrest which is manifest, and you
look for some one whom you can blame for the disturbance. But perhaps no
one is to blame.
I think that what is happening may be traced to a sufficient cause. We
are approaching the end of one great era in American history and we are
preparing, as best we may, for a new era. The consciousness of the
magnitude of the change has come to us rather suddenly. One big job
which has absorbed the energies and stimulated the ambition of Americans
for three hundred years is practically finished. Some work still remains
to be done on it, but it no longer demands the highest ability. The end
is in sight.
This work has been the settlement of a vast territory, lying between the
Atlantic and Pacific, with a population of white men. It was a task so
big in itself that it fired the imagination and developed that peculiar
type of character which we call American. In its outlines the task was
so broad and simple that it could be comprehended by the most ordinary
intelligence. It was so inevitable that it impressed upon all those
engaged in it the belief in Manifest Destiny.
What has been treated by incompetent critics as mere boastfulness has
in reality been practical sagacity and foresight. Sam Slick was only
expressing a truth when he said, "The Yankees see further than most
folks." This was not because of any innate cleverness but because of
their advantage in position. Americans have had a more unobstructed view
of the future than had the people of the overcrowded Old World. The
settlers on the shores of the Atlantic had behind them a region which
belonged to them and their children. They soon became aware of the
riches of this hinterland and of its meaning for the future. This vast
region must be settled. Roads must be built over the mountains, the
forests must be felled, mines must be opened up, farms must be brought
under the plow, great cities must be built by the rivers and lakes,
there must be schools and churches and markets established where now the
tribes of Indians roam. The surplus millions of Europe must be
transported to this wilderness.
It was a big task and yet a simple one. The movement was as obvious as
that of Niagara--Niagara is wonderful but inevitable. A great deal of
water flowing over a great deal of rock, that is all there is of it. The
destiny of America was equally obvious from the beginning. Here was a
great deal of land which was destined to be inhabited by a great many
people. It didn't matter very much what kind of people they were so that
they were healthy and industrious. The greatness of the country was
assured if only there were enough of them.
From the very first the future greatness of the land was seen by
open-eyed explorers. They all were able to appreciate it. Captain John
Smith does not compare Virginia with Great Britain; he compares it to
the whole of Europe. After mentioning the natural resources of each
country, he declares that the new land had all these and more, and
needed only men to develop them. And Captain John Smith's forecast has
proved to be correct.
In the first half of the last century, a party of twenty young men from
Cambridge, Massachusetts, started on what at that time was a great
adventure, the overland journey to Oregon. The preface to Wyeth's
"Oregon Expedition" throws light on the ideas of those who were not
statesmen or captains of industry, but only plain American citizens
sharing the vision which was common.
"The spot where our adventurer was born and grew up had many peculiar
and desirable advantages over most others in the County of Middlesex.
Besides rich pasturage, numerous dairies, and profitable orchards, it
possessed the luxuries of well-cultivated gardens of all sorts of
culinary vegetables, and all within three miles of Boston Market House,
and two miles of the largest live-cattle market in New England." Besides
these blessings there is enumerated "a body of water commonly called
Fresh Pond."
"But Mr. Wyeth said, 'All this availeth me nothing, so long as I read
books in which I find that by going only about four thousand miles
overland, from the shore of our Atlantic to the shore of the Pacific,
after we have there entrapped and killed the beavers and otters, we
shall be able, after building vessels for the purpose, to carry our most
valuable peltry to China and Cochin China, our sealskins to Japan, and
our superfluous grain to various Asiatic ports, and lumber to the
Spanish settlements on the Pacific; and to become rich by underworking
and underselling the people of Hindustan; and, to crown all, to extend
far and wide the traffic in oil, by killing tame whales on the spot,
instead of sailing around the stormy region of Cape Horn.'
"All these advantages and more were suggested to divers discontented and
impatient young men. Talk to them of the great labor, toil, risk, and
they would turn a deaf ear to you; argue with them and you might as well
reason with a snowstorm."
If you would understand the driving power of America, you must
understand "the divers discontented and impatient young men" who in each
generation have found in the American wilderness an outlet for their
energies. In the rough contacts with untamed Nature they learned to be
resourceful. Emerson declared that the country went on most
satisfactorily, not when it was in the hands of the respectable Whigs,
but when in the hands of "these rough riders--legislators in
shirt-sleeves--Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverine, Badger--or whatever hard-head
Arkansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, half-orator, half-assassin, to
represent its wrath and cupidity at Washington."
The men who made America had an "excess of virility." "Men of this
surcharge of arterial blood cannot live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies;
cannot read novels and play whist; cannot satisfy all their wants at the
Thursday Lecture and the Boston Athenæum. They pine for adventure and
must go to Pike's Peak; had rather die by the hatchet of the Pawnee than
sit all day and every day at the counting-room desk. They are made for
war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing, and the joy of
eventful living."
In Emerson's day there was ample scope for all these varied energies on
the frontier. "There are Oregons, Californias, and Exploring Expeditions
enough appertaining to America to find them in files to gnaw and
crocodiles to eat."
But it must have occurred to some one to ask, "What will happen when the
Oregons and Californias are filled up?" Well, the answer is, "See what
is happening now." Instead of settling down to herb-tea and elegies,
Young America, having finished one big job, is looking for another. The
noises which disturb you are not the cries of an angry proletariat, but
are the shouts of eager young fellows who are finding new opportunities.
They have the same desire to do big things, the same joy in eventful
living, that you had thirty years ago. Only the tasks that challenge
them have taken a different form.
When you hear the words "Conservation," "Social Service," "Social
Justice," and the like, you are apt to dismiss them as mere fads. You
think of the catchwords of ineffective reformers whom you have known
from your youth. But the fact is that they represent to-day the
enthusiasms of a new generation. They are big things, with big men
behind them. They represent the Oregons and Californias toward which
sturdy pioneers are moving, undeterred by obstacles.
The live questions to-day concern not the material so much as the moral
development of the nation. For it is seen that the future welfare of the
people depends on the creation of a finer type of civic life. Is this
still to be a land of opportunity? Ninety millions of people are already
here. What shall be done with the next ninety millions? That wealth is
to increase goes without saying. But how is it to be distributed? Are we
tending to a Plutocracy, or can a real Democracy hold its own? Powerful
machinery has been invented. How can this machinery be controlled and
used for truly human ends? We have learned the economies that result
from organization. Who is to get the benefit of these economies?
So long as such questions were merely academic, practical persons like
yourself paid little attention to them. Now they are being asked by
persons as practical as yourself who are intent on 'getting results.'
And what is more, they employ the instruments of precision furnished by
modern science.
You have been pleased over the millions of dollars which have been
lavished on education. The fruits of this are now being seen. Hosts of
able young men have been studying Government and Sociology and Economics
and History. These have been the most popular courses in all our
colleges. And they have been studied in a new way. The old formulas and
the old methods have been fearlessly criticized. New standards of
efficiency have been presented. The scientific method has been extended
to the sphere of moral relations. It has been demonstrated to these
young men that the resources of the country may be indefinitely
increased by the continuous application of trained intelligence to
definite ends. The old Malthusian doctrine has given way before applied
science. The population may be doubled and the standard of living
increased at the same time, if we plan intelligently. The expert can
serve the public as efficiently as he has served private interests, if
only the public can be educated to appreciate him, and persuaded to
employ him.