Chapter Nine: Internal Political Problems…

Chapter Nine: Internal Political Problems

The problems of population, especially those concerning the immigration and the negro, have taken considerable of our attention. We shall be able to survey problems of internal politics more quickly, since we have already met most of them in considering the American form of government. The insane programme of those who desire no government at all, that is, anarchy, is one of the American’s political problems only when the deed of some foreign assassin gives him a sudden fright. Then all sorts of propositions are on foot to weed out anarchism stem and root; but after a little time they subside. One sees how difficult it is to draw the lines, and the idea of suppressing free political speech is too much against the fundamental principles of the American democracy. But the fundamental principles of anarchism, or rather its fundamental confusions, have so little hope of influencing the conservative ideas of the Americans, that there need be no fear of anarchism creeping into the national mind. In so far as there is any such problem in America, it is connected solely with the question of immigration. Up to the present time, the government has been content to forbid acknowledged anarchists to land; but this involves such an un-American intermeddling with private convictions that the regulation will hardly be tolerated much longer. The true American, in any case, believes in state ordinances and loves his governmental machinery.

This apparatus itself of government has many details which offer problems, indeed, and are much discussed. Some of its elements have been added recently by President Roosevelt; the most important of them is the newly created Department of Commerce and Labour. This new division of the government, with over ten thousand officials, embraces also the Bureau of Corporations, which is designed to collect statistics regarding trusts and the overcoming of their influence; but the struggle promises to be a two-sided one. To the present administration belongs also the creation of a general staff for the Army, and on this head there seems to be a unanimous opinion that the Army is distinctly benefited by the measure. In some other directions, moreover, the make-up of the Army has become more similar to European models; new schools of war have been founded and the plan of holding great manœuvres introduced. The weakness of the military system is that preferments go according to seniority. It is clear to all that a merely mechanical advancement of officers is not advantageous to the military service; and yet everybody is afraid, if the uniform principle is given up and personal preferment is introduced, that all sorts of regrettable political and social influences will be brought to bear in the matter. Many persons see a difficult problem here; the young officer has almost no incentive to-day to special exertions.

The government has more and various plans with regard to the Navy. There, too, it seems as if a general staff similar to that of the Army is indispensable. The steady growth of the Navy itself is assured, since everyone recognizes that America could not carry out its present policy without a strong fleet. The fleet, which dates virtually from 1882, won the hearts of the imperialistic public by its victories at Manila and Santiago; and its growth is nowhere seriously opposed. Likewise, the Navy is introducing more large manœuvres. The real difficulty lies in lack of men; it becomes more and more difficult to get officers and sailors; and even in the question of manning a ship, the inevitable negro question plays a part.

There are many open questions also in regard to the diplomatic and consular service. The United States maintains an uncommonly large number of consuls, whose enterprise is nowhere contested, but whose preparation, tact, and personal integrity often leave a good deal to be desired. Their remuneration through fees contributes a good deal toward creating unwholesome conditions. The personnel of the diplomatic service is perhaps still more unequal than that of the consular. Since early times the United States has had the discernment to send some of its most distinguished men to fill important ambassadorial positions. At a time when the international relations of the country were still insignificant, such a position was often given to distinguished authors and poets, who represented their country at a foreign court in an intellectual and cultivated way, and contributed much to its esteem. This can happen no longer, and yet America has had again and again the good fortune to send to diplomatic positions men of uncommon caliber; scholars like Andrew D. White, statesmen like John Hay, and brilliant jurists like Choate. The danger still subsists, however, that men who are merely rich, and who have done small services to Senators, expect in return a diplomatic appointment, for the sake of the social glory. There is a growing desire to make the diplomatic service a regular career, in which a man progresses step by step.

As to the postal service, the foremost problem is now that of free delivery in rural districts. The tremendous extent of the country and the thinness of its population had at first made it a matter of course that the farmer should fetch his own mail from the nearest village. The rural letter-carrier was unknown, as he is still unknown in small towns; every man in the village goes to the post-office to get his newspapers and letters. But like every country at the present time, the United States is trying to check the continual afflux of population into the cities. It is obvious that specially with the intellectual make-up of the American, every effort must be made to make rural life less monotonous and tiresome, and that it is necessary most of all to establish ready communication between the remote farm-houses and the rest of the world. The more frequently and easily the farming people receive their letters and magazines, so much the less do they feel tempted to leave the soil. For this reason the very expensive rural delivery has spread rapidly. In the last year nine thousand new appointments were made in this service. Another important problem connected with the Post-Office is the fact that it does not pay for itself, because it carries printed matter at unprofitably low rates, and in this way has stimulated to an extraordinary degree the sending of catalogues and advertising matter. One can see how far this goes from the fact that a short time ago a factory for medicine sent out so many copies of a booklet advertising its specific through the so-called “testimonials,” that a railway train with eight large freight cars was necessary to carry them to the nearest post-office. Part of the difficulty comes from the private ownership of the railroads, whose contracts with the government for carrying the mails involve certainly no loss to the stockholders.

In similar wise, all of the great departments of government have their problems, large or small, and the most important of these must be dealt with when we come to speak of the economic situation. But there is one problem that is common to all branches of the government; it is the most important one which concerns internal affairs, and although it is discussed somewhat less actively to-day than in former years, it continues none the less in some new form or other to worry the parties, the government, and more especially public opinion. It is the question of civil-service reform.

We have touched on this question before when we spoke of the struggles between parties, and of the motives which bring the individual into the party service. Some things remain to be said by way of completely elucidating one of the most important problems of American public life. To commence with, if we abstract from the civil service in city and state—although the question is much the same there—that is, if we take into account only the federal service—we find over a hundred thousand official appointments: and the question is—Shall these appointments, with their assured salaries, be distributed to adherents of the party in power, chiefly with reference to their services to the party, or shall these positions be removed from all touch with the parties and given to the best and ablest applicants? It is clear that the problem could easily be so exhibited that the appointment of the best and most capable applicant, without reference to his party, should seem to be absolutely and unequivocally necessary, and as if any other opinion could proceed only from the desire to work corruption. The situation is not quite so simple, however.

In the first place, every one is aware that the highest administrative positions are invariably places of confidence, where it is very necessary that the incumbent shall be one in thought and purpose with the Executive; and this is more than ever necessary in a democracy composed of two parties. If the majority of the people elects a certain President in order to carry out the convictions of one party in opposition to the other, the will of the people would be frustrated if the upper members of the governmental staffs were not to be imbued with the same party ideas. A Republican President could not work together with a Democratic Secretary of State without sacrificing the efficiency of his administration, and struggling along on such compromises as would ultimately make meaningless the existence of two organized parties. A Republican Secretary of State must have, however, if he is to be spared a good deal of friction, an assistant secretary of state with whom he is politically in harmony; and so it goes on down.

But if we begin at the bottom and work up, the situation looks different. The book-keeper to the ministry, the small postal clerk, or the messenger boy in the treasury, has no opportunity to realize his personal convictions. He has merely his regular task to perform, and is not immediately concerned whether the policy of state is Republican or Democratic, imperialistic or anti-imperialistic. We have then to ask—Where lie the boundaries between those higher positions in which the private convictions of the incumbents ought properly to be with the administration, and those lower positions where party questions are in no way involved?

Opinions vary very widely as to where this boundary lies. Some put it rather low, and insist that the American by his whole political training is so thoroughly a creature of the party, that true harmony in state offices can be had only if the whole service from top to bottom is peopled with adherents of the ruling party; and this opinion, although it may be refuted on good grounds, is neither absurd nor dishonest. The population of Germany is divided to-day into a civil and a social-democratic party, and it appears to the dominant civil party by no means unnatural to exclude the social-democrats so far as possible from participation in the public service.

It is quite possible, moreover, for each party to furnish competent incumbents for all the leading positions; and so long as capable men can be found who will acquit themselves well in office, there is of course no reason for charging the party with greed or spoils-gathering, as if the public funds were a pure gift, and it were unworthy to accept an official appointment given in recognition of services to the party. We have already emphasized how extremely German conceptions differ from American on this point, and how the customary reiteration in Germany of the unfavourable comments made by certain American reform enthusiasts, leads to much misunderstanding. It is well-known that Germany has, for instance, for the university professors a system of state appointment, which rests wholly on personal recommendation; this in sharp contrast to England, where the candidates for every vacant chair must compete, and where no one can be called who does not compete; or with France, where the positions are awarded on the basis of an examination.

The considerations which we have stated are not at all to be taken as an argument against civil-service reform, but only as an indication that the problem is complicated and has its pros and cons. In fact, the grounds for the widest possible extension of a civil-service independent of party are many and urgent. In the first place, the service itself demands it. The appointments by party are really appointments on the basis of recommendations and wishes of political leaders. The Senators, for instance, from a certain state advise the President as to who should be appointed for postmasters in the most important post-offices; and the smaller positions are similarly filled on the recommendation of less influential politicians.

Therefore, it is only to a limited extent that there is any real estimation of the capacity and fitness of the proposed incumbent. Public opinion is always watchful, however, and the politician is generally afraid to press an appointment which he knows would be disapproved by public opinion, or which would later be seen to be absurd, would damage his own political credit, and perhaps even wreck his political future.

It is equally true that the political parties have become expert in sifting human material and finding just the right people for the places; and that, moreover, the American with his extraordinary capacity for adaptation and organization easily finds himself at home in any position and fills it creditably. And yet it remains, that in this way the best intentioned appointer works in the dark, and that a technical examination would more accurately select the fittest man from among the various candidates.

Most of all, by this method of appointment on the ground of political influence, where the petitions of the incumbent’s local friends, commendatory letters from well-known men, and the thousand devices of the wire-puller play an important part, the feeling of individual responsibility is always largely lost. The head of the department must rely on local representatives, and these politicians again know that they do not themselves actually make the appointments; and the candidate is put into office with no exertion on his own part—almost passively.

It is not to be denied that in this way many an unworthy man has come to office. The very lowest political services have been rewarded with the best positions. Political candidates have had to promise before their election to make certain appointments to office which had nothing at all to do with the fitness of the appointee; and such appointee, when actually instated, has not only neglected his office, but sometimes criminally misused it for embezzlement and fraudulent contracts, for government deals in which he has had some personal advantage, or for the smuggling in of friends and relatives to inferior positions. Politicians have too often sought to exact all sorts of devious personal and political services from those whom they have previously recommended for office in order to hush them up. Through the intrigues of such men all sorts of unnecessary positions have been created, in order to provide for political friends from the public treasury; and the contest for these personal nominations has consumed untold time and strength in the legislative chambers. No one can fail to see that such sores will develop over and over in the political organism so long as the principle is recognized of making official appointments on the basis of party allegiance. While criminal misuse of such a practice is the exception, and the honourable endeavour to pick out the best candidates and their honest performance of duty are the rule, nevertheless every thoughtful friend of the country’s welfare must wish to make all such exceptions impossible.

There is another unfavourable effect which such a system must have, within the party itself. A man who is put into office by politicians, unless he is a strong man, will labour in the interests of his benefactors, will carry party politics into places where they do not belong, and be ready to let the party rob him of a certain portion of his salary as a contribution to the party treasury, as has been customary for a long time. In this way salaries have been increased in order that a considerable portion might redound to the party treasury, and thus the means be won for bringing the party victoriously through the next elections; and in this way the official has been able to assure himself as good an office, or perhaps a better one, in the future. The same thing happens once more in city politics where the funds levied on city officials have made a considerable share of the party’s assets. There has been good reason, therefore, why public opinion has for a long time demanded, and with increasing energy, an entire change in such a state of things; and aside from the positions of actual confidence, in which in fact only men of a certain political faith could be of any service, it has demanded that public offices be put on a non-partisan basis and given out with a view solely to the efficiency of the appointee.

Such a problem hardly existed during the first forty years of American constitutional government; officials were appointed in a business-like way. A man in office stayed there as long as he did his duties well, and the advent of a new party in the higher positions had very little influence on the lower ones. It was deemed tyranny to dismiss a competent official in order to put a party adherent in his position. The statistics show that at that time not more than forty-two changes on the average were made on such political grounds every year. The opposite practice first arose in the cities, and especially in New York, whence it spread to the state, where in 1818 a whole regiment of party followers was established in the government offices of the state by Van Buren. And under President Jackson the principle finally became adopted in the federal government. About the year 1830, it became an unwritten law that official positions should be the spoils of victory at the elections and go to the favoured party. People were aware that there was no better way of getting party adherents to be industrious than to promise them positions if they would help the party to gain its victory. The reaction commenced at about the middle of the last century, closely following on a similar movement in England.

As the power of the English Parliament grew, popular representatives had demanded their share in the distributing of offices, and an obnoxious trading in salaries had become prevalent. When at last the abuses became too frequent, just before the middle of the last century, England instituted official examinations in order to weed out the obviously unfit candidates. It was not really a true competition, since the candidate was still appointed to office by the politicians. But the examination made sure of a minimal amount of proper training.

The American Congress followed this example during the fifties. Certain groups of minor positions were made, for which appointment could be had only after an examination. England now went further on the same course, and America followed her lead. On both sides of the ocean the insignificant examination of the candidate who had backing, became a general examination for all who wished to apply; so that the position came to be given to the best candidate. The Civil-Service Commission was instituted by President Grant, and for thirty years its beneficent influence has steadily grown, and it has made great inroads on the old system. The regular politicians who could not endure being deprived of the positions which they wished to pledge to their campaign supporters have naturally tried time after time to stem the current, and with some success. In 1875 Congress discontinued the salaries which had been paid the Commissioners; then competitive examinations were given up, and in their stead single examinations instituted for candidates who had been recommended by political influence.

But here, if anywhere, public opinion has been stronger than party spirit. Under President Hayes, and then under Garfield and Arthur, the competitive system was partly reinstated, and while the number of positions which were open only to those who had successfully passed the public examinations increased, at the same time the reprehensible taxation of officials for party ends was finally stopped. This did not prevent a certain smaller number of positions from retaining their partisan complexion; and the opinions and party creed of these incumbents continued to be important, so that whenever one party succeeded another, a certain amount of change was still necessary. So there remain two great divisions of the public service—the political offices which the President fills by appointment in co-operation with the Senate, and the so-called “classified” offices which are given out on the basis of public examinations. Public opinion and the sincere supporters of civil-service reform, among whom is President Roosevelt himself, are working all the time for an increase in the number of classified positions and a corresponding decrease in the political group.

The open opponents of this movement, of whom there are many in both parties, are hard at work in the opposite direction, and are too often supported by the faint-hearted friends of the reform, who recognize its theoretical advantages, but have some practical benefit to derive by pursuing the methods which they decry. There is no doubt that again in the last ten years some steps have been taken backward, and on various pretexts many important positions have been withdrawn from the classified service and restored to Senatorial patronage.

The actual situation is as follows. There are 114,000 non-classified positions, with a total salary of $45,000,000, and 121,000 classified positions which bring a salary of $85,000,000. Among the former, where no competition exists, over 77,000 are postmasterships; then there are consular, diplomatic, and other high positions, and a large number of places for labourers. In the classified service, there are 17,000 positions for officials who live in Washington, 5,000 of which are in the treasury. The committees on the commission have about 400 different kinds of examinations to give. Last year 47,075 persons were examined for admission to the civil service; 21,000 of these for the government service, 3,000 for the customs, and 21,000 for the postal service. There were about 1,000 examinations more for advancements in office and exchange from one part of the service to another, and 439 persons were examined for service in the Philippines. Out of all these applicants 33,739 passed the examinations, and of these 11,764 obtained positions which are theirs for life, independent of any change which may take place at the White House. It is a matter of course that the security which these positions give of life-long employment is the highest incentive to faithful service and conscientious and industrious labour.

The difference between the two services was again clearly brought out in the last great scandal, which greatly stirred up the federal administration. The Post-Office Department had closed a number of contracts for certain utensils from which certain officials, or at least their relatives, made considerable profits. Everything had been most discreetly hidden, and it took an investigation of several months to uncover the crookedness. But when everything had come out, it appeared that the officials who were seriously involved all belonged to the unclassified service, while the classified service of the Post-Office was found to be an admirable example of conscientious and faithful office-holding. Certain it is that such criminal misuse, even among the confidential positions, is a rare exception; it is no less sure that the temptations are much greater there. A man who holds office, not because he is peculiarly fitted for it, but because he has been generally useful in politics, knowing as he does that the next time the parties change places his term of office will be up, will always be too ready to use his position for the party rather than for the country, and finally for himself and his pocket-book rather than for his party.

Now, if civil-service reform is to spread or even to take no steps backward, public opinion must be armed for continual battle against party politicians. But it is an insult to the country when, as too often happens, some one tries to make it appear that the opponents of reform are consciously corrupt. The difficulty of the problem lies just in the fact that most honourable motives may be uppermost on both sides; and one has to recognize this, although one may be convinced that the reformer has the better arguments on his side. The filling of positions by party adherents, as a reward for their services, puts an extraordinary amount of willing labour at the service of the party. And undoubtedly the party system is necessary in America, and demands for its existence just such a tremendous amount of work. The non-classified positions are to the American party politicians exactly what the orders and titles which he can award are to the European monarch; and the dyed-in-the-wool party leader would in all honesty be glad to throw overboard the whole “humbug” of civil-service reform, since he would rather see his party victorious—that is, his party principles acknowledged in high federal places—than see his country served as economically, faithfully, and ably as possible. In fact, the regular party politician has come to look on the frequent shake-up among office-holders as an ideal condition. Just as no President can be elected more than twice, he conceives it to be unsound and un-American to leave an official too long in any one position.

The full significance of the problem comes out when one realizes that the same is true once more in the separate state, and again in every municipality. The states and cities have their classified service, appointment to which is independent of party allegiance, as of governor or mayor, and in addition to this confidential positions for which the governor and legislature or the mayor and city council are responsible. Municipal service has attracted an increasing amount of public attention in recent years, owing to the extremely great abuses which it can harbour.

Fraudulent contracts, the grant of handsome monopolies to street railway, gas, electric-light, telephone, and pier companies, the purchase of land and material for public buildings, and the laying out of new streets—all these things, owing to the extraordinarily rapid growth of municipalities, afford such rich opportunities for theft, and this can be so easily hidden from the state attorney, that frightfully large numbers of unscrupulous people have been attracted into public life. And the more that purely municipal politics call for a kind of party service which is very little edifying or interesting to a gentleman in frock and silk hat, so much the more other kinds of men force their way into politics in large cities and get control of the popular vote, not in order to support certain principles, but to secure for themselves positions from the winning party, of which the salary is worth something and the dishonest perquisites may be “worth” a great deal more. Even here again the service to the city is not necessarily bad, and certainly not so bad as the scandal-mongering press of the opposite party generally represents it. Most of the office-holders are decent people, who are contented with the moderate salary and modest social honour of their positions. Nevertheless, a good deal that is impure does creep in, and the service would be more efficient if it could be made independent of the party machine. Public opinion is sure of this.

Each party is naturally convinced that the greatest blame belongs with the other, and in strict logic one can no more accuse one party of corruption than the other. The Republican party in a certain sense whets the general instinct for greed more than the Democratic, so that its opponents like to call it “the mother of corruption.” It is a part of the Republican confession of faith, in consequence of its centralizing spirit, that the state cannot leave everything to free competition, but must itself exert a regulating influence; thus the Republican does not believe in free-trade, and he thinks it quite right for an industry or any economic enterprise which is going badly, or which fancies that it is not prospering enough, or which for any reason at all would like to make more money, to apply to the state for protection, and to be favoured at the expense of the rest of the community. The principle of complete equality is here lost, and the spirit of preference, of favours for the few against the many, and of the employment of public credit for the advantage of the avaricious, is virtually recognized. And when this spirit has once spread and gone through all party life, there is no way of preventing a situation in which every one applies to the public funds for his own enrichment, and the strongest industries secure monopolies and influence the legislatures in their favour by every means which the party has at its disposal.

The Democrats, on the other hand, desire equal rights for all, and free competition between all economic enterprises; they approve of all centrifugal and individualistic tendencies. And yet if the state does not exert some regulative influence, the less moral elements of society will misuse their freedom, and they will be freer in the end than the citizens who scrupulously and strictly govern themselves. And the spirit of unrestraint and immorality will be ever more in evidence. The Democratic party will be forced to make concessions to this idea if it desires to retain its domination over the masses, and any one who first begins to make concessions to individual crookedness is necessarily inoculated. Thus it happens that in the Republican party there is a tendency to introduce corruption from above, and in the Democratic party from below.

If in a large town, say, the Republican party is dominant, the chief public enemies will be the industrial corporations, with their tremendous means and their watered securities; but if the Democratic party is uppermost, the worst enemies will be the liquor dealers, procurers, and gamblers. Correspondingly, in the former case, the honour of the city council which closes huge contracts with stock companies will succumb, while in the latter it will be the conscience of the policeman on the corner who pockets a little consideration when the bar-keeper wants to keep open beyond the legal hour. And since the temptation to take small bribes are ten thousand times more frequent than the chances for graft on a large scale, the total damage to public morals is about the same in both cases. But we must repeat once more that these delinquencies are after all the exception rather than the rule, and happily are for the most part expiated behind the bars of a penitentiary.

Most of all, it must be insisted that public opinion is all the time following up these excrescences on party life, and that public opinion presses forward year by year at an absolutely sure pace, and purifies the public atmosphere. All these evil conditions are easy to change. When Franklin came to England he was alarmed to see what fearful corruptions prevailed in English official life; such a thing was unknown at that time in America. Now England has long ago wiped out the blot, and America, which fell into its political mire a half-century later, will soon be out again and free; just as it has got rid of other nuisances. Every year brings some advance, and the student of American conditions should not let himself be deceived by appearances.

On the surface, for instance, the last mayoralty election in New York City would seem to indicate a downward tendency. New York two years previously had turned out the scandalous Tammany Hall gang with Van Wyck and his brutal extortionist, Chief of Police Devery, by a non-partisan alliance of all decent people in the city. New York had elected by a handsome majority Seth Low, the President of Columbia University, to be its mayor, and thereby had instated the principle that, the best municipal government must use only business methods and be independent of political parties. Seth Low was supported by distinguished reformers in both parties, and was brilliantly successful in placing the entire city government on a distinctly higher level. The public schools, the general hygiene, the highways, and the police force were all thoroughly cleansed of impure elements and reformed without regard to party, on the purest and most business-like principle.

And then came the day for another election. Once more the independent voters, including the best men in both parties, the intellectual leaders and the socially dominant forces of the city, were banded together again to save their city of three million inhabitants from party politics, and to insure by their co-operation a continuance of the honest, business-like administration. They made Seth Low their candidate again; he was opposed by McClellan, the candidate of Tammany Hall, the party which loudly declares that “To the victors belong the spoils,” and that the thousands of municipal offices are to be the prey of party adherents. This was the candidate of the party which admitted that all the hopes of the worst proletariat, of prostitution and vagabondage, depended on its success; the candidate of a party which declared that it would everywhere rekindle the “red light,” that it would not enforce the unpopular temperance laws, and that it would leave the city “wide open.” On the day of election 251,000 votes were cast for Mayor Low, but 313,000 for Colonel McClellan.

Now, does this really indicate that the majority of the city of New York consists of gamblers, extortioners, and criminals? One who read the Republican campaign literature issued before the election might suppose so. After reading on every street corner and fence and on giant banners the campaign cry, “Vote for Low and keep the grafters out,” one might think that 300,000 pick-pockets had united to force out a clean administration and to place corruption on the throne. But on looking more closely at the situation one must see that no such thing was in question. Seth Low had furnished a clean administration, yet not a perfect one, and his mistakes had so seriously disaffected many citizens that they would rather endure the corruption of Tammany Hall than the brusqueness and various aggravations which threatened from his side.

Of these grievances, a typical one was the limitation of German instruction in the public schools. From the pedagogical point of view, this was not wholly wrong; and leading educationists, even German ones, had recommended the step. But at the same time the great German population was bitterly offended, and the whole discussions of the school board had angered the German citizens enough to cool off considerably their enthusiasm for reform. Then on top of this, Low’s administration had rigorously enforced certain laws of Sunday observance which the German part of the population cordially hated. Here, too, Mayor Low was undoubtedly right; he was enforcing the law; but when two years previously he had wished to win over the German vote, he had promised more than he could fulfill. But, most of all, Seth Low was socially an aristocrat, who had no common feeling with the masses; and whenever he spoke in popular assemblies he displayed no magnetism. Every one felt too keenly that he looked down on them from his exalted social height.

Against him were the Tammany people, of whom at least one thing must be said: they know the people and their needs. They have grown up among the people. In contrast to many a Republican upstart who, according to the European fashion, is servile to his superiors and harsh with his inferiors, these Tammany men are harsh to their superiors—that is, they shake the nerves of the more refined—but are servile before the masses and comply with every wish. And most of all, they are really the friends of the populace, sincerely true and helpful to it. Moreover, just these great masses have more to suffer under a good administration than under the corrupt government which lets every one do as he likes. These people do not notice that the strict, hygienic administration reduced the death-rate and the list of casualties, and improved the public schools; but they notice when for such improvements they have to pay a cent more in taxation, or have to put safer staircases or fire-escapes on their houses, or to abandon tottering structures, or if they are not allowed to beg without a permit, or are forbidden to throw refuse in the streets. In short, these people notice a slight expense or an insignificant prohibition, and do not see that in the end they are greatly benefited. And so, when the day of reckoning comes, when the election campaigns are fought, in which distinguished reformers deliver scholarly addresses on the advantages of a non-partisan administration while the candidates of the people excite them with promises that they shall be free from all these oppressive burdens—it is no wonder that Seth Low is not returned to the City Hall, and that McClellan, who by the way is a highly educated and cultured politician, is entrusted with the city government.

Such an outcome is not a triumph for vice and dishonour. In two years the reformers will probably conquer again, since every administration makes its enemies and so excites opposition. But there can be no doubt that even on this occasion public opinion, with its desire to reform, has triumphed, although the official friends of reform were outdone; such a man as the former Chief of Police, Devery, will be impossible in the future. Public opinion sees to it that when the two parties stand in opposition the fight is fought each successive time on a higher level. And Tammany of to-day as compared with the Tammany of years gone by is the best evidence for the victory of public opinion and the reformers.

Chapter Ten: External Political Problems

The attitude of America in international affairs can hardly be referred to any one special trait of mind. If one were to seek a simple formula, one would have to recognize in it a certain antithesis of mood; an opposition which one encounters in the American people under the most varied circumstances, and which perhaps depends on the fact that it is a people which has developed an entirely new culture, although on the basis of the high culture of the Old World. When we come to speak of American intellectual life we shall have again to consider this extraordinary combination of traits. The people are youthful and yet mature; they are fresher and more spontaneous than those of other mature nations, and wiser and more mature than those of other youthful nations; and thus it is that in the attitude of the Americans toward foreign affairs the love of peace and the delight in war combine to make a contrast which has rarely been seen. Doubtless there is an apparent contradiction here, but this contradiction is the historical mark of the national American temperament; and it is not to be supposed that the contradiction is solved by ascribing these diverse opinions to diverse elements in the population, by saying, for instance, that one group of citizens is more warlike, another more peaceable; that perhaps the love of hostile interference springs from the easily excited masses, while the love of peace is to be sought in their more thoughtful leaders, or that perhaps, on the other hand, the masses are peaceably industrious while their leaders draw them into war.

Such is not at all the case. There is not any such contrast between the masses and the classes; personal differences of opinion there are and some individuals are more volatile than others, but the craze for expansion in its newest form finds strong supporters and violent opponents in all parties and occupations. The most characteristic feature is, that just those who show the love for war most energetically are none the less concerned, and most earnestly so, for the advance of peace. President Roosevelt is the most striking example of the profound combination of these opposing tendencies in one human breast.

Every movement toward peace, in fact every international attempt toward doing away with the horrors of war, has found in the New World the most jealous and enthusiastic supporters; whenever two nations have come to blows the sympathies of the Americans have always been on the side of the weaker nation, no matter which seemed to be the side of justice. And the mere circumstance that two nations have gone to war puts the stronger power in a bad light in the eyes of America.

The nation has grown strong by peaceful industry; its greatest strength has lain in trade and the arts, its best population has come across the ocean in order to escape the military burdens of Europe; and the policy of the founders of the Republic, now become a tradition, was always to hold aloof from any dealings with the quarrelsome continent of Europe. During the short time of its existence, the United States has settled forty-nine international disputes in a peaceable court of arbitration, and oftentimes these have been in extremely important matters; and America has been a party in over half of the disputes which have been settled before a court of arbitration in recent times. America was an important participant in the founding of the Peace Tribunal at The Hague. When negotiations for that tribunal threatened to be frustrated by the opposing nations of Europe, the American government sent its representatives to the very centre of the opposition, and won a victory for the side of peace.

It is almost a matter of course that it is the munificent gift of an American which has erected a palace at The Hague for this international Peace Tribunal. While the European nations are groaning under the burden of their standing armies, and are weakened by wars over religious matters or the succession of dynasties, happy America knows nothing of this; her pride is the freedom of her citizens, her battles are fought out at the ballot-box. The disputes between sects and royal houses are unknown in the New World; its only neighbours are two oceans on the east and west, and on the north and south good friends. No end of progress remains to be made, but everything works together under the protection of the American Constitution to produce a splendid home in the New World for peace. America is the one world power which makes for peace; and it will only depend on the future growth of this nation, which has been ordained to become such an example, whether the idea of peace will finally prevail throughout the world over the immoral settlement of disputes by mere force of arms.

All this is not merely the programme of a party or of a group of people, but the confession of faith of every American. The American finds no problem here, since none would dispute the contention. It has all impressed itself so fully on the consciousness of the American people that it gives to the whole nation a feeling of moral superiority. Nor is this merely the pathos uttered in moral orations; it is the conviction with which every child grows up and with which every farmer goes to his plough, every artisan and merchant to his machine and desk, and the President to his executive chamber. And this conviction is so admirable that it has always been contagious, and all Europe has become quite accustomed to considering the Republic across the water as the firmest partisan of peace. The Republic has in fact been this, is now, and always will be so; while the riddle is—how it can be such a friend of peace when it was conceived in war, has settled its most serious problems by war, has gone to war again and again, has almost played with declarations of war, is at war to-day, and presumably will be at war many times again.

The Spanish war has shown clearly to European onlookers the other side of the shield, and many have at once concluded that the boasted American love of peace has been from the first a grand hypocrisy, that at least under McKinley’s administration an entirely new spirit had suddenly seized the New World. But McKinley’s predecessor, Cleveland, in the disputes arising between England and Venezuela, had waved the sabre until it hissed so loudly that it was not at all due to the American love of peace but rather to England’s preoccupation in the Transvaal which prevented the President’s message and the national love of interference from stirring up a war. And it is now several years since the successor of McKinley moved into the White House, yet McKinley’s war is still going on; for although a war has never been officially declared in the Philippines, war seems the only correct name for the condition which there prevails.

This Philippine question is a real political problem. That America is to serve the interests of peace is certain; every one is agreed on that; and the great majority of the people was also enthusiastically in favour of ending the Spanish misrule in Cuba. But the same is not true of the war in the Philippines, and becomes less true every day. The enthusiasts have subsided, the masses have become indifferent, while the politicians carry on the discussion; and since it is a question of motives which cannot be put aside for the present, and which at any time may so excite the nation as to become the centre of political discussion, it is well worth while to look more fully into these points.

The imperialists say that the events in the Pacific Ocean have followed exactly the traditions of the land; that expansion has always been a fundamental instinct of the nation; that its whole development shows that from the day when the Union was founded it commenced to increase its territory. The tremendous expansion gained by the purchase of Louisiana was followed by the annexation of Florida, and still later by that of the great tract called Texas. In the war with Mexico the region between Texas and California was acquired. Alaska was next gathered in. The narrow strip originally occupied by the Thirteen States became a huge country within a century, and thus the nation simply remains true to its traditions in stretching out over the ocean and carrying the Stars and Stripes toward Asia.

To this the anti-imperialists reply, on the contrary, that the United States is repudiating an honourable history and trampling down that which has been sacred for centuries. For if there has been any underlying principle at all to guide the United States in moments of perplexity, it has been a firm faith in the rights of people to govern themselves. The United States has never exchanged or acquired a foot of land without the consent of those who dwelt thereon. Where such lands have held nothing but the scattered dwellings of isolated colonists there existed no national consent to be consulted, and where there were no people no national self-government could come in question; neither Louisiana, California, nor Alaska was settled by a real nation, and Texas had of itself decided to become independent of Mexico. But the Philippines are inhabited by ten million people, with striking national traits and an organized will; and the United States, for the first time in history, now misuses its strength by oppressing another nation and forcing its own will on a prostrate people.

Now the imperialists reply they do not mean at all to dispute the right of self-government, a principle on which the greatness of our nation is founded. But it is a narrow and absurd conception of self-government which regards every people, however backward and unruly, capable thereof, and divinely privileged to misrule itself. The right of self-government must be deserved; it is the highest possession of civilized nations, and they have earned it by labour and self-discipline. The Americans derive their right to govern themselves from the toil of thirty generations. The Filipinos have still to be educated up to such a plane. To this the anti-imperialists enquire, Is that to be called education which subdues, like rebels, a people desirous of freedom? Are you helping those people by sending soldiers to assert your sovereignty?

And the imperialists reply again that we have sufficiently shown, in the case of Cuba, how seriously we take our moral obligations toward weaker peoples. When we had done away by force of arms with all Spanish domination in America, and had Cuba quite in our power, all Europe was convinced that we should never relax our hold, and that the war would result simply in a mere annexation of the rich island; in short, that we should pursue a typical European policy. But we have shown the world that America does not send her sons to battle merely for aggrandizement, but only in a moral cause; just as we demanded of the conquered Spaniards no indemnity, so we have made a general sacrifice for Cuba. We have laboured tirelessly for the hygiene and the education of the island, have strengthened its trade and awakened to new life the country which had been desolated by Spanish misrule, and, having finished the work, we have restored to Cuba her freedom and her right of self-government; and we recognize that we owe a similar duty to the Philippines. We have not sought to obtain those islands. At the outset of the war no American foresaw that the island kingdom in the tropics, ten thousand miles away, would fall into our hands; but when the chain of events brought it about, we could not escape the call of duty. Were we to leave the discontented Philippine population once more to the cruelty of their Spanish masters, or were we to displace the Spaniards and then leave the wild race of the islands to their own anarchy, and thus invoke such internal hostilities as would again wipe out all the beginnings which had been made toward culture? Was it not rather our duty to protect those who turned to us, against the vengeance of their enemies, and before all else to establish order and quietude? The anti-imperialists retort—the quietude of a grave-yard. If America’s policy had been truly unselfish, it should have made every preparation for dealing with the Philippines as it had dealt with Cuba; instead of fighting with the Filipinos we should at once have co-operated with Aguinaldo and sent over a civil instead of a military regiment. Nor is the world deceived into supposing that our boasted civil rule in the Philippines is anything more than a name, used in order somewhat to pacify the sentimentalists of the New England States; while in reality our rule is a military one, and the small success of a few well-meaning civil officials merely distracts the world’s attention from the constant outbreaks of war. We have not worked from the point of view of the Philippines, but from that of the United States.

The imperialists answer that it is no disgrace to have been patriotic to our Fatherland; the national honour requires us, indeed, to remain for the present in the Philippines, and not to take down the flag which we have hoisted so triumphantly. We should not flee before a few disaffected races living in those islands. Then the other side replies, you have not protected the honour of your nation, but you have worked its disgrace. The honour of America has been the moral status of its army; it was America’s boast that its army had never lost the respect of an enemy, and that it had held strictly aloof from every unnecessary cruelty. But America has learned a different lesson in the Philippines, and such a one as all thoughtful persons have foreseen; for when a nation accustomed to a temperate climate goes to the tropics to war with wild races which have grown up in cruelty and the love of revenge, it necessarily forgets its moral standards, and gives free rein to the lowest and worst that is in it. The American forces have learned there, to their disgrace, to conquer by deception and trickery; to be cruel and revengeful, and so return torture for torture.

Then the imperialists say that this is not a question of the army which was landed in the tropical islands, but of the whole American people, which undertook new duties and responsibilities for the islands, and wished to try, not only its military, but also its political, economic, and social powers along new lines. A people also must grow and have its higher aspirations. The youthful period of the American nation is over; manhood has arrived, when new and dangerous responsibilities have to be assumed. To this the anti-imperialists reply, that a nation is surely not growing morally when it gives up the principles which have always been its sole moral strength. If it gives up believing in the freedom of every nation and carries on a war of subjugation, it has renounced all moral development, and instead of growing it begins internally to decay. But this, the imperialists say, is absurd—since, outwardly, at least, we are steadily growing; our reputation before other nations is increasing with our military development; we have become a powerful factor in the powers of the world, and our Philippine policy shows that our navy can conquer even in remote parts of the earth, and that in the future America will be a power to reckon with everywhere. But, on the contrary, say the others, our nation held a strong position so long as, in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, it was able to keep any European power from getting a foothold on the American continents, and so long as we made the right of self-government a fundamental principle of our international politics. But the instant we adopted a policy of conquest and assumed the right to subjugate inferior peoples because our armies were the stronger, the Monroe Doctrine became at once and for the first time an empty phrase, if not a piece of arrogance. We are no better than the next nation; we have no right to prevent others from acting like ourselves, and we have sacrificed our strong position, and shall be led from war to war, and the fortunes of war are always uncertain.

The imperialists reply somewhat more temperately:—Ah, but the new islands will contribute very much to our trade. Their possession means the beginning of a commercial policy which will put the whole Pacific Ocean at the disposal of the American merchant. Who can foresee what tremendous developments may come from availing ourselves of regions lying so advantageously? When Congress in 1803 started to buy the great Province of Louisiana from France, there were also narrow-minded protests. At that time, too, anti-imperialists and fanatics became excited, and said that it was money thrown away; the land would never be populated. While to-day, a hundred years later, the world prepares to celebrate the anniversary of the purchase of Louisiana by a magnificent exposition at St. Louis—a transaction which has meant for the country a tremendous gain in wealth and culture. America is destined to be the mistress of the Pacific Ocean, and as soon as the canal is built across the isthmus the economic importance of the Philippines will appear more clearly every day. The anti-imperialists deny this. The financial statement of the entire war with Spain to the present moment shows that $600,000,000 have been wasted and ten thousand young men sacrificed without any advantage being so much as in sight. Whereto the imperialists reply:—There are other advantages. War is a training. The best thing which the nation can win is not riches, but strength; and in the very prosperity of America the weakening effect of luxury is greatly to be feared. The nerves of the nation are steeled in the school of war, and its muscles hardened. But the other side says that our civilization requires thousands of heroic deeds of the most diverse kinds, more than it needs those of the field of battle; and that the American doctrine of peace is much better adapted to strengthen the moral courage of the nation and to stimulate it than the modern training of war, which, in the end, is only a question of expenditure and science. What we chiefly need is serious and moral republican virtue. The incitements toward acquisition and the spirit of war, on the other hand, destroy the spirit of our democracy, and breed un-American, autocratic ambitions. War strengthens the blind faith of the leaders in their own dictatorial superiority, and so annihilates the feeling of independence and responsibility in the individual; and this is just the way for the nation to lose its moral and political integrity. The true patriotism which our youth ought to learn is not found in noisy jingoism, but in the silent fidelity to the Declaration of Independence of our fathers.

Thus the opinions are waged against one another, and so they will continue to be. We must emphasize merely again and again that that majority which to-day is on the side of the imperialists believes at the same time enthusiastically in the international movement for peace, and quite disinterestedly favours, as far as possible, the idea of the peace tribunal. Most of all, the treatment of Cuba certifies to the honourable and peaceful tendencies of the dominant party. That which was done under Wood’s administration for the hygiene of a country which had always been stricken with yellow fever, for the school and judicial systems of that unfortunate people, is remarkable; and the readiness with which the new republic was afterward recognized, and with which, finally, by special treaties extensive tariff reductions were made to a people really dependent on trade with America, makes one of the most honourable pages in American history. And all this happened through the initiative of these same men whose Philippine policy has been styled in the Senate Napoleonic. Thus the fact remains that there is an almost inexplicable mixture in the American nature of justice and covetiveness, conscience and indifference, love of peace and love of war.

The latest phase in expansion has been toward the south. America has assumed control of Panama. Constitutionally, the case is somewhat different here. Panama belonged to the Republic of Colombia, and when the government of Colombia, which conducts itself for the most part like the king and his advisers in a comic opera, tried to extort more money than was thought just from Washington before it would sign the treaty giving the United States a right to build a canal through Panama, and at first pretended to decline the treaty altogether, a revolution broke out in the part of the country which was chiefly affected. Panama declared itself an independent state, and the United States recognized its claim to independence, and concluded the canal treaty, not with Colombia, but with the upstart government of Panama. This was really part and parcel of the general imperialistic movement. We need not ask whether the American government encouraged Panama to secede; it certainly did nothing of the sort officially, although it is perfectly certain that the handful of people in Panama would not have had the slightest chance of escaping unpunished by Colombia if it had not been for American protection; indeed, it seemed to feel sure beforehand that the United States would keep Colombia at bay. And in fact, the baby republic was recognized with all the speed of telegraph and cable, and the treaty was signed before Panama had become quite aware of its own independence; while at the same time Colombia’s endeavour to bring the rebellious district into line was suppressed with all the authority of her mighty neighbour.

It is not to be denied that this transaction called into play new principles of international politics; nor can it be excused on the ground that new governments have been quickly recognized before. Never before had the United States declared a rebellion successful so long as the old government still stood, and the new one was able to hold out only by virtue of the interference of the United States itself. It is to be admitted that this was an imperialistic innovation, as was the subjugation of the Filipinos. But we should not be so narrow as to condemn a principle because it is new. All past history makes the expansion of American influence necessary; the same forces which make a state great continue to work through its later history. America must keep on in its extension, and if the methods by which the present nations grow are necessarily different from those by which the little Union was able to stretch out into uninhabited regions a hundred years ago, then, of course, the expansion of the twentieth century must take on other forms than it had in the nineteenth. But expansion itself cannot stop, nor can it be altered by mere citations from the Declaration of Independence, or pointings to the petty traditions of provincial days. The fight which the anti-imperialists are waging is thoroughly justified in so far as it is a fight against certain outgrowths of such expansion which have appeared in the Philippines, and most of all when it is against the loss to the Republic, through expansion, of its moral principles and of its finer and deeper feelings through the intoxication of power. But the fight is hopeless if it is waged against expansion itself. The course of the United States is marked out.

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It requires no special gift of prophecy to point out that the next expansion will be toward the north. Just as the relations in Panama were fairly obvious a half year before the catastrophe came, the suspicion cannot be now put by that at a time not far hence the Stars and Stripes will wave in the northwestern part of Canada, and that there too the United States will be unwilling to lower its flag.

A newspaper is published in Boston which announces every day, at the top of the page, in bold type, that it is the first duty of the United States to annex Canada. On the other hand, one hears the opinion that nothing could be worse for the United States than to receive this immense, thinly populated territory even as a gift. There are the same differences of opinion on the other side of the boundary; some say that the Canadians are glad to be free from the problems which face the United States, from its municipal politics, its boss rule in political parties, and from the negro and Philippine questions, and that Canadian fidelity to the English Crown is not to be doubted for a moment. While others admit quite openly that to be annexed to the United States is the only natural thing that can happen to Canada. The immediate future will probably see some sort of compromise. It is wholly unlikely that the eastern part of Canada, in view of all its traditions, will prove untrue to its mother country; whereas the western part of Canada is under somewhat different economic conditions; it has so different a history, and is to-day so much more closely related to the United States than to England that the political separation will hardly continue very long. The thousands who have gone from the United States across the Canadian frontier in order to settle the unpeopled Northwest will, in the not distant future, give rise to some occasion in which economic and political logic will decree a transfer of the allegiance of Western Canada, with the exception of a narrow strip of land along the Pacific Coast. The area of the United States would then include a new region of about 250 million acres of wheat lands, of which to-day hardly two millions are in cultivation.

The Canadian problem, of course, arose neither to-day nor yesterday. The first permanent colony in Canada was a French colony, begun in the year 1604. Frenchmen founded Quebec in the year 1608, and French settlements developed along the St. Lawrence River. In the year 1759 General Wolfe conquered Quebec for the English, and in the following year the whole of Canada fell into their power. English and Scotch immigrants settled more and more numerously in Upper Canada. The country was divided in 1791 in two provinces, which were later called Ontario and Quebec; and in 1867, by an act of the British Parliament, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were made into one country. A short time thereafter the government of the new country bought the possessions of the Hudson Bay Company, and soon afterward the large western region called Manitoba was organized as a distinct province. In 1871 British Columbia was taken in, and in the eighties this extensive western land was divided into four provinces. During this time there were all sorts of interruptions, wars with the Indians, and disputes over boundaries; but there has never been open warfare between Canada and the United States. The many controversies that have arisen have been settled by treaty, and a court of arbitration met even recently in London to settle a dispute about boundaries which for many years had occasioned much feeling. It was a question whether the boundary of the Northwest should lie so as to leave to Canada a way to the coast without crossing United States territory. The boundaries were defined by the treaties as lying a certain distance from the coast; was this coast meant to be mainland, or was it coastline marked out by the off-lying groups of islands? This was a question of great economic importance for a part of Canada. The court decided in favour of the United States, but the decision does not belong on one of the most honourable pages of American history. It had been agreed that both England and the United States should appoint distinguished jurists to the court of arbitration; and this the English did, while the United States sent prejudiced politicians. This has created some embitterment in Canada, and the mood is not to-day entirely friendly, although this will doubtless give way in view of the great economic development which works toward union with the United States.

Such a union would be hindered very much more by the friendly relations existing between the United States and England. At the time when the family quarrel between mother and daughter countries had made an open breach, it seemed almost certain that America would take the first good opportunity of robbing England of her Canadian possessions. Even before the early colonies decided on revolution, they tried to draw the northern provinces into their train. And when the new Union was formed, it seemed a most natural thing for all English speaking inhabitants of the American Continent to participate therein. It was no friendliness toward England that diverted the expansion of the young country toward the south rather than toward the north. It was rather the influence of the Southern States of the Federation which encouraged the expansion toward the south, because in that way their adjacent territory was increased, and therewith the number of the slave states represented in Congress; and the institution of slavery was thereby better protected from Northern interference. England was the hereditary foe of the country for an entire century, and every school boy learned from his history book to hate England and to desire revenge. But this has been wholly changed in recent years by the sympathy which John Bull showed during the Spanish war, and by his far-seeing magnanimity shown on a hundred occasions. There are already preparations making for a special court of arbitration to sit on all Anglo-American disputes, and the mood of the American people is certainly inclined to avoid everything that would unnecessarily offend England. American politicians would thus hesitate very long before attempting so bold a step as the annexation of Canada; and thus it is that the Canadian problem gets into the programme of neither party. Another consideration which perhaps makes a difference is that no party is quite sure which side would be the gainer; whether among the millions of people in the Canadian West there would be found to be more Republicans or Democrats. Therefore, Canada is not now an issue between the parties. Nevertheless, the problem grows more and more important in public opinion, and however much Congress may be concerned to avoid a war with England, and determined never deliberately to bring about any disloyalty in Canada, we may be certain that once the American farmers and gold miners in Northwestern Canada have set the pro-American ball rolling, then the general mood will speedily change and the friendly resolutions toward England which will be proposed by Senators will sound very feeble.

The most natural desire, which seems to be wide-spread, is for reciprocity with Canada. Both countries are aware that they are each other’s best purchasers, and yet they put difficulties in the way of importing each other’s products. American industry has already invested more than $100,000,000 for branch factories in Canada, in order to avoid duties; and the industry of New England would doubtless be much benefited if Canadian coal might be delivered duty-free along the Atlantic coast; nevertheless, the chief disadvantages in the present arrangements fall to Canada. A treaty was concluded in 1854 which guaranteed free entrance to the markets of the United States for all Canadian natural products, and during the twelve years in which the treaty was in force, Canadian exports increased fourfold. Then the American protective tariff was restored; and while, for example, the agricultural products which Canada sold to the United States in 1866 amounted to more than $25,000,000, they had decreased by the beginning of the twentieth century to $7,367,000; and all Canadian exports to the United States, with the exception of coin and precious metals, in spite of the tremendous growth of both countries, had increased at the same time only 5 per cent. Canada, on the other hand, contented herself with modest duties, so that the commerce of the United States with Canada has increased from $28,000,000 in the year 1866 to $117,000,000 in the year 1900. The necessary result of this policy of exclusion on the part of the United States has necessarily been closer economic relations between Canada and England. The Canadian exports to Great Britain have increased steadily, and the bold plans of those who are to-day agitating a tariff union for all Great Britain would, of course, specially benefit Canadian commerce.

But the United States knows this, and does not fail to think on the future. The agitation for new commercial treaties with Canada does not spring from the supporters of free-trade, but from some most conservative protectionists, and may be ascribed even to McKinley and Dingley; and this agitation is steadily growing. On the other hand, Canada is by no means unanimously enthusiastic for the universal British reciprocity alliance. The industrial sections of Eastern Canada see things with different eyes from the agrarians of Western Canada, and opinions are just as diverse as they are in England. The economic needs of the East and West are so fundamentally different, and since the West so greatly needs reciprocity, it is coming more and more to look for a solution of this problem by seeking, through a union of the West with the United States, all that which England cannot offer. The government of Canada, which comprises remarkably effective and intelligent men, is aiming to nip the incipient disaffection of the West in the bud, by means of its railroad policy. Railroad lines connect to-day the western portion of Canada much more closely with the eastern portion than with the northern parts of the United States.

The economic possibilities of Western Canada are enormous, and would suffice for a population of a hundred million. The supply of lumber exceeds that of the United States. Its gold regions are more extensive, its coal and iron supplies are inexhaustible, its nickel mines the richest in the world; it has twice the supply of fish of the United States, and its arable lands could feed the population of the United States and Europe together. Everything depends on making the most of these possibilities, and the Canadian of the West looks with natural envy on the huge progress which the entirely similar regions of the United States are making, and is moved to reflect how different things would be with him if only the boundary lines could be altered.

More than anything else, however, the Westerner feels that a spirit of enterprise, industrial energy, and independent force is needed to exploit these enormous natural resources, such as the inhabitants of a dependent colony can never have. Even when a colony like Canada possesses a certain independence in the administration of its own affairs, it is still only the appearance and not the fact of self-government. One sees clearly how colourless and dull the intellectual life of Canada is, and how in comparison with the very different life of England on the one hand, and of the United States on the other, the colonial spirit saps and undermines the spirit of initiative. The people do not suffer under such a rule; they do not feel the political lack of fresh air, but they take on a subdued and listless way of life, trying to adapt themselves to an alien political scheme, and not having the courage to speak out boldly. This depression is evinced in all their doings; and this is not the spirit which will develop the resources of Western Canada. But this infinite, new country attracts to its pioneer labours fresh energies which are found south of the Canadian line and across the ocean. The Scotch, Germans, Swedes, and especially Americans emigrate thither in great numbers. The farmers in the western United States are to-day very glad to sell their small holdings, in order to purchase broad tracts of new, fresh ground in Canada, where there is still no lack of room. They will be the leaders in this new development of the West. And while they bring with them their love of work and enterprise, they are of course without sympathy with Canadian traditions; nor do they feel any patriotism toward the country: their firmest convictions point toward such political freedom as the United States offers. Whether the tariff schemes of England will be able to win back some advantages for Canada, only the future can say. It is more likely that inasmuch as the Philippine agitation has extended the influence of the United States into the tropics, the climatic equilibrium will be restored by another extension into the Canadian Northwest.

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The relations of the United States to Cuba and to the Philippines, to Panama and to Canada, have been regulated by the immediate needs of the country without bringing into special prominence any general principles. Economic interest and general ethics have so far sufficed, and only here and there has mention been made of the fundamental doctrines contained in the Declaration of Independence. The case of South America is quite different; the policy of the United States toward South America is dictated to-day neither by economic interests nor moral principles; in fact, it is a mockery of morals and a great prejudice to American industry. The sole source of this policy is an abstract political doctrine, which a long time ago was both economically and morally necessary, but is to-day entirely without value; this is the Monroe Doctrine. The observance of this famous doctrine is one of the most interesting instances of the survival of an outlived political principle, and the blind way in which this prejudice is still favoured by the masses, so that even the leading politicians would not dare, at the present time, to defend the real interests of the country by opposing this doctrine, shows clearly how democracy favours rule of thumb, and how the American people is in its thought conservative to the last degree. The Monroe Doctrine has done the United States good service, and redounded to both its profit and its honour. And so no one ventures to disturb it, although it has long ceased to bring anything except disadvantage. Some of the best people know this; but where the people rule it is as true as where a monarch rules, that the misfortune of rulers is not to wish to hear the truth.

The blind folly of the Americans in holding tenaciously to the antiquated Monroe Doctrine is surpassed only by the madness of those Europeans who wish to take up arms against that doctrine. All the declarations of the Old World to the effect that the Monroe Doctrine is an unheard of piece of arrogance, and that the Americans have no right to assert themselves in such a way, and that it is high time forcibly to call their right in question, are historically short-sighted as well as dangerous. They are unhistorical, because there really was a time when this doctrine was necessary to the existence of the United States, and when, therefore, the country had a right to assert such doctrine; and now that it has been silently respected for a hundred years, any protest against it comes too late. Opposition to the doctrine from the side of Europe would be foolish, because no European country has any really vital reason for calling it in question, and there would be a very lively war indeed if Europe were to try to overstep the Monroe Doctrine as long as the great mass of the American people still hold it sacred. The Monroe Doctrine must and will succumb, but it will only be through the convictions of the Americans, never because some European nation threatens to batter down the wall. The logic of events is, after all, stronger than the mere inertia of inherited doctrines. The hour seems near when the error and folly of the Monroe Doctrine are about to be felt in wider circles than ever before. The opposite side is already ably supported in addresses and essays. Soon the opposition will reach the newspapers, which are to-day, of course, still unanimous on the popular side; and whenever a wholesome movement commences among the American people it generally spreads with irresistible speed. We have seen how rapidly the imperialistic idea took hold on the masses, and the repudiation of the theory of Monroe will follow quite as rapidly; since the nation cannot, for the sake of a mere whim, permanently forget its best interests. It is only a question of overcoming the inertia of long custom.

The spirit of the Monroe Doctrine was abroad long before the time of Monroe. It was agreed, from the earliest days of the federal government, that the new nation should keep itself clear of all political entanglement with Europe, that it would not mix in with the destinies of European peoples, and that it would expect of those peoples that they should not spread the boundaries of their possessions over to the American continents. When President Washington, in 1796, took his farewell of the nation, he recommended an extension of commercial relations with Europe, but entire aloofness from their political affairs. “The nations of Europe,” he said, “have important problems which do not concern us as a free people. The causes of their frequent misunderstandings lie far outside of our province, and the circumstance that America is geographically remote will facilitate our political isolation, and the nations who go to war will hardly challenge our young nation, since it is clear that they will have nothing to gain by it.”

This feeling, that America was to have nothing to do with European politics, and that the European nations should on no condition be allowed to extend their sphere of action on to the American continents, grew steadily. This national conviction rested primarily on two motives: firstly, America wanted to be sure of its national identity. It felt instinctively that, if it were to become involved in European conflicts, the European powers might interfere in the destinies of the smaller and growing nation, and that the danger of such interference would increase tremendously if the great nations of Europe were to gain a foothold in the neighbourhood of the young republic on this side of the ocean. In the second place, this nation felt that it had a moral mission to perform. The countries of Europe were groaning under oppression, whereas this nation had thrown off the English yoke, and proposed to keep the new continent free from such misrule. In order to make it the theatre for an experiment of modern democracy, no absolute monarchs were to set foot in this new world; the self-government of the people was to remain unquestioned, and every republic was to be free to work out its own salvation.

Thus the desire for self-protection and a moral interest in the fight against absolutism have prescribed a course of holding aloof from European affairs, and of demanding that Europe should not reach out toward the American continents. This has become a cardinal principle in American politics. The opportunity soon came to express this principle very visibly in international politics. The Holy Alliance between Austria, Russia, and Prussia was believed by America, ever since 1822, to have been arranged in order to regain for Spain the Spanish colonies in South America. England wished to ally itself with the United States; but they, with excellent tact, steered their course alone. In 1822 the United States recognized the independence of the Central American republics; and in 1823, President Monroe, in his message to Congress, which was probably penned by John Quincy Adams, who was then Secretary of State, set down this policy in black and white. Monroe had previously asked ex-President Jefferson for his opinion, and Jefferson had written that our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to involve ourselves in European disputes; and our second, never to permit Europe to meddle in cis-Atlantic affairs, North and South America having their own interests, which are fundamentally different from those of Europe. Now the message of President Monroe contained the following declarations: “That we should consider any attempt on their part [of the allied powers] to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety,” and “that we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing [governments on this side of the water whose independence we had acknowledged], or controlling in any manner their destiny by any European power, in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

Thus the famous Monroe Doctrine was announced to the world, and became an international factor sufficiently potent even to prevent Napoleon from realizing his plans regarding Mexico, and in more recent times to protect Venezuela from the consequences of her misdeeds. And although, at just that time of the Venezuelan dispute, the old Monroe Doctrine was in so far modified that the Presidential message conceded to European powers their right to press their claims by force of arms, so long as they claimed no permanent right of occupation, nevertheless the discussions ended with the extreme demand that foreign powers should be content with the promise of a South American state to pay its debts, and should receive no security; nor did the United States give security for the payment, either. After eighty years the doctrine is still asserted as it has been from the first, although the situation is in all respects very different. A few brief instances of these changes must suffice us.

In the first place, the two fundamental motives which gave rise to the doctrine, and in which all important documents are so clearly enunciated from the time of Washington to that of Monroe, have long since ceased to exist. The contrast between Europe as the land of tyranny and America as a democratic free soil, no longer holds; nor can the notion be bolstered up any longer, even for political ends. In the first place all countries of Western Europe now enjoy popular representation, while the Latin republics of South America, with the exception of Chili and the Argentine Republic, are the most absurd travesties of freedom and democracy. Conditions in Venezuela and Colombia are now pretty well known. It has been shown, for instance, that about one-tenth of the population consists of highly cultivated Spaniards, who take no part in politics, and suffer under a shameless administrative misrule; that some eight-tenths more are a harmless and ignorant proletariat of partly Spanish and partly Indian descent—people who likewise have no political interest, and who are afraid of the men in power—while the remaining tenth, which is of mixed Spanish, Indian, and negro blood, holds in its hands the so-called republican government, and keeps itself in power with every device of extortion and deception, and from time to time splits up into parties which throw the whole country into an uproar, merely for the personal advantages of the party leaders.

Even in America there is no longer a political back-woodsman who supposes that a republic like what the founders of the United States had in mind, can ever be made out of such material; and when, in spite of this, as in the negro question, some one gets up at the decisive moment of every discussion and tries to conjure with the Declaration of Independence, even such an appeal now often misses its effect. Since the Americans have gone into the Philippines they can no longer hold it an axiom that every government must be justified by the assent of the governed. People have learned to understand that the right of self-government must be earned, and is deserved only as the reward of hard work; that nations which have not yet grown to be orderly and peaceable need education like children who are not yet of age and do not know what is good for them. To say that the pitiable citizen of a corrupt South American republic is freer than the citizen of England, France, or Germany would be ridiculous; to protect the anarchy of these countries against the introduction of some European political system is at the present time not a moral obligation, surely, which the American Republic need feel itself called on to perform. The democratic idea, as realized in American life, has become much more influential on the governments of Europe than on those of South America, notwithstanding their lofty constitutions, which are filled with the most high-flown moral and philosophical utterances, but are obeyed by no one.

Now the other motive which supported the Monroe Doctrine, namely, the security of the United States and of their peaceful isolation, has to-day not the slightest validity; on the contrary, it is the superstitious faith in this doctrine which might conceivably endanger the peace of the country. Of course, this is only in so far as the doctrine applies to South America, not to Central America. It would indeed be impossible for the United States to allow, say Cuba, in passing from Spanish hands, to come into possession of another European nation; in fact, no part of Central America could become the seat of new European colonies without soon becoming a seat of war. The construction of the canal across the isthmus confirms and insures the moral and political leadership of the United States in Central America and the Antilles. But the situation is quite different in South America. The Americans are too apt to forget that Europe is much nearer to the United States than, for instance, the Argentine Republic, and that if one wants to go from New York to the Argentine Republic, the quickest way to go is by way of Europe. And the United States have really very little industrial intercourse or sympathy with the Latin republics. A European power adjoins the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean; and the fact that England, at one time their greatest enemy, abuts along this whole border has never threatened the peace of the United States; but it is supposed to be an instant calamity if Italy or England or Holland gets hold of a piece of land far away in South America, in payment of debts or to ensure the safety of misused colonists.

So long as the United States were small and weak, this exaggerated fear of unknown developments was intelligible; but now that the country is large and strong, and the supposed contrast between the Old and New Worlds no longer exists, since the United States are much more nearly like the countries of Europe than like the South American republics, any argument for the Monroe Doctrine on the ground of misgivings or fear comes to be downright hysterical. In the present age of ocean cables, geographical distances disappear. The American deals with the Philippines as if they were before his door, although they are much farther from Washington than any South American country is from Europe. Occasions for dispute with European countries may, on the other hand, come up at any time without the slightest reference to South America, since the United States have now become an international power; it requires merely an objectionable refusal to admit imports, some diplomatic mishap, or some unfairness in a matter of tariff.

If, on the other hand, the European countries were to have colonies in South America, as they have in Africa, no more occasions for complaint or dissatisfaction would accrue to the United States than from the similar colonies in Africa. No Russian or French or Italian colony in South America would ever in the world give rise to a difficulty with the United States through any real opposition of interests, and could only do so because a doctrine forbidding such colonies, which had been adopted under quite different circumstances, was still bolstered up and defended. If the Monroe Doctrine were to-day to be applied no farther than Central America, and South America were to be exempted, the possibilities of a conflict with European powers would be considerably decreased. That which was meant originally to guarantee peace, has, under the now wholly altered conditions, become the greatest menace of war.

But the main point is not that the motives which first led to the Monroe Doctrine are to-day invalid; the highest interests of the United States demand that this moribund doctrine be definitely given up. In the first place, it was never doubted that the exclusion of the Old World countries from the new American continents was only the conclusion of a premise, to the effect that the Americans themselves proposed to confine their political interests to their own continent. That was a wise policy in the times of Washington and Monroe; and whether or not it would have been wise in the time of McKinley, it was in any case at that time thrown over. The Americans have united with the European forces to do battle in China; they have extended their own dominion toward Asia; they have sent men-of-war to Europe on political missions; in short, the Americans have for years been extending their political influence around the world, and Secretary Hay has for a long time played an influential part in the European concert of powers. The United States have too often defended their Monroe claim on the ground of their own aloofness from these powers to feel justified in urging the claim when they no longer do keep aloof.

There is another and more important consideration. The real interest of the United States with regard to South America is solely that that land shall develop as far as possible, that its enormous treasures shall be exploited, and that out of a prosperous commercial continent important trade advantages shall accrue to the United States. This is possible only by the establishment of order there—the instant termination of anarchy. As long as the Monroe Doctrine is so unnecessarily held to, the miserable and impolitic stagnation of that ravaged country can never be bettered, since all the consequences of that doctrine work just in the opposite direction. It is sufficiently clear that progress will not be made until fresh, healthy, enterprising forces come in from outside; but now so soon as an Englishman or German or other European undertakes to earn his livelihood there, he is at once exposed to the shameless extortion and other chicanery of the so-called governments. And when European capital wishes to help the development of these countries, it is given absolutely no protection against their wretched politics. And all this is merely because the chartered rascals in power know that they can kill and steal with impunity, so long as the sacred Monroe Doctrine is there, like an enchanted wall, between them and the mother countries of their victims; they know only too well that no evil can come to them, since the statesmen at Washington are bound down to a prejudice, and required scrupulously to protect every hair on their precious heads. All this prevents any infusion of good blood from coming into these countries, and so abandons the land entirely to the indolence of its inhabitants. The conditions would be economically sounder, in almost every part of South America, if more immigrants came in, and more especially if those that came could take a larger part in the governments.

It would be somewhat different if the United States were to admit, as a consequence of the Monroe Doctrine, its own responsibility for the public administration of these countries, for their debts and for whatever crimes they commit; in other words, if the United States were virtually to annex South America. There is no thought of this; the United States have recently, in the Venezuela matter, clearly declined all responsibility. If, while declining the responsibility, the United States persist in affirming the Monroe Doctrine, they are to be charged inevitably with helping on anarchy, artificially holding back the progress of one of the richest and least developed portions of the earth, and thereby hurting their own commercial outlook more than any European protective tariff could possibly do. The greater part Europe takes in South America, so much the more will trade and commerce prosper; and in this pioneer labour, as history has shown, the patient German is the best advance-agent. Almost all the commercial relations between the United States and the South American republics are meditated by European, and especially German, business houses. The trade of the United States with South America is to-day astonishingly small, but when finally the Monroe barrier falls away it will develop enormously.

In all this America has not, from its previous policy, derived even the modest advantage of endearing itself to the inhabitants of these South American republics. Quite on the contrary, the Monroe Doctrine sounds like the ring of a sword in the South American ear. The American of the south is too vividly reminded that, although the province of the United States is after all only a finite portion of the New World, the nation has, nevertheless, set itself up as the master of both continents; and the natural consequence is, that all the small and weak countries join forces against the one great country and brood continually over their mistrust. The attempts of the United States to win the sympathies of the rest of America have brought no very great results—since, in the States, sympathy has been tempered with contempt, and in South America with fear. In short, the unprejudiced American must come back every time to the ceterum censeo that the Monroe Doctrine must finally be given up.

One point, however, must always be emphasized—that all the motives speaking against the doctrine will be efficient only so far as they appeal to the soul of the American people, and overthrow there the economically suicidal Monroe Doctrine. On the other hand, Europe would gain nothing by trying to tear in pieces the sacred parchment; no possible European interest in South America would compare in importance with the loss of friendship of the United States. And so long as the overwhelming majority of Americans holds to its delusions, the hostility would be a very bitter one. Indeed, there would be no surer way of stopping the gradual abandonment of the doctrine than for Europe to attempt to dispute its validity.

The process of dissolution must take place in America; but the natural interest and needs of the country so demand this development that it may be confidently expected. A new time has come: the provinciality of the Monroe Doctrine no longer does for America as a world power, and events follow their logical development; the time will not be long before the land of the Stars and Stripes will have extended across Western Canada to Alaska, and have annexed the whole of Central America; while the Latin republics of South America, on the other hand, will have been sprinkled in with English, Italian, French, and German colonies; and most of all, those republics themselves, by the lapse of the Monroe Doctrine, will have been won over to law and order, progress and economic health. The United States are too sound and too idealistic to continue to oppose the demands of progress for the sake of a mere fetish.

Thus the dominion of this world power will grow. The influence of the Army, and even more of the Navy, will help in this growth; even if the dreams of Captain Hobson are not realized. To be sure, the dangers will also grow apace; with a great navy comes the desire to use it. Nevertheless, one must not overlook the fact that international politics are much less a subject of public thought and discussion in America than in Europe. For the American thinks firstly of internal politics, and secondly of internal politics, and lastly of internal politics; and only at some distant day does he plan to meditate on foreign affairs. Unless the focus of public attention is distinctly transferred, the idea of expansion will meet with sufficient resistance to check its undue growth.

There is specially a thorough-going distrust of militarism, and an instinctive fear that it works against democracy and favours despotism; and there is, indeed, no doubt that the increasingly important relations between this country and foreign powers put more authority into the hands of the Presidential and Senatorial oligarchy than the general public likes to see. Every slightest concealment on the part of the President or his Cabinet goes against the feelings of the nation, and this state of feeling will hardly alter; it comes from the depths of the American character. On the other hand, it is combined with a positive belief in the moral mission of the United States, which are destined to gain their world-wide influence, not by might, but by the force of exemplary attainment, of complete freedom, admirable organization, and hard work. Any one who observes the profound sources of this belief will be convinced that any different feelings in the public soul, any greed of power, and any imperialistic instincts, are only a passing intoxication. In its profoundest being, America is a power for peace and for ethical ideals.

PART TWO ECONOMIC LIFE

Chapter Eleven: The Spirit of Self-Initiative

“The spirit aids! from anxious scruples freed, I write, ‘In the beginning was the deed!’” Others might write: In the beginning was the inexhaustible wealth of the soil; and still others, if their memory is short, might be tempted to say: In the beginning were the trusts! One who wishes to understand the almost fabulous economic development of the United States must, indeed, not simply consider its ore deposits and gold mines, its coal and oil fields, its wheat lands and cotton districts, its great forests and the supplies of water. The South Americans live no less in a country prospered by nature, and so also do the Chinese. South Africa offers entirely similar conditions to those of the North American continent, and yet its development has been a very different one; and, finally, a consideration of the peculiar forms of American industrial organization, as, for instance, the trusts, reveals merely symptoms and not the real causes which have been at work.

The colossal industrial successes, along with the great evils and dangers which have come with them, must be understood from the make-up of the American character. Just as we have traced the political life of America back to a powerful instinct for self-determination, the free self-guidance of the individual, so we shall here find that it is the instinct for free self-initiative which has set in motion this tremendous economic fly-wheel. The pressure to be up and doing has opened the earth, tilled the fields, created industries, and developed such technical skill as to-day may even dream of dominating the world.

But to grant that the essentials of such movements are not to be found in casual external circumstances, but must lie in the mental make-up of the nation, might lead in this case to ascribing the chief influence to quite a different mental trait. The average European, permeated as he is with Old World culture, is, in fact, convinced that this intense economic activity is the simple result of unbounded greed. The search for gold and the pursuit of the dollar, we often hear, have destroyed in the American soul every finer ambition; and since the American has no higher desire for culture, he is free to chase his mammon with undisguised and shameless greed. The barbarity of his soul, it is said, gives him a considerable economic advantage over others who have some heart as well as a pocket-book, and whose feelings incline to the humane.

Whether such a contemptuous allegation is a useful weapon in the economic struggle, is not here in question. One who desires to understand the historical development of events in the New World is bound to see in all such talk nothing but distortion, and to realize that Europe could face its own economic future with less apprehension if it would estimate the powers of its great competitor more temperately and justly, and would ask itself honestly if it could not learn a thing or two here and there.

Merely to ape American doings would, in the end, avail nothing; that which proceeds from intellectual and temperamental traits can be effectively adopted by others only if they can acquire the same traits. It is useless to organize similar factories or trusts without imitating in every respect the men who first so organized themselves. Whether this last is necessary, he alone can say who has understood his neighbours at their best, and I has not been contented to make a merely thoughtless and uncharitable judgment. A magnificent economic life such as that of America can never spring from impure ethical motives, and the person is very naïve who supposes that a great business was ever built up by mere impudence, deception, and advertising. Every merchant knows that even advertisements benefit only a solid business, and that they run a bad one into the ground. And it is still more naïve to suppose that the economic strength of America has been built up through underhanded competition without respect to law or justice, and impelled by nothing but a barbarous and purely material ambition. One might better believe that the twenty-story office buildings on lower Broadway are supported merely by the flagstones in the street; in point of fact, no mere passer-by who does not actually see the foundations of such colossal structures can have an idea of how deep down under the soil these foundations go in order to find bed-rock. Just so the colossal fabric of American industry is able to tower so high only because it has its foundation on the hard rock of honest conviction.

In the first place, we might look into the American’s greed for gold. A German observes immediately that the American does not prize his possessions much unless he has worked for them himself; of this there are innumerable proofs, in spite of the opposite appearances on the surface. One of the most interesting of these is the absence of the bridal dower. In Germany or France, the man looks on a wealthy marriage as one of the most reliable means of getting an income; there are whole professions which depend on a man’s eking out his entirely inadequate salary from property which he inherits or gets by marriage; and the eager search for a handsome dowry—in fact, the general commercial character of marriage in reputable European society everywhere—always surprises Americans. They know nothing of such a thing at home. Even when the parents of the bride are prosperous, it is unusual for a young couple to live beyond the means of the husband. Everywhere one sees the daughters of wealthy families stepping into the modest homes of their husbands, and these husbands would feel it to be a disgrace to depend on their prosperous fathers-in-law. An actual dowry received from the bride’s parents during their lifetime is virtually unknown. Another instance of American contempt for unearned wealth, which especially contrasts with European customs, is the disapproval which the American always has for lotteries. If he were really bent on getting money, he would find the dower and the lottery a ready means; whereas, in fact, the lottery is not only in all its forms forbidden by law, but public opinion wholly disapproves of games of chance. The President of Harvard University, in a public address given a short time since, in which he spoke before a large audience of the change in moral attitude, was able to give a striking illustration of the transformation in the fact that two generations ago the city of Boston conducted a lottery, in order to raise money for rebuilding a university structure which had been destroyed by fire. He showed vividly how such a transaction would be entirely unthinkable to-day, and how all American feelings would revolt at raising money for so good a cause as an educational institution by so immoral a means as a public lottery. The entire audience received this as a matter of course, apparently without a suspicion as to how many cathedrals are being built in Europe to-day from tickets at half a dollar. It was amusing to observe how Carnegie’s friend, Schwab, who had been the greatly admired manager of the steel works, fell in public esteem when news came from the Riviera that he was to be seen at the gaming-tables of Monaco. The true American despises any one who gets money without working for it. Money is not the thing which is considered, but the manner of getting it. This is what the American cares for, and he prizes the gold he gets primarily as an indication of his ability.

At first sight it looks as if this disinclination to gambling were not to be taken seriously. It would signify nothing that the police discover here and there a company of gamblers who have barricaded the door; but a European might say that there is another sort of speculative fever which is very prevalent. Even Americans on the stock exchange often say, with a smile: We are a gambling nation; and from the point of view of the broker it would be so. He sees how all classes of people invest in speculative securities, and how the public interests itself in shares which are subject to the greatest fluctuations; how the cab-driver and the hotel waiter pore nervously over the quotations, and how new mining stocks and industrial shares are greedily bought by school teachers and commercial clerks. The broker sees in this the people’s desire for gambling, because he is himself thoroughly aware of the great risks which are taken, and knows that the investors can see only a few of the factors which determine prices.

But in the public mind all this buying and selling looks very different. The small man, investing a few dollars in such doubtful certificates, never thinks of himself as a gambler; he thinks that he understands the market; he is not trusting to luck, but follows the quotations day by day for a long time, and asks his friends for “tips,” until he is convinced that his own discretion and cunning will give him an advantage. If he were to think of his gain as matter of chance, as the broker thinks it is, he would not only not invest his money, but would be no longer attracted by the transactions. And whenever he loses, he still goes on, believing that he will be able the next time to figure out the turn of the market more accurately.

The same is true of the wagers which the Anglo-Saxon is always making, because he loves excitement. For him a wager is not a true wager when it is merely a question of chance. Both sides make calculations, and have their special considerations which they believe will determine the outcome, and the winner feels his gain to be earned by his shrewdness. An ordinary game of chance does not attract the American—a fact which may be seen even in the grotesque game of poker. In a certain sense, the American’s aversion to tipping servants reveals, perhaps, the same trait. The social inferiority which he feels to be implied in the acceptance of a fee, goes against the self-respect of the individual; but there is the additional disinclination here to receiving money which is not strictly earned.

There are positive traits corresponding to these negative ones; and especially among them may be noticed the use to which money is put after it is gotten. If the American were really miserly, he would not distribute his property with such a free hand. Getting money excites him, but keeping it is less interesting, and one sees not seldom the richest men taking elaborate precautions that only a small part of their money shall fall to their children, because they think that the possession of money which is not self-earned is not a blessing. From these motives one may understand at once the magnificent generosity shown toward public enterprises.

Public munificence cannot well be gauged by statistics, and especially not in America. Most of the gifts are made quietly, and of course the small gifts which are never heard about outweigh the larger ones; and, nevertheless, one can have a fair idea of American generosity by considering only the large gifts made for public ends. If we consider only the gifts of money which are greater than one thousand dollars, and which go to public institutions, we have in the year 1903 the pretty sum of $76,935,000. There can be no doubt that all the gifts under one thousand dollars would make an equal sum.

Of these public benefactions, $40,700,000 went to educational institutions. In that year, for instance, Harvard University received in all $5,000,000, Columbia University $3,000,000, and Chicago University over $10,000,000; Yale received $600,000, and the negro institute in Tuskegee the same amount; Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania received about half of a million each. Hospitals and similar institutions were remembered with $21,726,000; $7,583,000 were given to public libraries, $3,996,000 for religious purposes, and $2,927,000 to museums and art collections. Any one who lives in America knows that this readiness to give is general, from the Carnegies and Rockefellers down to the working-men, and that it is easy to obtain money from private purses for any good undertaking.

One sees clearly, again, that the real attraction which the American feels for money-making does not lie in the having but only in the getting, from the perfect equanimity, positively amazing to the European, with which he bears his losses. To be sure, his irrepressible optimism stands him in good stead; he never loses hope, but is confident that what he has lost will soon be made up. But this would be no comfort to him if he did not care much less for the possession than for the getting of it. The American chases after money with all his might, exactly as on the tennis-court he tries to hit the ball, and it is the game he likes and not the prize. If he loses he does not feel as if he had lost a part of himself, but only as if he had lost the last set in a tournament. When, a short time ago, there was a terrific crash in the New York stock market and hundreds of millions were lost, a leading Parisian paper said: “If such a financial crisis had happened here in France, we should have had panics, catastrophies, a slump in rentes, suicides, street riots, a ministerial crisis, all in one day: while America is perfectly quiet, and the victims of the battle are sitting down to collect their wits. France and the United States are obviously two entirely different worlds in their civilization and in their way of thinking.”

As to the estimation of money and its acquirement, France and the United States are indeed as far apart as possible, while Germany stands in between. The Frenchman prizes money as such; if he can get it without labour, by inheritance or dowry, or by gambling, so much the better. If he loses it he loses a part of himself, and when he has earned enough to be sure of a livelihood, he retires from money-making pursuits as soon as possible. It is well known that the ambition of the average Frenchman is to be a rentier. The American has exactly the opposite idea. Not only does he endure loss with indifference and despise gain which is not earned, but he would not for any price give up the occupation of making money. Whether he has much or little, he keeps patiently at work; and, as no scholar or artist would ever think of saying that he had done enough work, and would from now on become a scientific or literary rentier and live on his reputation, so no American, as long as he keeps his health, thinks of giving up his regular business.

The profession of living from the income of investments is virtually unknown among men, and the young men who take up no money-making profession because they “don’t need to,” are able to retain the social respect of their fellows only by undertaking some sort of work for the commonwealth. A man who does not work at anything, no matter how rich he is, can neither get nor keep a social status.

This also indicates, then, that the American does not want his money merely as a means for material comfort. Of course, wealthy Americans are becoming more and more accustomed to provide every thinkable luxury for their wives and daughters. Nowhere is so much expended for dresses, jewelry, equipages and service, for country houses and yachts, works of art and private libraries; and many men have to keep pretty steadily at work year in and year out in order to meet their heavy expenditures. And the same thing is repeated all down the social scale. According to European standards, even the working-man lives luxuriously. But, in spite of this, no person who has really come into the country will deny that material pleasures are less sought after for themselves in the New World than in the Old. It always strikes the European as remarkable how very industrious American society is, and how relatively little bent on pleasure. It has often been said that the American has not yet learned how to enjoy life; that he knows very well how to make money, but not how to enjoy it. And that is quite true; except that it leaves out of account the main point—which is, that the American takes the keenest delight in the employment of all his faculties in his work, and in the exercise of his own initiative. This gives him more pleasure than the spending of money could bring him.

It is, therefore, fundamentally false to stigmatize the American as a materialist, and to deny his idealism. A people is supposed to be thoroughly materialistic when its sphere of interests comprises problems relating only to the world of matter, and fancies itself to be highly idealistic when it is mainly concerned with intangible objects. But this is a pure confusion of ideas. In philosophy, indeed, the distinction between materialistic and idealistic systems of thought is to be referred to the importance ascribed to material and to immaterial objects. Materialism is, then, that pseudo-philosophical theory which supposes that all reality derives from the existence of material objects; and it is an idealistic system which regards the existence of matter as dependent on the reality of thought. But it is mere play on words to call nations realistic or idealistic on the strength of these metaphysical conceptions, instead of using the words in their social and ethical significations. For in the ethical world a materialistic position would be one in which the aim of life was enjoyment, while that point of view would be idealistic which found its motive not in the pleasant consequences of the deed, but in the value of the deed itself.

If we hold fast to the meaning of materialism and idealism in this ethical sense, we shall see clearly that it is entirely indifferent whether the people who have these diametrically opposed views of life are themselves busy with tangible or with intangible things. The man who looks at life materialistically acts, not for the act itself, but for the comfortable consequences which that act may have; and these consequences may satisfy the selfish pleasure as well if they are immaterial as if they are material objects. It is indifferent whether he works for the satisfaction of the appetites, for the hoarding up of treasures, or for the gratification to be found in politics, science, and art. He is still a materialist so long as he has not devotion, so long as he uses art only as a means to pleasure, science only as a source of fame, politics as a source of power; and, in general, so long as the labour that he does is only the means to an end. But the man who is an idealist in life acts because he believes in the value of the deed. It makes no difference to him whether he is working on material or intellectual concerns; whether he speaks or rhymes, paints, governs, or judges; or whether he builds bridges and railroad tracks, drains swamps and irrigates deserts, delves into the earth, or harnesses the forces of nature. In this sense the culture of the Old World threatens at a thousand points to become crassly materialistic, and not least of all just where it most loudly boasts of intellectual wealth and looks down with contempt on everything which is material. And in this sense the culture of the New World is growing to the very purest idealism, and by no means least where it is busy with problems of the natural world of matter, and where it is heaping up economic wealth.

This is the main point: The economic life means to the American a realizing of efforts which are in themselves precious. It is not the means to an end, but is its own end. If two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or two railroad tracks where there was but one; if production, exchange, and commerce increase and undertaking thrives, then life is created, and this is, in itself, a precious thing. The European of the Continent esteems the industrial life as honest, but not as noble; economic activities seem to him good for supporting himself and his family, but his duty is merely to supply economic needs which are now existing.

The merchant in Europe does not feel himself to be a free creator like the artist or scholar: he is no discoverer, no maker; and the mental energy which he expends he feels to be spent in serving an inferior purpose, which he serves only because he has to live. That creating economic values can itself be the very highest sort of accomplishment, and in itself alone desirable, whether or not it is useful for the person who creates, and that it is great in itself to spread and increase the life of the national economic organization, has been, indeed, felt by many great merchants in the history of Europe, and many a Hanseatic leader realizes it to-day. But the whole body of people in Europe does not know this, while America is thoroughly filled with the idea. Just as Hutten once cried: “Jahrhundert, es ist eine Lust, in dir zu leben: die Wissenschaften und die Künste blühen,” so the American might exclaim: It is a pleasure to live in our day and generation; industry and commerce now do thrive. Every individual feels himself exalted by being a part of such a mighty whole, and the general intellectual effects of this temper show themselves in the entire national life.

A nation can never do its best in any direction unless it believes thoroughly in the intrinsic value of its work; whatever is done merely through necessity is never of great national significance, and second-rate men never achieve the highest things. If the first minds of a nation look down with contempt on economic life, if there is no real belief in the ideal value of industry, and if creative minds hold aloof from it, that nation will necessarily be outdone by others in the economic field. But where the ablest strength engages with idealistic enthusiasm in the service of the national economic problems, the nation rewards what the people do as done in the name of civilization, and the love of fame and work together spur them on more than the material gain which they will get. Indeed, this gain is itself only their measure of success in the service of civilization.

The American merchant works for money in exactly the sense that a great painter works for money; the high price which is paid for his picture is a very welcome indication of the general appreciation of his art: but he would never get this appreciation if he were working for the money instead of his artistic ideals. Economically to open up this gigantic country, to bring the fields and forests, rivers and mountains into the service of economic progress, to incite the millions of inhabitants to have new needs and to satisfy these by their own resourcefulness, to increase the wealth of the nation, and finally economically to rule the world and within the nation itself to raise the economic power of the individual to undreamt-of importance, has been the work which has fascinated the American. And every individual has felt his co-operation to be ennobled by his firm belief in the value of such an aim for the culture of the world.

To find one’s self in the service of this work of progress attracts even the small boy. As a German boy commences early to write verses or draw little sketches, in America the young farmer lad or city urchin tries to come somehow into this national, industrial activity; and whether he sells newspapers on the street or milks the cow on a neighbour’s farm, he is proud of the few cents which he brings home—not because it is money, but because he has earned it, and the coins are the only possible proof that his activities have contributed to the economic life of his country. It is this alone which spurs him on and fills him with ambition; and if the young newspaper boy becomes a great railroad president, or the farmer’s lad a wealthy factory owner, and both, although worth their millions, still work on from morning till night consumed by the thought of adding to the economic life of their nation, and to this end undertake all sorts of new enterprises, the labour itself has been, from beginning to end, its own reward. The content of such a man’s life is the work of economic progress.

Men who have so felt have made the nation great, and no American would admit that a man who gave his life to government or to law, to art or science, would be able to make his life at all more significant or valuable for the ends of culture. This is not materialism. Thus it happens that the most favoured youths, the socially most competent talents, go into economic life, and the sons of the best families, after their course at the university, step enthusiastically into the business house. One can see merely from ordinary conversation how thoroughly the value of economic usefulness is impressed on the people. They speak in America of industrial movements with as much general interest as one would find manifested in Europe over politics, science, or art. Men who do not themselves anticipate buying or selling securities in the stock market, nevertheless discuss the rise and fall of various industrial and railroad shares as they would discuss Congressional debates; and any new industrial undertaking in a given city fills the citizens with pride, as may be gathered from their chance conversations.

The central point of this whole activity is, therefore, not greed, nor the thought of money, but the spirit of self-initiative. It is not surprising that this has gone through such a lively development. Just as the spirit of self-determination was the product of Colonial days, so the spirit of self-initiative is the necessary outcome of pioneer life. The men who came over to the New World expected to battle with the natural elements; and even where nature had lavished her treasures, these had still to be conquered; the forests must be felled and the marshes drained. Indeed, the very spot to which the economic world comes to-day to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, the city of St. Louis, which has to-day 8,000 factories, it must not be forgotten was three generations ago a wilderness.

From the days when the first pioneers journeyed inland from the coast, to the time, over two hundred years later, when the railroad tracks were carried over the Rocky Mountains from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the history of the nation has been of a long struggle with nature and of hard-earned conquests; and for many years this fight was carried on by men who toiled single-handed, as it were—by thousands of pioneers working all at once, but far apart. The man who could not hold out under protracted labour was lost; but the difficulty of the task spurred on the energies of the strong and developed the spirit of self-initiative to the utmost. It was fortunate that the men who came over to undertake this work had been in a way selected for it: for only those who had resolution had ventured to leave their native hearth-stones. Only the most energetic risked the voyage across the ocean in those times, and this desire to be up and doing found complete satisfaction in the New World; for, as Emerson said: “America is another name for opportunity.”

The heritage of the pioneer days cannot vanish, even under the present changed conditions. This desire to realize one’s self by being economically busied is indeed augmented to-day by many other considerations. Both the political and the social life of the democracy demand equality, and therefore exclude all social classes, and titles, and all honourary political distinctions. Now, such uniformity would, of course, be unendurable in a society which had no real distinctions, and therefore inevitably such distinguishing factors as are not excluded come to be more and more important. A distinction between classes on the basis of property can be met in monarchial countries by a distinction in title and family, and so made at least very much less important than in democratic nations. And thus it necessarily comes about that, where an official differentiation is objected to on principle, wealth is sought as a means to such discrimination. In the United States, however, wealth has this great significance only because it is felt to measure the individual’s successful initiative; and the simple equation between prosperity and real work is more generally recognized by the popular mind than the actual conditions justify. Thus it happens also that the American sets his standard of life high. He wishes in this way to express the fact that he has passed life’s examination well, that he has been enterprising, and has won the respect of those around him. This desire for a high standard of living which springs from the intense economic enthusiasm works back thereon, and greatly stimulates it once more.

One of the first consequences of this spirit of initiative is, that every sort of true labour is naturally respected, and never involves any disesteem. In fact, one sees continually in this country men who go from one kind of labour to another which, according to European ideals, would be thought less honourable. The American is especially willing to take up a secondary occupation besides his regular calling in order to increase his income, and this leads, sometimes, to striking contrasts. Of course there are some limits to this, and social etiquette is not wholly without influence, although the American will seldom admit it. No one is surprised if a preacher gives up the ministry in order to become an editor or official in an industrial organization; but every one is astonished if he becomes agent for an insurance company; amazed if he goes to selling a patent medicine, and would be positively scandalized if he were to buy a beer-saloon.

It is much the same with avocations. If the student in the university tutors other students, it is quite right; if, during the university vacation, he becomes bell-boy in a summer hotel, or during the school year attends to furnaces in order to continue his studies, people are sorry that he has to do this, but still account him perfectly respectable; but if, on the other hand, he turns barber or artist’s model, he is lost, because being a model is passive—it is not doing anything; and cutting hair is a menial service, not compatible with the dignity of the student. And thus it is that the social feeling in the New World practically corrects the theoretical maxims as to the equal dignity of every kind of labour, although, indeed, such maxims are very much more generally recognized than in the Old World. And everywhere the deciding principle of differentiation is the matter of self-initiative.

The broadly manifest social equality of the country, of which we shall have to speak more minutely in another connection, would be actually impossible if this belief in the equivalence of all kinds of work did not rule the national mind. Whether the work brings much or little, or requires much or little preparation, is thought to be unimportant in determining a man’s status; but it is important that his life involves initiative, or that he not merely passively exists.

A people which places industrial initiative so high must be industrious; and, in fact, there is no profounder impression to be had than that the whole population is busily at work, and that all pleasures and everything which presupposes an idle moment are there merely to refresh people and prepare them for more work. In order to be permanently industrious, a man has to learn best how to utilize his powers; and just in this respect the American nation has gone ahead of every other people. Firstly, it is sober. A man who takes liquor in the early part of the day cannot accomplish the greatest amount of work. When the American is working he does not touch alcohol until the end of the day, and this is as true of the millionaire and bank president as of the labourer or conductor. On the other hand, the American workman knows that only a well-nourished body can do the most work, and what the workman saves by not buying beer and brandy he puts into roast beef. It has often been observed, and especially remarked on by German observers, that in spite of his extraordinary tension, the American never overdoes. The working-man in the factory, for example, seldom perspires at his work. This comes from a knowledge of how to work so as in the end to get out of one’s self the greatest possible amount.

Very much the same may be said of the admirable way in which the Americans make the most of their time. Superficial observers have often supposed the American to be always in a hurry, whereas the opposite is the case. The man who has to hurry has badly disposed of his time, and, therefore, has not the necessary amount to finish any one piece of work. The American is never in a hurry, but he so disposes his precious time that nothing shall be lost. He will not wait nor be a moment idle; one thing follows closely after another, and with admirable precision; each task is finished in its turn; appointments are made and kept on the minute; and the result is, that not only no unseemly haste is necessary, but also there is time for everything. It is astonishing how well-known men in political, economic, or intellectual life, who are loaded with a thousand responsibilities and an apparently unreasonable amount of work, have, by dint of the wonderful disposition of their own time and that of their assistants, really enough for everything and even to spare.

Among the many things for which the American has time, by reason of his economical management of it, are even some which seem unnecessary for a busy man. He expends, for example, an extraordinary large fraction of his time in attending to his costume and person, in sport, and in reading newspapers, so that the notion which is current in Europe that the American is not only always in a hurry, but has time for nothing outside of his work, is entirely wrong.

This saving of strength by the proper disposal of time corresponds to a general practicality in every sort of work. Business is carried on in a business-like way. The banker, whose residence is filled with sumptuous treasures of art, allows nothing unpractical to come into his office for the sake of adornment. A certain strict application to duty is the feeling one gets from every work-room; and while the foreigner feels a certain barrenness about it, the American feels that anything different shows a lack of earnestness and practical good sense. The extreme punctuality with which the American handles his correspondence is typical of him. Statistics show that no other country in the world sends so many letters for every inhabitant, and every business letter is replied to on the same day with matter-of-fact conciseness. It is like a tremendous apparatus that accomplishes the greatest labour with the least friction, by means of the precise adaptation of part to part.

A nation which is after self-initiative must inspire the spirit of initiative in every single co-operator. Nothing is more characteristic of this economic body than the intensity with which each workman—taking the word in its broadest sense—thinks and acts for himself. In this respect, too, outsiders often misunderstand the situation. One hears often from travellers in America that the country must be dwarfing to the intelligence of its workmen, because it uses so much machinery that the individual workman comes to see only a small part of what is being done in the factory and, so to say, works the same identical lever for life. He operates always a certain small part of some other part of the whole. Nothing could be less exact, and a person who comes to such a conclusion is not aware that even the smallest duties are extremely complex, and that, therefore, specialization does not at all introduce an undesirable uniformity in labour. It is specialization on the one hand which guarantees the highest mastery, and on the other lets the workman see even more the complexity of what is going on, and inspires him to get a full comprehension of the thing in hand and perhaps to suggest a few improvements.

Any man who is at all concerned with the entire field of operations, or who is moving constantly from one special process to another, can never come to that fully absorbed state of the attention which takes cognizance of the slightest detail. Only the man who has concentrated himself and specialized, learns to note fine details; and it is only in this way that he becomes so much a master in his special department that any one else who attempts to direct him succeeds merely in interfering and spoiling the output. In short, such a workman is face to face with intricate natural processes, and is learning straight from nature. It is in the matter of industrial technique exactly as in science. A person not acquainted with science finds it endlessly monotonous, and cannot understand how a person should spend his whole life studying beetles or deciphering Assyrian inscriptions. But a man who knows the method of science realizes that the narrower a field of study becomes, the more full of variety and unexpected beauties it is found to be. The triumph of technical specialization in America lies just in this. If a single man works at some special part of some special detail of an industrial process, he more and more comes to find in his narrow province an amazing intricacy which the casual observer looking on cannot even suspect; and only the man who sees this complexity is able to discover new processes and improvements on the old. So it is that the specialized workman is he who constantly contributes to perfect technique, proposes modifications, and in general exercises all the intelligence he has, in order to bring himself on in his profession. Just as we have seen how the spirit of self-determination which resides at the periphery of the body politic has been the peculiar strength of American political life, so this free initiative in the periphery, this economic resourcefulness of the narrow specialists, is the peculiar strength of all American industry.

The spirit of self-initiative does not know pettiness. Any one who goes into economic life merely for the sake of what he can get out of it, thinks it clever to gain small, unfair profits; but whosoever views his industry in a purely idealistic spirit, and really has some inner promptings, is filled with an interest in the whole play—sees an economic gain in anything which profits both capital and labour, and only there, and so has a large outlook even within his narrow province. The Americans constantly complain of the economic smallness of Europe, and even the well-informed leaders of American industry freely assert that the actual advance in American economic culture does not lie in the natural resources of the country, but rather in the broad, free initiative of the American people. The continental Europeans, it is said, frustrate their own economic endeavours by being penny-wise and observant of detail in the wrong place, and by lacking the courage to launch big undertakings. There is no doubt that it was the lavishness of nature which firstly set American initiative at work on a broad scale. The boundless prairies and towering mountains which the pioneers saw before them inspired them to undertake great things, and to overlook small hindrances, and in laying out their first plans to overlook small details. American captains of industry often say that they purposely pay no attention to a good many European methods, because they find such pedantic endeavour to economize and to achieve minute perfections to be wasteful of time and unprofitable.

The same spirit is found, as well, in fields other than the industrial. When the American travels he prefers to pay out round sums rather than to haggle over the price of things, even although he pays considerably more thereby than he otherwise would. And nothing makes him more angry than to find that instead of stating a high price at the outset, the person with whom he is dealing ekes out his profit by small additional charges. This large point of view involves such a contempt of petty detail as to astonish Europeans. Machines costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, which were new yesterday, are discarded to-day, because some improvement has been discovered; and the best is everywhere found none too good to be used in this magnificent industrial system. If the outlay is to correspond to the result, there must be no parsimony.

A similar trait is revealed in the way in which every man behaves toward his neighbour. It is only the petty man who is envious, and envy is a word which is not found in the American vocabulary. If one’s own advantage is not the goal, but general economic progress, then the success of another man is almost as great a pleasure as one’s own success. It is for the American an æsthetic delight to observe, and in spirit to co-operate with economic progress all along the line; and the more others accomplish the more each one realizes the magnificence of the whole industrial life. Men try to excel one another, as they have to do wherever there is free competition; and such rivalry is the best and surest condition for economic progress. Americans use every means in their power to succeed, but if another man comes out ahead they neither grumble nor indulge in envy, but rather gather their strength for a new effort. Even this economic struggle is carried on in the spirit of sport. The fight itself is the pleasure. The chess-player who is checkmated in an exciting game is not sorry that he played, and does not envy the winner.

This conviction, that one neither envies nor is envied, whereby all competitive struggle comes to be pervaded with a certain spirit of co-operation, ennobles all industrial activities, and the immediate effect is a feeling of mutual confidence. The degree to which Americans trust one another is by no means realized on the European Continent. A man relies on the self-respect of his commercial associates in a way which seems to the European mind almost fatuous, and yet herein lies just the strength and security of the economic life of this country.

It is interesting, in a recently published harangue against the Standard Oil Company, to read what a high-handed, Napoleonic policy Rockefeller has pursued, and then, in the midst of the fierce accusations, to find it stated that agreements involving millions of dollars and the economic fate of thousands of people were made merely orally. All his confederates took the word of Rockefeller to be as good as his written contract, and such mutual confidence is everywhere a matter of course, whether it is a millionaire who agrees to pay out a fortune or a street urchin who goes off to change five cents. Just as public, so also commercial, affairs get on with very few precautions, and every man takes his neighbour’s check as the equivalent of money. The whole economic life reveals everywhere the profoundest confidence; and undoubtedly this circumstance has contributed, more than almost anything else, to the successful growth of large organizations in America.

The spirit of self-initiative goes out in another direction. It makes the American optimistic, and so sure of success that no turn of fortune can discourage him. And such an optimism is necessary to the man who undertakes great enterprises. It was an undertaking to cross the ocean, and another to press on from the coast to the interior; it was an undertaking to bring nature to terms, to conjure up civilization in a wild country, and to overcome enemies on all hands; and yet everything has seemed to succeed. With the expansion of the country has grown the individual’s love of expansion, his delight in undertaking new enterprises, not merely to hold his own, but to go on and to stake his honour and fortune and entire personality in the hope of realizing something as yet hardly dreamed of. Any Yankee is intoxicated with the idea of succeeding in a new enterprise; he plans such things at his desk in school, and the more venturesome they are the more he is fascinated.

Nothing is more characteristic of this adventurous spirit than the way in which American railroads have been projected. In other countries railroads are built to connect towns which already exist. In America the railroad has created new towns; the engineer and capitalist have not laid their tracks merely where the land was already tilled, but in every place where they could foresee that a population could support itself. At first came the railroad, and then the men to support it. The freight car came first, and then the soil was exploited and made to supply the freight. Western communities have almost all grown up around the railway stations. To be sure, every railway company has done this in its own interest, but the whole undertaking has been immediately productive of new civilization.

Any person who optimistically believes that a problem has only to be discovered in order to be solved, will be sure to develop that intellectual quality which has always characterized the American: the spirit of invention. There is no other country in the world where so much is invented. This is shown not merely in the fact that an enormous number of patents is granted every year, but also where there is nothing to patent, the Yankee exercises his ingenuity every day. From the simplest tool up to the most complicated machine, American invention has improved and perfected, and made the theoretically correct practically serviceable as well. To be sure, the cost of human labour in a thinly settled country has had a great influence on this development; but a special talent also has lain in this direction—a real genius for solving practical problems. Every one knows how much the American has contributed to the perfection of the telegraph, telephone, incandescent light, phonograph and sewing-machine, to watch-making machinery, to the steamboat and locomotive, the printing-press and typewriter, to machinery for mining and engineering, and to all sorts of agricultural and manufacturing devices. Invention and enterprise are seen working together in the fact that every new machine, with all its improvements, goes at once to every part of the country. Every farmer in the farthest West wants the latest agricultural machinery; every artisan adopts the newest improvements; in every office the newest and most approved telegraphic and telephonic appliances are used; in short, every man appropriates the very latest devices to further his own success. Of course, in this way the commercial value of every improvement is greatly increased, and this encourages the inventor to still further productiveness. It so happens that larger sums of money are lavished in perfect good faith in order to solve certain problems than any European could imagine. If an inventor can convince a company that his principle is sound, the company is ready to advance millions of dollars for new experiments until the machine is perfected.

The extraordinarily wide adoption of every invention does not mean that most inventions are made by such men as Edison and Bell and their colleagues. Every factory workman is quite as much concerned to improve the tools which his nation uses, and every artisan at his bench is busy thinking out this or that little change in a process or method; and many of them, after their work, frequent the public libraries in order to work through technical books and the Patent Reports. It is no wonder that an American manufacturer, on hearing that a new machine had been discovered in Europe, conservatively declared that he did not know what the machine was, but knew for sure that America would improve on it.

Only one consequence of the spirit of self-initiative remains to be spoken of—the absolute demand for open competition. In order to exercise initiative, a man must have absolutely free play; and if he believes in the intrinsic value of economic culture, he will be convinced that free play for the development of industrial power is abstractly and entirely right. This does not wholly exclude an artificial protection of certain economic institutions which are weak—as, for instance, the protection of certain industries by means of a high tariff—so long as in every line all men are free to compete with one another. Monopoly is the only thing—because it strangles competition—which offends the instinct of the American; and in this respect American law goes further than a European would expect. One might suppose that, believing as they do in free initiative, Americans would claim the right of making such industrial combinations as they liked. When several parallel railroads, which traverse several states and compete severely with one another, finally make a common agreement to maintain prices, they seem at first sight to be exercising a natural privilege. The traffic which suffers no longer by competition is handled at a less expense by this consolidation, and so the companies themselves and the travelling public are both benefited. But the law of the United States takes a different point of view. The average American is suspicious of a monopoly, even when it is owned by the state or city; he is convinced from the beginning that the service will in some way or other be inferior to what it would be under free competition; and most of all, he dislikes to see any industrial province hedged in so that competitors are no longer free to come in. The reason why the trusts have angered and excited the American to an often exaggerated degree is, that they approach perilously near to being monopolies.

This spirit of self-initiative under free competition exists, of course, not alone in individuals. Towns, cities, counties, and states evince collectively just the same attitude; the same optimism and spirit of invention and initiative, and the same pioneer courage, inspire the collective will of city and state. Especially in the West, various cities and communities do things in a sportsmanlike way. It is as if one city or state were playing foot-ball against another, and exerting every effort to win: and here once more there is no petty jealousy. It was from such an optimistic spirit of enterprise, certainly, that the city of St. Louis resolved to invite all the world to its exposition, and that the State of Missouri gave its enthusiastic approval and support to its capital city. The sums to be laid out on such bold undertakings are put at a generous figure, and no one asks anxiously whether he is ready or able to undertake such a thing, but he is fascinated by the thought that such an industrial festival around the cascades of Forest Park, near the City of St. Louis, will stimulate the whole industrial life of the Mississippi Valley. One already sees that Missouri is disposed to become a Pennsylvania of the West, and to develop her rich resources into a great industry.

We must not suppose, in all this, that such a spirit of initiative involves no risk, or that no disadvantages follow into the bargain. It may be easily predicted that, just by reason of the energy which is so intrinsic to it, self-initiative will sometime overstep the bounds of peace and harmony. Initiative will become recklessness, carelessness of nature, carelessness of one’s neighbour, and, finally, carelessness of one’s self.

A reckless treatment of nature has, in fact, characterized the American pioneer from the first. The wealth of nature has seemed so inexhaustible, that the pioneers found it natural to draw on their principal instead of living on their income. Everywhere they used only the best which they found; they cut down the finest forests first, and sawed up only the best parts of the best logs. The rest was wasted. The farmers tilled only the best soil, and nature was dismantled and depleted in a way which a European, who is accustomed to precaution, finds positively sinful. And the time is now passed when this can go on safely. Good, arable land can nowhere be had for nothing to-day; the cutting down of huge forests has already had a bad effect on the rainfall and water supply, and many efforts are now being made to atone for the sins of the past by protecting and replanting. Intensive methods are being introduced in agriculture; but the work of thoughtful minds meets with a good deal of resistance in the recklessness of the masses, who, so far as nature is in question, think very little of their children’s children, but are greedy for instant profits.

The man, moreover, who ardently desires to play an important part in industry is easily tempted to be indifferent of his fellows. We have shown that an American is not jealous or distrustful of them, that he gives and expects frankness, and that he respects their rights. But when he once begins to play, he wants to win at any cost; and then, so long as he observes the rules of the game, he considers nothing else; he has no pity, and will never let his undertaking be interfered with by sentimental reasons. There is no doubt at all that the largest American industrial enterprises have ruined many promising lives; no doubt that the very men who give freely to public ends have driven their chariots over many industrial corpses. The American, who is so incomparably good-natured, amiable, obliging, and high-minded, admits himself that he is sharp in trade, and that the American industrial spirit requires a sort of military discipline and must be brutal. If the captain of industry were anxiously considerate of persons’ feelings, he would never have achieved industrial success any more than a compassionate and tearful army would win a victory.

But the American is harder on himself than on any one else. We have shown how, in his work, he conserves his powers and utilizes them economically; but he sets no bounds to the intellectual strain, the intensity of his nervous activities, and only too often he ruins his health in the too great strain which brings his success. The bodies of thousands have fertilized the soil for this great industrial tree—men who have exhausted their power in their exaggerated commercial ambitions. The real secret of American success is that, more than any other country in the world, she works with the young men and uses them up. Young men are in all the important positions where high intellectual tension is required.

In other directions, too, the valuable spirit of self-initiative shows great weaknesses and dangers. The confidence which the American gives his neighbour in business often comes to be inexcusable carelessness. In reading the exposures made of the Ship-Building Trust, one sees how, without a dishonest intent, crimes can actually be committed merely through thoughtless confidence. One sees that each one of the great capitalists here involved relied on the other, while no one really investigated for himself.

There is another evil arising from the same intense activity, although, to be sure, it is more a matter of the past than of the future. This is the vulgar display of wealth. When economic usefulness is the main ambition, and the only measure of success is the money which is won, it is natural that under more or less primitive social conditions every one should wish to attest his merits by displaying wealth. Large diamonds have then much the same function as titles and orders; they are the symbols of successful endeavour. In its vulgar form all such display is now virtually relegated to undeveloped sections of the country. In the parts where culture is older, where wealth is in its second or third generation, every one knows that his property is more useful in the bank than on his person.

In spite of this, the nation expends an unduly large part of its profits in personal adornment, in luxuries of the toilet, in horses and carriages and expensive residences. The American is bound to have the best, and feels himself lowered if he has to take the second best. The most expensive seats in an auditorium are always the best filled, and the opera is thinly attended only when it is given at reduced prices. It is just in the most expensive hotels that one has to engage a room beforehand. Everywhere that expenditure can be observed by others, the American would rather renounce a pleasure entirely than enjoy it in a modest way. He wants to appear everywhere as a prosperous and substantial person, and therefore has a decided tendency to live beyond his means. Extravagance is, therefore, a great national trait. Everything, whether large or small, is done with a free hand. In the kitchen of the ordinary man much is thrown away which the European carefully saves for his nourishment; and in the kitchens of the government officials a hundred thousand cooks are at work, as if there were every day a banquet. Even when the American economizes he is fundamentally extravagant. His favourite way of saving is by buying a life insurance policy; but when one sees how many millions of dollars such companies spend in advertising and otherwise competing with one another, and what prodigious amounts they take in, one cannot doubt that they also are a means of saving for wealthy men, who, after all, do not know what real economy is.

If the whole outward life is pervaded by this pioneer spirit of self-initiative, there is another factor which is not to be overlooked; it is the neglect of the æsthetic. Any one who loves beauty desires to see his ideal realized at the present moment, and the present itself becomes for him expressive of the past, while the man whose only desire is to be active as an economic factor looks only into the future. The bare present is almost valueless, since it is that which has to be overcome; it is the material which the enterprising spirit has to shape creatively into something else. The pioneer cannot be interested in the present as a survivor of the past; it shows to him only that which is to do, and admonishes his soul to prepare for new achievement. On Italian soil one’s eye is offended by every false note in the general harmony. The present, in which the past still lives, fills one’s consciousness, and the repose of æsthetic contemplation is the chief emotion. But a man who rushes from one undertaking to another seeks no unity or harmony in the present; his retina is not sensitive to ugliness, because his eye is forever peering into the future; and if the present were to be complete and finished, the enterprising spirit would regret such perfection and account it a loss—a restriction of his freedom, an end to his creation. It would mean mere pleasure and not action. In this sense the American expresses his pure idealism in speaking of the “glory of the imperfect.”

The Italian is not to be disparaged for being unlike the American and for letting his eye rest on pleasing contours without asking what new undertakings could be devised to make reality express his own spirit of initiative. One must also not blame the American if he does not scrutinize his vistas with the eye of a Florentine, if he is not offended by the ugly remains of his nation’s past, the scaffolding of civilization, or if he looks at them with pride, noting how restlessly his countrymen have stuck to their work in order to shape a future from the past. In fact, one can hardly take a step in the New World without everywhere coming on some crying contrast between mighty growth and the oppressive remains of outgrown or abortive activities. As one comes down the monumental steps of the Metropolitan Museum, in which priceless treasures of art are collected, one sees in front of one a wretched, tumbled-down hut where sundry refreshments are sold, on a dirty building-lot with a broken fence. It looks as if it had been brought from the annual county fair of some remote district into this wealthiest street of the world.

Of course such a thing is strikingly offensive, but it disturbs only a person who is not looking with the eye of the American, who can therefore not understand the true ethical meaning of American culture, its earnest looking forward into the future. If the incomplete past no longer met the American’s eye in all its poverty and ugliness and smallness, he would have lost the mainspring of his life. That which is complete does not interest him, while that which he can still work on wholly fascinates and absorbs him. It is true here, as in every department of American life, that superficial polish would be only an imitation of success; friction and that which is æsthetically disorganized, but for this very reason ethically valuable, give to his life its significance and to his industry its incomparable progress.

Chapter Twelve: The Economic Rise

Introite, nam et hic dii sunt—here, too, the gods are on their throne. The exploiting of the country, the opening of the mines, the building of factories and railroads, trade and barter, are not in question here as the mere means of livelihood, but as a spontaneous and creative labour, which is undertaken specifically in the interests of progress. In this confession of faith we have found the significance of American industrial life, in the spirit of self-initiative its greatest strength. Only such men as desire to take part in the economic era of creation, to meet their neighbours openly and trustingly and to rely on their spoken word, in short, to believe in the intrinsic worth of industry—only such men can weave the wonderful fabric of New World industry. A race of men carrying on commerce merely in order to live, feeling no idealism impelling them to industry, would never, even in this richly-endowed America, have produced such tangible results or gained such power.

Nevertheless, the country itself must not be forgotten by reason of its inhabitants. It was the original inducement to the inhabitants to turn so industriously to the spade and plough. Where the spade has dug, it has brought up silver and gold, coal and iron; and where the plough has turned, it has evoked a mammoth growth of wheat and corn. Seas and rivers, bays and mountains have produced a happy configuration of the land and pointed out the routes for traffic; oil-wells have flown freely, and the waterpower is inexhaustible; the supply of fish and fowl, the harvests of tropical fruits and of cotton have been sufficient to supply the world. And all this was commenced by nature, before the first American set his foot on the continent.

And while it was the lavish hand of nature which first brought prosperity to the inhabitants, this prosperity became, in its turn, a new stimulus to the economic exploitation of further natural resources. It provided the capital for new undertakings; it also helped on the extraordinary growth of economic demand, it made the farmer and the artisan the best patrons of thriving industries, and made the economic circulatory system pulsate with increasing strength through the national organization.

There are, besides the purely economic conditions, certain political and administrative ones. American history has developed in a free atmosphere such as cannot be had in countries with ancient traditions, and which, even in the New World, at least in the eastern part of it, is disappearing day by day. Of course, such elbow-room has not been an unqualified blessing. It has been attended by evils and has made sacrifices necessary. But these have always touched the individual. The community has gained by the freedom of economic conditions. For instance, railroads, such as were built through the whole West during the pioneer years of America, would not be permitted for a moment by a German government. Such flimsy bridges, such rough-and-ready road-beds, such inadequate precautions on crossings were everywhere a serious menace; but those who were injured were soon forgotten, while the economic blessings of the new railroads which transported hundreds of thousands of people into uninhabited regions, and left them to gather the treasure of the soil, continued. They could never have been built if people had waited until they were able to construct by approved methods. After the great pioneer railroads had accomplished their mission, the time came when they were replaced by better structures. And they have been built over many times, until to-day the traffic is sufficiently safe. It still belongs, in a way, to the confession of faith of this religion of self-initiative that each man shall be free to risk not only his property, but also his own life, for the sake of enterprise. No board of commissioners may interfere to tell an American not to skirt a precipice.

Such instances of complete freedom, where life and limb are unsafe, disappear day by day. Guide-posts are put at every railroad crossing, and civil authorities take more and more interest in safety appliances for factories and in the security of city buildings; in fact, hygienic regulations in some Eastern cities to-day go even further than they go in Germany. Nevertheless, in such matters as involve not dangers, but merely traditions or preferences, a large amount of democratic freedom can still be had in the New World. Over the broad prairies there are no signs lawfully warning persons to turn to the right and not to walk on the grass. The American himself not only regards this country as the land of “unlimited possibilities,” but more specially he regards the European Continent as the country of impossible limitations. Bureaucracy is to his mind the worst enemy of industrial life, because it everywhere provides the most trivial obstacles to that spirit of adventure and daring which seeks to press on into the future; and in the end it is sure to bring all enterprise to a standstill. It is important for this freedom that the whole economic legislation is regulated, first of all, not by the Union, but by the several states, and that thus every variety of industrial life going on in any state shall be so well represented that every attempt to bring up artificial restraints shall be nipped in the bud.

To this negative factor is to be added a positive one. Every one knows that the mighty growth of the American industry and of its whole commercial life would not have been possible without the carefully adapted protective tariff of recent years. The Dingley and the McKinley tariff laws have not, of course, produced that great advance, but they have powerfully aided it. And at the same time enormous sums have been derived therefrom and expended by the government in improving the water-ways and harbours. The government has spent vast sums in helping agriculture, and done much to irrigate the arid portions of the country. Economic problems in general receive great consideration in Washington and in every state capital. Besides such general political activities, there are more special ones. The nation’s agriculture, for instance, is tremendously assisted by scientific researches, which are carried on by the Department of Agriculture. The army of American consuls is incomparably alert in seeking out favourable openings for American trade with other nations, and the consular reports are distributed promptly and free of charge from Washington to all parts of the country.

The political attitude of the nation works in still another way to favour general prosperity. The country has a unified organization which favours all economic enterprises. Although seventeen times as large as Germany, the country is nevertheless one splendid unit without internal customs barriers, under one law, and free from sectional distrusts. For, wherever commercial intercourse goes on between different states, the common federal law is in force.

Perhaps even more important than the national unity is the democratic equality throughout the population. However diverse these eighty million people may be, they form a homogeneous purchasing public. Every new style or fashion spreads like wild-fire from New York to San Francisco, and in spite of their differences, the day-labourer and the millionaire both have a certain similarity of tastes and requirements, so that the industrial producer and the distributor find it easy to make and keep in stock all articles which are called for. Instead of the freakish and fanciful demand which makes the European industrial life so difficult, everybody in America wants the same pattern as his neighbour, perhaps a little finer and better, but still the same general thing. And this brings it about that producers can manufacture in large quantities, and wholesale production and the ease of placing wares on the market encourage again the uniformity of taste and requirement, and help on the popular tendency toward mutual imitation throughout the country.

But now, instead of recounting the conditions which have helped to make the story, we must narrate the story itself. The German can listen to it with pleasure, since it is about one of Germany’s best patrons—a nation which always buys from Germany in proportion to its own prosperity, and one whose adversity would bring misfortune to Germany. The story can be most quickly told in figures, as is the favourite American way; for, if the American has a special mania, it is to heap up all sorts of statistics.

We shall best study the statistical variations through long intervals of time, in order not to be led astray by temporary fluctuations. When, a few years ago, an industrial and financial relapse had set in in Germany, and England was suffering from the war in the Transvaal, while America was undertaking a gigantic work of organization which promised to have marvellous results, the United States suddenly appeared as the economic mistress of the world, to the astonishment and apprehension of all other countries. Soon after that German trade and industry began to revive and England recovered itself, while in America industrial extravagance and financial inflation were bringing about their necessary evil consequences. Then the public opinion of other countries swung at once to the other extreme, as if America’s success had been entirely spurious. People suddenly turned about and believed that the time of American prosperity was over, rejoiced with ghoulish glee over the weakness of the enemy, despised his foolhardiness, and gossiped about his industrial leaders. But it was only in other countries that men like Schwab, the president of the Steel Trust, had been looked on as a Napoleon of industry; and when he was not able to retain his position, European papers were as pleased as if a Napoleonic army had been wiped out. Such insignificant events of the day are able to distort the judgment of great movements; picturesque mishaps strike the attention, and are taken to indicate great movements.

The actual advance in economic life of the United States was not such a sudden thing as it seemed to nervous Europe, nor was there any reverse such as Europe delighted to record. To be sure, America has passed through several great crises; but her history is nevertheless one of steady, even and healthy development in economic organization. The American himself is inclined to believe that severe crises are not to be feared any more; but however that may be, the long-predicted downfall has not come to-day, and is not even in sight. The general progress persists, and the decline in stock-market securities, which has been here and there abroad the signal for alarm, is itself a part of the sound development. When one looks at the whole rise one realizes that the young nation’s development has been great and powerful, and such as was never before known in the history of civilization. Figures will show this better than adjectives. What now do the United States produce? The wheat of the country amounted, in the year 1850, to only 100 million bushels; in 1870 to 235 millions; 522 millions in 1900; 637 in 1903. The corn harvest was 592 millions in 1850; 1,094 in 1870; 2,105 in 1900; 2,244 in 1903. There were 52 million pounds of wool in 1850; 162 in 1870; 288 in 1900; 316 in 1902. But cotton is “king.” In 1850 the cotton harvest amounted to 2.3 million bales; 3.1 millions in 1870; 9.4 in 1900 and 10.7 in 1903; 110,000 tons of sugar were produced in 1850 and last year 310,000 tons. The dreaded American petroleum was not flowing in 1850. It appears in the statistical tables of 1859 in the modest quantity of 8,400 gallons; in 1870 there were 220 million gallons; in 1900, 2,661 million, and in 1903 there were 3,707 million gallons. The coal output of the country began in 1820 with 365 tons and amounted in 1850 to 3 million tons; in 1870 to 33 million; in 1900 to 240 million; in 1902 to 269 million tons. In the middle of the last century 563,000 tons of iron ore were mined; 1.6 million tons in 1870; 13.7 in 1900, and 18 million in 1903. The manufacture of steel began in 1867 with 19,000 tons and in 1870 amounted to 68,000 tons, to 10.1 million tons in 1900; 14.9 millions in 1902. Of copper, 650 tons were mined in 1850; 12,000 tons in 1870; 270,000 tons in 1900; and 294,000 tons in 1902. The silver production in the middle of the century was estimated at $50,000; in 1870 at $16,000,000, and in 1900 at $74,000,000; in the last three years it has gone back to $71,000,000. The highest point was reached in 1892, with $82,000,000. On the other hand, the production of gold has grown steadily in the last twenty years, although it had reached its first high point back in the fifties. In the year 1853, $65,000,000 worth of gold was produced. The amount decreased slowly but steadily to $30,000,000 in the year 1883, and has since risen almost steadily until in 1903 it amounted to $74,000,000. The total output of minerals was valued at $218,000,000 in 1870, and $1,063,000,000 in 1900.

This steady growth of natural products is repeated in the agricultural and industrial spheres. The number of farms was given at 1.4 million in the middle of the last century, with the total value of $3,967,000,000; in 1870 there were 2.6 million farms valued at $8,944,000,000; and in 1900 there were 5.7 million, valued at $20,514,000,000. In 1870, 5.9 million people engaged in agriculture; 10.4 million in 1900. The total value of agricultural products amounted, in 1870, to $1,958,000,000, and in 1900 to $3,764,000,000. All domestic animals—cattle, horses, mules, sheep and pigs—amounted in 1850 to $544,000,000; in 1870 to $1,822,000,000; in 1900 to $2,228,000,000, and in 1903 to $3,102,000,000.

The greatest growth, however, is shown in industry. In 1850 there were 123,000 industrial plants with 957,000 employees, paying wages of $236,000,000, and with an output worth $1,019,000,000. In 1870 there were 252,000 factories, with 2 million workmen, paying $775,000,000 in wages, and with an output worth $4,232,000,000; in 1890 there were 3,550,000 factories, 4.7 million workmen, a salary list of $2,283,000,000, and a product worth $9,372,000,000. In 1900 there were 512,000 factories, with 5.7 million workmen, a pay-roll of $273,500,000, and an output worth $13,039,000,000. Statistics here cannot be brought up to the present time, since a careful industrial census is made only every ten years; but this glance over the half century shows at once that there has been a very steady increase, and that it is no mushroom growth due to the recently enacted protective tariffs.

The economic rise of the nation is well reflected in its foreign commerce. If we disregard the imports and exports of precious metals, the international commerce of the United States shows a total import in the year 1903 of $1,025,719,237, and a total export of $1,420,141,679. We must analyze these two figures in several ways, and compare them with similar figures in the past. In one way they show a decrease, since in the year 1903 the exports exceeded the imports by over 394 millions, but in the preceding year by 477 millions. This unfavourable change is not from any decrease in exports, but from a remarkable increase in imports; in fact, the exports were 38 millions more than during the previous year, while the imports were 122 millions more.

Thus, in the year 1903, the total foreign trade of the United States exceeded that of all previous years, and reached the astonishing figure of $2,445,000,000. Although before the year 1900 the total trade was less than two billions, it reached the sum of one billion as early as the year 1872; exports and imports together amounted in 1830 to 134 millions; in 1850 to 317 millions; in 1860 to 687 millions; in 1870 to 828 millions; in 1880 to 1,503 millions; in 1890 to 1,647 millions, and in 1900 to 2,244 millions. During this period the balance of trade shifted frequently. In 1800, for instance, there was an import balance of 21 millions, and similarly in the decades ending in 1810, 1820, and 1830. In the decade which ended in 1840 there was an average export balance of 29 millions. The tables turned in the next decade ending in the year 1850, when there was an average import balance of 29 millions; in the decade ending 1860, of 20 millions, and in the following decade, of 43 millions. But then the exports suddenly increased, and have exceeded the imports for the last twenty-five years. In 1880 the imports were 667 millions, and the exports 835 millions; in 1890 the imports were 789 millions, and the exports 857 millions; in 1900 the imports were 849 millions, and the exports 1,394 millions; in 1901 the imports were 823, and the exports 1,487; in 1902 the imports were 903, and the exports 1,381; and in 1903, as given above, the imports were 1,025, and the exports 1,420 millions.

Let us now look at the American imports more closely. Letting all our figures represent million dollars, we learn that during the last year imports of breadstuffs and live animals were 212; of raw materials 383; of half-finished products 97; of manufactured products 169, and of articles of luxury in general 145. The food products imported, which comprise to-day 21 per cent. of all imports, comprised 31 per cent. in 1880; and at that time the necessary manufactured articles were also a larger proportion of the whole, being then 20 per cent. against 16 per cent. to-day. On the other hand, raw materials, which were then 25 per cent., are to-day 38 per cent., and articles of luxury have increased from 10 to 14 per cent. of the total imports. Of the half-manufactured products imported, the most important were the chemicals, valued at 38 millions; then come wooden wares worth 11, oil worth 10, iron worth 8, skins and leather worth 5 millions. Of raw materials the most valuable were skins and furs, which amounted last year to 58 millions; raw silk was next, with 50; vegetable fibres, such as hemp, 34; rubber 32, iron and steel 30. This last figure is an exceptional one, and is due to the fact that during the year the American steel industries were taxed to their utmost by consumers’ demands. In the year 1902 the iron and steel imports were only 9, and in 1901 only 3 millions. The imports of raw chemicals amounted to 23 millions, and tin the same; wool 21, copper 20; wood 11, and cotton 11.

The exports, arranged according to the sources of production, amounted, last year, to 873 million dollars’ worth of agricultural products, 407 of factory products, 57 of products of the forest, 39 of mines, and 7 from fisheries. Of the remainder, 6 millions were from other domestic sources, and 27 had come from other countries. The agricultural exports reached their highest point in 1901, when they amounted to 943, and also the export of manufactured articles is now 3.4 less than in 1901 and 26 less than in 1900. But the statistics of manufactures show sufficiently that there has been no decrease in output, but merely that the home consumption has increased. Apart from these accidental fluctuations of the past three years, the exports have steadily increased. In 1800 the agricultural exports were 25 millions; the industrial 2; in 1850 the former were 108, the latter 17; in 1880 they were 685 and 102 respectively, and in 1900 they were 835 and 433.

If we look at the foreign trade with regard to the countries traded with, we shall find Europe first in both exports and imports. In the year 1903 the imports from Europe to the United States were 547, the exports to Europe 1,029; the imports from Canada and Mexico were 189, and the exports thereto 215. From South America the imports were 107, the exports 41; from Asia the imports were 147, the exports 58; from Australia they were 21 and 37, and from Africa 12 and 38.

The trade balances with individual countries in Europe were as follows: England bought from the United States 523 million dollars’ worth, and sold the value of 180; then comes Germany, which bought 174 and sold 111; France bought only 70 and sold 87; Austria bought 6 and sold 10; Russia bought 7 and sold the same amount. After England and Germany the best purchaser was Canada, which imported from the United States 123 and exported thereto 54. Germany imports more from the United States than from any other country. Germany imports very much less from Russia, and still less from Austria and Great Britain. Among the countries to which Germany exports her wares the United States has third place, England and Austria having the first and second. America imports from Germany firstly drugs and dye-stuffs, then manufactured cotton, silk, and iron goods, books, pictures, and works of art, clay ware, china, lithographs, toys, etc. No other class amounts to more than 10 million marks. There is a steady increase in almost every class, and the total imports from Germany were 17 per cent. larger last year than during the year previous; 71 per cent. more than in 1898; 138 per cent. more than in 1880; 198 per cent. more than in 1875, and 343 per cent. more than in 1870.

The principal export of the United States to Germany is cotton. Ten years ago the amount exported was 34 million dollars’ worth; in 1901, it was 76; in the following year only 70, but in the year 1903, 84, the amount exported in that year being 957,000,000 pounds. The exports of wheat to Germany amounted in 1896 to only 0.608 million dollars; in the following year to 1.9; in the next year to 3.1; in 1899 to 7.6; and in 1902 to 14.9; but in 1903 to only 11.1. The exports of corn fluctuate still more widely. In the year 1901 Germany bought 17 millions, in 1903 only 6.6. The exportation of petroleum reached its largest figure in 1900, with 8 millions, and in 1893 was 6.3.

Enough of these dry figures. They would look still more striking if compared with the statistics of other countries. More wheat grows in the United States than in any other country, and more corn than in all the other countries put together; more cattle and hogs are slaughtered than in any other country, and three-fourths of the world’s cotton harvest is grown in the United States. No other country mines so much coal, petroleum, iron, copper, and lead, or produces so much leather or charcoal. In short, the most important articles entering into manufactures are more plentiful than in any other country of the world. But even on looking over these figures of international trade, one does not get so adequate an impression of the immense economic activity as by actually seeing the wheels of this great machine in motion. One must see the power stations at Niagara, the steel works of Pittsburg, the slaughter-houses of Chicago, the textile factories of New England, the printing-presses of New York, the watch factories of Massachusetts and Illinois, the grain-elevators of Buffalo, the mills of Minneapolis, the locomotive and ship works near Philadelphia, and the water front of New York City, in order to understand the tremendous forces which are constantly at work.

A single factory turns out 1,500 locomotives every year. A Chicago factory which makes harvesting machinery covers 140 acres, employs 24,000 men, and has made two million machines which are now in use. It has fifty ships to bring its wood and iron, and every day loads a hundred freight cars with its finished products. And enterprise on this large scale is found not merely in staple articles, but in more trivial wares. It is a familiar fact that in Germany the large department stores make very slow progress against small shops, while in America the great shops meet at once with popular favour. Their huge advertisements in newspapers and magazines vie with their shop windows in attracting trade. It is nothing uncommon for the manufacturer of a breakfast food or some chemical preparation to spend over a million dollars a year for humorous advertisements. In the Ladies’ Home Journal one insertion on the advertising pages costs six dollars per line, and the lines are short. A short time ago a soap concern leased the back outside cover of a magazine for a period of time and paid $150,000 therefor.

More impressive, however, than anything that the traveller is able to see to-day is the comparison with what existed yesterday. Our figures have very well shown that the speed of development has been rapid everywhere and sometimes almost explosive. A typical example of this is found in agricultural machinery. The manner of tilling the ground was wholly revolutionized in 1870, when the first ploughing-machine was offered for sale to the American farmer. Since then improvements have been made continually, until to-day every farmer rides on his machines; and the steam-plough, which sows and harrows at the same time, has reduced the amount of time spent on these processes to one-fifteenth of what it formerly was, and the cost of every sheaf of wheat to one-quarter. The machines of to-day sow and fertilize at the same time, and place the seeds at just the desired depth beneath the surface. There are other machines which take the corn from the cob, at the same time cutting up the cobs, and turn out a bushel of corn in a minute, for which a good labourer used to take two hours.

The threshing-flail was abandoned long ago, and the combined mowing and threshing machine is perhaps the most clever invention of all. It cuts the kernels from the stalk, threshes and winnows them, and packs them in bags; and all this as quickly as the horses are able to travel down the field. The machines which separate the cotton from the cotton seed are the only thing that makes it possible to gather a harvest of ten million bales. In former times it took a person about ten hours to remove the seeds from a pound and a half of cotton. The machine cleans 7,000 pounds in the same time.

In just the same way the inventive genius of the American has everywhere increased the output of his factories. His chief aim is to save labour, and hence to devise automatic processes wherever they are possible, so that turning a crank or touching a lever shall accomplish as much as hard work once accomplished. This continual process of invention and improvement, and the fertile resourcefulness of every workman and capitalist, their readiness to introduce every improvement without delay and without regard to expense, have contributed more to the enormous economic progress than all the protective tariff or even than the natural resources of the soil itself.

Extreme jingoes see in this huge growth only the beginning of something yet to come, and in their dreams imagine a day when America shall rule the markets of the world. But no one should be deceived by such ideas. The thoughtful American knows very well that, for instance, the great increase of his export trade has by no means overcome all obstacles. He knows that American wages are high, and that prosperity makes them more so, because the American workman is better able than the European to demand his share of all profits. Also the thoughtful American does not expect to gain the European market by “dumping” his wares. In the apprehension of dull times he may snatch an expedient for getting rid of accumulations which the home market will not take off his hands. In ordinary times industry will not do this, because it knows the demoralizing effect produced on the home country when it is known that the manufacturer is selling more cheaply abroad than at home. The American is afraid of demoralizing the domestic market more than anything else; since, owing to the strong tendency toward industrial imitation, any economic depression spreads rapidly, and can easily cause a general collapse of prices. Even the elaborate pains taken to replace human labour in the American labour-saving machines are often quite made up for by the thoughtless waste of by-products and by the general high-handedness of conducting business.

While America has a tremendous advantage in the fact that coal can be readily brought to the industrial centres, and that the products can be delivered cheaply throughout the country, it stands under the disadvantage that most of its exports are shipped in foreign bottoms, so that the freight charges go to foreigners; for the American merchant-marine is wholly inadequate to the needs of American trade. If America is strong by reason of protective tariff, England intends, perhaps, to remind her daughter country that the American game can be played by two. Protection is no monopoly. While the natural wealth of this country is inexhaustible, the American knows that the largest profits will go to the country which manufactures them; and while the American is energetic and intelligent in getting a foothold in foreign markets, he finds that other nations also have some counterbalancing virtues which he neither has nor can get. First of these is the patience to study foreign requirements, and then the ways of guarding against wastefulness. He has one incomparable advantage, as we have seen—his economic idealism, his belief in the intrinsic value of economic progress, his striving to be economically creative in order to satisfy the restlessness which is in him. The economic drawback of this point of view is not far to seek. The spirit of individual initiative awakens in the workman the demand for equal rights, and intensifies the fight between capital and labour more than in any other country, and puts such chains on industry as are spared to America’s competitors in the markets of the world. In short, the thoughtful American knows very well that the markets of the world are to be won for his products only one by one, and that he will meet competitors who are his equals; that there will be difficulties on difficulties, and that the home market from time to time will make heavy imports necessary. He knows that he cannot hope simply to overthrow the industry of all Europe, nor to make the industrial captains of the New World dictators of the earth.

That which he does expect, however, is sure to happen; namely, that the progress of America will be in the future as steady as it has been in the past. The harvests of all the states will not always prosper, nor speculators be always contented with their profits, but the business life of the nation as a whole, unless all signs fail, need fear no setbacks or serious panics.

The United States have gone through six severe crises—in 1814, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, and 1893. There is much to indicate that the trite idea of the rhythmical recurrence of crises will be given up henceforth. And although just now, after years of great expansion, contraction is setting in, still the times are not to be compared with preceding crises, and particularly not with the bitter days of 1893. Let us examine what happened in that year. The unhappy experiences of the early nineties resulted naturally from an abnormal expansion of credit. Five or six years of prosperity had gone before, and therewith every industry which contributed to personal gratification was stimulated to excess. An unreasonable craze for building went over the country, and real estate rose constantly. But the country had not developed economically in other directions to a corresponding degree. Too many superfluous undertakings had been started, and houses and lands were everywhere heavily mortgaged. As early as 1890 things began to tremble, and three years later the final crash came. More than 15,000 bankruptcies followed one another during that year, of which the total obligations were $350,000,000; and in the three following years matters were hardly any better. Everything was paralyzed. The farmer was in debt, the artisan out of employment, the miner had to be fed by charity, and since the purchasing power of millions of people was destroyed, there was no one to support industry and trade. It was a veritable economic collapse, with all the symptoms of danger; but the organism recovered without the aid of a physician, by its own healthy reaction, and in such wise that a relapse will hardly take place in the future.

The catastrophe prepared for the return to strength by destroying many business concerns which were not fit to survive, and leaving only the strongest in the field. But this result is, of course, not a lasting one, because in prosperous years all sorts of poor businesses start up again; good years stimulate superfluous production. The permanent result was the lesson which industry learned, in prudence and economy. There is very much in this direction still to be learned, yet the last crisis accomplished a great deal. For instance, in the stock-yards a single company had formerly thrown away annually portions of the animals which would have yielded six million pounds of lime, 30 million pounds of fat, and 105 million pounds of fertilizer, and a few years later the total dividends of that company were paid by the by-products which had been thrown away a short time before. The same thing has happened in the mines and oil-wells, in the fields and in the forests.

Owing to the special gift which the American has for invention, this period brought out a great number of devices looking toward economy. In iron factories and coal mines, and in a thousand places where industry was busy, expenses were cut down and profits were increased, more labour-saving devices were invented, and all sorts of processes were accomplished by ingenious machines. American industry derived advantages from this period in which the nation had to be economical, which it will never outlive.

Although such great economy helps out in bad times, it does not in itself revive trade. It is difficult to say where and how the revival set in, since the most diverse factors must have been at work. But the formation of the great trusts was not a cause of such revival, but merely a symptom of it. The real commencement seems to have been the great harvest which the country enjoyed in the fall of 1897. When wheat was scarce in Russia and India, and therefore throughout the world, America reaped the largest harvest in years, and despite the enormous quantity the European demand carried prices up from week to week. The farmer who in 1894 had received forty-nine cents for each bushel of wheat, now received eighty-one cents, and at the same time had his bins full. Of course there could be only one result. The farmers who had been economizing and almost impoverished for several years became very prosperous, and called for all sorts of things which they had had to go without—better wagons and farming implements, better clothing, and better food. In a country where agriculture is so important, this means prosperity for all industries.

The shops in every village were busy once more, and the large industries again started up one by one. The effect on the railroads was still more important. The good times had stimulated the building of many competing lines of railroad, which were very good for the country, but less profitable to their owners. The lean years just passed had brought great demoralization to these lines. One railroad after another had gone into a receiver’s hands, and the service was crippled. Every possible cent was saved and coaches and road-beds were sparingly renewed. Now came an enormous freight demand to carry the great harvest to market, and to serve the newly revived industries. The railroads rapidly recovered; their service was restored. The railroads brought prosperity once more to the iron and steel industries; new rails and ties were absolutely necessary, and the steel industry started forward and set everything else in motion with it. Artisans became prosperous again and further stimulated the industries which they patronized; coal was wanted everywhere, and so the mines awakened to new life.

Then the Spanish War was begun and brought to the nation an unexpected amount of self-confidence, which quickened once more its industrial activity. Such were the internal conditions which made for growth, and the external conditions were equally favourable. In 1898 America harvested 675 million bushels of wheat, and the enormous quantity of 11 million bales of cotton. By chance, moreover, the production of gold increased to $64,000,000; and this, with the enormous sums which foreign countries paid for American grain, considerably increased the money in circulation. This was the time for the stock market to enjoy a similar boom. During the crisis it had nervously withheld from activity and looked with distrust on the West and South, which were now being prospered by great harvests. Everything had formerly been mortgaged in those regions, and from the despair of the Western farmer the ill-advised silver schemes had arisen to fill the eastern part of the country with anxiety. But now the election of McKinley had assured the safety of the currency; the silver issue was laid low; the debts of the Western farmer had been paid within a few years by magnificent crops, and the Western States had come into a healthy state of prosperity. Now the stock markets could pluck up courage. In the stock market of New York in the year 1894 only 49,000,000 shares were bought and sold. In 1897 the market began to recover, and 77,000,000 shares were exchanged; in 1898 there were 112,000,000, and in 1899, 175,000,000 shares.

In the winter of 1898–99 the formation of trusts commenced in good earnest, and this was a glad day for the stock markets. Large amounts of capital which had been only cautiously offered now sought investment, and since the market quotations could rise more quickly than industries could grow, it was a favourable time for reorganizing industry and making great combinations with a capital proportioned to the happy industrial outlook. In the State of New Jersey alone, a state which specially invited all such organizations by means of its very lenient laws of incorporation, hundreds of such combinations were incorporated with a total nominal capital of over $4,000,000,000. To be sure, in just this connection there was very soon a recoil. In December of 1899, a great many of these watered-stock issues collapsed, although the industries themselves went on unharmed. But this activity of the stock market, in spite of its fluctuating quotations, was of benefit to industrial life.

Meanwhile wealth in town and country increased, owing to the general activity of all factors. In a few years the number of savings-banks accounts was doubled, and railroads had only the one complaint—that they could not get enough cars to carry all the wheat, corn, wood, iron, cattle, coal, cotton, and manufactures offered for transportation. In two years the number of money-orders sent through the post-offices increased by 7 millions, and the number of letters and packages by 361 millions. Now, too, came a time of magnificent philanthropy; private endowments for education and art increased in one year more than $50,000,000.

Along with all this came an increase in foreign trade; here, too, bad times had prepared the way. When the home market was prostrate, industry had sought with great energy to get a footing in foreign markets; and by low prices, assiduous study of foreign demands, and good workmanship, it had slowly conquered one field after another, so that when good times came there was a splendid foundation built for a foreign commerce. America sold bicycles and agricultural machinery, boots, cotton cloth, paper, and watches, and eventually rails, bridges, and locomotives in quantities which would never have been thought of before the panic. And the country became at the same time more than ever independent of European industry. In 1890 America bought $357,000,000 of foreign manufactures and sold of her own only $151,000,000. In 1899 its purchases were $100,000,000 less and its exports nearly $200,000,000 more.

And at the same time, owing to the tremendous crops, the total export of native products reached the sum of $1,233,000,000, and therewith the United States had for the first time reached the highest place among the exporting countries of the world—a position which had formerly belonged to Great Britain. The trade balance of the United States, even in the first year of prosperity, 1898, brought $615,000,000 into the country. The year in which the American Navy, by a rapid succession of victories, demonstrated that the nation was politically a world power, brought the assurance that it was no less a world power commercially. Already the Russian trans-Siberian Railway was using American rails, American companies were building bridges in India, American cotton goods driving out British competition in China, and the movement was still going on. One large harvest followed another.

The wheat harvest in 1901 reached the unprecedented figure of 736 million bushels, and in 1902 of 987 millions. In the same year there were 670 million bushels of barley, and as many as 2,523 million bushels of corn. A corn harvest is almost always profitable, because it keeps and can easily be stored until the right time comes to sell it; and then, too, the farmers are always ready to use it for feed, which further helps its price. Corn has done more than any other harvest to bring wealth into the West. The cotton crop stayed at its ten-million mark, and nearly 70 million barrels of petroleum flowed every year. The demands made on the railroads increased month by month, until finally last year there were weeks in which no freight could be received, because the freight yards were full of unloaded cars. And at the head of everything moved the iron and steel industries. The larger the harvests the more lively was the industry of the country, and the more busy the factories and railroads became the more the iron industry prospered. The manufacture of iron and steel increased steadily, and in 1898 amounted to 11.9 million meter-tons of pig-iron, and 9 million of steel; in 1900, to 14 of pig-iron and 10 of steel; in 1902, to 18 and 15: while the production of the entire earth was only 44 and 36 respectively.

But in spite of this tremendous growth, the prices also rose. Railroads which in the spring had made contracts for new rails were able a few months later to sell their old rails at prices which were 25 per cent. higher than the former price of new rails, because meanwhile the price of steel had risen enormously. If it is true that the iron industry can be taken as an index of national prosperity, there is no doubt at all that prosperity was here. No city in the country experienced such a growth in its banking as Pittsburg, where the banking transactions in 1899 amounted to $1,500,000,000.

This tempestuous expansion in every direction, which lasted from 1897 to 1903, is no longer going on. A counter-movement has set in again. So many factors are at work that it is hard to say where the reaction commenced, although undoubtedly the great coal strikes were the first important indication. The feverish building activity of the country is very largely over, and this decrease has considerably affected the steel industry. Perhaps the refusal of bankers further to countenance the financial operations of the railroads has been an even more important matter. During the years of prosperity the railroads had obtained credit so easily that the scale of expenditure on most railroads had become too lavish, and in particular large sums had been spent in converting railroad shares into bonds. Now the financial world began to react and refused to furnish any more funds, whereon the railroads, which were among the best patrons of the steel industry, had to retrench. And this depressed the state of business, and the otherwise somewhat diminished industry cut down the freight traffic. Other industries had to suffer when the building and iron industries declined. The purchasing power of the working-man has decreased somewhat, and general industry is a trifle dull. This has affected stock quotations, and nervousness in financial circles has been increased by the mishaps and miscalculations of well-known operators. This has worked back in various directions, and so it is natural that pessimists at home and the dear friends of the country abroad have predicted a panic.

But it will not come. The situation has been too largely corrected, and the country has learned a lasting lesson from previous years. When a collapse came in the early nineties, after a time of prosperity and over-expenditure in every sort of undertaking, the national situation was in every way different. There was a great deal of real weakness, and there were many unnecessary and unconservative business ventures on foot. All this is different to-day. The credit which the railroads at that time had overdrawn on had been used to lay thousands of miles of tracks where as yet there was no population. During the recent years of prosperity, on the contrary, the railroads have been extended relatively little, and the expenditures have been mainly for improved equipment and service. The railroads have been made more efficient and substantial, their indebtedness is less, and the considerable contraction of business cannot do them serious harm. Indeed, many persons believe that the great strain which the boom of the last few years has put on the railroads has been a decided disadvantage to them. The excessive traffic has disturbed regular business, increased the danger from accidents, and considerably raised the charges for maintenance. In general, the railroads would prefer a normal to an abnormal traffic demand.

The same is true of industry. Such tremendous pressure as the last few years have brought cannot be borne without loss. The factories were obliged to hire working-men much below the average grade of intelligence, and the slight decline of industrial demand has made it possible to dismiss the inferior men and to keep only the more efficient. Industry itself is to-day like the railroads, thoroughly sound and prosperous, and the small fluctuations in profits are not nearly so great as the declines in market quotations.

Financial operations and labour are largely independent of each other. The output can be undisturbed when the value of shares is being wiped out in the market. American stocks do not represent the actual value of the industrial plants which have been combined to form a trust, but represent in part certain advantages which it is calculated will accrue from the consolidation of business—economies of administration and obviation of competition. The real economic life will not be damaged if such shares, which for the most part have remained in the strongboxes of the very rich, decline from their fictitious values. Such fluctuations have always happened, and may happen in the very height of prosperity, without doing any harm to industry itself. Thus, for instance, in 1898 an enormous over-speculation commenced in copper shares. Their price was artificially raised and raised, and in the summer of 1899 this house built of share certificates collapsed, and great was the fall thereof; but the price of copper itself was uninfluenced. A pound of copper in the year 1897 brought only the average price of 11 cents; in 1899 its average price was 17 cents, although the copper securities were going down steadily. Not only is industry itself on a sound basis, and the improvements which it introduced in the last panic are not only still in force, but also certain needs have now been met at home which formerly were met only by foreign countries; and at the same time commerce has been so energetically carried into other countries, that there is now a readier outlet than ever in case the domestic purchasing power should again be suspended.

But there are still more important factors. The first of these is the recent and complete independence of this country from European capital. Since year after year the exports of the United States to Europe have exceeded the imports by hundreds of millions of dollars, the debt which Europe so contracted has been paid for the most part by returning the industrial and other bonds which Europe owned against America. It was this which had greatly contributed to the crisis in the early nineties; Europe withdrew her capital. In 1892 the United States paid back $500,000,000 of European capital, and to-day very little is left to pay. In 1893 the United States exported $108,000,000 in gold, but imported only $22,000,000. In the year 1898 the imports of gold to the United States were $105,000,000 more than the exports. Last year the balance was still in favour of the United States; and it would be impossible to-day, in case of any stringency in the money market of the country, for the withdrawal of European capital to precipitate a panic.

Another factor is that the political situation is now certain, as it was not at the time of the last panic. The silver schemes of the West then filled the country with apprehension, whereas to-day there are no such political fears. However the Presidential election may turn out, there will be no dangerous experiments tried with the currency; and even if both parties should mildly oppose the trusts, the nation nevertheless knows that just the formation of these trusts has contributed to the steadiness and security of economic prosperity, that it has done away with unnecessary competition, has brought about an orderly and uniform production, and that although the purchasers of watered stocks may have been bitten, the purchasers of the finished products have suffered little inconvenience.

Then there are two other factors whose significance for economic solidity cannot be overestimated. The first of these is the increasing independence of the agricultural West, and the second is the industrial revival of the South. The financial condition of the New York Stock Exchange to-day no more represents the industrial life of the whole nation, as it did ten years ago. The West, which before the panic of 1893 was up to its ears in debts owned by the East, is now, by reason of six tremendous harvests, prosperous and independent, and its purchasing power and business enterprise are no longer affected by the fluctuations of Wall Street. Even if the shares of all New Jersey corporations should collapse, the nation could continue to buy and sell, produce, manufacture, and transport, because the Western agricultural states would suffer no relapse of prosperity. They have paid off their mortgages and laid money by; the farmer has bought his daughter a parlour organ, sent his sons to college, and bent all his energies to making his West into an economic paradise. Migration has once more set in from the Eastern to the Western States, while during the poor years it had almost stopped; and Western economic influence is asserting itself more and more in the political field.

The same is more or less true of the South. In former times, whenever a cotton harvest brought prosperity, the South still did not take the trouble to utilize its ample resources outside of the plantations. It did not try to mine its coal and iron deposits, nor exploit its forests, nor grow wheat and corn, nor manufacture cotton into cloth, nor the cottonseed into oil. It left all this to the North. But during hard times the South has learned its lesson, and at the time of the last great revival the whole South developed an almost undreamed-of economic activity. The exploitation of forests and coal and iron deposits made great strides, and the factories turned out articles to the value of $2,000,000,000. Cotton is still the staple article of the South, but the bales no longer have to be sent to the North to be made into cloth. As early as 1899 there were 5 million spindles in operation, and the manufacture of cotton has made the South more independent than any number of bales produced for export could have made it.

This economic independence of one another of large sections of the country, and at the same time of European capital, combined with the large increase of commerce with the whole world, the improvement in economic appliances, and a surprising growth in technical science and technical instruction, has created a national economic situation which is so different from that which prevailed in the beginning of the nineties, that there is no analogy to justify the pessimist in predicting another such panic. It had to come at that time. Industrial forces had suffered a serious disaster and had to go back to camp in order to recuperate. Since then they have been striding forward, swerving a little now and then, it may be, to avoid some obstacle, but they are still marching on as they have marched for seven years with firm and steady step, and keeping time with the world-power tune which the national government is playing.