Americans, an impression

Front matter

AN IMPRESSION

BY

ALEXANDER FRANCIS

Preface

THE earlier chapters of this book were written in America, the later ones in England ; and all were revised by me in Russia, where I was able to regard the two Englishspeaking nations with greater detachment than was, perhaps, possible either in the country which is my own or in the country which is my theme, and to compare Democracy, as it is exemplified in England and America, with Autocracy, which finds its most notable modern instance in the Empire of the Tsar.

I have higher appreciation of Russians and Russian institutions than most observers of them seem to entertain — possibly, because they know them less ; yet, my sense of the value to a people of a democratic government has been deepened by my visit to America and my return from Russia to England. The criticism of American, and inferentially of English, institutions which the following chapters viii PREFACE

contain implies, therefore, not depreciation of democracy, but appreciation of the need of a purer form and wider application of it than even the most democratic governments display.

In America, as has seemed to me, there is a drift from democracy to an elective despotism ; and that I regard as an ominous sign. The election of Mr. Taft to succeed Mr. Roosevelt as President may, however, unless the opinion that I have formed of him is wide of the mark, be taken as a guarantee that the cure of the evils of the democracy will be sought in more, not less, Democracy. Incidentally, I may say that what I have written upon Socialism in America, I had written before the Presidential election had taken place ; but the relative strength of political parties discovered by the polls, does not make necessary any modification of the views which I had ventured to express.

I regret that, being removed from my library and my notes, I am unable to give more than the titles of the books to which I refer in the text.

The several chapters of this book first ap peared, as a series of special articles, in the London Times ; and I have pleasure in making grateful acknowledgment of the courtesy of that journal in allowing me to issue them in their present form. I am also deeply indebted

PREFACE

IX to many Americans, officials and others, for having given me access to sources of informa tion, and especially for having been themselves as an open book for me to read. If I could hope that Americans would be read by them, or by any one, with a moiety of the interest with which Americans have been read by me, it would be with less misgiving that I should send forth this result of my self-imposed and most pleasurable task.

CALCUTTA, 1909.

Contents

CHAP.

I. THE NATIONAL TEMPER

II. AMERICA AND ENGLAND 18

Chapter I. The National Temper

" If you wish success in life make Perseverance your bosom Friend, Experience your wise Counsellor, Caution your elder Brother, and Hope your Guardian Genius " — ADDISON.

False traditional Estimate of Americans — The Charge of Materialism— The Era of Brag— Succeeded by excessive Self-Disparagement— The Faith of the original Settlers— The Test of national Experience — The present popular Mood.

I VI SI TED Americans rather than America. TO I did, indeed, cross and recross the vast continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific cans~ Ocean and back to my starting-point, by routes that carried me over enormous distances, in such uninterrupted convenience and comfort (the promiscuous sleeping-cars notwithstand ing) as I have not experienced in any, although I have been across every, other continent of the world ; and I was not insensible, I trust, to the imposing scenery through which I passed. But traversing America was merely the necessary means to meeting, that I might know, Americans, which was my constant aim. For I would fain estimate the genius of the people ; and how could that be known other wise than through knowledge of the people themselves, not only in their outward actions but also in their inward spirit, in their dominant emotions and guiding principles as well as in their achievements in the material world and the daily habits of their social life?

Who latest attempts this task has the greatest difficulties to overcome ; for the problem increases in complexity, and becomes more difficult of solution, as the forces of the nation, steadily progressing towards some far-off divine event, daily grow in energy and' expand in range, ever differentiating them selves into new forms and advancing in the rapidity of their interaction. My poor apparatus, as I know more surely than any other, can measure only a few feet, if at all, beneath the surface of this fathomless ocean which many have sought to sound ; and I make no pretence, in this or any other chapter, to do more than give the record made by that instrument at such depth as, here and there, it may have reached.

Americans are pre-eminently accessible, and —because, to meet them requires nothing more than easy easiiyUSh travel. Their houses lie open to one another met~~ and the road, unenclosed by wall, fence of hedge, as if in token of the neighbourliness and friendliness of themselvesjl and during the year that I was in their country I lived literally chez eux. Excepting a fortnight spent in hotels, my home was with professors in their residences, with students in their " fraternity " chapter-houses, with alumni in their university clubs, with ministers in their parsonages, with social workers in their settlements, and with farmers in their homes ; and at the moment of writing this, although under my own flag, I am one of the guests of an American who has an island of the Canadian Muskoka Lakes as his summer home. The strenuous American at work is a familiar sight, but I have had the advantage of also seeing the relaxed American at play ; and no man can be known who has not been seen in his recreations as well as at his tasks. From coast to coast I have also been in touch with immigrants, of whom I shall have much to say, and who, while in process of trans formation by native Americans, are exerting far-reaching reactive influence upon them.

^ut^AmgQ^aS-ai^jQSge easily met than —They are JknownTv Never having had titles of nobility known!17 or clearly defined class distinctions of any kind, they have not, although some of them are striving to acquire, the haughtiness and exclusiveness with which Englishmen are generally charged, and which are probably due in England, as Coleridge suggested, not to climate or natural temper but to the encroach ments of classes deemed " lower" on classes deemed " higher," by which each class became nervous and jealous in the general communion. Yet Americans, like other people, practise reticence and reserve ; and, more than other people, they are other than they seem to undiscerning eyes. Without intelligence, sympathy, insight and breadth of view, observers of them are as idols, having eyes but seeing not ; and the traditional estimate of Americans is based upon the impressions of those who, having merely crushed together several partially observed facts and kneaded them into an imperfect generalisation which, being caught up by a violent prejudice, became a false theory, have spoken and have been listened to, as if they were gods, pronouncing judgment upon a great nation which they themselves were too small to understand. Americans, with characteristic good-humour, express their sense of this weakness of ours in V the story of one of us who, on his return to

England, reported of the speech of Americans that they say " Where am I at ? " when we should say " Where is my 'at?" The rebuke is not undeserved.

I am painfully aware that when I first went A new to America I was under the influence of this requiredfalse tradition and that, in consequence, there was, even in me who less than the least of all critics have right to it, that "certain condescen sion on the part of foreigners " which Lowell has so charmingly described. I went at my own instance, to satisfy a vagabond curiosity and under no promise to write, provoked partly by the contrast between Americans as I had found them in Europe and Americans as books declare them to be in their own land. And in the presence of the people and their achievements, after living intimately with them during twelve consecutive months, drinking in, at all the pores of my mental and moral sensibilities, the signs which no one who has any habit of observing men with open heart as well as open mind could fail to discern, I gained a new estimate of the people whom I "went out for to see." I shall have much adverse criticism to offer upon certain aspects of their municipal, political, commercial, educa tional, domestic and religious life; but, at least, I shall not mistake the sea-foam for the sea.

—by As dense as most foreigners' ignorance of

Americans A A . , . r

them- Americans is many Americans ignorance of themselves ; and the " certain condescension on the part of foreigners" towards all Americans of which I have heard many com plaints, is equalled by the condescension of each group of States towards all other groups in the United States. In the North-Western and Western States I have seen the desert made to blossom as the rose before my eyes as marvellously as I have seen a mango grow from seed to fruit beneath the hand of a Hindu juggler ; and the settlers, men of English stock and speech, who in the thick of the greatest and swiftest battle ever fought with Nature in her wildest mood remain good-humoured, hospitable and brave, have spoken to me of the Eastern States as a small world of little men who are doing paltry tasks in mean ways. Previously, in the Eastern States, I had been told that, when I got amongst the farmers of the West, I should find them spending all their energy in planting corn to feed swine for sale, in order that with the proceeds they might buy more land on which to plant more corn to feed more swine, in order to get more money to buy still more land on which to plant still more acres of corn to feed still more herds of swine.

These charges, brought by Americans — ofThemagainst Americans, are but new forms with se limited application of the old charge of materialism which has been long brought against the entire American people by the Old World, and which was not disbelieved by me when I came, in much fear and trembling, to this New World. Now, however, after visiting Americans in all parts of their vast territory, I am prepared to undertake the defence of Americans against themselves, and of America against the world and to prove, when occasion shall offer, that the prevalent opinion that America has a double dose of the original sin of materialism is the result of partial observation and mistaken judgment,^ and is due, in large measure, to the fallacious theory that a people which has proved itself practical and efficient in handling actualities must needs be devoid of spiritual vision, energy and power. Undeniably, there is incessant and devouring activity in all the States of America, except the Southern which are becoming quickly conformist in this as in other respects. Multitudes of Americans are eager for gold and power and put the last things first and the first things last in their ambition and effort ; and the prevalent greed and struggle and noise tend to deafen and deaden their highest self and show that they live at the periphery of their being, not knowing where its axis is. It is also un deniable that, as a people, Americans are not as highly developed in their rational and artistic capabilities as in their practical powers, and that consequently America has not yet made contributions to the arts and sciences and the higher intellectual life of the world commensurate with its importance as a national Power. Mediocrity triumphs. Commonness prevails. Yet this is not the whole truth. Beneath the surface, it is found that uniformity does not really exist. Natural replace artificial differences ; and there exists, within the one great community, a vast number of smaller communities, each having its special intellectual and moral characteristics. Further, it has to be said that, at the expense of the exceptional it may be, the average has risen. The mountains have, perhaps, been denuded, but the valleys have certainly been raised. Some force has been at work, raising the whole level of the elwOora votffj,ara, the ways of thinking and feeling, in which every citizen grows up. To see things in their beauty is to see them in their truth ; and this is the beautiful thing that, in America, I have seen — the deep moral foundations on which alone enduring prosperities rest, in this divinely appointed world. The whole people, more com^pletelyj_..p_erhaps,^than any other people,

^_ jiassjoifTS justice; "* devojdon_JgLJreedomj_ and enthusiasm,, fajth^ generous instincts are neither the root

the secular spirit makes itself so apparent that even by the most superficial observer it is not missed, there is a deeper life which has suffered no permanent evil from the gusts of commercial passion with which its surface is constantly swept.

The boy is father to the man ; and the America modern American retains as his deepest traits m^teriaithe high and wholesome ideals of the original istic~~ Colonial settlers. During the years of national growth, the inevitable changes have not been either so radical or so swift as to obliterate all resemblances in the American Republic, in its essential features, to the simple democracies of English Colonial days. Then, there was a virile intellectual, moral and religious life that kept all other interests in reasonable subordina tion. New England is able, and never forgets, to boast that in its inception it was "a think ing, not a trading community, the arena and mart for ideas." Nor did the Virginian settlers go to America merely for material gain.^'

io AMERICANS

They were attracted by the romantic and perilous enterprise of laying the foundation of a new commonwealth across the sea ; and in their task they had the high hopes and eager sympathy of those who remained in Old England. Those settlers built up the original States ; and the blood of New England flows in the veins of every State to-day and largely determines the character of the whole American people. The penetrat ing influence of the Puritan idealism is felt in every part, and has been felt in every crisis, of the national life.

It is the rare fortune of the American people that in their formative days the quick moral and religious life of the early communities left on the larger life of the nation a deep impress which has never been effaced, although, as we have seen and yet shall see, the clear lines of its beauty have been broken and confused. By a process which has aptly been compared to that of physical growth, the living body of institutions, customs, duties and privileges then created has made the vital conditions of the national existence of the present time. Now, as then, although not as consciously as then, the American people build upon the faith that God is present in human life. Now, as then,

THE NATIONAL TEMPER n

although not as generally as then, wealth is made the means of quickening the higher feelings and faculties. Now, as then, and now in clear recognition of the harder task than was then, the effort is made to guide life in clean and honest ways and consecrate intellectual as well as material resources to wise human ends. De Tocqueville regarded as the gravest danger that threatened a democracy, the complete absorption in the pursuit of material well-being and the means of material well-doing, to the disparagement and disregard of every ideal consideration. Shades of this prison-house constantly threaten to close in upon the growing nation. But America is not in bondage yet ; and less, not greater, materialism has marked its recent years.

I shall be more restrained than Americans —nor themselves in my criticism of American institutions. They are freer than Englishmen of the shallow official optimism that refuses to see self-defects and of the false patriotism that will not acknowledge such defects as refuse not to be seen. TJietr^t^sgnl^f. m p e r ^ven_d IJSJTOSP.S them to excessive self:disparagement ; and, in-

__deed, a humbl^^^^a^^y^Y^^^^-^^I^^1 their^ bluster and brag. The loud depreciation of themselves that is, and the louder appreciation of themselves that was, can be traced to a common root. It is easy to believe that, to wield any kind of influence over the masses of an enormous democratised community in whom ultimate power lies, an individual must make his expressed opinions much more pronounced than his inward convictions. Therefore, when the nation, after its first years of national inexperience, which were characterised by unreasonable optimism, was in danger of growing diffident in face of its great and increasing responsibilities and tasks, its leaders made conscious exaggeration, in order to maintain the nation in a just appreciation of its powers ; and the people, slow to see through the exaggeration, were quick to make it their own, and then were inevitably driven to spend themselves that they might make sure of the wealth, and to throw themselves into violent motions that they might make sure of the powers, which they had been told that they possessed. By this process, without gaining the assurance that they sought, they lost the secret of silence, dignity and repose ; and more than ever it seemed necessary, in order to impress the people, to resort to noise and effort, to act and effect. Then was the era of brag.

By reason But when, at last, the evils wrought by

of — the old exaggeration became apparent to a few, these, in order that they might be heard by the many, practised new exaggera- —new tions of speech and act in a direction opposite turns— ™~ to the old ; and the unqualified denunciation of the ills of the body politic which have filled the land during recent years, and the spec tacular legislative measures proposed as a remedy, have had so potent an effect upon the popular mind that, in America, bragging is in danger of becoming a lost art. Two distinguished Oxford professors whom I met, one in New England and the other in Cali fornia, said to me, in amazement and not with out regret, that during many weeks spent in the country they had not heard a single brag. My experience has not been quite as happy as theirs, perhaps because I have gone farther afield ; but candour compels me to say that, in America, I met fewer braggarts than I should have done had I been under the British \% flag, and that of " a certain condescension " I saw nothing at all. For Americans are less disposed than Englishmen to dwell on and exaggerate their own national virtues, or to weigh them by the opposite vices of foreigners instead of by the virtues which those foreigners possess and they themselves lack.

exces sive

—not "Boosters," indeed, afflicted me every day

—men, women, and children who have pledged themselves to glorify their particular States and towns in the hope of making, by calling, them great. In the West, every town has its " Boosters' Club " whose members wear a conspicuous badge ; and every available adver tising spot is placarded with appeals to every inhabitant to " Be a Booster" — and, if a boast

d 1 1 zen will~"doubt t^hcUjhe^end--^ Tnthe village of Pecatonica, Illinois, a man was heard, and every other man there and in every other American village, town or city may any day be heard, solemnly declaring, " This is the greatest city in the world " ; and on one occasion, when I foolishly attempted to " boost " my own country as a colonising power, I was told that, perhaps, there was a civilising mission for England in such parts of the world as America might not ultimately claim — and the tone was as solemn, although not as sincere, as that of a learned Brahmin in Benares who once said to me that he was willing to regard Jesus as an incarnation of Vishnu for the benefit of the Western world. But all this loud affirmation is always with business intent and rarely without a saving sense of humour. It is conscious and avowed ;

it is naked and not ashamed. It indicates the essential vigour rather than the vanity of the social body. It shows that the people are progressing, but not fast enough to suit their desire. And, in the grateful sense of their exuberant youth, one forgets to be shocked by the lack of dignity, refinement and restraint which it displays. This is different from the national boasting with which America is uni versally charged and which, if it ever was, no longer is ; and it is high time to drop the threadbare gibe that Americans are a braggart people.

The first settlers in America were brought— but face to face with an inspiring vision ; their hearts beat high with the hope of a new social fif1 order ; they heard the challenge of liberty, equality and fraternity ; and they flung them selves with transport into the new day which seemed to them to have dawned. And the remarkable achievements of the early Puritans were largely due to their sublime faith that New England was charged with the Divine mission to show the world what human society might be, when governed by constant devotion to the revealed law of God. Soon, shades of the prison-house closed in upon the growing nation. National experience, as was inevitable, modified the early faith ; and the nation would be not less, but more, fitted for its eternal task if it were merely disciplined and chastened, and if, with the discovery that liberty is not a pastime, it had made the more important discovery that liberty has greater virtue and value on that account. But, in the difficulty —the and disaster of self-government, the splendid Mood! vision seems to have fled and to be dis credited. I take, almost at random, an article on social and political conditions in one of the popular magazines, and in this sentence I find the present popular mood expressed : " The American people finds itself to-day in the position of a man with a dulled knife and broken cudgel in the midst of an ever-growing circle of wolves." This temper is far removed • from the former national gaiety of heart which the nation, still young, ought still to possess and must regain if it is to overcome its confident internal foes. The worst cause conducted in hope is ever an overmatch for the noblest conducted in despondency ; and, if it could be done without impertinence, I should suggest to those public men who have the national welfare at heart that the fact that President Eliot of Harvard University, Miss Jane Addams of Chicago Hull House Settle ment, and others who do not " lift up the voice or cry in the street," exert wide and profound influence, indicates that America still has an ear to hear the still small voice when, by it, an~ enlightened conscience, an informed mind and a balanced judgment find expression in uhexaggerated phrase.

Chapter II. America And England

" Strong Mother of a Lion-line Be proud of these strong sons of thine Who wrenched their rights from thee ! " — TENNYSON.

Democracy and elective Despotism — National Conservatism — English Characteristics retained — Development of a new human Type — The Master Force in American Civilisation — Common Politeness — Sohrab and Rustum — English Pride in American Achievements.

An T ACK of democratic confidence shows

ominous ir • A

Lack— 1 ^ itself, m America, in many ways, most obviously although perhaps not most signifi cantly, in the growing fear of immigration to which I shall yet have occasion to refer. The race problem is, at bottom, a character problem. In the contact and conflict of different national ities, the strongest life must ultimately prevail ; and the influx of foreign immigrants which now provokes alarm was hailed with joy when Americans were confident that the issue would be decided in their favour, as indeed it has hitherto been, by the superior quality of the native stock.

i3

Still more ominous is the modern drift to— as at what might be termed an elective despotism. At New York and San Francisco, and at many points between these geographical extremes, Governors, Mayors and Commissioners have been vested for a term of years with larger powers than Englishmen would surrender to any individual, however worthy, or to any Commissioner, however carefully selected, even for a day or an hour. " The cure of the ills of democracy is more democracy " was once the American shibboleth, but no one can or dares pronounce it unfalteringly now ; and, as the machinery of democratic government, groaning under the pressure of new demands, breaks down in any of its parts, the attempt is made to repair it, not by providing a more vital and genuinely organised expression of the popular will, but by giving to administrative officers more and ever-increasing power, even as the Romans, in similar stress, were wont to determine that affairs required the direction of an absolute power and would appoint a dictator by whom, with steadiness and intrepidity, it should be exercised.

I attended a " town meeting," at Wellesley _0f real Hills, Massachusetts — a New England town. As completely as in the ancient Greek City- State or in the modern Russian mir, pure democracy was in action. Every item of business, great and small, all that might affect in any degree any individual of the town, from the appointment of executive officers to the naming of streets, was submitted to the entire body of the townsmen for decision by them selves. It was democracy as it once was everywhere, and is now only here and there, in this land. I should be the last man in the world to suggest that no administrative act can be truly democratic unless the people en masse assemble to initiate and approve it. Such a doctrine is both absurd in itself and the reductio ad absurdum of government, as I heard the President of Columbia University say in a vigorous address to the University of California, designed to prove that it is a false, spurious and misleading democracy that would destroy efficiency in working out the people's policies by insisting that all the people shall join in A cure working them out. But that is also false democracy which, from fear of the people, surrenders popular rights to Commissioners appointed by elected officials and placed beyond popular control ; and this is what is seen in America to-day. Massachusetts will serve as well as any other State to illustrate the im potence to which the people have been reduced. Complaints were made of gross mismanage ment of the prisons of that State : for the press in America retains its freedom of utterance, even as did the tribune of the people at Rome under the dictatorship appointed by the people themselves. But upon investigation it was found that the prison Commissioners could not be reached after their appointment except at the trouble, expense and delay of judicial investi gation ; and nothing was done. This system gives great power without proper responsibility ; it tends to remove the people's government from the people's control ; and it even fails to secure efficiency.

Yet that, if it be a democracy at all, is— worse democracy as it is in many cities, and is tending diseaseto become in all. It is an attempt to cure the ills of democracy by less democracy. It is adopted as a heroic remedy for the corruption of the "political machine" ; and for a time it seems to succeed. But this is mere seeming and is but for a time. The effect is analogous to that sometimes seen in a sick man whose mind, gaining increase of vitality from a new hope in a fresh mode of treatment, sends a flush of apparent life through the enfeebled body, even while the mind collapses and death creeps on. It is neither heroic nor remedial to disturb the foundations of a temple in order to repair a rat-hole in the wall ; and it may be, as has been suggested, that the corrupt politician, because he is democratic in his methods, is on a more ethical line of development than the modern social reformer who attempts the new cure. Retrospect This retrograde movement is likely to be Prospect, continued, at an accelerated pace, in the immediate future, if only from fear of the too forward movement of socialistic and other schemes which the State fears. Americans are impressionable and volatile and disposed to run to extremes. They are quick to take up new ideas and to carry them to their utmost extent. They have not, nor could they have, the long political experience which instinctively supplies counterpoises to partial or novel impulses. It may be that their crisp and varied climate fosters nervous energy at the expense of physical vitality and fits them for sharp rather than sustained effort, for action rather than endurance, for well-doing rather than patient continuance in the same. In the long and arduous task to which the American democracy is committed, will the endurance of the future equal the splendid energy of the past ? That is really the question that was raised by the Secretary of State, Mr. Elihu Root, when he recently impressed upon the students at Yale University that, while democracy has proved successful under simple conditions, it remains to be seen how it will stand the strain of the vast complication of life upon which the country is now entering.