Dynamic Americanism

Front matter

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Preface

The author believes that Americanism implies an adequate understanding of the ideals and aspirations of Amer¬ ican democracy, a profound conviction as to their funda¬ mental worth, and, above all, a deep sense of personal ac¬ countability for their development and defense. The great war afforded a dramatic demonstration of the utility and power of organized patriotic sentiment. For it was under its driving impulse that the people of America gloriously accepted the burdens and sacrifice of war.

It is significant, however, that we do not always find the same degree of chivalry, devotion and self-sacrifice evi¬ denced in our domestic conflicts. The reason is that our pa¬ triotic education has been too much restricted to the ex¬ ploits of the battle-field and the achievement of martial glory. But the creation of patriotic sentiment need not be so confined. The instinctive and emotional life of the nation can be just as effectively mobilized around the tragic prob¬ lems of domestic controversy and translated into construc¬ tive acts of social and political achievement, if we only will. An analysis of the vital problems of domestic life, in terms of the dramatic human interests that are at stake, will create a profound emotional response, which can be molded into a patriotic sentiment as dynamic in peace as it has been pow¬ erful in war.

The purpose of the present volume has been to suggest ways and means by which the study and observation of American government, life and politics, whether in the local

Preface —Continued community or the nation's capital, may be made the basis for the development of such a sentiment of dynamic Amer¬ icanism. This involves less emphasis upon political forms and more attention to the needs and functions of govern¬ ment and the dynamic forces of human nature that function through it. If the legal skeleton of civics is thus clothed with the flesh and blood of human interest, it loses the mo¬ notonous drone of chronological detail and takes on the gripping interest of the drama.

The critical reader may complain of the “damnable reiter¬ ation" and the use of superfluous illustrations. There is no justification for the former other than the author's zeal to carry conviction to the reader. In the abundant use of illus¬ trative material, the writer has sought to practise what he preached, and to make his theories vivid by expressing them in terms of modern life. It is to be hoped that this material will be found of special value and significance to many readers.

In the bibliography at the end of each chapter are found only those references which would seem to be most useful in connection with the topics therein treated. Throughout the preparation of the work and particularly in selecting the bibliography, the author has received the generous and valu¬ able assistance of his wife.

Arnold Bennett Hall.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Introduction—The Need for Constructive Patriotism 1

II How May Constructive Patriotism Be Developed . 20

Chapter I Introduction-the Need For Constructive Patriotism

J ELECTION was pending in a city of the Middle

West. Public interest was at fever heat. The lines of battle seemed sharply drawn. The issues were cleanly cut. It was a conflict between the forces of righteousness and ini¬ quity. The candidates of the opposing ranks personified their respective forces, one appealing directly to the ideal¬ ism and intelligence of the public, the other to its prejudice and cupidity. One promised the fearless and able enforce¬ ment of the law; the other pledged a lawless and wide-open town. The records of the candidates were such as to afford sufficient evidence of their good faith. On the one side were marshaled those citizens who were ready to fight in defense of public decency and civic honor; opposed to them were gathered the forces of evil and corruption. The white-slaver, the vice king, the gambler, the crook and the boodler, all seeking freedom from legal restraint in their perni¬ cious callings, rallied their forces to the conflict, spent their money with prodigality and worked with unceasing toil.

Election day found both parties prepared and confident. Every possible precaution had been taken to prevent cor¬ ruption and fraud. Detectives had been employed in scores to safeguard the ballot. For the first time in years a cam¬ paign had been forced along lines that would divide the sheep from the goats. It was a fair fight between good and evil. There was no confusion of issues. It was honesty pitted against dishonesty, the law against the white-slaver, the public conscience against commercialized vice, public health against public disease, public morality against public immorality, public welfare against the public enemy. Patri¬ otic citizens were elated with the coming triumph. At last the day had come. The people were on trial. Democracy would be vindicated.

A group of faithful citizens was gathered in a down¬ town room to hear the election news. The results never were in doubt from the first returns. Little by little the lead of their enemy increased until his victory was acknowledged by a comfortable majority. The little band broke up, disap¬ pointed, hopeless and dejected. The people had been tried and found wanting. Democracy had not been vindicated.

Among this little group was a school-teacher who had fought hard in the campaign. He had entered the contest with enthusiasm, for he saw an opportunity to try out the reforms which he had so long taught as the hope of de¬ mocracy. He had taught his students in high-school history and civics that efficient government would come only with the enthronement of the people's will. He had argued with conviction that this would be accomplished with the advent of the primary and the safeguarding of the ballot. He had depicted the role of the political boss in scathing terms. To him had been ascribed the tragic horrors of the crowded tenements with their filth and immorality. To him had been charged the epidemics of preventable disease, the vir¬ tual licensing of crime and vice, and the general inability of the government to serve the human interests of the com¬ munity. But the primary had been used, the ballot safe¬ guarded, and still the boss had won. What was wrong? Had he been misguiding his students all these years when he had sought to place upon the boss the sole responsibility for governmental ills ? Had his dogmatic support of the new reforms, which he had preached with a crusader’s zeal, been without reason and in vain? Could it be that democracy, the hope of every true American, had actually been tried and found wanting?

These and similar thoughts crowded upon him in quick succession in the days that followed. Thousands of his fellow citizens who had shared the same hopes and suffered the same disappointments mingled their wondering doubts with his.

Then slowly there began to dawn a new understanding. As he talked with his friends and acquaintances he was continually astounded to find how citizens of intelligence and honesty had voted against reform. Some had voted for the winning side because they felt the importance of parti¬ san victory. Others voted against common decency because they feared that if the evils of the city were brought to light it would hurt its reputation, unsettle business and im¬ pair its prosperity. Others feared the effect on public utility securities, which were widely held and in which were in¬ vested, no doubt, some of the savings of widows and orphans. A group from a better residence district feared that under the administration pledged to abolish the “red light” district, its denizens might seek the residence dis¬ tricts of the city for their nefarious callings, thereby threat¬ ening the children and homes of the “better classes,” rather than the households of the poor. Still others had been so deeply absorbed in their personal affairs that they had neglected the opportunities afforded by the election, or failed to see how the whole contest was fraught with the gravest possibilities for good or evil to the civic and spiritual interests of the community. The teacher discovered that the second strongest organization of physicians in the city had refused to support reform unless its advocate would pledge himself not to maintain free dispensaries nor inaugurate an effective campaign against disease. Such methods, he was told, would interfere with private business.

Amazed and disillusioned he began to realize that the citizens of the city did not want reform, or were too in¬ different to make themselves effective. He faced the fact that every reform that is effective must, temporarily at least, encroach upon some sphere of private interest. He found that one can not promise to regulate public utilities in the interest of the public, without impairing the value of securities held by many influential citizens, banks and trust companies, whose sympathy for the widow and orphan investors was, perchance, largely dependent upon their per¬ sonal holdings. The city can not clean up the tenements without imposing additional burdens for the time being upon the landlord and property owner. Public health can not be safeguarded without injuring the practise of physi¬ cians. Vice and crime can not be blotted out without taking away the abnormal rents landlords receive from property used for immoral and illegal purposes, and without threat¬ ening the more prosperous citizens with a portion of the in¬ convenience and danger to which they deliberately condemn the poor, who live in the segregated districts.

This teacher also found that a great many honest and re¬ spectable citizens, the kind we think of as the backbone of the republic, could only see those aspects of politics that af¬ fected them. Their vision was too limited and their sympa¬ thies too well controlled to allow them to view the issue in its broadest human aspects. They were indifferent because they had no direct personal interest at stake.

If these were the facts of our political life, and if these were the influences that controlled our elections, then his easy-going philosophy that the "remedy for the evils of democracy is more democracy” was impotent. The enthronement of the public will was not the only essential of social and civic reform. As far as he could look into the future, thoroughgoing reforms must always run counter, temporarily at least, to private interests. Opposition would always develop from those whose interests were threatened. The direct primary and the security of the ballot would not change these interests but only make their expression the more easy and effective.

Then what should he teach his class in civics? He had sought sincerely to make this a class for the development of citizenship. He had sought to equip his pupils with the ideas inherent in social progress, but these ideas had proved unproductive of results. Should he revise his philosophy of politics? Was democracy impotent? Could he go before his pupils with sincerity and power, and continue to espouse a system and a theory that had proved futile, that had not saved the city in a contest between right and wrong, and that had frustrated its noblest and highest aspirations? Could he defend a system of government that protected commercialized vice and immorality, that refused to oppose the spread of disease, and that encouraged individual self¬ ishness to exploit the unhappy victims of the slums?

This experience of an unusually conscientious and able teacher ought to come as a challenge to the entire pro¬ fession throughout the country. The conflict that awakened him, with its dramatic appeal, is being reproduced in lesser degrees in every portion of our land. There is scarcely a local community where needless deaths do not occur from preventable diseases, that would have been prevented by the same degree of efficiency in government that we demand in private enterprise. There is not a state that does not offer up its annual tribute of human life to industrial accidents and diseases that could be prevented. There is not a Congress that does not make wasteful appropriations for river and harbor bills, when like sums invested in a nation-wide fight on tuberculosis would produce untold dividends in human life and human happiness. There are communities all over the land where public funds are wasted in extravagance, if not in graft, which might be devoted to providing ample playgrounds and civic centers that would produce better citizens and higher morals. These condi¬ tions lead one to question the vitality of our democracy and to challenge our citizenship.

Occasionally the public, aroused to a consciousness of its neglect, organizes a movement of relief against one ill or another. Some are pressed with vigor and determination until success is won, but many are mere abortive efforts, spasmodic and short-lived. Through the few that do suc¬ ceed progress is being made. Our political life is growing better but the progress is slow and the mistakes are many. The cost of these failures is appalling and must be borne by the helpless and the weak. If the milk supply is unin¬ spected, it brings death only to the homes of those too poor and ignorant to buy privately inspected milk. If housing conditions are unregulated, it is the unprotected children of the slums whose blighted lives must pay for democracy’s mistake.

The teacher in the public schools to-day, whose mission is the training of boys and girls for participation in democracy, is facing greater difficulties than in any other period of our nation’s history. The problems of to-day that challenge constructive democracy are vastly different from those of the early days of the New World. We are prone to wor¬ ship the past as the great day for American democracy. We think of the New England town meeting as the ideal of democratic accomplishment. We sigh as we compare with it the inefficiency of the city government of to-day.

But the comparison is unfair. It leaves out of account the tremendous difference in the nature of the problems to be solved. The New England town meeting was con¬ fronted with such problems as the location of a town well, the building of a schoolhouse or its repair, the fixing of the salary of the school-teacher, or the maintenance of the high¬ way. With the Industrial Revolution, however, came a new set of problems, gigantic in size and complicated in nature. The factory system with its dangerous machinery created tremendous cities out of rural communities. The public utilities, with their financial power and political in¬ trigue, menaced any government that sought to control them. Great trusts and monopolies, whose financial and political control threatened to vest them with autocratic power, seemed to spring up overnight. The industrial city came, with its problems of morals, diseases, sanitation and engineering projects, and challenged the deepest learning and the most constructive statesmanship that the nation could produce. In these facts the careful observer will find little basis for the pessimistic worship of the past, and ample challenge to the dynamic Americanism of the future.

The new problems of the day demand more than the casual study of the patriot; they demand technical research, infinite patience, and a capacity for sustained, patriotic interest. The problems of the New England town meeting were not different from the problems that the pioneers were meeting every day in their customary callings. They were problems calling for the exercise of common sense and honest judgment. Most of them were solved by a few hours’ careful discussion and deliberation. Compare these problems with those of the present. The citizens of to-day are called upon to grapple with the vexing problems of water supply, involving tremendous engineering feats; they are to solve complex questions of sanitation and public hygiene based upon the learning of technical science; they have to adjust innumerable conflicts between the interests of the public and private enterprise in public utilities and public service; they must protect the health and limb of the employees against all manner of disease and accident with¬ out unduly impeding the processes of production; they must attack the mighty struggle between labor and capital, pro¬ tecting the interest of the public, with impartial justice to either side.

These problems can not be solved by momentary appeals to patriotic fervor. They are not amenable to solution by the application of good judgment and common sense alone. They require the patient research of the scholar and the technical efficiency of the expert. Back of these there must lie the eternal vigilance of the public, whose sustained inter¬ est will stimulate the fidelity and efforts of its servants, and whose ultimate judgment upon the results achieved must afford a rational and enlightened system of rewards or punishments for official effort. The formulation of public opinion and its application to modern problems through the media of scientific experts, preserving the efficiency of the expert and the point of view of the public, presents one of the most difficult problems of constructive politics.

On the other hand, the developing in the body politic of a capacity of sustained civic interest, sufficient to follow with unbiased zeal and discriminating judgment the slowly mov¬ ing methods of scientific effort, is indispensable to social and political reform. Experts* alone will tend to become bureaucratic unless closely followed by a patient though aggressive public, while public opinion will be impotent in the face of modern problems without the service of scien¬ tific effort. To arouse the public to a' righteous and emo¬ tional protest against specific ills, especially if they appear in a dramatic setting, is easily and quickly done. It is the national pastime of the politician and demagogue. But the public interest is too easily pacified by the impossible promises of the skilful politician. The public interest does not continue until the evil has been permanently eliminated. It is one thing for an aroused public to retire a public servant from office, and another thing to keep public interest up to the point of watching to see that the newly elected officer does not make the same mistakes. It is one thing to protest against an unjust and inefficient system of taxation until it becomes a political issue upon which a party comes into power, but it is a vastly different thing to keep the public interest centered upon the new administration for a length of time sufficient to produce a constructive system of finance. Thus it becomes evident that modern problems require for their solution a more virile and sustained civic spirit than was required for the solution of the more primitive problems of a century ago.

In spite of these obvious needs, popular and hysterical revolts still continue the order of the day. Cities will be¬ come outraged over the dramatic revelation of some evi¬ dence of graft or fraud, but will fall back into indifference again before the newly elected administration has entered into office. The periodic exposes afford accumulating evi¬ dence of this tragic fact. As a result progress is slow, scientific and progressive methods have but little chance, and pressing modern problems go unsolved.

To meet this condition many plans and panaceas have been suggested. Most of the panaceas have been mere changes in the form of government. The history of the last eighty years has witnessed a series of blind attempts to solve the problems of municipal inefficiency, by changing from one type of government to another and finally cul¬ minating in the present movement for the adoption of the business manager form. But it has only been in the last portion of this period that any real progress seems to have been achieved.

The direct primary has been espoused by many as the final bulwark against the encroachments of special privilege and the domination of the political boss. This has been given a fair hearing but the millennium has not appeared, while the demagogue and boss continue to exercise tre¬ mendous power. The initiative and referendum has been defended by the exponents of direct democracy, as the instrument through which popular government would realize its higher self, corruption and inefficiency be banished from our legislative halls, and the complicated problems of modem politics be adequately solved. The recall of public officers, we are told, would afford the people an instrument by which the public servant would be compelled to give an administration that would be wise, beneficent and effective.

Again another group of political students has staked its hope of redeeming democracy upon the system of preferen¬ tial voting, confident in the belief that if the wants of the citizens may be but accurately expressed, the problems of government will be safely met. The short-ballot movement, with its attractive program for simplifying the ballot and concentrating official responsibility where the voter may more easily make his influence effective, is another remedy which has rallied many to its cause with its promises of relief from the intolerable conditions of the present. To-day millions of our citizens are seeking hopefully, but impotently, for relief through one or more of these chosen methods. Like the school-teacher in the Middle West, they have a blind unquestioning faith in the efficacy of structural re¬ forms. There is one thing, one great outstanding, funda¬ mental fact they overlook—the mere change of governmental forms does not change the intelligence or civic interest of the people who function through these forms. Every one of these suggested panaceas and remedies may be embodied in our fundamental law without necessarily solving a single problem, without wiping out a single evil, without bringing work to a single member of the army of the unemployed. The same problems would remain, the same conflicts in interest would continue, the same powerful, ingenious and autocratic bosses would still seek to hold the reins of government. It is true that new instruments will be avail¬ able, and in so far as they might be better adapted to the problems to be solved, they would be helpful; but they are only instruments, and back of these instruments will be found the same lack of civic pride, the same want of a constructive patriotism, the same selfish and sordid inter¬ ests, the same criminal indifference to the public weal, that have combined to produce the conditions and problems against which we righteously protest.

Does this, then, mean that there is no escape from the evils and failures of democracy? Must we continue to render tribute to the forces of indifference, ignorance and greed ? Must we continue the annual sacrifice of life, limb and soul to the preventable horrors of our industrial life? Or does it not show the pathway along which permanent reform must lead ? Does it not point with dramatic vivid¬ ness to the social and moral education of our youth, as the means of democratic accomplishment? Does it not bring out in bold relief the fundamental fact, that in the youth of to-day, the citizenship of to-morrow, must be developed the new patriotism of civic achievement, that vital sustained interest in public problems, that unfailing fidelity to the public weal, which the gigantic, complicated and portentous problems of modern life so imperatively demand?

This, then, is the challenge of modem democracy to the modern school. Its fundamental basis is the fact that the solution of modern problems requires more than the passing thrill of patriotic fervor, or the spasmodic protest of an out¬ raged public. It requires more than the mere structural changes that are necessary from time to time. It requires a regenerated citizenship. It requires a keen sense of in¬ dividual responsibility and a capacity for a sustained interest in civic matters. It requires that our process of education must build into the consciousness and soul of the child a new philosophy of life, the philosophy of service. There must be new ideals and aspirations aroused, strengthened and defined, the ideals of civic obligation. There must be a new morality evolved, and a new patriotism nourished, one that is both social and constructive.

The bane of the popular conception of democracy is that it is expressed in the terms of the rights of individuals. The patriotic oration, the flamboyant appeals of the dema¬ gogue, the “rule of thumb’’ conceptions of the reformer, are expressed in the term of rights. One of America’s leading citizens has boldly declared that democracy had the right to make mistakes. It follows then that when democracy mistakenly allowed the institution of child labor to gain a foothold in our country, until hundreds of thou¬ sands of children had been sacrificed to human greed, that democracy had the right to exact the lives and souls of children as the price of its indifference and mistakes. The piteous appeals of suffering children have for years fallen upon the unhearing ears of American citizenship. Their shrieks have beat with tragic impotence against the bulwark of democratic rights. Whence came this inhuman concep¬ tion of democracy’s rights? Who gave into the hands of an indifferent people the despotic right to pay their obli¬ gations with the lives and suffering of others? Who re¬ leased the citizens of a democracy from the obligation of being their brother’s keeper? These are questions that should be thundered from every housetop until America is awakened, and until the pernicious doctrine of demo¬ cratic rights has been obliterated by the larger vision of dem¬ ocratic service, made possible through individual consecra¬ tion to the sacred duties of democracy.

The teaching of this conception of democracy is of para¬ mount importance, and experience would seem to indicate that if it is not done in our schools it is likely to go undone. The young citizen who can view preventable suffering with¬ out a sense of personal shame, or -who can see the failures of our government to produce the largest possible dividends of human happiness without a twinge of conscience, is not yet morally equipped to fight the battles of aggressive, triumphant democracy. He lacks the necessary moral and spiritual equipment. It must be the mission of the school to supply that equipment. It must provide a sense of per¬ sonal accountability. It must build up a dynamic theory of morality. It must produce a patriotism that is virile and constructive. It must produce a dynamic Americanism that will be practical and effective.

The influence of the schools in building moral standards and quickening moral perception in certain lines of thought and conduct, gives promise of tremendous good when di¬ rected to the positive morality required by the civic duty of to-day. But so far most moral teachings have been negative and personal, ignoring the positive and the social. Few graduates of our public school would not blush for shame if detected in an act of dishonesty or personal immorality, but these same people will idly boast of an ignorance re¬ garding the current issues of the ballot box and the capacity of candidates for public office, for whom they are asked to vote. It is the exceptional citizen that follows the fate of political issues and administrative policy from its incep¬ tion, through the necessary machinery of political parties.

to its concrete realization in accomplished fact Thousands of citizens will deplore the inefficiency and waste of govern¬ ment, while only tens will study out the responsible parties and apply the doctrine of strict accountability. Thousands will rise in righteous indignation against the depredations and despotism of unscrupulous bosses, and yet very few will take the time and energy to organize effectively against their power. We cry out against government that is weak, corrupt, incompetent, and yet we are unwilling to pay the price of efficient government, or bear the burdens of effi¬ cient democracy.

The cry for reform is always in the air, but when a concrete measure is suggested that casts a burden upon a group or class, they are too frequently unwilling to bear the burden. They prefer the injustice and weakness of the present system, whose burdens may be shifted to others. Thousands of these same persons would rally to the defense of their ideals of national honor, were it assailed by a foreign foe. They would sacrifice their lives if need be in its defense. Let a weak sister republic fail to protect the lives of American citizens, and thousands will be found willing to make any sacrifice or bear any burdens necessary to avenge the insult to American honor. But industry and disease may claim its daily toll of hundreds, through the inefficiency of democracy, and the public sits by in com¬ placent idleness. They see no blot on American honor in this useless sacrifice. They feel no patriotic call to fight against the disease, poverty and misery that follow in the wake of inefficient government. They have no conception of a nation’s honor that calls for patriotic service in the cause of justice, righteousness and decency at home.

These are the conditions that confronted the school¬ teacher of the Middle West, as he tried to adjust himself to the new conditions and problems of democracy, as evidenced to him by the results of the city election upon which he had staked so much. These are the facts, un¬ pleasant though they be, that challenge the attention of America to-day. If it be said that too much is expected of the citizens of a democracy, that they can not be expected to fight for reforms that interfere incidentally with their personal pecuniary interest, that they can not be expected to give patient and careful study to public problems, the answer is, then, that such a people needs rulers, and not servants, to guide their destinies. If this be the answer, then it means that to America democracy is an idle shib¬ boleth with which the boss and demagogue may play. It means that the ideals and aspirations of American heroes whose memories we revere, the ideals and aspirations that sustained Washington at Valley Forge, that steeled the nerve and provided courage for the pioneers in their con¬ quest of the West, that gave to Lincoln that infinite har¬ mony of tenderness and strength with which to guide the destinies of a troubled nation—these, the most cherished possessions of a great people, consecrated by the toil and sacrifice of millions, are prostituted to a selfish individualism that is both sordid and sterile.