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diff --git a/19739.txt b/19739.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5807c08 --- /dev/null +++ b/19739.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5479 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern American Prose Selections, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Modern American Prose Selections + +Author: Various + +Editor: Byron Johnson Rees + +Release Date: November 8, 2006 [EBook #19739] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN AMERICAN PROSE SELECTIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Matt Whittaker and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + +*************** +Transcriber's Notes: In the Woodrow Wilson selection, the word 'altrusion' +was changed to 'altruism' based on consultation with the original text from +which the passage was taken for this book. + +In the Jacob Riis selection, the phrase "It it none too fine yet" was +replaced with "It is none too fine yet" after consultation with the +original text from which the passage was taken for this book. + +Other minor typos were also corrected. Hyphenation was left consistent +with how it appears in the book. +*************** + + + + + MODERN + AMERICAN PROSE + SELECTIONS + + + EDITED BY + + BYRON JOHNSON REES + PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE + + + NEW YORK + HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE + 1920 + + + + + THE PLIMPTON PRESS + NORWOOD MASS U. S. A. + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE +PREFACE vii + +ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi + +_Abraham Lincoln_ Theodore Roosevelt 3 + +_American Tradition_ Franklin K. Lane 8 + +_America's Heritage_ Franklin K. Lane 17 + +_Address at the College of the Holy +Cross_ Calvin Coolidge 25 + +_Our Future Immigration Policy_ Frederic C. Howe 31 + +_A New Relationship between Capital +and Labor_ John D. Rockefeller, Jr. 42 + +_My Uncle_ Alvin Johnson 48 + +_When a Man Comes to Himself_ Woodrow Wilson 53 + +_Education through Occupations_ William Lowe Bryan 68 + +_The Fallow_ John Agricola 81 + +_Writing and Reading_ John Matthews Manly and + Edith Rickert 87 + +_James Russell Lowell_ Bliss Perry 94 + +_The Education of Henry Adams_ Carl Becker 109 + +_The Struggle for an Education_ Booker T. Washington 119 + +_Entering Journalism_ Jacob A. Riis 128 + +_Bound Coastwise_ Ralph D. Paine 135 + +_The Democratization of the Automobile_ + Burton J. Hendrick 145 + +_Traveling Afoot_ John Finley 157 + +_Old Boats_ Walter Prichard Eaton 165 + +_Zeppelinitis_ Philip Littell 177 + + + + + TO + E., C., AND H. + STUDENTS AND FRIENDS + + + +PREFACE + + +As the reader, if he wishes, may discover without undue delay, the little +volume of modern prose selections that he has before him is the result of +no ambitious or pretentious design. It is not a collection of the best +things that have lately been known and thought in the American world; it is +not an anthology in which "all our best authors" are represented by +striking or celebrated passages. The editor planned nothing either so +precious or so eclectic. His purpose rather was to bring together some +twenty examples of typical contemporary prose, in which writers who know +whereof they write discuss certain present-day themes in readable fashion. +In choosing material he has sought to include nothing merely because of the +name of the author, and he has demanded of each selection that it should be +of such a character, both in subject and style, as to impress normal and +wholesome Americans as well worth reading. + +The earlier selections--President Roosevelt's noble eulogy upon Lincoln, +Secretary Lane's two addresses on American tradition and heritage, and +Governor Coolidge's address at Holy Cross--remind the reader of the high +significance of our national past and indicate the promise of a rightly +apprehended future. There follow two articles--"Our Future Immigration +Policy," by Commissioner Frederic C. Howe, and "A New Relationship between +Capital and Labor," by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.--on subjects that press +for earnest consideration on the part of all who are intent upon the +solution of our problems. Mr. Alvin Johnson's playful yet serious essay on +"the biggest, kindliest, most honest and honorable tribal head that ever +lived" completes the group of what may be termed "Americanization" Papers. + +Perhaps the best of the many magazine articles that President Wilson has +written is that which serves as a link--for those to whom links, even in a +miscellany, are a satisfaction--between the earlier selections and those +that follow. "When a Man Comes to Himself," expressing as it does in +English of distinction the best thought of the best Americans concerning +the individual's relation to society and to the state, will probably be +widely read, with attention and gratitude, for many years to come. +Associated with Mr. Wilson's article are three selections presenting +various aspects of self-realization in education. One of them, "The +Fallow," deals in signally happy manner with the insistent and vital +question of the study of the Classics. + +That scholarly and competent literary criticism need not be dull or +deficient in charm is obvious from an examination of Mr. Bliss Perry's +masterly study of James Russell Lowell and Mr. Carl Becker's subtle and +discriminating analysis of _The Education of Henry Adams_. Both writers +attack subjects of considerable complexity and difficulty, and both succeed +in clarifying the thought of the discerning reader and inducing in him an +exhilarating sense of mental and spiritual enlargement. + +From the many notable autobiographies that have appeared during recent +years the editor has chosen two from which to reprint brief passages. The +first is Booker T. Washington's _Up from Slavery_, the simple and +straightforward personal narrative of one whom all must now concede to have +been a very great man; the other is that human and poignant epic of the +stranger from Denmark who became one of us and of whom we as a people are +tenderly proud. _The Making of an American_ is in some ways a unique book; +concrete, specific, self-revealing and yet dignified; a book that one could +wish that every American might know. + +Also concrete and specific are the chapters from Mr. Ralph D. Paine and Mr. +Burton J. Hendrick. In "Bound Coastwise" Mr. Paine has treated, with +knowledge, sympathy, and imagination, an important phase of our commercial +life. As an example of narrative-exposition, matter-of-fact yet touched +with the romance of those who "go down to the sea in ships," the excerpt is +thoroughly admirable. Mr. Hendrick, in entertaining and profitable wise, +tells the story of what he considers "probably America's greatest +manufacturing exploit." + +Dr. Finley "starts the imagination out upon the road" and "invites to the +open spaces," especially to those undisturbed by "the flying automobile." +"Walking," he says eagerly, "is not only a joy in itself, but it gives an +intimacy with the sacred things and the primal things of earth that are not +revealed to those who rush by on wheels." + +In "Old Boats" Mr. Walter Prichard Eaton, in a manner of writing that has +of late years won him a large place in the hearts of readers, thoughtfully +contemplates the abandoned farmhouse, and lingers wistfully beside the +beached and crumbling craft of the "unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea." Few +can read, or, better, hear read, his closing paragraph without thrilling to +that "other harmony of prose." That such a cadenced and haunting passage +should have been published as recently as 1917 should assure the doubter +that there is still amongst us a taste for the beautiful. "I live inland +now, far from the smell of salt water and the sight of sails. Yet sometimes +there comes over me a longing for the sea as irresistible as the lust for +salt which stampedes the reindeer of the north. I must gaze on the unbroken +world-rim, I must feel the sting of spray, I must hear the rhythmic crash +and roar of breakers and watch the sea-weed rise and fall where the green +waves lift against the rocks. Once in so often I must ride those waves with +cleated sheet and tugging tiller, and hear the soft hissing song of the +water on the rail. And 'my day of mercy' is not complete till I have seen +some old boat, her seafaring done, heeled over on the beach or amid the +fragrant sedges, a mute and wistful witness to the romance of the deep, the +blue and restless deep where man has adventured in craft his hands have +made since the earliest sun of history, and whereon he will adventure, +ardently and insecure, till the last syllable of recorded time." + + + +ACKNOWLEDGMENTS + + +The editor's thanks are due to the holders of copyrights who have +generously permitted him to include selections from books and magazines +published by them. More particularly he would express his gratitude to the +Yale University Press, to Harper and Brothers, to Henry Holt and Co., to +Doubleday, Page and Co., to the Macmillan Company, to the Century Company, +to the Frederick A. Stokes Company, to the P. F. Collier and Son Company, +to the Houghton Mifflin Company, to the Outlook Company, to the Indiana +University Bookstore, to the editor of the _Harvard Graduates' Magazine_, +to the editors of the _American Historical Review_, and to Harcourt, Brace +and Howe. Specific indications as to the extent of the editor's borrowing +will be found with the selections. + +Authors from whose work the editor has wished to quote have been invariably +gracious. To President Wilson for his essay "When a Man Comes to Himself," +to Governor Coolidge for his Holy Cross College address, to Secretary Lane +for two addresses, and to Commissioner Howe for his article on immigration, +he would express his gratitude. President John Finley, Mr. Walter Prichard +Eaton, Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., President W. L. Bryan, Mr. Alvin +Johnson, Mr. John Matthews Manly, Miss Edith Rickert, Mr. Carl Becker, Mr. +Ralph D. Paine, Mr. Burton J. Hendrick, Mr. Philip Littell, and Mr. Bliss +Perry have freely accorded permission to reprint the selections that bear +their names. Mrs. Jacob A. Riis and Mr. R. W. Riis have courteously granted +the use of the excerpt from _The Making of an American_. The editors of +_The New Republic_ and the editors of _The University of Virginia Alumni +Bulletin_ have kindly consented to the reprinting of articles that +originally appeared in their periodicals. To Mr. Will D. Howe, whose +assistance has been constant and invaluable, the editor would extend his +hearty thanks. + + + + +MODERN AMERICAN PROSE SELECTIONS + + + + +ABRAHAM LINCOLN[1] + +THEODORE ROOSEVELT + +[Footnote 1: Address delivered at Lincoln's birthplace, Hodgenville, Ky., +Feb. 12, 1909. Reprinted from _Collier's Weekly_, issue of Feb. 13, 1909. +By permission. Copyright, 1909, P. F. Collier & Son Co.] + + +We have met here to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one +of the two greatest Americans; of one of the two or three greatest men of +the nineteenth century; of one of the greatest men in the world's history. +This rail-splitter, this boy who passed his ungainly youth in the dire +poverty of the poorest of the frontier folk, whose rise was by weary and +painful labor, lived to lead his people through the burning flames of a +struggle from which the nation emerged, purified as by fire, born anew to a +loftier life. + +After long years of iron effort, and of failure that came more often than +victory, he at last rose to the leadership of the Republic, at the moment +when that leadership had become the stupendous world-task of the time. He +grew to know greatness, but never ease. Success came to him, but never +happiness, save that which springs from doing well a painful and a vital +task. Power was his, but not pleasure. The furrows deepened on his brow, +but his eyes were undimmed by either hate or fear. His gaunt shoulders were +bowed, but his steel thews never faltered as he bore for a burden the +destinies of his people. His great and tender heart shrank from giving +pain; and the task allotted him was to pour out like water the life-blood +of the young men, and to feel in his every fibre the sorrow of the women. +Disaster saddened but never dismayed him. + +As the red years of war went by they found him ever doing his duty in the +present, ever facing the future with fearless front, high of heart, and +dauntless of soul. Unbroken by hatred, unshaken by scorn, he worked and +suffered for the people. Triumph was his at the last; and barely had he +tasted it before murder found him, and the kindly, patient, fearless eyes +were closed forever. + +As a people we are indeed beyond measure fortunate in the characters of the +two greatest of our public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they +differed in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Kentucky +backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials, they were alike in the great +qualities which made each able to do service to his nation and to all +mankind such as no other man of his generation could or did render. Each +had lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain these lofty ideals was +guided by the soundest common sense. Each possessed inflexible courage in +adversity, and a soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each possessed all +the gentler virtues commonly exhibited by good men who lack rugged strength +of character. Each possessed also all the strong qualities commonly +exhibited by those towering masters of mankind who have too often shown +themselves devoid of so much as the understanding of the words by which we +signify the qualities of duty, of mercy, of devotion to the right, of lofty +disinterestedness in battling for the good of others. + +There have been other men as great and other men as good; but in all the +history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these, no +other two good men as great. Widely though the problems of to-day differ +from the problems set for solution to Washington when he founded this +nation, to Lincoln when he saved it and freed the slave, yet the qualities +they showed in meeting these problems are exactly the same as those we +should show in doing our work to-day. + +Lincoln saw into the future with the prophetic imagination usually +vouchsafed only to the poet and the seer. He had in him all the lift toward +greatness of the visionary, without any of the visionary's fanaticism or +egotism, without any of the visionary's narrow jealousy of the practical +man and inability to strive in practical fashion for the realization of an +ideal. He had the practical man's hard common sense and willingness to +adapt means to ends; but there was in him none of that morbid growth of +mind and soul which blinds so many practical men to the higher aims of +life. No more practical man ever lived than this homely backwoods idealist; +but he had nothing in common with those practical men whose consciences are +warped until they fail to distinguish between good and evil, fail to +understand that strength, ability, shrewdness, whether in the world of +business or of politics, only serve to make their possessor a more noxious, +a more evil, member of the community if they are not guided and controlled +by a fine and high moral sense. + +We of this day must try to solve many social and industrial problems, +requiring to an especial degree the combination of indomitable resolution +with cool-headed sanity. We can profit by the way in which Lincoln used +both these traits as he strove for reform. We can learn much of value from +the very attacks which following that course brought upon his head, attacks +alike by the extremists of revolution and by the extremists of reaction. He +never wavered in devotion to his principles, in his love for the Union, and +in his abhorrence of slavery. Timid and lukewarm people were always +denouncing him because he was too extreme; but as a matter of fact he never +went to extremes, he worked step by step; and because of this the +extremists hated and denounced him with a fervor which now seems to us +fantastic in its deification of the unreal and the impossible. At the very +time when one side was holding him up as the apostle of social revolution +because he was against slavery, the leading abolitionist denounced him as +the "slave hound of Illinois." When he was the second time candidate for +President, the majority of his opponents attacked him because of what they +termed his extreme radicalism, while a minority threatened to bolt his +nomination because he was not radical enough. He had continually to check +those who wished to go forward too fast, at the very time that he overrode +the opposition of those who wished not to go forward at all. The goal was +never dim before his vision; but he picked his way cautiously, without +either halt or hurry, as he strode toward it, through such a morass of +difficulty that no man of less courage would have attempted it, while it +would surely have overwhelmed any man of judgment less serene. + +Yet perhaps the most wonderful thing of all, and, from the standpoint of +the America of to-day and of the future, the most vitally important, was +the extraordinary way in which Lincoln could fight valiantly against what +he deemed wrong and yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the +brother from whom he differed. In the hour of a triumph that would have +turned any weaker man's head, in the heat of a struggle which spurred many +a good man to dreadful vindictiveness, he said truthfully that so long as +he had been in his office he had never willingly planted a thorn in any +man's bosom, and besought his supporters to study the incidents of the +trial through which they were passing as philosophy from which to learn +wisdom and not as wrongs to be avenged; ending with the solemn exhortation +that, as the strife was over, all should reunite in a common effort to save +their common country. + +He lived in days that were great and terrible, when brother fought against +brother for what each sincerely deemed to be the right. In a contest so +grim the strong men who alone can carry it through are rarely able to do +justice to the deep convictions of those with whom they grapple in mortal +strife. At such times men see through a glass darkly; to only the rarest +and loftiest spirits is vouchsafed that clear vision which gradually comes +to all, even the lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, and wounds +are forgotten, and peace creeps back to the hearts that were hurt. + +But to Lincoln was given this supreme vision. He did not hate the man from +whom he differed. Weakness was as foreign as wickedness to his strong, +gentle nature; but his courage was of a quality so high that it needed no +bolstering of dark passion. He saw clearly that the same high qualities, +the same courage, and willingness for self-sacrifice, and devotion to the +right as it was given them to see the right, belonged both to the men of +the North and to the men of the South. As the years roll by, and as all of +us, wherever we dwell, grow to feel an equal pride in the valor and +self-devotion, alike of the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the +gray, so this whole nation will grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in +the man whose blood was shed for the union of his people and for the +freedom of a race; the lover of his country and of all mankind; the +mightiest of the mighty men who mastered the mighty days, Abraham Lincoln. + + + + +AMERICAN TRADITION[2] + +FRANKLIN K. LANE + +[Footnote 2: Address delivered by Secretary Lane at the University of +Virginia, Feb. 22, 1912. Reprinted from the University of Virginia _Alumni +Bulletin_, and from _The American Spirit_, by Franklin K. Lane (Copyright, +1918, by the Frederick A. Stokes Co.). By permission of the author and of +the publishers.] + + +It has not been an easy task for me to decide upon a theme for discussion +to-day. I know that I can tell you little of Washington that would be new, +and the thought has come to me that perhaps you would be interested in what +might be called a western view of American tradition, for I come from the +other side of this continent where all of our traditions are as yet +articles of transcontinental traffic, and you are here in the very heart of +tradition, the sacred seat of our noblest memories. + +No doubt you sometimes think that we are reckless of the wisdom of our +forebears; while we at times have been heard to say that you live too +securely in that passion for the past which makes men mellow but unmodern. + +When you see the West adopting or urging such measures as presidential +primaries, the election of United States Senators by popular vote, the +initiative, the referendum and the recall as means supplementary to +representative government, you shudder in your dignified way no doubt, at +the audacity and irreverence of your crude countrymen. They must be in your +eyes as far from grace as that American who visited one of the ancient +temples of India. After a long journey through winding corridors of marble, +he was brought to a single flickering light set in a jeweled recess in the +wall. "And what is this?" said the tourist. "That, sir," replied the guide, +"is the sacred fire which was lighted 2,000 years ago and never has been +out." "Never been out? What nonsense! Poof! Well, the blamed thing's out +now." This wild Westerner doubtless typifies those who without heed and in +their hot-headed and fanatical worship of change would destroy the very +light of our civilization. But let me remind you that all fanaticism is not +radical. There is a fanaticism that is conservative, a reverence for things +as they are that is no less destructive. Some years ago I visited a fishing +village in Canada peopled by Scotchmen who had immigrated in the early part +of the nineteenth century. It was a place named Ingonish in Cape Breton, a +rugged spot that looks directly upon the Atlantic at its cruelest point. +One day I fell into talk with a fisherman--a very model of a tawny-haired +viking. He told me that from his fishing and his farming he made some $300 +a year. "Why not come over into my country," I said, "where you may make +that in a month?" There came over his face a look of humiliation as he +replied, "No, I could not." "Why not?" I asked. "Because," said he, +brushing his hand across his sea-burnt beard, "because I can neither read +nor write." "And why," said I, "haven't you learned? There are schools +here." "Yes, there are schools, but my father could not read or write, and +I would have felt that I was putting a shame upon the old man if I had +learned to do something he could not do." Splendid, wasn't it! He would not +do what his father could not do. Fine! Fine as the spirit of any man with a +sentiment which holds him back from leading a full, rich life. Yet can you +conceive a nation of such men--idolizing what has been, blind to the great +vision of the future, fettered by the chains of the past, gripped and held +fast in the hand of the dead, a nation of traditionalists, unable to meet +the needs of a new day, serene, no doubt self-sufficient, but coming how +far short of realizing that ideal of those who praise their God for that +they serve his world! + +I have given the two extremes; now let us return to our point of departure, +and the first question to be asked is, "What are the traditions of our +people?" This nation is not as it was one hundred and thirty-odd years ago +when we asserted the traditional right of Anglo-Saxons to rebel against +injustice. We have traveled centuries and centuries since then--measured in +events, in achievements, in depth of insight into the secrets of nature, in +breadth of view, in sweep of sympathy, and in the rise of ennobling hope. +Physically we are to-day nearer to China than we were then to Ohio. +Socially, industrially, commercially the wide world is almost a unit. And +these thirteen states have spread across a continent to which have been +gathered the peoples of the earth. We are the "heirs of all the ages." Our +inheritance of tradition is greater than that of any other people, for we +trace back not alone to King John signing the Magna Charta in that little +stone hut by the riverside, but to Brutus standing beside the slain Caesar, +to Charles Martel with his battle-axe raised against the advancing horde of +an old-world civilization, to Martin Luther declaring his square-jawed +policy of religious liberty, to Columbus in the prow of his boat crying to +his disheartened crew, "Sail on, sail on, and on!" Irishman, Greek, Slav, +and Sicilian--all the nations of the world have poured their hopes and +their history into this great melting pot, and the product will be--in +fact, is--a civilization that is new in the sense that it is the blend of +many, and yet is as old as the Egyptians. + +Surely the real tradition of such a people is not any one way of doing a +certain thing; certainly not any set and unalterable plan of procedure in +affairs, nor even any fixed phrase expressive of a general philosophy +unless it comes from the universal heart of this strange new people. Why +are we here? What is our purpose? These questions will give you the +tradition of the American people, our supreme tradition--the one into which +all others fall, and a part of which they are--the right of man to oppose +injustice. There follow from this the right of man to govern himself, the +right of property and to personal liberty, the right to freedom of speech, +the right to make of himself all that nature will permit, the right to be +one of many in creating a national life that will realize those hopes which +singly could not be achieved. + +Is there any other tradition so sacred as this--so much a part of +ourselves--this hatred of injustice? It carries in its bosom all the past +that inspires our people. Their spirit of unrest under wrong has lighted +the way for the nations of the world. It is not seen alone in Kansas and in +California, but in England, where a Liberal Ministry has made a beginning +at the restoration of the land to the people; in Germany, where the citizen +is fighting his way up to power; in Portugal, where a university professor +sits in the chair a king so lately occupied; in Russia, emerging from the +Middle Ages, with her groping Douma; in Persia, from which young Shuster +was so recently driven for trying to give to a people a sense of national +self-respect; in India, where an Emperor moves a national capital to pacify +submerged discontent; and even in far Cathay, the mystery land of Marco +Polo, immobile, phlegmatic, individualistic China, men have been waging war +for the philosophy incorporated in the first ten lines of our Declaration +of Independence. + +Here is the effect of a tradition that is real, not a mere group of words +or a well-fashioned bit of governmental machinery--real because it is ours; +it has come out of our life; for the only real traditions a people have are +those beliefs that have become a part of them, like the good manners of a +gentleman. They are really our sympathies--sympathies born of experience. +Subjectively they give standpoint; objectively they furnish background--a +rich, deep background like that of some master of light and shade, some +Rembrandt, whose picture is one great glowing mystery of darkness save in a +central spot of radiant light where stands a single figure or group which +holds the eye and enchants the imagination. History may give to us the one +bright face to look upon, but in the deep mystery of the background the +real story is told; for therein, to those who can see, are the groping +multitudes feeling their way blindly toward the light of self-expression. + +Now, this is a western view of tradition; it is yours, too; it was yours +first; it was your gift to us. And is it impertinent to ask, when your +sensibilities are shocked at some departure from the conventional in our +western law, that you search the tradition of your own history to know in +what spirit and by what method the gods of the elder days met the wrongs +they wished to right? It may be that we ask too many questions; that we are +unwilling to accept anything as settled; that we are curious, distrustful, +and as relentlessly logical as a child. + + For what are we but creatures of the night + Led forth by day, + Who needs must falter, and with stammering steps + Spell out our paths in syllables of pain? + +There are no grown-ups in this new world of democracy. We are trying an +experiment such as the world has never seen. Here we are, so many million +people at work making a living as best we can; 90,000,000 people covering +half a continent--rich, respected, feared. Is that all we are? Is that why +we are? To be rich, respected, feared? Or have we some part to play in +working out the problems of this world? Why should one man have so much and +many so little? How may the many secure a larger share in the wealth which +they create without destroying individual initiative or blasting individual +capacity and imagination? It was inevitable that these questions should be +asked when this republic was established. Man has been struggling to have +the right to ask these questions for 4,000 years; and now that he has the +right to ask _any_ questions surely we may not with reason expect him to be +silent. It is no answer to make that men were not asking these questions a +hundred years ago. So great has been our physical endowment that until the +most recent years we have been indifferent as to the share which each +received of the wealth produced. We could then accept cheerfully the +coldest and most logical of economic theories. But now men are wondering as +to the future. There may be much of envy and more of malice in current +thought; but underneath it all there is the feeling that if a nation is to +have a full life it must devise methods by which its citizens shall be +insured against monopoly of opportunity. This is the meaning of many +policies the full philosophy of which is not generally grasped--the +regulation of railroads and other public service corporations, the +conservation of natural resources, the leasing of public lands and +waterpowers, the control of great combinations of wealth. How these +movements will eventually express themselves none can foretell, but in the +process there will be some who will dogmatically contend that "Whatever is, +is right," and others who will march under the red flag of revenge and +exspoliation. And in that day we must look for men to meet the false cry of +both sides--"gentlemen unafraid" who will neither be the money-hired +butlers of the rich nor power-loving panderers to the poor. + +Assume the right of self-government and society becomes the scene of an +heroic struggle for the realization of justice. Take from the one strong +man the right to rule and make others serve, the right to take all and hold +all, the power to grant or to withhold, and you have set all men to asking, +"What should I have, and what should my children have?" and with this come +all the perils of innovation and the hazards of revolution. + +To meet such a situation the traditionalist who believes that the last word +in politics or in economics was uttered a century ago is as far from the +truth as he who holds that the temporary emotion of the public is the +stone-carved word from Sinai. + +A railroad people are not to be controlled by ox-team theories, declaims +the young enthusiast for change. An age that dares to tell of what the +stars are made; that weighs the very suns in its balances; that mocks the +birds in their flight through the air, and the fish in their dart through +the sea; that transforms the falling stream into fire, light, and music; +that embalms upon a piece of plate the tenderest tones of the human voice; +that treats disease with disease; that supplies a new ear with the same +facility that it replaces a blown-out tire; that reaches into the very +grave itself and starts again the silent heart--surely such an age may be +allowed to think for itself somewhat upon questions of politics. + +Yet with our searchings and our probings, who knows more of the human heart +to-day than the old Psalmist? And what is the problem of government but one +of human nature? What Burbank has as yet made grapes to grow on thorns or +figs on thistles? The riddle of the universe is no nearer solution than it +was when the Sphinx first looked upon the Nile. The one constant and +inconstant quantity with which man must deal is man. Human nature responds +so far as we can see to the same magnetic pull and push that moved it in +the days of Abraham and of Socrates. The foundation of government is +man--changing, inert, impulsive, limited, sympathetic, selfish man. His +institutions, whether social or political, must come out of his wants and +out of his capacities. The problem of government, therefore, is not always +what should be done but what can be done. We may not follow the supreme +tradition of the race to create a newer, sweeter world unless we give heed +to its complementary tradition that man's experience cautions him to make a +new trail with care. He must curb courage with common-sense. He may lay his +first bricks upon the twentieth story, but not until he has made sure of +the solidity of the frame below. The real tradition of our people permits +the mason to place brick upon brick wherever he finds it most convenient, +safest and most economical; but he must not mistake thin air for structural +steel. + +Let me illustrate the thought that I would leave with you by the +description of one of our western railroads. Your train sweeps across the +desert like some bold knight in a joust, and when about to drive recklessly +into a sheer cliff it turns a graceful curve and follows up the wild +meanderings of a stream until it reaches a ridge along which it finds its +flinty way for many miles. At length you come face to face with a great +gulf, a canyon--yawning, resounding and purple in its depths. Before you +lies a path, zigzagging down the canyon's side to the very bottom, and away +beyond another slighter trail climbs up upon the opposite side. Which is +our way? Shall we follow the old trail? The answer comes as the train +shoots out across a bridge and into a tunnel on the opposite side, coming +out again upon the highlands and looking into the Valley of Heart's Desire +where the wistful Rasselas might have lived. + +When you or I look upon that stretch of steel we wonder at the daring of +its builders. Great men they were who boldly built that road--great in +imagination, greater in their deeds--for they were men so great that they +did not build upon a line that was without tradition. The route they +followed was made by the buffalo and the elk ten thousand years ago. The +bear and the deer followed it generation after generation, and after them +came the trapper, and then the pioneer. It was already a trail when the +railroad engineer came with transit and chain seeking a path for the great +black stallion of steel. + +Up beside the stream and along the ridge the track was laid. But there was +no thought of following the old trail downward into the canyon. Then the +spirit of the new age broke through tradition, the canyon was leaped and +the mountain's heart pierced, that man might have a swifter and safer way +to the Valley of Heart's Desire. + + + + +AMERICA'S HERITAGE[3] + +FRANKLIN K. LANE + +[Footnote 3: Address at the Americanization Banquet, Washington, D. C., May +14, 1919. Reprinted by permission from _Proceedings of the Americanization +Conference_, Government Printing Office, 1919.] + + +You have been in conference for the past three days, and I have greatly +regretted that I could not be with you. You have been gathered together as +crusaders in a great cause. You are the missionaries in a new movement. You +represent millions of people in the United States who to-night believe that +there is no other question of such importance before the American people as +the solidifying and strengthening of true American sentiment. + +I understand that your conference has been a success; and it has been a +success because, unlike some other conferences, it was made up of experts +who knew what they were talking about. But you know no one can give the +final answer upon the question of Americanization. You may study methods, +but you find yourselves foiled because there is no one method--no +standardized method that can always be used to deal correctly and truly +with any human problem. Bergson, the French philosopher, was here a year or +two ago, and he made a suggestion to me that seemed very profound when he +said that the theory of evolution could carry on as to species until it +came to deal with man, and then you had to deal with each individual man +upon the theory that he was a species by himself. And I think there is more +than superficial significance to that. It may go to the very heart and +center of what we call spirituality. It may be because of that very fact +the individual is a soul by himself; and it is for that reason that there +must be avenues opened into men's hearts that can not be standardized. + +Man is a great moated, walled castle, with doors by the dozens, doors by +the score, leading into him--but most of us keep our doors closed. It is +difficult for people to gain access to us; but there are some doors that +are open to the generality of mankind; and as those who are seeking to know +our fellow man and to reach him, it is our place to find what those doors +are and how those doors can be opened. + +One of those doors might be labeled "our love for our children." That is a +door common to all. Another door might be labeled "our love for a piece of +land." Another door might be labeled "our common hatred of injustice." +Another door might be labeled "the need for human sympathy." Another door +might be labeled "fear of suffering." And another door might be labeled +"the hope that we all have in our hearts that this world will turn into a +better one." + +Through some one of those doors every man can be reached; at least, if not +every man, certainly the great mass of mankind. They are not to be reached +through interest alone; they are not to be reached through mind; they are +reached through instincts and impulses and through tendencies; and there is +some word, some act that you or I can do or say that will get inside of +that strange, strange man and reveal him to himself and reveal him to us +and make him of use to the world. + +We want to reach, through one of those doors, every man in the United +States who does not sympathize with us in a supreme allegiance to our +country. You would be amused to see some of the letters that come to me, +asking almost peremptorily what methods should be adopted by which men and +women can be Americanized, as if there were some one particular +prescription that could be given; as if you could roll up the sleeve of a +man and give him a hypodermic of some solution that would, by some strange +alchemy, transform him into a good American citizen; as if you could take +him water, and in it make a mixture--one part the ability to read and write +and speak the English language; then another part, the Declaration of +Independence; one part, the Constitution of the United States; one part, a +love for apple pie; one part, a desire and a willingness to wear American +shoes; and another part, a pride in using American plumbing; and take all +those together and grind them up, and have a solution which you could put +into a man's veins and by those superficialities, transform him into a man +who loves America. No such thing can be done. We know it can not be done, +because we know those who read and write and speak the language and they do +not have that feeling. We know that we regard one who takes his glass of +milk and his apple pie for lunch as presumably a good American. We know +that there is virtue in the American bath. We know that there are +principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and in the +Constitution of the United States which are necessary to get into one's +system before he can thoroughly understand the United States; and there are +some who have those principles as a standard for their lives, who yet have +never heard of the Declaration of Independence or of the Constitution of +the United States. You can not make Americans that way. You have got to +make them by calling upon the fine things that are within them, and by +dealing with them in sympathy; by appreciating what they have to offer us, +and by revealing to them what we have to offer them. And that brings to +mind the thought that this work must be a human work--must be something +done out of the human heart and speaking to the human heart, and must +largely turn upon instrumentalities that are in no way formal, and that +have no dogma and have no creed, and which can not be put into writing, and +can not be set upon the press--to a thought that I have had in my mind for +some time as to the advancing of a new organization in this country--and, +perhaps, you will sympathize with it--I have called it, for lack of a +better name, "The League of American Fellowship," and there should be no +condition for membership, excepting a pledge that each one gives that each +year, or for one year, the member will undertake to interpret America +sympathetically to at least one foreign-born person, or one person in the +United States who does not have an understanding of American institutions, +American traditions, American history, American sports, American life, and +the spirit that is American. If you, upon your return to your homes, could +organize in the cities that you represent, throughout the breadth of this +land, some such league as that, and by individual effort, and without +formalism, pledge the body of those with whom you come in contact to make +Americans by sympathy and by understanding, I believe we would make great +progress in the solution of this problem. + +I do not know what method can be adopted for the making of Americans, but I +think there can be a standard test as to the result. We can tell when a man +is American in his spirit. There has been a test through which the men of +this country--and the women, too--have recently passed--supposed to be the +greatest of all tests--the test of war. When men go forth and sacrifice +their lives, then we say they believe in something as beyond anything else; +and so our men in this country, boys of foreign birth, boys of foreign +parentage, Greek and Dane and Italian and Russian and Polander and +Frenchman and Portuguese, Irish, Scotch--all these boys have gone to +France, fought their fight, given up their lives, and they have proved, all +Americans that they are, that there is a power in America by which this +strange conglomeration of peoples can be melted into one, and by which a +common attachment can be made and a common sympathy developed. I do not +know how it is done, but it is done. + +I remember once, thirty years or more ago, passing through North Dakota on +a Northern Pacific train. I stepped off the platform, and the thermometer +was thirty or forty degrees below zero. There was no one to be seen, +excepting one man, and that man, as he stood before me, had five different +coats on him to keep him warm; and I looked out over that sea of snow, and +then I said, "Well, this is a pretty rough country, isn't it?" He was a +Dane, I think, and he looked me hard in the eye and he said, "Young fellow, +I want you to understand that this is God's own country." + +Every one of those boys who returned from France came back feeling that +this is God's own country. He knows little of America as a whole, perhaps; +he can not recite any provisions in the Constitution of the United States; +it may be that he has learned his English while in the Army; but some part +of this country is "God's own country" to him. And it is a good thing that +we should not lose the local attachments that we have--those narrownesses, +those prejudices that give point to character. There is a kind of breadth +that is shallowness; there is a kind of sympathy that has no punch. We must +remember that if that world across the water is to be made what it can be +under democratic forms, it is to be led by Democracy; and, therefore, the +supreme responsibility falls upon us to make this all that a Democracy can +be. And if there is a bit of local pride attaching to one part of our soil, +that gives emphasis to our intense attachment to this country, let it be. I +would not remove it. I come from a part of this country that is supposed to +be more prejudiced in favor of itself than any other section. I remember +years ago hearing that the Commissioner of Fisheries wished to propagate +and spread in these Atlantic waters the western crab--which is about four +times the size of the Atlantic crab--and so they sent two carloads of those +crabs to the Atlantic coast. They were dumped into the Atlantic at Woods +Hole, and on each crab was a little aluminum tablet saying "When found +notify Fish Commission, Washington." A year passed and no crab was found; +two years passed and no crab was found. And the third year two of those +crabs were found by a Buenos Aires fisherman, who reported that they +evidently were going south, bound around the Cape, returning to California. + +A week or two ago I was addressing a Methodist conference in Baltimore, and +I told this story to a dear old gray-headed man, seated opposite me, who +was eighty-six years of age, who said he had been preaching there for sixty +years; and I said to him, "Do you come from Maryland?" He said, "Yes, sir." +He said, "I come from the Eastern Shore. Have you ever been there?" I said, +"No; I am sorry that I have never been on the Eastern Shore." He said, +"Never been there? Well, I am sorry for you." He said, "You know, we are a +strange people down there--a strange people." He said, "We have some +peculiar legends; some stories that have come down to us, generation after +generation; and while other people may not believe them, we do; and one of +the stories is that when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, they fell +sick, and the Lord was greatly concerned about them, and he called a +meeting of his principal angels and consulted with them as to what to do +for them by way of giving them a change of air and improving their health; +and the Angel Gabriel said, 'Why not take them down to the Eastern Shore?' +And the Lord said, 'Oh, no; that would not be sufficient change.'" + +And so, as you go throughout the United States, you find men attached to +different parts of our continent, making their homes in different places, +and not thinking often about the great country to which they belong, +excepting as it is represented by that flag; and every one of those local +attachments is a valuable asset to our country, and nothing should be done +to minimize them. When the boys come back from France, every one of them +says, "The thing I most desired while I was in France was to get home, for +there I first realized how splendid and beautiful and generous and rich a +country America was." We want to make these men who come to us from abroad +realize what those boys realized, and we want to put inside of their +spirits an appreciation of those things that are noble and fine in American +law and American institutions and American life; and we want them to join +with us as citizens in giving to America every good thing that comes out of +every foreign country. + +We are a blend in sympathies and a blend in art, a blend in literature, a +blend in tendencies, and that is our hope for making this the supremely +great race of the world. It is not to be done mechanically; it is not to be +done scientifically; it is to be done by the human touch; by reaching some +door into that strange man, with some word or some act that will show to +him that there is in America the kind of sentiment and sympathy that that +man's soul is reaching out for. + +This _is_ God's own country. We want the boys to know that the sky is blue +and big and broad with hope, and that its fields are green with promise, +and that in every one of our hearts there is the desire that the land shall +be better than it is--while we have no apologies to make for what it is. +This is no land in which to spread any doctrine of revolution, because we +have abolished revolution. When we came here we gave over the right of +revolution. You can not have revolution in a land unless you have somebody +to revolt against--and whom would you revolt against in the United States? +And when we won our revolution 140 years ago, we then said, "We give over +that inherent right of revolution because there can be no such thing as +revolution against a country in which the people govern." + +We have no particular social theory to advocate in Americanization; no +economic system to advocate; but we can fairly and squarely demand of every +man in the United States, if he is a citizen, that he shall give supreme +allegiance to the flag of the United States, and swear by it--and he is not +worthy to be its citizen unless it holds first place in his heart. + +The best test of whether we are Americans or not will not come, nor has it +come, with war. It will come when we go hand in hand together, recognizing +that there are defects in our land, that there are things lacking in our +system; that our programs are not perfect; that our institutions can be +bettered; and we look forward constantly by cooeperation to making this a +land in which there will be a minimum of fear and a maximum of hope. + + + + +ADDRESS AT THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS[4] + +CALVIN COOLIDGE + +[Footnote 4: _From Have Faith in Massachusetts_, by Calvin Coolidge. The +selection is used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, the +Houghton Mifflin Co., the authorized publishers. Copyright, 1919, by +Houghton Mifflin Co. The address was delivered June 25, 1919.] + + +To come from the press of public affairs, where the practical side of life +is at its flood, into these calm and classic surroundings, where ideals are +cherished for their own sake, is an intense relief and satisfaction. Even +in the full flow of Commencement exercises it is apparent that here abide +the truth and the servants of the truth. Here appears the fulfillment of +the past in the grand company of alumni, recalling a history already so +thick with laurels. Here is the hope of the future, brighter yet in the +young men to-day sent forth. + + The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads + Celestial armory, shield, helm and spear, + Hung bright, with diamond flaming and with gold.[5] + +[Footnote 5: _Paradise Lost_, IV, 1. 552.] + +In them the dead past lives. They represent the college. They are the +college. It is not in the campus with its imposing halls and temples, nor +in the silent lore of the vast library or the scientific instruments of +well-equipped laboratories, but in the men who are the incarnation of all +these, that your college lives. It is not enough that there be knowledge, +history and poetry, eloquence and art, science and mathematics, philosophy +and ethics, ideas and ideals. They must be vitalized. They must be +fashioned into life. To send forth men who live all these is to be a +college. This temple of learning must be translated into human form if it +is to exercise any influence over the affairs of mankind, or if its alumni +are to wield the power of education. + +A great thinker and master of the expression of thought has told us:-- + + It was before Deity, embodied in a human form, walking among men, + partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over + their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that + the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and + the pride of the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords + of thirty Legions, were humbled in the dust.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Macaulay's _Essay on Milton_.] + +If college-bred men are to exercise the influence over the progress of the +world which ought to be their portion, they must exhibit in their lives a +knowledge and a learning which is marked with candor, humility, and the +honest mind. + +The present is ever influenced mightily by the past. Patrick Henry spoke +with great wisdom when he declared to the Continental Congress, "I have but +one lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience." +Mankind is finite. It has the limits of all things finite. The processes of +government are subject to the same limitations, and, lacking imperfections, +would be something more than human. It is always easy to discover flaws, +and, pointing them out, to criticize. It is not so easy to suggest +substantial remedies or propose constructive policies. It is characteristic +of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, +and, because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to +be new. Into this error men of liberal education ought not to fall. The +forms and processes of government are not new. They have been known, +discussed, and tried in all their varieties through the past ages. That +which America exemplifies in her Constitution and system of representative +government is the most modern, and of any yet devised gives promise of +being the most substantial and enduring. + +It is not unusual to hear arguments against our institutions and our +government, addressed particularly to recent arrivals and the sons of +recent arrivals to our shores. They sometimes take the form of a claim that +our institutions were founded long ago; that changed conditions require +that they now be changed. Especially is it claimed by those seeking such +changes that these new arrivals and men of their race and ideas had no hand +in the making of our country, and that it was formed by those who were +hostile to them and therefore they owe it no support. Whatever may be the +condition in relation to others, and whatever ignorance and bigotry may +imagine such arguments do not apply to those of the race and blood so +prominent in this assemblage. To establish this it were but necessary to +cite eleven of the fifty-five signers of the Declaration of Independence, +and recall that on the roll of Washington's generals were Sullivan, Knox, +Wayne, and the gallant son of Trinity College, Dublin, who fell at Quebec +at the head of his troops--Richard Montgomery. But scholarship has answered +ignorance. The learned and patriotic research of men of the education of +Dr. James J. Walsh and Michael J. O'Brien, the historian of the Irish +American Society, has demonstrated that a generous portion of the rank and +file of the men who fought in the Revolution and supported those who framed +our institutions was not alien to those who are represented here. It is no +wonder that from among such that which is American has drawn some of its +most steadfast defenders. + +In these days of violent agitation scholarly men should reflect that the +progress of the past has been accomplished not by the total overthrow of +institutions so much as by discarding that which was bad and preserving +that which was good; not by revolution but by evolution has man worked out +his destiny. We shall miss the central feature of all progress unless we +hold to that process now. It is not a question of whether our institutions +are perfect. The most beneficent of our institutions had their beginnings +in forms which would be particularly odious to us now. Civilization began +with war and slavery; government began in absolute despotism; and religion +itself grew out of superstition which was oftentimes marked with human +sacrifices. So out of our present imperfections we shall develop that which +is more perfect. But the candid mind of the scholar will admit and seek to +remedy all wrongs with the same zeal with which it defends all rights. + +From the knowledge and the learning of the scholar there ought to be +developed an abiding faith. What is the teaching of all history? That which +is necessary for the welfare and progress of the human race has never been +destroyed. The discoverers of truth, the teachers of science, the makers of +inventions, have passed to their last rewards, but their works have +survived. The Phoenician galleys and the civilization which was born of +their commerce have perished, but the alphabet which that people perfected +remains. The shepherd kings of Israel, the temple and empire of Solomon, +have gone the way of all the earth, but the Old Testament has been +preserved for the inspiration of mankind. The ark of the covenant and the +seven-pronged candlestick have passed from human view; the inhabitants of +Judea have been dispersed to the ends of the earth, but the New Testament +has survived and increased in its influence among men. The glory of Athens +and Sparta, the grandeur of the Imperial City, are a long-lost memory, but +the poetry of Homer and Virgil, the oratory of Demosthenes and Cicero, the +philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, abide with us forevermore. Whatever +America holds that may be of value to posterity will not pass away. + +The long and toilsome processes which have marked the progress of the past +cannot be shunned by the present generation to our advantage. We have no +right to expect as our portion something substantially different from human +experience in the past. The constitution of the universe does not change. +Human nature remains constant. That service and sacrifice which have been +the price of past progress are the price of progress now. + +This is not a gospel of despair, but of hope and high expectation. Out of +many tribulations mankind has pressed steadily onward. The opportunity for +a rational existence was never before so great. Blessings were never so +bountiful. But the evidence was never so overwhelming as now that men and +nations must live rationally or perish. + +The defences of our Commonwealth are not material but mental and spiritual. +Her fortifications, her castles, are her institutions of learning. Those +who are admitted to the college campus tread the ramparts of the State. The +classic halls are the armories from which are furnished forth the knights +in armor to defend and support our liberty. For such high purpose has Holy +Cross been called into being. A firm foundation of the Commonwealth. A +defender of righteousness. A teacher of holy men. Let her turrets continue +to rise, showing forth "the way, the truth and the light"-- + + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man's search + To vaster issues.[7] + +[Footnote 7: George Eliot's "O may I join the choir invisible."] + + + + +OUR FUTURE IMMIGRATION POLICY[8] + +FREDERIC C. HOWE + +[Footnote 8: From _Scribner's Magazine_, May, 1917. Copyright, 1917, by +Charles Scribner's Sons. By permission of the author and of the +publishers.] + + +The outstanding feature of our immigration policy has been its negative +character. The immigrant is expected to look out for himself. Up to the +present time legislation has been guided by conditions which prevailed in +the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We have permitted the immigrant +to come; only recently has he been examined for physical, mental, and moral +defects at the port of debarkation, and then he has been permitted to land +and go where he willed. This was the practice in colonial days. It has been +continued without essential change down to the present time. It was a +policy which worked reasonably well in earlier times, when the immigrant +passed from the ship to land to be had from the Indians, or in later +generations from the government. + +And from generation to generation the immigrant moved westward, just beyond +the line of settlement, where he found a homestead awaiting his labor. +These were the years of Anglo-Saxon, of German, of Scandinavian, of north +European settlement, when the immigration to this country was almost +exclusively from the same stock. And so long as land was to be had for the +asking there was no immigration problem. The individual States were eager +for settlers to develop their resources. There were few large cities. +Industry was just beginning. There was relatively little poverty, while the +tenements and slums of our cities and mining districts had not yet +appeared. This was the period of the "old immigration," as it is called; +the immigration from the north of Europe, from the same stock that had made +the original settlements in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, +and the South; it was the same stock that settled Ohio and the Middle West, +Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. + +The "old immigration" from northern Europe ceased to be predominant in the +closing years of the last century. Then the tide shifted to southern +Europe, to Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Poland, and the Balkans. A new +strain was being added to our Anglo-Saxon, Germanic stock. The "new +immigration" did not speak our language. It was unfamiliar with +self-government. It was largely illiterate. And with this shift from the +"old immigration" to the "new," immigration increased in volume. In 1892 +the total immigration was 579,663; in 1894 it fell to 285,631. As late as +1900 it was but 448,572. Then it began to rise. In 1903 it was 857,046; in +1905 it reached the million mark; and from that time down to the outbreak +of the war the total immigration averaged close on to a million a year, the +total arrivals in 1914 being 1,218,480. Almost all of the increase came +from southern Europe, over 70 per cent of the total being from the Latin +and Slavic countries. In 1914 Austria contributed 134,831 people; Hungary +143,321; Italy 283,734; Russia 255,660; while the United Kingdom +contributed 73,417; Germany 35,734; Norway 8,329; and Sweden 14,800. + +For twenty years the predominant immigration has been from south and +central Europe. And it is this "new immigration," so called, that has +created the "immigration problem." It is largely responsible for the +agitation for restrictive legislation on the part of persons fearful of the +admixture of races, of the difficulties of assimilation, of the high +illiteracy of the southern group; and most of all for the opposition on the +part of organized labor to the competition of the unskilled army of men who +settle in the cities, who go to the mines, and who struggle for the +existing jobs in competition with those already here. For the newcomer has +to find work quickly. He has exhausted what little resources he had in +transportation. In the great majority of cases his transportation has been +advanced by friends and relatives already here, who have lured him to this +country by descriptions of better economic conditions, greater +opportunities for himself, and especially the new life which opens up to +his children. And this overseas competition _is_ a serious problem to +American labor, especially in the iron and steel industries, in the mining +districts, in railroad and other construction work, into which employments +the foreigners largely go. + +How seriously the workers and our cities are burdened with this new +immigration from south and central Europe is indicated by the fact that 56 +per cent of the foreign-born population in this country is in the States to +the east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio Rivers, to which at least +80 per cent of the present incoming immigrants are destined. In the larger +cities between 70 and 80 per cent of the population is either foreign born +or immediately descended from persons of foreign birth. In New York City +78.6 per cent of the people are of foreign birth or immediate foreign +extraction. In Boston the percentage is 74.2, in Cleveland 75.8, and in +Chicago 77.5. In the mining districts the percentage is even higher. In +other words, almost all of the immigration of the last twenty years has +gone to the cities, to industry, to mining. Here the immigrant competes +with organized labor. He burdens our inadequate housing accommodations. He +congests the tenements. He is at least a problem for democracy. + +But the effect of immigration on our life is not as simple as the advocates +of restriction insist. It is probable that the struggle of the working +classes to improve their conditions is rendered more difficult by the +incoming tide of unskilled labor. It is probable too that wages are kept +down in certain occupations and that employers are desirous of keeping open +the gate as a means of securing cheap labor and labor that is difficult to +organize. It is also probably true that the immigrant is a temporary burden +to democracy and especially to our cities. But the subject is not nearly as +simple as this. The immigrant is a consumer as well as a producer. He +creates a market for the products of labor even while he competes with +labor. And he creates new trades and new industries, like the clothing +trades of New York, Chicago, and Cleveland, which employ hundreds of +thousands of workers. And a large part of the immigrants assimilate +rapidly. + +In addition, the new stock from southern and central Europe brings to this +country qualities of mind and of temperament that may in time greatly +enrich the more severe and practical-minded races of northern Europe. + +But it is not the purpose of this article to discuss the question of +immigration restriction or the kinds of tests that should be applied to the +incoming alien. It is rather to consider the internal or domestic policy we +have thus far adopted after the immigrant has landed on our shores. And +this policy has been wholly negative. Our attitude toward the immigrant has +undergone little change from the very beginning, when immigration was +easily absorbed by the free lands of the West. Even at the present time our +legislative policy is an outgrowth of the assumption that the immigrant +could go to the land and secure a homestead of his own; and of the +additional assumption that he needed no assistance or direction when he +reached this country any more than did the immigrants of earlier centuries. + +Up to the present time, with the exception of the Oriental races, there has +been no real restriction to immigration. Our policy has been selective +rather than restrictive. Of those arriving certain individuals are rejected +by the immigration authorities because of some defect of mind, of body, or +of morals, or because of age infirmity, or some other cause by reason of +which the aliens are likely to become public charges. For the official year +1914, of the 1,218,480 applying for admission 15,745 were excluded because +they were likely to become a public charge; 6,537 were afflicted with +physical or mental infirmities affecting their ability to earn a living; +3,257 were afflicted with tuberculosis or with contagious diseases; and +1,274 with serious mental defects. All told, in that year less than 2 per +cent of the total number applying for admission were rejected and sent back +to the countries from which they came. + +Our immigration policy ends with the selection. From the stations the +immigrants pass into the great cities, chiefly into New York, or are placed +upon the trains leaving the ports of debarkation for the interior. They are +not directed to any destination, and, most important of all, no effort is +made to place them on the land under conditions favorable to successful +agriculture. And this is the problem of the future. It is a problem far +bigger than the distribution of immigration. It is a problem of our entire +industrial life. For, while our immigrants are congested in the cities +agriculture suffers from a lack of labor. Farms are being abandoned. Not +more than one-third of the land in the United States is under cultivation. +Far more important still, millions of acres are held out of use. Land +monopoly prevails all over the Western States. According to the most +available statistics of land ownership, approximately 200,000,000 acres are +owned by less than 50,000 corporations and individual men. Many of these +estates exceed 10,000 or even 50,000 acres in extent. Some exceed the +million mark. States like California, Texas, Oregon, Washington, and other +Western States have great manorial preserves like those of England, +Prussia, and Russia which are held out of use or inadequately used, and +which have increased in value a hundredfold during the last fifty years. +These great estates are largely the result of the land grants given to the +railroads as well as the careless policy of the government in the disposal +of the public domain. + +Here is one of the anomalies of the nation. Here is the real explanation of +the immigration problem. Here, too, is the division between the "old +immigration" and the "new immigration." For the "old immigration" from the +north of Europe went to the country. The "new immigration" has gone to the +cities because the land had all been given away and the only opportunity +for immediate employment was to be found in the cities and mining +districts. The "new immigration" from the South of Europe is as eager for +home-ownership as the "old immigration" from the north of Europe. But the +land is all gone, and the incoming alien is compelled to accept the first +job that is offered, or starve. It is this too that has stimulated the +protest on the part of labor against the incoming tide. For, so long as +land was accessible for all, the incoming immigrants went to the country, +where they could build their fortunes as they willed, just as they did in +earlier generations. + +The European War has forced many new problems upon us. And one of these is +the relation of people to the land. Of one thing, at least, we may be +certain--that with the ending of the war there will be a competition for +men, a competition not only by the exhausted Powers of Europe but by +Canada, Australia, and America as well. Europe will endeavor to keep its +able-bodied men at home. They will be needed for reconstruction purposes. +There will be little immigration out of France; for France is a nation of +home-owning peasants and France has never contributed in material numbers +to our population. The same is true of Germany. Germany is the most highly +socialized state in Europe. The state owns the railways, many mines, and +great stretches of land. In England too the state has been socialized to a +remarkable extent as a result of the war. Russia and Austria-Hungary have +undergone something of the same transformation. When the war is over these +countries will probably endeavor to mobilize their men and women for +industry as they previously mobilized them for war. And in so far as they +are able to adjust credit and assistance to their people, they will strive +to keep them at home. + +But that is not all. Millions of men have been killed or incapacitated. +Poland, Galicia, parts of Hungary and Russia have been devastated. Many +nobles who owned the great estates have been killed. Many of them are +bankrupt. Their land holdings may be broken up into small farms. The state +can only go on, taxes can only be collected if industry and agriculture are +brought back to life. And the nations of Europe are turning their attention +to a consciously worked out agricultural programme for putting the +returning soldiers back on the land. Not only that, but reports from +steamship and railroad companies indicate that large numbers of men are +planning to return to Europe after the war. The estimates, based upon +investigation, run as high as a million men. Poles and Hungarians are +imbued with the idea that land will be cheap in Europe and that the savings +they have accumulated in this country can be used for the purchase of small +holdings in their native country, through the possession of which their +social and economic status will be materially improved. + +I have no doubt but that the years which follow the ending of the war will +see an exodus from this country which may be as great as the incoming tide +in the years of our highest immigration. Along with this exodus to Europe, +Canada will endeavor to repeople her land. Western Canada especially is +working out an agricultural and land programme. Even before the war her +provinces had removed taxes from houses and improvements and were +increasing the taxes upon vacant land, with the aim of breaking up land +speculation. And this policy will probably be largely extended after the +war is over. England, too, is developing a comprehensive land policy, and +is placing returning soldiers upon the land under conditions similar to +those provided in the Irish Land Purchase Act. It is not improbable that +the war will be followed by a breaking up of many of the great estates in +England and the settlement of many men upon the land in farm colonies, such +as have been worked out in Denmark and Germany. Even prior to the war +Germany had placed hundreds of thousands of persons upon the state-owned +farms and on private estates which had been acquired by the government for +this purpose. Over $400,000,000 has been appropriated for the purpose of +encouraging home-ownership in Germany during recent years. + +All over the world, in fact, the necessity of a new governmental policy in +regard to agriculture is being recognized. Thousands of Danish agricultural +workers have been converted into home-owning farmers through the aid of the +government. To-day 90 per cent of the farmers in Denmark own their own +farms, while only 10 per cent are tenants. The government advances 90 per +cent of the cost of a farm, the farmer being required to advance only the +remaining 10 per cent. In addition, teachers and inspectors employed by the +state give instruction as to farming, marketing, and the use of cooeperative +agencies, while the railroads are owned by the state and operated with an +eye to the development of agriculture. As a result of this, Denmark has +become the world's agricultural experiment-station. The immigration from +Denmark has practically ceased, as it has from other countries of Europe in +which peasant proprietorship prevails. + +In my opinion, immigration to the United States will be profoundly +influenced by these big land-colonization projects of the European nations. +It may be that large numbers of men with their savings will be lured away +from the United States. As a result, agricultural produce in the United +States may be materially reduced. Even now there is a great shortage of +agricultural labor, while tenancy has been increasing at a very rapid rate. +And America may be confronted with the immediate necessity of competing +with Europe to keep people in this country. A measure is now before +Congress looking to the development of farm colonies, in which the +government will acquire large stretches of land to be sold on easy terms of +payment to would-be farmers, who are permitted to repay the initial cost in +installments covering a long period of years. Similar measures are under +discussion in California, in which State a comprehensive investigation has +been made of the subject of tenancy and the possibility of farm settlement. +Looking in the same direction are the declarations of many farmers' +organizations throughout the West for the taxing of land as a means of +ending land monopoly and land speculation. This is one of the cardinal +planks in the platform of the non-partisan organization of farmers of North +Dakota which swept the State in the last election. Every branch of the +government was captured by the farmers, whose platform declared for the +untaxing of all kinds of farm-improvements and an increase in the tax rate +on unimproved land as a means of developing the State and ending the +idle-land speculation which prevails. + +If such a policy as this were adopted for the nation as a whole; if the +idle land now held out of use were opened up to settlement; if the +government were to provide ready-made farms to be paid for upon easy terms, +and if, along with this, facilities for marketing, for terminals, for +slaughter-houses, and for agencies for bringing the produce of the farms to +the markets were provided, not only would agriculture be given a fillip +which it badly needs but the congestion of our cities and the immigration +problem would be open to easy solution. Then for many generations to come +land would be available in abundance. For America could support many times +its present population if the resources of the country were opened up to +use. Germany with 67,000,000 people could be placed inside of Texas. And +Texas is but one of forty-eight States. Under such a policy the government +could direct immigration to places of profitable settlement; it could +relieve the congestion of the cities and Americanize the immigrant under +conditions similar to those which prevailed from the first landing in New +England down to the enclosure of the continent in the closing days of the +last century. For the immigration problem is and always has been an +economic problem. And back of all other conditions of national well-being +is the proper relation of the people to the land. + + + + +A NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOR[9] + +JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR. + +[Footnote 9: Address at the National Industrial Conference, Washington, D. +C., Oct. 16, 1919. By permission.] + + +The experience through which our country has passed in the months of war, +exhibiting as it has the willingness of all Americans without distinction +of race, creed, or class to sacrifice personal ends for a great ideal and +to work together in a spirit of brotherhood and cooeperation, has been a +revelation to our own people, and a cause for congratulations to us all. +Now that the stimulus of the war is over the question which confronts our +nation is how can these high levels of unselfish devotion to the common +good be maintained and extended to the civic life of the nation in times of +peace. + +We have been called together to consider the industrial problem. Only as +each of us discharges his duties as a member of this conference in the same +high spirit of patriotism, of unselfish allegiance to right and justice, of +devotion to the principles of democracy and brotherhood with which we +approached the problems of the war, can we hope for success in the solution +of the industrial problem which is no less vital to the life of the nation. +There are pessimists who say that there is no solution short of revolution +and the overturn of the existing social order. Surely the men and women who +have shown themselves capable of such lofty sacrifice, who have actually +given themselves so freely, gladly, unreservedly, as the people of this +great country have during these past years, will stand together as +unselfishly in solving this great industrial problem as they did in dealing +with the problems of the war if only right is made clear and the way to a +solution pointed out. + +The world position which our country holds to-day is due to the wide vision +of the statesmen who founded these United States and to the daring and +indomitable persistence of the great industrial leaders, together with the +myriads of men who with faith in their leadership have cooeperated to rear +the marvelous industrial structure of which our country is justly so proud. +This result has been produced by the cooeperation of the four factors in +industry, labor, capital, management and the public, the last represented +by the consumer and by organized government. No one of these groups can +alone claim credit for what has been accomplished. Just what is the +relative importance of the contribution made to the success of industry by +these several factors and what their relative rewards should be are +debatable questions. But however views may differ on these questions it is +clear that the common interest cannot be advanced by the effort of any one +party to dominate the other, to dictate arbitrarily the terms on which +alone it will cooperate, to threaten to withdraw if any attempt is made to +thwart the enforcement of its will. Such a position is as un-American as it +is intolerable. + +Almost countless are the suggested solutions of the industrial problem +which have been brought forth since industry first began to be a problem. +Most of these are impracticable; some are unjust; some are selfish and +therefore unworthy; some of them have merit and should be carefully +studied. None can be looked to as a panacea. There are those who believe +that legislation is the cure-all for every social, economic, political, and +industrial ill. Much can be done by legislation to prevent injustice and +encourage right tendencies, but legislation will never solve the industrial +problem. Its solution can be brought about only by the introduction of a +new spirit into the relationship between the parties to industry--a spirit +of justice and brotherhood. + +The personal relationship which existed in bygone days is essential to the +development of this new spirit. It must be reestablished; if not in its +original form at least as nearly so as possible. In the early days of the +development of industry, the employer and capital investor were frequently +one. Daily contact was had between him and his employees, who were his +friends and neighbors. Any questions which arose on either side were taken +up at once and readily adjusted. A feeling of genuine friendliness, mutual +confidence, and stimulating interest in the common enterprise was the +result. How different is the situation to-day! Because of the proportions +which modern industry has attained, employers and employees are too often +strangers to each other. Personal contact, so vital to the success of any +enterprise, is practically unknown, and naturally, misunderstanding, +suspicion, distrust, and too often hatred have developed, bringing in their +train all the industrial ills which have become far too common. Where men +are strangers and have no points of contact, this is the usual outcome. On +the other hand, where men meet frequently about a table, rub elbows, +exchange views and discuss matters of common interest, almost invariably it +happens that the vast majority of their differences quickly disappear and +friendly relations are established. Much of the strife and bitterness in +industrial relations results from lack of ability or willingness on the +part of both labor and capital to view their common problems each from the +other's point of view. + +A man who recently devoted some months to studying the industrial problem +and who came in contact with thousands of workmen in various industries +throughout the country has said that it was obvious to him from the outset +that the working men were seeking for something, which at first he thought +to be higher wages. As his touch with them extended, he came to the +conclusion, however, that not higher wages but recognition as men was what +they really sought. What joy can there be in life, what interest can a man +take in his work, what enthusiasm can he be expected to develop on behalf +of his employer, when he is regarded as a number on a payroll, a cog in a +wheel, a mere "hand"? Who would not earnestly seek to gain recognition of +his manhood and the right to be heard and treated as a human being, not as +a machine? + +While obviously under present conditions those who invest their capital in +an industry, often numbered by the thousand, cannot have personal +acquaintance with the thousands and tens of thousands of those who invest +their labor, contact between these two parties in interest can and must be +established, if not directly then through their respective representatives. +The resumption of such personal relation through frequent conference and +current meetings, held for the consideration of matters of common interest +such as terms of employment, and working and living conditions, is +essential in order to restore a spirit of mutual confidence, good will, and +cooeperation. Personal relations can be revived under modern conditions only +through the adequate representation of the employees. Representation is a +principle which is fundamentally just and vital to the successful conduct +of industry. This is the principle upon which the democratic government of +our country is founded. On the battlefields of France this nation poured +out its blood freely in order that democracy might be maintained at home +and that its beneficent institutions might become available in other lands +as well. Surely it is not consistent for us as Americans to demand +democracy in government and practice autocracy in industry. + +What can this conference do to further the establishment of democracy in +industry and lay a sure and solid foundation for the permanent development +of cooeperation, good-will, and industrial well being? To undertake to agree +on the details of plans and methods is apt to lead to endless controversy +without constructive result. Can we not, however, unite in the adoption of +the principle of representation, and the agreement to make every effort to +secure the endorsement and acceptance of this principle by all chambers of +commerce, industrial and commercial bodies, and all organizations of labor? +Such action I feel confident would be overwhelmingly backed by public +opinion and cordially approved by the federal government. The assurance +thus given of a closer relationship between the parties to industry would +further justice, promote good-will, and help to bridge the gulf between +capital and labor. + +It is not for this or any other body to undertake to determine for industry +at large what form representation shall take. Once having adopted the +principle of representation, it is obviously wise that the method to be +employed should be left in each specific instance to be determined by the +parties in interest. If there is to be peace and good will between the +several parties in industry, it will surely not be brought about by the +enforcement upon unwilling groups of a method which in their judgment is +not adapted to their peculiar needs. In this as in all else, persuasion is +an essential element in bringing about conviction. With the developments in +industry what they are to-day there is sure to come a progressive evolution +from autocratic single control, whether by capital, labor, or the state, to +democratic cooeperative control by all three. The whole movement is +evolutionary. That which is fundamental is the idea of representation, and +that idea must find expression in those forms which will serve it best, +with conditions, forces, and times, what they are. + + + + +MY UNCLE[10] + +ALVIN JOHNSON + +[Footnote 10: Reprinted from _John Stuyvesant, Ancestor_, by Alvin Johnson. +Copyright, 1919, by Harcourt, Brace and Howe, Inc. By permission of the +author and of the publishers.] + + +My uncle only by marriage, he is naturally the less intelligible and the +more intriguing to me. I can't say with assurance whether I feel absolutely +at home with him or not, but I think I do. Always he has treated me with +the utmost kindness. That he regards me exactly as a nephew of the blood, +he makes frequent occasion to assure me, especially on his birthday, which +we all make much of, since it is about the only day when we are chartered +to sentimentalize quite shamelessly over him. But behind his solemn face +and straight, quizzical gaze, I often detect a lurking reservation in his +judgment of me. He thinks, I believe, that I have not been altogether +weaned of the potentates and powers I abjured when I crossed the water to +become a member of his family. Not that he greatly cares. Potentates and +powers, emperors, kings, princes, are treasured words in his oratorical +vocabulary--he could not very well do without them. He is a democrat, and +he declares that in the presence of hereditary majesties, he would most +resolutely refuse to bend the knee. No doubt he would, and his instinct is +correct aesthetically as well as morally. It's a stiff knee he wears, and +you can't help smiling at the thought of the two long members of his leg, +tightly cased in striped trousers, arranging themselves in an obsequious +right angle. Erect and stiff, chest out, chin whiskers to front, eyes +blinking independently, my uncle is superb. Or when he raises his hat with +a large, outward gesture of his arm, bowing slightly from the shoulders, in +affable salutation. Or most of all, when his fists clench, his jaws display +big nervous knots, his eyes gleam with hard blue light in wrath over some +palpable iniquity, some base cowardice, some outrageous act of cruelty or +oppression. + +The mood of rage is, to be sure, infrequent with him, and he prides himself +in a self-control that forbids him to act upon it. Therefore, certain cocky +foreign fellows, upholders of the duty of fighting at the drop of the hat, +have charged that our uncle would place peace above honor. And some of us, +his nephews, are not exactly easy under the charge. It seems to reflect on +us. But most of us really know better. Our uncle hates trouble, and prefers +argument to fists. But nobody had better presume too much upon his distaste +for violence. + +Pugnacity, declares my uncle, is a form of sentimentalism, and all +sentimentalism is despicable. This is a practical world. Determine the +value of what you are after and count the cost. And wherever you can, +reduce all items to dollars and cents. "Aha!" cry the hostile critics of +our house, "what a gross materialist!" And some, even of the nephews of the +blood, repeat the taunt behind our good uncle's back. At first I too +thought there might be something in it. But I was forced to a different +view by dint of reflection on the notorious fact that my uncle is far +readier in a good cause to "shell out" his dollars and cents than any of +his idealistic critics. Reduction of a problem to dollars and cents, I have +come to see, is just his means of arriving at definiteness. My uncle wants +to do a good business, whether in the gross joys of the flesh or in the +benefits of salvation. The Lord's cause, he thinks, ought to be as solvent +as the world's. A naive view? To be sure, but not one that argues a base +soul. + +This insistence of my uncle on definiteness, on the financial solvency of +every enterprise, does to be sure get on the nerves of many of us. He'll +drop into your studio, dispose his long, bony body in your most comfortable +chair and ruminate for hours while you work. You are immersed in a very +significant problem. You are at the point, we will say, of discovering how +to convey the sound of bells by pure color. "May I ask," he says finally, +"what in thunder are you trying to do?" You explain at length, +enthusiastically. He hears you through, with visible effort to suspend +judgment. You pause and scan his face for a responsive glow. He rises, pats +you gently on the shoulder. "My boy, I can put you into a good job down in +the stockyards. Fine prospects, and a good salary to begin with. I ran in +to see your wife and youngsters yesterday and they're looking rather +peaked. Not much of a living for them in this sort of thing, you know. Of +course it is mighty interesting. But don't you think you could manage to do +something with it in your free time?" + +It can't be denied, in the matter of the family relation my uncle is +hopelessly reactionary. In his view almost the whole duty of man is to keep +his wife well housed, well dressed, contented, and his children plump and +rosy. To abate a tittle from this requirement my uncle regards as pure +embezzlement. You try to make him see the counterclaims upon you of +science, literature, art. "Yes, yes, those things are all very fine, but +will you rob your own wife and children for them?" + +I wonder whether this myopia of my uncle is due to the fact that he is a +confirmed old bachelor, and all women and children are to him pure ideals, +as much sweeter than all other ideals as they are more substantial? He +poses, to be sure, as a depreciator of woman. "Just like a woman," "women's +frivolity," "useless little feminine trinkets," are phrases always on his +lips. But watch his caressing expression as he listens to the chatter of +Cousin Thisbe, the most empty-headed little creature who ever wore glowing +cheeks and bright curls. Let anybody get into trouble with his wife or +sweetheart, and my uncle straightway takes up the cudgels for the lady. The +merits of the case don't matter: a lady is always right, or if she isn't, +it's a mighty mean man who'll insist on it. + +His nephews of the blood are firmly convinced that the reason why our uncle +is such a fool about women in general is because he has never been in love +with any woman in particular. Thus do members of a family blind themselves +with dogmas about one another. I, being more or less of an outsider, can +observe without preconceptions. Now I assert, in spite of his consistent +pose of serene indifference to particular charms, my uncle's temperament is +that of a man forever in love with somebody or other. He is strong, he is +simple, he is pure, and should he escape the dart? Depend on it, he has +fallen in love not once or twice, but often and often. And the +probabilities are, he has been loved, though not so often. And--this would +be an impious speculation if I were nephew of the blood--how has he +behaved, in the rare latter event? As a man in the presence of a miracle +done for his sole benefit. He has exulted, then doubted its reality, then +betaken himself to the broad prairie, where he is most at home, to cool his +blood in the north wind, and restore himself to the serenity, the freedom +from entanglements, befitting an uncle at the head of his tribe. This, you +say, is all conjecture, deduced from the behavior of those of his nephews +who most resemble him? No. Do you not recall that early affair of his, with +the dark vivacious lady--Marianne, I believe, was her name? Do you not +recall a later affair with a very young, cold lady from the land of the +snows? Do you not recall his maturer devotion to the noble lady of the +trident, his cousin? And--but I'll not descend to idle gossip. + +As you can see, I do not wholly accept my uncle, as he is. I wish he +weren't so insistent upon reducing everything to simple, definite terms, +whether it will reduce to such terms or not. I wish he would give more +thought to making his conduct correct as well as unimpeachable. I'm for him +when his inferiors laugh at him, but I wish he would manage to thwart their +malicious desire to laugh. I wish he were less disposed to scoff gently at +my attempts to direct his education. Just the same, he is the biggest, +kindliest, most honest and honorable tribal head that ever lived. And you +won't find a trace of these reservations in the enthusiasm with which I +shall wish him many thousands of happy returns, next Fourth of July. + + + + +WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF[11] + +WOODROW WILSON + +[Footnote 11: From _The Century Magazine_, June, 1901. Copyright 1901, by +Harper and Brothers, and published by them in 1915 in a volume entitled +_When a Man Comes to Himself_. By permission of the author and of the +publishers.] + + +It is a very wholesome and regenerating change which a man undergoes when +he "comes to himself." It is not only after periods of recklessness or +infatuation, when he has played the spendthrift or the fool, that a man +comes to himself. He comes to himself after experiences of which he alone +may be aware: when he has left off being wholly preoccupied with his own +powers and interests and with every petty plan that centers in himself; +when he has cleared his eyes to see the world as it is, and his own true +place and function in it. + +It is a process of disillusionment. The scales have fallen away. He sees +himself soberly, and knows under what conditions his powers must act, as +well as what his powers are. He has got rid of earlier prepossessions about +the world of men and affairs, both those which were too favorable and those +which were too unfavorable--both those of the nursery and those of a young +man's reading. He has learned his own paces, or, at any rate, is in a fair +way to learn them; has found his footing and the true nature of the "going" +he must look for in the world; over what sorts of roads he must expect to +make his running, and at what expenditure of effort; whither his goal lies, +and what cheer he may expect by the way. It is a process of +disillusionment, but it disheartens no soundly made man. It brings him into +a light which guides instead of deceiving him; a light which does not make +the way look cold to any man whose eyes are fit for use in the open, but +which shines wholesomely, rather, upon the obvious path, like the honest +rays of the frank sun, and makes traveling both safe and cheerful. + +There is no fixed time in a man's life at which he comes to himself, and +some men never come to themselves at all. It is a change reserved for the +thoroughly sane and healthy, and for those who can detach themselves from +tasks and drudgery long and often enough to get, at any rate once and +again, view of the proportions of life and of the stage and plot of its +action. We speak often with amusement, sometimes with distaste and +uneasiness, of men who "have no sense of humor," who take themselves too +seriously, who are intense, self-absorbed, over-confident in matters of +opinion, or else go plumed with conceit, proud of we cannot tell what, +enjoying, appreciating, thinking of nothing so much as themselves. These +are men who have not suffered that wholesome change. They have not come to +themselves. If they be serious men, and real forces in the world, we may +conclude that they have been too much and too long absorbed; that their +tasks and responsibilities long ago rose about them like a flood, and have +kept them swimming with sturdy stroke the years through, their eyes level +with the troubled surface--no horizon in sight, no passing fleets, no +comrades but those who struggle in the flood like themselves. If they be +frivolous, lightheaded, men without purpose or achievement, we may +conjecture, if we do not know, that they were born so, or spoiled by +fortune, or befuddled by self-indulgence. It is no great matter what we +think of them. + +It is enough to know that there are some laws which govern a man's +awakening to know himself and the right part to play. A man _is_ the part +he plays among his fellows. He is not isolated; he cannot be. His life is +made up of the relations he bears to others--is made or marred by those +relations, guided by them, judged by them, expressed in them. There is +nothing else upon which he can spend his spirit--nothing else that we can +see. It is by these he gets his spiritual growth; it is by these we see his +character revealed, his purpose, and his gifts. Some play with a certain +natural passion, an unstudied directness, without grace, without +modulation, with no study of the masters or consciousness of the pervading +spirit of the plot; others give all their thought to their costume and +think only of the audience; a few act as those who have mastered the +secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of themselves to +the great end and motive of the play, spending themselves like good +servants, indulging no wilfulness, obtruding no eccentricity, lending heart +and tone and gesture to the perfect progress of the action. These have +"found themselves," and have all the ease of a perfect adjustment. + +Adjustment is exactly what a man gains when he comes to himself. Some men +gain it late, some early; some get it all at once, as if by one distinct +act of deliberate accommodation; others get it by degrees and quite +imperceptibly. No doubt to most men it comes by the slow processes of +experience--at each stage of life a little. A college man feels the first +shock of it at graduation, when the boy's life has been lived out and the +man's life suddenly begins. He has measured himself with boys, he knows +their code and feels the spur of their ideals of achievement. But what the +world expects of him he has yet to find out, and it works, when he has +discovered it, a veritable revolution in his ways both of thought and of +action. He finds a new sort of fitness demanded of him, executive, +thoroughgoing, careful of details, full of drudgery and obedience to +orders. Everybody is ahead of him. Just now he was a senior, at the top of +a world he knew and reigned in, a finished product and pattern of good +form. Of a sudden he is a novice again, as green as in his first school +year, studying a thing that seems to have no rules--at sea amid +cross-winds, and a bit seasick withal. Presently, if he be made of stuff +that will shake into shape and fitness, he settles to his tasks and is +comfortable. He has come to himself: understands what capacity is, and what +it is meant for; sees that his training was not for ornament, or personal +gratification, but to teach him how to use himself and develop faculties +worth using. Henceforth there is a zest in action, and he loves to see his +strokes tell. + +The same thing happens to the lad come from the farm into the city, a big +and novel field, where crowds rush and jostle, and a rustic boy must stand +puzzled for a little how to use his placid and unjaded strength. It +happens, too, though in a deeper and more subtle way, to the man who +marries for love, if the love be true and fit for foul weather. Mr. Bagehot +used to say that a bachelor was "an amateur in life," and wit and wisdom +are married in the jest. A man who lives only for himself has not begun to +live--has yet to learn his use, and his real pleasure too, in the world. It +is not necessary he should marry to find himself out, but it is necessary +he should love. Men have come to themselves serving their mothers with an +unselfish devotion, or their sisters, or a cause for whose sake they +forsook ease and left off thinking of themselves. It is unselfish action, +growing slowly into the high habit of devotion, and at last, it may be, +into a sort of consecration, that teaches a man the wide meaning of his +life, and makes of him a steady professional in living, if the motive be +not necessity, but love. Necessity may make a mere drudge of a man, and no +mere drudge ever made a professional of himself; that demands a higher +spirit and a finer incentive than his. + +Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in +him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit +for. It is only then that he knows of what he is capable and what his heart +demands. And, assuredly, no thoughtful man ever came to the end of his +life, and had time and a little space of calm from which to look back upon +it, who did not know and acknowledge that it was what he had done +unselfishly and for others, and nothing else, that satisfied him in the +retrospect, and made him feel that he had played the man. That alone seems +to him the real measure of himself, the real standard of his manhood. And +so men grow by having responsibility laid upon them, the burden of other +people's business. Their powers are put out at interest, and they get usury +in kind. They are like men multiplied. Each counts manifold. Men who live +with an eye only upon what is their own are dwarfed beside them--seem +fractions while they are integers. The trustworthiness of men trusted seems +often to grow with the trust. + +It is for this reason that men are in love with power and greatness: it +affords them so pleasurable an expansion of faculty, so large a run for +their minds, an exercise of spirit so various and refreshing; they have the +freedom of so wide a tract of the world of affairs. But if they use power +only for their own ends, if there be no unselfish service in it, if its +object be only their personal aggrandizement, their love to see other men +tools in their hands, they go out of the world small, disquieted, beggared, +no enlargement of soul vouchsafed them, no usury of satisfaction. They have +added nothing to themselves. Mental and physical powers alike grow by use, +as every one knows; but labor for one's self alone is like exercise in a +gymnasium. No healthy man can remain satisfied with it, or regard it as +anything but a preparation for tasks in the open, amid the affairs of the +world--not sport, but business--where there is no orderly apparatus, and +every man must devise the means by which he is to make the most of himself. +To make the most of himself means the multiplication of his activities, and +he must turn away from himself for that. He looks about him, studies the +face of business or of affairs, catches some intimation of their larger +objects, is guided by the intimation, and presently finds himself part of +the motive force of communities or of nations. It makes no difference how +small a part, how insignificant, how unnoticed. When his powers begin to +play outward, and he loves the task at hand not because it gains him a +livelihood but because it makes him a life, he has come to himself. + +Necessity is no mother to enthusiasm. Necessity carries a whip. Its method +is compulsion, not love. It has no thought to make itself attractive; it is +content to drive. Enthusiasm comes with the revelation of true and +satisfying objects of devotion; and it is enthusiasm that sets the powers +free. It is a sort of enlightenment. It shines straight upon ideals, and +for those who see it the race and struggle are henceforth toward these. An +instance will point the meaning. One of the most distinguished and most +justly honored of our great philanthropists spent the major part of his +life absolutely absorbed in the making of money--so it seemed to those who +did not know him. In fact, he had very early passed the stage at which he +looked upon his business as a means of support or of material comfort. +Business had become for him an intellectual pursuit, a study in enterprise +and increment. The field of commerce lay before him like a chess-board; the +moves interested him like the manoeuvres of a game. More money was more +power, a greater advantage in the game, the means of shaping men and events +and markets to his own ends and uses. It was his will that set fleets +afloat and determined the havens they were bound for; it was his foresight +that brought goods to market at the right time; it was his suggestion that +made the industry of unthinking men efficacious; his sagacity saw itself +justified at home not only, but at the ends of the earth. And as the money +poured in, his government and mastery increased, and his mind was the more +satisfied. It is so that men make little kingdoms for themselves, and an +international power undarkened by diplomacy, undirected by parliaments. + +It is a mistake to suppose that the great captains of industry, the great +organizers and directors of manufacture and commerce and monetary exchange, +are engrossed in a vulgar pursuit of wealth. Too often they suffer the +vulgarity of wealth to display itself in the idleness and ostentation of +their wives and children, who "devote themselves," it may be, "to expense +regardless of pleasure"; but we ought not to misunderstand even that, or +condemn it unjustly. The masters of industry are often too busy with their +own sober and momentous calling to have time or spare thought enough to +govern their own households. A king may be too faithful a statesman to be a +watchful father. These men are not fascinated by the glitter of gold: the +appetite for power has got hold upon them. They are in love with the +exercise of their faculties upon a great scale; they are organizing and +overseeing a great part of the life of the world. No wonder they are +captivated. Business is more interesting than pleasure, as Mr. Bagehot +said, and when once the mind has caught its zest, there's no disengaging +it. The world has reason to be grateful for the fact. + +It was this fascination that had got hold upon the faculties of the man +whom the world was afterward to know, not as a prince among merchants--for +the world forgets merchant princes--but as a prince among benefactors; for +beneficence breeds gratitude, gratitude admiration, admiration fame, and +the world remembers its benefactors. Business, and business alone, +interested him, or seemed to him worth while. The first time he was asked +to subscribe money for a benevolent object he declined. Why _should_ he +subscribe? What affair would be set forward, what increase of efficiency +would the money buy, what return would it bring in? Was good money to be +simply given away, like water poured on a barren soil, to be sucked up and +yield nothing? It was not until men who understood benevolence on its +sensible, systematic, practical, and really helpful side explained it to +him as an investment that his mind took hold of it and turned to it for +satisfaction. He began to see that education was a thing of infinite usury; +that money devoted to it would yield a singular increase, to which there +was no calculable end, an increase in perpetuity--increase of knowledge, +and therefore of intelligence and efficiency, touching generation after +generation with new impulses, adding to the sum total of the world's +fitness for affairs--an invisible but intensely real spiritual usury beyond +reckoning, because compounded in an unknown ratio from age to age. +Henceforward beneficence was as interesting to him as business--was, +indeed, a sort of sublimated business in which money moved new forces in a +commerce which no man could bind or limit. + +He had come to himself--to the full realization of his powers, the true and +clear perception of what it was his mind demanded for its satisfaction. His +faculties were consciously stretched to their right measure, were at last +exercised at their best. He felt the keen zest, not of success merely, but +also of honor, and was raised to a sort of majesty among his fellow-men, +who attended him in death like a dead sovereign. He had died dwarfed had he +not broken the bonds of mere money-getting; would never have known himself +had he not learned how to spend it; and ambition itself could not have +shown him a straighter road to fame. + +This is the positive side of a man's discovery of the way in which his +faculties are to be made to fit into the world's affairs and released for +effort in a way that will bring real satisfaction. There is a negative side +also. Men come to themselves by discovering their limitations no less than +by discovering their deeper endowments and the mastery that will make them +happy. It is the discovery of what they can _not_ do, and ought not to +attempt, that transforms reformers into statesmen; and great should be the +joy of the world over every reformer who comes to himself. The spectacle is +not rare; the method is not hidden. The practicability of every reform is +determined absolutely and always by "the circumstances of the case," and +only those who put themselves into the midst of affairs, either by action +or by observation, can know what those circumstances are or perceive what +they signify. No statesman dreams of doing whatever he pleases; he knows +that it does not follow that because a point of morals or of policy is +obvious to him it will be obvious to the nation, or even to his own +friends; and it is the strength of a democratic polity that there are so +many minds to be consulted and brought to agreement, and that nothing can +be wisely done for which the thought, and a good deal more than the +thought, of the country, its sentiment and its purpose, have not been +prepared. Social reform is a matter of cooeperation, and, if it be of a +novel kind, requires an infinite deal of converting to bring the efficient +majority to believe in it and support it. Without their agreement and +support it is impossible. + +It is this that the more imaginative and impatient reformers find out when +they come to themselves, if that calming change ever comes to them. +Oftentimes the most immediate and drastic means of bringing them to +themselves is to elect them to legislative or executive office. That will +reduce over-sanguine persons to their simplest terms. Not because they find +their fellow legislators or officials incapable of high purpose or +indifferent to the betterment of the communities which they represent. Only +cynics hold that to be the chief reason why we approach the millennium so +slowly, and cynics are usually very ill-informed persons. Nor is it because +under our modern democratic arrangements we so subdivide power and balance +parts in government that no one man can tell for much or turn affairs to +his will. One of the most instructive studies a politician could undertake +would be a study of the infinite limitations laid upon the power of the +Russian Czar, notwithstanding the despotic theory of the Russian +constitution--limitations of social habit, of official prejudice, of race +jealousies, of religious predilections, of administrative machinery even, +and the inconvenience of being himself only one man, and that a very young +one, over-sensitive and touched with melancholy. He can do only what can be +done with the Russian people. He can no more make them quick, enlightened, +and of the modern world of the West than he can change their tastes in +eating. He is simply the leader of Russians. + +An English or American statesman is better off. He leads a thinking nation, +not a race of peasants topped by a class of revolutionists and a caste of +nobles and officials. He can explain new things to men able to understand, +persuade men willing and accustomed to make independent and intelligent +choices of their own. An English statesman has an even better opportunity +to lead than an American statesman, because in England executive power and +legislative initiative are both intrusted to the same grand committee, the +ministry of the day. The ministers both propose what shall be made law and +determine how it shall be enforced when enacted. And yet English reformers, +like American, have found office a veritable cold-water bath for their +ardor for change. Many a man who has made his place in affairs as the +spokesman of those who see abuses and demand their reformation has passed +from denunciation to calm and moderate advice when he got into Parliament, +and has turned veritable conservative when made a minister of the crown. +Mr. Bright was a notable example. Slow and careful men had looked upon him +as little better than a revolutionist so long as his voice rang free and +imperious from the platforms of public meetings. They greatly feared the +influence he should exercise in Parliament, and would have deemed the +constitution itself unsafe could they have foreseen that he would some day +be invited to take office and a hand of direction in affairs. But it turned +out that there was nothing to fear. Mr. Bright lived to see almost every +reform he had urged accepted and embodied in legislation; but he assisted +at the process of their realization with greater and greater temperateness +and wise deliberation as his part in affairs became more and more prominent +and responsible, and was at the last as little like an agitator as any man +that served the Queen. + +It is not that such men lose courage when they find themselves charged with +the actual direction of the affairs concerning which they have held and +uttered such strong, unhesitating, drastic opinions. They have only learned +discretion. For the first time they see in its entirety what it was that +they were attempting. They are at last at close quarters with the world. +Men of every interest and variety crowd about them; new impressions throng +them; in the midst of affairs the former special objects of their zeal fall +into new environments, a better and truer perspective; seem no longer +susceptible to separate and radical change. The real nature of the complex +stuff of life they were seeking to work in is revealed to them--its +intricate and delicate fiber, and the subtle, secret interrelationship of +its parts--and they work circumspectly, lest they should mar more than they +mend. Moral enthusiasm is not, uninstructed and of itself, a suitable guide +to practicable and lasting reformation; and if the reform sought be the +reformation of others as well as of himself the reformer should look to it +that he knows the true relation of his will to the wills of those he would +change and guide. When he has discovered that relation he has come to +himself: has discovered his real use and planning part in the general world +of men; has come to the full command and satisfying employment of his +faculties. Otherwise he is doomed to live forever in a fools' paradise, and +can be said to have come to himself only on the supposition that he is a +fool. + +Every man--if I may adopt and paraphrase a passage from Dr. South--every +man hath both an absolute and a relative capacity; an absolute in that he +hath been endued with such a nature and such parts and faculties; and a +relative in that he is part of the universal community of men, and so +stands in such a relation to the whole. When we say that a man has come to +himself, it is not of his absolute capacity that we are thinking, but of +his relative. He has begun to realize that he is part of a whole, and to +know _what_ part, suitable for what service and achievement. + +It was once fashionable--and that not a very long time ago--to speak of +political society with a certain distaste, as a necessary evil, an +irritating but inevitable restriction upon the "natural" sovereignty and +entire self-government of the individual. That was the dream of the +egotist. It was a theory in which men were seen to strut in the proud +consciousness of their several and "absolute" capacities. It would be as +instructive as it would be difficult to count the errors it has bred in +political thinking. As a matter of fact, men have never dreamed of wishing +to do without the "trammels" of organized society, for the very good reason +that those trammels are in reality no trammels at all, but indispensable +aids and spurs to the attainment of the highest and most enjoyable things +man is capable of. Political society, the life of men in states, is an +abiding natural relationship. It is neither a mere convenience nor a mere +necessity. It is not a mere voluntary association, not a mere corporation. +It is nothing deliberate or artificial, devised for a special purpose. It +is in real truth the eternal and natural expression and embodiment of a +form of life higher than that of the individual--that common life of mutual +helpfulness, stimulation, and contest which gives leave and opportunity to +the individual life, makes it possible, makes it full and complete. + +It is in such a scene that man looks about to discover his own place and +force. In the midst of men organized, infinitely cross-related, bound by +ties of interest, hope, affection, subject to authorities, to opinion, to +passion, to visions and desires which no man can reckon, he casts eagerly +about to find where he may enter in with the rest and be a man among his +fellows. In making his place he finds, if he seek intelligently and with +eyes that see, more than ease of spirit and scope for his mind. He finds +himself--as if mists had cleared away about him and he knew at last his +neighborhood among men and tasks. + +What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he +imagines it to lie in self-indulgence, so long as he deems himself the +center and object of effort. His mind is spent in vain upon itself. Not in +action itself, not in "pleasure," shall it find its desires satisfied, but +in consciousness of right, of powers greatly and nobly spent. It comes to +know itself in the motives which satisfy it, in the zest and power of +rectitude. Christianity has liberated the world, not as a system of ethics, +not as a philosophy of altruism, but by its revelation of the power of pure +and unselfish love. Its vital principle is not its code, but its motive. +Love, clear-sighted, loyal, personal, is its breath and immortality. Christ +came, not to save himself, assuredly, but to save the world. His motive, +his example, are every man's key to his own gifts and happiness. The +ethical code he taught may no doubt be matched, here a piece and there a +piece, out of other religions, other teachings and philosophies. Every +thoughtful man born with a conscience must know a code of right and of pity +to which he ought to conform; but without the motive of Christianity, +without love, he may be the purest altruist and yet be as sad and as +unsatisfied as Marcus Aurelius. + +Christianity gave us, in the fullness of time, the perfect image of right +living, the secret of social and of individual well-being; for the two are +not separable, and the man who receives and verifies that secret in his own +living has discovered not only the best and only way to serve the world, +but also the one happy way to satisfy himself. Then, indeed, has he come to +himself. Henceforth he knows what his powers mean, what spiritual air they +breathe, what ardors of service clear them of lethargy, relieve them all +sense of effort, put them at their best. After this fretfulness passes +away, experience mellows and strengthens and makes more fit, and old age +brings, not senility, not satiety, not regret, but higher hope and serene +maturity. + + + + +EDUCATION THROUGH OCCUPATIONS[12] + +WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN + +[Footnote 12: A commencement address, reprinted from _The Spirit of +Indiana_, by William Lowe Bryan. Copyright, 1917, by the Indiana University +Bookstore. By permission of the author and of the publishers.] + + +Young ladies and gentlemen, your chief interest at present, as I suppose, +is in the occupations which you are about to follow. What I have to say +falls in line with that interest. + +In the outset, I beg to remind you that every important occupation has been +made what it is by a guild--by an ancient guild whose history stretches +back in direct or indirect succession to the farthest antiquity. Every such +historic guild of artisans, scholars, lawyers, prophets, what not, rose, +one may be sure, to meet some deep social necessity. In every generation +those necessities were present demanding each the service of its share of +the population, demanding each the perpetuation of its guild. And because +in the historic arts and crafts and professions mankind has spent in every +generation all that it had of drudgery or of genius, it has won in _them_ +its whole estate. The steel mill, the battleship, the court of justice, the +university--these and the like of them are not accidents, nor miracles of +individual invention, nor products of the vague longings and gropings of +society in general. They are each the product of a brotherhood, of +generations working to meet one social necessity, of an apostolic +succession of masters living in the service of one ideal. And so it is +these brotherhoods of labor, it is these grim brotherhoods covered with +grime and scars, that stand before you to-day inviting you to initiation. + +The fact that an occupation can teach its far-brought wisdom to the men of +each generation makes civilization and progress possible. But this on one +condition, that many of the people and some of the best of them shall be +able to make that occupation their life business. + +The law is not in a country when you have imported Blackstone's +Commentaries and the Statutes of Parliament. The law is in a country in the +persons of such lawyers as are there. It is there in John Marshall. + +Religion is not in a country because we have built a church and furnished +it with cushions to sleep on once a week. It is there in Bishop Brooks and +Mr. Moody and the Salvation Army. + +The steel business is not in Pittsburgh in an industrial museum where the +public may gad about on holidays. It is there in the men who earn their +living by knowing a little better each year how to make armor-plate. + +All this ought to be a matter of course. But there are many who think that +science and art can be made to serve us at a cheaper price, that these +stern guilds will give up their secret treasures in extension lectures and +chautauqua clubs and twenty minutes a week in the public schools. History +will show, I think, that this is not true, that no art and no sort of +learning was ever vitally present among a people unless it was there as a +living occupation. + +Learning has come to us in this sense only within the last quarter-century. +We were busy at other things before that. Our fathers were doing--as every +people must--what they had to do. They had to live, to establish a +government, and to maintain their fundamental faiths. They bent themselves +to these tasks with the energy of our breed. And the tasks have shaped our +national history and character. They gave us the Declaration of +Independence and the American farmer who takes for granted that its +principles are true. They gave us Chicago, the Amazon who stands yonder +with _I will_ written upon her shield and a throng of men who are fit to +serve her will. They gave us a Civil War--men who could fight it and +afterwards live together in peace. They gave us industry, law, democracy. +But not science, not art. These were not wholly absent, but they were +guests. They were here in the persons of a few men who in spite of all +difficulties did work at them as a life business. + +In this far western village, for example, we had two men who brought here +the old English classical learning, two who more than fifty years ago had +been trained in the universities of Europe, and one whom the radical +instinct which set science going in the first place, called from a village +academy into membership in the international guild of scholars. What these +men did for sound learning and what they did through their pupils to uplift +every occupation in the State, it is wholly beyond our power to measure. +But one thing they could not do. They could not furnish to society more men +who should devote themselves to learning than society would furnish a +living for. And the bare fact is that there was a living for very few such +men in America in the days before the war. Within the past quarter-century +there has been a change in this respect so great that none fails to see it. +The millions that we have spent upon universities and high schools, the +vast plant of buildings and libraries and laboratories, fill the public eye +with amazement. But all this is the husk of what has happened. The real +thing is that these millions, this vast plant, these thousands of +_positions_ demanding trained men, have brought to life upon this ground +the guild of scholars. We do not need any more to exhort men to become +scholars. The spirit which was in Thales and Copernicus, in Agassiz and +Kirkwood, calls to the Hoosier farmboy in its own voice, and shows him a +clear path by which, if he is fit, he may join their great company. + +And, if I am not mistaken, Art, which has also been a guest, is ready at +last to become a citizen. Why should it not? What is lacking? Yonder are +the works of art and the men who know. Here are the youths some share of +whom must by right belong to the service of Art. And here are the millions +which go to support men in every molehole of scientific research and other +millions spent stupidly and wantonly for whatever the shopkeepers tell us +is beautiful. We could not create these potential forces that make for art. +But if it is true that they are here, we can organize them, as David Starr +Jordan and the like of him less than twenty years ago organized the forces +that make for science. We can make a path through the school and the +university along which all the children of the State may go as far as they +will and along which those who are fit may enter the artist's life. + +"The mission of society," says Geddes, "is to bring to bloom as many sorts +of genius as possible." And this it can do only when each sort of genius +has the chance to choose freely its own life occupation. + +Here, as I think, is the program for our educational system--to make plain +highways from every corner of the State to every occupation which history +has proved good. + + +II + +However, as matters actually stand at present, it is your good fortune to +have a wide range of occupations among which to choose. + +It is no light matter to make the choice. It is to elect your physical and +social environment. It is to choose where you will work--in a scholar's +cloister, on a farm, or in the cliffs of a city street. It is to choose +your comrades and rivals. It is to choose what you will attend to, what you +will try for, whom you will follow. In a word, it is to elect for life, for +better or worse, some one part of the whole social heritage. These +influences will not touch you lightly. They will compass you with subtle +compulsions. They will fashion your clothes and looks and carriage, the +cunning of your hands, the texture of your speech, and the temper of your +will. And if you are wholly willing and wholly fit, they can work upon you +this miracle: they can carry you swiftly in the course of your single life +to levels of wisdom and skill in one sort, which it has cost the whole +history of your guild to win. + +But there is, of course, no magic in merely choosing an occupation. If you +do nothing to an occupation but choose it, it can do nothing at all to you. +If you are an incorrigible lover of holidays, so that the arrival of a +working-day makes you sick, if every task thrust into your hands grows +intolerable, if every calling, as soon as you have touched its drudgery, +grows hateful--that is to have the soul of a tramp. It is to be stricken +with incurable poverty. You turn your back upon every company of men where +anything worth while is to be done. You shut out of yourself every wisdom +and skill which civilized work develops in a man. And you grow not empty +but full, choked with evil life. Wretched are they that hunger and thirst +after nothing good, for they also shall be filled. Herein is democracy, +that whether you are a beggar's son or the son of Croesus you cannot escape +from yourself--you cannot bribe or frighten yourself into being anything +else than what your own hungers and thirsts have made you. + +It is somewhat better but far from well enough if you enter many +occupations, but stay in none long enough to receive thorough +apprenticeship. + +It is so ordered that it is easy for most of us to make a fair beginning at +almost anything. In the rough and tumble of babyhood and youth we all +accumulate experiences which are raw material for any and every occupation. +So when one of them kindles in you a light blaze of curiosity, you have +only to pull yourself together, you have only to mobilize your forces, and +you are presently enjoying little successes that surprise and delight you +and that may give you the illusion of mastery. + +Doubtless the World Soul knows his own affairs in ordering this so. For one +thing, the easy initial victories are fine baits, lures, by which youths +are caught and drawn into serious apprenticeship. For another thing, the +influence of each occupation upon society in general must be exercised +largely through men who carry some intelligence of it into other +occupations. + +But if a man flits from one curiosity to another, if for fear of being +narrow and with the hope of being broad, he forsakes every occupation +before it can set its seal upon him, if he is through and through +dilettante, jack-of-all-trades, he is a man only less poverty-stricken than +a tramp. He has the illusion of efficiency. He wonders that society +generally judges that he is not worth his salt, that on every battlefield +Hotspur curses him for a popinjay, that in every company of master workmen +met for council he is at most a tolerated guest. The judgment upon him--not +my judgment, but the judgment which the days thrust in his face--is this: +that when there is important work to be done he cannot do it. He is full of +versatility. He knows the alphabet of everything--chemistry, engineering, +business, law, what not. But with all these he cannot bridge the +Mississippi. He cannot make the steel for the bridge, nor calculate the +strength of it, nor find the money to build it, nor defend its interests in +court. These tasks fall to men whom twenty years' service in their several +callings have taught to speak for society at its best. And while their work +goes on its way, the brilliant man who refused every sort of thorough +training which society could give him, can only stand full of wonder and +anger that with all his versatilities he is left to choose between the +drudgery of unskilled labor and mere starvation. + +There is another sort of man who will learn little in any occupation +because he is wholly bent upon being original. The past is all wrong, full +of errors, absurdities, iniquities. To serve apprenticeship is to +indoctrinate one's self with pernicious orthodoxies. We must rebel. We must +begin at the beginning. We must do something entirely new and +revolutionary. We must rely upon our free souls to see and to do the right, +as it has never been seen or done before. Some such declaration of +independence, some such combination of hopeless pessimism about all that +has been done, with confident optimism about what is just to be done, one +finds in men of every art, craft, and calling. We are to have perpetual +motion. We are to square the circle. We are to abandon our present +political and religious and educational institutions and get new and +perfect ones. Above all, the children must grow up free from the whole +array of social orthodoxies. We are to escape from the whole wretched +blundering past and by one bold march enter a new Garden of Eden. + +There is something inspiring in this, something that stirs the youth like a +bugle, and something, as I believe, that is essential in every generation +for the purification of society. The past is as bad as anybody says it is, +woven full of inconsistency and iniquity. We _must_ escape it. We _must_ +fight it. And it is no doubt inevitable that there should be some who think +that they owe it nothing but war. + +And yet, for my part, I am convinced that this is a fatally one-sided view +of things. Is there in existence one great work of any sort which owes +nothing to the historic guild which does that sort of work? Is there one +great man in history who gave to the future without getting anything from +the past? The bare scientific fact is that no man escapes the tuition of +society. The crank does not escape. The freak does not escape. They miss +the highest traditions of society only to become victims of lower +traditions. Whether such a man have genius or the illusion of genius, it is +his tragic fate to have the best that he can do lie far below the best that +society already possesses. + +If one will see what genius without adequate instruction comes to, let him +look at the case of the mathematical prodigy, Arthur Griffith. There is +what no one would refuse to call genius. There is originality, spontaneity, +insatiable interest, unceasing labor. And the result? A marvelous skill for +which society has almost no use, and a knowledge of the science of +arithmetic which is two hundred years behind that of the high school +graduate. + + +III + +But now that we have told off these three classes who will not learn what +society has to teach, we have happily left most of mankind; certainly, I +trust, most of you who have submitted to the instruction of society thus +far. And it is you who are willing to work and eager for the best +instruction that society can give, whom the question of occupations +especially concerns. + +And here I beg to have you discriminate between the work to which one gives +his attention and the great swarm of activities physical and mental which +are always going on in the background. + +A boy who is driving nails into a fence has for the immediate task of his +eyes and hands the hitting of a certain nail on the head. Meanwhile, the +rest of the boy's body and soul may be full of rebellion and longing to be +done with the fence on any terms and away at the fishing. Or instead of +that the whole boy may be full of pride in what he has done and of +resolution to drive the last nail as true as the first. Which of these two +things is the more important--the task in the foreground or the disposition +in the background--I do not know. They cannot be separated. They are both +present in every waking hour, weaving together the threads of fate. + +A man's life is not wholly fortunate unless all that is within him rises +gladly to join in the work that he has to do. + +It is, however, unhappily true that many good and useful men are forced by +circumstances to work at one thing, while their hearts are tugging to be at +something else. They have not chosen their tasks. They have been driven by +necessity. There must be bread. There are the wife and the children. There +is no escape. It is up with the sun. It is bearing the burden and heat of +the day. It is intolerable weariness. It is worse than that. It is tramping +round and round in the same hated steps until you cannot do anything else. +You cannot think of anything else. They sound in your dreams--those +treadmill steps arousing echoes of bitterness and rebellion. You cannot +escape from yourself. You cannot take a vacation. You may grow rich and +travel far and spend desperately, but the baleful music will follow you to +the end, the music of the work you did in hate. This is the tragedy of +drudgery, not that you spend your time and strength at it, but that you +lose yourself in it. + +But at the worst this man is no such poverty-stricken soul as the crank, +the tramp, or the jack-of-all-trades. If his occupation was worth while, +those hated habits are far from deserving hate. If they are habits by which +a man may live, by which one may give a service that other men need and +will pay for, their value is certified from the sternest laboratory. The +drudge has a right to respect himself. He has the right to the respect of +other men and I give mine without reserve. I say that he who holds himself +grimly for life to a useful commonplace work which he hates, is heroic. It +is easy to be heroic on horseback. To be heroic on foot in the dust, lost +in the crowd, with no applause--that is the heroism which has borne up and +carried forward most of the work of civilization. + + +IV + +We honor the drudge, but deplore his fate. And yet there are many who +believe that there is in fact no other fate for any man; that every +business is in the long run a belittling business; that whether you are a +hodcarrier or a poet, as you go on in your calling, "shades of the +prison-house" will close upon you and custom lie upon you "heavy as frost +and deep almost as life." + +Let us look at this deep pessimism at its darkest. The imperfect, that is +everywhere. That is all that you can see or work at. That is the warp and +woof of all your occupations and institutions, your politics, your science, +your religion. They are all nearly as bad as they are good. Your science +has forever to disown its past. Your politics demands that you shall be +_particeps criminis_ in its evil as the price of a position in which you +can exert any influence. Your historic church is almost as full of Satan as +of Christ. And when you have spent your bit of life in any of these +institutions or occupations, they are not perfect as you had hoped. + +You emancipate the slaves and the negro question still looks you in the +face. You invent printing and then must say with Browning's Fust, "Have I +brought man advantage or hatched so to speak a strange serpent?" + +You establish a new brotherhood for the love of Christ, and presently they +are quarreling which shall be chief or perhaps haling men to prison in the +name of Him who came to let the oppressed go free. + +And you, yourself, for reward will be filled with the Everlasting Imperfect +which your eyes have seen and your hands have handled. + +The essential tragedy of life, according to this deep pessimism, is not in +pain and defeat, but in the emptiness and vanity of all that we call +victory. + + Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the + labor that I had labored to do; and, behold, all was vanity and + vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. + + +V + +I suppose that every man's faith is the outgrowth of his disposition, and +mine makes me believe that the truth embraces all the blackest of this +pessimism and also the victory over it. I admit and declare that our case +is as bad as anybody has found it to be. In a generation which soothes +itself with the assurance that there is no hell, I am one who fears that +its fire is leaping through every artery of society. + +And yet I have never a doubt that there is a spirit which may lead a man +through any calling always into more of the life and freedom of the Kingdom +of God. + +For one thing, it is necessary that your calling at its best, the best that +it has done, the best that it may do, should lay before you a program of +tasks, the first of them lying definitely before you and within your power, +the others stretching away into all that a man can do in that sort. This is +no treadmill. This is a ladder, resting on the ground, stretching toward +heaven. + +For another thing, you must delight in your work. Your heart and body must +be in it and not tugging to be away at something else. You do not then deal +out to each bit of work its stingy bit of your attention. You delight in +the thing. You hover and brood over it like a lover and lavish upon it the +wealth of uncounted hours. + +The sure consequence is that you are not doing the same things over and +over and grooving the same habits deeper and deeper. Habits cannot stand in +this heat. They fuse and flow together. They are no longer chains. They are +wings. They lift you up and bear you swiftly and joyfully forward. + +This is indeed the life of joy. You have the joy of efficiency. You have +the joy of doing the best you had hoped to do. And it may be that once and +again you will be set shaking with delight because something within you has +turned out a better bit of work than you had thought possible. + +And if, besides all this, the background of feeling and will in you is +wholly right; if, by the grace of God, you have learned to work in delicate +veracity, stern against yourself, loyal to the Perfection whose veils no +man has lifted; if the far vision of that Perfection touches you with +humility, mans you with courage, and makes you leap glad to meet the tasks +which are set for you,--what is this but entrance here and now into the +Kingdom of God? + +And if this crowning grace comes to you, as it may in any calling--it came +to Uncle Tom--you will not, I think, believe that all your hands have +wrought is vanity. You will not believe that the Logos who has called our +race out of the earth to behold and share in his creation is a dream, a +mockery of our despair, as we make the last useless turns about the dying +sun. But you will see that He knew the truth of things who said: + + My Father worketh hitherto and I work. The works that I do shall ye do + also and greater works than these shall ye do because I go to the + Father. + + + + +THE FALLOW[13] + +JOHN AGRICOLA + +[Footnote 13: By permission of the author, John Finley.] + + +In a book on "Roman Farm Management" containing translations of Cato and +Varro by a "Virginia Farmer" (who happens also to be an American railroad +president), there is quoted in the original Latin a proverb whose practice +not only gave basis for the proud phrase "_Romanus sum_" but also helped to +make the Romans "a people of enduring achievement." It is "_Romanus sedendo +vincit_." For, as this new-world farmer adds by way of translation and +emphasis, "The Romans achieved their results by _thoroughness_ and +_patience_." "It was thus," he continues, "they defeated Hannibal, and it +was thus that they built their farmhouses and fences, cultivated their +fields, their vineyards and their olive yards, and bred and fed their +livestock. They seemed to have realized that there are no shortcuts in the +processes of nature and that the law of compensations is invariable." "The +foundation of their agriculture," he asserts, "was the _fallow_"; and +concludes, commenting upon this, that while "one can find instruction in +their practice even to-day, one can benefit even more from their +agricultural philosophy, for the characteristic of the American farmer is +that he is in too much of a hurry." + +This is only by way of preface to saying that the need in our educational +philosophy, or, at any rate, in our educational practice, as in +agriculture, is the need of the _fallow_. + +It will be known to philologists, even to those who have no agricultural +knowledge, that the "fallow field" is not an idle field, though that is the +popular notion. "Fallow" as a noun meant originally a "harrow," and as a +verb, "to plough," "to harrow." "A fallow field is a field ploughed and +tilled," but left unsown for a time as to the main crop of its +productivity; or, in better modern practice, I believe, sown to a crop +valuable not for what it will bring in the market (for it may be utterly +unsalable), but for what it will give to the soil in enriching it for its +higher and longer productivity. + +I employ this agricultural metaphor not in ignorance; for I have, out on +these very prairies, read between corn-husking and the spring ploughing +Virgil's _Georgics_ and _Bucolics_, for which Varro's treatises furnished +the foundations. And I have also, on these same prairies, carried Horace's +_Odes_, in the spring, to the field with me, strapping the book to the +plough to read while the horses rested at the furrow's end. + +Nor do I employ this metaphor demeaningly. Nothing has so glorified for me +my youthful days on these prairies as the associations which the classics, +including the Bible, gave to them on the farm; and also in the shop, I may +add, for it was in the shop, as well as on the farm, that I had their +companionship. When learning the printer's trade, while a college student, +I set up in small pica my translation of the daily allotment of the +_Prometheus Bound_ of Aeschylus, and that dark and dingy old shop became +the world of the Titan who "manward sent Art's mighty means and perfect +rudiment," the place where the divine in man "defied the invincible gesture +of necessity." And nothing can so glorify the classics as to bring them +into the field and into the shop and let them become woven into the tasks +that might else seem monotonous or menial. + +In a recent editorial in the _New York Times_ it was said that the men and +the times of Aristophanes were much more modern than the administration of +Rutherford B. Hayes. But this was simply because Aristophanes immortally +portrayed the undying things in human nature, whereas the issues associated +with this particular administration were evanescent. The immortal is, of +course, always modern, and the classic is the immortal, the timeless +distillation of human experience. + +But I wander from my thesis which is that the classics are needed as the +_fallow_ to give lasting and increasing fertility to the natural mind out +upon democracy's great levels, into which so much has been washed down and +laid down from the Olympic mountains and eternal hills of the classical +world. + +In the war days we naturally ignored the _fallow_. We cultivated with +Hooverian haste. It was necessary to put our soil in peril of exhaustion +even as we put our men in peril of death. Forty million added acres were +commandeered, six billions of bushels of the leading cereals were added to +the annual product of earlier seasons. The land could be let to think only +of immediate defense. Crops only could be grown which would help promptly +to win the war. Vetch and clover and all else that permanently enriched +must be given up for war gardening or war farming. The motto was not +_Americanus sedendo vincit_ but _Americanus accelerando vincit_. + +But on this day of my writing (the day of the signing of the peace) I am +thinking that in agriculture and in education as well, we must again turn +our thoughts to the virtues of thoroughness and patience--the virtues of +the fallow, that is, to ploughing and harrowing and tilling, _not_ for the +immediate crop, but for the enrichment of the soil and of the mind, +according as our thought is of agriculture or education. + +Cato, when asked what the first principle of good agriculture was, answered +"To plough well." When asked what the second was, replied "To plough +again." And when asked what the third was, said "To apply fertilizer." And +a later Latin writer speaks of the farmer who does not plough thoroughly as +one who becomes a mere "clodhopper." You will notice that it is not sowing, +nor hoeing after the sowing, but ploughing that is the basic operation. + +It is the sowing, however, that is popularly put first in our agricultural +and educational theory. "A sower went forth to sow." A teacher went forth +to teach, that is, to scatter information, facts:--arithmetical, +historical, geographical, linguistic facts. But the emphasis of the +greatest agricultural parable in our literature was after all not on the +sowing but on the soil, on that upon which or into which the seed fell,--or +as it might be better expressed, upon the _fallow_. It was only the fallow +ground, the ground that had been properly cleared of stones, thorns, and +other shallowing or choking encumbrances, that gave point to the parable. +It was the same seed that fell upon the stony, thorny, and fallow ground +alike. + +There is a time to sow, to sow the seed for the special crop you want; but +it is after you have ploughed the field. There is a time to specialize, to +give the information which the life is to produce in kind; but it is when +you have thoroughly prepared the mind by its ploughing disciplines. + +I have lately seen the type of agriculture practised out in the fields that +were the Scriptural cradle of the race. There the ploughing is but the +scratching of the surface. Indeed, the sowing is on the top of the ground +and the so-called ploughing or scratching in with a crooked stick comes +after. Contrast this with the deep ploughing of the West, and we have one +explanation at least of the greater productivity of the West. And there is +the educational analogue here as well. In those homelands of the race, the +seed of the mind is sown on the surface and is scratched in by oral and +choral repetitions. The mind that receives it is not ploughed, is not +trained to think. It merely receives and with shallow root, if it be not +scorched, gives back its meager crop. + +There must be ploughing before the sowing, and deep ploughing if things +with root are to find abundant life and fruit. And the classics to my +thought furnish the best ploughs for the mind,--at any rate for minds that +have depth of soil. For shallow minds, "where there is not much depth of +earth," where, because there cannot be much root, that which springs up +withers away, it were perhaps not worth while to risk this precious +implement. And then, too, there are geniuses whose fertility needs not the +same stirring disciplines. There are also other ploughs, but as a ploughman +I have found none better for English use than the plough which has the +classical name, the plough which reaches the sub-soil, which supplements +the furrowing ploughs in bringing to the culture of our youthful minds that +which lies deep in the experience of the race. + +There are many kinds of fallow as I have already intimated. The more modern +is not the "bare fallow" which lets the land so ploughed and harrowed lie +unsown even for a season, but the fallow, of varied name, where the land is +sown to crops whose purpose is to gather the free nitrogen back into the +ground for its enrichment. So is our fallowing by the classics not only to +prepare the ground, clear it of weeds, aerate it, break up the clods, but +also to enrich it by bringing back into the mind of the youth of to-day +that which has escaped into the air of the ages past through the great +human minds that have lived and loved upon this earth and laid themselves +down into its dust to die. + +In New York City, a young man, born out upon the prairies, was lying, as it +was thought, near to death, in a hospital. He turned to the nurse and asked +what month it was. She answered that it was early May. He thought of the +prairies, glorified to him by Horace's _Odes_. He heard the frogs in the +swales amid the virgin prairie flowers as Aristophanes had heard them in +the ponds of Greece. He saw the springing oats in a neighboring field that +should furnish the pipes for the winds of Pan. He saw, as the dying poet +Ibycus, the cranes go honking overhead. And he said, "I can't die now. It's +ploughing time." + + * * * * * + +It is "ploughing time" for the world again, and ploughing time not only +because we turn from instruments of war to those of peace, symbolized since +the days of Isaiah by the "ploughshares" beaten from swords, but because we +must turn to the cultivation with _thoroughness_ and _patience_ not only of +our acres but of the minds that are alike to have world horizons in this +new season of the earth. + +Amos prophesied that in the day of restoration "the ploughman would +overtake the reaper." War's grim reaper is quitting the field to-day. The +ploughman has overtaken him. May he remember the law of the "_fallow_" and +not be in too great a hurry. + + + + +WRITING AND READING[14] + +JOHN MATTHEWS MANLY AND EDITH RICKERT + +[Footnote 14: From _The Writing of English_, by John Matthews Manly and +Edith Rickert. Copyright, 1919, by Henry Holt and Co. By permission of the +authors and of the publishers.] + + +Do you like to write? Probably not. What have you tried to write? Probably +"themes." + +The "theme" is a literary form invented by teachers of rhetoric for the +education of students in the art of writing. It does not exist outside the +world of school and college. No editor ever accepted a "theme." No "theme" +was ever delivered from a rostrum, or spoken at a dinner, or bound between +the covers of a book in the hope that it might live for centuries. In a +word, a "theme" is first and last a product of "composition"--a laborious +putting together of ideas, without audience and without purpose, hated +alike by student and by instructor. Its sole use is to exemplify the +principles of rhetoric. But rhetoric belongs to the past as much as the +toga and the snuffbox; it is an extinct art, the art of cultivating style +according to the mannerisms of a vanished age. + +Forget that you ever wrote a "theme," and ask yourself now: "Should I like +to write?" Of course you would--if you could. And you can. You have had, +and you will have, some experiences that will not be repeated exactly in +any other life--that no one else can express exactly as you would express +them. And the art of expressing what you have experienced, what you think, +what you feel, and what you believe, can be learned. + +If you stop to consider the matter, you will realize that self-expression +is one of the laws of life; you do express yourself day after day, whether +you will or not. Hence, the more quickly you learn that successful +self-expression is the source of one of the greatest pleasures in life, the +more readily will you be able to turn your energy in the right direction, +and the more fun will you get out of the process. The kind of delight that +comes through self-expression of the body, through the play of the muscles +in running or hurdling, through the play of muscles and mind together in +football or baseball or tennis or golf, comes also through the exercise of +the mind alone in talk or in writing. + +Remember always throughout this course, that you have something to +say--something peculiar to yourself that should be contributed to the sum +of the world's experience, something that cannot be contributed by anyone +but yourself. It may be much or it may be little: with that you are not +concerned at present; your business now is to find out how to say it; how +to clear away the obstacles that clog self-expression; how to give your +mind free swing; and how to get all the fun there is in the process. + +The initial problems in learning to write are: How can you get at this +store of material hidden within you? and how can you know when you have +found it? Your experience, however interesting, is as yet very limited. How +can you tell which phases of it deserve expression, and which are mere +commonplace? The quickest way to answer this question is by reading. +Reading will tell you which phases of experience have been commonly treated +and which have been neglected. Moreover, as you read you will be surprised +to find that very often the features of your life which seem to you +peculiarly interesting are exactly those that are commonly--and even +cheaply--written about, while those which you have passed over as not worth +attention may be aspects of life that other people too have passed over; +they may therefore be fresh and well worth writing about. For instance, +within the last twenty-five years we have had two writers, Joseph Conrad +and John Masefield, writing of the sea as it has never been written of +before. Both have been sailors; and both have utilized their experience as +viewed through the medium of their temperaments in a way undreamed of +before. Again, within the last ten years we have had Algernon Blackwood, +using his imagination to apply psychology to the study of the supernatural, +and so developing a field peculiar to himself. Still again, H. G. Wells, +who began his career as a clerk and continued as a teacher of science, has +found in both these phases of his experience a mine of literary wealth; and +Arnold Bennett, born and educated in the dreariest, most unpicturesque, +apparently least inspiring, part of England, has seen in the very prosiness +of the Five Towns untouched material, and has given this an enduring place +in literature. In your imagination there may lie the basis of fantasies as +yet unexpressed; or in your experience, aspects of life that have not as +yet been adequately treated. As you read you will find that until recently +the one phase of life most exploited in literature was the romantic love of +youth; this was the basis of nearly all novels and of most short stories; +its presence was demanded for either primary or secondary interest in the +drama; and it was the chief source of inspiration for the lyric. But within +the last thirty years all sorts of other subjects have been opened up. +To-day the writer's difficulty is, not that he is restricted by literary +convention in his choice of material, but that he is so absolutely +unrestricted that he may be in doubt where to make his choice. He is, to be +sure, conditioned in two ways: To do the best work, he must keep within the +bounds of his own temperament and experience; and he should as far as +possible avoid phases of life already written about, unless he can present +them under some new aspect. + +With these conditions in mind, you are ready to ask yourself: What have I +to write about? Let us put the question more concretely: Have you lived, +for instance, in a little mining town in the West? Such a little town, with +its saloons and automatics and flannel-shirted hero, stares at us every +month from the pages of popular magazines. But perhaps your little mining +town is dry, perhaps there has not been a shooting fray in it for ten +years, and all the young men go to Bible class on Sunday. Well, here is +something new; let us have it. Is New York your home? The magazines tell +you that New York is parceled out among a score of writers: the Italian +quarter, the Jewish quarter, the Syrian quarter, the boarding-houses, Wall +Street. What is there left? The suburbs? Surely not; and yet have you ever +seen a story of just your kind of street and just the kind of people that +you know? If not, here is your opportunity. + +You have read about sailors, fishermen, farmers, detectives, Italian +fruit-peddlers, Jewish clothes-merchants, commercial travelers, financiers, +salesmen and saleswomen, doctors, clergymen, heiresses, and men about town, +but have you often read a thrilling romance of a filing clerk? How about +the heroism of a telephone collector? the humors of a street-car conductor? +The seeing eye will find material in the street car, in the department +store, in the dentist's waiting room, in college halls, on a lonely country +road--anywhere and everywhere. And the seeing eye is cultivated by a +perpetual process of comparing life as it is with life as it is portrayed +in literature and in art. In other words, to get material to write about, +you must cultivate alertness to the nature and value of your own +life-experience, and to the nature and value of all forms of life with +which you come into contact; but this you can never do with any degree of +success unless you at the same time learn how to read. + +You may say that you know how to read. It is almost certain that you do +not. If by reading you mean that you can run your eye over a page, and, +barring a word here and there, get the general drift of the sense, you may +perhaps qualify as able to read. If you are set the task of interpreting +fully every phrase in an article by a thoughtful writer, the chances are +that you will fail. When only a small part of a writer's meaning has passed +from his mind to yours, you can hardly be said to have read what he has +written. On the other hand, no one can get out of written words all that +was put into them. What was written out of one man's experience must be +interpreted by another's experience; and as no two people ever have exactly +the same experience--no two people are exactly alike--it follows that no +interpretation is ever entirely what the writer had in mind. The ratio +between what goes into a book and what comes out of it varies in two ways. +Granted the same reader, he will take only to the limit of his capacity +from any book set before him: he may get almost all from a book that +contains but little, a good share of a book that contains much, but very +little of a book that is far beyond the range of his experience. Granted +the same book, one reader will barely skim its surface, another will gain a +fair idea of the gist of it, a third will almost relive it with the author. + +The main point is that this varying ratio depends upon the amount of +life-experience that goes into the writing of a book and the amount of +life-experience that goes into the reading of it. For as writing is the +expression of life, so reading is vicarious living--living by proxy, +reliving in imagination what the author has lived before he was able to +write it. Hence, we grow _up to_ books, grow _into_ them, grow _out of_ +them. Our growing experience of life may be measured by the books that we +read; and conversely, as we cannot have all experience in our own lives, +books are necessarily one of the most fruitful sources of growth in +experience. + +This is true, however, only of what may be called vitalized +reading--reading, not with the eyes alone, nor with the mind alone, but +with the stored experiences of life, with the emotions that it has brought, +with the attitudes toward men and things and ideas that it has given--in a +word, with imagination. To read with imagination, you must be, in the first +place, active; in the second place, sensitive, and, because you are +sensitive, receptive. Instead, however, of being merely passively receptive +of the stream of ideas and images and sensations flowing from the work you +are reading, you must be alert to take all that it has to give, and to +re-create this in terms of your own experience. Thus by making it a part of +your imaginative experience, you widen your actual experience, you enrich +your life, and you increase the flexibility and vital power of your mind. + +In order, then, to tap the sources of your imagination, you must learn to +experience in two ways: first, through life itself, not so much by seeking +experiences different from those that naturally come your way, as by +becoming aware of the value of those that belong naturally to your life; +and second, through learning to absorb and transmute the life that is in +books, beginning with those that stand nearest to your stage of +development. In the process of reading you will turn more and more to those +writers who have a larger mastery of life, and who, by their skill in +expressing the wisdom and beauty that they have made their own, can admit +you, when you are ready, to some share in that mastery. + + + + +JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL[15] + +BLISS PERRY + +[Footnote 15: An address delivered at the exercises held by the Cambridge +Historical Society in Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Feb. 22, 1919, +to commemorate the centenary of Lowell's birth. By permission of Professor +Perry and of the editor of the _Harvard Graduates' Magazine_. Copyright, +1919, by _The Harvard Graduates' Magazine_.] + + +Two Harvard men, teachers of English in the University of North Carolina, +have recently published a new kind of textbook for undergraduates. +Abandoning the conventional survey of literary types and the examination of +literary history in the narrow sense of those words, they present a program +of ideas, the dominant ideas of successive epochs in the life of England +and America. They direct the attention of the young student, not so much to +canons of art as to noteworthy expressions of communal thought and feeling, +to the problems of self-government, of noble discipline, of ordered +liberty. The title of this book is _The Great Tradition_. The fundamental +idealism of the Anglo-Saxon race is illustrated by passages from Bacon and +Raleigh, Spenser and Shakespeare. But William Bradford, as well as Cromwell +and Milton, is chosen to represent the seventeenth-century struggle for +faith and freedom. In the eighteenth century, Washington and Jefferson and +Thomas Paine appear side by side with Burke and Burns and Wordsworth. +Shelley and Byron, Tennyson and Carlyle are here of course, but with them +are John Stuart Mill and John Bright and John Morley. There are passages +from Webster and Emerson, from Lowell and Walt Whitman and Lincoln, and +finally, from the eloquent lips of living men--from Lloyd George and Arthur +Balfour and Viscount Grey and President Wilson--there are pleas for +international honor and international justice and for a commonwealth of +free nations. + +It is a magnificent story, this record of Anglo-Saxon idealism during four +hundred years. The six or seven hundred pages of the book which I have +mentioned are indeed rich in purely literary material; in the illustration +of the temper of historic periods; in the exhibition of changes in language +and in literary forms. The lover of sheer beauty in words, the analyzer of +literary types, the student of biography, find here ample material for +their special investigations. But the stress is laid, not so much upon the +quality of individual genius, as upon the political and moral instincts of +the English-speaking races, their long fight for liberty and democracy, +their endeavor to establish the terms upon which men may live together in +society. And precisely here, I take it, is the significance of the pages +which Professors Greenlaw and Hanford assign to James Russell Lowell. The +man whom we commemorate to-night played his part in the evolution which has +transformed the Elizabethan Englishman into the twentieth-century American. +Lowell was an inheritor and an enricher of the Great Tradition. + +This does not mean that he did not know whether he was American or English. +He wrote in 1866 of certain Englishmen: "They seem to forget that more than +half the people of the North have roots, as I have, that run down more than +two hundred years deep into this new-world soil--that we have not a thought +nor a hope that is not American." In 1876, when his political independence +made him the target of criticism, he replied indignantly: "These fellows +have no notion what love of country means. It is in my very blood and +bones. If I am not an American, who ever was?" + +It remains true, nevertheless, that Lowell's life and his best writing are +keyed to that instinct of personal discipline and civic responsibility +which characterized the seventeenth century emigrants from England. These +successors of Roger Ascham and Thomas Elyot and Philip Sidney were +Puritanic, moralistic, practical; and with their "faith in God, faith in +man and faith in work" they built an empire. Lowell's own mind, like +Franklin's, like Lincoln's, had a shrewd sense of what concerns the common +interests of all. The inscription beneath his bust on the exterior of +Massachusetts Hall runs as follows: "Patriot, scholar, orator, poet, public +servant." Those words begin and end upon that civic note which is heard in +all of Lowell's greater utterances. It has been the dominant note of much +of the American writing that has endured. And it is by virtue of this note, +touched so passionately, so nobly, throughout a long life, that Lowell +belongs to the elect company of public souls. + +No doubt we have had in this country distinguished practitioners of +literature who have stood mainly or wholly outside the line of the Great +Tradition. They drew their inspiration elsewhere. Poe, for example, is not +of the company; Hawthorne in his lonelier moods is scarcely of the company. +In purely literary fame, these names may be held to outrank the name of +James Russell Lowell; as Emerson outranks him, of course, in range of +vision, Longfellow in craftsmanship, and Walt Whitman in sheer power of +emotion and of phrase. But it happens that Lowell stands with both Emerson +and Whitman in the very centre of that group of poets and prose-men who +have been inspired by the American idea. They were all, as we say proudly +nowadays, "in the service," and the particular rank they may have chanced +to win is a relatively insignificant question, except to critics and +historians. + +The centenary of the birth of a writer who reached three score and ten is +usually ill-timed for a proper perspective of his work. A generation has +elapsed since his death. Fashions have changed; writers, like bits of old +furniture, have had time to "go out" and not time enough to come in again. +George Eliot and Ruskin, for instance, whose centenaries fall in this year, +suffer the dark reproach of having been "Victorians." The centenaries of +Hawthorne and Longfellow and Whittier were celebrated at a period of +comparative indifference to their significance. But if the present moment +is still too near to Lowell's life-time to afford a desirable literary +perspective, a moral touchstone of his worth is close at hand. In this hour +of heightened national consciousness, when we are all absorbed with the +part which the English-speaking races are playing in the service of the +world, we may surely ask whether Lowell's mind kept faith with his blood +and with his citizenship, or whether, like many a creator of exotic, hybrid +beauty, he remained an alien in the spiritual commonwealth, a homeless, +masterless man. + +No one needs to speak in Cambridge of Lowell's devotion to the community in +which he was born and in which he had the good fortune to die. In some of +his most delightful pages he has recorded his affection for it. Yonder in +the alcoves of Harvard Hall, then the College Library, he discovered many +an author unrepresented among his father's books at Elmwood. In University +Hall he attended chapel--occasionally. In the open space between Hollis and +Holden he read his "Commemoration Ode." He wrote to President Hill in 1863: +"Something ought to be done about the trees in the Yard." He loved the +place. It was here in Sanders Theatre that he pronounced his memorable +address at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the +College--an address rich in historic background, and not without solicitude +for the future of his favorite humanistic studies--a solicitude, some will +think, only too well justified. "Cambridge at all times is full of ghosts," +said Emerson. But no ghost from the past, flitting along the Old Road from +Elmwood to the Yard, and haunting the bleak lecture-rooms where it had +recited as a careless boy and taught wearily as a man, could wear a more +quizzical and friendly aspect than Lowell's. He commonly spoke of his life +as a professor with whimsical disparagement, as Henry Adams wrote of his +own teaching with a somewhat cynical disparagement. But the fact is that +both of these self-depreciating New Englanders were stimulating and +valuable teachers. From his happily idle boyhood to the close of his +fruitful career, Lowell's loyalty to Cambridge and Harvard was unalterable. +Other tastes changed after wider experience with the world. He even +preferred, at last, the English blackbird to the American bobolink, but the +Harvard Quinquennial Catalogue never lost its savor, and in the full tide +of his social success in London he still thought that the society he had +enjoyed at the Saturday Club was the best society in the world. To +deracinate Lowell was impossible, and it was for this very reason that he +became so serviceable an international personage. You knew where he stood. +It was not for nothing that his roots ran down two hundred years deep. He +was the incarnation of his native soil. + +Lowell has recently been described, together with Whittier, Emerson, and +others, as an "English provincial poet--in the sense that America still was +a literary province of the mother country." To this amazing statement one +can only rejoin that if "The Biglow Papers," the "Harvard Commemoration +Ode," "Under the Old Elm," the "Fourth of July Ode," and the Agassiz elegy +are English provincial poetry, most of us need a new map and a new +vocabulary. Of both series of "Biglow Papers" we may surely exclaim, as did +Quintilian concerning early Roman satire, "This is wholly ours." It is true +that Lowell, like every young poet of his generation, had steeped himself +in Spenser and the other Elizabethans. They were his literary ancestors by +as indisputable an inheritance as a Masefield or a Kipling could claim. He +had been brought up to revere Pope. Then he surrendered to Wordsworth and +Keats and Shelley, and his earlier verses, like the early work of Tennyson, +are full of echoes of other men's music. It is also true that in spite of +his cleverness in versifying, or perhaps because of it, he usually showed +little inventiveness in shaping new poetic patterns. His tastes were +conservative. He lacked that restless technical curiosity which spurred Poe +and Whitman to experiment with new forms. But Lowell revealed early +extraordinary gifts of improvisation, retaining the old tunes of English +verse as the basis for his own strains of unpremeditated art. He wrote "A +Fable for Critics" faster than he could have written it in prose. "Sir +Launfal" was composed in two days, the "Commemoration Ode" in one. + +It was this facile, copious, enthusiastic poet, not yet thirty, who grew +hot over the Mexican War and poured forth his indignation in an +unforgettable political satire such as no English provincial poet could +possibly have written. What a weapon he had, and how it flashed in his +hand, gleaming with wit and humor and irony, edged with scorn, and weighted +with two hundred years of Puritan tradition concerning right and wrong! For +that, after all, was the secret of its success. Great satire must have a +standard; and Lowell revealed his in the very first number and in one line: + + "'T aint your eppylets an' feathers + Make the thing a grain more right." + +Some readers to-day dislike the Yankee dialect of these verses. Some think +Lowell struck too hard; but they forget Grant's characterization of the +Mexican War as "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a +weaker nation." There are critics who think the First Series of "Biglow +Papers" too sectional; an exhibition of New England's ancient tendency +towards nullification of the national will. No doubt Lowell underestimated +the real strength of the advocates of national expansion at any cost. +Parson Wilbur thought, you remember, that + + "All this big talk of our destinies + Is half on it ign'ance an' t'other half rum." + +Neither ignorance nor rum was responsible for the invasion of Belgium; but +at least one can say that the political philosophy which justifies forcible +annexation of territory is taught to-day in fewer universities than were +teaching it up to 1914. Poets are apt to have the last word, even in +politics. + +The war with Mexico was only an episode in the expansion of the slave +power; the fundamental test of American institutions came in the War for +the Union. Here again Lowell touched the heart of the great issue. The +Second Series of "Biglow Papers" is more uneven than the First. There is +less humor and more of whimsicality. But the dialogue between "the Moniment +and the Bridge," "Jonathan to John," and above all, the tenth number, "Mr. +Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly," show the full sweep of +Lowell's power. Here are pride of country, passion of personal sorrow, +tenderness, idyllic beauty, magic of word and phrase. + +Never again, save in passages of the memorial odes written after the War, +was Lowell more completely the poet. For it is well known that his was a +divided nature, so variously endowed that complete integration was +difficult, and that the circumstances of his career prevented that steady +concentration of powers which poetry demands. She is proverbially the most +jealous of mistresses, and Lowell could not render a constant allegiance. +At thirty his friends thought of him, rightly enough, as primarily a poet: +but in the next fifteen years he had become a professor, had devoted long +periods to study in Europe, had published prose essays, had turned editor, +first of the _Atlantic_, then of the _North American Review_, and was +writing political articles that guided public opinion in the North. To use +a phrase then beginning to come into general use, he was now a "man of +letters." But during the Civil War, I believe he thought of himself as +simply a citizen of the Union. His general reputation, won in many fields, +gave weight to what he wrote as a publicist. His editorials were one more +evidence of the central pull of the Great Tradition; it steadied his +judgment, clarified his vision, kept his rudder true. + +Lowell's political papers during this period, although now little read, +have been praised by Mr. James Ford Rhodes as an exact estimate of public +sentiment, as voicing in energetic diction the mass of the common people of +the North. Lincoln wrote to thank him for one of them, adding, "I fear I am +not quite worthy of all which is therein kindly said of me personally." +Luckily Lincoln never saw an earlier letter in which Lowell thought that +"an ounce of Fremont is worth a pound of long Abraham." The fact is that +Lowell, like most men of the "Brahmin caste," came slowly to a recognition +of Lincoln's true quality. Motley, watching events from Vienna, had a +better perspective than Boston then afforded. Even Mr. Norton, Lowell's +dear friend and associate upon the _North American Review_, thought in 1862 +that the President was timid, vacillating, and secretive, and, what now +seems a queerer judgment still, that he wrote very poor English. But if the +editors of the _North American_ showed a typical Anglo-Saxon reluctance in +yielding to the spell of a new political leadership, Lowell made full +amends for it in that superb Lincoln strophe now inserted in the +"Commemoration Ode," afterthought though it was, and not read at the +celebration. + +In this poem and in the various Centennial Odes composed ten years later, +Lowell found an instrument exactly suited to his temperament and his +technique. Loose in structure, copious in diction, swarming with imagery, +these Odes gave ample scope for Lowell's swift gush of patriotic fervor, +for the afflatus of the improviser, steadied by reverence for America's +historic past. To a generation beginning to lose its taste for +commemorative oratory, the Odes gave--and still give--the thrill of +patriotic eloquence which Everett and Webster had communicated in the +memorial epoch of 1826. The forms change, the function never dies. + +The dozen years following the Civil War were also the period of Lowell's +greatest productiveness in prose. Tethered as he was to the duties of his +professorship, and growling humorously over them, he managed nevertheless +to put together volume after volume of essays that added greatly to his +reputation, both here and in England. For it should be remembered that the +honorary degrees of D.C.L. from Oxford and LL.D. from Cambridge were +bestowed upon Lowell in 1873 and 1874; long before any one had thought of +him as Minister to England, and only a little more than ten years after he +had printed his indignant lines about + + "The old J. B. + A-crowdin' you and me." + +J. B. seemed to like them! A part of Lowell's full harvest of prose sprang +from that habit of enormous reading which he had indulged since boyhood. He +liked to think of himself as "one of the last of the great readers"; and +though he was not that, of course, there was nevertheless something of the +seventeenth century tradition in his gluttony of books. The very sight and +touch and smell of them were one of his pieties. He had written from +Elmwood in 1861: "I am back again in the place I love best. I am sitting in +my old garret, at my old desk, smoking my old pipe and loving my old +friends." That is the way book-lovers still picture Lowell--the Lowell of +the "Letters"--and though it is only a half-length portrait of him, it is +not a false one. He drew upon his ripe stock of reading for his college +lectures, and from the lectures, in turn, came many of the essays. Wide as +the reading was in various languages, it was mainly in the field of +"belles-lettres." Lowell had little or no interest in science or +philosophy. Upon one side of his complex nature he was simply a book-man +like Charles Lamb, and like Lamb he was tempted to think that books about +subjects that did not interest him were not really books at all. + +Recent critics have seemed somewhat disturbed over Lowell's scholarship. He +once said of Longfellow: "Mr. Longfellow is not a scholar in the German +sense of the word--that is to say, he is no pedant, but he certainly is a +scholar in another and perhaps a higher sense. I mean in range of +acquirement and the flavor that comes with it." Those words might have been +written of himself. It is sixty-five years since Lowell was appointed to +his professorship at Harvard, and during this long period erudition has not +been idle here. It is quite possible that the University possesses to-day a +better Dante scholar than Lowell, a better scholar in Old French, a better +Chaucer scholar, a better Shakespeare scholar. But it is certain that if +our Division of Modern Languages were called upon to produce a volume of +essays matching in human interest one of Lowell's volumes drawn from these +various fields, we should be obliged, first, to organize a syndicate, and, +second, to accept defeat with as good grace as possible. + +Contemporary critics have also betrayed a certain concern for some aspects +of Lowell's criticism. Is it always penetrating, they ask? Did he think his +critical problems through? Did he have a body of doctrine, a general thesis +to maintain? Did he always keep to the business in hand? Candor compels the +admission that he often had no theses to maintain: he invented them as he +went along. Sometimes he was a mere guesser, not a clairvoyant. We have had +only one Coleridge. Lowell's essay on Wordsworth is not as illuminating as +Walter Pater's. The essay on Gray is not as well ordered as Arnold's. The +essay on Thoreau is quite as unsatisfactory as Stevenson's. It is true that +the famous longer essays on Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Dryden, +Milton, are full of irrelevant matter, of facile delightful talk which +often leads nowhere in particular. It is true, finally, that a deeper +interest in philosophy and science might have made Lowell's criticism more +fruitful; that he blazed no new paths in critical method; that he +overlooked many of the significant literary movements of his own time in +his own country. + +But when one has said all this, even as brilliantly as Mr. Brownell has +phrased it, one has failed to answer the pertinent question: "Why, in spite +of these defects, were Lowell's essays read with such pleasure by so many +intelligent persons on both sides of the Atlantic, and why are they read +still?" The answer is to be found in the whole tradition of the English +bookish essay, from the first appearance of Florio's translation of +Montaigne down to the present hour. That tradition has always welcomed +copious, well-informed, enthusiastic, disorderly, and affectionate talk +about books. It demands gusto rather than strict method, discursiveness +rather than concision, abundance of matter rather than mere neatness of +design. "Here is God's plenty!" cried Dryden in his old age, as he opened +once more his beloved Chaucer; and in Lowell's essays there is surely +"God's plenty" for a book-lover. Every one praises "My Garden +Acquaintance," "A Good Word for Winter," "On a Certain Condescension in +Foreigners" as perfect types of the English familiar essay. But all of +Lowell's essays are discursive and familiar. They are to be measured, not +by the standards of modern French criticism--which is admittedly more deft, +more delicate, more logical than ours--but by the unchartered freedom which +the English-speaking races have desired in their conversations about old +authors for three hundred years. After all, + + "There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays + And every single one of them is right." + +Lowell, like the rest of us, is to be tested by what he had, not by what he +lacked. + +His reputation as a talker about books and men was greatly enhanced by the +addresses delivered during his service as Minister to England. Henry James +once described Lowell's career in London as a tribute to the dominion of +style. It was even more a triumph of character, but the style of these +addresses is undeniable. Upon countless public occasions the American +Minister was called upon to say the fitting word; and he deserves the +quaint praise which Thomas Benton bestowed upon Chief Justice Marshall, as +"a gentleman of finished breeding, of winning and prepossessing talk, and +just as much mind as the occasion required him to show." I cannot think +that Lowell spoke any better when unveiling a bust in Westminster Abbey +than he did at the Academy dinners in Ashfield, Massachusetts, where he had +Mr. Curtis and Mr. Norton to set the pace; he was always adequate, always +witty and wise; and some of the addresses in England, notably the one on +"Democracy" given in Birmingham in 1884, may fairly be called epoch-making +in their good fortune of explaining America to Europe. Lowell had his +annoyances like all ambassadors; there were dull dinners as well as +pleasant ones, there were professional Irishmen to be placated, solemn +despatches to be sent to Washington. Yet, like Mr. Phelps and Mr. Bayard +and Mr. Choate and the lamented Walter Page in later years, this gentleman, +untrained in professional diplomacy, accomplished an enduring work. Without +a trace of the conventional "hand across the sea" banality, without either +subservience or jingoism, he helped teach the two nations mutual respect +and confidence, and thirty years later, when England and America essayed a +common task in safeguarding civilization, that old anchor held. + +This cumulative quality of Lowell's achievement is impressive, as one +reviews his career. His most thoughtful, though not his most eloquent +verse, his richest vein of letter-writing, his most influential addresses +to the public, came toward the close of his life. Precocious as was his +gift for expression, and versatile and brilliant as had been his +productiveness in the 1848 era, he was true to his Anglo-Saxon stock in +being more effective at seventy than he had been at thirty. He was one of +the men who die learning and who therefore are scarcely thought of as dying +at all. I am not sure that we may not say of him to-day, as Thoreau said of +John Brown, "He is more alive than ever he was." Certainly the type of +Americanism which Lowell represented has grown steadily more interesting to +the European world, and has revealed itself increasingly as a factor to be +reckoned with in the world of the future. Always responsive to his +environment, always ready to advance, he faced the new political issues at +the close of the century with the same courage and sagacity that had marked +his conduct in the eighteen-forties. You remember his answer to Guizot's +question: "How long do you think the American Republic will endure?" "So +long," replied Lowell, "as the ideas of its founders continue to be +dominant"; and he added that by "ideas" he meant "the traditions of their +race in government and morals." Yet the conservatism revealed in this reply +was blended with audacity--the inherited audacity of the pioneer. No line +of Lowell's has been more often quoted in this hall than the line about the +futility of attempting to open the "Future's portal with the Past's +blood-rusted key." Those words were written in 1844. And here, in a +sentence written forty-two years afterward, is a description of organized +human society which voices the precise hope of forward-looking minds in +Europe and America at this very hour: "The basis of all society is the +putting of the force of all at the disposal of all, by means of some +arrangement assented to by all, for the protection of all, and this under +certain prescribed forms." Like Jefferson, like Lincoln, like Theodore +Roosevelt at his noblest, Lowell dared to use the word "all." + +Such men are not forgotten. As long as June days come and the bobolink's +song "runs down, a brook of laughter, through the air"; as long as a few +scholars are content to sit in the old garret with the old books, and close +the books, at times, to think of old friends; as long as the memory of +brave boys makes the "eyes cloud up for rain"; as long as Americans still +cry in their hearts "O beautiful, my country!" the name of James Russell +Lowell will be remembered as the inheritor and enricher of a great +tradition. + + + + +THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS[16] + +CARL BECKER + +[Footnote 16: _The Education of Henry Adams: an Autobiography._ Houghton +Mifflin Co., 1918. The selection is a part of an admirable critique in the +April, 1919, number of the _American Historical Review_. By permission of +the author and of the editors of the magazine. The article should be read +as a whole for a complete understanding of the critic's analysis.] + + +In 1771, Thomas Hutchinson wrote to one of his friends, "We have not been +so quiet here these five years ... if it were not for two or three Adamses, +we should do well enough." From that day to this many people have agreed +with the fastidious governor. But so far, an Adams or two we have always +had with us; and on the whole, although they have sometimes been +exasperating, they have always been salutary. During four generations the +men of this family have loved and served America as much as they have +scolded her. More cannot be said, except that they have commonly given, on +both counts, more than they have received. Theirs is therefore the +blessing, and ours the benefit. + +Among other things, we have to thank them for some diaries and +autobiographies which have been notable for frank self-revelation. Henry +Adams would of course have stoutly denied that any such impertinence as +self-revelation was either intended or achieved in the _Education_. There +is no evidence that he ever kept a diary (all things considered, the burden +of proof is not on us!); but it is not to be supposed that he would have +published it in any case. A man who regarded himself as of no more +significance than a chance deposit on the surface of the world might indeed +write down an intimate record of his soul's doings as an exercise in cosmic +irony; but the idea of publishing it could hardly have lived for a moment +in the lambent flame of his own sardonic humor. He could be perverse, but +perversity could not well go the length of perpetrating so pointless a joke +as that would come to. + +No, Henry Adams would not reveal himself to the curious inspection of an +unsympathetic world; but he would write a book for the purpose of exposing +a dynamic theory of history, than which nothing could well be more +impersonal or unrevealing. With a philosophy of history the Puritan has +always been preoccupied; and it was the major interest of Henry Adams +throughout the better part of his life. He never gained more than a faint +idea of any intelligible philosophy, as he would himself have readily +admitted; but after a lifetime of hard study and close thinking, the matter +struck him thus: + + Between the dynamo in the gallery of machines and the engine-house + outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a + historian's objects. No more relation could he discover between the + steam and the electric current than between the Cross and the + cathedral. The forces were interchangeable if not reversible, but he + could see only an absolute _fiat_ in electricity as in faith. + +In these two forces the secret must lie, since for centuries faith had +ruled inexorably, only to be replaced by electricity which promised to rule +quite as inexorably. To find the secret was difficult enough; but + + any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by + motion, from a fixed point. Psychology helped here by suggesting a + unit--the point of history when man held the highest idea of himself + as a unit in a unified universe. Eight or ten years of study had led + Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens + Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he + might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything + as true or untrue except relation.... Setting himself to the task, he + began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint-Michel and + Chartres: a Study in Thirteenth-Century Unity." From that point he + proposed to fix a position for himself, which he could label: "The + Education of Henry Adams: a Study in Twentieth-Century Multiplicity." + With the help of these two points of relation, he hoped to project his + lines forward and backward indefinitely, subject to correction from + anyone who should know better. Thereupon, he sailed for home. + +You are to understand, therefore, that the _Education of Henry Adams_ has +nothing to do really with the person Henry Adams. Since the time of +Rousseau, + + the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of + model, to become a manikin, on which the toilet of education is to be + draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object + of study is the garment, not the figure.... The manikin, therefore, + has the same value as any other geometrical figure of three or four + dimensions, which is used for the study of relation. For that purpose + it cannot be spared; it is the only measure of motion, of proportion, + of human condition; it must have the air of reality; it must be taken + for real; it must be treated as though it had life. Who knows? Perhaps + it had. + +Whether it had life or not is, however, of no importance. The manikin is to +be treated impersonally; and will be indicated throughout in the third +person, not as the author's ego, but as a kind of projected and animated +geometrical point upon which cosmic lines of force impinge! + +It turns out that the manikin had life after all--a good deal of it; with +the effect that as you go on you become more concerned with the manikin +than with the clothes, and at last find yourself wholly absorbed with an +ego more subtle and complex, at times more exasperating, yet upon the whole +more engaging, and above all more pervasive, than you are likely to come +upon in any autobiography of modern times. It is really wonderful how the +clothes fall away from the manikin, how with the best effort at draping +they in fact refuse to be put on at all. The reason is simple; for the +constant refrain of the study is that no clothes were ever found. The +manikin is therefore always in evidence for lack of covering, and ends by +having to apologize for its very existence. "To the tired student, the idea +that he must give it up [the search for philosophy-clothes] seemed sheer +senility. As long as he could whisper, he would go on as he had begun, +bluntly refusing to meet his creator with the admission that the creation +had taught him nothing except that the square of the hypothenuse of a +right-angled triangle might for convenience be taken as equal to something +else." On his own premises, the assumption that the manikin would ever meet +his creator (if he indeed had one), or that his creator would be concerned +with his opinion of the creation, is gratuitous. On his own premises, there +is something too much of the ego here. The _Education of Henry Adams_, +conceived as a study in the philosophy of history, turns out in fact to be +an _Apologia pro vita sua_, one of the most self-centered and +self-revealing books in the language. + +The revelation is not indeed of the direct sort that springs from frank and +insouciant spontaneity. Since the revelation was not intended, the process +is tortuous in the extreme. It is a revelation that comes by the way, made +manifest in the effort to conceal it, overlaid by all sorts of cryptic +sentences and self-deprecatory phrases, half hidden by the protective +coloring taken on by a sensitive mind commonly employing paradox and +delighting in perverse and teasing mystification. One can never be sure +what the book means; but taken at its face value the _Education_ seems to +be the story of a man who regarded life from the outside, as a spectator at +the play, a play in which his own part as spectator was taken by a minor +character. The play was amusing in its absurdity, but it touched not the +spectator, Henry Adams, who was content to sit in his protected stall and +laugh in his sleeve at the play and the players--and most of all at himself +for laughing. Such is the implication; but I think it was not so. In the +_Mont-Saint-Michel_[17] Adams speaks of those young people who rarely like +the Romanesque. "They prefer the Gothic.... No doubt, they are right, since +they are young: but men and women who have lived long and are tired--who +want rest--who have done with aspirations and ambitions--_whose life has +been a broken arch_--feel this repose and self-restraint as they feel +nothing else." The _Education_ is in fact the record, tragic and pathetic +underneath its genial irony, of the defeat of fine aspirations and laudable +ambitions. It is the story of a life which the man himself, in his old age, +looked back upon as a broken arch. + +[Footnote 17: _Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres_, p. 7. [Author's note.]] + +One is not surprised that a man of Henry Adams's antecedents should take +life seriously; but no sane man, looking upon his career from the outside, +would call it a failure. Born into a family whose traditions were in +themselves a liberal education, Henry Adams enjoyed advantages in youth +such as few boys have. It was at least an unusual experience to be able, as +a lad, to sit every Sunday "behind a President grandfather, and to read +over his head the tablet in memory of a President great-grandfather, who +had 'pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor' to secure the +independence of his country." This to be sure might not have been an +advantage if it led the lad to regard the presidency as a heritable office +in the family; but it was certainly a great deal to be able to listen +daily, at his father's table, to talk as good as he was "ever likely to +hear again." This was doubtless one of the reasons why he got (or was it +only that it seemed so to him in his old age?) so little from Harvard +College; but at any rate he graduated with honors, and afterwards enjoyed +the blessed boon of two care-free years of idling and study in Germany and +Italy. For six years, as private secretary to his father on one of the most +difficult and successful diplomatic missions in the history of his country, +he watched history in the making, and gained an inside knowledge of English +politics and society such as comes to one young man in ten thousand. +Returning to America, he served for a time as editor of the _North +American_, and was for seven years a professor of history in Harvard +College. During the last thirty-five years of his life, he lived +alternately in Washington and Paris. Relieved of official or other +responsibility, he travelled all over the world, met the most interesting +people of his generation, devoted himself at leisure to the study of art +and literature, philosophy and science, and wrote, as an incident in a long +life of serious endeavor, twelve or fifteen volumes of history which by +common consent rank with the best work done in that field by American +scholars. + +By no common standard does such a record measure failure. Most men would +have been satisfied with the life he lived apart from the books he wrote, +or with the books he wrote apart from the life he lived. Henry Adams is +commonly counted with the historians; but he scarcely thought of himself as +one, except in so far as he sought and failed to find a philosophy of +history. It is characteristic that in the _Education_ he barely mentions +the _History of the United States_. The enterprise, which he undertook for +lack of something better, he always regarded as negligible--an episode in +his life to be chronicled like any other. But it is safe to say that most +of us who call ourselves historians, with far less justification, would be +well content if we could count, as the result of a lifetime of effort, such +a shelfful of volumes to our credit. The average professor of history might +well expect, on less showing, to be chosen president of the Historical +Association; in which case the prospect of having to deliver a presidential +address might lead him to speculate idly in idle moments upon the meaning +of history; but the riddle of existence would not greatly trouble his +sleep, nor could it be said of him, as Henry Adams said of himself, that "a +historical formula that should satisfy the conditions of the stellar +universe weighed heavily upon his mind." He would live out the remnant of +his days, an admired and a feted leader in the scholar's world, wholly +unaware that his life had been a cosmic failure. + + * * * * * + +It is not likely that many readers will see the tragedy of a failure that +looks like success, or miss the philosophy-clothes that were never found. +And indeed we may all be well content with the doings of this manikin that +turns out to be so lively an ego. Henry Adams was worth a wilderness of +philosophies. Perhaps we should have liked the book better if he could have +taken himself more frankly, as a matter of course, for what he was--a man +of wide experience, of altogether uncommon attainments, of extraordinarily +incisive mental power; and if, resting on this assumption, he had told us +more directly, as something we should like to know, what he had done, what +people he had met and known, what events he had shared in or observed, and +what he thought about it all. This he does do of course, in his own +enigmatic way, in the process of explaining where and how he sought +education and failed to find it; and fortunately, in the course of the +leisurely journey, he takes us into many by-paths and shows us, by the easy +play of his illuminating intelligence, much strange country, and many +people whom we have never known, or have never known so intimately. When +this happens, when the manikin forgets itself and its education-clothes, +and merely describes people or types of mind or social customs, the result +is wholly admirable. There are inimitable passages, and the number is +large, which one cannot forget. One will not soon forget the young men of +the Harvard class of '58, who were "_negative to a degree that in the end +became positive and triumphant_"; or the exquisitely drawn portrait of +"Madame President," all things considered the finest passage in the book; +or the picture of old John Quincy Adams coming slowly down-stairs one hot +summer morning and with massive and silent solemnity leading the rebellious +little Henry to school against his will; or yet the reflections of the +little Henry himself (or was it the reflection of an older Henry?), who +recognized on this occasion "that the President, though a tool of tyranny, +had done his disreputable work with a certain intelligence. He had shown no +temper, no irritation, no personal feeling, and had made no display of +force. Above all, he had held his tongue."... + +The number of passages one would wish to quote is legion; but one must be +content to say that the book is fascinating throughout--particularly +perhaps in those parts which are not concerned with the education of Henry +Adams. Where this recondite and cosmic problem is touched upon, there are +often qualifications to be made. The perpetual profession of ignorance and +incapacity seems at times a bit disingenuous; and we have to do for the +most part, not with the way things struck Adams at the time, but with the +way it seemed to him, as an old man looking back upon the "broken arch," +they should have struck him. Besides, in the later chapters, in which he +deals with the dynamic theory of history, the problem was so vague, even to +himself, that we too often do not know what he wishes to convey. Apropos of +the Chicago Fair, which like everything else in his later years linked +itself to the business of the dynamo and the Virgin, he says: "Did he +himself quite know what he meant? Certainly not! If he had known enough to +state his problem, his education would have been completed at once." Is +this the statement of a fact, or only the reflection of a perversity? We do +not know. Most readers, at all events, having reached page 343, will not be +inclined to dispute the assertion. Yet we must after all be grateful for +this meaningless philosophy of history (the more so perhaps since it is +meaningless); for without it we should never have had either the +_Mont-Saint-Michel_ or _The Education of Henry Adams_--"books which no +gentleman's library" need contain, but which will long be read by the +curious inquirer into the nature of the human heart. + +Henry Adams lies buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington. The casual +visitor might perhaps notice, on a slight elevation, a group of shrubs and +small trees making a circular enclosure. If he should step up into this +concealed spot, he would see on the opposite side a polished marble seat; +and placing himself there he would find himself facing a seated figure, +done in bronze, loosely wrapped in a mantle which, covering the body and +the head, throws into strong relief a face of singular fascination. Whether +man or woman, it would puzzle the observer to say. The eyes are half +closed, in reverie rather than in sleep. The figure seems not to convey the +sense either of life or death, of joy or sorrow, of hope or despair. It has +lived, but life is done; it has experienced all things, but is now +oblivious of all; it has questioned, but questions no more. The casual +visitor will perhaps approach the figure, looking for a symbol, a name, a +date--some revelation. There is none. The level ground, carpeted with dead +leaves, gives no indication of a grave beneath. It may be that the puzzled +visitor will step outside, walk around the enclosure, examine the marble +shaft against which the figure is placed; and, finding nothing there, +return to the seat and look long at the strange face. What does he make of +it--this level spot, these shrubs, this figure that speaks and yet is +silent? Nothing--or what he will. Such was life to Henry Adams, who lived +long, and questioned seriously, and would not be content with the dishonest +or the facile answer. + + + + +THE STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION[18] + +BOOKER T. WASHINGTON + +[Footnote 18: From _Up from Slavery_, by Booker T. Washington. Copyright, +1900, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co. By permission.] + + +One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two miners +talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in Virginia. +This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about any kind of +school or college that was more pretentious than the little coloured school +in our town. + +In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to the +two men who were talking. I heard one tell the other that not only was the +school established for the members of my race, but that opportunities were +provided by which poor but worthy students could work out all or a part of +the cost of board, and at the same time be taught some trade or industry. + +As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be the +greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more attractions for +me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in +Virginia, about which these men were talking. I resolved at once to go to +that school, although I had no idea where it was, or how many miles away, +or how I was going to reach it; I remembered only that I was on fire +constantly with one ambition, and that was to go to Hampton. This thought +was with me day and night. + +After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued to work for a few +months longer in the coal-mine. While at work there, I heard of a vacant +position in the household of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of the +salt-furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of General +Ruffner, was a "Yankee" woman from Vermont. Mrs. Ruffner had a reputation +all through the vicinity for being very strict with her servants, and +especially with the boys who tried to serve her. Few of them had remained +with her more than two or three weeks. They all left with the same excuse: +she was too strict. I decided, however, that I would rather try Mrs. +Ruffner's house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my mother applied to +her for the vacant position. I was hired at a salary of $5 per month. + +I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner's severity that I was almost afraid +to see her, and trembled when I went into her presence. I had not lived +with her many weeks, however, before I began to understand her. I soon +began to learn that, first of all, she wanted everything kept clean about +her, that she wanted things done promptly and systematically, and at the +bottom of everything she wanted absolute honesty and frankness. Nothing +must be sloven or slipshod; every door, every fence, must be kept in +repair. + +I cannot now recall how long I lived with Mrs. Ruffner before going to +Hampton, but I think it must have been a year and a half. At any rate, I +here repeat what I have said more than once before, that the lessons that I +learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as valuable to me as any education +I have ever gotten anywhere since. Even to this day I never see bits of +paper scattered around a house or in the street that I do not want to pick +them up at once. I never see a filthy yard that I do not want to clean it, +a paling off of a fence that I do not want to put it on, an unpainted or +unwhitewashed house that I do not want to paint or whitewash it, or a +button off one's clothes, or a grease-spot on them or on a floor, that I do +not want to call attention to it. + +From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one of my best +friends. When she found that she could trust me she did so implicitly. +During the one or two winters that I was with her she gave me an +opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a portion of the +winter months, but most of my studying was done at night, sometimes alone, +sometimes under someone whom I could hire to teach me. Mrs. Ruffner always +encouraged and sympathized with me in all my efforts to get an education. +It was while living with her that I began to get together my first library. +I secured a dry-goods box, knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in +it, and began putting into it every kind of book that I could get my hands +upon, and called it my "library." + +Notwithstanding my success at Mrs. Ruffner's I did not give up the idea of +going to the Hampton Institute. In the fall of 1872 I determined to make an +effort to get there, although, as I have stated, I had no definite idea of +the direction in which Hampton was, or of what it would cost to go there. I +do not think that any one thoroughly sympathized with me in my ambition to +go to Hampton unless it was my mother, and she was troubled with a grave +fear that I was starting out on a "wild-goose chase." At any rate, I got +only a half-hearted consent from her that I might start. The small amount +of money that I had earned had been consumed by my stepfather and the +remainder of the family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and so I +had very little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling expenses. +My brother John helped me all that he could, but of course that was not a +great deal, for his work was in the coal-mine, where he did not earn much, +and most of what he did earn went in the direction of paying the household +expenses. + +Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection with my +starting for Hampton was the interest that many of the older coloured +people took in the matter. They had spent the best days of their lives in +slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time when they would see a +member of their race leave home to attend a boarding-school. Some of these +older people would give me a nickel, others a quarter, or a handkerchief. + +Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton. I had only a small, +cheap satchel that contained what few articles of clothing I could get. My +mother at the time was rather weak and broken in health. I hardly expected +to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more sad. She, however, +was very brave through it all. At that time there were no through trains +connecting that part of West Virginia with eastern Virginia. Trains ran +only a portion of the way, and the remainder of the distance was travelled +by stagecoaches. + +The distance from Malden to Hampton is about five hundred miles. I had not +been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully evident +that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to Hampton. One experience +I shall long remember. I had been travelling over the mountains most of the +afternoon in an old-fashioned stage-coach, when, late in the evening, the +coach stopped for the night at a common, unpainted house called a hotel. +All the other passengers except myself were whites. In my ignorance I +supposed that the little hotel existed for the purpose of accommodating the +passengers who travelled on the stage-coach. The difference that the colour +of one's skin would make I had not thought anything about. After all the +other passengers had been shown rooms and were getting ready for supper, I +shyly presented myself before the man at the desk. It is true I had +practically no money in my pocket with which to pay for bed or food, but I +had hoped in some way to beg my way into the good graces of the landlord, +for at that season in the mountains of Virginia the weather was cold, and I +wanted to get indoors for the night. Without asking as to whether I had any +money, the man at the desk firmly refused to even consider the matter of +providing me with food or lodging. This was my first experience in finding +out what the colour of my skin meant. In some way I managed to keep warm by +walking about, and so got through the night. My whole soul was so bent upon +reaching Hampton that I did not have time to cherish any bitterness toward +the hotel-keeper. + +By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way, +after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about +eighty-two miles from Hampton. When I reached there, tired, hungry, and +dirty, it was late in the night. I had never been in a large city, and this +rather added to my misery. When I reached Richmond, I was completely out of +money. I had not a single acquaintance in the place, and, being unused to +city ways, I did not know where to go. I applied at several places for +lodging, but they all wanted money, and that was what I did not have. +Knowing nothing else better to do, I walked the streets. In doing this I +passed by many food-stands where fried chicken and half-moon apple pies +were piled high and made to present a most tempting appearance. At that +time it seemed to me that I would have promised all that I expected to +possess in the future to have gotten hold of one of those chicken legs or +one of those pies. But I could not get either of these, nor anything else +to eat. + +I must have walked the streets till after midnight. At last I became so +exhausted that I could walk no longer. I was tired, I was hungry, I was +everything but discouraged. Just about the time when I reached extreme +physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where the board +sidewalk was considerably elevated. I waited for a few minutes, till I was +sure that no passers-by could see me, and then crept under the sidewalk and +lay for the night upon the ground, with my satchel of clothing for a +pillow. Nearly all night I could hear the tramp of feet over my head. The +next morning I found myself somewhat refreshed, but I was extremely hungry, +because it had been a long time since I had had sufficient food. As soon as +it became light enough for me to see my surroundings I noticed that I was +near a large ship, and that this ship seemed to be unloading a cargo of +pigiron. I went at once to the vessel and asked the captain to permit me to +help unload the vessel in order to get money for food. The captain, a white +man, who seemed to be kind-hearted, consented. I worked long enough to earn +money for my breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to have +been about the best breakfast that I have ever eaten. + +My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I could +continue working for a small amount per day. This I was very glad to do. I +continued working on this vessel for a number of days. After buying food +with the small wages I received there was not much left to add to the +amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton. In order to economize in every +way possible, so as to be sure to reach Hampton in a reasonable time, I +continued to sleep under the same sidewalk that gave me shelter the first +night I was in Richmond. Many years after that the coloured citizens of +Richmond very kindly tendered me a reception at which there must have been +two thousand people present. This reception was held not far from the spot +where I slept the first night I spent in that city, and I must confess that +my mind was more upon the sidewalk that first gave me shelter than upon the +reception, agreeable and cordial as it was. + +When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach +Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and started +again. Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with a surplus of +exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education. To me it had been a +long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the large, three-story, +brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all that I had +undergone in order to reach the place. If the people who gave the money to +provide that building could appreciate the influence the sight of it had +upon me, as well as upon thousands of other youths, they would feel all the +more encouraged to make such gifts. It seemed to me to be the largest and +most beautiful building I had ever seen. The sight of it seemed to give me +new life. I felt that a new kind of existence had now begun--that life +would now have a new meaning. I felt that I had reached the promised land, +and I resolved to let no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest +effort to fit myself to accomplish the most good in the world. + +As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton Institute, I +presented myself before the head teacher for assignment to a class. Having +been so long without proper food, a bath, and change of clothing, I did +not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon her, and I could see +at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me +as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that +I was a worthless loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to +admit me, neither did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger +about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. +In the meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly +to my discomfort, for I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as +well as they, if I could only get a chance to show what was in me. + +After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: "The adjoining +recitation-room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it." + +It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive an +order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner had +thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her. + +I swept the recitation-room three times. Then I got a dusting-cloth and I +dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, +table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides, +every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the +room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large measure +my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher in the +cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the head teacher. +She was a "Yankee" woman who knew just where to look for dirt. She went +into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then she took her +handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the walls, and over the +table and benches. When she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the +floor, or a particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked, +"I guess you will do to enter this institution." + +I was one of the happiest souls on earth. The sweeping of that room was my +college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for +entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction. I +have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt that +this was the best one I ever passed. + + + + +ENTERING JOURNALISM[19] + +JACOB A. RIIS + +[Footnote 19: From _The Making of an American_, by Jacob A. Riis. +Copyright, 1901, by The Outlook Co. Copyright, 1901, by The Macmillan Co. +By permission of Mrs. Jacob A. Riis and of the publishers.] + + +When at last I got well enough to travel, I set my face toward the east, +and journeyed on foot through the northern coal regions of Pennsylvania by +slow stages, caring little whither I went, and earning just enough by +peddling flat-irons to pay my way. It was spring when I started; the autumn +tints were on the leaves when I brought up in New York at last, as nearly +restored as youth and the long tramp had power to do. But the restless +energy that had made of me a successful salesman was gone. I thought only, +if I thought at all, of finding some quiet place where I could sit and see +the world go by that concerned me no longer. With a dim idea of being sent +into the farthest wilds as an operator, I went to a business college on +Fourth Avenue and paid $20 to learn telegraphing. It was the last money I +had. I attended the school in the afternoon. In the morning I peddled +flat-irons, earning money for my board, and so made out. + +One day, while I was so occupied, I saw among the "want" advertisements in +a newspaper one offering the position of city editor on a Long Island City +weekly to a competent man. Something of my old ambition stirred within me. +It did not occur to me that city editors were not usually obtained by +advertising, still less that I was not competent, having only the vaguest +notions of what the functions of a city editor might be. I applied for the +job, and got it at once. Eight dollars a week was to be my salary; my job, +to fill the local column and attend to the affairs of Hunter's Point and +Blissville generally, politics excluded. The editor attended to that. In +twenty-four hours I was hard at work writing up my then most ill-favored +bailiwick. It is none too fine yet, but in those days, when every nuisance +crowded out of New York found refuge there, it stunk to heaven. + +Certainly I had entered journalism by the back door, very far back at that, +when I joined the staff of the _Review_. Signs of that appeared speedily, +and multiplied day by day. On the third day of my employment I beheld the +editor-in-chief being thrashed down the street by an irate coachman whom he +had offended, and when, in a spirit of loyalty, I would have cast in my lot +with him, I was held back by one of the printers with the laughing comment +that that was his daily diet and that it was good for him. That was the +only way any one ever got any satisfaction or anything else out of him. +Judging from the goings on about the office in the two weeks I was there, +he must have been extensively in debt to all sorts of people who were +trying to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I met him on the +stairs, propelled by his washerwoman, who brought her basket down on his +head with every step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were +outside the building) to witness just punishment meted out to him for +failing to pay for the washing of his shirts, I rightly concluded that the +city editor's claim stood no show. I left him owing me two weeks' pay, but +I freely forgive him. I think I got my money's worth of experience. I did +not let grass grow under my feet as "city editor." Hunter's Point had +received for once a thorough raking over, and I my first lesson in hunting +the elusive item and, when found, making a note of it. + +Except for a Newfoundland pup which some one had given me, I went back over +the river as poor as I had come. The dog proved rather a doubtful +possession as the days went by. Its appetite was tremendous, and its +preference for my society embarrassingly unrestrained. It would not be +content to sleep anywhere else than in my room. If I put it out in the +yard, it forthwith organized a search for me in which the entire +neighborhood was compelled to take part, willy-nilly. Its manner of doing +it boomed the local trade in hair-brushes and mantel bric-a-brac, but +brought on complications with the landlord in the morning that usually +resulted in the departure of Bob and myself for other pastures. Part with +him I could not; for Bob loved me. Once I tried, when it seemed that there +was no choice. I had been put out for perhaps the tenth time, and I had no +more money left to provide for our keep. A Wall Street broker had +advertised for a watch-dog, and I went with Bob to see him. But when he +would have counted the three gold pieces he offered into my hand, I saw +Bob's honest brown eyes watching me with a look of such faithful affection +that I dropped the coins as if they burned, and caught him about the neck +to tell him that we would never part. Bob put his huge paws on my +shoulders, licked my face, and barked such a joyous bark of challenge to +the world in general that even the Wall Street man was touched. + +"I guess you are too good friends to part," he said. And so we were. + +We left Wall Street and its gold behind to go out and starve together. +Literally we did that in the days that followed. I had taken to peddling +books, an illustrated Dickens issued by the Harpers, but I barely earned +enough by it to keep life in us and a transient roof over our heads. I call +it transient because it was rarely the same two nights together, for causes +which I have explained. In the day Bob made out rather better than I. He +could always coax a supper out of the servant at the basement gate by his +curvetings and tricks, while I pleaded vainly and hungrily with the +mistress at the front door. Dickens was a drug in the market. A curious +fatality had given me a copy of "Hard Times" to canvass with. I think no +amount of good fortune could turn my head while it stands in my bookcase. +One look at it brings back too vividly that day when Bob and I had gone, +desperate and breakfastless, from the last bed we might know for many days, +to try to sell it and so get the means to keep us for another twenty-four +hours. + +It was not only breakfast we lacked. The day before we had had only a crust +together. Two days without food is not good preparation for a day's +canvassing. We did the best we could. Bob stood by and wagged his tail +persuasively while I did the talking; but luck was dead against us, and +"Hard Times" stuck to us for all we tried. Evening came and found us down +by the Cooper Institute, with never a cent. Faint with hunger, I sat down +on the steps under the illuminated clock, while Bob stretched himself at my +feet. He had beguiled the cook in one of the last houses we called at, and +his stomach was filled. From the corner I had looked on enviously. For me +there was no supper, as there had been no dinner and no breakfast. +To-morrow there was another day of starvation. How long was this to last? +Was it any use to keep up a struggle so hopeless? From this very spot I had +gone, hungry and wrathful, three years before when the dining Frenchmen for +whom I wanted to fight thrust me forth from their company. Three wasted +years! Then I had one cent in my pocket, I remembered. To-day I had not +even so much. I was bankrupt in hope and purpose. Nothing had gone right; +nothing would ever go right; and, worse, I did not care. I drummed moodily +upon my book. Wasted! Yes, that was right. My life was wasted, utterly +wasted. + +A voice hailed me by name, and Bob sat up looking attentively at me for his +cue as to the treatment of the owner of it. I recognized in him the +principal of the telegraph school where I had gone until my money gave out. +He seemed suddenly struck by something. + +"Why, what are you doing here?" he asked. I told him Bob and I were just +resting after a day of canvassing. + +"Books!" he snorted. "I guess they won't make you rich. Now, how would you +like to be a reporter, if you have got nothing better to do? The manager of +a news agency down town asked me to-day to find him a bright young fellow +whom he could break in. It isn't much--$10 a week to start with. But it is +better than peddling books, I know." + +He poked over the book in my hand and read the title. "Hard Times," he +said, with a little laugh, "I guess so. What do you say? I think you will +do. Better come along and let me give you a note to him now." + +As in a dream, I walked across the street with him to his office and got +the letter which was to make me, half-starved and homeless, rich as +Croesus, it seemed to me. Bob went along, and before I departed from the +school a better home than I could give him was found for him with my +benefactor. I was to bring him the next day. I had to admit that it was +best so. That night, the last which Bob and I spent together, we walked up +and down Broadway, where there was quiet, thinking it over. What had +happened had stirred me profoundly. For the second time I saw a hand held +out to save me from wreck just when it seemed inevitable; and I knew it for +His hand, to whose will I was at last beginning to bow in humility that had +been a stranger to me before. It had ever been my own will, my own way, +upon which I insisted. In the shadow of Grace Church I bowed my head +against the granite wall of the gray tower and prayed for strength to do +the work which I had so long and arduously sought and which had now come to +me; the while Bob sat and looked on, saying clearly enough with his wagging +tail that he did not know what was going on, but that he was sure it was +all right. Then we resumed our wanderings. One thought, and only one, I had +room for. I did not pursue it; it walked with me wherever I went: She was +not married yet. Not yet. When the sun rose, I washed my face and hands in +a dog's drinking-trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, and +went with Bob to his new home. That parting over, I walked down to 23 Park +Row and delivered my letter to the desk editor in the New York News +Association, up on the top floor. + +He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the +early hours I kept, told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk, +bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments; and +with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that +had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard +work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays +that go to make up the sum of the life of the metropolis, it exercises the +old spell over me yet. If my sympathies need quickening, my point of view +adjusting, I have only to go down to Park Row at eventide, when the crowds +are hurrying homeward and the City Hall clock is lighted, particularly when +the snow lies on the grass in the park, and stand watching them awhile, to +find all things coming right. It is Bob who stands by and watches with me +then, as on that night. + +The assignment that fell to my lot when the book was made out, the first +against which my name was written in a New York editor's books, was a lunch +of some sort at the Astor House. I have forgotten what was the special +occasion. I remember the bearskin hats of the Old Guard in it, but little +else. In a kind of haze, I beheld half the savory viands of earth spread +under the eyes and nostrils of a man who had not tasted food for the third +day. I did not ask for any. I had reached that stage of starvation that is +like the still centre of a cyclone, when no hunger is felt. But it may be +that a touch of it all crept into my report; for when the editor had read +it, he said briefly:-- + +"You will do. Take that desk, and report at ten every morning, sharp." + +That night, when I was dismissed from the office, I went up the Bowery to +No. 185, where a Danish family kept a boarding-house up under the roof. I +had work and wages now, and could pay. On the stairs I fell in a swoon and +lay there till some one stumbled over me in the dark and carried me in. My +strength had at last given out. + +So began my life as a newspaper man. + + + + +BOUND COASTWISE[20] + +RALPH D. PAINE + +[Footnote 20: From _The Old Merchant Marine_, by Ralph D. Paine, in _The +Chronicles of America_ Series. Copyright, 1919, by the Yale University +Press. By permission of the author and of the publishers.] + + +One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of the clipper ship and +distant ports. The coasting trade has been overlooked in song and story; +yet, since the year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more +important than the American deep-water commerce nor have decay and +misfortune overtaken them. It is a traffic which flourished from the +beginning, ingeniously adapting itself to new conditions, unchecked by war, +and surviving with splendid vigor, under steam and sail, in this modern +era. + +The seafaring pioneers won their way from port to port of the tempestuous +Atlantic coast in tiny ketches, sloops, and shallops when the voyage of +five hundred miles from New England to Virginia was a prolonged and +hazardous adventure. Fog and shoals and lee shores beset these coastwise +sailors, and shipwrecks were pitifully frequent. In no Hall of Fame will +you find the name of Captain Andrew Robinson of Gloucester, but he was +nevertheless an illustrious benefactor and deserves a place among the most +useful Americans. His invention was the Yankee schooner of fore-and-aft +rig, and he gave to this type of vessel its name.[21] Seaworthy, fast, and +easily handled, adapted for use in the early eighteenth century when inland +transportation was almost impossible, the schooner carried on trade between +the colonies and was an important factor in the growth of the fisheries. + +[Footnote 21: It is said that as the odd two-master slid gracefully into +the water, a spectator exclaimed: "See how she scoons!" "Aye," answered +Captain Robinson, "a schooner let her be!" This launching took place in +1713 or 1714. [Author's note.]] + +Before the Revolution the first New England schooners were beating up to +the Grand Bank of Newfoundland after cod and halibut. They were of no more +than fifty tons' burden, too small for their task but manned by fishermen +of surpassing hardihood. Marblehead was then the foremost fishing port with +two hundred brigs and schooners on the offshore banks. But to Gloucester +belongs the glory of sending the first schooner to the Grand Bank. From +these two rock-bound harbors went thousands of trained seamen to man the +privateers and the ships of the Continental navy, slinging their hammocks +on the gun-decks beside the whalemen of Nantucket. These fishermen and +coastwise sailors fought on the land as well and followed the drums of +Washington's armies until the final scene at Yorktown. Gloucester and +Marblehead were filled with widows and orphans, and half their men-folk +were dead or missing. + +The fishing-trade soon prospered again, and the men of the old ports +tenaciously clung to the sea even when the great migration flowed westward +to people the wilderness and found a new American empire. They were +fishermen from father to son, bound together in an intimate community of +interests, a race of pure native or English stock, deserving this tribute +which was paid to them in Congress: "Every person on board our fishing +vessels has an interest in common with his associates; their reward depends +upon their industry and enterprise. Much caution is observed in the +selection of the crews of our fishing vessels; it often happens that every +individual is connected by blood and the strongest ties of friendship; our +fishermen are remarkable for their sobriety and good conduct, and they rank +with the most skillful navigators." + +Fishing and the coastwise merchant trade were closely linked. Schooners +loaded dried cod as well as lumber for southern ports and carried back +naval stores and other southern products. Well-to-do fishermen owned +trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors shifting from one +forecastle to the other. With a taste for an easier life than the stormy, +freezing Banks, the young Gloucester-man would sign on for a voyage to +Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to become a mate or +master and take to deep water after a while. In this way was maintained a +school of seamanship which furnished the most intelligent and efficient +officers of the merchant marine. For generations they were mostly recruited +from the old fishing and shipping ports of New England until the term +"Yankee shipmaster" had a meaning peculiarly its own. + +Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary changes and old days and ways +are so nearly obliterated that it is singular to find the sailing vessel +still employed in great numbers, even though the gasolene motor is being +installed to kick her along in spells of calm weather. The Gloucester +fishing schooner, perfect of her type, stanch, fleet, and powerful, still +drives homeward from the Banks under a tall press of canvas, and her crew +still divide the earnings, share and share, as did their forefathers a +hundred and fifty years ago. But the old New England strain of blood no +longer predominates, and Portuguese, Scandinavians, and Nova Scotia +"Blue-noses" bunk with the lads of Gloucester stock. Yet they are alike for +courage, hardihood, and mastery of the sea, and the traditions of the +calling are undimmed. + +There was a time before the Civil War when Congress jealously protected the +fisheries by means of a bounty system and legislation aimed against our +Canadian neighbors. The fishing fleets were regarded as a source of +national wealth and the nursery of prime seamen for the navy and merchant +marine. In 1858 the bounty system was abandoned, however, and the fishermen +were left to shift for themselves, earning small profits at peril of their +lives and preferring to follow the sea because they knew no other +profession. In spite of this loss of assistance from the Government, the +tonnage engaged in deep-sea fisheries was never so great as in the second +year of the Civil War. Four years later the industry had shrunk one-half; +and it has never recovered its early importance.[22] + +[Footnote 22: In 1862, the tonnage amounted to 193,459; in 1866, to 89,386. +[Author's note.]] + +The coastwise merchant trade, on the other hand, has been jealously guarded +against competition and otherwise fostered ever since 1789, when the first +discriminatory tonnage tax was enforced. The Embargo Act of 1808 prohibited +domestic commerce to foreign flags, and this edict was renewed in the +American Navigation Act of 1817. It remained a firmly established doctrine +of maritime policy until the Great War compelled its suspension as an +emergency measure. The theories of protection and free trade have been +bitterly debated for generations, but in this instance the practice was +eminently successful and the results were vastly impressive. Deep-water +shipping dwindled and died, but the increase in coastwise sailing was +consistent. It rose to five million tons early in this century and makes +the United States still one of the foremost maritime powers in respect to +salt-water activity. + +To speak of this deep-water shipping as trade coastwise is misleading, in a +way. The words convey an impression of dodging from port to port for short +distances, whereas many of the voyages are longer than those of the foreign +routes in European waters. It is farther by sea from Boston to Philadelphia +than from Plymouth, England, to Bordeaux. A schooner making the run from +Portland to Savannah lays more knots over her stern than a tramp bound out +from England to Lisbon. It is a shorter voyage from Cardiff to Algiers than +an American skipper pricks off on his chart when he takes his steamer from +New York to New Orleans or Galveston. This coastwise trade may lack the +romance of the old school of the square-rigged ship in the Roaring Forties, +but it has always been the more perilous and exacting. Its seamen suffer +hardships unknown elsewhere, for they have to endure winters of intense +cold and heavy gales and they are always in risk of stranding or being +driven ashore. + +The story of these hardy men is interwoven, for the most part, with the +development of the schooner in size and power. This graceful craft, so +peculiar to its own coast and people, was built for utility and possessed a +simple beauty of its own when under full sail. The schooners were at first +very small because it was believed that large fore-and-aft sails could not +be handled with safety. They were difficult to reef or lower in a blow +until it was discovered that three masts instead of two made the task much +easier. For many years the three-masted schooner was the most popular kind +of American merchant vessel. They clustered in every Atlantic port and were +built in the yards of New England, New York, New Jersey, and +Virginia--built by the mile, as the saying was, and sawed off in lengths to +suit the owners' pleasure. They carried the coal, ice, lumber of the whole +sea-board and were so economical of man-power that they earned dividends +where steamers or square-rigged ships would not have paid for themselves. + +As soon as a small steam-engine was employed to hoist the sails, it became +possible to launch much larger schooners and to operate them at a +marvelously low cost. Rapidly the four-master gained favor, and then came +the five-and six-masted vessels, gigantic ships of their kind. Instead of +the hundred-ton schooner of a century ago, Hampton Roads and Boston Harbor +saw these great cargo carriers which could stow under hatches four and five +thousand tons of coal, and whose masts soared a hundred and fifty feet +above the deck. Square-rigged ships of the same capacity would have +required crews of a hundred men, but these schooners were comfortably +handled by a company of fifteen all told, only ten of whom were in the +forecastle. There was no need of sweating and hauling at braces and +halliards. The steam-winch undertook all this toil. The tremendous sails, +stretching a hundred feet from boom to gaff could not have been managed +otherwise. Even for trimming sheets or setting topsails, it was necessary +merely to take a turn or two around the drum of the winch engine and turn +the steam valve. The big schooner was the last word in cheap, efficient +transportation by water. In her own sphere of activity she was as notable +an achievement as the Western Ocean packet or the Cape Horn clipper. + +The masters who sailed these extraordinary vessels also changed and had to +learn a new kind of seamanship. They must be very competent men, for the +tests of their skill and readiness were really greater than those demanded +of the deep-water skipper. They drove these great schooners alongshore +winter and summer, across Nantucket Shoals and around Cape Cod, and their +salvation depended on shortening sail ahead of the gale. Let the wind once +blow and the sea get up, and it was almost impossible to strip the canvas +off an unwieldy six-master. The captain's chief fear was of being blown +offshore, of having his vessel run away with him! Unlike the deep-water +man, he preferred running in toward the beach and letting go his anchors. +There he would ride out the storm and hoist sail when the weather +moderated. + +These were American shipmasters of the old breed, raised in schooners as a +rule, and adapting themselves to modern conditions. They sailed for nominal +wages and primage, or five per cent of the gross freight paid the vessel. +Before the Great War in Europe, freights were low and the schooner skippers +earned scanty incomes. Then came a world shortage of tonnage and +immediately coastwise freights soared skyward. The big schooners of the +Palmer fleet began to reap fabulous dividends and their masters shared in +the unexpected opulence. Besides their primage they owned shares in their +vessels, a thirty-second or so, and presently their settlement at the end +of a voyage coastwise amounted to an income of a thousand dollars a month. +They earned this money, and the managing owners cheerfully paid them, for +there had been lean years and uncomplaining service and the sailor had +proved himself worthy of his hire. So tempting was the foreign war trade, +that a fleet of them was sent across the Atlantic until the American +Government barred them from the war zone as too easy a prey for submarine +attack. They therefore returned to the old coastwise route or loaded for +South American ports--singularly interesting ships because they were the +last bold venture of the old American maritime spirit, a challenge to the +Age of Steam. + +No more of these huge, towering schooners have been built in the last dozen +years. Steam colliers and barges have won the fight because time is now +more valuable than cheapness of transportation. The schooner might bowl +down to Norfolk from Boston or Portland in four days and be threshing about +for two weeks in head winds on the return voyage. + +The small schooner appeared to be doomed somewhat earlier. She had ceased +to be profitable in competition with the larger, more modern +fore-and-after, but these battered, veteran craft died hard. They harked +back to a simpler age, to the era of the stage-coach and the +spinning-wheel, to the little shipyards that were to be found on every bay +and inlet of New England. They were still owned and sailed by men who +ashore were friends and neighbors. Even now you may find during your summer +wanderings some stumpy, weather-worn two-master running on for shelter +overnight, which has plied up and down the coast for fifty or sixty years, +now leaking like a basket and too frail for winter voyages. It was in a +craft very much like this that your rude ancestors went privateering +against the British. Indeed, the little schooner _Polly_, which fought +briskly in the War of 1812, is still afloat and loading cargoes in New +England ports. + +These little coasters, surviving long after the stately merchant marine had +vanished from blue water, have enjoyed a slant of favoring fortune in +recent years. They, too, have been in demand, and once again there is money +to spare for paint and cordage and calking. They have been granted a new +lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on the marine +railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their turn to refit. +It is a matter of vital concern that the freight on spruce boards from +Bangor to New York has increased to five dollars a thousand feet. Many of +these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who dared not venture past +Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable _Matilda Emerson_ or the +valetudinarian _Joshua R. Coggswell_ should open up and founder in a blow. +During the winter storms these skippers used to hug the kitchen stove in +bleak farmhouses until spring came and they could put to sea again. The +rigor of circumstances, however, forced others to seek for trade the whole +year through. In a recent winter fifty-seven schooners were lost on the New +England coast, most of which were unfit for anything but summer breezes. As +by a miracle, others have been able to renew their youth, to replace spongy +planking and rotten stems, and to deck themselves out in white canvas and +fresh paint! + +The captains of these craft foregather in the ship-chandler's shops, where +the floor is strewn with sawdust, the armchairs are capacious, and the +environment harmonizes with the tales that are told. It is an informal club +of coastwise skippers and the old energy begins to show itself once more. +They move with a brisker gait than when times were so hard and they went +begging for charters at any terms. A sinewy patriarch stumps to a window, +flourishes his arm at an ancient two-master, and booms out: + +"That vessel of mine is as sound as a nut, I tell ye. She ain't as big as +some, but I'd like nothin' better than the sun clouded over. Expect to +navigate to Africy same as the _Horace M. Bickford_ that cleared t'other +day, stocked for _sixty thousand dollars_." + +"Huh, you'd get lost out o' sight of land, John," is the cruel retort, "and +that old shoe-box of yours 'ud be scared to death without a harbor to run +into every time the sun clouded over. Expect to navigate to Africy with an +alarm-clock and a soundin'-lead, I presume." + +"Mebbe I'd better let well enough alone," replies the old man. "Africy +don't seem as neighborly as Phippsburg and Machiasport. I'll chance it as +far as Philadelphy next voyage and I guess the old woman can buy a new +dress." + +The activity and the reawakening of the old shipyards, their slips all +filled with the frames of wooden vessels for the foreign trade, is like a +revival of the old merchant marine, a reincarnation of ghostly memories. In +mellowed dignity the square white houses beneath the New England elms +recall to mind the mariners who dwell therein. It seems as if their +shipyards also belonged to the past; but the summer visitor finds a fresh +attraction in watching the new schooners rise from the stocks, and the gay +pageant of launching them, every mast ablaze with bunting, draws crowds to +the water-front. And as a business venture, with somewhat of the tang of +old-fashioned romance, the casual stranger is now and then tempted to +purchase a sixty-fourth "piece" of a splendid Yankee four-master and keep +in touch with its roving fortunes. The shipping reports of the daily +newspaper prove more fascinating than the ticker tape, and the tidings of a +successful voyage thrill one with a sense of personal gratification. For +the sea has not lost its magic and its mystery, and those who go down to it +in ships must still battle against elemental odds--still carry on the noble +and enduring traditions of the Old Merchant Marine. + + + + +THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE[23] + +BURTON J. HENDRICK + +[Footnote 23: From _The Age of Big Business_, by Burton J. Hendrick, in +_The Chronicles of America_ Series. Copyright, 1919, by the Yale University +Press. By permission of the author and of the publishers.] + + +In many manufacturing lines, American genius for organization and large +scale production has developed mammoth industries. In nearly all the +tendency to combination and concentration has exercised a predominating +influence. In the early years of the twentieth century the public realized, +for the first time, that one corporation, the American Sugar Refining +Company, controlled ninety-eight per cent of the business of refining +sugar. Six large interests--Armour, Swift, Morris, the National Packing +Company, Cudahy, and Schwarzschild and Sulzberger--had so concentrated the +packing business that, by 1905, they slaughtered practically all the cattle +shipped to Western centers and furnished most of the beef consumed in the +large cities east of Pittsburgh. The "Tobacco Trust" had largely +monopolized both the wholesale and retail trade in this article of luxury +and had also made extensive inroads into the English market. The textile +industry had not only transformed great centers of New England into an +American Lancashire, but the Southern States, recovering from the +demoralization of the Civil War, had begun to spin their own cotton and to +send the finished product to all parts of the world. American shoe +manufacturers had developed their art to a point where "American shoes" had +acquired a distinctive standing in practically every European country. + +It is hardly necessary to describe in detail each of these industries. In +their broad outlines they merely repeat the story of steel, of oil, of +agricultural machinery; they are the product of the same methods, the same +initiative. There is one branch of American manufacture, however, that +merits more detailed attention. If we scan the manufacturing statistics of +1917, one amazing fact stares us in the face. There are only three American +industries whose product has attained the billion mark; one of these is +steel, the other food products, while the third is an industry that was +practically unknown in the United States fifteen years ago. Superlatives +come naturally to mind in discussing American progress, but hardly any +extravagant phrases could do justice to the development of American +automobiles. In 1902 the United States produced 3700 motor vehicles; in +1916 we made 1,500,000. The man who now makes a personal profit of not far +from $50,000,000 a year in this industry was a puttering mechanic when the +twentieth century came in. If we capitalized Henry Ford's income, he is +probably a richer man than Rockefeller; yet, as recently as 1905 his +possessions consisted of a little shed of a factory which employed a dozen +workmen. Dazzling as is this personal success, its really important aspects +are the things for which it stands. The American automobile has had its +wild-cat days; for the larger part, however, its leaders have paid little +attention to Wall Street, but have limited their activities exclusively to +manufacturing. Moreover, the automobile illustrates more completely than +any other industry the technical qualities that so largely explain our +industrial progress. Above all, American manufacturing has developed three +characteristics. These are quantity production, standardization, and the +use of labor-saving machinery. It is because Ford and other manufacturers +adapted these principles to making the automobile that the American motor +industry has reached such gigantic proportions. + +A few years ago an English manufacturer, seeking the explanation of +America's ability to produce an excellent car so cheaply, made an +interesting experiment. He obtained three American automobiles, all of the +same "standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking tour over +English highways. Workmen then took apart the three cars and threw the +disjointed remains into a promiscuous heap. Every bolt, bar, gas tank, +motor, wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and piled up, a +hideous mass of rubbish. Workmen then painstakingly put together three cars +from these disordered elements. Three chauffeurs jumped on these cars, and +they immediately started down the road and made a long journey just as +acceptably as before. The Englishman had learned the secret of American +success with automobiles. The one word "standardization" explained the +mystery. + +Yet when, a few years before, the English referred to the American +automobile as a "glorified perambulator," the characterization was not +unjust. This new method of transportation was slow in finding favor on our +side of the Atlantic. America was sentimentally and practically devoted to +the horse as the motive power for vehicles; and the fact that we had so few +good roads also worked against the introduction of the automobile. Yet +here, as in Europe, the mechanically propelled wagon made its appearance in +early times. This vehicle, like the bicycle, is not essentially a modern +invention; the reason any one can manufacture it is that practically all +the basic ideas antedate 1840. Indeed, the automobile is really older than +the railroad. In the twenties and thirties, steam stage coaches made +regular trips between certain cities in England and occasionally a much +resounding power-driven carriage would come careering through New York and +Philadelphia, scaring all the horses and precipitating the intervention of +the authorities. The hardy spirits who devised these engines, all of whose +names are recorded in the encyclopedias, deservedly rank as the "fathers" +of the automobile. The responsibility as the actual "inventor" can probably +be no more definitely placed. However, had it not been for two +developments, neither of them immediately related to the motor car, we +should never have had this efficient method of transportation. The real +"fathers" of the automobile are Gottlieb Daimler, the German who made the +first successful gasoline engine, and Charles Goodyear, the American who +discovered the secret of vulcanized rubber. Without this engine to form the +motive power and the pneumatic tire to give it four air cushions to run on, +the automobile would never have progressed beyond the steam carriage stage. +It is true that Charles Baldwin Selden, of Rochester, has been pictured as +the "inventor of the modern automobile" because, as long ago as 1879, he +applied for a patent on the idea of using a gasoline engine as motive +power, securing this basic patent in 1895, but this, it must be admitted, +forms a flimsy basis for such a pretentious claim. + +The French apparently led all nations in the manufacture of motor vehicles, +and in the early nineties their products began to make occasional +appearances on American roads. The type of American who owned this imported +machine was the same that owned steam yachts and a box at the opera. Hardly +any new development has aroused greater hostility. It not only frightened +horses, and so disturbed the popular traffic of the time, but its speed, +its glamour, its arrogance, and the haughty behavior of its proprietor, had +apparently transformed it into a new badge of social cleavage. It thus +immediately took its place as a new gewgaw of the rich; that it had any +other purpose to serve had occurred to few people. Yet the French and +English machines created an entirely different reaction in the mind of an +imaginative mechanic in Detroit. Probably American annals contain no finer +story than that of this simple American workman. Yet from the beginning it +seemed inevitable that Henry Ford should play this appointed part in the +world. Born in Michigan in 1863, the son of an English farmer who had +emigrated to Michigan and a Dutch mother, Ford had always demonstrated an +interest in things far removed from his farm. Only mechanical devices +interested him. He liked getting in the crops, because McCormick harvesters +did most of the work; it was only the machinery of the dairy that held him +enthralled. He developed destructive tendencies as a boy; he had to take +everything to pieces. He horrified a rich playmate by resolving his new +watch into its component parts--and promptly quieted him by putting it +together again. "Every clock in the house shuddered when it saw me coming," +he recently said. He constructed a small working forge in his school-yard, +and built a small steam engine that could make ten miles an hour. He spent +his winter evenings reading mechanical and scientific journals; he cared +little for general literature, but machinery in any form was almost a +pathological obsession. Some boys run away from the farm to join the circus +or to go to sea; Henry Ford at the age of sixteen ran away to get a job in +a machine shop. Here one anomaly immediately impressed him. No two machines +were made exactly alike; each was regarded as a separate job. With his +savings from his weekly wage of $2.50, young Ford purchased a three dollar +watch, and immediately dissected it. If several thousand of these watches +could be made, each one exactly alike, they would cost only thirty-seven +cents apiece. "Then," said Ford to himself, "everybody could have one." He +had fairly elaborated his plans to start a factory on this basis when his +father's illness called him back to the farm. + +This was about 1880. Ford's next conspicuous appearance in Detroit was +about 1892. This appearance was not only conspicuous; it was exceedingly +noisy. Detroit now knew him as the pilot of a queer affair that whirled and +lurched through her thoroughfares, making as much disturbance as a freight +train. In reading his technical journals Ford had met many descriptions of +horseless carriages; the consequence was that he had again broken away from +the farm, taken a job at $45 a month in a Detroit machine shop, and devoted +his evenings to the production of a gasoline engine. His young wife was +exceedingly concerned about his health; the neighbors' snap judgment was +that he was insane. Only two other Americans, Charles B. Duryea and Ellwood +Haynes, were attempting to construct an automobile at that time. Long +before Ford was ready with his machine, others had begun to appear. Duryea +turned out his first one in 1892; and foreign makes began to appear in +considerable numbers. But the Detroit mechanic had a more comprehensive +inspiration. He was not working to make one of the finely upholstered and +beautifully painted vehicles that came from overseas. "Anything that isn't +good for everybody is no good at all," he said. Precisely as it was Vail's +ambition to make every American a user of the telephone and McCormick's to +make every farmer a user of his harvester, so it was Ford's determination +that every family should have an automobile. He was apparently the only man +in those times who saw that this new machine was not primarily a luxury but +a convenience. Yet all manufacturers, here and in Europe, laughed at his +idea. Why not give every poor man a Fifth Avenue house? Frenchmen and +Englishmen scouted the idea that any one could make a cheap automobile. Its +machinery was particularly refined and called for the highest grade of +steel; the clever Americans might use their labor-saving devices on many +products, but only skillful hand work could turn out a motor car. European +manufacturers regarded each car as a separate problem; they individualized +its manufacture almost as scrupulously as a painter paints his portrait or +a poet writes his poem. The result was that only a man with several +thousand dollars could purchase one. But Henry Ford--and afterward other +American makers--had quite a different conception. + +Henry Ford's earliest banker was the proprietor of a quick-lunch wagon at +which the inventor used to eat his midnight meal after his hard evening's +work in the shed. "Coffee Jim," to whom Ford confided his hopes and +aspirations on these occasions, was the only man with available cash who +had any faith in his ideas. Capital in more substantial form, however, came +in about 1902. With money advanced by "Coffee Jim," Ford had built a +machine which he entered in the Grosse Point races that year. It was a +hideous-looking affair, but it ran like the wind and outdistanced all +competitors. From that day Ford's career has been an uninterrupted triumph. +But he rejected the earliest offers of capital because the millionaires +would not agree to his terms. They were looking for high prices and quick +profits, while Ford's plans were for low prices, large sales, and use of +profits to extend the business and reduce the cost of his machine. Henry +Ford's greatness as a manufacturer consists in the tenacity with which he +has clung to this conception. Contrary to general belief in the automobile +industry he maintained that a high sale price was not necessary for large +profits; indeed he declared that the lower the price, the larger the net +earnings would be. Nor did he believe that low wages meant prosperity. The +most efficient labor, no matter what the nominal cost might be, was the +most economical. The secret of success was the rapid production of a +serviceable article in large quantities. When Ford first talked of turning +out 10,000 automobiles a year, his associates asked him where he was going +to sell them. Ford's answer was that that was no problem at all; the +machines would sell themselves. He called attention to the fact that there +were millions of people in this country whose incomes exceeded $1800 a +year; all in that class would become prospective purchasers of a low-priced +automobile. There were 6,000,000 farmers; what more receptive market could +one ask? His only problem was the technical one--how to produce his machine +in sufficient quantities. + +The bicycle business in this country had passed through a similar +experience. When first placed on the market bicycles were expensive; it +took $100 or $150 to buy one. In a few years, however, an excellent machine +was selling for $25 or $30. What explained this drop in price? The answer +is that the manufacturers learned to standardize their product. Bicycle +factories became not so much places where the articles were manufactured as +assembling rooms for putting them together. The several parts were made in +different places, each establishment specializing in a particular part; +they were then shipped to centers where they were transformed into +completed machines. The result was that the United States, despite the high +wages paid here, led the world in bicycle making and flooded all countries +with this utilitarian article. Our great locomotive factories had developed +on similar lines. Europeans had always marveled that Americans could build +these costly articles so cheaply that they could undersell European makers. +When they obtained a glimpse of an American locomotive factory, the reason +became plain. In Europe each locomotive was a separate problem; no two, +even in the same shop, were exactly alike. But here locomotives are built +in parts, all duplicates of one another; the parts are then sent by +machinery to assembling rooms and rapidly put together. American harvesting +machines are built in the same way; whenever a farmer loses a part, he can +go to the country store and buy its duplicate, for the parts of the same +machine do not vary to the thousandth of an inch. The same principle +applies to hundreds of other articles. + +Thus Henry Ford did not invent standardization; he merely applied this +great American idea to a product to which, because of the delicate labor +required, it seemed at first unadapted. He soon found that it was cheaper +to ship the parts of ten cars to a central point than to ship ten completed +cars. There would therefore be large savings in making his parts in +particular factories and shipping them to assembling establishments. In +this way the completed cars would always be near their markets. Large +production would mean that he could purchase his raw materials at very low +prices; high wages meant that he could get the efficient labor which was +demanded by his rapid fire method of campaign. It was necessary to plan the +making of every part to the minutest detail, to have each part machined to +its exact size, and to have every screw, bolt, and bar precisely +interchangeable. About the year 1907 the Ford factory was systematized on +this basis. In that twelve-month it produced 10,000 machines, each one the +absolute counterpart of the other 9,999. American manufacturers until then +had been content with a few hundred a year! From that date the Ford +production has rapidly increased; until, in 1916, there were nearly +4,000,000 automobiles in the United States--more than in all the rest of +the world put together--of which one-sixth were the output of the Ford +factories. Many other American manufacturers followed the Ford plan, with +the result that American automobiles are duplicating the story of American +bicycles; because of their cheapness and serviceability, they are rapidly +dominating the markets of the world. In the Great War American machines +have surpassed all in the work done under particularly exacting +circumstances. + +A glimpse of a Ford assembling room--and we can see the same process in +other American factories--makes clear the reasons for this success. In +these rooms no fitting is done; the fragments of automobiles come in +automatically and are simply bolted together. First of all the units are +assembled in their several departments. The rear axles, the front axles, +the frames, the radiators, and the motors are all put together with the +same precision and exactness that marks the operation of the completed car. +Thus the wheels come from one part of the factory and are rolled on an +inclined plane to a particular spot. The tires are propelled by some +mysterious force to the same spot; as the two elements coincide, workmen +quickly put them together. In a long room the bodies are slowly advanced on +moving platforms at the rate of about a foot per minute. At the side stand +groups of men, each prepared to do his bit, their materials being delivered +at convenient points by chutes. As the tops pass by these men quickly bolt +them into place, and the completed body is sent to a place where it awaits +the chassis. This important section, comprising all the machinery, starts +at one end of a moving platform as a front and rear axle bolted together +with the frame. As this slowly advances, it passes under a bridge +containing a gasoline tank, which is quickly adjusted. Farther on the motor +is swung over by a small hoist and lowered into position on the frame. +Presently the dash slides down and is placed in position behind the motor. +As the rapidly accumulating mechanism passes on, different workmen adjust +the mufflers, exhaust pipes, the radiator, and the wheels which, as already +indicated, arrive on the scene completely tired. Then a workman seats +himself on the gasoline tank, which contains a small quantity of its +indispensable fuel, starts the engine, and the thing moves out the door +under its own power. It stops for a moment outside; the completed body +drops down from the second floor, and a few bolts quickly put it securely +in place. The workman drives the now finished Ford to a loading platform, +it is stored away in a box car, and is started on its way to market. At the +present time about 2000 cars are daily turned out in this fashion. The +nation demands them at a more rapid rate than they can be made. + +Herein we have what is probably America's greatest manufacturing exploit. +And this democratization of the automobile comprises more than the acme of +efficiency in the manufacturing art. The career of Henry Ford has a +symbolic significance as well. It may be taken as signalizing the new +ideals that have gained the upper hand in American industry. We began this +review of American business with Cornelius Vanderbilt as the typical +figure. It is a happy augury that it closes with Henry Ford in the +foreground. Vanderbilt, valuable as were many of his achievements, +represented that spirit of egotism that was rampant for the larger part of +the fifty years following the war. He was always seeking his own advantage, +and he never regarded the public interest as anything worth a moment's +consideration. With Ford, however, the spirit of service has been the +predominating motive. His earnings have been immeasurably greater than +Vanderbilt's; his income for two years amounts to nearly Vanderbilt's total +fortune at his death; but the piling up of riches has been by no means his +exclusive purpose. He has recognized that his workmen are his partners and +has liberally shared with them his increasing profits. His money is not the +product of speculation; Ford is a stranger to Wall Street and has built his +business independently of the great banking interest. He has enjoyed no +monopoly, as have the Rockefellers; there are more than three hundred +makers of automobiles in the United States alone. He has spurned all +solicitations to join combinations. Far from asking tariff favors he has +entered European markets and undersold English, French, and German makers +on their own ground. Instead of taking advantage of a great public demand +to increase his prices, Ford has continuously lowered them. Though his +idealism may have led him into an occasional personal absurdity, as a +business man he may be taken as the full flower of American manufacturing +genius. Possibly America, as a consequence of universal war, is advancing +to a higher state of industrial organization; but an economic system is not +entirely evil that produces such an industry as that which has made the +automobile the servant of millions of Americans. + + + + +TRAVELING AFOOT[24] + +JOHN FINLEY + +[Footnote 24: Reprinted, by permission of the author and of the publishers, +from _The Outlook_, April 25, 1917. Copyright, 1917, by The Outlook Co.] + + +"Traveling afoot"--the very words start the imagination out upon the road! +One's nomad ancestors cry within one across centuries and invite to the +open spaces. Many to whom this cry comes are impelled to seek the mountain +paths, the forest trails, the solitudes or wildernesses coursed only by the +feet of wild animals. But to me the black or dun roads, the people's +highways, are the more appealing--those strips or ribbons of land which is +still held in common, the paths wide enough for the carriages of the rich +and the carts of the poor to pass each other, the roads over which they all +bear their creaking burdens or run on errands of mercy or need, but +preferably roads that do not also invite the flying automobiles, whose +occupants so often make the pedestrian feel that even these strips have +ceased to be democratic. + +My traveling afoot, for many years, has been chiefly in busy city streets +or in the country roads into which they run--not far from the day's work or +from the thoroughfares of the world's concerns. + +Of such journeys on foot which I recall with greatest pleasure are some +that I have made in the encircling of cities. More than once I have walked +around Manhattan Island (an afternoon's or a day's adventure within the +reach of thousands), keeping as close as possible to the water's edge all +the way round. One not only passes through physical conditions illustrating +the various stages of municipal development from the wild forest at one end +of the island to the most thickly populated spots of the earth at the +other, but one also passes through diverse cities and civilizations. +Another journey of this sort was one that I made around Paris, taking the +line of the old fortifications, which are still maintained, with a zone +following the fortifications most of the way just outside, inhabited only +by squatters, some of whose houses were on wheels ready for "mobilization" +at an hour's notice. (It was near the end of that circumvallating journey, +about sunset, on the last day of an old year, that I saw my first airplane +rising like a great golden bird in the aviation field, and a few minutes +later my first elongated dirigible--precursors of the air armies). + +I have read that the Scotch once had a custom of making a yearly pilgrimage +or excursion around their boroughs or cities--"beating the bounds", they +called it, following the boundaries that they might know what they had to +defend. It is a custom that might profitably be revived. We should then +know better the cities in which we live. We should be stronger, healthier, +for such expeditions, and the better able and the more willing to defend +our boundaries. + +But these are the exceptional foot expeditions. For most urbanites there is +the opportunity for the daily walk to and from work, if only they were not +tempted by the wheel of the street car or motor. During the subway strike +in New York not long ago I saw able-bodied men riding in improvised barges +or buses going at a slower-than-walking pace, because, I suppose, though +still possessed of legs, these cliff-dwellers had become enslaved by +wheels, just like the old mythical Ixion who was tied to one. + +I once walked late one afternoon with a man who did not know that he could +walk, from the Custom-House, down near the Battery, to the City College +gymnasium, 138th Street, and what we did (at the rate of a mile in about +twelve minutes) thousands are as able to do, though not perhaps at this +pace when the streets are full. + +And what a "preparedness" measure it would be if thousands of the young +city men would march uptown every day after hours, in companies! The +swinging stride of a companionless avenue walk, on the other hand, gives +often much of the adventure that one has in carrying the ball in a football +game. + +Many times when I could not get out of the city for a vacation I have +walked up Fifth Avenue at the end of the day and have half closed my eyes +in order to see men and women as the blind man saw them when his eyes were +first touched by the Master--see them as "trees walking." + +But the longing of all at times, whether it be an atavistic or a cultivated +longing, is for the real trees and all that goes with them. Immediately +there open valleys with "pitcher" elms, so graceful that one thinks of the +famous line from the Odyssey in which Ulysses says that once he saw a tree +as beautiful as the most beautiful woman--valleys with elms, hill-tops with +far-signaling poplars, mountains with pines, or prairies with their groves +and orchards. About every city lies an environing charm, even if it have no +trees, as, for example, Cheyenne, Wyoming, where, stopping for a few hours +not long ago, I spent most of the time walking out to the encircling mesas +that give view of both mountains and city. I have never found a city +without its walkers' rewards. New York has its Palisade paths, its +Westchester hills and hollows, its "south shore" and "north shore," and its +Staten Island (which I have often thought of as Atlantis, for once on a +holiday I took Plato with me to spend an afternoon on its littoral, away +from the noise of the city, and on my way home found that my Plato had +stayed behind, and he never reappeared, though I searched car and boat). +Chicago has its miles of lake shore walks; Albany, its Helderbergs; and San +Francisco, its Golden Gate Road. And I recall with a pleasure which the war +cannot take away a number of suburban European walks. One was across the +Campagna from Frascati to Rome, when I saw an Easter week sun go down +behind the Eternal City. Another was out to Fiesole from Florence and back +again; another, out and up from where the Saone joins the Rhone at Lyons; +another, from Montesquieu's chateau to Bordeaux; another, from Edinburgh +out to Arthur's Seat and beyond; another, from Lausanne to Geneva, past +Paderewski's villa, along the glistening lake with its background of Alps; +and still another, from Eton (where I spent the night in a cubicle looking +out on Windsor Castle) to London, starting at dawn. One cannot know the +intimate charm of the urban penumbra who makes only shuttle journeys by +motor or street cars. + +These are near journeys, but there are times when they do not satisfy, when +one must set out on a far journey, test one's will and endurance of body, +or get away from the usual. Sometimes the long walk is the only medicine. +Once when suffering from one of the few colds of my life (incurred in +California) I walked from the rim of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado down +to the river and back (a distance of fourteen miles, with a descent of five +thousand feet and a like ascent), and found myself entirely cured of the +malady which had clung to me for days. My first fifty-mile walk years ago +was begun in despair over a slow recovery from the sequelae of diphtheria. + +But most of these far walks have been taken just for the joy of walking in +the free air. Among these have been journeys over Porto Rico (of two +hundred miles), around Yellowstone Park (of about one hundred and fifty +miles, making the same stations as the coaches), over portages along the +waterways following the French explorers from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to +the Gulf of Mexico, and in country roads visiting one-room schools in the +State of New York and over the boundless prairie fields long ago. + +But the walks which I most enjoy, in retrospect at any rate, are those +taken at night. Then one makes one's own landscape with only the help of +the moon or stars or the distant lights of a city, or with one's unaided +imagination if the sky is filled with cloud. + +The next better thing to the democracy of a road by day is the monarchy of +a road by night, when one has one's own terrestrial way under guidance of a +Providence that is nearer. It was in the "cool of the day" that the +Almighty is pictured as walking in the garden, but I have most often met +him on the road by night. + +Several times I have walked down Staten Island and across New Jersey to +Princeton "after dark," the destination being a particularly attractive +feature of this walk. But I enjoy also the journeys that are made in +strange places where one knows neither the way nor the destination, except +from a map or the advice of signboard or kilometer posts (which one reads +by the flame of a match, or, where that is wanting, sometimes by following +the letters and figures on a post with one's fingers), or the information, +usually inaccurate, of some other wayfarer. Most of these journeys have +been made of a necessity that has prevented my making them by day, but I +have in every case been grateful afterward for the necessity. In this +country they have been usually among the mountains--the Green Mountains or +the White Mountains or the Catskills. But of all my night faring, a night +on the moors of Scotland is the most impressive and memorable, though +without incident. No mountain landscape is to me more awesome than the +moorlands by night, or more alluring than the moorlands by day when the +heather is in bloom. Perhaps this is only the ancestors speaking again. + +But something besides ancestry must account for the others. Indeed, in +spite of it, I was drawn one night to Assisi, where St. Francis had lived. +Late in the evening I started on to Foligno in order to take a train in to +Rome for Easter morning. I followed a white road that wound around the +hills, through silent clusters of cottages tightly shut up with only a slit +of light visible now and then, meeting not a human being along the way save +three somber figures accompanying an ox cart, a man at the head of the oxen +and a man and a woman at the tail of the cart--a theme for Millet. (I asked +in broken Italian how far it was to Foligno, and the answer was, "Una +hora"--distance in time and not in miles.) Off in the night I could see the +lights of Perugia, and some time after midnight I began to see the lights +of Foligno--of Perugia and Foligno, where Raphael had wandered and painted. +The adventure of it all was that when I reached Foligno I found it was a +walled town, that the gate was shut, and that I had neither passport nor +intelligible speech. There is an interesting walking sequel to this +journey. I carried that night a wooden water-bottle, such as the Italian +soldiers used to carry, filling it from the fountain at the gate of Assisi +before starting. Just a month later, under the same full moon, I was +walking between midnight and morning in New Hampshire. I had the same +water-bottle and stopped at a spring to fill it. When I turned the bottle +upside down, a few drops of water from the fountain of Assisi fell into the +New England spring, which for me, at any rate, has been forever sweetened +by this association. + +All my long night walks seem to me now as but preparation for one which I +was obliged to make at the outbreak of the war in Europe. I had crossed the +Channel from England to France, on the day that war was declared by +England, to get a boy of ten years out of the war zone. I got as far by +rail as a town between Arras and Amiens, where I expected to take a train +on a branch road toward Dieppe; but late in the afternoon I was informed +that the scheduled train had been canceled and that there might not be +another for twenty-four hours, if then. Automobiles were not to be had even +if I had been able to pay for one. So I set out at dusk on foot toward +Dieppe, which was forty miles or more distant. The experiences of that +night would in themselves make one willing to practice walking for years in +order to be able to walk through such a night in whose dawn all Europe +waked to war. There was the quiet, serious gathering of the soldiers at the +place of rendezvous; there were the all-night preparations of the peasants +along the way to meet the new conditions; there was the pelting storm from +which I sought shelter in the niches for statues in the walls of an +abandoned chateau; there was the clatter of the hurrying feet of soldiers +or gendarmes who properly arrested the wanderer, searched him, took him to +a guard-house, and detained him until certain that he was an American +citizen and a friend of France, when he was let go on his way with a _bon +voyage_; there was the never-to-be-forgotten dawn upon the harvest fields +in which only old men, women, and children were at work; there was the +gathering of the peasants with commandeered horses and carts in the +beautiful park on the water-front at Dieppe; and there was much besides; +but they were experiences for the most part which only one on foot could +have had. + +And the moral of my whole story is that walking is not only a joy in +itself, but that it gives an intimacy with the sacred things and the primal +things of earth that are not revealed to those who rush by on wheels. + +I have wished to organize just one more club--the "Holy Earth" club, with +the purposes that Liberty Bailey has set forth in his book of the same +title (_The Holy Earth_), but I should admit to membership in it (except +for special reasons) only those who love to walk upon the earth. + +Traveling afoot! This is the best posture in which to worship the God of +the Out-of-Doors! + + + + +OLD BOATS[25] + +WALTER PRICHARD EATON + +[Footnote 25: From _Green Trails and Upland Pastures_, by Walter Prichard +Eaton. Copyright, 1917, by Doubleday, Page & Co. By permission of the +author and of the publishers.] + + +Anything which man has hewn from stone or shaped from wood, put to the uses +of his pleasure or his toil, and then at length abandoned to crumble slowly +back into its elements of soil or metal, is fraught for the beholder with a +wistful appeal, whether it be the pyramids of Egyptian kings, or an +abandoned farmhouse on the road to Moosilauke, or only a rusty hay-rake in +a field now overgrown with golden-rod and Queen Anne's lace, and fast +surrendering to the returning tide of the forest. A pyramid may thrill us +by its tremendousness; we may dream how once the legions of Mark Antony +encamped below it, how the eagles of Napoleon went tossing past. But in the +end we shall reflect on the toiling slaves who built it, block upon heavy +block, to be a monarch's tomb, and on the monarch who now lies beneath (if +his mummy has not been transferred to the British Museum). The old gray +house by the roadside, abandoned, desolate, with a bittersweet vine +entwined around the chimney and a raspberry bush pushing up through the +rotted doorsill, takes us back to the days when the pioneer's axe rang in +this clearing, hewing the timbers for beam and rafter, and the smoke of the +first fire went up that ample flue. How many a time have I paused in my +tramping to poke around such a ruin, reconstructing the vanished life of a +day when the cities had not sucked our hill towns dry and this scrubby +wilderness was a productive farm! + +The motor cars go through the Berkshires in steady procession by the valley +highways, past great estates betokening our changed civilization. But the +back roads of Berkshire are known to few, and you may tramp all the morning +over the Beartown Mountain plateau, by a road where the green grass grows +between the ruts, without meeting a motor, or indeed, a vehicle of any +sort. A century ago Beartown was a thriving community, producing many +thousand dollars' worth of grain, maple sugar, wool, and mutton. To-day +there are less than half a dozen families left, and they survive by cutting +cord wood from the sheep pastures! We must haul our wool from the +Argentine, and our mutton from Montana, while our own land goes back to +unproductive wilderness. As the road draws near the long hill down into +Monterey, there stands a ruined house beside it, one of many ruins you will +have passed, the plaster in heaps on the floor, the windows gone, the door +half fallen from its long, hand-wrought hinges. It is a house built around +a huge central chimney, which seems still as solid as on the day it was +completed. The rotted mantels were simply wrought, but with perfect lines, +and the panelling above them was extremely good. So was the delicate +fanlight over the door, in which a bit of glass still clings, iridescent +now like oil on water. Under the eaves the carpenter had indulged in a +Greek border, and over the woodshed opening behind he had spanned a +keystone arch. Peering into this shed, under the collapsing roof, you see +what is left of an axe embedded in a pile of reddish vegetable mould, which +was once the chopping block. Peering through the windows of the house, you +see a few bits of simple furniture still inhabiting the ruined rooms. Just +outside, in the door-yard, the day lilies, run wild in the grass, speak to +you of a housewife's hand across the vanished years. The barn has gone +completely, overthrown and wiped out by the advancing forest edge. Enough +of the clearing still remains, however, to show where the cornfields and +the pastures lay. They are wild with berry stalks and flowers now, still +and vacant under the Summer sun. + +The ruins of war are melancholy, and raise our bitter resentment. Yet how +often we pass such an abandoned farm as this without any realization that +it, too, is a ruin of war, the ceaseless war of commercial greed. No less +surely than in stricken Belgium has there been a deportation here. +Factories and cities have swallowed up a whole population, indeed, along +the Beartown road. It is easy to say that they went willingly, that they +preferred the life of cities; that the dreary tenement under factory grime, +with a "movie" theatre around the corner, is an acceptable substitute to +them for the ample fireplaces, the fanlight door, the rolling fields and +roadside brook. We hear much discussion in New England to-day of "how to +keep the young folks on the farm." But why should they stay on the farm, to +toil and starve, in body and mind? We have so organized our whole society +on a competitive commercial basis that they can now do nothing else. Those +ancient apple trees beside the ruined house once grew fruit superior in +taste to any apple which ever came from Hood River or Wenatchee, and could +grow it again; but greed has determined that our cities shall pay five +cents apiece for the showy western product, and the small individual grower +of the East is helpless. We have raised individualism to a creed, and +killed the individual. We have exalted "business," and depopulated our +farms. The old gray ruin on the back road to Monterey is an epitome of our +history for a hundred years. + +But to pursue such reflections too curiously would take our mind from the +road, our eyes from the wild flower gardens lining the way--the banks of +blueberries fragrant in the sun, the stately borders of meadow rue where +the grassy track dips down through a moist hollow. And to pursue such +reflections too curiously would take us far afield from the spot we planned +to reach when we took up our pen for this particular journey. That spot was +the bit of sandy lane, just in front of Cap'n Bradley's house in old South +County, Rhode Island. The lane leads down from the colonial Post Road to +the shore of the Salt Pond, and the Cap'n's house is the first one on the +left after you leave the road. The second house on the left is inhabited by +Miss Maria Mills. The third house on the left is the Big House, where they +take boarders. The Big House is on the shore of the Salt Pond. There are no +houses on the right of the lane, only fields full of bay and huckleberries. +The lane runs right out on a small pier and apparently jumps off the end +into whatever boat is moored there, where it hides away in the hold, +waiting to be taken on a far journey to the yellow line of the ocean beach, +or the flag-marked reaches of the oyster bars. It is a delightful, +leisurely little lane, a byway into another order from the modernized +macadam Post Road where the motors whiz. You go down a slight incline to +the Cap'n's house, and the motors are shut out from your vision. From here +you can glimpse the dancing water of the Salt Pond, and smell it too, when +the wind is south, carrying the odour of gasolene the other way. The +Cap'n's house is painted brown, a little, brown dwelling with a blue-legged +sailor man on poles in the dooryard, revolving in the breeze. The Cap'n is +a little brown man, for that matter. He is reconciled to a life ashore by +his pipe and his pension, and by his lookout built of weathered timber on a +grass-covered sand drift just abaft the kitchen door, whither he betakes +himself with his spy glass on clear days to see whether it is his old +friend Cap'n Perry down there on number two oyster bar, or how heavy the +traffic is to-day far out beyond the yellow beach line, where Block Island +rises like a blue mirage. + +Cap'n Bradley boasts a garden, too. It is just across the lane from his +front door. There are three varieties of flowers in it--nasturtiums, +portulacas, and bright red geraniums. The portulacas grow around the +border, then come the nasturtiums, and finally the taller geraniums in the +centre. The Cap'n has never seen nor heard of those ridiculous wooden birds +on green shafts which it is now the fashion to stick up in flower beds, but +he has something quite appropriate, and, all things considered, quite as +"artistic." In the bow of his garden, astride a spar, is a blue-legged +sailor man ten inches tall, keeping perpetual lookout up the lane. For this +flower bed is planted in an old dory filled with earth. She had outlived +her usefulness down there in the Salt Pond, or even, it may be, out on the +blue sea itself, but no vandal hands were laid upon her to stave her up for +kindling wood. Instead, the Captain himself painted her a bright yellow, +set her down in front of his dwelling, and filled her full of flowers. She +is disintegrating slowly; already, after a rain, the muddy water trickles +through her side and stains the yellow paint. But what a pretty and +peaceful process! She might not strike you as a happy touch set down in one +of those formal gardens depicted in _The House Beautiful_ or _Country +Life_, but here beside the salty lane past Cap'n Bradley's door, gaudy in +colour, with her load of homely flowers and her quaint little sailor man +astride his spar above the bright geraniums, she is perfect. No boat could +come to a better end. She's taking portulacas to the Islands of the Blest! + +Miss Maria Mills, in the next house, never followed the sea, and her idea +of a garden is more conventional. She grows hollyhocks beside the house, +and sweet peas on her wire fence. But at the lane's end, where the water of +the Salt Pond laps the pier, you may see another old boat put to humbler +uses, now that its seafaring days are over, and uses sometimes no less +romantic than the Cap'n's garden. It is a flat-bottomed boat, and lies +bottom side up just above the little beach made by the lap of the waves, +for the tide does not affect the Salt Pond back here three miles from the +outlet. The paint has nearly gone from this aged craft, though a few flakes +of green still cling under the gunwales. But in place of paint there have +appeared an incredible number of initials, carved with every degree of +skill or clumsiness, over bottom and sides. This boat is the bench whereon +you wait for the launch to carry you down the Pond, for the catboat or +thirty-footer to be brought in from her moorings, for Cap'n Perry to land +with a load of oysters; or it is the bench you sit upon to watch the sunset +glow behind the pines on the opposite headland, the pines where the blue +herons roost, or to see the moon track on the dancing water. The Post Road +is alive with motors now, far into the evening. You get your mail from the +little post office beside it as quickly as possible--which isn't very +quickly, to be sure, for we do not hurry in South County, even when we are +employed by Uncle Sam--and then you turn down the quiet lane, past the +Cap'n's garden, toward the lap of quiet water and the salty smell. Affairs +of State are now discussed, of a summer evening, upon the bottom of this +upturned boat, while a case knife dulled by oyster shells picks out a new +initial. And when the fate of the nation is settled, or to-morrow's weather +thoroughly discussed (the two are of about equal importance to us in South +County, with the balance in favour of the weather), and the debaters have +departed to bed, some of them leaving by water with a rattle of tackle or, +more often in these degenerate days, the _put, put_ of an unmuffled +exhaust, then other figures come to the upturned boat, speaking softly or +not at all, and in the morning you may, perhaps, find double initials +freshly cut, with a circle sentimentally enclosing them. So the old craft +passes her last days beside the lapping water, a pleasant and useful end. + +On the other side of the Big House from the pier, at the head of a tiny +dredged inlet, there is an old boathouse. It seems but yesterday that we +used to warp the _Idler_ in there when summer was over, get the chains +under her, and block her up for the winter. She spent the winter on one +side of the slip; the _Sea Mist_, a clumsy craft that couldn't stir short +of a half gale, spent the winter on the other side. Over them, on racks, +the rowboats were slung. There was a larger boathouse for the big fellows. +What busy days we spent in May or June, caulking and scraping and painting, +splicing and repairing, making the little _Idler_ ready for the sea again! +She was an eighteen-foot cat, a bit of a tub, I fear, but the best on the +Pond in her day, eating up close into the wind, sensitive, alert, with a +pair of white heels she had shown to many a larger craft. Surely it was but +yesterday that I rowed out to her where she was moored a hundred feet from +shore, climbed aboard, hoisted sail, and, with my pipe drawing sweetly, sat +down beside the tiller and played out the sheet till the sail filled; there +was a crack and snaffle of straining tackle, the boat leaped forward, the +tiller batted my ribs, the _Idler_ heeled over, and then quietly, softly, +as rhythmic as a song, the water raced hissing along her rail, the little +waves slapped beneath her bow--and the world was good to be alive in! +Surely it was but yesterday that the white sail of the _Idler_ was like a +gull's wing on the Pond! + +But the white sail wings are few on the Pond to-day, and the _Idler_ lies +on her side in the weeds behind the boathouse. She had to make room for the +motor craft. She is too bulky for a flower bed, too convex for a bench. Her +paint is nearly gone now, both the yellow body colour and the pretty green +and white stripe along her rail that we used to put on with such care. Her +seams are yawning, and the rain water pool that at first settled on the low +side of her cockpit has now seeped through, and a little deposit of soil +has accumulated, in which a sickly weed is growing. Poor old _Idler_! One +day I got an axe, resolved to break her up, but when it came to the point +of burying the first blow my resolution failed. I thought of all the hours +of enthusiastic labour I had spent upon those eighteen feet of oak ribs and +planking; I thought of all the thrilling hours of the race, when we had +squeezed her into the wind past Perry's Point and saved a precious tack; I +thought of the dreamy hours when she had borne us down the Pond in the +summer sunshine, or through the gray, mysterious fog, or under the stars +above the black water. So instead, I laid my hand gently on her rotting +tiller, and then took the axe back to the woodshed. She will never ride the +waves again, but she shall dissolve into her elements peacefully, in sight +of the salt water, in the quiet grass behind the boathouse. + +It seems to me that all my life I have had memories of old boats. One of my +earliest recollections is of _Old Ironsides_, in the Charlestown Navy Yard, +dismantled and decked over, but saved from destruction by Dr. Holmes's +poem. What thrilling visions it awoke to climb aboard her and tread her +decks! Acres of spinnaker and topgallants broke out aloft, cannon boomed, +smoke rolled, "grape and canister" flew through the air, chain shot came +hurtling, and the Stars and Stripes waved through it all, triumphant. The +white ironclads out in the channel (for in those days they were white) +evoked no such visions. Another memory is of a childhood trip to New +Bedford and a long walk for hours by the water front, out on green and +rotting piers where chunky, square-rigged whalers, green and rotting, too, +were moored alongside. The life of the whaler was in those days something +infinitely fascinating to us boys. We read of the chase, the hurling of the +harpoon, the mad ride over the waves towed by the plunging monster. And +here were the very ships which had taken the brave whalers to the hunting +grounds, here on their decks were some of the whale boats which had been +towed over the churned and blood-flecked sea! Why should they be green and +rotting now? They produced upon me an impression of infinite sadness. It +seemed as if a great hand had suddenly wiped a romantic bloom off my vision +of the world. + +But it was not long after that I knew the romance of a launching. It was at +Kennebunkport in Maine. All summer the ship yards on either side of the +river, close to the little town and under the very shadow of the white +meeting house steeple, had rung with the blows of axe and hammer. The great +ribs rose into place, the sheathing went on, the decks were laid, the masts +stepped; finally the first rigging was adjusted. After the workmen left in +the late afternoon, we boys swarmed over the ships--three-masters, smelling +deliciously of new wood and caulking, and played we were sailors. When the +rope ladders were finally in place, we raced up and down them, sitting in +the crow's nest on a line with the church weather vane, and pretending to +reef the sails. It was an event when the ships were launched. The tide was +at the flood, gay canoes filled the stream along both banks, hundreds of +people massed on the shore. A little girl stood in the bow with a bottle of +wine on a string. An engine tooted, cables creaked, and down the greased +way slid the ship, with a dip and a heave when she hit the water that made +big waves on either side and set the canoes to rocking madly, while the +crowd cheered and shouted. After the launching, the schooners were towed +out to sea, and down the coast, to be fitted elsewhere. We boys followed +them in canoes as far as the breakwater, and watched them disappear. Soon +their sails would be set, and they would join the white adventurers out +there on the world rim. + +Where are they now, I wonder? Are they still buffeting the seas, or do they +lie moored and outmoded beside some green wharf, their days of usefulness +over? I remember hoping, as I watched them pass out to sea, that they would +not share the fate of the unknown craft which lay buried in the sands a +mile down the coast. It was said that she came ashore in the "Great Storm" +of 1814 (or thereabouts). Nothing was left of her in our day but her sturdy +ribs, which thrust up a few feet above the sand, outlining her shape, and +were only visible at low water. On a stormy day, when the seas were high, I +used to stand at the head of the beach and try to picture how she drove up +on the shore, shuddering deliciously as each great wave came pounding down +on all that was left of her oaken frame. When I read in the newspaper of a +wreck I thought of her, and I think of her to this day on such occasions, +thrusting up black and dripping ribs above the wet sands at low water, or +vanishing beneath the pounding foam of the breakers. + +If you take the shore line train from Boston to New York, you pass through +a sleepy old town in Connecticut where a spur track with rusty rails runs +out to the wharves, and moored to these wharves are side-wheel steamers +which once plied the Sound. It served somebody's purpose or pocket better +to discontinue the line, and with its cessation and the cessation of work +in the ship yards close by, the old town passed into a state of salty +somnolence. The harbour is glassy and still, opening out to the blue waters +of the Sound. Still are the white steamers by the wharves, where once the +gang planks shook with the tread of feet and the rumble of baggage trucks. +Many a time, as the train paused at the station, I have watched the black +stacks for some hint of smoke, hoping against hope that I should see the +old ship move, and turn, and go about her rightful seafaring. But it was +never to be. There were only ghosts in engine room and pilot house. Like +the abandoned dwelling on the upland road to Monterey, these steamers were +mute witnesses to a vanished order. But always as the train pulled out from +the station I sat on the rear platform and watched the white town and the +white steamers and the glassy harbour slip backward into the haze--and it +seemed as if that haze was the gentle breath of oblivion. + +I live inland now, far from the smell of salt water and the sight of sails. +Yet sometimes there comes over me a longing for the sea as irresistible as +the lust for salt which stampedes the reindeer of the north. I must gaze on +the unbroken world-rim, I must feel the sting of spray, I must hear the +rhythmic crash and roar of breakers and watch the sea-weed rise and fall +where the green waves lift against the rocks. Once in so often I must ride +those waves with cleated sheet and tugging tiller, and hear the soft +hissing song of the water on the rail. And "my day of mercy" is not +complete till I have seen some old boat, her seafaring done, heeled over on +the beach or amid the fragrant sedges, a mute and wistful witness to the +romance of the deep, the blue and restless deep where man has adventured in +craft his hands have made since the earliest sun of history, and whereon he +will adventure, ardently and insecure, till the last syllable of recorded +time. + + + + +ZEPPELINITIS[26] + +PHILIP LITTELL + +[Footnote 26: Reprinted by permission from _Books and Things_, by Philip +Littell. Copyright 1919, by Harcourt, Brace and Howe, Inc.] + + +Much reading of interviews with returning travellers who had almost seen +Zeppelins over London, and of wireless messages from other travellers who +had come even nearer seeing the great sight, had made me, I suppose, +morbidly desirous of escape from a city where other such travellers were +presumably at large. However that may be, when Mrs. Watkin asked me to +spend Sunday at her place in the country, I broke an old habit and said I'd +go. When last I had visited her house she worshipped success in the arts, +and her recipe was to have a few successes to talk and a lot of us +unsuccessful persons to listen. At that time her aesthetic was easy to +understand. "Every great statue," she said, "is set up in a public place. +Every great picture brings a high price. Every great book has a large sale. +That is what greatness in art means." Her own brand of talk was not in +conflict with what she would have called her then creed. She never said a +thing was very black. She never said it was as black as the ace of spades. +She always said it was as black as the proverbial ace of spades. Once I +ventured to insinuate that perhaps it would be more nobly new to say "as +black as the proverbial ace of proverbial spades," but the suggestion left +her at peace with her custom. Well, when I got to her house last week, and +had a chance to scrutinize the others, they did not look as if she had +chosen them after any particular pattern. + +Dinner, however, soon enabled us all to guess the model from which Mrs. +Watkin had striven to copy her occasion. I was greatly relishing the +conversation of my left-hand neighbor, a large-eyed, wondering-eyed woman, +who said little and seemed never to have heard any of the things I usually +say when dining out, and who I dare swear would have looked gratefully +surprised had I confided to her my discovery that in the beginning God +created the heaven and the earth. Before we were far gone with food the +attention of this tactful person was torn from me by our hostess, whose +voice was heard above the other voices: "Oh, Mr. Slicer, do tell us your +experience. I want _all_ our friends to hear it." Mr. Slicer, identifiable +by the throat-clearing look which suffused his bleached, conservative face, +was not deaf to her appeal. He had just returned from London, where he had +been at the time of the Zeppelin raid, and although he had not himself been +so fortunate as to see a Zeppelin, but had merely been a modest witness of +the sporting fortitude with which London endured that visitation, the +Zeppelin-in-chief had actually been visible to the brother of his +daughter's governess. "At the noise of guns," said Mr. Slicer, "we all left +the restaurant where we were dining, Mrs. Humphry Ward, George Moore, +Asquith, Miss Pankhurst and I, and walked, not ran, into the street, where +it was the work of a moment for me to climb a lamp-post, whence I obtained +a nearer view of what was going on overhead. Nothing there but blackness." +Instinctively I glanced at Mrs. Watkin, upon whose lips the passage of +words like "as the proverbial ace of spades" was clearly to be seen. "Of +course," Mr. Slicer went on, "I couldn't indefinitely hold my coign of +vantage, which I relinquished in favor of Mrs. Humphry Ward, to whom at her +laughing request George Moore and I gave a leg up. She remained there a few +moments, one foot on my shoulder and one on Sir Edward Carson's--she is not +a light woman--and then we helped her down, Asquith and I. When I got back +to my lodgings in Half-Moon Street I found that the governess's brother, +who had been lucky enough to see a Zeppelin, had gone home. I shall not +soon forget my experience." This narrative was wonderful to my left-hand +neighbor. It made her feel as if she had really been there and seen it all +with her own eyes. + +Mr. Mullinger, who was the next speaker on Mrs. Watkin's list, and who had +returned from Europe on the same boat with Mr. Slicer, had had a different +experience. On the evening of the raid he was in a box at the theatre where +Guitry, who had run over from Paris, was appearing in the little role of +_Phedre_, when the noise of firing was heard above the alexandrines of +Racine. "With great presence of mind," so Mr. Mullinger told us, "Guitry +came down stage, right, and said in quizzical tone to us: '_Eh bien, chere +petite folle et vieux marcheur_, just run up to the roof, will you please, +and tell us what it's all about, don't you know.' The Princess and I stood +up and answered in the same tone, 'Right-o, _mon vieux_,' and were aboard +the lift in no time. From the roof we could see nothing, and as it was +raining and we had no umbrellas, we of course didn't stay. When we got back +I stepped to the front of the box and said: 'The Princess and Mr. Mullinger +beg to report that on the roof it is raining rain.' The words were nothing, +if you like, but I spoke them just like that, with a twinkle in my eye, and +perhaps it was that twinkle which reassured the house and started a roar of +laughter. The performance went on as if nothing remarkable had happened. +Wonderfully poised, the English." And this narrative, too, was so fortunate +as to satisfy my left-hand neighbor. It made her feel as if she had been +there herself, and heard all these wonderful things with her own ears. + +After that, until near the end of dinner, it was all Zeppelins, and I hope +I convey to everyone within sound of my voice something of my own patriotic +pride in a country whose natives when abroad among foreigners consort so +freely and easily with the greatest of these. No discordant note was heard +until the very finish, when young Puttins, who as everybody knows has not +been further from New York than Asbury Park all summer, told us that on the +night of the raid he too had been in London, where his only club was the +Athenaeum. When the alarm was given he was in the Athenaeum pool with Mr. +Hall Caine, in whose company it has for years been his custom to take a +good-night swim. "Imagine my alarm," young Puttins continued, "when I saw +emerging from the surface of the waters, and not five yards away from the +person of my revered master, a slender object which I at once recognized as +a miniature periscope. I shouted to my companion. In vain. Too late. A slim +fountain spurted fountain-high above the pool, a dull report was heard, and +the next instant Mr. Hall Caine had turned turtle and was sinking rapidly +by the bow. When dressed I hastened to notify the authorities. The pool was +drained by noon of the next day but one. We found nothing except, near the +bottom of the pool, the commencement of a tunnel large enough for the +ingress and egress of one of those tiny submersibles the credit for +inventing which neither Mr. Henry Ford nor Professor Parker ever tires of +giving the other. I have since had reason to believe that not one +swimming-pool in Great Britain is secure against visits from these +miniature pests. Indeed, I may say, without naming any names," ... but at +this moment Mrs. Watkin interrupted young Puttins by taking the ladies +away. She looked black as the proverbial. + +October, 1915. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Modern American Prose Selections, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN AMERICAN PROSE SELECTIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 19739.txt or 19739.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/7/3/19739/ + +Produced by Matt Whittaker and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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