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diff --git a/old/64402-0.txt b/old/64402-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1674bd6..0000000 --- a/old/64402-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6259 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Reign of Gilt, by David Graham Phillips - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Reign of Gilt - -Author: David Graham Phillips - -Release Date: January 27, 2021 [eBook #64402] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REIGN OF GILT *** - - - - -THE REIGN OF GILT - - - - - THE - REIGN OF GILT - - BY - - DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS - - [Illustration] - - - New York - JAMES POTT & CO. - 1905 - - - - - Copyright, 1905, by JAMES POTT & CO. - - ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL, LONDON - - - First Impression, September, 1905 - - - - -TABLE OF CONTENTS - - -PART I--PLUTOCRACY - -CHAPTER PAGE - - I WE ARE NOT ALL MONEY-CRAZED 1 - - II THE MANIA FOR GILT 20 - - III PLUTOCRACY AT HOME 32 - - IV YOUTH AMONG THE MONEY-MANIACS 50 - - V CASTE-COMPELLERS 72 - - VI PAUPER-MAKING 91 - - VII THE MADE-OVER WHITE HOUSE 105 - - VIII AND EUROPE LAUGHS 122 - - - PART II--DEMOCRACY - - IX “WE, THE PEOPLE” 141 - - X THE COMPELLER OF EQUALITY 159 - - XI DEMOCRACY’S DYNAMO 183 - - XII A NATION OF DREAMERS 202 - - XIII NOT GENEROSITY, BUT JUSTICE 210 - - XIV THE INEVITABLE IDEAL 226 - - XV OUR ALLIES FROM ABROAD 239 - - XVI THE REAL AMERICAN WOMAN 253 - - XVII AS TO SUCCESS 274 - - XVIII THE MAN OF TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW 288 - - - - -PART I.--PLUTOCRACY - - - - -CHAPTER I - -WE ARE NOT ALL MONEY-CRAZED - - -The eminent Bishop of the Episcopalian diocese of New York has spent -practically his whole life among people of wealth and fashion and -their associates. He has made some brief excursions, but his social -relations, his intimacies have been altogether with what Parton calls -“the triumphant classes.” He knows the plutocracy; his diocese lies in -its stronghold, includes many of its most conspicuous and aggressive -leaders both in making and spending money. There can be no question of -his qualification to speak authoritatively of it, of its mode of living -and thinking. He has said: - -“Hear a group of young girls whose fresh youth one would think ought, -in the matter of their most tender and sacred affection, to be as free -from sordid instinct as from the taint of a godless cynicism. You will -find that they have their price, and are not to be had without it any -more than a Circassian slave in the market of Bagdad.” - -Again: - -“If the first comers to these shores were to come back to-day and see -the houses, the dress and the manners of their descendants, they would -think themselves in London in the time of Charles, or in Versailles in -the time of the Louises.” - -When he went on to urge the rich “to illustrate in their habit of -life simplicity of attire, inexpensiveness in the appointments and -chasteness in the aspect, proportions, furniture and decorations of -their dwellings,” he could have meant only that he finds the Americans -whom he knows best for the most part ostentatious and extravagant in -dress, prodigal and vulgar and ignorantly profuse in their dwellings. -And when he charged them with having “the buying of legislatures as -their highest distinction” and with “appropriating the achievements -of the scholar, the inventor, the pioneer in commerce or the arts, -without rewarding them for the products of their genius,” he framed -an indictment not on belief but on knowledge which becomes tremendous -in view of the conservative character of his mind and his training, -the dignity and responsibility of his position and the unequalled -opportunity that is his to know whereof he speaks. - -Lord Methuen, felled in a trifling engagement in the Boer war by one of -those flesh wounds that are most painful but not serious, telegraphed -home, “This is the bloodiest battle in history.” His point of view was -rather too personal. And somewhat so must it have been with the Bishop -when he concluded his survey of the encompassing plutocracy with this -wild, despairing cry: - -“The whole people are corrupted and corrupting! Moloch is god and his -shrine is in almost every household in the republic!” - -Fifth avenue and Wall street are not all of Manhattan Island: Manhattan -Island is not all of New York City; New York City is not the only city -in America; and outside the cities in every direction stretch vast -areas of American soil not without its population. The plutocracy is -a phase, not the whole. If the distinguished Bishop were as competent -to speak of the American people as he is of the plutocracy, we might -well feel that it is all over with the republic--that we Americans have -bartered our birthright for a few handfuls of yellow earth and richly -deserve our fate of social, political and industrial serfdom. - -But---- - -It is as exact a truth as any in chemistry or mechanics that -Aristocracy is the natural, the inevitable sequence of widespread -ignorance, and Democracy the natural, the inevitable sequence of -widespread intelligence. - -An intelligent few may be, as in Russia to-day, crushed down by -an unintelligent mass wielded by a tyrant or group of tyrants. An -unintelligent mass may for a time get, as in modern England, some -measure of liberty through the mutual jealousies of intelligent upper -classes warring one with another for supremacy. But let intelligence -be diffused, let the sluices be opened so that it flows through the -social soil in every direction and the tendency toward Democracy -becomes irresistible. Monarchs may plot. Venerable and long-venerated -institutions of princely and priestly and property caste and privilege -may thunder, “Thus far and no farther!” Schools and colleges may give -an education of half-truths and prejudices. Philosophers may deplore -and warn, may project subtle and alluring schemes for maintaining or -rehabilitating the old tyrannies in a new form. New conditions may -produce new and subtle tyrannies that seem stronger than the old. All -in vain. As well might a concourse of parliaments and tongues resolve -that the heat of the sun be reduced one-half. - -In face of any and all obstacles, in face even of the determination of -a whole people, confused by false education, refusing to be free and -rallying to the defense of some beloved tradition of caste, Democracy -marches on hardly more hindered than an epidemic by the incantations of -a “medicine man.” - -Inertia is characteristic of the great mass of human beings, whatever -their stage of development. And if the combat against the instinctive, -all but universal reluctance to change had no stronger weapons than the -tongues and pens of “reformers,” men would still be huddled in caves, -gnawing bones. It is by no effort of its own that a race or a nation -moves. It is in obedience to conditions that cannot be resisted and -that now gently and now rudely compel man to readjust himself or to -perish. - -Democracy does not appreciably advance by the energy and enthusiasm -of those who believe in it any more than it greatly lags because -of the machinations of those who secretly or openly oppose it. -Energy and enthusiasm may hasten its formal recognition, its formal -embodiment in written laws. On the other hand, adroitness may obtain -a lease of formal existence for the outgrown institutions. But in -neither case is the great essential fact of the progress of Democracy -altered. This progress depends upon the diffusion of intelligence; and -intelligence is not a matter of individual choice or even of formal -education. If the eyes and the ears are open, if the mental faculties -are normal, then wherever intelligence is diffusing, there the mind -must be drinking it in. A sponge thrown into the water must become -saturated. When intelligence permeates the masses, then out of the -action and reaction of the common and the conflicting interests of an -ever-increasing multitude of intelligent men there must begin to issue -a democratic compromise self-government. - -Thus Democracy is not a “cult” to rise and rage and perish. It is not -a theory that may some day be discovered false. It is not a plant to -be carefully watched and watered lest peradventure it die. It is a -condition, an environment, an atmosphere. A force as irresistible -as that which keeps the stars a-swinging is behind it. The story of -history, rightly written, would be the story of the march of Democracy, -now patiently wearing away obstacles, accelerated there, now sweeping -along upon the surface, again flowing for centuries underground, but -always in action, always the one continuous, inevitable force. There -never has been any more danger of its defeat than there has been -danger that the human brain would be smoothed of its thought-bearing -convolutions and set in retreat through the stages of evolution back to -protoplasm. - -Until this last half-century it was extremely difficult to study the -operations of any great world-principle. But discovery and invention -have now given us sight far more penetrating than that of the fabled -giant who could see the grass grow. The difficulty now is to avoid -seeing and knowing. And to shut out all but some relatively unimportant -phenomenon--suddenly and suspiciously acquired wealth here, a corrupt -and extravagant or degraded public administration there, a strike or -a riot or a momentary moral convulsion yonder--and from it to predict -the approach of chaos with tyranny upon its back, is as childish as the -fantastic alarms of a tribe of savages during an eclipse or a thunder -storm. - -That any in America should thus shut the eyes, say “It is night,” and -grope and tremble, is more discreditable than a similar folly among -Englishmen or Frenchmen or Germans. Democracy has been our familiar -from the very beginning, and self-government and the absence of rule -are as old as our oldest settlements. - -Those miserable first settlers, with minds as small and mean as their -cabins, had no conception either of freedom or self-government. The -tyrannies theological and tyrannies political which they set up to make -life as hateful as it was squalid show that they had brought their -European ideas with them. But fate was against them. They were of about -the same low social rank. They were poor--and poverty is as potent a -leveller as death itself. They were isolated. They had to shift each -man for himself. So, deprived of rulers and forced to be free, since -none cared to bind them, they began to govern each man himself. And -they took the material tools which the civilization then current in -Europe forced into their hands and, to save themselves from starvation, -they set about the conquest of the land, not for a State as they -imagined, but for themselves and their children. - -Freedom is not the American’s because constitutions or statutes assert -it. The constitutions, the statutes are merely written records of -a truth no more dependent upon them than the proportions in which -elements combine are dependent upon the text-books of chemistry. -Besides, constitutions and laws avail only through their interpreters. -And interpretation varies with the honesty or open-mindedness of -official interpreters, with the spirit of the time, with the caprice -of the moment even--a popular outburst, an impulse of bad courage in -the public administrations, a greedy fear or desire in some powerful -class. Legal enactments affect the surface of a society more or less -and for periods of varying brevity; but the society itself is formed -by conditions over which man has no greater control than he has over -his heart-action. Those conditions constitute what the religious call -“God in history” and the unreligious call fate or destiny or natural -evolution. - -America will remain in the highway to freedom because printing presses -are whirling, because railway trains are moving, because news is -streaming along the telegraph wires, because schools and colleges and -libraries are open--because intelligence is diffused and is ever more -widely diffusing. Rights may be and constantly are assailed in isolated -instances. But each instance remains and must remain isolated. None has -become or can become a precedent. And there must be precedent or there -can be no tyranny. Prejudice, even wilful prejudice, still thrives; -truth and error have not yet been divorced from their unholy alliance -which seduces honest men to the purposes of rascals; passion still -rules the heart and the heart still rules the reason. But America must -be free, however hard it may struggle against freedom; Intelligence is -striking off the shackles. It can no more be stopped or stayed than the -law of gravitation can be suspended. - -The European, or the American returning from a visit to Europe, -is always disagreeably impressed by the evidences of haste, of -imperfection in detail, by “the ragged ends sticking out.” But after -a moment’s consideration of the reasons for this slovenliness wise -criticism is disarmed. In the busiest hundred years the world has ever -seen the Americans have had to shape out of a trackless wilderness a -complete civilization containing as many as possible of the good ideas -of the world’s past and having also all the latest improvements. There -has been no time to “gather up loose ends.” The filling in of gaps, the -replacing of makeshifts with permanent structures, the finishing and -the polishing, have been perforce left to posterity. And, thanks to the -passing and the present generations, posterity will have the leisure -and the resources, and also the finer qualifications, necessary to that -part of the task of civilization-building. - -The shortcomings of to-day, as nationally characteristic as our energy -and our mental alertness, are most obvious, of course, in the public -administration--disagreeable in the national administration, painful -in the state administration, shocking in the municipal administration. -Because of these spectacles of sloth, incompetence and corruption -in public officials, it is charged by many persons of reputation as -“publicists” that Democracy is a breeder of public corruption. The -truth is just the reverse. Democracy drags public corruption out of its -mole-tunnels where it undermines society, drags it into the full light -of day, draws its deadly fangs that fasten in fundamental human rights, -cuts its fatal claws that sink deep into the throat of freedom. One -sees and hears more of public corruption in a Democracy than in a -State. An organism that is expelling disease at its surface _looks_ -worse than one which is hiding and fostering disease in its vitals. - -Corruption is no offspring of Democracy. It is co-existent with human -passions and weaknesses. Society is but a conglomerate of individuals; -the whole, with all the strength of all the parts, has also all their -weakness. In a State the public administration is the parlor; in a -Democracy it is the servants’ hall. Public corruption in a State means -that the head of the house is corrupt; public corruption in a Democracy -means that the servants need attention. - -Our serious public corruption--national, State and municipal--is of a -kind unknown to the people of two generations ago. About the middle of -the last century science developed to the point at which it was able -to give man weapons adequate to the thorough conquest of nature and of -natural difficulties. The American people at once seized these most -timely tools and began the rapid conquest of their vast, undeveloped -heritage. Forty years ago this was a sturdy but dull and monotonous -agricultural nation. It was hindered in intercourse with the rest -of civilization by the wide ocean, across which passage was slow, -painful, dangerous. It had a sparse, scattered population leading a -severe and sodden rural or semi-rural life. There were no cities in -the modern sense, practically no railroads, few and wretched wagon -roads, few factories, no great distributing agencies, no telegraphs. -Each section was shut off from, was ignorant and suspicious of, the -others. Opportunities for advancement, for individual elevation, did -not, as now, press upon even the incompetent and unworthy through very -profusion, but were rare, uncertain and narrow. - -From the recent great industrial-social revolution has emerged the -America of to-day--a land undreamed by our forefathers, uncomprehended -by ourselves. In every essential of life--in education, in comfort, -in refinement--there has been an immeasurable advance. And, most -important of all, intelligence and that divine, truly democratic -spirit of discontent, which has ever been the harbinger of enlightened -progress, have penetrated to the remotest farmhouses, and fight a -valiant and a winning battle with the sloth and despair of our city -slums. Incidental to this evolution, inseparable from it, logically -and naturally a part of it, there have been myriad opportunities for -a temptation to corruption. And our corruption has complied with -corruption’s universal law. It has been in direct proportion to -opportunity. - -As long as only old and familiar forms had to be combated the people -did not feel, as they do now, the inadequacy, the utter unfitness of -their electoral machinery for the work of selecting and controlling -their public administrators. This machinery, with some slight changes, -is the same that was used in Athens and that was borrowed by the Greeks -from the Egyptians. It is the crudest and clumsiest device possible for -registering the public will. It works fairly well in small communities -where the people are not busy, where everybody knows everybody else, -where public administrators can be held to strict personal account by -their neighbors, their masters. - -Until the two last centuries the world had little use for electoral -machinery. And until the last fifty years, at most, there were no -conditions that forcibly demanded the invention of a new electoral -machine--one that would permit a people to register their will -quickly, without circumlocutions, and at the same time without the -haste that makes right action an accident. - -In addition to this fundamental disadvantage our people are also -contending against an almost equally unfortunate limitation. The -industrial revolution presses into private service not merely all of -the best minds of the nation, but also most of the minds in which -large measures of both capacity and character are combined. Even the -mediocres who would best fill public office--which in a Democracy -should be obedient and never initiatory--have been impressed by high -pecuniary rewards into private service. But demand creates supply. -Give us a little time and our supply will once more equal the demands -upon it. We are manufacturing competent, intelligent men and women -workers by the tens and the hundreds of thousands now-a-days--faster -than private enterprise can absorb them, in such vast numbers that not -the richest plutocracy could seduce and silence all or even a large -proportion of them. Give us a little time, another thirty years or -so--at most. - -Meanwhile let us not forget:-- - -First--That while we ought to be, and are, concerned about the purity -and efficiency of our public administrations, our vital interest is in -the projects and acts of the industrial leaders who here ignore, there -cajole or bully, the public administration, now use and now defy it. - -Second--That the new form of public corruption is an -incident--melancholy, deplorable, dreadful, but still only a necessary -incident--in that swift yet permanent betterment of man’s condition -which practically began in the childhood of men still young. - -Third--That while purchasers of inequality and of privilege to extort -may evade the laws of the statute books, they cannot evade that law of -Democracy which compels them to assist in raising the consuming and -producing capacities of the people, the standards of enlightenment, -of comfort, of refinement, of civilized desire--of intelligence! The -plutocrats themselves are, in the quaint irony of fate, by no means the -least efficient of our manufacturers of democrats. - -It is not rational, it is distinctly irrational, to assert that moral -or mental or physical betterment can tend to disaster, that the growth -of intelligence may make men seek to tear down and tear up the fabric -of civilization. It is true that the people--not here only, but -throughout civilization and wherever civilization touches--are growing -more restless, ever less content, ever more inquisitive, ever less -reverential to tradition and authority. But are not these the very -qualities which, working in the minds of the few in the past, led the -human race up from the caves? Newspapers, libraries, schools do not -make Huns and Vandals. On the contrary, they tame and eradicate that -savagery which is the largest part of the estate we have inherited from -our ancestors; on the contrary, they destroy the Huns and Vandals of -inequality and privilege who would wrest from man his heritage under -Intelligence and Democracy. - -As for our own people, whose fate has been forecast in so many -jeremiads, how would any man or body of men set about subjecting -millions upon millions who are not merely educated but are also -_intelligent_? The world has heretofore offered no opportunity for the -trial of any such experiment in enslavement. The experiment if tried -must be, indeed, original in conception and in execution. Is there -hazard in the prophecy that no man now on earth will live to see it -tried? Is there hazard even in the prophecy that it never will be -tried? To assume that such an experiment could have any measure of -success is to become involved in contradictions and absurdities. Make -out the perils that beset our Democratic path as formidable as you -please, and still it is less contradictory and absurd to assume that we -shall triumph over them. - -How will we do it? It is not given to man to foresee even one minute -of his own future. But, since triumph we must, rest assured that -triumph we shall. If you wish to make a shrewd guess as to the how of -it, watch the motions of that infant of yesterday, Science. Already -Science has given to us all a thousand things that not the richest of -our grandparents could afford, nor the most powerful command. Beyond -question it will presently unlock the secrets of the composition of -matter and show us how every object that now enters into private wealth -or is rationally sought by human desire can be obtained so easily by a -little effort on the part of any human being that a man would as soon -think of devoting himself to bottling sunshine as to storing up what -is now called wealth. Less than two human generations of scientific -activity, and already what ominous groanings and crackings in the last -remaining of the artificial barriers that have so long dammed up the -riches of the earth as wealth to be withheld or doled out by the few. -Science is the emancipator, the deliverer, the mighty equalizer and -leveler--equalizing and leveling _up_. Not down, but up, always up. Not -by making the rich poor, but by making the poor rich. Not by making the -wise foolish, but by making the foolish wise. Not by enfeebling the -powerful, but by making powerful the feeble. - -For signs of the world’s to-morrow, look not in the programs of -political parties, not in the plottings of princes or plutocrats, but -in the crucible of the chemist. - -We have reminded ourselves of the solid ground upon which rests our -faith in ourselves as a democratic people with a democratic future. -We can therefore proceed, with fairly tranquil minds, to view some -of the “perils” to the republic. And of these the greatest, the one -that includes them all, is the plutocracy, which fills so many of our -thinkers with grim forebodings. Instead of lying awake o’ nights, -worrying about it, let us go boldly and democratically forth in the -broad day and gaze straight at it in all its grisly vulgarity. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE MANIA FOR GILT - - -You stand in front of a huge dam. Its wall rises bare and sheer. You -say to yourself: “There can be little water behind it.” But even as you -think this, the dam becomes a waterfall, and the waterfall swells into -a Niagara. You go round where you see the other side; you find a lake -fathoms deep and extending miles up the valley. - -Precisely such a phenomenon occurred in this country a few years ago. -Behind a dam of long-established customs of simplicity and frugality, -concentrated private wealth had been rising for a generation with -amazing rapidity. Suddenly it overflowed in a waterfall of luxurious -living; and to-day the waterfall has become a Niagara. - -The dam that has pent and narrowed the streams of national wealth is -the concentration of property that has come about through the imperfect -working of the law of combination which steam and electricity -established. That imperfection has produced the multi-millionaire, the -plutocrat, as the crowning inequality in a succession of inequalities. -First, the man with a million or so; then the man with ten millions -or so; then the man with fifty millions or so; now, the man with a -hundred, with five hundred, with nearly a thousand millions. Every -city has its plutocrats. In New York is the capital of plutocracy. As -businesses combine, as wealth concentrates, the directors of business, -the masters of wealth, segregate. Thus, New York is denuding the rest -of the country of its plutocrats. Most of them live in New York now; -the rest must soon come. - -The mighty cataract of extravagant ostentation is continent-wide--from -Boston to San Francisco. In New York, the high-curving centre of the -down-pouring, glittering stream, the spectacle almost passes belief. -There is not the least danger of exaggeration in description; the -danger is lest they who have not seen with their own eyes may refuse -to believe that men and women can be born under the American flag wild -enough to indulge in such prodigality and pretense and folly. - -A score of years ago there were in New York only a few private houses -that could accurately be spoken of as palaces; to-day there are more -than two hundred private houses that are indeed palaces in size, in -cost, and in showiness; and hardly a week passes without announcement -of several new ones of equal or surpassing splendor. Twenty years -ago there were not in all so many as a score of palace-like hotels, -apartment houses and business buildings; to-day there are more than -five hundred of these wonderful structures of marble and granite over -iron, each costing, with its equipment, decorations and furnishings, -from two to six millions. - -And the whole city--business quarters and industrial, rich quarters -and poor--is in a state of chaotic upheaval, so furiously are they -tearing down the New York that was new twenty years ago, and replacing -it with a New York, in every quarter and every street significant of -the presence of colossal wealth, of stupendous private fortunes, of an -unprecedented and unbelievable number of great incomes. - -Fifteen years ago the number of private equipages on New York’s streets -was noticeably small, considering the city’s size and wealth, and -their appointments for the most part extremely modest. To-day Fifth -avenue and Central Park, from September to mid-June, are thronged with -handsome private carriages, notably costly in all details of harness -and upholstery, the servants in expensive, often gaudy liveries; and -the multitude of women thus swept along in state, in beautiful dresses -and hats and wraps, frequently display fortunes in furs and jewels. - -As for the shops, it seems indeed only yesterday that you found the -costly luxuries in a few fashionable places, and there in small -quantities and almost reverently handled by clerks and customers. -To-day the shops where the tens of thousands buy are more luxurious -than were most of the best shops ten years ago. And in the best -shops you are dazzled and overwhelmed by the careless torrent of -luxury--enormous quantities, enormous prices, throngs of customers. -Twenty-five dollars for a pair of shoes, fifteen dollars for a pair -of stockings, two hundred dollars for a hat, one thousand dollars for -a hat-pin or parasol, fifteen hundred for a small gold bottle for a -woman’s dressing-table, thirty or forty thousand for a tiara, a hundred -thousand for a string of pearls--these are prices which salesmen will -give you with the air of one who tells an oft-told tale. - -Why has an income of ten thousand a year become a mere competence in -New York City to-day? Why do the families with ten times ten thousand -regard themselves as far from rich? Why do enough New Yorkers to make -a populous city regard it as privation if they cannot keep at least -three servants, one of them a man-servant, and ride in cabs and have a -country place in summer? - -The explanation is--the multi-millionaire. - -There are in New York City to-day upward of a thousand fortunes of -two or more millions. About one-fourth of these are of more than ten -millions. There are no less than forty-eight fortunes of more than -forty millions, about twenty of these being more than seventy-five -millions, and half a dozen of them between seventy-five millions and -the mountainous aggregations of the Oil King--three-quarters of a -billion, with an income beyond forty-five millions a year. - -There is no way of estimating the number of fortunes of from -three-quarters of a million to two millions. The income of a million -dollars, safely invested, is about forty thousand a year. Many New -York men--several thousands--have from their profession or their -business annual incomes, available for living expenses, of forty -thousand or thereabouts, yet their holdings of property are small. But -they belong in the millionaire class because they spend money like the -millionaires and are of the most strenuous part of the plutocracy. - -It is the multi-millionaires who set and force the pace--the families -with incomes of more than a quarter of a million a year. “A man with a -hundred thousand a year,” said the late Pierre Lorillard, with humorous -seriousness, “is in the unhappy position where he can see what a good -time he could have if he only had the money.” And he added that easy -circumstances meant “a thousand dollars a day--and expenses.” - -Properly and comfortably to live in the style which New York most -envies and admires and encourages, a family should have an income of -three-quarters of a million at least. But by economy and abstention -from too great self-indulgence, and by Spartan resistance to many -fascinating temptations, they may keep up the appearances of a very -high degree of luxury on a quarter of a million a year. Of course, -they cannot have very many or very grand houses; they must not -think of racing stables; they would do well to keep out of yachts; -they must expect to be frequently and far outshone in jewels and in -entertainments; they must keep down their largess, their benevolences. -But they can have a small house in town, one or two more in the -country, can entertain creditably if they do not entertain too often, -and can live--if they are prudent--free from the harassments of money -cares. - -The quickest way to get at the reason for this curious state of -affairs, that may seem to many a flamboyant jest rather than -conservatively presented reality, is to look at the life of the -typical New York multi-millionaire of the extravagant class. There -are multi-millionaires, scores of them, who do not belong in this -extravagant class; but there are not so many outside of it now as there -were five years ago. - -Our up-to-date, luxury-hunting, luxury-teaching Mr. Multi-Millionaire -has a fortune which is estimated at thirty millions, but is ten -millions more or less in the widest fluctuations of the stock market. -His income is about a million and a half a year, but he usually spends -three-quarters of a million, and relies upon speculation to put him in -funds for extraordinary expenditures, such as a new house, a large gift -to education or charity, a large purchase of pictures or jewels. - -As human beings compare themselves only with those in better -circumstances, he counts himself poor rather than rich--his -fellow-citizens, the Oil King, and the Copper King, and the Sugar King, -and the Steel King, and the Telegraph King, and the Tobacco King, and -the Real Estate King are what he calls rich. He thinks himself unlucky -rather than lucky; he avoids intimacy with men of smaller fortunes and -no fortunes unless he has known them long, because he suspects that he -is usually sought with a view to exploitation--and he is not far from -right. He thinks he is opposed to ostentation, severely criticises his -richer neighbors and loudly applauds frugality. - -He has a wife who is forty-five years old and passes for “about -thirty.” They have a son who has been out of college four years, and -after learning enough of business to supervise a fortune, has settled -down to the life of a “gentleman”; a daughter, who came out last winter -and who is being guarded by her mother, her companion, her aunt and -her sophisticated self against the wiles of fortune-hunters wearing -Cupid’s livery; a son who was at Groton, is now a sophomore at Harvard; -a daughter nine years old. - -They have three fixed and six or seven temporary residences. - -First, there is the palace in Fifth avenue, where the family is united -for a few weeks in each year. It is closed from the first of June until -the first of October, and when the various members of the family make -flying trips into New York they take a suite at the St. Regis or at -Sherry’s. Second, there is “the cottage” at Newport, about the same -size as the palace on Fifth avenue. Most of the family usually spend -the latter part of the summer here. Third, there is the large new house -on Long Island, twenty-five miles from New York, where several members -of the family spend part of the spring and fall. Luxurious New Yorkers -are becoming more and more susceptible to the changes of the season. -They are emulating, though as yet at a distance, the smart set of -Juvenal’s Rome, with its summer and winter finger rings. - -Our family have a small house at a fashionable place in North -Carolina; the mother and eldest son go there for a part of February -and March. They have a thousand acres and a comfortable house in the -Adirondacks--the head of the family likes to shoot and fish. They have -a place in the Berkshire Hills--but they do not go there now and they -are thinking of selling it. The wife has an apartment in Paris. She -must be sure of comfort when she goes over for her shopping. Every -few years they take a big house in Mayfair for the season, and go -on to Scotland for the shooting. Then there is the steam yacht, an -ocean greyhound--last year it cost them sixty thousand dollars for -maintenance, a few repairs and refittings. The grown son has persuaded -his father to start a racing stable--a small one with fifteen or twenty -thoroughbreds. His trainer costs him ten thousand dollars a year, and -his jockey five thousand more, as a retaining fee. The father estimates -the cost of this addition to the family expense at one hundred thousand -dollars a year--he hopes this will include betting losses. The son has -long had a string of polo ponies that costs, with all its embroideries, -fifteen to twenty thousand a year. - -Ten years ago this family had only a small house in town--small by -comparison--and the beautiful palace on the Ocean Drive at Newport. -But they do not feel that they are now extravagant. Wherever they go -they find people of their own set and a good many “rank outsiders” -doing the same things they are doing; and they find many doing things -they would think far beyond their means. - -For example, a man has just paid two hundred and eighty thousand -dollars for a string of pearls for his wife. Our multi-millionaire -regards that as an extravagance. He thinks his own wife’s string, which -cost one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, represents the limit -of prudent expenditure for such a purpose. And those of their friends -whom they regard as comparatively poor--the people with from fifty to -a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year--are pushing them on by -concentrating where they scatter. They meet different groups of these -moderately rich people at different points in their annual round; and -each group is living almost as well as, in some respects better than, -they are at that particular point. True, So-and-So’s house in town is a -trivial twenty-room affair on a side street, but his place in Newport -(he concentrates upon it) is far finer than their Newport place. Smith -is decently housed in town and at Newport, but lives in a tiny doll’s -house in Curzon street during the London season. Jones is modest in -America and England, but how he does blaze on the Riviera! - -There must be no standing still. There must be progress. The standards, -all the standards--house, dress, equipage, number and livery of -servants, jewels, works of art, sports, gifts--are rising, rising, -rising. Each year, more and ever more must be spent, unless one is to -fall behind, lose one’s rank, be mingled with the crowd that is ever -pressing on and trying to catch up. - -In the neighborhood of these plutocrats and their parasites and -imitators, struggling thus desperately in gaudiness, it is all -but impossible not at times to fear that prosperity, concentrated -prosperity, has killed Democracy, has killed the republic. Foreigners -look at New York and the galaxy of rich cities eagerly imitating it, -and shrug their shoulders and sneer. Americans look, and try to keep -their courage and their point of view. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -PLUTOCRACY AT HOME - - -Let us glance at our typical Mr. Multi-Millionaire’s town house. It is -a palace of white marble, in Fifth avenue, near Fifty-ninth street--the -view across the Park from the upper windows is superb. This palace was -the inaugural of the family’s recent fashionable career. It is the -struggle to live up to it that is making them famous in New York. - -The palace was to have cost our family a million, including the site. -Up to the present time it has cost them two and a half millions, and -that does not include the one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollar -set of tapestries for the dining-room which is on its way from Europe. -The site cost half a million; the house three-quarters of a million; -the rest went for furniture, and the house still looks bare to the -family. “A wretched barn,” madame calls it. There are one hundred and -fifty thousand dollars in paintings and statuary in the entrance-hall, -fifty thousand dollars in paintings, statuary, and such matters in the -rest of the house. Two hundred thousand dollars could easily be spent -without overcrowding. The furniture, thinly scattered in the long and -lofty salon, cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars--it is amazing -how fast the money disappears once one goes in for old furniture. - -As you look round these show rooms--the vast entrance-hall, the -enormous dining-room, the great library, the salon which is used -as ballroom, the comparatively small and exquisitely furnished -reception-rooms--you are struck by the absence of individual taste. You -are in a true palace--the dwelling-place, but in no sense the home, of -people of great wealth, but of no marked æsthetic development. They -have the money, and to a certain extent the faculty of appreciation. -But others have supplied the active, the creative brains. - -You go up the grand stairway, and at the turn pause to look down at the -magnificent rug which almost covers the floor of the entrance-hall, up -at the splendid painting which adorns the ceiling. The owner--you know -him well--tells you that each cost twenty-five thousand dollars. - -And then he takes you into the wife’s living-rooms. She is out of town. - -Madame lives in five great rooms--a sitting-room, a dressing-room, -a bedroom, a room where her clothes in use--quantities of dresses, -hats, wraps, boots, shoes, slippers, drawers full of the finest -underclothing--are kept, and a bathroom. She is very crowded, she will -tell you. For instance, where is her secretary to sit and work when -she wishes to use her sitting-room for a private talk with her son or -daughter, or some intimate friend? - -You look round these rooms and again you note the absence of individual -taste. Madame is always on the wing; she has no time to impress herself -on her immediate surroundings. But a very capable artist has been at -work and has not neglected the opportunities which his freedom in the -matter of money opened to him. He has created several marvelous color -schemes through harmonious shadings in rugs, upholstery, the brocade -coverings of the walls, the curtains, the woodwork and the ceilings. -You are not surprised that a hundred thousand dollars went in making -suitable surroundings for a lady of fashion and fortune. You know -that there are several dozen suites more expensive than this within -gun-shot, and scores almost as expensive within a radius of half a mile. - -If she were at home there would be on that dressing-table five or six -thousand dollars in gold articles: brushes, combs, hand-mirrors--each -gold and rock-crystal hand-mirror cost seven hundred and fifty -dollars--bottles, button-hooks, and so forth, and so forth. If she -were here, there would be in that safe at least fifty thousand dollars -in jewelry--a small part of what she has, the rest being in the -safe-deposit vaults. - -The two marvels of this suite of hers are the bed and bath-tub. The -bed is on a raised platform in a sort of alcove. The canopy and -curtains are of a wonderful shade of violet silk. The counter-pane and -roll-cover are of costly lace. The head-board and foot-board are two -splendid paintings--one of sleep, the other of awakening. You think -nine thousand dollars was cheap for this bed, even without canopy, lace -and other fineries. - -The bath-tub is cut from a solid block of white marble and is sunk in -the marble floor of her huge bathroom. It is a small swimming-pool, -and its plumbing is silver, plated with gold. On the floor of this -room at the step down into the tub there is a great white bear-skin, -and there is another in front of the beautiful little dressing-table. -Three palms rise from the floor and tower--real trees--toward the lofty -ceiling. - -Going on through the palace you discover that it is arranged in -suites--somewhat like a very handsome and exclusive private hotel. And -then you learn that here is not one establishment, but seven, each -separate and distinct. Our multi-millionaire’s family have outgrown -family life and are living upon the most aristocratic European plan. - -In a smaller, more plainly furnished suite of rooms than those occupied -by his wife, lives the husband. In a third suite lives the grown -son; in a fourth the grown daughter; in a fifth and sixth, these the -smallest, live the young son and the young daughter. The seventh -establishment consists of forty-two personal assistants and servants. - -Each member of the family has his or her own sitting-room and there -receives callers from within or without the family--except that -the daughter receives men callers in the smallest of the three -reception-rooms on the ground floor. Each has his or her own personal -attendants; each lives his or her separate social life. They rarely -meet at breakfast--it is more comfortable to breakfast in one’s -sitting-room; they rarely meet at luncheon--luncheon is the favorite -time for going to one’s intimates; they rarely meet at dinner--one or -more are sure to be dining out or the mother is giving a dinner for -married people. - -It is with eyes on this lofty height that the New York family, just -emerging from obscure poverty, with five or six thousand a year, -anxiously ask themselves: “Now, can we at last afford a man to go to -the door and wait on the table?” - -For the man-servant is the beginning of fashion, and its height can -be measured--as certainly as in any other way--by the number of -men-servants and the splendor of their liveries. - -Of course, our family of pacemakers have an “adequate” supply of -secretaries, tutors, governesses, valets, maids; and the housekeeper -has her staff, the chef his, the butler his, the head coachman his, -the captain of the yacht his. Then there are caretakers, gardeners -and farmers, the racing-stable staff, various and numerous occasional -employees. At the request of Mr. Multi-Millionaire, his private -secretary recently drew up a list of all persons in the family’s -service. It contained--with the yacht out of commission and the Newport -place not yet opened--seventy-nine names. - -Mr. Multi-Millionaire, becoming interested in statistics, went on to -have his secretary take a census of the horses and carriages owned by -the family. Of horses there were sixty-four, excluding the seventeen -thoroughbreds in the racing stable at Saratoga, but including the -hunters and the polo ponies. The little girl had the fewest. Poor -child! She had only a pair of ponies and a saddle horse, and she -complained that her sister was always loaning the hack to some friend -whom she wished to have riding with her. The grown son had the -most--thirteen; he must hunt and he must coach and he must play polo, -or try to. The father himself was almost as badly off as his little -daughter--he had only four. - -Of vehicles there were at the town stables a landau, two large -victorias and a small one, two broughams, a hansom; an omnibus, seating -six; four automobiles, a tandem cart, a pony cart. At the several -country places--a coach, a drag, a surrey, a victoria phaeton, two -dos-à-dos, two T-carts, four runabouts, three buggies, two breaking -carts, making a total of thirty-one. - -The secretary remarked that these vehicles, assembled and -properly distanced, would, with their animals, form a procession -about three-quarters of a mile long. He then tried to read Mr. -Multi-Millionaire some statistics of harness, saddles, and so forth, -but was forbidden. - -In further pursuit of this statistical mania, Mr. Multi-Millionaire -discovered that his family and their friends--and the servants--had -drunk under his various roofs during the past year nearly two thousand -quarts of red wine, about one thousand quarts of champagne, one -hundred and fifty quarts of white wine, one hundred and fifty quarts -of whiskey, one thousand eight hundred quarts of mineral water, and an -amazing amount of brandy, chartreuse, and so forth. The family’s total -bills for drink, food, cigars, and cigarettes had been of such a size -that they represented an expenditure of about three hundred and seventy -dollars a day--about one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars a -year. His wife became very angry when he showed her these last figures. -She told him that he was meddling in her business and that she didn’t -purpose to spend her whole life in watching servants. - -Our multi-millionaire did not make his fortune; he inherited it. But he -has been very shrewd in managing it, for all his extravagance. Though -he is cautious about expenses in one way, he shows by the allowances he -makes to the various members of his family that he believes in carrying -out to the uttermost the idea that his family must live in state. His -wife has a million in her own name, but he makes her an allowance -of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to maintain -herself and their households. The grown son has had an allowance of -twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and when he marries it will be -trebled--perhaps quadrupled. This is large for persons of their modest -fortune, but many fathers of smaller means are doing as much for their -children, and our multi-millionaire will not see his children suffer. -His grown daughter has an allowance of fifteen thousand dollars--more -than she needs, as she has only to buy her clothes and pay her small -expenses out of it. The boy in college has five thousand dollars a -year; he is always in debt, but his mother helps him. The youngest -child has ten dollars a week--her clothes are bought for her, and she -can always get money from her father or mother when she wishes to make -handsome presents. - -The most interesting person in the family is the mother. She is its -moving force, one of the moving forces in the extravagant life of New -York City to-day. You see her name and her pictures in the newspapers -very often, always in connection with the news that she is doing -something. She was the first in New York to have huge flunkeys in -gaudy knee-breeches and silk stockings in waiting at her front door. -She was the first to have as an entertainment for a few people after -dinner several of the grand opera stars and the finest orchestra in -the country. She is a woman with ideas--ideas for new and not noisy -or gaudy, but attractive ostentations of luxury. She spends money -recklessly, but she gets what she wants. - -She is one of the busiest women in town. And the main part of her -business is one which engages New York women, and men, too, ever more -and more--the fight for prolonging youth. - -You would never suspect that she is the mother of a son twenty-five -years old. Indeed, you would not suspect from her looks or her -conversation that she is a mother. She is making her fight for youth -most successfully. Of course, she uses no artifices--the New York women -who care greatly about looks have long since abandoned artificiality, -except as a fad. Her hair is thick and dark and fine. It is her own, -kept vigorous by constant treatment. Her skin is clear and smooth -and healthily pale--it costs her and her beauty assistants hours of -labor to keep it thus. Her figure is tall and slender and girlish--her -masseuse could tell you how that is done. She lives, eats, exercises, -with the greatest regularity. And she eats little and drinks less. - -On dress she spends about fifty-five thousand dollars a year. You will -not see her many times in the same hat or dress; and she has a passion -for real lace underclothing and for those stockings which seem to have -been woven on fairy looms of some substance so unsubstantial that only -fairies could handle it. She bought twelve thousand dollars’ worth -of underclothing when she was in Paris last spring. Her bills at the -dressmaker’s of the Rue de la Paix were twenty-seven thousand dollars, -and at the milliner’s twenty-four hundred dollars. She has about five -thousand dollars invested in parasols. She has sixty-seven thousand -dollars’ worth of wraps--sables, chinchillas and ermine cannot be -got for small sums. She has many evening dresses that cost from eight -hundred dollars to twelve hundred dollars each. She has few dresses -that cost as little as one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The average -price for her hats would be, perhaps, fifty dollars. She had one with -fur on it last winter that cost two hundred and seventy-five dollars. - -The chief reason for her large expenditure for clothes is that -now-a-days every detail of each costume must be in harmony. She must -have slippers, stockings, skirt, dress, hat, parasol, all to match -or in perfect harmony. For she is one of half a dozen New York women -who are famous for style, and having established this reputation she -must live up to it. When she ceases to fight for youth--which will be -in about ten years--she will probably cut her expenditures for dress -in half. By that time extravagance will have so far advanced that her -successor will spend seventy-five thousand dollars or more on dress. -The last season has seen a three-league advance. It is now the fashion -to wear for a drive down the Avenue those delicate shades which are -ruined so quickly. Next season the color scheme of the Avenue will be -still more gorgeous and varied--and prodigiously more expensive. - -But it is her mode of keeping house and entertaining that makes the -thousands and tens of thousands fly. Her establishments are maintained -like so many luxurious hotel restaurants. Though her housekeeper is -a capable person and she herself studies her accounts closely, it is -impossible to be ready at all times to house and feed an indefinite -number of people of exacting taste without spending great sums of -money. It costs to be able to say to the butler at the last moment: -“There will be ten for luncheon, instead of six,” or “There will be -twelve for dinner, instead of four,” or “There will be four for dinner, -not eight.” - -Our Mrs. Multi-Millionaire lives no better in respect of her table -than scores of people in her set and around it. She pays her chef one -hundred dollars a month and her butler seventy-five dollars a month, -and so do they. She has no better supplies on hand than have they. -Her bills at the shops where they sell things out of season--peaches -at four dollars apiece, strawberries at fifty cents apiece, and peas -at a dollar a small measure--show no different kinds of items from -theirs. They, too, have Sèvres plates at five hundred dollars the -dozen. They, too, have fruit plates and finger-bowls of gold plated -on silver that cost twelve hundred dollars the dozen. They, too, have -solid-gold after-dinner coffee cups at two thousand dollars the dozen, -and solid-gold spoons at four hundred dollars the dozen. The difference -between the dinners of those of her fortune and the dinners of those of -fewer millions lies in quantity, not quality. Where they would have to -make an effort in arranging an unusual dinner and could not have more -than a dozen at table, her establishment and many more establishments -like hers would easily and without effort expand to entertain, in a -fashion once called royal, two or three scores of guests. - -The main and very conspicuous characteristic of this typical leader -in New York’s extravagance is, naturally, restlessness. Like the -other women of her set, like their imitators, down and down through -the strata of New York’s wealth-scaled society, she wanders nervously -about, spending money, inventing new ways of spending it, all because -she is in search of something, she knows not what, that ever eludes -her. And this restlessness, this nervousness, this hysteria, possesses -the women and the men alike. Does it come uptown with the men from -Wall street? Does it go downtown from the women and the fever of Fifth -avenue? It is impossible to say. We only know that it possesses both -and that it influences their every relation of life, public and private. - -A fashionable woman sails for Europe--more than five thousand -dollars’ worth of flowers, jewels, books, things to eat and drink, -go to the steamer on sailing day from her friends. A young couple -are married--their intimates and relatives give them three-quarters -of a million in wedding gifts. A brother meets his sister on her way -downstairs on the morning of her birthday--“Here is a little gift for -you,” he says, pausing just long enough to hand her a paper. It makes -her the owner of a million in gilt-edged securities. A husband comes -home from the office--“I’ve put through my deal,” he says. “You can -have your new house, but I won’t stand for more than a million and a -half.” A father calls his son into his study and says, “You will be -twenty-one to-morrow. I fix your allowance at seventy-five thousand -dollars a year.” A doctor goes to a banker to get a small subscription -for a new hospital--“Why not build a new hospital?” asks the banker. -“I’ll give a million. If that’s not enough I’ll give two.” - -It is amazing how many great and beautiful palaces of a kind such as is -occupied by our multi-millionaire are being added yearly to New York’s -fashionable quarter. And there is not a single palace in New York that -is comfortable. No way has yet been devised for making them otherwise -than chilly and draughty. The human animal is too small for such huge -surroundings; and there are not enough competent servants or even -competent available housekeepers to make the domestic machinery run -smoothly. - -The new millionaires slip into New York, into their new palaces, -attracting little attention. Men with a scant million or two are coming -all the time unobserved. If it were not necessity that drove them here, -many of them would doubtless become angry at their insignificance -and would go where less money gives distinction. But the rapid -concentration of the directing forces of the business of the country -in Manhattan Island compels them to yield to the entreaties of their -wives and daughters and remain. - -Scores of these palace owners have or seem to have no way of getting -acquainted with anybody whatsoever. There are millionaires’ families -that stare drearily out of the windows, bored to death in their -isolation, and wishing they were back in the Western town where they -used to have lots of fun. There are others who give entertainments in -the vast rooms of their palaces at which you will find their clerks, -a few nondescripts male and female, and no others--these standing or -strolling awkwardly about, trying to forget that they are miserable in -reflecting on the cost of the pictures and the decorations. - -In the surroundings above outlined, how could anyone, whether newly -rich or long rich, lead other than a sordid life? Money is there -necessarily the basis of all action, the determiner of the complexion -of every thought. - -To the narrow vision of the palace dweller and of those who look only -at palace dwellers, America seems like a greedy, ill-mannered child -released upon a candy shop. In the wide, the true aspect it seems a -man, intelligently developing himself, fevered by a sense of the -shortness of life and the vastness of its opportunities. - -In the one aspect it suggests an express rushing along, with the -engineer mad and the passengers drunk. In the other aspect it suggests -its own miraculous sky-scrapers, rising swift as an exhalation, high as -the clouds, yet securely founded upon the rock. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -YOUTH AMONG THE MONEY-MANIACS - - -The typical young men of the America of fashion and high finance, -created by the multi-millionaire, fall into two classes--the born -successes, sons or heirs of rich men; the candidates for success. It is -hardly necessary to say that in this connection success always means -the accumulation of riches enough to enable one to make a stir even -among the very rich. - -If the young man is a born success, all that is left for him to achieve -is to devise some plan for making a stir--the simplest way being -to marry some woman with a talent for doing original and striking -things. No matter how great his income, if he is not to suffer the -fate of being an obscure follower, a merely rich person, suspected -of stinginess, stupidity and vulgarity to boot, he must do something -out of the ordinary--assemble an astonishing establishment, have the -finest pictures, give the finest dinners and dances, run the fastest -horses or the most demoniac automobile, give large sums on some -original plan to education and philanthropy. - -The chances are that the born success will marry in his own set--that -is, the daughter or the heiress of some rich man. This will be due in -large part to deliberation; also, neither is likely to know well many -people who are not rich or of the rich. If he is the eldest son, the -probabilities, the increasing probabilities are that he will inherit -the bulk of the fortune, no matter how many brothers and sisters he -may have. Some one in the next generation must maintain the family -magnificence. Naturally, therefore, an unwritten law of primogeniture -is rapidly growing in force and effect. - -And this custom, combined with the rapidity with which great wealth -piles up in America for him who has great commercial skill, insures us -a future of ever more dazzling splendor, of luxury and extravagance--an -_immediate_ future; we will not here speculate as to that future which -is more remote, but not less certain. - -A short time ago a young man--a “born success”--went to a beautiful -country house near New York to make a Saturday-to-Monday visit. He -brought with him two huge trunks. These were taken to the almost -magnificent suite of rooms which had been assigned to him. His valet -unlocked the trunks and summoned the chambermaid. The two servants -stripped from the bed the sheets and pillow-cases and covers; then -from the trunks they took the young man’s own wonderful bed-clothing, -woven especially for him by the best looms in Europe. These creations -were put on the bed in place of the silk and fine linen which the owner -of the country house, a very rich man, regarded as fit for a king, -but which this young man thought far too coarse for contact with his -delicate skin. - -The host was given to extravagance, was used to and in sympathy with -the eccentric efforts of too-rich people to attract attention to -themselves. But this insulting refinement “got” on his nerves. As -his guest was a very rich man, and was therefore entitled to that -reverential deference which only the rich are capable of feeling for -and giving to the rich, the host let no outward sign of his state -of mind appear. But he confided the insult to his other guests as -a “joke,” and had them privately laughing and jeering at his young -friend. - -This young man is one of the small advance guard of the new generation -of plutocrats--the generation that has about the same knowledge of life -as it is lived by the great mass of Americans that we have of the mode -of life in a Hottentot kraal. We shall soon be far better acquainted -with these sons and grandsons of somebodies than we are at present. -Soon the wealth and industrial energy of the country will be controlled -by them, or, rather, through them by a clever and unscrupulous few. Let -us therefore pause for a moment upon these American “born successes,” -taking at random some one of them as a type--one we will call, for -convenience, Jones. - -His father was a great business man, and in forty years of intelligent, -incessant and unscrupulous effort amassed a vast fortune so invested -that it gave the possessor control of an enormous financial and -industrial area. The father was a self-made man; he had a profound -reverence for book-learning; he was resolved that none of his own -deficiencies should be reproduced in his son. His boy was to be a -“cultured gentleman,” moving in the “best society.” Also, the boy -should have all the “fun” which first poverty and then business cares -had denied to the old man. He sent young Jones to the most famous -schools both here and abroad; and he gave him plenty of money. It is -not definitely known whether the old man was proud of the results of -his method of bringing up a boy so far as he saw them before he died; -but there is reason to believe that he was. Certainly, the boy was as -different as it is possible to imagine from his plain, rather coarse, -very manly if also very unscrupulous father. The boy had all his -father’s supreme contempt for the ordinary moral code and for the mass -of “weaklings” who live under it and suffer themselves to be plucked. -There the resemblance between the two ends. In place of a brain, the -boy acquired at college and elsewhere a lump of vanities, affectations -and poses. Surrounded by hirelings from infancy, he became convinced -that he was the handsomest in body and the most brilliant in mind that -the world had in recent centuries produced. He thought, having been -assured of it by shopkeepers and agents, that his taste was almost too -fine for a coarse, commercial era, that his nerves were almost too -delicate even for the works of the greatest musicians and painters and -sculptors and poets, that he was living both within and without a sort -of tone-poem. - -When he came into his own and descended to Wall street, he was -gratified but not surprised to learn that Wall street entertained his -own exalted opinion of himself. And when he heard on every side that, -in addition to being such an exquisite as a Lucullus or a Louis XIV -would have copied, he was the greatest financier that ever lived, a -boy-wonder at high finance, a greater than his father, the brain of a -Nathan Rothschild in the body of a young Apollo, he accepted it all -as the matter-of-course. Like so many of our very rich, he had an -economical streak in him--but this was a profound secret, hardly known -even to himself. So, he readily fell in with Wall street’s pleasant -way of saving its own money and living off the money of other people. -He plunged into the wildest extravagances, imitating and striving to -outdo the young scions of plutocracy with whom he associated uptown. -And like them, he made the people of whose trust funds his wealth gave -him control, pay the bills. It is vulgar to pay one’s own bills, but -there is no objection to their being paid out of another’s pocket. It -saves one from the degradation of counting the cost, of thinking about -prices and limits of incomes and such low things. - -No sooner was he fairly launched than a half dozen of the great -plutocrats, with wild shouts of adulation, proclaimed him their leader, -put him in a commanding position in all their big swindling schemes -called “finance” in Wall street. “You’re it, my lad,” they cried. “We -take a back seat. Go up front where you belong. We’ll do whatever you -say.” - -Is it strange that the young man went about as if he were Mercury of -the winged feet? Is it strange that he got into the habit of greeting -his fellow-men with that gracious sweetness which kings alone have--and -they only on the stage or in novels? And when it is added that uptown -the married women flattered him, all the girls languished upon him, -everybody pronounced him a devil of a fellow, a heart-breaker, a real, -twenty-four carat, all-wool “cuss,” is it not wonderful that he did not -go quite mad and dress in purple and wear laces and a sword? - -Indeed, he did have those moments of absolute mental aberration, and -had to go to or give fancy balls to hide his lunacy from the world. At -those balls he always dressed in some ancient kingly costume; and so -evident was it that he thought himself indeed a king, holding a grand -levee, that a smirk followed in his wake as he stepped grandly about--a -smirk that burst into a titter as soon as he was out of ear-shot. Yet -really he was not the least bit more ridiculous than the other sons and -daughters of plutocracy, all dressed up as kings and queens and nobles -and grandees, and wondering if the imaginary were not the real and -their moments in ordinary clothes a nightmare. - -On and on he went, madder and madder, so crazy about himself that even -his plutocratic “lieutenants,” who were using him as a stool-pigeon, -could hardly keep their faces straight. At last he got to the stage -at which the old kings of France got just before the Revolution--the -mental state superinduced by beginning their education by setting -in their copy-books as a writing model, “Kings may do whatever they -please.” He never had had any sense of trusteeship; he had been -flattered into believing that the railway or manufactory in which he -owned a large amount of stock was his very own, that wages and salaries -paid and dividends declared were his royal and gracious largess. But -he at first had a dim sense that this great truth must not be publicly -aired, that it was prudent to let the common people believe they had -some share in the enterprise. Now, however, this dim respect for, or, -rather, tolerance of, a popular delusion vanished. With rolling eyes -and haughty nose and lips and high-stepping legs he advanced boldly and -publicly into his kingdom. A Russian grand-duke said of the Russian -people, “These fleas imagine they are the dog.” Young Jones said in -effect the same thing of the depositors and stockholders in “my” -enterprises, and showed publicly that he thought it. - -Great excitement. His plutocrat “lieutenants,” seeing that their graft -through this joyous young ass was imperiled, tried to quiet him. -Failing there, they tried to cajole, then to cow the insurgent “fleas.” -But all in vain. The ears of Jones, attuned only to adulatory sounds, -were assailed by such shuddering rudenesses as “Petty larceny thief! -Jackass! Swindler! Puller-in for the big gamblers! Crazy numskull!” - -Frightful, wasn’t it? Not that he was in the least disturbed in his own -exalted opinion of himself. An angel come from heaven direct would -have moved him only to light, incredulous laughter by telling him the -plain truth about himself. Still, the clamor was unpleasant; the open -sneers, the sly stabs. And, above all, the ingratitude! The ingratitude -of his associates in “society” who had got so much expensive -entertainment and so much inspiration from him. The ingratitude of the -people, his vassals, whom he paid salaries and wages and dividends, -whom he permitted to deposit in his banks and to invest in his -enterprises! - -His soul is brave, as becomes the soul porphyrogenetic. But, as it is -also a sensitive soul, how it is wrung! - -The trouble with our young Jones is that he was premature--not in -thought, but in showing his thoughts. Only premature. The madness that -ravaged him is in the plutocratic air. Many eyes are rolling, many -fingers are twitching in the premonitory symptoms of the malady. A few -years at our plutocracy’s present rate of progress, and Jones will be -recognized as a martyr. “Jones was born a little too soon. Jones came -to a climax a little before the season,” the dandies will say. - -June is the time for roses. Jones came in April. Poor Jones! Poor April -rose! - -Such is the mode of the “born success”; now for the young man who is -born with brains and appetites and ambitions only. He is determined to -achieve a plutocratic success; looks about him for the road that leads -to palaces, equipages, yachts--all that gives one title to a seat at -the table of honor at this banquet of extravagant luxury. He sees at -once that to become a multi-millionaire he must use his brains to force -or to cajole the multi-millionaires to make him one of them. - -He must pattern after those who are far on the way to achieving -his kind of success: this corporation lawyer earning his hundred -thousand or more a year as the legal servant of rich men; that railway -president with his fifty thousand a year and perquisites, earned as -the commercial servant of rich men; that manager getting a salary of -one hundred and twenty-five thousand as a seeker of safe investments -for surplus millions of income--again a servant of rich men; that bank -president with salary and opportunities together netting him upward -of two hundred thousand a year--again a servant of the rich; that -broker who put by half a million last year as a result of his skill -and assiduity in the service of rich operators; that doctor who made -seventy-five thousand in fees and two hundred thousand in Wall Street -last year on “tips” from grateful patients--again the rewards of -service to the rich. - -Our young candidate for success has brains to sell; he wants customers -with money. He hopes ultimately to sell these brains at a very high -price; he wants customers with lots of money, millions of money, in -which he may presently share largely. He must ingratiate himself with -the rich; must go where they are to be found, not only in business -hours, but also in hours of relaxation. He must not only work hard; he -must also play hard and high--must lead the life of the rich as far as -possible. His air, his dress, his style of living, all must be such -that he will be regarded as rich and progressive. To drudge and to -economize and to keep away from the extravagance downtown and up will -mean a small success, or at best one that will not lead to the lofty -height of fashion and social position upon which he has fixed his eyes. - -He may have a streak of incurable folly in him. His effort to be “a man -of the world” may draw him from discreet dissipation into that vortex -which swallows up all weaklings not secured by great wealth. But let -us suppose that he is not a weakling and that he keeps clearly in mind -that at the basis of all success lies clear-headed, incessant industry. -He works steadily at his business, commercial or professional; he shows -capacity and is advanced; he is soon getting four or five thousand -a year. At the same time he has prospered in what may be called the -uptown end of his business; he has made acquaintances among the rich -socially; several women of importance are interested in him and are -telling their husbands and their husbands’ friends that he has brains. -The men are seeing that the women are not mistaken. - -In any American city except New York or Chicago, our young man would -now be regarded as a person of some consequence. In New York or Chicago -he has merely reached the point at which he can, if he is sagacious, -measure his insignificance. He has worked hard, but the real day’s toil -has only begun. He has raised himself from the class that includes -hundreds of thousands; but he is still in a class that includes tens of -thousands. - -Perhaps this discourages him, makes him feel that he can never attain -the paradise of multi-millionaires, or that, if he did attain it, he -would be too exhausted to enjoy it. Perhaps experience has given him -a clearer insight into the real meaning of his ambitions, and he is -disgusted with their pettiness and sordidness, and begins to long for -self-respect and decency and manhood. Perhaps his dream of success has -been interrupted by a dream of sentiment. He may decide to marry and -settle down--he has found New York drearily cold and lonely. - -In that event he gives up his bachelor apartments in the edge of the -fashionable district; he is seen no more at his club--indeed, he has -resigned from it; he is forgotten by his fashionable friends; he and -his wife live obscurely in a flat or an apartment hotel far from the -world of fashion, or in a cottage down in the country--a commuter’s -cottage, as unlike as possible the multi-millionaire’s cottage of -marble or limestone, of which he once dreamed. And as he is no longer -of the world with which we are concerned, he drops out of sight--for -the present. - -But, on the other hand, perhaps his discovery of his insignificance -does not discourage him, but only serves to rouse him to greater -efforts. His close inspection of the palaces and performances of -the fashionable and extravagant rich has fired his imagination and -energy. In that case he does not marry. “I am too poor,” he says, as -he looks at his paltry income of five thousand a year and thinks on -the humble ménage it would maintain, and remembers that his poorest -married acquaintances up in the Fifth avenue or Lake Drive district -have fifteen thousand a year and cannot afford to entertain or to keep -a carriage, and are always fretting about money. He considers what a -“decent” hat or dress for a woman costs, and--well, his tailor’s bill -was seven hundred dollars last year and he has almost no clothes. -He remembers his bills for the few small and very modest dinners -he gave--a week’s earnings gone in a few minutes and the dinner a -poor affair beside the poorest he has had at the houses of his rich -acquaintances. To console himself for his heroic sacrifice of sentiment -to ambition, he takes a somewhat better apartment for his bachelor -self in a more fashionable apartment house--his rent is twelve hundred -a year. He works hard downtown; he continues to work hard uptown. He -works as cleverly in the one quarter as in the other. He is always -seen with rich people; he belongs to fashionable clubs; he dines in -palaces; he goes for Saturday-to-Monday visits at great, extravagantly -maintained country houses; he is seen in boxes at the opera, at the -horse show; he expands his tastes and his expenditures with his rapidly -expanding income. His “fixed charges” are now fifteen thousand a -year--very moderate for a man of his associations. - -In addition to these absolute necessities he spends about fifteen -thousand more upon presents and entertaining. Half a dozen men living -in the apartment house he lives in spend twice as much as he does and -do not consider themselves, and are not considered, either extravagant -or dissipated. - -He is making a great deal of money, but he feels--and is--poor. -However, he is sustained and soothed by the certainty of riches -immediately ahead. He has been spending, but it has been in the nature -of an investment--a most judicious investment from the standpoint of -his purposes. And presently his cleverness and audacity and “large -ideas” have their reward; and then he marries. - -She has tastes which are exactly his. She is willing to marry him -because she has not made the success she and her mother dreamed of and -strove for. She has some money--their joint income, while not imposing -as New York incomes go, is still large enough to enable them to make “a -decent start in life,” as their “set” interprets life. - -Presently we find them installed in a “small” house or “little” -apartment--the rent is more than ten thousand a year, and they have -twelve servants. His skill as a money-maker is talked about; her -dresses are admired and envied; their equipages, their surroundings, -their dinners are models of luxurious good taste. As both are shrewd -managers, their forty thousand a year enables them to seem to be -spending twice that amount. They are in the high-road of plutocratic -happiness and are creditably charioted. And as the years pass, their -increasing wealth rolls up on itself as large wealth has a habit of -doing. They annually tour the multi-millionaire circuit in great -state--North Carolina, Hempstead, the Hudson, London, Paris, Newport. -They have children. - -No healthier, rosier, more intelligent children can be found -anywhere than theirs. They have the best care that competent nurses -and governesses can give. They live by the clock, are fed the most -expensive and at the same time the most sensible food. They are -dressed in a manner that makes plain mothers blink and stare. There -are only two of them and the elder is only seven, but their clothing -bill last year was fourteen hundred. It will be less, much less, as -they grow older, for it is not good form to dress boys and girls -extravagantly--at least not yet. They speak French and German as -fluently as they speak English, and far more correctly. They have -everything for mind and body--except the direct constant care of their -mother. They have everything--that money can buy. - -Let us go back to the cross-roads and take a candidate for success -who, when he achieved his modest five thousand a year, married and -went to live in a flat or small suite in an apartment hotel of the -kind that would have been called luxurious a dozen years ago, but is -now third-class. Let us assume that his wife, whether she came from -out-of-town or from the city, is the typical present-day big-city -woman of extravagant ideas--is, like her husband, wealth-crazy and -luxury-crazy and society-mad. - -In all probability they will have no children. Children are not popular -among the extravagant in New York--dogs are less expensive, less -troublesome, fully as affectionate and far less unfashionable. The -extravagant rich still tolerate children, possibly because of a quaint, -made-in-England theory that aristocratic families should maintain the -“family line.” But “climbers” cannot afford the necessary time and -money. It was Swift--was it not?--who first called attention to the -fact that the attitude in climbing and in crawling is the same. - -Our young climber is busy all day downtown--busy making money. His -wife is busy uptown--busy spending the money he makes, or as much of -it as she can threaten or wheedle away from him. She falls into a set -of young married women with husbands and tastes like hers. They, like -their husbands, think only of wealth and extravagance. And while they -wait for their dreams to come true they invest every cent they can lay -their hands upon in an imitative vain show. - -Our young man’s wife reads the fashionable intelligence with her -coffee. She presently goes forth as fashionably dressed as if their -income were three or four times what it is. She walks in fashionable -streets or sits in some fashionable restaurant, there to view and study -and envy the fashionable women she reads about. She “shops” in the -fashionable millinery and dressmaking establishments--not to buy, but -to steal hints for the use of her own cheaper milliner and dressmaker -in getting together her imitation costumes. She strives to model her -person, her dress, her walk, her conduct, her conversation upon the -conception of what is fashionable in the multi-millionaire’s set. - -As our young man has the genius for money-getting, he gradually becomes -rich. As his wealth grows he and his wife “drop” the “friends” of less -income, gather about them “friends” of their own fortune, and reach -out for “friends” who have fortunes greater than their own. And at -last, perhaps by way of a season in London under the guidance of some -impecunious woman of title, they arrive at the bliss of being able to -tour the multi-millionaire’s circuit in good company all the way. And a -crowd gapes at their palace doors and windows whenever they “entertain.” - -Those city crowds that pause to gape whenever more than one carriage -halts before a palace! - -Fifteen years ago the most extravagant millionaire in New York--a great -financier--spent upon his domestic establishment, everything included, -eighty thousand a year. Very few people of his set spent half as much, -and the most of them spent less than twenty-five thousand. To-day, for -the fashionable extravagant set, eighty thousand a year would not be -far from the average expenditure, taking rich and “poor” together. When -that financier’s family were the leaders, the principal entertainments -in fashionable society were modest affairs--though they were not then -regarded as economical--and were given by association. To-day every -palace has its great dining-hall and its huge ballroom. And the very -rich who have not palaces give their big entertainments individually -in hotels and restaurants, hiring a large part of the building for -the exclusive use of their guests, and spending thirty or forty -thousand dollars or more--in not a few instances far more--upon each -entertainment. - -To-morrow-- - -In this early twentieth century--which bids fair to be known as -America’s century--New York, the capital of our plutocracy, blazes -out a world-capital. Into it are pouring wealth and luxury, pictures, -statuary and works of art of all kinds and periods; jewels and -collections of rarities. In it are rising miles on miles of palaces, -wonderful parks and driveways. It has begun to be a City Splendid. It -has already won a place in the line of world-capitals back and back -through the ages to the mighty, nameless, forgotten cities of the -Valley of the Euphrates. And New York begins where the others reached -their climax. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -CASTE-COMPELLERS - - -It is still an open and anxious question whether this fashionable -society, the growth, as we have seen, of the last two or three decades, -constitutes a genuine aristocracy. The society itself hopes so and -tries to believe so, and struggles to forget its uncertain tenure, -its sordid basis and its humble ancestry. And it is encouraged in its -pretensions by many thousands of agile and aggressive climbers who -would not for worlds lose their delusion that their climbing has a -goal, and a goal worth achieving. But uneasy doubts refuse to down, -and whenever one of the fashionables says, with a brave essay at the -careless, matter-of-course tone, “We of the upper classes,” he--or she, -for it is more often she--can’t refrain from a furtive glance to see -whether all faces within sight are perfectly sober, self-complacent and -approving. - -No such uncertainty, however, exists in the case of the servants of -wealth and fashion. They know that they themselves are an aristocracy, -and they are determined that there shall be no doubt about their being -dignified, if menial, bulwarks of an aristocracy of their employers. -These servants, both male and female, are not Americans. Once in a -while you will find among them a naturalized American; once in a long -while you will find a shamefaced, apologetic American-born. But they -are essentially an immigrant aristocracy, and nine-tenths of them are -from England, where the iron caste-distinctions of feudalism have come -down even unto the present day, not only merely intact, but monstrously -exaggerated, where snobbishness is not only part of the statute law, -but deeply imbedded in the vastly more potent customary law, and is -even incorporated in the divine law, is read out from the pulpit each -Sunday and piously echoed by reverent congregations. - -In Europe the “upper class” and its haughty servants are born to their -lofty stations; here the “upper class” is manufactured, largely out -of watered stock and bonds and stolen franchises, and its servants -are imported. It is the natural instinct of small people, suddenly -elevated in material wealth, to try to believe that the wealth which -relieves them of the necessity for daily labor also produces a -chemical change, a refining transformation, in the clay whereof their -singularly human-looking bodies are composed. Against this instinct is -the good old American sense of humor that recognizes in the unerasable -physical and mental mint-marks of human brotherhood Nature’s mocking -rebuke to the vanities of pose and pretense. But few people’s sense of -humor extends to themselves; and if they get the least encouragement, -off they go on a high horse. Our rich people get more than a little -encouragement from certain of their fellow-citizens and from -upper-class foreigners, who for obvious reasons cultivate and flatter -them in the delusion that it is not their bank accounts but themselves -that are superior. But the fashionable section would never have gone so -fast or so far in this hallucination had it not been for this important -menial aristocracy. Students of human development, in their passion -for dealing only with the seemingly big, with the high-sounding, often -reach conclusions ludicrously wide of the truth, often neglect those -humble but mighty causes that really shape human destiny. They find -in the great and burning thoughts of philosophers the explanations of -revolutions which a glance at the prices of bread would more justly -explain. Let us make no such mistake. In seeking the cause of our rich -people’s sudden and furious craze for caste let us not be proud. Let us -turn away from the bronze front doors and the magnificent drawing-room -and go humbly to the area gate and the backstairs quarters, where the -real cause of their curious, amusing and pitiful backsliding from the -grand concepts of Democracy is to be found. - -When rich Americans first began to go abroad the servility of -English servants offended. But custom soon changed that. Servility -is insidious. The Americans, longing to feel themselves the equals -of the complacent and secure upper class in England, and realizing -that they could never hope to get deferential respect from their -fellow-countrymen--even from those willing to go into domestic -service--began to import servants. “The English servants are so much -better, you know; understand their business and their place.” But the -English servant’s “place” in the social hierarchy is dependent upon his -master’s place. Whoever seeks to lower the master in the social scale -seeks to lower the servant. On the other hand, whatever raises the -master socially raises the servant. Your Englishman who is a servant -born and bred is even more incapable of understanding and warming up -to Democracy than his king would be. He loathes Democracy--does it not -lower him in the social scale by putting all men on the same level; -does it not take away his dear gods of rank and birth and leave him -godless and adrift? He wants none of it. It may be good enough for -foreigners, but not for an Englishman. - -Once the imported members of the servile aristocracy were among us in -considerable numbers they began to plot and to compel an aristocracy -above them. The general theory is that these rich Americans who have -gone crazy about themselves were infected by associating with the -aristocracies of the Old World, and no doubt that association is partly -responsible. But the main cause of the malady is that every American -family living ostentatiously, or even at all luxuriously, soon found -established within its gates an aristocracy of caste that compelled the -family to seem to put on airs. And any American family that assembles -a household staff of these aristocrats will soon be strutting and -posing, however hard it may strive to remain sensible. The servants -simply won’t have “under-bred” Democracy; they would despise themselves -if they found themselves working for men and women not their superiors. -And it isn’t in human nature, weakened by the example of all around -it, to resist the subtle and insinuating compulsion of the “well-bred” -hints and innuendos of “well-bred” servants. A man and a woman are no -longer master and mistress of themselves, not to speak of their house, -when they have given way to the luxury and vanity of a real high-class -English butler backed up by half a dozen English footmen, an English -coachman and three or four English grooms. He and she will begin to cut -pigeon-wings like a colored gentleman on the first warm day of Spring. -He and she will do it because the servants expect it, because the -servants have convinced them that it is the correct form, because the -servants will not tolerate any departure from the pose of “my lord” and -“my lady”--and because such posings are so titillating to the vanity. -And from striving to seem a truly “my lord” and a truly “my lady” -before the “well-bred” butler and coachman and their henchmen, the man -and the woman pass on naturally and by imperceptible stages to making -the same ludicrous struggle in all seriousness before their associates, -all of whom are doing precisely the same silly thing from precisely the -same silly cause. - -There is a woman in one of our big cities who is now a leader of -fashion, very “classy” indeed, most glib on the subject of the -“traditions of people of our station.” Her father was an excellent -peddler, her mother a farmer’s daughter who could be induced to “help -out” a neighbor in the rush of the harvest time. This typical American -woman behaved very sensibly so long as her sensible father and mother -were alive and until the craze for English households arose. She fell -in line. But the haughty servants were most trying at first. For -instance, she loved bread spread with molasses. She ate it before the -butler once; his face told her what a hideous “break” she had made. -She tried to conquer this low taste--never did weak woman fight harder -against the gnawings of sinful appetite. At last she gave way, and in -secret and in stealth indulged. She was not caught and, encouraged, she -proceeded to add one low common habit to another until she was leading -a double life. It had its terrors; it had its compensating joys. But -before she had gone too far she was happily saved. One morning her maid -caught her, and the whole household was agog. The miseries endured in -the few following weeks completely cured her. She is now in private, as -well as in public, as sound a snob as ever reveled in “exclusiveness.” - -This is no isolated case. For bread and molasses substitute any -plain, natural human habit not tolerated in England, and you have a -story in outline that would apply to hundreds. How contemptuously -our fashionables would deny if accused! How indignantly the younger -generations who have never known what it was to be free from the -English strait-jacket would protest against such coarse insinuations -about our aristocracy. But the laughable truth remains unshaken--and -also the truth that our aristocracy is wofully servant-pecked. - -Fully to realize what a tremendous pressure this servile aristocracy -entrenched in the privacy of the home can exert, let us glance at the -composition of a fashionable household in America to-day. Take a family -of some aspiring money-lender or stock swindler or franchise grabber -who has got together in one way and another--principally another--a -fortune of a dozen millions or so. There are himself, his wife with -the longing to be “in it” or to keep “in it” gnawing at her, the grown -son and the grown daughter. Papa is willing to have the family show -off, but he is not quite ready to go the limit. So the establishment is -what other fashionable people call modest, and what his wife and two -children tell him is “mean.” Here is the schedule: - - _General Staff_--Housekeeper, a broken-down “gentlewoman”; butler, - formerly with the Earl of Tyne and still with him in spirit; chef, a - Frenchman, but thoroughly Anglicized in soul, though not in accent or - cooking; coachman, an Englishman, recently with Her Grace the Dowager - Duchess of Doodles; chauffeur, a Frenchman who speaks to nobody unless - spoken to and keeps clear of the whole mess as much as possible. - - _Housekeeper’s Staff_--Two English parlor maids from the best English - houses, most expert in handling bric-à-brac and such perishables; two - very humble, very impudent English chambermaids; a French laundress, - who disdains all but the butler and the coachman, and sighs for the - haughty chauffeur; a seamstress, a great gossip and an authority on - “fashionable intelligence”; a linen woman, daughter of an English - tavern-keeper whose glory was that he had been valet to a duke; a - useful woman, for packing, etc., etc., most “respectable,” most - English; a useful man, for heavy work, windows, errands, etc., an - Englishman who shows that he is spiritually prostrate whenever a - superior speaks to him; three chambermaids, very English-Irish. - - _Butler’s Staff_--Two Englishmen to stand in the hall in immaculate - livery, white silk stockings, etc., etc.; two Englishmen, equally - immaculate, to assist at table, etc.; two other English assistants, - not at all times immaculate. - - _Coachman’s Staff_--Four English grooms. - - _Chauffeur’s Staff_--One assistant, learning the profession. - - _Chef’s Staff_--An assistant, a Frenchwoman; two English kitchen maids - or “scullions.” - - _Personal Servants_--Valet to the master, a quiet, well-bred, insolent - Englishman; valet to the young master, an understudy to the other - valet; maid to Madame (French); maid to Mademoiselle (French); valet - to the upper caste men-servants (English); valet to the lower class - men-servants (English); maids to the servants (three English-Irish); - laundress to the servants (English). - -Quite a staff--and it does not include Madame’s private secretary, an -American, a “gentlewoman,” thoroughly converted to the English system, -or Mademoiselle’s visiting governess, a product of ten years’ training -in a New York private school for the “young ladies of the upper class,” -or extra servants of all kinds that are constantly coming and going. -The total monthly pay-roll is never below one thousand seven hundred -dollars; often, in the height of the winter season in New York or of -the summer season at Newport, it climbs up to two thousand dollars. -And, putting the feeding of all these people at twenty dollars apiece -a month, which is exceedingly, ridiculously low, the board-bill would -be more than eight hundred dollars a month. Then, naturally, all of -them are as careless and as wasteful as they dare to be, and, wherever -possible, corrupt in the taking of commissions from the “tradespeople.” -This means a squandering of more than their wages and board together. -But it is indeed a most “modest” establishment--there are at least a -thousand in this country far more imposing. Why, our hero has not even -provided servants for the servants of his servants! And, as everybody -knows, that is always done in a really bang-up, swell, first-class -establishment. Also, his liveries, although what the “tradespeople” -would call elegant, are not nearly so sumptuous as those of the -neighboring establishments. - -But, dissatisfied though the servants are, they do their best to keep -up appearances and they fight strenuously for the caste system. They -are, roughly speaking, divided into five ranks. At the top stand the -private secretary, the visiting governess, and the housekeeper. They -are almost “gentlefolk”; in fact, they are gentlefolk in abeyance, as -it were, like cadets of a royal house which has been kicked out by -its unfeeling subjects. Next come butler and coachman and chef. Each -admits the right of the other two to high rank, but each feels toward -the others as they fancy a marquis must feel toward an earl. Below -these high haughtinesses is the main body of servants, with the lowest -rank made up of stablemen, scullions, servants’ servants. Each servant -fiercely insists upon his own station, and still more fiercely insists -upon the lower station of those whom the code of caste has assigned -there. And all the servants insist upon the aristocratic principle -being enforced from top to bottom of the household. The “master” and -his wife, the boy and the girl, know that if they for an instant -drop the pose they will be the butt of ridicule and contempt in the -servants’ hall. - -The effect of this incessant, subtle pressure upon the grown people -is strong enough. But they retain some glimmerings of a sane point of -view; at times they realize that there is not a little rotten nonsense -in their mode of life. But think of the children! They were born -into this noisome atmosphere; they are never allowed to breathe any -other--for, even when they go away to school, it is to some “select,” -“exclusive” institution, or to associate only with the “select” and -“exclusive” in the big college. They know no more of the free and -national and growing American life than a Mammoth Cave fish knows -of the light and the radiant waters of the upper world. They regard -Americanism as synonymous with demagoguery and anarchy. And they -become sincere and, because of their wealth and display, successful -missionaries of the gospel of snobbishness to all the children of the -rich and the well-to-do brought into contact with them. - -Truly, the service is not the most important item that comes up the -back stairs of the fine houses of our plutocracy. The ideas--they are -the real item. - -English servants do not, as a rule, like to come to this country. -Few of the best class, as yet, will consent to give up the splendor -and assured aristocracy of England and go to live among a lot of -vulgarians, hard though those vulgarians are striving to be worthy -of the support of an aristocratic menialdom. Those few of the best -who do condescend to exile themselves wear sad faces and show that -they keenly feel the humiliation. For they cannot blind themselves -to the truth that their masters and mistresses, striving hard to -please and to delude, are still not really “ladies” and “gentlemen,” -but just Americans. Have they titles? No. Do the common people doff -the hat to them? No. Have they “ancestry”? They pretend to have, but -the genealogical trees look about as much like real trees as the -papier-mâché palm looks like the genuine thing; and Burke’s peerage and -the Almanach de Gotha know them not. No, they are not aristocrats, and -it pains the aristocratic servants to serve them much as it would pain -a first gentleman of the bedchamber to King Edward to get on his knees -to some “big nigger” who called himself Emperor of Ashanteeland. The -commiseration of all sympathizers with sensitive souls belongs of right -to these aristocrats of menialdom in exile. - -The great mass of these imported servants, excepting those who come -here for the chance to become men and women and to shake off servitude, -are a worthless lot, weedings from those perfect English gardens of -menialdom. And a hard time their American masters have with them. -Insolence, shiftlessness, drunkenness, petty thieving are tolerated -to and beyond the most asinine patience; then, one furious day, the -housekeeper, under orders from an outraged master or mistress, ejects -the whole crew and gets in an entirely new lot. But this revolt of the -downtrodden “upper classes” is rare and dangerous and often disastrous. -For this servile aristocracy is a close corporation, very limited -in numbers and fully awake to its own power over the plutocrats who -must at any cost in money, manhood and discomfort have servility and -an imitation of the English way of living. Woe, woe, woe unto the -plutocrat who gets himself on the imported servants’ black-list! He may -have actually to close in whole or in part his vast houses, and to -cease from inviting in his hordes of rich friends to see how much more -gaudily he is showing off than they are. He may have to call in colored -or plain Irish or Swedish servants, mostly women, to save him and his -family from the horrors of waiting on themselves. But one shrinks from -pushing inquiry in so harrowing a direction. - -How long will it be before we have a home-grown menial aristocracy -to bolster up and make strong our fashionable aristocracy? It may -be longer than one might imagine. The educated people, the lawyers, -superintendents, merchants, social, political and financial hangers-on, -who serve the plutocracy, fall easily into servile habits. The big -corporation lawyer and his family, the fifty thousand dollars a year -dummy railway president and his family, eagerly pay court to the great -plutocrat, bow and scrape and mould themselves to his and his family’s -humors. But the “lower classes” here remain obstinately insolent. They -go into plutocratic domestic service only under stress; they act in a -manner that exasperates their servility-seeking employers; they leave -as soon as they can get any sort of job anywhere. Also, they rouse the -soundly sleeping or stunned manhood and womanhood of the imported -aristocracy-adoring servants, and so compel the constant recruiting of -the ranks of the menial aristocracy by fresh importations. - -True, among the mass of our immigrants, almost all from countries -where a real caste system has prevailed always, there is a tendency -toward a searching after an aristocracy in this country. They miss -it; they cannot believe that a land in all its physical aspects like -unto the lands from which they have fled should be without what has -always seemed to them a natural and necessary part of the order of -the universe. But they hunt for this aristocracy not with the idea -of worshipping it, but with the idea of destroying it. And hence we -find that the loudest angry assertion of the existence of a true -aristocracy here comes from those of our democracy-loving citizens who -are foreign-born. They see this monstrous pretense rearing itself as -imposingly as the true aristocracies of Europe; and they do not pause -to distinguish between marble and plaster painted to look like marble. -They raise a wild shriek and demand that snickersnees be drawn and that -heads begin to fall. A natural mistake, and highly gratifying to our -would-be aristocrats. They are not terrified by the uncouth and futile -clamors; though to make the thing more realistic to themselves, they -sometimes pretend to be. But they are through and through pleased at -hearing themselves in seriousness called what they would fain believe -themselves to be; and they say delightedly: “At last, the lower classes -begin to recognize themselves, and us!” - -But this rejoicing is premature. They are right in seeing that it -takes a body of self-confessed peasantry to make a prince--that the -prince proclaiming himself and proclaimed by hirelings and dependents -only is no prince at all, but a laughing-stock. But they are wrong in -seeing signs of a forming peasantry; what they see is an un-forming -peasantry--a vastly different matter. - -The obstinacy of the American and thoroughly Americanized “lower -classes” seems incurable. And until it is cured, until a body of -citizens is created that will accept the aristocratic idea not as -applying to themselves and making them superior, but as applying to -a fixed class of superiors to whom they themselves must be and must -remain inferiors--until then, the plutocracy will sigh in vain for -transformation into an aristocracy. Imported servants and our own -snob graduates of snob colleges with yearnings after the “cultured -and refining influences of caste” will in vain crook the pregnant -hinges of the knee. The plutocracy will be haunted and humiliated by -the undignifying grin of the “proletariat,” incurably and militantly -democratic. - -And the more excited about itself and eager to show off the plutocracy -becomes, the more insistent and imperious will become the inquiry -into the origin and the rightfulness of these vast fortunes that are -being reaped where their owners have not sown and squandered after the -proverbial manner of ill-gotten gains. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -PAUPER-MAKING - - -There is a story of a rich woman--an Austrian, perhaps--who was chilled -through by a long drive on a bitter winter day. - -“Make a huge fire in my sitting-room,” she said to a servant as she -entered her country house, “and order wood distributed to the poor of -the village.” - -She sat by the huge fire for ten minutes and then rang the bell. “Never -mind about distributing that wood,” she said to the answering servant. -“The weather seems to have moderated.” - -The theory back of this story is the popular one: that the great -comfort of great wealth hardens the rich, makes them insensible to -privation. The fact is the reverse--at least so far as America is -concerned. Nowhere in the world is the value of wealth so grossly, so -ludicrously over-estimated as among our plutocrats--not unnaturally, -since their only title to distinction is their wealth, and a man -cannot but reverence that which makes him distinguished. Nowhere, -therefore, are the discomforts of poverty so exaggerated as in the -palaces of our very rich. And so eager are the men as well as the -women for opportunities to exercise their emotions over poverty and -destitution that they are rapidly creating a huge pauper class. Demand -is creating supply. - -The poor give to the poor through sympathy. The rich give to the poor -through pity. The sympathetic poor are many, and so their pennies -and food-donations, small in the single, pile up mountainously in -the total. But they are sparsely and more or less judiciously, -because intelligently, distributed. The very rich are, comparatively, -though not absolutely, many; and they almost all give what seems to -the ordinary run of well-to-do people very large sums. They give -carelessly, freely. Though warned by often-exposed abuses, they never -take warning. Each new fraud finds them credulous and eager. They want -to give; they want to show that they are generous and helpful; to -caution them is to irritate them. - -Thus pauperization is a vast and thriving industry. It is said, and -there is no reason to doubt it, that there are several hundred families -on Manhattan Island--enough to populate a small city--that have lived -well for years wholly upon charity, no member of them ever doing any -work beyond writing begging letters or patrolling begging routes. In -addition there are thousands of families supported in large part by -relief got from rich men and rich women. And the same state of affairs -is found wherever the very rich, living exclusive and aloof lives, have -built their palaces. - -To play Lord or Lady Bountiful is such a self-gratifying part. It is -the traditional, the conventional part of the very rich toward the -very poor. Beggars are so voluble in thanks. It sounds so well to -talk of “my worthy poor,” of what “I am doing for charity.” So many -hours that would otherwise be boresome can be filled with receiving -and patronizing cringing, slathering paupers or with nosing about -tenements, receiving on every floor noisy showers of blessings in -exchange for less than the price of a supper after the theatre. - -The whole business lessens the vanity-disturbing doubts that -sometimes will arise even among the very rich as to the validity of -the distinctions in this Democracy between “upper class” and “lower -classes.” In some cases the motive is higher. In many cases there is an -admixture of the higher motive. But the persistence of the very rich -in face of the plain showings of the harm they do makes it impossible -entirely to acquit large numbers of them. - -The pauperization plants of plutocracy fall into three classes--the -public, the semi-public and the private. - -The politicians have expanded, where they have not out and out -established, the public plants. Instead of making the people realize -the truth--that these plants are their property, paid for out of -their wages and giving service to them not as charity, but as -their hard-earned, paid-for right, the politicians turn them into -favor-distributing centres, centres for the distribution of alms -in exchange for political power. The semi-public plants for the -manufacture of paupers are the gifts of very rich men, usually men -who made their own money; after the first generation the very rich do -not as a rule go in for large public gifts. It is never profitable or -just to examine deep into motives; sufficient to say that, with a few -exceptions, these semi-public philanthropic institutions for giving -something in exchange for nothing are avoided by all but such of the -poor as don’t mind thinking themselves paupers or being looked on and -treated as paupers. - -Finally, there are the private pauperization plants. From them might be -excepted those of the rich men and the rich women who have gone into -the relief business in a systematic way and operate through thoroughly -organized, carefully and competently conducted bureaus. Their theory -of helping is not exactly consistent with the old American idea of -“root hog or die,” but neither is it wholly exploitation of their own -personal vanity without any regard to the merits of applicants. They -give relief, but they try to make sure that relief is, according to -their very liberal notion of necessity, needed. - -Probably all but a very few of the families that are famous throughout -the country for wealth have organizations of this kind. But there are -upward of ten thousand millionaires concentrated in a few cities, -several hundred of them multi-millionaires. The overwhelming majority -of these go in for philanthropy, not on the carefully organized -system, but more or less haphazard giving, with never thorough -investigation, often with no investigation whatever. - -It seems impossible to make people in the habit of keeping themselves -clean believe that dirt is not necessarily or even frequently a proof -positive of poverty overwhelmed by adversity against which it has made -an honest struggle. And the rich people who like the “Bountiful” pose -refuse to believe that almost all honest destitution is relieved by its -neighbors and relatives, that nine out of ten cases of destitution are -fraudulent, that all the street beggars are liars, that no one need -go hungry or shelterless or cold if he will apply to the public or -semi-public institutions ready to relieve. So, we have Lord and Lady -Bountiful relieving grown people of the necessity of “hustling,” and, -worst of all, encouraging them to bring up their children as paupers -and beggars. - -So scandalous has this industry of pauper-making become that in -every city’s highways there are now children openly begging, -telling their whining lies of various more or less ingenious kinds, -pretending to sell newspapers or pencils or shoe-strings to give a -color of respectability to their shamelessness, or, rather, to the -shamelessness of their parents. - -The passing generation--the rustling, hustling, money-grabbing -generation--is usually rather shrewd in its philanthropies, as well as -generous. The “old man” was a car-driver, or a brakeman, or a plow-boy, -or a peasant’s son. He has poverty’s sympathy with poverty, but also -poverty’s suspicion of the cause of poverty. Thus, our cities have got -and are getting libraries, hospitals, free dispensaries, free technical -schools of various kinds, model tenements, and the like. Millions on -millions are given annually by “self-made” men, most of it as wisely as -giving can be. - -But shrewd as these men are, they often fail to see the difference -between the sympathetic, unselfish, man-to-man individual help they as -poor boys got from people of their own kind in better circumstances, -and this general, unequal, pitying, condescending charity which -gives indiscriminatingly something that is of value only to the -self-respecting, and too often takes away in exchange all, or nearly -all, self-respect. - -Still, though these “self-made” men give and give largely and with many -mistakes, they have the fear of pauper-making ever in mind. And when -they give to individuals they try to be doubly careful. - -In the second generation--what used to be but is no longer the -spendthrift generation--the very rich retrench in the matter of large -benefactions. The family position is established. None of the members -of it has ever known what it is to be hungry or cold without knowing -just where to turn for food and warmth. Sympathy, which was the -sentiment in the first generation, now becomes pity. Man-to-man is -changed into “Bountiful” and his or her “worthy poor.” And we have the -pauper-plant in full blast. - -Each day every rich man or woman who is at all well known receives -large numbers of begging letters--from beggars in Maine and in -Texas, in Florida and in Washington, in all parts of the Union. They -want loans. They want notes or mortgages paid. They want pianos and -trousseaus. They want pensions for crippled sons or daughters. Or they -want anything from old clothes to several thousand dollars to buy a -farm or a store. The apparent effrontery of these requests disappears -as the letters are read and the amazing, even pathetic, simplicity of -the writers stands out. - -Curiously enough, some of these requests, preposterous though they -are, are granted. A skilfully written letter sent to a certain kind of -rich person at just the right moment has been known to produce amazing -results. No reader of this book, however, need advise a beggar of his -acquaintance to try it. The two cents postage would be far more likely -to bring a return if invested in stocks of the mines of the mountains -in the moon. There are many of the rich who have every begging letter -that is at all reasonable or plausible thoroughly investigated by -a secretary--or by some local agent of a corporation in which the -recipient happens to be interested. Pity for the “worthy poor” is an -extremely potent force in the plutocracy. - -But it is local pauper-making that has the greatest fascination for the -rich man or woman who does not care to go into charity on the Carnegie -or Rockefeller or Armour scale, or to take the trouble to organize a -bureau that works with precision and without any advertisement of its -owner. The “agony stories” cooked up by the newspapers are noted, -the slums are ransacked, the parasites on “charity,” both those who -honestly deceive themselves and those who deliberately “graft,” are -eagerly welcomed and listened to. Thus there are a good many thousands -of rich city dwellers with incomes ranging from twenty thousand to -several hundred thousands a year, each of whom has his or her circle -of “worthy poor,” or gives regularly to those myriad petty enterprises -of misdirected or barefacedly fraudulent charity which enlist the -activities of so many “workers.” - -The women are the most persistent and unreasonable offenders in this -respect. Partly through idleness, partly through a craving to have -occupation and a sense of usefulness, partly through a profound pity -for their apparently unfortunate sisters, they pour out capital for -pauper-plants and search diligently for “worthy poor” to pauperize. - -Among the long-very-rich there is notable shyness of the larger kinds -of giving. No doubt at bottom this is due to increasing selfishness, -increasing absorption in amusements of the wholly selfish kinds. It -costs more and more every year to play the rich man’s part; more and -more imagination is brought to bear in developing it, both by rich -men eager to find new ways of showing off and by ingenious poor men -inventing new ways of making a living out of the rich upon whose -extravagance they thrive. The rich man, even where his income is huge, -is often pinched. He hates to give--he may find that his giving has -compelled him to forego a most attractive investment or has compelled -him to abstain from some new expensive luxury or pleasure. He hoards, -to be ready for such emergencies. Then if he has several children, he -wants to leave each of them as rich as possible so that they can all -live in the style to which they have been accustomed, the style in -which their friends and associates live. For worship of wealth you must -look among the long-very-rich. Those who pass Mammon’s statue with a -nod or a half-ashamed crook of a reluctant knee will have the pleasure -of seeing very, very many of the rich “old families” flat in the dust, -noses plowing it, and not a bit ashamed. - -Is this drying up of the charity of “philanthropy” wholly a matter for -regret? - -Several years ago a few young Americans from various parts of -the country began to spend their summer vacations at Woods Hole, -Massachusetts. They were young; they were poor; they were obscure; -they were hard-worked and hard-working as well; they were profoundly -indifferent to money or money gain; they were not even bothering -especially about fame. They had as their common bond a passion -for science. They had as their common aim the satisfying of that -divine curiosity which makes the man who has it toil incessantly and -unweariedly over ways more arduous and through wildernesses more -dangerous than those that baffled the seekers after the Holy Grail. -They longed--these earnest, poor, obscure young Americans--to penetrate -to Nature’s innermost laboratory, her workshop of workshops, her temple -of temples, there to surprise her supreme secret--the mystery of the -origin of life. - -Fifteen summers of this pursuit, free from self-seeking or sordidness -or jealousy, free from fame’s flatteries, and the Marine Biological -Laboratory of Woods Hole became famous wherever the human intellect is -respected. Its Knights of Science have not reached their goal--their -Holy Grail. But under the inspiration of the triple vow of Science for -her Knights--poverty, self-immolation and obedience to truth--they -have had adventures and have made discoveries so strange, so passing -strange, so wonderful, that all Americans are intensely proud of this -American institution, at once so small and so majestically great. - -Then came the proposal to endow this little laboratory with part of the -Carnegie millions and to erect it into a rich and aristocratic palace -of science. At first glance the proposal seemed as admirable as the -purpose that prompted it. And yet---- - -This is a day when the numerous newcomers among our multi-millionaires -are so pouring out the millions that it looks as if presently the -necessity for struggle, the incentive to struggle, in the development -of brain power, would be almost wholly removed. In the progress of -the race, wealth in possession has played a very small part--has more -often interfered to blight than to bless. Wealth possessed means ease -and power without effort, and a sense that the goal has been reached. -It means the mind at rest, tending to sloth and slumber, with life’s -greatest fears and greatest incentives removed. Above all, it means an -atmosphere of self-complacency and satiety and languor that insensibly -relaxes the strongest fibre. - -Carnegie millions may help to keep a-burning the light in that plain -little temple of science at Woods Hole--_may_, if judiciously used. But -not if they stifle the splendid, self-sacrificing, self-unconscious -enthusiasm which set that light a-blazing. The lesson is wider than -the instance--far wider. It was wealth and patronage that rotted the -splendid intellect of Greece; wealth again, and patronage, that brought -the Renaissance to an abrupt, inglorious end. And how much the English -intellect in its long period of most brilliant achievement owed to the -contempt of the English dominant classes--that of birth and that of -commerce--for scientists, writers and “those kinds of cattle!” - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE MADE-OVER WHITE HOUSE - - -We find plutocracy’s follies in full swing not alone in the great -cities, East and West, where the money-caste must have outward signs of -superiority to bolster up its pretensions, but in our national capital -as well--in what ought to be the high-set citadel of democratic dignity. - -Few Americans have any adequate idea of the system of etiquette which -has grown up there. The other day a newly appointed high officer of the -Government said: - -“My daughter went to lunch with the daughter of Secretary ---- -yesterday. She did not come home until long after she was expected, and -her mother asked her what was the matter. - -“‘Oh,’ she explained, ‘Secretary ----’s daughter was there, and none of -us could go until she left, and we thought she never would go.’ And I -find that precedent is carried out in the strictest possible way all -through Washington society in all its sets, down to the very children.” - -If there are any persons in official life in Washington who do not -attach importance to precedence, do not resent being seated out of -rank at table, or being in all other ways given their exact official -amount of deference, those persons keep extremely quiet. In Washington -one ceases to be surprised at hearing men of national reputation -complaining fiercely because they have been subjected to some trivial -slight in this matter of precedence. It irritates a Cabinet officer -to be put a shade out of his rank just as much as it irritates a -Congressman from nowhere or a Government clerk. - -Precedence is killing Washington as a place of residence for sensible -people. It is destroying its chief charm. If one thinks of going there -to live it is because he expects to meet in the easy circumstance of -social intercourse those who are interesting or amusing or curious. -That sort of social intercourse is becoming practically impossible. -No one giving any sort of entertainment, however informal, dares to -arrange his or her guests according to congeniality. The same people -must always be put next each other. The same man must take the same -woman in to dinner. The same youth must dance with the same girl. And -as official life expands the blight of precedence spreads. - -It is difficult for an outsider to listen without laughing or -showing irritation as the Washingtonians discuss precedence and -relate incidents of national and international catastrophes almost -brought about by violation of it. But as some of the persons who most -strenuously insist upon it are otherwise high above the human average, -it would be well, before utterly condemning the Washingtonians, to -reflect whether the craze for precedence is not a universal human -weakness, latent--happily latent--in most of us because it has no -chance to show itself. - -There is a certain officer who, in the official lists, is called -Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds. In fact he is “Lord -Great Chamberlain” to the President. Perhaps there was once a Lord -Great Chamberlain who was merely Superintendent of Public Buildings and -Grounds at the lower end of Pennsylvania avenue. But that was a long -time ago. - -For many years the Major of Engineers assigned to that title with -the rank and pay of Colonel has been actually the chief officer of -the President’s court, the manager of what might be called his public -household. Whenever the President entertains on a grand scale he is -obviously in command, directing the ceremonials, superintending the -evolutions of his staff of dancing and small-talk army men, overseeing -the assiduities of the court retinue of servants. When a new ambassador -or other eminent personage, domestic or foreign, arrives, he is the -functionary who puts on a gorgeous uniform, drives in state in the -President’s carriage to the visitor’s lodgings, escorts him to the -President, introduces him, takes him away and escorts him back to his -lodgings. Also, he in large measure directs the expenditures from the -White House privy purse. - -The Constitution and the Statute Book make no provision for a Lord -Great Chamberlain. But constitutions and institutions are vastly -different. Part of the President’s time is given to matters contained -or supposed to be contained in the written laws, the larger part to -matters set down in the unwritten laws and nowhere else. When we broke -away from Europe and European political and social ideas, we did -not get rid of those customs for high executive officers which had -been established among us by royal colonial governors, although they -were simple compared with the growing dimensions of our present-day -ceremonial. - -Thus the unwritten laws say that the President must have a court like a -king or other royal reigning person. It must be disguised and modified, -but it must be “the real thing” in its essence. A court involves a -place to hold it, officers to conduct it, an etiquette to guide it, and -money to keep it going. The written laws provide for a Presidential -residence--they permit the President to sit rent-free. That provision -readily stretches to cover a place to hold the court. - -Again, the written laws permit the President to detach certain public -officers for rather indefinite purposes. There you have a Lord Great -Chamberlain and a Lord High Steward, and so forth, provided with -comparative ease. - -As for etiquette, that part of the unwritten law need not be reconciled -to written law, because etiquette costs nothing but headaches and -heart-burnings--and the only reason for attempting to reconcile written -law and unwritten is, of course, the matter of money expense. Finally, -the written laws provide, or can be stretched to provide, the money -for all the bigger items of court expenses--furnishings and repairs -and alterations, linen, china, flowers, cooks, scullions, butlers, -coachmen, footmen, door-openers and door-closers, card-carriers, light, -heat, everything except what is eaten and drunk. As yet no way has been -found to stretch the written law or the good nature of Congress to -cover the court appetite. It must be appeased out of the President’s -salary. - -The most important, though by no means the most expensive, item in the -court budget charged against the public, is the Lord Great Chamberlain -who conducts the court and executes, either directly or indirectly, -all that pertains to the social side of life at the White House. He is -always an officer of engineers. He must be a person of knowledge, of -tact, of good appearance. - -Lord Great Chamberlain has ever been a distinguished office. It was -never so distinguished as now. And, unless there is some sort of -extraordinary convulsion and revulsion, it is destined to become almost -eminent. For the White House has entered a new and dazzling period of -social splendor which may presently make it as little different from -the residence of a monarch as is the Elysée Palace, where lives the -President of France’s imperial Democracy. - -The newly evolved notion of the Presidential office is that it is -the centre of political, intellectual and sociological authority -and also of social honor. Not only must the democratic--or -plutocratic--overlord, anointed with the new kind of divine oil, be the -embodiment and exponent of the popular will; he must also be the source -of honor, the recognizer of merit. - -Does one sing well? Does one paint well? Does one write well? Does -one lead in education or literature or law or sociology or finance or -commerce or trade--or fashion? Is one in the forefront in any line -of activity not definitely declared criminal? Then the President of -the American people must entertain him, must take his hand in that -hand which is a sort of composite of eighty million right hands of -fellowship. The approving accents of that voice which is now conceived -to be the composite of eighty million approving voices must tickle his -ravished ears; he must, at the Presidential board, eat and drink the -composite hospitalities of the eighty millions’ dinner or luncheon -tables. - -In a real plain-as-an-old-coat Democracy the President would be a -business person only, keeping his official life and his social life -separate and distinct. The one would be public, the other private. -He would have no more to do privately with those with whom he is -officially brought into contact than would the head of a big business -with his assistants, employés and customers. Social life is in a -democratic society altogether of and by the family; and theoretically -the President’s wife and children, the wives and children of the -other public officials, are left in private life when the man of the -family takes office. Practically, however, they are all elected, and -if the written law provides no honors for wife and children and other -relatives of the successful candidate, unwritten law must be created to -repair the grave, the intolerable omission. - -Hence the elaborate, the complex, the awe-inspiring system of -precedence. Every one from the President and his family and their -remotest connection visiting Washington, down through all the branches -of official life to grand-niece of the scrubwoman who sees to the -basement steps of the smallest public building, has his or her exactly -defined and jealously guarded station in the social hierarchy. - -Naturally, the most interesting part of the imposing structure that -descends tier on tier from the august and exalted Chief Magistrate, is -the court--the President, his Cabinet (Cabinet “ministers,” to give -them the fanciful title they love best), the ambassadors and ministers -and staffs of the various embassies and legations, the families -of all these, and this means the White House and the Lord Great -Chamberlain--the White House, the stage; the Lord Great Chamberlain, -the stage manager. - -The White House was always inadequate--it would have been inadequate -only for carrying out the purely democratic idea of the Presidential -office, the idea set forth in the written laws. For the splendid, -imperial, democratic concept of the plutocracy, the White House was -ridiculous. Many a previous President and his wife, conscious of the -social possibilities of the Presidential office, and yearning to -develop them, have sighed over and moaned over and hinted about the -petty proportions of the “Executive Mansion.” But political timidity -restrained them from insisting upon expansion and elaboration. Mr. -Roosevelt, confident that the people understood and approved him, and -full of enthusiasm for his exalted concept of a new Presidency to suit -a new era of the republic, boldly ventured where other Presidents had -shrunk back. He demanded adequate quarters for the imperial-democratic -court. The result is a new White House, a fit theatre for plutocratic -social activities, a fit field for the operations of an energetic and -sympathetic Lord Great Chamberlain. - -The present President entertains, not occasionally but constantly, -not exclusively but as democratically as an emperor, not meagrely but -lavishly, not a score of guests, but hundreds and thousands. He has -a multitude of guests to lunch, a multitude to dine, a multitude to -hear music or to take part in various kinds of “drawing-rooms” and -levees, a multitude to stay the night under his roof--not a multitude -all at one time, but a multitude in the aggregate. Rich and poor, snob -and democrat, plutocrat and proletarian, black and white, American -and foreigner, Maine woods guide, Western scout, fashionable and -frowzy--all equally welcome, all equal at his court. Morgan and Jacob -Riis, Countess de Castellane and Booker Washington, Wild Bill and -Bishop Potter, Duse and Rough Rider Rob, Alfred Henry Lewis and a New -York cotillon leader. - -Not long ago when some one said in his hearing, “There’s no first-class -hotel in Washington,” he replied, “You forget the White House.” He has -made it indeed a national hotel, or rather a great national assembling -place. And he is ever unsatisfied, ever reaching out for more “doers,” -for more and more people of interest or importance. He wishes all -people of mark to bask in the Presidential sunshine, to give him the -benefit of their intellect or character, or whatever they may have -that is worth seeing or hearing. For he wishes to receive as well as -to give. And he is determined that his court shall be entirely and -completely representative. The world has seen nothing like it in recent -centuries; the Emperor of Germany, broad though his sympathies are, is -a snob in comparison. For a parallel we must go back to the courts of -the emperor-presidents of Rome, in the days when Rome thought itself -a republic. And the exigencies of plutocratic politics and the new -social conditions have combined to attract the leaders of plutocracy’s -fashion in plutocracy’s capitals, New York and Chicago, to favor -Washington more and more each winter with their presence and their -patronage. - -The new White House, which is thus in a fair way to become the social -centre of the republic, is in one sense the first step toward an -entirely new Washington. In every street at all fit for Presidential -purposes great houses are going up for the leisurely rich, and smaller -but attractive houses for the leisurely well-to-do. It is obvious -to the most casual observer that to-morrow will see a brilliant and -numerous society seated at Washington, a society devoted to luxury -and entertaining and revolving round the President, and dazzling and -dominating the servants of the people. Of all the bribes, which is so -seductive, so insidiously corrupting as the social bribe? - -At the Congressional Library are exhibited models of the Washington the -public administration purposes to build, has already begun to build. -It will be a city of magnificent boulevards and parks and drives, and -public buildings and national monuments. It will be probably the most -splendid and most beautiful city in the world. It will probably be the -one great city on earth where all who are not servants and tradespeople -think and talk chiefly politics, literature, art, science--when they -are not talking gossip and envying each other’s rank or looks or -clothes or establishments. - -The made-over White House, astounding though it is as a sudden -development, is but the crude inaugural of this Washington of -to-morrow. But it is a beginning--a most audacious move on the part -of one of the most audacious men who ever rose to first place in the -republic. It is indeed audacious to be a democratic President with the -ceremonial of a king--“a ceremonial more rigid than that of the court -of the Czar,” according to the wife of one of the ambassadors. - -The White House demand upon Congress for running expenses has leaped -from the former twenty-five thousand dollars to sixty thousand dollars. -As the President’s salary is just under a thousand dollars a week, and -as he evidently believes the people expect the President to spend his -salary upon the embellishment of the position, it appears that the -new White House, the new court, is now on the average costing in the -neighborhood of two thousand dollars a week, half from the pocket of -the people, the other half from the President’s private pocket. - -As the heavy expense is crowded into five months of the year--December -to April, inclusive--the probabilities are that the new White House is -costing during the season not far from three thousand dollars a week. -This means that the new departure has certainly doubled, and perhaps -trebled, the cost of the White House court, for most Presidents have -contributed about half their salary toward holding court and have -called on Congress for a supplementary appropriation of twenty-five -thousand dollars a year. - -A few years ago such imposing figures as these would have caused a -great outcry. In every part of the land, in city as well as country, -hands would have been thrown up, and “we, the people,” would have -ejaculated: “Three thousand dollars a week! Mercy on us! The fellow -must be crazy. What _are_ we coming to?” - -But we think in large sums these days, and the establishments of our -multi-millionaires have accustomed us to big expenditures for what were -less than half a generation ago universally regarded as prodigalities. -Scores of millionaires spend several times two thousand dollars a -week in “maintaining their dignity.” There were some faint, shamefaced -mutterings in Congress against the alterations in the White House -and the lively leap of the public share in the expenses. But these -mutterings died away instead of growing stronger, and the project for -raising the Presidential salary to one hundred thousand dollars a year -has all but passed Congress. - -In the competition of display, of “splurge,” shall “we, the people” be -distanced by private persons? Is not “blowing it in” the great test -of dignity and worth, the test established by our most “successful” -citizens? Yet a few years and the President will be getting one -hundred thousand dollars in salary and will think himself moderate in -calling upon the nation for twice sixty thousand a year to be spent -in maintaining the Presidential dignity. Less than that will seem -shabby in the new Washington under the spell of the new concept of -the Presidency as a social font. Simplicity and quiet as a measure of -dignity will belong to the past. It still remains true, as when Burke -said it, that “the public is poor.” True, the nation has riches, but -only a few have wealth. True, wages have not actually increased over -what they were _thirty years ago_. True, the incomes of the great mass -of Americans are just about where they used to be; true, taxation is -to them still a burden, and “making the ends meet” is still an anxious -problem. But our plutocrats and the representatives of kings and other -tax-eaters and people-plunderers must feel at home when they honor our -White House with their presence. - -There is not the slightest surface indication that the Lord Great -Chamberlain will preside over a diminished office. Public business in -the narrow, strictly legal, old-fashioned democratic sense has now for -the first time wholly withdrawn from the White House and is seated in -what is derisively and not inaptly called the “Executive Hen-coop”--a -temporary office building near by. The White House has been definitely -and apparently permanently transformed into a place devoted to that -part of the Presidential office which is not recognized in written law -and which has hitherto been kept in the background. - -And so rapidly is the White House developing that no one need be -astonished if it almost immediately becomes the social Mecca of -the whole American people. Any one who has studied the effect of -social life upon political life, of social customs upon politics, -will appreciate that that transformation might be of profound and -far-reaching importance. It might be significant of a new kind of -republic, of a fallen Democracy on this American continent. It -might well mean that the dream of all aggressive, self-aggrandizing -office-holders had at last been realized; that for the people-ruled -public administration contemplated by the fathers and embodied in the -Constitution had been substituted a real, a people-ruling government. - -For, more powerful than any written laws, are the unwritten laws that -bind men in the slowly, noiselessly forged chains of Habit. - -And what a busy, big man the Lord Great Chamberlain would be then! - -But he would still be called Superintendent of Public Buildings and -Grounds, and the Most Puissant Over-lord of the Imperial Plutocracy -would still be called President of the United States. And so nobody -would in the least mind. If the waffle is named “Hot Waffle,” only a -carping, croaking pessimist notes that it is stone cold. - -Such are the _surface_ indications. But surface indications are -not infallible; they have been known to be unimportant and wholly -misleading. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -AND EUROPE LAUGHS - - -An attaché of one of the Continental Embassies to the King of England -was dining at the Carlton with an American, an old friend of his. The -room was filled with English and Americans. Almost all the English -were men and women of title or rank, or both. Almost all the Americans -were well known both at home and abroad because of their wealth, -their fondness for display, and their intimacies and relationships by -marriage with the aristocratic caste of Europe. - -“You Americans are popular here,” said the diplomat. - -“Yes,” assented the American. - -“And on the Continent also,” said the diplomat. - -“Yes,” replied the American. “How the German Emperor does love us--he -is almost as enthusiastic about us as is King Edward.” - -“You are popular,” went on the diplomat, “and very unpopular. You were -never so popular nor so unpopular.” - -“You mean we are unpopular because of the American trade invasion?” - -“Not at all. That is a trifling matter. It concerns only the -politicians and a few manufacturers and the farmers, and does not -concern them very deeply. No--let me explain. Formerly we--and when I -say ‘we’ I mean the upper classes of Europe, those which still rule, -despite all this talk about the progress of Democracy--formerly we -feared you; we pretended to despise you, but in fact we were afraid. -You were the great experiment in Democracy, that is, in anarchy--in the -rule of the masses, the mob. Your success meant serious trouble for -us, if not the handwriting on the wall, because our masses were always -thinking of you.” - -Here the diplomat smiled peculiarly and glanced round the room. - -“Now all that has been changed,” he went on. “Europe and America are -better acquainted. We no longer fear you. Why should we?” - -And again he paused to let his glance travel round the room, finally -to rest with good-humored satire upon the American’s face. - -“Yes--we understand you better. Our fears have been proved groundless, -our suspicions have been justified. Your new path, after making a -wide bend, has returned into the old historic highway of caste. And -so our upper class, which hated you, now--well, it neither loves nor -admires you, but it honors and courts you. It laughs a little at your -pretensions to birth. But it respects the solid foundation of your -aristocracy--wealth. For, no matter what we may pretend, not blood, but -money, wealth, is the essence of aristocracy. As for our masses, that -once looked up to you as their ideal----” He shrugged his shoulders. - -“They no longer look up to us?” - -“They look down upon you. They see that you, too, have your dominating -class just as they have. And they prefer their own kind of upper -class as less sordid, less vulgar, the embodiment of a more inspiring -ideal. So long as they knew you only by report they believed in you; -and that belief still makes them restless under us. But now that they -have seen you, now that you are constantly in evidence, they see that -their hopes--at least so far as they were based upon you--were a -foolish dream. They prefer their own princes to ‘bosses’ and upstart -newly-rich.” - -“But suppose these Americans whom you see over here and whom you read -most about are not representative?” - -The diplomat smiled. “I have heard that before,” said he. “But, my dear -friend, they are representative. Your country has changed and you do -not realize it. You are deceived, not we. You are like the Romans who -thought they had a republic when, in fact, the republic had been dead -five hundred years. Think a moment. What sort of men did you formerly -send to us as diplomats? And what sort of men do you send now? What -has become of the old horror of court dress and rank and precedence -which they used to exhibit? You cannot deny that your diplomats are -representative. And are they not of the same class as these ladies and -gentlemen about us here, so obviously delighted with themselves and -their aristocratic company, with themselves because of their company?” - -There is much truth in the diplomat’s comments on the state of European -public sentiment toward America. And the change is, as he said, due to -better acquaintance. Europe thinks it has discovered that as soon as -an American rises in prosperity above the mass of his fellow-citizens, -he enters an actual ruling class that dictates and disdains the laws, -uses them for enriching himself and for exploiting the mass of his -fellow-countrymen. Europe thinks that as soon as he reaches this stage -he turns his eyes longingly toward the Old World monarchies and begins -to plan to become as nearly like the aristocrats as possible. He may -not flaunt his power--he must respect republican forms. But he may, and -does, flaunt his wealth. And in Europe he can get open recognition of -his superior rank when such recognition as it gets at home is indirect -and more or less secret. - -Thousands of Americans live in Europe. Every considerable city on the -Continent has its American colony, and year by year these colonies -grow apace. Americans--chiefly the women--have intermarried everywhere -into the European nobility. Nearly all these expatriated Americans are -people of means; many of them are rich. They lead lives of industrious -idleness. Many of them frankly express their contempt for the country -from which they draw their incomes, the country but for which they -would be miserable peasants, sweating for the amusement of some -European land-holder. - -It is fortunate that their dislike of their native land has been strong -enough to take them away and to keep them away; it is a pity that the -migrating impulse does not seize upon more of their kind. The world has -room for idlers--it has room for all sorts of people. But America has -no room for them. That great workshop wants no idlers obstructing the -aisles and hindering the toilers at their tasks. That would be a sorry -day for us when our rapidly growing leisure class should “civilize” and -“refine” America into an agreeable place of residence for “ladies” and -“gentlemen” of the European pattern. - -These Americans who have “outgrown” their country serve to confirm -Europe in the suspicions raised by the news that has reached it of -stupendous aristocratic changes in the American people, of rotten -political machines ruled by the rich, of toll-gates set up on every -highway of American trade and commerce for the tax-gatherers of -plutocracy, of a people fatuously imagining that it is free because it -can go to the polls and freely choose which of two sets of candidates -shielded by the plutocracy shall make and execute the laws. This brings -up the whole subject of our relations with “abroad”--and the social and -political meaning and tendency of those relations. - -A few years ago Paris was the paradise of Americans, especially of the -Americans of wealth. It is so no longer. It is now for them a mere -stopping-place for buying clothes--a pause _en route_ to the true, -fashionable, American Mecca, London. A few years ago Americans, except -those of the ordinary sight-seeing, mind-improving kind, loathed -London. They knew few people there--and, like Vienna, London is an -impossible place for the stranger in search of amusement; if he does -not know natives, is not invited to their houses, a soundless desert is -a cheerful, companionable place in comparison. Further, such English as -the rich, fashionable, amusement-hunting American knew--that is, such -Englishmen “of the right sort”--were about as friendly and sociable -as they are to their servants. But that was before the “Anglo-Saxon -Alliance.” - -The change came with the British discovery that the American -multi-millionaire and the American heiress were not, as had been -supposed, rarities found only occasionally after long search through -trackless and vast wildernesses of “unspeakable bounders,” but were -deposited in “the States” in quantities, were easily accessible, -were yearning for high society, for aristocracy, for titled friends, -for titled alliances. This was tidings of great joy to the English -aristocracy. For an aristocrat may not work; and no matter how heavily -“endowed” a title may be, values will shrink as time passes--not to -speak of those savage “death duties” which the rascally Liberals -enacted to the infuriating of the upper classes, who yet dare not -repeal them. - -The “Anglo-Saxon Alliance” began forthwith. Scores of English -upper-class families opened their hearts and their hearths to their -“cousins across the sea.” The more American friends one accumulated the -more likely was one to find an American multi-millionaire or so among -them, or at least to be by way of getting into touch with American -multi-millionaires or within “touching” distance of them. - -To realize to what an extent the “Anglo-Saxon Alliance” was and is -based upon this notion, one must realize how all-powerful the upper -class is in England, and how inarticulate, how socially, politically -and in every public way insignificant, are the English masses, -including the bulk of the middle classes. When you speak of English -public sentiment you mean the sentiment of the London drawing-rooms. -They are filled with the governing class, which constitutes parliaments -and ministries; they dominate the journalists, who are either of -the upper class or desperately struggling to get into it; they also -dominate the masses who have been trained by centuries of unbroken -custom to bow before rank and title. - -There were excellent reasons in international politics for England’s -turning favorable, friendly, even enthusiastic eyes upon America. But -there could not have been this present passionate, personal love, this -daily and hourly working of that toothless old saw, “blood is thicker -than water,” had there not existed a reason which appealed directly to -the personal and family self-interest of every member of nearly every -upper-class family in England. - -And soon the German Emperor and those about him, all of a high and -impoverishing nobility, began to work the same trusty, but never -now-a-days rusty, old saw about the thickness of blood and water--are -we not “Germanic,” we Americans? But the motive which is the less -with the King and the upper classes of England is the stronger with -our tempestuous German suitor--the motive of political, or, rather, -industrial friendship. He feels that in dining and wining and -treating, “just as if they were equals,” American owners of yachts and -multi-millionaires, he is endearing himself to the American people. -For, like practically the whole of Europe to-day, he thinks America -is no longer a Democracy, but a thinly disguised plutocracy. And -the more he reads and hears of the power and prestige of American -multi-millionaires at home, the more firmly is he convinced that when -he is tickling the vanity of these “dollar-swollen upstarts,” he is -sending delicious thrills up and down the spine of the American eagle. - -Yes, European princes and potentates are rubbing noses and -back-scratching in the friendliest, most democratic fashion in the -world, with such of the American people as can afford to visit Europe -in royal luxury and get themselves admitted to royal inclosures. -The object of these condescensions to our fellow-countrymen is to -improve the relations between sundry European monarchies and the -American people. A worthy object, as is any which has at bottom the -promoting of peace on honorable terms. But Europe is wasting energy in -misdirected effort. It assumes that these American beneficiaries have -the same “rank” at home that similarly fortuned Europeans have in their -countries. And, not unnaturally, it is confirmed in its false notion by -many a petty success through this courtship of snobbish plutocrats and -plutocratic diplomats. - -The American multi-millionaire and his wife and his son and his -daughter--again this does not mean all Europe-visiting Americans of -wealth--are directly responsible for Europe’s present opinion of -the American brand of Democracy. For they--not unnaturally--wish to -make themselves out the relative equals of their titled and exalted -friends. They begin to “talk tall”; and, being far away from home, -they soon are thinking as tall as they talk. They confirm each other -in the idea that they are really the “whole show” at home. They -return with retinues of caste-trained, servile domestics; they live -in colonies in our own cities into which none but dollar-hunters -and dollar-worshipers penetrate. The political bosses court them, -give them laws and senatorships and diplomatic posts in exchange for -campaign contributions. Their infatuation grows apace. - -Thus the American fresh from America finds London--let us confine -ourselves to the one capital as typical--a strange, humorous spectacle -in the fashionable season. He can hardly believe his own eyes and ears. -A week or two, and so persistent are the impressions of a true American -nobility visiting Europe that he almost feels that he has been asleep -with Rip Van Winkle and has awakened to a new country and a new order -in which there is no American Republic. - -And we are only at the beginning. The “Anglo-Saxon Alliance” between -the English upper class and the American aspirants to be thought “upper -class,” the dragging in of the rich American pilgrim out of the fog -to the cheeriest corner of the English fire, these are matters of -yesterday. And already Paris gets but a glance from the rich Americans, -and the most foresighted of Paris shopkeepers are establishing London -branches for the “Anglo-Saxon” American who no longer can spare the -time from his or her English social duties to make the outfitting trip -across the English Channel. To-morrow--The English hearth is large; -there is room on it for every presentable or hope-inspiring American -who can afford to cross the Atlantic; and the news of the jollity -of the London season and of the round of English house parties is -spreading in America and is attracting the pretentious society of all -the large American cities. The “Alliance” is indeed booming. - -It is not through English aversion to the Atlantic voyage that, though -we are the sought, we go to the home of the seeker to be sought. The -English upper classes would come to us if we insisted upon it, although -the item of expense looks larger to them than to us. But we do not -insist upon it. Our “leisure class” is made far more comfortable in -England than it is at home. America has no such facilities as has -England for amusing sheer idleness in ways that are not undisguisedly -inane. Through several centuries, the filling in of the idle hours of -professional idlers has been a study there; the houses, the streets, -the theatres, the restaurants, the whole social system is adapted to it. - -Further, the American can feel so “tall,” can believe so thoroughly in -his own aristocracy and aloofness above the general run of mankind -when there are three thousand miles of barren water between him in his -grandeur and the shop where he worked as a “clark,” or the cabin where -his father was born, or the back yard where his mother, in gingham, -hung out the wash. Thus, the Americans in search of “the high life” for -which they yearn prefer to go to it rather than to have it brought to -them. - -“As I study your countrymen here and get their views,” said an -Englishman, famous as a lifelong admirer of America and of the -democratic idea, “I become convinced against my will that your -Democracy is dying. It seems the ideal of Democracy is too high to -survive prosperity; apparently it can exist only in what one of your -countrymen, writing in your simple days, called the atmosphere of plain -living and high thinking. As soon as a man becomes prosperous he begins -to ‘put on airs,’ as you Americans say. And the pity of it is that -the less prosperous concede his superiority, and so make his ‘airs’ -significant where they would otherwise be ridiculous. The reason our -monarchies, that is, our monarchical governments and our aristocratic -classes, are becoming friendly to you, is that you are becoming like -them. They concede something; but you--you concede your principles. -They get something--cash dividends on their condescensions. But I’m -blest if I can see what _you_ get.” - -To the stay-at-home American, or, for the matter of that, to the -travelling American who retains his sense of proportion, the -exaggerating of bumptious American “diplomats” and “dollarcrats” into -a national phenomenon of peril, and the gloomy croakings or sardonic -rejoicings in Europe over the decay of the American Republic may seem -preposterous--as preposterous as an ambassador’s fancying that his -ecstasies when a king claps him on the shoulder are the ecstasies of -the entire American people. But it is a phenomenon that should not, -that cannot wisely, be left out of account. Steam and electricity have -bridged the chasm across which our ancestors fled to establish here a -system based upon sanity, simplicity and justice. And at a peculiarly -trying time there are crossing over to us European ideas and ideals -that so dangerously disguise snobbishness and plundering and injustice -under pretentious culture and such plausible frauds as the “natural -leadership of the classes that have demonstrated their superiority by -success.” - -The problem is often stated cart before the horse. “What will our -plutocracy do with us?” men say in all seriousness. The question, in -fact, is, “What shall we do with our plutocracy?” It has descended -upon us swift as a cyclone, insidious as a plague. We had no adequate -warning. We have not yet, as a people, grasped the situation in its -fullness. Of all the cure-alls so confidently proposed by our political -and sociological quacks, which one does not show on its very surface to -any careful mind utter futility at best, disaster in the application as -a highly probable event? - -The plutocracy itself shares in the delusion of so many of our -“publicists.” “What shall we do with America?” it insolently says in -effect. - -A little patience; a little time for our eighty millions, surcharged -with Democracy, to weigh and measure and judge. Be sure, the dog will -not be wagged by the tail. And before many decades European caste will -see such a handwriting upon the western sky as has not terrified it -since our Declaration of Independence. - - - - -PART II.--DEMOCRACY - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -“WE, THE PEOPLE” - - -It cannot, then, be denied that wealth, concentrated wealth--not so -much the plutocrat himself as the vast masterful accumulation of which -he is the appendage; one might with truth say, the victim--is not only -the most conspicuous factor in American life to-day, but also one of -the most potent factors. The plutocracy in politics, the plutocracy in -business, the plutocracy in society, the plutocracy in the home--in its -own homes--that is our “peril.” - -A great monster indeed, fully up to the harrowing descriptions of our -radical orators and writers. But why does the average, common-sense -American refuse to be terrified? Because he does not see it? Hardly -that. No; the real reason is that the American is fundamentally -incapable of those caste and class feelings, without which a plutocracy -can never hope to erect itself into an aristocracy, and therefore a -real “peril.” - -To see America--the America that was, and is, and shall be--we must -leave the neighborhood of the palaces of the plutocracy with its -servile parasites and imitators, its fawning menials and shopkeepers; -we must also leave the neighboring slums, where the American is so -sadly caricatured--not more sadly, in truth, than where the plutocracy -flaunts. We must go to the smaller cities and the towns and villages -and the farms, where in ten thousand homes a sane and sober life is led -by a sane and sober people. And we find there no tendencies toward the -development of caste, far-reaching though the poisonous influence of -the plutocracy is. - -For our hopeful, yes, convincing comparisons, we need not bring forward -the early days of the republic, when the surviving silly old Colonial -aristocracy was strong enough to restrict the suffrage, to enforce -rigid class distinctions, to threaten us with an official aristocracy -of “birth.” We only need compare forty years ago with to-day to see the -substantial progress of true Democracy. Proportionately, are there not -vastly fewer people to-day lacking that high sense of self-respect -which caused so much open, profuse and shamefaced apologies for -electing to the Presidency a man of such “low origin” as Lincoln? At -the time of the Civil War, and even thereafter, the rich men in every -community had great political influence simply because they were rich, -and property, as property, claimed and was conceded a right to a -more potent voice in the public affairs. Is it so to-day? Is not the -property influence exercised only in secrecy and stealth? Is the rich -man a favorite for elective office, or are the people, roused by the -frequent coincidence of wealth and corruption, jealously suspicious of -the rich man in politics? - -Outside the umbra and penumbra of plutocracy we find the American with -the inborn sense of equality, the American that rejoices in humble -origin as proof of the personal worth of him who has risen. We are -still a nation of working men and women, the sons and daughters of -working people. And just as soon as one of us becomes ashamed of his -birth or of his own past, becomes infected with the cheap and silly -vulgarisms that Europe is always thrusting upon us, just so soon -does he or she begin to fall behind in the procession. Influential -relatives will not long save him or her, nor inherited property; -misused opportunity to better education will only hasten the downfall. - -Never was country made up of more _kinds_ of people than the United -States; but we have no classes. There is no condition to which one is -born from which one may not escape. Class means such a condition. Now, -were caste altogether a matter to be determined by the rich, by those -“on top,” we might well tremble for the future of our social state. -The rich of a thousand localities would not be slow to take advantage -of the chance were it offered them. But fortunately _caste is made by -those who look up, not by those who look down_. - -However many Americans there may be who would like to look _down_, -there are few, there are ever fewer, with the quaint fancy for looking -_up_. It is true that in our so-called “foreign element” there seems -to lie the possibility of a dangerous influence. This vast mass of -foreigners, coming from lands where class distinctions are centuries -old, is regarded with hope, consciously and unconsciously, by our -plutocratic with caste aspirations. But let us recall the facts about -that other flood of immigration, the Irish and the Germans who came -in the middle part of the last century--proportionately a greater -flood than the one which has been sweeping in upon us for the last -twenty years. In the fifties of the last century, as to-day, it was -confidently predicted that the downfall of Democracy had already -begun. The slavocracy of the South struck hands with the then existing -manufacturing plutocracy of the North, and the basis of the Northern -plutocracy was the hordes of ignorant immigrants. What happened? -The war? More than that. Democracy absorbed away the basis of the -rising Northern aristocracy just as the war swept away the basis of -slavocracy. The children and grandchildren of the immigrants became the -most strenuous of Americans. - -Our “foreign element” does not remain foreign. It comes here to become -American, and it sets about the accomplishment of its purpose with an -energy and a resolution that are unconquerable. When our plutocracy of -to-day leans upon the “foreign element” it leans upon a breaking reed. -And the more heavily it leans the worse will be the fall. - - * * * * * - -In manners more easily than any other way can we see Democracy in -progress. There should be no confusing that respectful consideration -for others, which in an honest way most of us have, with the European -idea of deference. Whether at home or abroad, the big asset of the -American is his lack of deference, his freedom from that which angered -Walt Whitman into crying out haughtily: - -“By heaven, there has been about enough of doffing and deprecating. I -find no sweeter fat than that which clings to my own bones.” - -Manners bespeak mental attitude; and mental attitude is the man. -Americans should be careful how they permit themselves to trifle with -their manners. We are hearing a great deal about “growing distinctions -between class and mass” now-a-days. Many are “viewing with alarm” and -“deeply deploring” such evidences of it as, to use the most often cited -instance, the increasing tendency of well-to-do parents to send their -children to private schools instead of, as formerly, to the public -school. - -The viewers with alarm seem to miss the point. It is not the “mass” -that is going to suffer by this imported passion for exclusiveness; it -is the “class.” The “class” cuts itself off from the “mass,” from the -full, strong currents of democratic life which alone give vitality and -endurance. The mass remains vital and energetic and progressive; the -class withers and shrivels and sloughs away. - -Nevertheless, the disposition on the part of some Americans to despise -and forsake the splendid triumph-producing ideas of their country for -the mean and petty, disaster and decay-producing ideas of the Old -World, is a matter which should not be passed over without comment. Of -necessity our snobs will be pushed aside and trampled in the resistless -onrush of the Democratic idea. The nation would be feeble indeed if it -could be halted or even slackened by such an obstacle. But the snobs -ought to be noted and warned. Disobedience to the great laws which -determine the evolution of mankind is important only to the disobedient -individual. But it is part of our humanitarian duty as democrats to be -patient with the ignorant, the weak and the erring, and to be helpful -to them as far as we can. It is impossible for any one with the broad -sympathies which Democracy engenders not to feel the impulses of pity -when he sees fellow-beings, through vanity or ignorance, flinging -themselves and their innocent young children across the very pathway of -the mighty wave of Democracy. - -A snob is a person who feels inferior and wants company in his misery, -and longs for the consolation of finding those even lower than himself. -Snobism should be exterminated, just as, more and more scientifically, -bodily disease is being stamped out. The snob is the only one who -wants class distinctions, or who can encourage their existence. It is -the snob who returns from abroad deeply impressed by courtesies shown -him over there in expectation of and in exchange for tips. He uses -his first intake of native air to fall afoul of the native manners. -And no doubt our manners do need improving. We have always been in a -great hurry under press of work, and there is still a great deal more -to do than our competent doers can find time for. But in polishing -our manners we must be careful to use a sound brand of democratic -polish, not the English brand so much admired by those who yearn for a -deference from others which they would not when alone venture to show -themselves. - -Back of manners is instinct. Often a man’s lack of manners enables us -to see whether his instincts are right or not. Aristocratic manners -hide moral and mental defects, just as whiskers and clothes hide -physical defects. What we ought to develop is sincere manners--not the -bowings and scrapings of fear and cupidity and servility. Democratic -manners! - -Good manners among the various kinds of public and semi-public servants -in England would not be considered good manners here. Without disputing -the point with those admirers of the English servant, we must insist -that it would be ridiculous for a self-respecting American citizen to -grovel and scrape and look and act “humble.” We want no servility here, -much as we would like to please those persons who constantly feel the -need of assurances from others that they are as grand folks as they -would like to think themselves. - -Scraping and cringing, whether in a duke or in a domestic, are as bad -manners for a human being as are arrogance and impertinence. - -The grotesque nature of the snob complaints against the manners of our -everyday people is striking when one recognizes a certain criticism -that can justly be made against us. It is among so-called well-bred -people, a certain brand of them, our snobs, that bad manners are most -prevalent. For out of them is left that on which alone good manners -can be built--the proud, erect, democratic spirit. - -It is not difficult to have good manners in a graded social system. It -is extremely difficult to have good manners in a Democracy. Any one can -easily be a snob, a looker-up and a looker-down. But how very difficult -it is to be a simple, unaffected man or woman, considerate, courteous, -looking all other men and women straight in the eyes and saying: “You -are certainly as good as I am. I hope I am as good as you are.” - -“I am your equal” is at the basis of democratic bad manners. “You are -my equal” is the basis of democratic good manners. - -Again and again in fashionable society, frequently among those most -prone to call their poorer countrymen and women ill-mannered, there are -barbarities and repulsive lapses of good taste not merely tolerated, -but approved as marks of fashion and refinement. For example: A rich -woman gives a cotillon, provides many thousand dollars’ worth of -handsome favors. You look about the ballroom--there sits a circle of -girls, pretty and ugly and passable, attractive and unattractive. Some -are loaded down with favors--you can hardly see their radiant faces -for the mass of articles which testify to their popularity. - -Others have only a few favors, and those of the poorest. Yet there -they must sit, acting as foils for the pretty and lucky girls who are -emphasizing their homeliness and bad luck. Their sufferings do not show -in their faces--at least not very plainly. But they would not be human -if they did not feel the pangs of humiliated and wounded vanity at this -most conspicuous advertisement of their inferiority in charm. - -Yet the cotillon is regarded as the very highest kind of refined social -entertainment. And hostesses will beam upon this sorry scene with -never a thought for the sufferings of their slighted and wounded girl -guests. In a truly refined society would any one ever give any form of -entertainment at which there would be frank discrimination among the -guests? - -Again, a woman gives a dinner. You go to her house and find her -receiving in a magnificent dress and displaying hundreds of thousands -of dollars’ worth of jewelry. She is far and away the most gorgeously, -the most expensively dressed person at her dinner. She outshines all -her women guests. In a truly sensitively refined society would a -hostess do this? Would she not rather dress simply, even plainly? -Her dinner, and its service, should of course be the best she can -provide--there she is honoring her guests. But in her own dress, in -the one feature of her entertainment where invidious and humiliating -comparisons could be instantly made, she would think not of gratifying -her own vanity, but of putting her guests at their ease. And so she -would save her best jewels and dresses for places other than her own -house and eyes other than those of her own guests. - -The kinds of grossly bad manners of which these are fair and familiar -examples would not surprise us in Europe, where the education is narrow -and souls are shaped in pettiness and vulgarity by class distinctions. -But they would and do surprise us in America. - - * * * * * - -There is one trait in our national character that is a veritable -Gibraltar against caste tendencies. It is that passion for -up-to-dateness, which is so American, which is the cause of American -progress, which is the secret of the ever rising plane of the comfort -and intelligence of the American masses. - -A European landowner or manufacturer, filled with the spirit of -conservatism, the spirit of “good enough” and “it will do” and “don’t -destroy old landmarks,” clings to musty and rusty antiquities, hampers -himself and his associates and neighbors, drags and makes them drag -at the wheels of advance. With the American, how quickly is the new -building, the new machine, the new method already improved into -antiquity! Away with it! Replace it by the latest and best. Better -one big item in the profit and loss account than steadily decreasing -profits and wages and products, and steadily increasing losses through -the triumphs of competitors. The new, always the new! The new, always -hopeful of the new! Give the new a trial! To-day must be better than -yesterday; to-morrow will surely be better still. That is America. - -And this same spirit wages incessant and successful war against caste. -If the new man is the best man we put him to the front. Does our -“irreverence” for things ancient sometimes offend a super-æsthetic -few? It is a pity they are so enraptured by European picturesqueness -of the antique that they fail to note the European peasant bending -and groaning under the weight of the past. Does this disrespect for -hampering tradition proclaim us “new”? That is well. When did youth -become a calamity and a reproach? May we ever be “new,” looking at the -problems of life with hopeful young eyes, confident that better, more -beautiful things lie in the future than past suns ever shone upon. - -There are two kinds of stability--the stability of the ship rotting at -its wharf; the stability of the ship, strong and steady, on its way -through the midst of the sea. - -America is all for the latter. It abhors barnacles and rust. And it -combats monopolistic tendencies most fiercely because, however adroitly -disguised as “communities of interest,” they promote the stability of -stagnation, blindfold the eager eyes of competition, bribe brain and -muscle to sloth, hold up the heavy hands of sluggard and incompetent, -and discourage individual ambition and hope. There should be no -structure of any kind whatsoever, whether national or social, which, -when it has clearly outlived its use, can be saved by sentiment or -interest or bulwarks of brainless boodle-bags. And Democracy will have -none such. Let those who tremble for our future be calmed. As for those -who fancy they can in their own interest create such structures, let -them read history and learn to laugh at their folly. - -The principle applies to those less tangible but more insidious -structures--those ideas that would give permanence or prominence to -people because of what some one else has been, or what they have been -in the past--structures existent only in the minds of comparatively -few, gone daft in their love of European imitation. But we tear down -too quickly for them. While the fine building of class distinctions is -constructing, changes occur that knock out the foundation stones. - -An old New York “aristocrat”--his grandfather came over in the -steerage--glanced around the Metropolitan Opera House one night not -long ago and said: “There are not a dozen families on the list of -boxholders twenty years ago that are on that list to-day. All new -people--and from heaven knows where.” Where were the new people from? -Why, from whence this old “aristocrat’s” grandparents came, from where -his grandchildren will be. - -Whenever a fence is put up by any group of people around themselves -one of two things happens. Either those inside grow terribly weary of -their exclusiveness, and, finding that no particular benefit seems to -be coming from it, voluntarily let down the fence; or the society-mad -herd, seeing the fence, makes a rush for it to get in. A coarse -rattling of hoofs and horns, a discovery of a loose paling, a crash, a -mad scramble, and there are more inside than out. - -Democracy is as much the law of our social order as gravitation is of -our physical order. Those who don’t like it will, if they are wise, -either leave the country or adjust themselves and their children to -its conditions. For if they stay and bring up their children out of -harmony with the existing and unalterable order, their children will -be punished, even though they themselves, through obedience in their -earlier lives, escape the worst consequences of their folly. - -The part of the coming generation that is trained in Democracy is the -part that will survive and prosper and progress. The part that is bred -in exclusiveness and caste feeling is going to be bitterly discontented -and deplorably unprogressive certainly, and in all probability, except -in a few rare cases, downright unprosperous. - -Why do not the plutocratic “exclusives” and aspirants to exclusiveness -see these things and take warning? Because vanity is so much stronger -in influence over the average human being than is reason. They pile up -the millions, make safe investments, plot monopolies that will insure -stability of property, and imagine that their family line will be -secure. Then they educate their children to folly and superciliousness -and economic helplessness or at best give them a training not in -business, in useful labor, but in the truly aristocratic chicanery of -high finance. Thus does Nature, abhorring permanence, craftily use them -for their own undoing. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make -drunk on the fumes of vanity. - -The plutocracy and its imitators bring up their children in hot-houses. -Some of the youngsters are ejected from the hot-house and exposed as -soon as they are grown--or sooner; others remain in the hot-house -and perhaps breed there. But the day of fate comes. The hot-house is -emptied or destroyed. - -Fortunately for the masses and their children, fortunately for the -prosperity and progress of the race, few can build these hot-houses; -only a few can dwell in them. And with the swift progress of Democracy -in these modern days, this cruel, mocking favoritism swiftly decreases. - -Manners there can be, but they must be democratic manners. Refinement, -culture, there can be, but it must be democratic. Idealism there can -be, but it must be true idealism, broad, deep and high, not a “class” -matter, not a vanity, not a pretentious crushing down of millions to -make luxurious holiday for a few. - -The aristocratic idealisms in manners, education, politics, religion, -mode of life, are fleeing like shades of night before the bright -daylight of Democracy. Only ignorance could ever have thought them -fair. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -THE COMPELLER OF EQUALITY - - -Ever since the first tall chimneys unfurled the sooty banners of the -new, the industrial civilization, we have had the cry that the power -machine is a monster whose reign means the debasement of the masses -of mankind. And latterly, throughout the world, but most loudly in -America, which has been foremost in promoting the new order, it has -been charged that the men in control of the new order, the business -men, are merciless and relentless; that in the struggle for markets and -for profits they are trampling morality and all the other restraints -and ideals. Now comes Thorstein Veblen, lately Assistant Professor of -Political Economy at the University of Chicago, to formulate these -charges upon a scientific basis. In his _Theory of Business Enterprise_ -he makes the following declarations of scientific principle: - -First: That “the machine is a leveller, a vulgarizer, whose ends seem -to be the extirpation of all that is respectable, noble and dignified -in human intercourse and ideals”; that “in the nature of the case the -cultural growth dominated by the machine industry is of a skeptical, -matter-of-fact complexion, materialistic, unmoral, unpatriotic, -undevout”; that “the machine, their (the masses’) master, is no -respecter of persons, and knows neither morality nor dignity, nor -prescriptive right, divine or human.” - -Second: That “the machine methods which are corrupting the hearts and -manners of the workmen are profitable to the business man.” - -Third: That “the economic welfare of the community at large is best -secured by a facile and uninterrupted interplay of the various -processes which make up the industrial system at large; but the -pecuniary interests of the business men, in whose hands lies the -discretion in the matter, are not necessarily best served by an -unbroken maintenance of the industrial balance. Especially is this -true as regards those greater business men whose interests are very -extensive. Gain may come to them from a given disturbance of the -system, whether the disturbance makes for heightened facility or for -widespread hardship, very much as a speculator in grain futures may be -either a bull or a bear.” - -Fourth: That, these being the facts, there has arisen a “class of -pecuniary experts” who “have an interest in making the disturbances -of the system large and frequent”; that, under the new civilization, -industry being carried on for business, and not business for the sake -of industry, such disturbances are as a matter of fact both large -and frequent, are incident to a merciless struggle among business -men for the supremacy which monopoly alone gives; that, while the -business man, in common with other men, is moved by humane ideals, -“motives of this kind detract from business efficiency, and an undue -yielding to them on the part of business men is to be deprecated as an -infirmity”; that, while sentiment has a certain force “in restraint -upon pecuniary advantage, not in abrogation of it,” the “code of -business ethics consists, after all, of mitigations of the maxim, -_caveat emptor_ (let the buyer beware)”; that, “under the system of -handicraft and neighborhood industry, the adage ‘Honesty is the best -policy’ seems, on the whole, to have been accepted and to have been -true. This adage has come down from the days before the machine’s -régime and before modern business enterprise”; that, under modern -circumstances of lack of personal contact between business man and -customer, “business management has a chance to proceed on a temperate -and sagacious calculation of profit and loss, untroubled by sentimental -considerations of human kindness or irritation or of honesty.” - -Professor Veblen’s ideas have been given in his own language so far -as has been permitted by his passionate professorial predilection for -polysyllables--or, has he used long words and involved phrases from -the prudent motive of screening from “the vulgar” the ferocity of his -attack upon business men, rather than from the reactionary motive of -scholastic snobbery? However this may be, to close study he makes it -clear enough that, according to his reading of political economy: - -First: The machine is a monster. - -Second: It is making monsters of men--brutal serfs of the masses; -bandits, liars, thieves and cheats of the managers and directors. - -A savage indictment that! A terrifying, topsy-turvying of the dearest -beliefs and hopes of us who look upon steam and electricity as -efficient agents of Democracy, the strong and inevitable unshacklers -of the bodies and minds of mankind. But Professor Veblen has stated -only the extreme of what is said without denial every day; he is simply -the courageous spokesman of the majority of the classes who write and -speak; he is putting into scientific formula the sneer of every snob -who professes contempt of business and, indeed, of all other forms of -modern democratic activity. His book, therefore, serves admirably as -a provocation for presenting a few facts and suggestions on the other -side. - -Is it true, either in whole or in part, that our industrial -civilization is degrading the masses into mere appurtenances of the -machine, mere mechanical aids to the heaping up of vast profits in the -treasuries of the few? Is it true, either in whole or in part, that our -business men, whether great or small, whether captains of industry or -sub-officers, are degenerating into dishonesty and the short-sighted -selfishness of the slave-master? - -A surface survey of our time reveals much that seems to compel a -reluctant affirmative answer. To glance at a newspaper is to read -of the cynical tyrannies of beef, oil, coal, iron, grain, railway -magnates, who make their infamies nauseating by ardent professions of -patriotism and piety. And from time to time the shameless adulterations -of food and drink culminate in some sensational slaughter of people -wholesale, suggesting vastly greater slaughters effected quietly from -day to day. - -And we see persons grown enormously rich upon stolen privileges of -various kinds exhibiting themselves in luxurious ostentation, offering -tempting rewards to sycophancy and pauperizing those fighting on the -poverty line by supercilious gifts and condescensions. We see rascality -rewarded with wealth and honors, success bought with self-sale. We see -corruption, conspicuous and hideous, everywhere upon the surface of the -social body. And we turn away heartsick, convinced that the Veblens -have stated the truth with moderation. - -But if we turn away to read history--not the fables and fancies, the -poetical romances and romantic poems from which the Veblens draw their -“facts,” but the true story of the mankind that was--if we read that -painful recital, we turn again to the mankind of our day, and it is -like a landscape from which the storms of winter are rolling away. The -corruption which revolted us is still there, just as hideous as before; -but we now see that it is the poison which was working in the veins and -arteries of the patient and is now at the surface, on its way out of -the body before the victorious legions of health. - -Professor Veblen, and his like, are prone to use, in writing and -speaking, words of many meanings; they unconsciously play upon these -words, and so fall into grievous error. For instance, Professor Veblen -talks of ours as a “machine” civilization--as if the machine were its -new and characteristic factor, determining its form and its destiny. -In fact, civilization from its very inception has been “machine-made.” -It began when our remotest ancestor snatched the bough of a tree -and decided thenceforth to walk erect, using the bough as staff and -club--that is, as a machine. Every tool of every kind has been a -machine; and the progress of the race has been determined by the -number and efficiency of its machines, both those designed to compel -peace and those designed to further the arts of peace. If you wish -to measure the actual value of any civilization--value in producing -healthy minds in healthy bodies--you need only inquire into the kind -and number and efficiency of its machines. Why? Because the machine -represents the effort of man to adjust himself to his environment, his -environment to himself. It gives power to him, whoever he may be, that -learns to use it; it leaves him who does not avail himself of its aid, -whether through idleness or ignorance or intemperance or incapacity, -about where he would have been--certainly no worse off than he would -have been--had mankind remained in the helpless, machineless “state of -nature.” - -Evolution has so unevenly affected the human race that, fortunately for -us in the foremost files of progress, we need not rely upon history -and cautious conjecture for our encouraging and inspiring knowledge of -the world of the past, which enables us to see how far and how high we -have got, and that the journey is still swiftly, if steeply, upward. -There is hardly a stage of human progress that is not now represented -on the earth, inviting any man with a passion for the “glorious past,” -to disillusionize himself and cheer his pessimism. And we are enabled -easily to reconstruct any period of the past. Thus, we have visual -confirmation of the truth about Athens which history can only suggest. -We know that the Athens of Plato and Praxiteles was no more the true -Athens than is the intellect and tradition of Booker Washington a true -type of the intelligence and condition of the overwhelming mass of our -eight million negroes. We come to understand what Athens’ twenty-five -thousand free citizens and many hundred thousand slaves really meant; -we penetrate into the profligacy of the Athenian rich, the degradation -of the Athenian masses; we realize why Aristides was banished for being -just and Alcibiades carried on the shoulders of the Athenian Democracy -(!) because he was a degenerate and a debauchee. And so on through all -the past. - -In like manner, we need not rely upon the poets and poetical -historians, as Professor Veblen apparently does, for knowledge of what -the “handicraft” civilization meant. We can study it, as it survives -practically unchanged in the miserable hovels of Bohemian and Italian -and Spanish peasants, where men and beasts rot together in conditions -of sanitation that would not long be tolerated in any place where the -“machine civilization” has inaugurated its high and ever higher moral -and physical standards. We need not go so far from home. To get a -picture of a prosperous handicraft city of the middle ages, go to New -York’s East Side, where are the fast disappearing sweatshops that were -transplanted from “handicraft neighborhoods” of Europe. The poets have -it otherwise; and so do those historians who like to paint alluring -pictures for their readers--and hate to grub for facts. But there is -the grisly truth. Contrast the average sweatshop with the average -factory. No; contrast the best sweatshop with the worst factory. - -Partly because some men are so much shrewder and more persistent and -more far-sighted than the masses of their fellows, but chiefly because -the mass of mankind has not been long enough emancipated by the power -of the machine to learn how to work intelligently and efficiently, -the power machine, become enormously beneficent through steam and -electricity, has not yet done all, or even more than a very small part, -of what it can do, and shall do, for mankind. But already--in less -than ten decades, less than seven--what a forward stride! In place of -a world where all but a handful toiled early and late--from dawn until -far into the night--toiled that others might reap all and they only -blows and the meagre bread of bitterness, we now have a world where -millions upon millions are comfortable. And as for the masses and -toilers still in the shackles of the old régime, are they not better -off than they were under that régime where wages were alms, and alms -of the scantiest; where the only lights in the black darkness of utter -ignorance were the will-o’-the-wisps of Superstition, drawing man -farther and farther into the morass of slavery to king and noble and -priest? - -In writing works on political economy, professors should not study the -conditions of labor before steam and electricity in poems and romances -and from orchestra stalls at productions of “Die Meistersinger.” There -is not a serf toiling in the deepest depth of the most hell-like mine -in Siberia, upon whose shoulders, and upon whose soul, the burden is -not lighter for the modern expansion of the civilization of the machine. - -The truth is, steam and electricity have made the human race suddenly -and acutely self-conscious as a race for the first time in its -existence. They have constructed a mighty mirror wherein humanity sees -itself, with all its faults and follies, and diseases and deformities. -And the sudden, unprecedented spectacle is so startling, is in such -abhorrent contrast with poetical pictures of the past, painted in -school and popular text-books, that men of defective perspective -shrink, and shriek: “Mankind has become monstrous!” But not so. Man, -rising, rising, rising through the ages, is not nearer to the dark and -bloody and cruel place of his origin than to the promised land toward -which his ideals are drawing him. His diseases and deformities are -of the past; and virtues that were, up to a few decades ago, almost -unattainable ideals, are now so nearly a part of his natural adornment -that hope of the nearness of the luminous penumbra of the Golden Age -seems not unjustified. - -What our grandfathers regarded as the natural and just demands of -employer upon employé are now regarded as rigorous and tyrannous -exactions of a brute. And in trying still to continue such exactions -men slink behind the lawyer-constructed shield of the corporation, that -they may be easier in conscience by trying to believe they are not -“personally” responsible. - -This brings us, naturally, to the charges against business men. - -Professor Veblen does not, in so many words, assert that there was a -time when business men were in business with other motives--presumably -idealistic--more potent than profits. But he forces his readers to -infer that this was the case--and that lofty view is always taken by -the assailants of our present civilization. That is, man used to be an -altruistic animal; Democracy and the machine--for you will find that -these assailants are always hitting at Democracy over the shoulders of -the machine--have made him a selfish and cruel rascal. - -False weights were found in the ruins of the oldest city that has -yet been exhumed. And false weights will probably be consumed when -the earth drops into the sun and the heavens are rolled together -like a scroll. Ancient records and ancient statute books are full of -evidence that every new plundering device--from capitalistic and labor -monopolies, secret rebates and majority owners swindling minority -owners, down to adulterations and crooked scales--was familiar to our -ancestors of the plateau of Iran before the migrations. Vice is the -old inhabitant; virtue is the newcomer, the immigrant, received with -reluctance and compelled to fight for every inch of ground he gains. -As for specific testimony as to past ages, we have the testimony of -all the old writers that the mercantile classes, the business men, -were “without honor,” mean of soul, oppressors of their employés, -robbers of their customers. We happen to know, also, that as for the -other classes--the proud kings and haughty nobles and the rest--they -certainly had a very quaint interpretation of that word “honor” when a -murderer, a tyrant, a gambler, a practitioner of every vice that rots -its slave and ruins its victims could yet be a “gentleman of unsullied -honor.” And we know, finally, that only with the rise of the business -men to influence and authority did the standard of honor become what -all the world now recognizes as “ideal.” The very Biblical phrases in -which honesty is enjoined are altogether commercial, are the language -of the business world, of business men. - -There are two vital facts about our new industrial civilization which -its critics neglect: - -First--It has created an unprecedented and infinitely great number -of opportunities to dishonesty of the kinds that are, to as yet but -slightly enlightened human nature, potently tempting. - -Second--It has created new conditions of the moral, as well as of the -material, relations of man to the masses of his fellow-men which are as -yet imperfectly understood and constitute a debatable ground for even -the fairest and rigidest consciences. Men now see that large action of -any kind involves large evil as well as large good; and the balance of -right and wrong is not easy to adjust, except in the tranquil studies -of critics and theorists. - -To the first of these two facts may justly be attributed the -unquestionably large amount of dishonesty--dishonesty clearly and -generally recognized as such. To the second of these two facts is -undoubtedly due the most of the wrong-doing by men who in their private -relations are above reproach. These statements are not put forward to -justify men for yielding to temptation to dishonesty and to justify -men in acts, approval of which can be got from conscience by sophistry -only, if at all. They are put forward simply to explain why it is that, -when there are actually more honesty and conscientiousness, and they of -a higher quality, than ever before in human history, there should be a -seeming of more dishonesty and consciencelessness. Further in support -of the same view, while wrongdoers of the past were hidden or veiled -by the imperfect means of publicity, wrongdoers of to-day are at once -searched out and pilloried by the press and by public opinion. Up to -the middle of the last century men knew little of the large evil done -them, and that little imperfectly; now, knowledge of individual acts -of uprightness, once scattered everywhere by being immortalized in -tradition, rhymed and prose, is lost in the vast revelations of huge -and ancient wrongs persisting. - -It is no new thing for a man to be admired and envied for wealth and -station, regardless of how he got them. But it is a new thing in -the world for the public conscience to be so sensitive that a man -in possession of wealth or station, got not by outright and open -robbery--methods not long ago regarded without grave disapproval--but -by means that are questionable and suspicious merely, should be in an -apologetic attitude, should feel called upon to defend himself and -to give large sums in philanthropy in the effort to justify and to -rehabilitate himself. Steam and electricity have given to man a sudden, -vast power. It is not strange that he should commit errors and crimes -in working out its unfamiliar possibilities. It is not strange that -abuses, as old as the selfish struggle for existence, should succeed in -adapting themselves to the new conditions, should contrive to persist. -But is it not strange that professors of political economy, supposedly -familiar with the truth about the past, should be so narrow and twisted -in historic and psychological perspective as to misunderstand these -simple phenomena? And what must we think of them if, in support of -their pessimistic and unwarranted jeremiads, they conjure the fantastic -and preposterous and long-exploded myth of humanity’s past Golden Age? - -According to Professor Veblen, honesty is no longer the best _policy_. -What an incredible misreading of the very sign-board of our time! Under -the old régime of priest or soldier or prince, honesty was distinctly -not the best policy. Strategy, dexterity, chicane, finesse, sophistry, -cozening--these were the sure, the only ways to preferment. For, under -those régimes preferment meant securing the right to live without work -upon the toil of others. And, to confine ourselves to the mercantile -classes, was not the successful business man he who got from prince or -priest or tyrant the right to rob the people, he who got a monopoly or -a license or a concession? - -How is it under the new régime, the democratic, the “vulgarizing” -régime of the business man? Our chief troubles come from survivals -into the present of the tenacious roots of the past’s methods to -success, come from the persistence of the idea that by wit and not -by wisdom and justice does the truly strong man truly prevail. But -slowly--and surely!--the “vulgar” régime is enforcing the laws and -sanctions of “vulgar” morality. Even our robber barons demand honesty, -strict honesty, among themselves in their conspiracies to monopolize -to their own profit the benefits intended for all. When they violate -the law of honesty, they do it in secrecy and make haste to deny their -crime and to return to their allegiance to the law. Honesty is the -very ground upon which a commercial civilization must rest. That our -business men are, as a class, and with rare exceptions, honest, keeping -their bargains, giving and receiving the value agreed upon, is proved -beyond question by the fact that we as a nation prosper, that our -abject poverty is almost confined to newly arrived immigrants and to -our only recently emancipated negroes. - -Where a prince is armed with power arbitrarily to suspend the natural -laws governing the intercourse of human beings, lies and dishonesty -may, for a time, prosper; but not where the sole basis of intercourse -is the voluntary belief of men in each other’s integrity. And more -than ninety per cent. of our business is done upon credit! Under the -old order, the very laws and customs, the very morality taught by the -church, was grounded upon the justice of the unjust distribution of the -products of labor; under the new régime, under “business enterprise,” -law and custom and religion teach only value for value received. - -Professor Veblen does well to criticise the misguided attempts of -philanthropy and so-called charity to restore the old relations of -superior and inferior. But his criticism that they are insufficient and -not in keeping with the “machine civilization’s” merciless demand for -economic efficiency does not go far enough. They are also unnecessary, -and in large measure productive of greater ills--of pauperism and -dependence--than those they seek to mitigate. The ills are not -machine-created. They are inherent in the imperfect nature of man. -They will tend wholly to disappear only when the machine’s “merciless” -demand for efficiency is rigidly enforced. For, what is that -“merciless” demand? What does the machine say to man? It says, “Work -is not a curse, but a blessing. In a leisure class the only culture -is of the germs of profligacy, superciliousness, snobbery and decay. -All men must work, and must learn to work well. All men must serve -that they may pay for service rendered. And where that order prevails, -to the worker will come the full reward for his work. I, the machine, -will make your burden into a blessing, your toil into labor, the noble, -the dignified, the producer of civilization and self-respect. I will -widen your horizon until you see that all men are brothers, brothers -in the business of, by business enterprise, increasing and creating -wants, and of, by business enterprise, satisfying them. I will give -you ideals that are true and just--not loyalty to idle, thieving -prince, not slavery to irrational superstition, not bondage to bloody -soldier-tyrant, but intelligent loyalty to truth and justice and -progress. I will make you master of nature and of yourself, servant of -the true religion and the true morality.” - -Until now has been reserved the inquiry into how it happens that these -critics of industrialism fall into their fatal errors. That inquiry -will not long detain us. Professor Veblen naïvely gives himself and -his fellow-critics away. He confesses why he hates the régime of -the business man, what he means when he calls the machine industry -“materialistic, unmoral, undevout.” “Business life,” he says, “does -not further the growth of manners and breeding, pride of caste, -punctilios of honor or even religious fervor.” And he finds his hope -for the future in militarism and imperialism--which he, by the way, -unjustly charges to the business men instead of to the politicians -pandering to the still lively passions of man’s inheritance from the -past when all the world was militaristic and imperialistic. “There can -be no serious question,” says he, “but that a consistent return to -the ancient virtues of allegiance, piety, servility, graded dignity, -class prerogatives, and prescriptive authority would greatly conduce -to popular content and to the facile management of affairs.” Nor does -he conceal under the ponderous sarcasm lurking in that statement the -truth of his own fixed belief in at least a measure of those “ancient -virtues.” For his whole book, and the speeches and writings of -practically all the critics of industrialism, show that these critics -abhor the new virtues as “materialistic.” - -The motive in the mind of each critic is a little different from that -of his fellow-critics. One wishes college professors and the like -to be in control; another is for the supremacy of birth; another for -the supremacy of culture, whatever that may mean. Another wants the -preacher back at the helm, with mankind an open-mouthed, uncritical -congregation. Each wants the particular class or condition to which -he himself has the good fortune to belong, to have the chief say in -affairs. But all agree in denouncing the business man who is actually -in control--and will remain there. They profess to despise money, yet -they hate him for his profits. They profess to prefer the intellectual -and moral dividends which their own intellectual and moral enterprises -declare; yet their dainty fingers twitch for the material dividends -which his material enterprises naturally declare. They would deny him -the gains which are the only--and, as they loudly profess, the poor -enough--rewards for wasting his life upon the gross and sordid things. - -The business man--and that means the worker, the “toiler”--is in -control, is there to stay, because the human animal is so constituted -that its material affairs--proper food, proper clothing, proper -shelter--must always be primal. Not of the _highest_ importance, but -of the _first_ importance. And if those material matters are well -attended to--as they will be when the worker’s instinct pervades the -whole race--the spiritual matters, the growth of body and soul, must -inevitably prosper. The worker, the worker’s instinct, provides the -right soil for a soul to grow in--a real soil, full of the natural -and nourishing substances, not a fanciful, unsubstantial soil of -false ideals, fraudulent culture and barren fiddle-faddle of closet -theorizings. - -For proof that the business instinct will provide the right soil we -need only point to our own country as it is. In America, the great -business nation of the nations, there lives a race of idealists, -eighty millions earnest, dominated by the instincts for self-help and -helpfulness to others, afire with the passion for improvement, for -education, for knowledge of all kinds and from any and all sources. - -The world has wandered in the swamps of vain and sentimental imaginings -long enough. By all means, let us have it established on the firm -ground and in the straight, upward roads of science and business. -The sun shines upon those roads by day, the moon and the stars light -them by night; the flowers bloom beside them--and within reach of the -humblest wayfarer. - -This gospel will not be attractive to _poseurs_ and to the lazy and -the incompetent. But it is gospel, the gospel of Democracy, America’s -gospel. In the cargo of merchandise, Enlightenment and Democracy always -travel as stowaway missionaries; when the cargo is landed, they go -ashore and begin to preach. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -DEMOCRACY’S DYNAMO - - -Education is the huge dynamo which supplies power to the American -people. Not in history or in legend is there recorded such an outburst -of international curiosity as that about the real America, as -distinguished from the America created in the minds of Europeans by -our multi-millionaires, since it became not merely agricultural but -also an industrial world-factor, inevitably dominant in an era whose -civilization is the first based upon peace and indissolubly wedded to -peaceful arts. Europe has not been satisfied with inspecting what comes -to her. Such specimens only whetted her curiosity to an edge as fine -as that which cut the home ties of adventurous spirits when Columbus -exhibited his Indians and his gold at the court of his patrons. - -The Europeans, and the Asiatics, too, hastened to dispatch to us all -manner of commissioners, semi-official and private, from princes of -reigning houses to delegates from labor unions. And each of these -spies--of the splendid modern kind--has been charged to seek and find -and forthwith bring home an answer to the all-important question: “How -_do_ they do it?” - -And these gentlemen have peeked and poked and peered in the -friendliest, most flattering way imaginable. They have examined palace -and tenement and cottage, and their tenants. They have eaten and drunk -of all the products of the land, and have listened to speeches numerous -and have read newspapers numberless. They have watched wheels go round -in factories--and in heads as well. They have heard those who say “the -captains of industry did it,” those who say “it was done in spite of -the captains of industry and the high financiers.” And after tasting -and seeing and smelling and touching and hearing, from Maine to the -Golden Gate, these envoys have gone back, and with one accord have -replied: - -“They do it by education.” - -From the end of the Civil War--an interruption of our progress to rid -ourselves of a drag upon it--we have been educating as we never did -before, as no other people ever did or now does. Immigrants have -poured in; our great “infant industry” which protectionist and free -trader alike believe in protecting and fostering, has been exceedingly -expansive. And we have put home and foreign product into the great -educational plant--from half to two-thirds of all between five years -old and twenty going through school and academy and college. The -average annual number who now receive formal education is one-fifth -of our total population. And more than a million of our young men and -women--one in every ten of both sexes of the higher education age, one -in every six young men of that age--are annually in the universities, -colleges, academies, business and professional schools. Not enough, not -nearly enough; but in hopeful proportion to what used to be. - -“I think, therefore I am,” runs the Descartes formula. We teach our -youth to think in order that they may really _be_--be individual, be -proud and self-respecting and self-reliant, be free with the freedom no -government or law can give or secure, or take away. In the educational -institutions this impulse gets form and direction that it may develop -efficient manhood. And against the thinking toiler all the forces -of ignorance and passion and wasteful luxury, of base and foolish -political, social, industrial ideas, cannot prevail. - -The first free school opened on these shores was in New York City on -Manhattan Island. Of all the settlers who came to America the Dutch -alone understood and believed in the free public school, offering free -education not as alms but as a right. They had had it at home. They -established it here, and set the example which was followed by the -other colonists, first of all by those New Englanders who had lived in -the Holland that fought Alva and Philip, and had there absorbed some -democratic ideas. Holland was the godmother of modern Democracy, was -the nursery of the modern public school. - -These words are from the pen of John of Nassau, the oldest brother of -that friend of civil and religious liberty, William the Silent: - -“Soldiers and patriots thus educated (in free schools) are better than -all armies, arsenals, armories, munitions, alliances and treaties that -can be had or imagined in the world.” - -Those words, written three hundred years ago by a man who had devoted -his life to the study of the rights and wrongs of the common man, sum -up the whole story. How his eloquent common sense contrasts with the -shrieking of those little Americans who think that a cannon shot can -penetrate further than a noble idea! How this old friend of freedom -rebukes the puny, alleged statesmen who fancy that the manhood of -this republic was developed on the battlefields, instead of realizing -that military prowess is only one matter-of-course evidence of its -existence! Enlightenment and Democracy make men who _live_ for their -country--and that is the new force in the world. - -Let the people who fear for the future of the democratic spirit -of this people look upon the spectacle of our free schools, those -millions of young heads bent over books, those millions of young -brains learning to think, to reason, learning to use mind and body in -the service of civilization, real civilization. Enlightenment has won -all the victories of the republic in the past. Its eternal warfare -upon ignorance and incompetence, upon craft of plutocrat and craft of -demagogue, and plausible idealism of reactionary, is the safeguard of -the republic’s future. And one of the great agents of enlightenment, of -Democracy--not the only great agent, not the greatest agent--is formal -education in school, academy and college. - -And more important even than the formal education of the boys is the -formal education of the girls. The other means to enlightenment are -more accessible to the men--indeed, they compel the men to become less -ignorant and less prejudiced in spite of themselves. But to reach -the women, the formal education is almost indispensable, for their -ignorance and their prejudice are more sheltered, less open to the -light of Democracy that floods the arenas and the market places. - -And educated, enlightened, democratic women are of the highest -importance to America, whose mission seems to be to lead the world in -the march upward to that Arcady where every human unit shall have the -chance to count as one. - -Our extensive and our expanding system of higher education of women -is often bitterly assailed by educated men, by educators. Bourbonism, -especially when bulwarked by vanity, does not yield easily. And it will -be many a day before death reaps the last man with the passion for -looking down on his fellow-creatures. To avoid useless dispute, admit -that woman should look up to man. Still there remains unimpaired the -truth that woman’s two highest functions are to be the companion of -man and the mother of men. The profitable companion for an educated -man must be an educated woman--educated not merely for man’s “hours of -ease,” nor for his happily infrequent hours “when pain and anguish rack -the brow,” but also for the hours of development and endeavor. - -So long as so-called education consisted in a little Latin and less -Greek, forgotten as speedily as the business of life could crowd it -from the mind, higher education was as unimportant to women as--well, -as it was to man. But now that education consists in teaching not how -the Greeks and Romans lived, but how “you and I” must live to-day and -to-morrow, the gap between the man who has had the higher education -and the woman who has not had it and has not supplied the deficiency, -is wide indeed and will grow wider. If as much attention were given to -the relations between men and women from five years after marriage on -to the end as is given to their relations during the purely sentimental -and transitory mating season this difference would appear in its true -importance. - -The same point of view applies to woman as a mother. So long as the -training of children centred around the slipper and the switch, an -ignorant mother was not at a great disadvantage--the best educated -mothers knew little. But now-a-days the child of the highly educated -mother has an enormous advantage, other things being equal, because -such a mother applies science to the conduct of her home as her husband -applies it to the conduct of his profession or business. - -No education in the mother will compensate for lack of character. -Character without education is infinitely better than education without -character. But character plus education is the true ideal--and it is -attainable. - -If we are speedily to enter more fully into the rich promised land -which Democracy opens to us, we must have not only the man who knows -but the woman who knows. After all, is not our ultimate excuse for -being alive that we are the parents of the next generation? And there -the woman, with practically absolute control over the next generation -at its vital, formative age, has the better of the man. If anything, -does she not need the higher education more than does the man? - -Education for the men; education for the women. But it must be -_enlightened and enlightening_ education. - -Our national ideal is not a powerful state, famed and feared for -bluster and appetite, not a people welded by unthinking passion for -military glory into an instrument to the greed and vanity of the few; -but manhood and womanhood, a citizenship ever wiser and stronger and -more civilized, with ever more and more individual units that cannot -be controlled in the mass--the democratic man and the democratic -woman--alert, enlightened, self-reliant, free. - -Now, there can be no difference of opinion as to the way to this ideal, -the way to make the individual capable to work out his own salvation -without hindrance from the aggressiveness of his neighbor or neighbors, -without hindrance from the prejudices begotten in and of the darkness -of his own ignorance. - -Against all these foes, those without, those within, there is just one -effective weapon--education. - -It is impossible for an ignorant man to be free. No matter what -constitutions you establish, no matter what laws you pass, no matter -how assiduously you safeguard individual rights and liberties, the -ignorant man will still be a slave. He rejoices in his chains, his -prejudices and his superstitions. He clings to them. He beats off those -who seek to deliver. He welcomes those who seek to bind. He shouts for -chains, he votes for chains--chains for himself, chains for others. If -he is ever in the right it is because he is mistaken. And you may be -certain that a demagogue or other slave-hunter will soon recapture him -and restore him to his beloved bondage of error. - -This is why the man who aspires to freedom instinctively reaches for -the weapon of education. This is why the American people always have -had as their dominant passion the passion for education. This is why on -the frontier the schoolhouse is finished before the home is furnished; -why the washerwoman and the drayman toil to keep their children in -school and to send at least one son to college; why our self-made men -pour out their wealth in educational endowments; why there are all -these colossal public appropriations for schools, academies, colleges, -universities. - -What is an ignorant man? - -Of course there are the illiterates and the almost illiterate. But, -numerous though they are, they do not count for much in this republic. -They do not decide elections. They do not select candidates. They do -not propose and compel legislation. The so-called ignorant vote is not -a national or a local peril. It is not a national, rarely even a local -factor. - -The ignorance that counts in a Democracy is educated ignorance. -Sometimes it has only been part of the way through the common schools. -Sometimes it has one or more university degrees. Sometimes it struts -and preens itself as “the scholar in politics.” Only too often it -writes books, especially histories, and in the magazines and in the -newspapers tells how and for whom we ought to vote. More often than -not the very conspicuous members of this ignorant class are full to -the overflowing with knowledge, knowledge from books, knowledge from -experience, knowledge from travel. - -No, education--democratic education--is not knowledge. It is not even -experience. Profound, deadly, dangerous ignorance is compatible with -both. - -What, then, is ignorance? - -All its shades and kinds can be so classified as to exclude none who -ought to be included, include none who has the right to go free. Is not -the dangerous, ignorant man of the Democracy the man who cannot reason, -cannot think for himself? - -What does it mean to think for one’s self? - -Fortunately, it does not mean original thinking. If that were so there -would instantly arise in the world the most contracted and exclusive -aristocracy it has ever known. To think for one’s self does not even -mean correctly to reason out one’s own conclusions from given premises. -That would involve an amount of mental labor from which many brains -might shrink. It merely means to be able to follow reasoning that is -laid before one; to hear both sides and suspend judgment until both are -heard; to recognize which is sound and which fallacious, and upon that -independent and clear judgment to accept the true, or rather, to reject -the false. - -A Democracy must breed citizens who think for themselves. Without them -it cannot live. With them it cannot die. Hence it follows that in a -Democracy education means to cultivate the ability to think for one’s -self. Democracy means the right of private judgment. Education in and -for a Democracy means development of the capacity to form private -judgment. - -So far as the Democracy is concerned, so far as the equable -distribution of rights and liberties is concerned, no education that -does not increase reasonableness is of the slightest value. - -The education that has for its chief aims, its only real aims, culture, -refinement, knowledge, learning, may be useful to an aristocracy like -Great Britain, to an empire like Germany, to an autocracy like Russia. -But it is not only not helpful to but actually hostile to democratic -ideas and ideals. It breeds contempt on the one hand, fear and -suspicion and hate on the other--the few looking down upon the many, -the many looking up at the few. It makes the powerful supercilious. It -makes the weak, whether educated or uneducated, helpless. It fills the -brain; it does not necessarily strengthen the brain. It _gives_ a man -something; it does not compel him to make something of himself. - -The truth about democratic education is indirectly recognized in -practice more and more as science and its rigidly logical methods have -grown in educational importance. All our modern systems of education -are based perforce, rather than by design, in part upon teaching the -brain to reason. But do we realize fully as yet that for us, for our -democratic purposes of self-development and self-government, teaching -the brain to think is not only the whole foundation of education, but -also the sustaining part of the superstructure? - -Take up any one of the great newspapers of the country, the great -reflectors of the public mind and heart and taste. A few minutes’ -searching among the advertisements will discover columns on columns -of notices of astrologers and palmists and clairvoyants, of mediums -and crystal gazers and cure-all doctors with their cure-all medicines. -To whom do these dealers in the secrets of life and death, the future -and the beyond, appeal for their comfortable incomes? To those who -cannot read? Manifestly not. To the people in the humbler walks of -life? Certainly not. No, they are inviting the educated classes to -call--merchants and bankers and artisans, their wives and their -daughters, the “well-to-do,” the reading public, the “substantial,” -the part of the people which is commonly called “the backbone of the -republic.” - -Go on to the news columns. You find some account of the doings of -a band of thieves who have got possession of some department or -departments of the city or state government, and have substituted for -the statute law the law of loot. Who turned over the keys to them? -The illiterate, the dishonest, the criminal? Not at all. Look at the -primary rolls of the organization whom these wretches disgrace, and -you find a thoroughly respectable, in the main intelligent, certainly -honest, body of voters. By no stretch of the meaning could you call -them uneducated in the sense in which that term is commonly used. - -In the very next column, perhaps, you read how a statesman of pious -mien and impressive manner has been assuring his fellow-countrymen -that they have a commission from the Almighty (which he begs leave to -execute) calling them from their peaceful and orderly occupations and -sending them forth to slaughter certain other men of whom they had -not heard until a few months ago, to seize persons and property and -to administer upon them arbitrarily. And who cheered wildly as these -tidings of morality and civilization were proclaiming? Illiterates? -Certainly not; but educated men, many of them highly educated, men -who would hardly characterize such performances in private life as -“manifest destiny” and “plain duty.” - -A few columns further on and you read how one is wailing like a lost -soul over heaps of scrap metal and rags and waste paper, because he -cannot get permission to work them over into money and so make us -all millionaires. And who is he? A college graduate. And who are his -supporters? Millions who have gone to school and take in the newspapers -and magazines. - -These few illustrations of the reign of illogic are cited from the -multitude available with a double purpose. In the first place, they -faintly suggest to what an extent the citizen of a Democracy is prey -to charlatanism. In countries with other forms of government--in -monarchies and the like--a few charlatans are licensed and erected into -respectability and power, and given the range of the people, while all -others are rigidly repressed. In a Democracy any charlatan may license -himself. The people are prey to every and any form of charlatanism, -fraudulent or both. They must protect themselves, or they will not be -protected at all. And right education is the only means. - -The second point made obvious by these examples of superstition -theological, superstition medical, superstition political, is that -our education in the past must have been defective and must still be -so. It has been seeking, it now seeks, as its chief object, to impart -knowledge, not to cultivate the art of using knowledge, the art of -thinking correctly. - -The ideal has been an education that is reminiscent and is only -incidentally constructive. The democratic ideal is the education that -is constructive and only incidentally reminiscent. - -There is only one way to this true education. Just as a child is taught -to walk, to ride, to swim, just as it is taught to read, to write, to -cipher, with just as much care, with just as much patience, with just -as much deliberateness of purpose, must it be taught to reason. - -This is not in advocacy of courses in formal logic. Those courses do -not teach men to think. They teach men what certain other men have -thought about the processes of thinking. And too often they teach it -in such a way as to discourage the exercise of the reasoning faculty. -No; the education that will soundly educate must make of every kind -of lesson a lesson in logic, an incessant pointing out of reasons, -reasons, reasons why certain facts are so, certain allegations false; -an incessant demand that reasons, reasons, reasons be given--always -reasons. The interrogation point should be the symbol over the door -of every school, high and low, as the indication of what is going on -within. - -The average child starts in life with a question mark at the tip of -every sense. Why does this inquisitiveness gradually disappear or -become perverted into curiosity about trivialities? Why does going to -school become a burden? Why are so many classes at college listless and -inattentive? Why does the light, the frivolous, the thoughtless attract -and hold, while that which is in reality far more interesting wearies -and repels? Is it not because this reasoning faculty is allowed to grow -up “any which way,” and is discouraged or suppressed wherever memory or -some other form of some one’s else ideas can be substituted? Is it not -because to reason comes to seem a burden, a bore, a pain? Would that be -so if education were rightly based, rightly built? - -We Americans reason better, perhaps, than any other nation about a -wider range of affairs; probably not with so much depth as some other -peoples, but certainly with greater clearness. But this is due to a -compulsory training almost altogether outside of the schoolroom. It is -due to Democracy, that compels the mind to grow as Spring’s sunshine -compels the seed. As our affairs, both public and private, have grown -more complex, the defects due to this haphazard education of the -reasoning faculty, this treatment of it almost as if it were a weed, -become more and more apparent, more and more in need of correction. - -Common sense is looked upon as a gift of the gods, a sort of intuition. -Is it not in reality merely the result of a somewhat better natural or -acquired reasoning faculty? Ought not common sense to be the attainable -possession of every American? And where but the schoolhouse is the -place to obtain this possession, this means to self-rule, to freedom, -to the full splendor of the noblest of human ideals, Democracy? - -In a Democracy the school should not be the temple of knowledge. It -should be the temple of reason. And it shall be! And that day will be a -sad one for charlatanism and for charlatans. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -A NATION OF DREAMERS - - -Each year not far from fifty million dollars are spent in America in -exploiting cures for digestion troubles; and no doubt we give the -doctors and the druggists a thousand millions or so each year in -seeking relief from the consequences of our ignorance and our folly -in feeding ourselves. Some of us are too poor to get the right sort -of food, even when we know what is the right kind; others are both -ignorant and incapable of resisting the clamors of appetite. The -problems of mental and physical food are not analogous; they are two -parts of a whole. Our ignorance of chemistry and hygiene and our -unguarded appetites lead us into gastronomic folly; our ignorance of -the simple and easily learned laws of the mind and our vitiated and -undiscriminating mental appetites, called passions and prejudices, lead -us into educational follies as wild but no wilder than our gastronomic -follies. The results of the one show in poor health; the results of -the other show in confusion in the conduct of our affairs, private and -public. - -Some of us have no means of getting good mental food, and would not -know what to select and what to reject if we had. Others, and these are -the overwhelming majority, have no power to discriminate between the -true and the false, the rational and the irrational, between that which -strengthens the powers of the mind and that which weakens or perverts -them. We take in cheap or worthless mental food just as we put cheap or -worthless stuff into our stomachs. We take in that which is easy and -pleasant to the taste--that is, we patronize the intellectual pastry -cooks and confectioners too liberally. Or, we go to the purveyors of -the strong waters of passion and prejudice, and under the influence of -such whiskies and brandies imagine ourselves beings of extraordinary -and fine mentality. - -There is as much, indeed, there is greater, cause for alarm over the -gastronomic than over the mental follies. But neither kind is evidence -that we are on the down grade. We are more alert and wiser all the -time in matters of physical health, despite our own appetites and -foolish inclinations and lazy disinclinations, despite the pretentious -ignorance of the medical profession and the shrewd chicanery of the -quacks. In the same manner we are more and more alive to the importance -of mental health, of the well-fed, well-exercised brain; and this -improvement goes steadily forward, despite the harmful effects of -alleged literature and drama, despite the pretentious ignorance of -our regularly constituted teachers, despite the energetic educational -quackeries of false learning, false culture and false taste. -Intelligence will spread; Democracy will compel. - -A hundred years ago small indeed was the part of the human race that -could be reached by an appeal to the reason. To-day in many parts of -the civilized world advances begin to be made not alone by appeals -to empty stomachs, by shouts about full and empty dinner pails, but -by real intellectual force. There are even a few rare but highly -significant instances of masses of men being induced to sacrifice a -small immediate good to gain a remoter larger good. That is, the masses -begin to show signs of that same intelligent foresight which created -and maintained class rule in times past, which makes some successful -far beyond their fellows. And those who are so greatly concerned by the -vast concentration of machinery and capital in a few hands fail to give -proper consideration to the two most important points, more important -far than the evils of concentration of wealth and power: - -First: Concentrations of capital are at the mercy of brains. They are -impotent unless they are administered by brains, administered by a -multitude of brains working intelligently and harmoniously for a common -end. - -Second: Their evil consequences result from lack of reasoning power, -lack of far-sightedness, due to imperfect education in the managers; -lack of knowledge how to protect their own interests on the part of the -masses. - -On one hand we see an enormous increase in the brain power of the -people--a multitude able to think, eager to think, not to be prevented -from thinking, where only two or three generations ago the thinking was -done exclusively by the few. On the other hand we see the necessity for -more thinking, for vigorous stirring-up of the minds of the masses, -for more and more education. And, year by year, the stirring-up process -increases. The evils of the present day are as old as the race, as old -as ignorance, as old as human frailty. The good, the benefits, are new, -entirely new. - -The material and mental forces of modern civilization have already -wrought wonders. Think of it! Less than a century and a half ago the -world for the first time heard a plea for the freedom, the dignity, -the individuality of man. To-day millions of minds have that gospel as -their fundamental creed. And freedom of thought, freedom of action, is -the realized ideal of many nations, the realizing ideal of almost all -the others. Why should we fear that the idea of manhood will lose its -charm; that the democratic ideal, which has real beauty, should prove -less attractive than the old ideal of inequality and injustice and -inhumanity, which is now seen to be in fact hideous? Why should we fear -that as we grow in enlightenment, grow in capacity to think and act -with freedom, we should care less and less about thinking and acting -with freedom? - -What will come out of this vast, unbarriered flood of sunshine of -enlightenment, out of these concentrations social called cities, -these concentrations industrial called combinations? Who can say? Who -would care to destroy life’s chief interest, the veiled future, by -foreseeing? One thing we can be assured of--it will not be tyranny. -It could not be tyranny, because the light of intellect, of real -intelligence, is now in millions of minds, is kindling in millions more. - -Of the many misreadings of history perhaps the silliest is that which -attributes to former times an idealism greater than that of our own -day. And of the many misreadings of our own times certainly the -silliest is that which attributes more idealism to such countries as -Germany, Austria, and Italy than to these United States. - -The Middle Ages are generally cited as the period of intensest and -loftiest idealism. But looking past the artistic and literary few -of those centuries, looking at nations and peoples, what do we see? -Ignorance, squalor, inconceivable physical and mental and moral -wretchedness; ferocious tyrannies worse almost than anarchy itself and -constantly producing it; stolid and heartless indifference in almost -all to the welfare of their fellow-beings; “Every man for himself” the -universal cry. No wonder there was a passionate yearning for the life -beyond the grave with its promise of escape from a world made hideous -by “man’s inhumanity to man.” And in these modern countries where -so-called idealism is rampant, we find false and oppressive social and -industrial conditions in the ascendant, we find a deplorable incapacity -for dealing with the problems of life or an ignorant insensibility to -them. - -If idealism means inanely beating the empty air, if it means the -worship of the vague, the remote and the purely fanciful, then this -age cannot be charged with idealism and our country must plead guilty -to the charge of gross materialism; and for idealism we must look to -seclusions and deserts, where a few surviving dirty and distracted -hermits and yogis spend their time in fantastical imaginings. But if -idealism means rational, realizable and realizing dreams of a to-morrow -that shall be as much better than to-day as to-day is better than -yesterday, then the world was never before so idealistic, and America -is the chief prophet and chief apostle of idealism. - -In this sense the Declaration of Independence is the most idealistic -literary product of the human mind; the so-called idealism of -superstition, of chivalry, of kingship and aristocracy, of the -divinely appointed few taking care of the many, of “never mind this -world; all will be righted in the next,” has the cheap, dull glitter -of “fool’s gold” and paste diamonds. These fallacies were, and -still are, poisonous, because of their interference with the growth -of true idealism--the idealism of self-help and helping others to -help themselves. And to show them up and then to show them down and -out--especially down and out of our colleges and universities--we need -another Cervantes and a revised and enlarged Don Quixote. - -Never before was the true ideal, humanity, clear and universal. “Light -from the East” was the old proverb; the new proverb is “Light from the -West!” For ours is the dawn-land of the Golden Age. We are a nation, -a race of idealists, of dreamers. Even our plutocrats, with their -Americanism submerged and all but suffocated in their wealth, still -dream fitfully of justice and equality and universal enlightenment and -the brotherhood of man. - -We are a nation of dreamers who make their dreams come true! - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -NOT GENEROSITY, BUT JUSTICE - - -It is reasonable, and not unkind, to assume that the time will come -when we shall no longer have John D. Rockefeller with us. He may not -die; as a vindication and a reward he may be honored with the unique -distinction of Enoch and Elijah. But, whether by the vulgar route or -in fiery chariot with angel escort, go he will, and his son will reign -in his stead. The word reign is here used in the metaphoric sense in -which it is almost always used now-a-days. For, the son of Rockefeller -will not be free literally to reign. He will be hedged about with -a thousand and one restraints. His acts will be the result not of -his own intellect and will, but of his training, his tradition, his -environment. He will be little of the autocrat, a great deal of the -agent and servant. But, suppose that he would be really free, really -self-owned, really capable of the mastership of his vast inheritance, -instead of its slave, doing its bidding, acting always as a son of John -D. Rockefeller and a member of the class multi-millionaire. Suppose -this possible. What could he do with his nearly a thousand millions, -for the most part so massed that they control many of the great vital -industries of the country? Imbued with a deep sense of trusteeship to -humanity instead of to the quaint Rockefeller god, and endowed with the -intelligence to act upon that sense, what could he do to make the world -the better for his sojourn in it? What would be his opportunities? - -Of course, in the reality his opportunities will be small indeed. His -limitations, through heredity, education and environment, are too -narrow. But under our fanciful, even fantastic, “if,” there must be -surely some way for a rich man to serve his fellow-men and demonstrate -high qualities of mind and heart other than by these commonplace, more -or less “cheap and nasty” schemes of so-called philanthropy. To all men -in the past, and to the small man still--that is, to any man incapable -of grasping the splendid and lofty idealism of Democracy--there -could be nothing more captivating than playing the rôle of my Lord -Bountiful. Not merely the paying of one’s just debts, not merely -the doing of the commands of one’s own self-respect, but graciously -condescending to part with one’s wealth for the gratification of -one’s vanity and for the development of deference and humility in the -recipients of the bounty. Philanthropy as it is practiced is more often -than not a vice both in its origin and in its results. So, we will -not make our imaginary young Rockefeller a philanthropist. We will -not subject him to the temptation to make of himself a supercilious -Pharisee and to make of others paupers and parasites and courtiers. - -He is free; he is young; he is fearless. He is absolute master of his -colossal inheritance. He looks up at the vast structure his father -built. He reads upon it the motto his father placed there--“I am a -clamorer for dividends.” His face sobers as he reads, and out of his -mind go his half-formed projects to endow missions and colleges and -hospitals and libraries. “Perhaps I have not so much to give as I -thought,” he says to himself. “I must first see. What are the sources -of my income? Am I stealing from anybody? Should I be giving away that -which is not rightfully mine to give?” - -And as a preliminary move he tears down the offensive “I am a clamorer -for dividends,” and puts in its stead “I am a clamorer for justice.” - -“Let us first be just,” he says. “Perhaps we shall not be able to be -generous. Perhaps we shall even, hat in hand, and upon our knees, be -compelled to crave the generous forgiveness of our fellow-men.” All -this time he has been standing at the rear or business end of the -paternal structure. He now goes round to the front or philanthropic -side of it. He closes the doors there with a sign, “Philanthropy -suspended during the taking of the inventory.” - -And so we find our ideal young Rockefeller, his ears shut against -the importunities of paupers and panderers and parasites, plunging -deep and resolutely into the details of business--of the several vast -enterprises which he, by inheritance, owns or controls. And soon all -his father’s old friends, with the approval of all the leading men in -finance and industry, are discussing whether a commission ought not -to be obtained, and cannot be obtained, to inquire into the sanity of -the young man. Not dividends, but honesty and justice! Why, the young -fellow’s brain is turned! Denouncing business methods approved by the -best lawyers at the bar, sanctified by the use of the greatest captains -of industry? Insisting that commodities should be sold at only a fair -profit over and above the cost of production? Dismissing men skilled in -legal and business chicane? Insisting that no man in his employ shall -have less than a decent living wage? Calling for the reorganization of -great properties, not to increase but to decrease the bonds and stocks -on whose interest and dividends a hundred of our best people are able -to lead lives of elegant leisure and look down with amused pity on -those who have to toil? There is no escape from the conclusion that the -young man is mad, mad as a hatter, mad as a March hare. - -If he had established soup kitchens to tempt the hard-working to knock -off and join the army of lusty beggars, if he had given millions to -enable missionaries to live at ease while they gratified their abnormal -passion for meddling in other people’s business, if he had subsidized -faculties to teach only “safe and sane” doctrines, if he had set aside -vast corruption funds for debauching legislatures to suffer the people -to be despoiled, if he had poured rivers of water into the stocks and -bonds of his enterprises, had cut down wages and raised prices, if he -had built himself half a dozen palaces, and conducted himself like a -monkey that has been given a red cap and a pink jacket--why, that would -have been sane, eminently sane. But honesty and justice! And in his own -affairs! A real, practical application! Hear the shouts of derisive -laughter. See the winks, the tongues in derisive cheeks. “The man’s -mad! The man’s mad!” cries a generation tainted with the coarse ideals -of riches, show and condescension. - -But let us suppose that he is not strait-jacketed by his friends nor -daunted by the hoots of the crowd. Let us suppose that he remains -at large and has his way. And then, let us look at his first great -“philanthropy.” - -At first glance there seems nothing to look at, no important change. -The same old machinery of these several huge Rockefeller industries of -manufacture, trade and transportation seems to be moving on in much the -same old way. The only obvious change is in the fortune and the income -of the young iconoclast and his fellow-stockholders. There is seen an -enormous shrinkage--enough to have endowed hundreds of colleges, enough -to have made millions of paupers. The difference between the old order -and the new is chiefly in moral tone. An honest man and a criminal go -through precisely the same routine each day--dressing, eating, talking, -sleeping. The abysmal difference between the two is invisible to human -eyes. - -Nor does the example of the new order seem to amount to much. Such -doings are too expensive. Charity, donations, subscriptions, cost -far less, do not interfere with dividends and interest, and bring -returns in public applause. Why be honest and just when nobody else -is--when nobody appreciates it--when the very victims of the system of -dishonesty and injustice have less respect for you? Why refrain from -“respectable” robbery when indulging in it gives power and prestige? - -But the young iconoclast is not discouraged. He keeps hammering -away--establishing the new order where he has control, making a fierce -and incessant and public fight for it in those corporations in which -he is a director sitting for a minority interest. And gradually the -fury of the “respectable” rises against him. He has outraged the great -“respectable” lawyers, who fatten on fraud and crime; he has inflamed -the stockholders and bondholders, great and small, who find their -incomes cut down; he has exasperated all who, but for the pickings -and stealings under the old system, would have to work instead of -idling about, pitying and patronizing workers. He has stirred to awful -fury the whole capitalistic class, the honest ones no less than the -dishonest; for the honest capitalist, while he looks askance at his -dishonest fellow-member of the capitalistic solidarity, yet regards him -as a wronged brother whenever any one by criticising him seems to be -criticising capitalism. And these cyclonic ragings against the young -man slowly rouse the masses of the people, slowly waken the slumbering -moral sense of a society that has yielded to the seductions of the -practical maxim, “Put money in thy purse.” And he is greatly cheered by -the swelling, stentorian applause of the people. - -He has cut down his income to less than one-twentieth what it was; -but still a vast sum, far more than he can possibly spend, pours in -upon him and demands investment. Further, many of the enterprises in -which he is a large but not a controlling factor are of so suspicious -a character, are so dependent for success upon roguery, that he feels -he cannot continue in them. To abandon his holdings would be merely -to add to the incomes of the rascals; he sensibly, but not without -qualms, sells out at as large a price as he can get. Looking for new -investments, he goes into the most crowded and squalid section of each -of the cities and large towns in which he has interests--into those -sections where the workers associated with his various enterprises -are congregated. He buys up whole blocks and sections of unsanitary -tenements. He tears them down and builds in place of them houses fit -for human habitation. And he adjusts the scale of rents there, not on -the familiar principle of robbing the poor because it is so easy to do, -but on the same principles that he would apply to business property of -the kinds used by people whose necessities are not so great that they -are helpless before the robber. He is content with a decent profit; -he takes no blood-money. He is a business-like, human landlord, not a -bloody bandit, not a “clamorer for dividends.” - -In each of these neighborhoods he establishes a huge department store -in which he sells everything; and he gives value, not sham and shoddy. -These stores make a specialty of food. They sell only wholesome -food--and they can easily afford to sell it at the same prices -which the former purveyors to these poor got for vile, poisonous, -rotten meat and vegetables. Then he buys up the street-car lines in -his neighborhoods as far as he can, and establishes two-cent fares. -He realizes the importance of the item of car-fare to the poor, the -wickedness of stock and bond watering to keep up the cruelest of all -taxes. - -And now he is in hot water! He has alienated a large and influential -section of every one of the grand divisions of respectable society. He -has against him, and purple with rage at the very mention of his name, -all the men and all the women and all the families that directly or -indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, live by exploiting the poor. -Right and left he has cut into or cut entirely away incomes, sources of -vast profit, those infamous yet “respectable” capitalizations of the -industry of picking the pockets in the tattered dress of the working -girl, in the ragged overalls of the laborer! What an uproar from all -that is articulate! They cry in the newspapers that he is worse than -his father, that he is impoverishing the “best citizens,” et cetera. -They scream that he is doing it, is using the almost infinite power -of his father’s massed millions, with an ulterior motive--solely to -increase his income. - -As a matter of fact, his income has begun to increase. In a few years, -the practice of honesty and justice on a scale that makes it impossible -for the dishonest and the unjust to crush him, results in his having a -vaster fortune than ever. Everything he touches turns to gold. In his -main enterprise, the policy of low prices, honest wares and high wages -causes business to flow in and to more than make up for the old profits -lost by the abolition of the short-sighted tyrannies and monopolistic, -pound-foolish, penny-wise policies. His tenements pay; his department -stores can’t take care of the business offered; his street-car lines -are crowded. The old business principle, time-honored, was: “Raise -prices as the demand increases.” He acts on the new, the scientific -business principle: “Lower prices as demand increases. Don’t kill that -which you have been striving to create. Foster demand.” - -At first he was called a “well-meaning but wildly mistaken -philanthropist.” Now he is called a shrewder business man than -his father. Like his father, he is hated and envied by all the -rich-but-not-so-rich. And, sad yet amusing to relate, he is profoundly -suspected by those whom he is striving to benefit. Such few friends as -he has left bring this to his attention. “What’s the use?” they say. -“Look at the ingrates. If you had stolen ten millions from them and -given back a hundred thousand in charity they would have cheered you to -the echo. You pamper them, and they turn on you. If there was to be a -revolution to-morrow your head would be the first to go off.” - -What does the young man reply? He might invite them to note the fact -that he is making more money than his father did and is at least -escaping the odium of being regarded as a hypocrite. But he does not. -He is a peculiar young man. He simply smiles. “I am in business to -please one customer first of all,” says he. “That customer is myself. -What does it matter to me what other people think of me? I don’t have -to live with them. But I do have to live with myself.” - -And he orders further reductions of prices, and further increases of -wages, buys more street-car lines, builds more tenements, opens a -half dozen other big stores. To supply these stores with meat, eggs, -butter, vegetables, et cetera, he starts in the neighborhood of each -of his cities and towns huge farms, to which he sends boys and girls -as apprentices to learn the farming business. And he engages to set -up in the farming business each boy or girl who works well. Those who -cannot be got in love with farming are to have first call on the lower -positions in his various manufacturing and distributing enterprises. - -He has now been twenty years at this business of applying old -moral principles and policies to the vast modern opportunities for -concentration and combination. Twenty years of hard work, and he is -a happy, hated man of fifty and odd. He is richer than his father -ever dreamed of being. Wonder of wonders, he at last has begun to -drive the crooks and the rascals out of big business. There is just -one competition in which a crook cannot survive--the competition -with intelligent honesty. It is a competition which had never been -tried until the coming of our fanciful, fantastic scion of Standard -Oil, black sheep in the capitalistic fold. The crooked little farmer -or merchant cannot survive against the straight little farmer or -merchant. The crooked big “captain of industry” found that he couldn’t -survive against our Rockefeller, inheriting his father’s business -ability with his father’s wealth, but not inheriting his father’s -convention-calloused moral sense. - -It is not until our young man is well on toward sixty that there begins -to be any real appreciation of philanthropy by making money instead of -by giving it away. The laughter at honesty and justice, in business as -well as in personal relations, in practice as well as in theory, on -week-days as well as on Sunday, toward the helpless and obscure and -unknown as well as toward the powerful and “respectable,” gradually -dies away before his ocular demonstration of its sound practical -wisdom. And his activities have been an enormous educational factor, -giving men that practical enlightenment which the school of life alone -can give, but which, under the old system, it so rarely did give. -His high wages have raised the general wage market. His tenements -and dwelling houses have raised the standard of housekeeping. His -department stores have raised the standard of food and clothing. And -when the material foundations of life rose, the moral and æsthetic -structure superimposed upon them of necessity rose also. To raise a -house, raise its foundations; don’t try to separate it from them. - -As the laughter at iconoclastic business ceased, laughter at -philanthropy burst out. The rich rascals, the smug feeders of their -own vanity, the coy contributors to the conscience fund, who came in -superciliousness and condescension with their pharisaical offerings, -were greeted with hoots and jeers. Our young man of many millions, -dauntless through all those trying years, had taught the people to look -at the true inwardness of things. “Go back to your business,” they -would shout at each of these astonished almsgivers. “Go back, and take -with you this pittance of your filchings from your workmen and your -customers. You are the real object of pity and charity. Look at the -tainted sources of your income! Repent, reform, give us our rights, our -just dues. Don’t pose as a philanthropist when you are giving away our -money--and only a meagre part of the vast sums you have taken from us. -Give justice. Generosity will take care of itself!” - -And in those days our young iconoclast came into his own, so everybody -said. But when his friends, wholly changed in their opinion now, -approached him with enthusiastic flattery, he smiled his old peculiar -smile. “I came into my own, years ago,” said he. “I came into it on the -day I tore down the motto ‘I am a clamorer for dividends’ and set up -‘I am a clamorer for justice’, in its place.” And when he died he did -not leave his vast fortune to his children to tempt them to forget his -training and example and become soft, idle, foolish and unhappy. He -left it to his enterprises, its income to be divided between those who -made themselves most valuable and those who, having worked well, had -earned the right to a peaceful old age. - - * * * * * - -“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,” sang the poet, “the saddest are -these: ‘It might have been.’” Not so. It is the vain might-have-been -that gives birth to the bright shall-be! - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -THE INEVITABLE IDEAL - - -“Our ancestors who migrated hither were laborers,” wrote Jefferson. -And again: “My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what -an additional title of nobility is or the ensigns of a new order are -in Europe.” The dignity of labor, the prizes to the laborer--these -ideals of a century ago, ideals born no doubt of a vanity which sought -to make a virtue of necessity, are still our ideals. But, where in -Jefferson’s day his broad and sympathetic mind was almost alone in the -belief in the loftier basis for the ideal, to-day millions of us see -that the laborer is the only good citizen, that his estate is the only -estate of dignity. No people ever had such a conception of work as we -have to-day. It is an evolution under Democracy. No previous nation -could have understood it; our ancestors did not have it, for they were -still influenced by caste ideas, hard and nobly though they strove -to outgrow them. There are vestiges of the old ideas concerning work -remaining. The class that does not work and the class that emulates it -and envies it still look down on work, still hug the vulgar, ignorant -fancy that work is a curse. But that is not important. Once more let us -remind ourselves that caste is made not by him who looks down but by -him who looks up. The vital fact is that the laborer is himself aware -of his own sovereign dignity. And, excepting a few black sheep, the -American flock still bears the ancestral markings; this is a nation -of laborers. And the markings of which our ancestors tried hard, but -with dubious success, not to be ashamed, have become the markings of -honor--not to an occasional Jefferson, but to the overwhelming mass of -our eighty millions. - -This concept of labor is the first-fruit of Democracy and Enlightenment. - -When sons of men of vast wealth go to work, there is much excitement -among the idlers, rich and poor. The agitation shows how hard dies -the theory that work is wholly a curse and, to a great extent, a -degradation; that the only sensible, or noble even, ideal of life is -to idle about; that there must be something of the freak in a human -being who labors when he might sit at his ease amusing himself by -counting the drops of sweat as they roll from the brows of his toiling -fellow-men. - -This is indeed the old, old theory. It has the sanction of many -venerable authorities. But, like almost everything else that has come -down to us from the ignorant far past, it will not stand examination. - -There was a time when work undoubtedly was both a curse and a -degradation. When the many labored under the lash that the few might -reap, when the toilers got only the toil and the idlers got all the -results, when the highest ideals of the human race were a full stomach -and fine raiment and the gratification of other crude desires and -appetites--then work was justly regarded as degrading drudgery. But not -now, hard though laziness and cheap vanity strive to keep alive such -fictitious distinctions as are given an air of actuality by phrases -like “master and servant,” “employer and employé,” “capital and labor,” -“gentleman,” “lady,” et cetera, et cetera. The truth of the dignity -of labor, the dishonesty and degradation of every form of parasitism, -however gaudily tricked out, appears despite the subtleties of snobism. - -The political ideal of a barbarian is to rule others; the political -ideal of a highly civilized man is to rule himself and let his -fellow-men alone. The industrial ideal of a barbarian is to live in -empty-headed and ambitionless idleness upon the labor of others. The -industrial ideal of a civilized man is to work, and work incessantly in -conditions that permit him to reap the full reward of his efforts and -to make those efforts in the direction best suited to his capacities. -And he has a deepening scorn of all the tricks by which some men live, -taking all and giving nothing. Nor is his scorn the less when those -tricks happen to be made “respectable” by law or by custom. - -Is it any wonder that a man with the brain of an Æsop or an Epictetus -should have revolted against compulsory labor that could much better -have been performed by an ox or an ass? On the other hand, is it not -amazing that any man with a thinking machine in his skull and vital -force flowing along his nerves can be content to lead a life that would -bore a grasshopper? The “curse and degradation” theory of work adapts -itself to climates. Man began in the tropics, where idleness is least -difficult; therefore for a long time absolute idleness was the ideal of -this theory. But when man moved up into the colder parts of the earth, -where to idle was to be physically miserable, the theory was slightly -modified. The curse and the degradation of work were thought to lie in -the doing of useful work. To tilt with iron-pointed sticks, to stab -and jab and cut, to spend days and weeks chasing little foxes that -could not even be eaten if by chance they were caught, to hit little -balls with little sticks, to sit all night matching monotonous picture -cards--all such “amusements,” the hardest kind of work, work at which -the thinking part of any human being might well balk, were regarded as -“worthy of a gentleman.” To plough, to sow, to reap, to manufacture -something that might be used, to perform any kind of useful labor, -mental or manual, was “low” and “menial.” - -Toward the middle of the last century, with our growing wealth and the -rise of a leisure class through false education, the Old World ideas -found their way across the Atlantic. And in every community there -began to be at least a few persons who took on the supercilious and -contemptuous attitude toward work. Fortunately for the good sense and -happiness of the American people, at about that time modern industrial -conditions changed the whole system of getting and keeping prosperous. - -In the old days, idle and brainless barbarians could hold on to and -even add to their possessions--agricultural land. But in the new days -of intense energy, of rapidly changing values, of trade, commerce, and -competition, of rise in the price of labor and fall in the price of -money, property is always growing wings that must be clipped daily and -often hourly to keep it from taking flight. It is getting harder and -harder to reap where one has not sown, to induce men to work without -a proper return, or, after wealth has been acquired, to hold on to it -without the use of brains and energy. And so, the old theory is dying -out, chiefly for the usual reason for any human advancement--changed -conditions compelling men to change their point of view. - -The reason the rich men’s sons are going to work is that they, or at -least their sagacious fathers, know that if they don’t work, the men -who do work will get their wealth away from them. And this reason of -necessity is going to bring about a revolution where all the shrieking -of the reformers, all the logic of the moral philosophers, all the -talk about the dignity of labor and “happiness only in hard work” make -no headway worth the measuring. Maxims of good sense and good morals -can’t be pounded or preached into poor short-sighted, irrational, -shadow-chasing humanity. Nature and the laws of environment do not -preach. They quietly but relentlessly compel. And sad wrecks they make -of the pretensions and pomposities of the conceited human animal. - -It is in vain that aristocracy-worshiping mothers of America dream -of an Old World upper class for their sons and daughters. It is in -vain that silly sociologists prattle about the necessity and the -advantages of a “leisure class.” Modern environment says “Work; work -hard! Be a somebody or I will make you a nobody!” And work we must. -And presently we shall hear the last of the notions that idleness or -useless employment is “noble” and “dignified” and “aristocratic.” And -only in mad-houses will be found men and women who continue in their -grown-up periods of life the pastimes of childhood--playing with blocks -and soldiers and toy tools. What of the old notions of property rights -and distribution of wealth will go by the board and what will remain, -no one can foresee. Nor does it in the least matter, since we can be -certain that no conditions will arise in which the idler will be more -comfortable or the worker less comfortable than in the past or at -present. - -The change in the attitude toward work is coming from both sides of -the world. The rich are more and more forced to work. The not-rich are -demanding and compelling better opportunities to work. Look at our -national life in the broad, and you see all elements concentrating on -the democratic platform--Work! Beyond question the “workingman” is -discontented. Nor will his discontent decrease. On the contrary, the -more he has, the more he’ll want. His appetite will grow with what it -feeds on. This Republic was started by just such men, was started for -the purpose of creating ever more and more of them. The eagerness for -better pay, for better treatment, for better surroundings, whether -that eagerness be in the capitalist or in the street-cleaner, is proof -that the Republic is still doing business at the old stand in the old -way. And the more or less turbulent wrangling over the division of the -rewards will never cease. If there were any signs of its ceasing or of -its abating, then indeed might we justly despair of Democracy. Content -means caste; discontent means Democracy. - -Work is democratic, not because all kinds of men engage in it and so -make it common, but because of its effect on the individual worker. -Every impulse toward Democracy is fostered by it, just as every impulse -toward caste is encouraged by leniency toward the idea of the value of -a leisure class. - -The sooner ambition is roused in every man, woman and child, the sooner -they learn that by work alone can their ambitions be gratified, the -sooner will an ideal democratic condition evolve. America is ahead of -all the great nations in the race toward this ideal Democracy, because -there is the nearest approach in America in every walk of life to a -condition in which idlers are few and toilers many. - -In a previous chapter the efforts of plutocratic philanthropists to -relieve a certain part of each community from the “stern and cruel -necessity to work” have been noted. But the pauper-making plutocrats -and lords and ladies Bountiful are not the only missionaries of -idleness and incompetence. Our legislatures, national, state, -municipal, are voting large sums of money for free something or other -for somebody or other, or for bolstering up some real or reputed -neglected or defective class. And leading citizens, themselves -toilers at businesses, trade and professions, are, through mistaken -sentimentality, urging the legislatures to vote still larger sums for -indiscriminate--_necessarily_ indiscriminate--alms. - -If Democracy were dependent upon conscious human effort, we should -be moving rapidly and far from the old ideas of independence, of -self-reliance, of individuality; we should be hastening toward a -re-establishment of the aristocratic ideal of “molly-coddling,” of -making the citizen a hot-house plant sheltered under government -glass from the rude but invigorating forces of nature--but exposed -to withering and denuding paternalism. Everybody who did not do for -himself--whether because he would not or because he could not, we -should not stop to ask--would be provided with education, ideas, -food, clothing, shelter, amusements, baths, in short, everything but -self-respect and the power to produce self-respecting progeny. And -these things would be provided, not by private philanthropy, not by -the rich giving of their surplus, but by taxation. - -Taxation simply means taking from one part of the community, chiefly -from the poor and those of moderate means, and giving to another part, -after an army of officials have had their “rake-off” in salaries and -perquisites. Taxation, therefore, means levying upon those who have -little to spare; it means crippling those who are trying to fight the -hard battle of life. - -There is nothing democratic, nothing economically sound, in these -alluring schemes for making men sleek and comfortable and wise by -public bounty. They result in coddling incompetents, and in breaking -down those who are now just able to get along and who need only the -push of additional taxation to send them fairly over the precipice from -self-reliance to dependence. - -A wise man once said: “Most legislation consists of A and B getting -together and deciding what C shall do for D.” We mustn’t forget C. He -pays the bills. And his name is “the people.” - -The work that saves is the work of a man, by himself, for himself, -work chosen by him, mastered by him, work by which he is sometimes -mastered. He must stand or fall on the results of his efforts. This is -no programme for the timid or the halting, but it is the programme for -all grades of intelligence and opportunity, each doing for himself just -as well as he possibly can, under his circumstances. - -Work--not as a means to leisure, but as in itself the aim and end. No -thought of “retiring.” No thought of social distractions that breed -only boredom, or of useless activities that dissipate manhood and -womanhood. The main thought--work. Work is _the_ ideal of the Republic. -The central point in the Old World theory which our plutocracy would -make our theory of life is that a man or woman ought to aspire not -to be a worker, but a person of leisure, to become not a doer of -useful things, but a doer of useless things. The central point of -the democratic theory of life is just the reverse. It is the worker -exalted, and his work also. Europe clings to precedent; America insists -upon judgment. Europe tends to act as “father and grandfather did”; -America has acted and should tend to act as the new situation, ever -changing, may require at any given moment. - -Europe, bound by precedents, by false ideals, by traditions of class -distinctions and the nobility of idleness, simply cannot compete with -us. For the cause of Democracy, for the uplifting of the common man, -for the increase in the application of human energy to human needs, -America’s competition with Europe is more helpful than centuries of -theorizing and preaching and political maneuvering. The Great Republic -is presenting to Europe the stern alternative: Democracy or Decay. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -OUR ALLIES FROM ABROAD - - -The European “hordes” continue to pour in upon us, and the agitation -over, and against, the “foreign devil” increases. We shall soon be -“welcoming to our shores” upwards of a million strangers a year, all -of them with no “capital”--except their muscles and the potentialities -of their minds and hearts. If Washington and Jefferson could have -looked forward to this time, they would have lifted jubilant prayers of -thankfulness that their hopes that this land would become “the refuge -of the poor and oppressed of all nations” were being superbly realized. -But many of our statesmen view the tidal-wave incursions with anything -but joy; and their woful cries find echo everywhere among those who do -not take the trouble to put facts into proper perspective. Russian and -Finn, Polack, Hun and Lithuanian, Sicilian and Greek and Syrian and -Bohemian, on they come, streaming from the noisome steerages of great -ocean liners, pouring through the gates of the immigration offices. -They are obviously poor, obviously the descendants of generations of -toilers. And with them are their wives and their children. Myriads of -anxious, troubled faces, in which hope and fear alternately triumph in -the struggle for expression. Indeed, a disquieting spectacle to those -who cannot or will not look beneath surfaces at universal human nature -with its powerful instincts for and resolves toward progress. But let -us watch this incoming flood with American eyes. Let us see what the -facts plead--the facts, as distinguished from prejudices. - -What is our so-called foreign-population problem? - -According to the latest census there were in the United States, of -our 76,300,000 population, no less than 26,200,000 persons of foreign -birth or parentage. Of these, ten and a half millions were born -abroad, while 11,000,000 more were born in this country of parents who -were foreign-born. Since 1880 and up to 1901 no less than 18,000,000 -foreigners have come to us. That is to say, counting in arrivals and -births since the taking of our latest census, and making due mortality -allowance, we have to-day a population more than one-fourth of which -was born abroad or is of foreign parentage. - -The anti-immigration crusade based upon these figures insists that -the foreigners come too fast for Americanism to digest and assimilate -them, that they will undermine and destroy free institutions. Also, -there is the cry that these recent comers are of peoples less desirable -than those that used to send their millions to us. The newcomers are -impossible in point of numbers, undesirable in point of quality. - -As to numbers--Our first, and last previous, great flood of -immigration was between 1840 and 1861. In those twenty years about -13,000,000 immigrants came. Our population in 1840 was 17,000,000. -Thus, the immigration was about 80 per cent. Between 1880 and 1901, -the immigration was about 18,000,000. Our population in 1880 was -50,000,000. Thus, the immigration was not much above 35 per cent. -Clearly, the present “horde” is numerically not imposing or alarming -in comparison with the foreign invasion of half a century ago. -Our country is still sparsely inhabited; one-third of its area is -still absolutely undeveloped. If half a century ago, with the then -comparatively limited and crude means of transforming the foreigner -into the American, thirteen million foreigners did not “swamp” -seventeen million Americans, how can the present lesser immigration -seriously or permanently hinder the alert, democratically militant -America of to-day? - -Then, there is the matter of distribution. Let us take New York City by -way of illustration. There the “congestion” of immigration is greater -than anywhere else; and the advocates of exclusion always point to -it as the crowning “awful example.” In the ’40s and ’50s that city -grew almost altogether by immigration from abroad. Between 1840 and -1861 New York City increased from 312,000 to 814,000--502,000. The -rate of growth, then, was just over 160 per cent. Between 1880 and -1901 the same territory increased in population from 1,200,000 to -2,050,000--850,000, and a large part of that increase was from the -smaller cities, the towns and the rural districts of the United States. -The ratio of increase was about 70 per cent., less than half what it -was during the preceding great immigration. Further, the charitable -and corrective forces, official and unofficial, at work in New York are -not much occupied with the immigrants who have come in the last twenty -years. The crime, the abject poverty, the destitution are among the -earlier immigrants and their descendants. The later immigration is not -from peoples given to excess in drink--and drunkenness is the chief -cause of the miseries of crime and pauperism. - -Looking at the immigration problem thus numerically, we see that the -pessimists and the panic-stricken are afflicted with the narrowness -of geographic and historical vision which is responsible for so many -jeremiads. The shriek that the nation, and especially its cities, are -being “swamped” has no basis in mathematics. - -“But the quality! The quality!” they cry. Well, what of the quality? -Turn to the files of the publications in the middle of the last -century; read what the “good Americans” then said and wrote and thought -of the vast in-marching armies of “foreign devils,” whose grandchildren -are a valuable part of our citizenship to-day. They were “the scum -of Ireland and Germany.” They were “incapable of receiving American -ideas.” They were “welcomed by the rich employers because their coming -meant cheap labor.” And loudest in lamentation and fiercest in demand -for bars and barriers were the people who had themselves just arrived! - -But, that was a false alarm, say the anti-immigrationists; this is -the real thing. Again a lamentable lack of historical perspective, -a pitiful narrowness of human sympathy. The truth is that man, from -whatever clime or nation, is first of all man, the materials of -progress and civilization. If the present millions of newcomers are -ignorant, so much the less will they have to unlearn. If they have -been savagely oppressed, so much the more brightly will burn hatred of -inequality and injustice, love of equality and justice. If they are -poor--and poor they are--then, Heaven be praised! They will work hard; -and hard work and a passionate eagerness to get on in the world, and -the prospect of being able to rise by work instead of, as at home, -toiling that others might reap all, will make them hasten to become the -best possible Americans. - -From poverty and experience of oppression comes the most militant -Democracy. Let us not be afraid of this our brother-man. Let us not -judge him by the superficial and unimportant differences between him -and us. Let us welcome him. He needs us, but not more than we need -him, and his familiarity with hard work, and his nature unspoiled by -over-prosperity. Above all, we need his children. They will be American -through and through. They will help us to outvote and to over-balance -and to counteract the supercilious breed of falsely educated who have -fallen away from the high and noble ideal of the equality and the -brotherhood of man. These newcomers are the descendants of the peoples -that built the splendid civilization of the past--the civilization -around the Mediterranean and in Eastern Europe. For centuries the -immense energy and imagination of those peoples have been forcibly -suppressed and repressed. But they are there, and in free America they -will burst forth again. Indeed, they are already bursting forth. - -We hear so much about the glories of the Civil War that we are apt to -overlook its fearful cost. One item is important here: - -In the Southern States, practically all the white males able to bear -arms went to the war. In the Northern States the two and three-quarter -millions who served were, on the average, under rather than over twenty -years of age. - -That is to say, to the war the South gave all its manhood; the North -gave the fathers of its present native-born generation. So abounding is -our vitality as a people that we cannot clearly see the full results of -this fearful sacrifice. But let us remember that war kills only a few; -it returns to peaceful pursuits the vast majority poisoned and weakened -by all kinds of diseases. - -What is the connection between these facts and immigration? Look at -the South, which sent all its manhood to camp and march and battle; -at the South, into which almost no immigration has gone to make good -the enormous losses. The trouble with the South to-day is not the -destruction or abolition of property, not the failure of natural -resources, but the depletion, the decay, the destruction of so large -a part of the splendid stock that made the South great in ante-bellum -days. Despite its abounding natural resources, despite the valiant -efforts it has made and is making, the South advances slowly and -with difficulty. And while the North had to make no such complete -sacrifice to war, still even there, in the few places to which foreign -immigration has not penetrated, the effects of the impairment of the -sources of the best manhood are plainly visible. Not infrequently you -find a Northern town with all the natural opportunities to progress, -yet with retrogression and decay eating it away. What’s the matter? The -war; the Civil War. The best young men, the most vigorous, the most -enterprising, the most ambitious, went to the war. Many of them came -back; but they had left at the war their best--their health, their -energy. And the present generation shows it, suffers for it. - -It is indeed inspiring to see young men eager to die gloriously for -their country. We also need young men eager to _live_ gloriously for -their country. And war, the arch-enemy of progress, the great trickster -of man through his finest instincts, how many of those who would have -lived most gloriously for their country has it cost us! - -Do we not owe to the “hordes” from Europe, to immigration, the good -fortune that our nation has pushed on apparently almost unaffected in -its manhood by the great calamity of ’61-’64? Is it unwarranted to -suggest that but for these inpourings of vigor and vitality, the losses -in that frightful catastrophe might have all but cost us our national -greatness, would certainly have set us back several generations? - -As to the political effect of immigration: Among our cities the -two most conspicuous examples of misgovernment are New York and -Philadelphia. In each the dominant political machine is scandalously -corrupt. But it is far more audacious, far more cynically and openly -contemptuous of public opinion in Philadelphia than in New York. -Philadelphia is an “American” city; New York is a “foreign” city. In -Philadelphia the corruption seems almost hopeless; in New York the -element to which every movement for betterment looks--not in vain--is -the “foreign” element. The weakness of Tammany’s control over the -masses of “German-Americans” and “Italian-Americans” and “Jewish -Russian-Americans” is the chief reason why it does not feel easy and -secure in the enjoyment of plunder. Cities where the “foreign vote” -is preponderant may be corrupt; but so also are cities where the -native American rules undisputed. Manifestly, the causes of political -corruption are deeper than immigration, are not aggravated by it. And -since our most hopeful States politically are for the most part those -into which immigration from abroad has been pouring in a vast and -steady stream for fifteen years, is there not sufficient ground for the -confident assertion that the newcomer with his untainted passion for -Democracy and his new-born hope of rising in the world is one of our -tremendous political assets? - -As to the industrial effect. The overwhelming mass are farmers or -unskilled laborers. But the wages of unskilled labor cannot be much -depressed. In all ages and in all countries the unskilled laborer has -got just about enough to keep him alive--never much more, often a -little less. In America, as a whole, the condition of unskilled labor -to-day is better than it ever has been. The fact that we have so much -rough work to do in developing our vast raw resources makes America the -best market for unskilled labor the world has ever seen; and it will -be many generations before that rough work is completed, so inadequate -is our supply of unskilled labor in proportion to the demand. In the -trades the competition of the immigrant has not lowered wages. There -again we have more work to do than there are workers. _The forces -that have operated unfavorably upon wages are notoriously not forces -of competition among wage-earners, but forces tending to abolish -competition among employers for the services of the skilled laborer._ -And in combating these forces, is the immigrant a help or a hindrance? -Does his vote go for tyranny or for freedom? - -The disposition of prosperity to look down on poverty, to drift out -of _brotherly_ sympathy with it, to misunderstand it, is as old as -property rights. The disposition of the so-called educated to look down -on the less educated, to mistake knowledge for intellect, absurdly -to exaggerate the practical and even the æsthetic value of “polite -learning,” to under-estimate the all-round importance of that real -education which is got only in the school of rude experience--this -supercilious disposition is as old as human vanity. It insinuates -itself into the sanest characters; it makes fools and incompetents -and snobs of many promising young men. And these two errors--the one, -through prosperity; the other, through false education--are responsible -for the failure of such a large section of our “elegantly articulate” -to appreciate that we are to-day getting from abroad the best in brain -and in vitality that we have ever got. - -What differentiates the immigrant from those he left behind him? Why, -he had the enterprise, the courage to protest against the slavery in -which militarism and despotism were enwrapping all. He left; he made -the long and arduous journey into this remote and unknown land. He did -not give up when conditions became too hard, did not sink into serfdom; -he boldly made a hazard of new fortunes. - -Away back in the centuries, Asia’s most vigorous fled from her into -Europe--and Asia sank into the slough of despotism and Europe became -great and strong, advancing in all the arts. Now-a-days--to-day no less -than when Salem and Jamestown and New Amsterdam and New Orleans were -founding--Europe is causing her best to fly to us. Her best, indeed! -We must be American enough, democratic enough, to disregard the snob -standards of our weak wanderers off after European caste and culture; -we must look at men in the true American fashion--must look at men as -_men_. - -From the common people our Democracy--like all Democracy--sprang; -by the common people is it nourished; by the common people will it -prevail. And these newcomers are of the common people, the custodians -of the highest ideals that irradiate the human imagination. Unimportant -indeed is the traffic of individuals and ideas that goes first-class -between America and Europe, in the comparison with the traffic that -goes steerage. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -THE REAL AMERICAN WOMAN - - -The American woman is regarded both here and abroad as the strongest -and subtlest enemy of the American Democracy. She is pictured in -the imaginations of students of our life as ignorant of politics, -interested only in her own sovereignty over the American man, or, -rather, over his pocketbook, a snob and a climber and a worshiper -of European aristocratic institutions; a poor housekeeper and a -reluctant mother, and a very vampire for luxury and show, she hides -her superficiality and cold-heartedness under a mask that is fair and -fascinating. She is a born caste-worshiper, an instinctive hater of -Democracy. - -What truth, if any, is there in these hardy criticisms? - -We have noted how, under the leadership and inspiration of the capital -of plutocracy, New York, every city in the country is, with true -American rapidity, developing its individual fashionable society. It -is directed by the wives and daughters of rich men; it is, as we have -seen, devoted chiefly to spending time and money in unproductive and -more or less frivolous forms of self-amusement. The character of this -“set” varies slightly for each locality--but only slightly. In the -West the wealth-worship is franker; in the East more hypocritical, -more beslimed and bemessed with cant about birth and culture. But -whether Mammon is naked and unashamed or is draped and decorated, he -is still Mammon. The monotonous sameness of the people comprising each -division of the set, the sameness of their opportunities and aims, -the world-neighborliness which railways and telegraph and printing -press have brought about, prevent any notable differences. To dress, -to talk, to eat, to drive, to entertain, to bring up one’s children, -all in accord with the standards of “good form” established by the -aristocratic societies of Europe; to spend each day in pleasures -that permit one to shift most of the labor and all the thinking and -providing to hirelings of divers degrees, from lawyers and industrial -managers to secretaries, housekeepers, butlers, valets and maids; to -live worthlessly without useful work--these are the aims, East, West, -and South. And in rapidly increasing measure the aims are accomplished. - -Universal freedom, universal opportunity, all but universal toil, have -indeed very suddenly brought vast riches to America, vast wealth to a -few. This sudden wealth, coming to a people whose characteristics are -energy, restlessness and lightning-like adaptability, has all in a day -relieved a relatively small but, in another aspect, very numerous and -most influential part of each large community from the necessity to -labor. Many, a great many, of these continue to strive to cherish the -ideals of a life of useful labor, continue to strive to set a worthy -example to their children and to their fellow-citizens--that is, to -remain sane and American. But a great many others have eagerly adopted -those alien ideals of the aristocracy of idleness and the vulgarity -of toil which appeal so strongly to the vanity and other ancient -weaknesses of the human animal the world over. - -For this state of affairs women, imperfectly educated, wrongly, -sillily educated, in fact, practically uneducated, are in the main -responsible. Our women, like our men, inherit the American energy and -restlessness. Where circumstances compel, they work in the home, the -shop, the factory, the office, in the fine American way. But where -circumstances do not compel they seek other outlets for their restless -energy. And thus we find rich wives and daughters organizing elaborate -establishments and fashionable sets and international circuits, and -devoting themselves to erecting the life of frivolity and show into a -career that will at once fill their idle hours, gratify their vanity, -and give them the sense of doing something ambitious, of “getting on in -the world.” - -Among a people who have always yielded a commanding position to -women, the power of this new American woman--attractive in dress -and in surroundings, so often fascinating in personality, usually -clever and so plausible that she deceives no one more completely than -herself--could not but be enormous. Is it strange that she weakens -the hold of the old ideals upon her husband and upon the men who are -drawn to her attractive house? Is it strange that they persuade their -consciences to let them neglect to-day’s duties while they help her -amuse them and herself? Is it strange that she has sons and daughters -devoted to her ideals? Is it strange that she gathers about her more -and more backsliders from the democratic conception of life? - -Organized as we are, there is absolutely no useful place for a leisure -class. We do not purpose to be ruled, but, on the contrary, insist -that our public administrators shall be chosen from the main body -of toilers and shall execute, not direct, the popular will. Since -leadership in public and private activity thus falls to the toiler in -a Democracy, these fashionable “sets” provided by the women of the -rich class are wholly alien and hostile to us as a democratic people. -And they inevitably become a menace as their influence extends over -the men and women of superior education or natural endowments who -should be the leading exemplars of the American ideal. And this menace -threatens to erect itself into what pessimists would call a “peril,” -as the “community of interest” creates monopolies so intertwined with -our individual structure that to assail them is to jeopardize it, and -perpetuates wealth in certain families and groups. - -Such is the anti-democratic woman. But over against her set the -American woman. The plutocratic American man, being gaudy and -conspicuous, distracts attention from the democratic American man, who -outnumbers and outvotes and out-influences him into insignificance, -except as an awful warning against flying in the face of the world’s -democratic destiny. The plutocratic American woman is even more -conspicuous than the plutocratic American man. But contrast her with -the rest of the women, especially with the women who go forth from the -homes to work. Great as is the influence against Democracy exerted by -the women of the leisure class, it is weak in comparison with that -exerted for Democracy by the professional and business women of the -United States. - -Ten years ago about one-fifth of all the wage and salary earners in the -United States were women and girls. When these figures were published -there was a great outcry of wonder and alarm--wonder at the changed -conditions, alarm lest those changed conditions might be permanent -and the old-fashioned woman of the fireside and the stoveside and the -cradleside might be passing away. To-day about one-third of all the -women in the United States not on farms earn their own living outside -their own homes, and these women constitute more than one-fourth of -all the persons in the United States engaged in gainful occupations -other than agriculture. - -It is evident that the changed conditions are not passing, but -permanent; that the “new woman” is the woman of the future. Yet we -still hear the old order talked of as if it were not a departing order, -and the new order criticised as if it were abnormal, a fad of a few -“freak” women. - -Obviously, this change is most intimately associated with Democracy. -Democracy, work, women; women, work, Democracy. Did any of those -ancient republics we hear so much about, those whose decline and fall -Europe and our own pessimists say we must inevitably imitate, ever -number among its inhabitants a company of women wage and salary earners -such as has been so swiftly evolved in democratic, work-compelling, -work-exalting America? - -In face of this army of women who work outside the home, the theory -still is that man bears the brunt of the battle for food, clothing and -shelter, while woman is sheltered and comparatively at her ease. This -theory never was sound. It never would have been accepted had writers -and thinkers kept clearly before their minds the fact that the human -race does not consist of a luxuriously comfortable class, but of vast -masses of laborious millions. From time immemorial, among the masses of -the people everywhere, the men and the women have worked equally for -the support of the family. But latterly, under the pressure of modern -conditions, which are forcing all into the general service of society, -the women have been drawn from the obscure toil of occupations within -and around the household; and also into the ranks of women toilers -have gone hundreds of thousands of women from the classes which, until -recently, did try to keep their women at home. Is it illogical to say -that we may presently see practically all the capable members of our -society, regardless of sex, self-supporting? And in such circumstances, -would not the family relations, the relations of mother to father, and -both to children, necessarily undergo a radical transformation? - -To-day the women vote in four States and hold public office in all the -States and under the National Government. There are women policemen and -firemen, women locomotive engineers, women masons and plasterers and -gunsmiths, women street-car drivers and conductors, women blacksmiths -and coopers and steel and iron workers, and even women sailors--to take -only a few occupations which, on the face, would seem to exclude women. -In fact, there is not in this country a single department of skilled or -unskilled labor, except only soldier and man-o’-war’s man, which has -not its women workers in swiftly increasing numbers. In the professions -there are thousands of women doctors, lawyers, authors, professors, -musicians, artists, decorators, journalists, public speakers, and -more than a hundred thousand women teachers. In the trades there -are thousands of women hotel and restaurant keepers, insurance and -real estate agents, bookkeepers, clerks, merchants, officers in -corporations, saleswomen, stenographers, telegraph and telephone -operators. In manufactories the women operatives almost equal the men -in numbers. There are thousands of women who hold responsible positions -in the management of manufacturing corporations. All these occupations, -with the exception of such as nursing and teaching school and music, -were once exclusively in the hands of men. - -The cause of the change is the same as that which has revolutionized -every part of modern society--the amazing discoveries of science, -creating an enormous number of new occupations and revolutionizing -the method of all the old occupations, from housekeeping to national -administration. - -War was the department of human endeavor which not only excluded women -from itself, but also kept her fast anchored at home. Until the second -quarter of the last century war was the chief thought, the chief -pursuit of the human animal. He was either just going to war or just -coming home from war, or engaged in war or preparing for imminent war. -Obviously, so long as war occupied this position in human affairs woman -was inevitably in the background, in the secondary places, a household -drudge or plaything. But war is no longer the principal business of the -race, with peace tolerated as a breathing spell now and then. Peace and -its arts have become the serious business of civilization, the settled -order, with war as a dreadful nightmare. The wars, if not fewer, are -briefer and are carefully concentrated and confined. Civilization has -been forced upon a peace basis not by enlightenment, but by commerce -growing out of discovery and invention. It clamors for skilled hands, -not for brutal hands. Hence the vast opening for women and the -vast inrush of women. It is a democratic tide. Out of discovery and -invention comes commerce; out of commerce and its intercourse, which is -death to all forms of provincialism, both mental and physical, comes -enlightenment; in the train of enlightenment, as day in the train of -the sun, comes Democracy. - -This country was remote from other great nations and, therefore, from -the ever present threat of the actuality of war. It was--perhaps -through its freedom from war and war alarms--eagerest in seizing -upon and using the mighty industrial machinery which science gave to -the race. Thus it has come to pass with us that the abolition of the -non-worker, the progress toward the industrial equality of the two -sexes, has been most rapid. - -Where European societies had a very complex organization, our society -had from the beginning simplicity as its chief characteristic. We were -really all toilers--until recently almost all toilers at occupations -close to manual labor. The women and the men were throughout on that -equal basis which in Europe was, and to a great extent is yet, found -only among the peasant and shopkeeping classes. And as the new era--the -era of steam and electricity--developed with us, our women and our men -naturally remained side by side. - -Our government was founded in war. Its founders assumed, from the -history of all other nations, that offense and defense were to be -its main functions. And the barbaric theory is still ignorantly or -carelessly assented to. This explains the lagging of the political -rights of women behind their industrial and civil rights--or, -rather, industrial and civil necessities; for no right has ever -been, or probably ever will be, recognized until recognition becomes -a necessity. The development with us of a class of women who are -housekeepers only and are most of the time idle or half idle, is -foreign to the spirit of our democratic era. That development cannot, -therefore, long survive, any more than an equatorial plant can long -survive in our zone. The new departures are in harmony with Democracy; -they mean increased efficiency and usefulness of the human race; they -must persist and expand and prevail. - -To three causes we owe the American woman of the class that only -pretends to contribute, or at best half-heartedly contributes, toward -the support of our social system: - -First, to the survival of the Old World, old era ideas of “woman’s -sphere,” of the coarsening effect of labor upon her “finer nature,” -of the “aristocratic flavor” and “high breeding” of uselessness and -idleness. - -Second, to the simpler tastes of our ancestors, and the comparative -ease with which at an early period in our national life the labor of -the men in the family could provide money enough to satisfy those -tastes. - -Third, to the very tardy development of the domestic laborers and -providers that now relieve woman of the confining cares of household -and nursery. - -As a result of these three causes a class of idle women sprang up--not -only among the rich and well-to-do, but even among artisans, small -farmers and shopkeepers. And this class came to be regarded as typical -and exemplary. In reality it is neither. It has no place in our -tradition of mothers and grandmothers who spun and made preserves, did -their own housework, and were busy every waking moment about matters -which are now attended to in shops and factories. It has no place in -common sense--the women who insist most strenuously that child-bearing -and home-making are woman’s whole duty are the women who, as a class, -leave the care of the home to servants and bear few children and -consign them to nurses at the earliest possible moment. And manifestly -it has no place in our future; it must inevitably go the way of all -else that is undemocratic and parasitic. Our society is founded upon -the two ideas--work and equal opportunity to all to work. It abhors -the idler as nature abhors a vacuum. And as the old-time occupations -of woman are carried on in a different way, she must find other -occupations. Must, because man will be unable both to support himself -in the comfort he ever more exactingly demands and also to support her -in idleness as well as she insists upon being supported. Must, because -her own increasing aversion to restraint will not let her rest content -with the slavish and shameful position of a cajoler and dependent. - -The sex instinct is powerful enough to triumph over even the instinct -of self-preservation for a time; but it cannot withstand the steady, -day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year pressure of that instinct of -self-preservation incessantly stimulated by the operations of economic -forces. The old order, bulwarked by tradition and by the sex-passion -and by woman’s ingenuity and man’s weakness where women are concerned, -will survive long, will disintegrate gradually. But how can it be saved? - -Thus we have a social organization which is in process of revolutionary -change. The women are rapidly pushing out or are rapidly being pushed -out into occupations which have been transferred from the domestic to -the general sphere; they are entering upon occupations new and old -which it was thought a few years ago would be for the men only. The men -on their part not only are working as formerly, but also are entering -occupations once followed exclusively by women. Some of the new -employments of women have already been enumerated. The new employments -of men in this country include laundry work, cooking, general -housework, nursing, keeping boarding-houses, teaching primary and -kindergarten pupils, dressmaking, millinery. The list is far shorter -and, from the old viewpoint where the equal dignity of all honorable -labor was denied, seems far less dignified than the women’s list. The -reason for this is of course that the men had small room to expand -their already multiform activities, while the women had all the room in -the world. - -The underlying principle of this redistribution of activities is the -common-sense principle that every unit in a society should do the work -at hand for which it is best fitted. This principle explains every -case. Where we find a man dusting, scrubbing and doing laundry work -it is because he could find nothing more remunerative to do and could -outbid the women applying for that particular task. Wherever we find -a woman plastering, or keeping books, or driving a street-car, or -managing a store or corporation, it is for the same reason. And this -modern principle wholly ignores sex and looks only at the work to be -done and at the comparative fitness of the male and female applicants -for it. We are being taught by destiny that parasitism and dependence -are no more essentials of the feminine than the brands and manacles -which at one time most men wore were essentials of the masculine. - -It is not prophecy to say that, as more and more millions of women -enter the industrial fields, these readjustments and redivisions, this -absorption of some occupations by women and of other occupations by -men, will go on apace. We may not like it; but we can no more stop it -than we can stop the physical and mental development of woman, or the -use of steam and electricity. - -The missionary work for Democracy done by the women already -understanding the values of work will undoubtedly eventually reach the -“exclusive,” most distinctly leisure class. Its influence is seen on -every hand, among the girls and young women of the very well-to-do, -in families where the daughters are still persuaded to remain idly at -home against their own inclinations. Probably every woman earning her -own living, who has associates among women more or less comfortably -supported in idleness, and in restraint, by men, is envied by not a -few of them, by all not hopelessly corrupted by laziness and caste. -And eventually they will be following her example. As the number -of educated, valuable women forced to work for a living increases, -the number of the same kind of women voluntarily going to work will -increase. - -And finally the richer women will be reached and impelled. Their -yearning to do something will take tangible form. We may live to see -the discontented, folly-chasing daughters of the rich stepping not -down to, but up to a place beside the woman wage-earner, because they -are sick and tired of having no sensible employment, tired of the -pitiful wait for some man with the right qualifications of personal and -pecuniary attractiveness; because they have sufficiently developed in -intelligence to have not a theoretic but a practical envy of the joys -of the woman who is absolute mistress of herself and is waiting for the -right man only as a man now waits for the right woman. - -There is no such simplifier of life as work. Its effect upon the dress, -the home surroundings, the very expression and manners of women once -accustomed to leisure, is enormous. It tends to make them far more -attractive to their own sex and also to such men as are not afraid -an intelligent, competent woman would at close range discover the -shallowness of their posings and pretenses. Finally, it makes them -democratic--all of them that have the wisdom to look on their work -not as a sentence to drudgery from which they hope they can presently -cajole some man into releasing them, but as a high dispensation of -destiny in their favor. The “emancipation of woman” is no mere sonorous -phrase. The new woman can, indeed must, retain all the virtues of -the “old-fashioned” woman. Feminine is as eternal and immutable -as masculine; and the other virtues of the old were the virtues -inseparable from a life of busy usefulness. The new woman can and must, -and therefore will, free herself from the vices of the old-fashioned -woman--the vices of narrowness and irrationality, of artifice that -harks back to the days when woman was the servant of man’s appetites -and had to pander to them. - -The decisive advantage the men have had in the fifty years since -Democracy set its powerful forces to work upon woman has been not their -superior strength or skill or faithfulness or industry, but that woman -has worked merely as a temporary expedient. She has tenaciously assumed -that she would presently “quit work” and be supported by some man. -This dream has been largely fanciful, though none the less potent for -that. The woman, married, has usually found that she has not stopped -working, but has undertaken a far more laborious and ever grudgingly -paid occupation. The delusion has made her wages smaller. Who will not -pay more to a worker who expects to go on working than to a worker who -expects presently to stop work, and is meanwhile giving at least half -her energy to another occupation, that of catching a husband? The -delusion has also destroyed or impaired her ambition. Why struggle to -rise in an occupation which one hopes and intends presently to abandon -for another that is wholly different? - -But latterly a host of women have been coming into conspicuous -positions because ambition drove them there. They have begun to work -for work’s sake. They have seen the fraud in the silly and shallow -twaddle about “woman and the home”--as if for centuries the mothers of -the men most useful to society had not been for the most part working -women who could not, if they would, have pleaded child-bearing and -nursery and housework in excuse for doing nothing to add to the family -income. The “new woman” is not a slovenly drudge waiting irritably for -the advent of a husband that she may become a tenement “sill-warmer” -or a palace parasite. She works until she is married; she continues -to work after she is married. And there is no shadow of a taint of -pecuniary interest in the love and affection she gives. - -Disregard the negligible few women of the plutocracy and its environs, -as we have disregarded the unimportant few men of the same class, -and looking at all over eight millions, you find that the American -woman, like the American man, is developing in harmony with the ideal -of Democracy. Democracy is no discriminator either among persons -or between sexes. It respects the mothers of future generations as -profoundly as it respects the fathers. And it has the same gifts for -all--freedom, intelligence, the joy of work. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -AS TO SUCCESS - - -It has often been said, and written, that we are about the most unhappy -people on the face of the earth, that our unhappiness increases with -our Democracy. That our unhappiness is caused by our Democracy. -Democracy and discontent, despotism and discontent, constitutional -monarchy and content--so runs the argument. - -If this were true, we as Americans would say, “Happiness bought at -the price of self-respect is far too dear. Heaven itself would be -too dear at that price. And, however it may be with some Europeans, -to an American the admission that he was not the equal of any man -would be a degradation like that of the slave.” But it is not true -that we are an unhappy people. Not to be sunk in a bucolic stupor -like the peasants of Europe does not mean unhappiness. To know when -one is uncomfortable, to think how to become less uncomfortable, to -be alive, alert, aspiring, to love work as other people love play, -to love progress as other people love stagnation--that does not mean -unhappiness. There are other standards of happiness than the bucolic or -than the self-complacence of the constricted devotees of caste. Indeed, -we in America continue to doubt whether those states of mind are truly -happy. Content may or may not mean happiness. It may be the calm, numb -resignation of despair. It may be the fat, swine-like stupor of an -established aristocracy. We have our own ideas of happiness--and it is -interesting to note that these restless, forever unsatisfied longings -of ours tend to long life. - -We are not unhappy; but neither are we happy, nor likely to become so, -until our corner of the world, at least, is in far better order than it -is at present or likely to be soon. - -There are two kinds of optimism. There is the optimism of retreat--the -kind our critics set up as the harbinger of happiness. Our plutocrats -preach this optimism, and those of our politicians who are fattening -on the honors, salaries and spoils of office. “We are a great -people,” they say. “Look at our national wealth. Look at our per -capita circulation of money. Look at the totals of our production of -everything for man and beast. Let us rejoice and do nothing to disturb -our national prosperity. Let us stop thinking--or, rather, let the -masses of the people give the plutocrats and the politicians in power a -free hand to do the thinking and acting for the nation. Enough of this -vulgar and irritating discontent! Enough of the coarse, low talk about -wealth! Let us discuss art and literature and glory and grandeur!” - -All this with the most serious face in the world. All this with perfect -honesty and a heart full of patriotism! - -The answer of the American people is cruel. “Rubbish!” they say. They -are not optimists of retreat--for what but retreat is a progress that -advances a class at the expense of the mass? - -Theirs is the optimism of advance--the advance of all. “We are indeed -great,” they reply to the optimists of retreat. “Let us be greater. -What Democracy we have had has carried us far. Let us have more -Democracy. The masses are better off than they used to be, thanks to -the sweeping away of some of the obstacles of class and caste. Let us -sweep away the rest of those obstacles. What we have is good. It is the -promise of better. Let us see that that promise is redeemed!” - -Happiness--in the customary, narrow sense--the sense put into the word -by the long past with its reign of class and caste--that happiness we -have not. But the joy of life--the vigorous, bounding hope that beats -in the heart and throbs in the veins of the strong man growing in -strength--that we have in ever fuller measure. Such happiness never has -been in the past? Such happiness cannot be in a world of such abysmal -natural inequalities? We deny it. We are here not to live by the past, -by precedent, but to make a mockery of past and precedent. We are the -children of Democracy, not the wards of aristocracy. We propose a -wholly new world--and we are putting our proposals into effect. We have -done well, though we have barely begun. We shall do better. Another -century or so! We envy our grandchildren, not our grandfathers. - -If happiness of the kind our ancestors of the world’s aristocratic -days dreamed had been the objective of the human race, man would have -retained his hairy coat, his taste for raw meat, his pleasure in -cave-dwelling. Every once in awhile we see in America people whose -object is happiness. Sooner or later they arrive at the bottom. -Sometimes they are happy there. But, happy or not, they are not to be -envied or imitated. The dominant note of the real slums is happiness. -Don’t be deceived by the squalor and rags into thinking it misery. The -unhappy slum-dwellers do not remain, but restlessly and resolutely -fight against the bestial stupor, fight their way back to the light and -the joy of life. - -The joy of life is the exaltation that comes through a sense of -a life lived to the very limit of its possibilities; a life of -self-development, self-expansion, self-devotion to the emancipation -of man. Whoever you are, this joy of life can be yours. Money has -nothing to do with it, either in aiding or retarding. Money cannot -buy the essentials--health and love. It cannot avert the essential -evils--illness, bereavement. The world keeps finding this out from -generation to generation--and forgetting as soon as it rediscovers. -Solomon mentioned the matter many centuries ago, when he wrote: - - “I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; - I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all - kinds of fruits; I made me pools of water to water therewith the wood - that bringeth forth trees; I got me servants and maidens, and had - servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and - small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me; I gathered - me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of - the provinces;.... - - “Then I looked on all these works that my hands had wrought and on - the labour that I had laboured to do; and, behold, all was vanity and - vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.” - -Our rich men are largely responsible for the misconception that the -American people have no ideal higher than that of money-making. The -following remarks once made by a rich philanthropist are interesting -because they are typical of the thought of a great number of persons -who speak in public to-day: - - “In contributing to the education of the suffrage the rich are but - building for their own protection. If they neglect so to build, - barbarism, anarchy, plunder will be the inevitable result. If the - spirit of commercialism and greed continues to grow stronger, then - the Twentieth Century will witness a social cataclysm unparalleled in - history.” - -Is all this true? Does the future of civilization depend upon the -generosity of rich men? If the rich men do not awaken as a class and -give more largely to the uplifting of their fellow-men, shall we have -a carnival of barbarism, anarchy and plunder? - -The speaker and his kind of social students mean well. They are right -in arousing the rich to a deeper sense of duty to mankind. But they -think so intently upon their pet theory that they lose their point of -view. They exaggerate to hysteria the importance of the rich. They are -infected with the dollar-worshiping craze which they profess to abhor. -They vastly over-estimate concentrated wealth as a factor in human -progress. They erect money into a powerful deity, just as do all other -worshipers of the dollar. The difference is that they wish to make it a -benevolent deity. - -It is an excellent thing that the rich should be aroused. A rich man -who does nothing for his brother-man is a contemptible fellow--almost -as contemptible as a poor man who does nothing for his brother-man. -The selfish rich man can plead in extenuation that temptations, -beyond human nature’s power to combat, have narrowed and chilled and -withered him. But, save ignorance, what excuse has the poor man for -selfishness? However, if by chance the selfish rich man become aroused -and give--give manlily, democratically--of his riches, he must not be -excited about the importance to others of what he has done. Its main -importance is purely personal. He is a better man for doing it and has -a stronger title to self-respect. But if he had not done it, the poor, -old, stupid, blundering human race would have managed to stagger along -somehow. - -By all means let the rich give. For their own self-respect, for their -own self-satisfaction, they ought to give largely and intelligently. -Let the honest rich give in sympathy--let the dishonest give in -humility. But we must remember that all such gifts put together are -as a mere drop in the ocean so far as the effect upon civilization is -concerned. - -We have not reached our present estate through the generosity of -any class of men. And we shall not advance to our destined higher -estate because of the generosity and benevolence of any class. The -benevolence of the rich may earn for them an honorable place in the -procession of humanity ever toiling upward, and may enable laggards or -the too heavily handicapped to keep in line. But this procession, that -has marched on over kings and emperors, over tyrants and oppressors -and false teachers, that has met and swept away army after army of -embattled wrong, is not to be perceptibly retarded or accelerated by -the errors or the virtues of a class of men who are merely rich. - -Rich men did not implant in the human heart the all but universal -passion for progress. Rich men did not put into the human skull the -marvelous mechanism of the human mind. Rich men did not endow that -mind with the body to carry out its will. Wealth has not made the -great pictures or paintings, has not written the great books nor -achieved the great discoveries, nor erected the great institutions, -nor evolved any of the glories of the emancipation of man, social, -political, industrial, intellectual. _All_ these we owe to men in whom -the wealth-getting instinct was at most a shriveled rudiment. Wealth -did not build this Republic in its present majesty; Pliny the younger -said--and said truly--that wealth had ruined Rome. Concentrated wealth, -breeder of parasitism and patronage, has shriveled and rotted--always, -everywhere. If history had not been written by snobs and persons -tainted with aristocratic error, this fact would be as clear as print -could make it. - -The real wealth, the real riches of humanity are these capable minds -and capable bodies, the creators of intelligent, progress-producing -thought and action. - -The value of civilization, of an orderly social system, is great to, -and is keenly felt by, the rich. But that value is just as great to, -just as keenly felt by, the masses. Are they not wholly dependent upon -it for well-being, just as are the rich--no more, no less? - -And the work of preparing the oncoming generation for the preservation -and improvement of the social structure is done in each generation -not by the rich, not by generosity and benevolence, but by the masses -themselves in a myriad of homes, in a myriad of schoolhouses, in the -hourly personal and helpful intercourse of a myriad intelligent, -aspiring men, women and children. It is not concentrated wealth that -places the resources of the world at the disposal of the masses. It is -the intelligence of the masses, demanding those resources, that enables -concentrated wealth to gain its too often hideously unjust demands. -Concentrated wealth may to a limited extent promote progress; but that -is overbalanced by the fact that concentrated wealth still more heavily -penalizes progress. - -If civilization, freedom, love of order, were dependent for their -existence or spread in any large degree upon the rich philanthropist -and his fellow-millionaires, cataclysm would be a mild word for what -would be about to befall us. - -As for the “spirit of commercialism and greed,” what reason is there to -suppose it stronger now than in the past? Because the wealth-producing -capacity of the masses has enormously increased, because the -opportunities for earning comfort have infinitely multiplied, because -millions are striving for prosperity now where the few once monopolized -it all--are these reasons for accusing us to-day of being greedy and -growing greedier? - -Was there ever a time or a place in history where mere money was so -powerless and brains so mighty as the present day in the American -Republic? Was there ever a time or place where the individual man was -at once so powerful to protect his own rights to life, liberty and the -pursuit of happiness, and so powerless to snatch away those rights from -others? - -The conscientious rich man does well to try to whip his -fellow-millionaires into line with the procession. But he need not -torment his declining years with horrid visions of coming anarchy -if these rich men do not stop groveling and grasping and begin to -entertain worthy ambitions. Let the rich do their part; but let every -man, rich or poor, high or humble, remember that his first duty is to -see that he is doing his own part. - -One loses patience with the constant precedence given the idea that -riches alone mean success. Why is it that the only men who are eagerly -interviewed and importuned to write articles on “the secret of success” -are multi-millionaires? - -Are there no successful men but multi-millionaires? There are not more -than five thousand of them in the country. Carlyle once described -England as “inhabited by thirty millions, mostly fools.” And our own -country, if none has succeeded in it but the multi-millionaires, may be -described as inhabited by “eighty millions, mostly failures.” - -Success is a glittering word, capable of many meanings. A man is not -necessarily a failure because he has not made money--a million dollars -or a hundred. Some very successful men have never tried to make money. -They preferred to make _something_, and if they achieved their desires -they succeeded--from their own viewpoint, at least. - -Agassiz would not accept five thousand dollars a night to lecture. “I -have no time to make money,” he said. Scientific inquiry and discovery -were the objects of his life, and he succeeded in his pursuit of them. -Wellington, after conquering Mysore, was proffered a gift of five -hundred thousand dollars by the corrupt East Indian Company. He refused -to touch it. Piling up “big money” was not his idea of success, either. - -When John Hancock, one of the signers of our great Declaration, was -sitting in the Continental Congress a letter was read from Washington -suggesting the destruction of Boston by bombardment. Hancock was one -of Boston’s largest property owners, but he instantly said: “All my -property is in Boston; but if the expulsion of the British from it -require that Boston be burnt to ashes, issue the order immediately.” -There was another man who didn’t believe that “success” was only -another name for millions. - -Charles Sumner refused to lecture at any price. “My time belongs to -Massachusetts and the nation,” he said. Big money was not his idol. -Thomas Jefferson died insolvent. Was he therefore a failure? Abraham -Lincoln died a poor man. Was he also a failure? Grant died so poor -that his opinion on “how to succeed” would have been of no value to the -money-mad, even if he had left it. - -Finally, can you imagine any of the great real benefactors of mankind -plotting to make the service they rendered a heavy tax upon posterity -for maintaining their descendants in foolish idleness and luxury? - -Sooner or later there will be a reaction from this search for “the -secret of success” among the trust kings and the sudden-rich heroes -of the stock ticker. “I know of no great men,” says Voltaire, “except -those who have rendered great service to the human race.” Judged by -that true standard, the mere makers of “big money” cannot tell our -young men the “secret of success.” They do not know it themselves. - -The money success is blatant and strong. It flaunts itself and tries -to absorb all attention. But it ought not to deceive any but the -superficial observers of the American people. Our ideals still centre -in the affections, not in the appetites. To be free, to love, to think, -to grow--the joy of life. That sums up America. Gilt may for the moment -reign; but gilt does not rule. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -THE MAN OF TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW - - -In Chicago, in Lincoln Park, there is a wonderful statue. A big, -slouching form, loose yet powerful; ungraceful, yet splendid because -it seems to be able to bear upon its Atlantean shoulders the burdens -of a mighty people. The big hands, the big feet, the great, stooped -shoulders tell the same story of commonness and strength. - -Then you look at the face. You find it difficult to keep your hat upon -your head. - -What a countenance! How homely, yet how beautiful; how stern, yet how -gentle; how inflexible, yet how infinitely merciful; how powerful, yet -how tender; how common, yet how sublime! - -Search the world through and you will find no greater statue than -this--the statue of Abraham Lincoln, by St. Gaudens. It is Lincoln; but -it is also a great deal more. It is the glorification of the Common -Man--the apotheosis of Democracy. - -As you look at that face and that figure you feel the history of the -human race, the long, the bloody, the agonized struggle of the masses -of mankind for freedom and light. You see the whole history of your -own country, founded by common men for the common people, founded upon -freedom and equality and justice. - -Here is no vain haughtiness, no arrogance, no supercilious looking -down, no cringing looking upward, nothing that suggests class or rank -or aristocracy. Here is Democracy, the Common Man exalted in the -dignity of his own rights, in the splendor of the recognition of the -equal rights of all others; the Common Man, free and enlightened, -strong and just. - -The statue is in the attitude of preparation to speak. What is that -brain formulating for those lips to utter? - -The expression of brow and eyes and lips leaves no doubt. It is -some thought of freedom and justice, some one of those many mighty -democratic thoughts which will echo forever in the minds and hearts of -men. - -Let us recall three of those thoughts: - - “The authors of the Declaration of Independence meant it to be a - stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free - people back into the hateful paths of despotism.” - - “That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and - that government of the people, by the people, and for the people - shall not perish from the earth.” - - “I say that no man is good enough to govern another man without that - other man’s consent. I say that this is the leading principle, the - sheet-anchor.” - -These were the ideas that found this country a few ragged settlements -trembling between a hostile sea and a hostile wilderness and built -it up to its present estate of democratic grandeur. Not tyranny, -not murder disguised as war, not robbery disguised as “benevolent -guidance,” not any of the false and foolish ideas of imperialism -and aristocracy. But ideas of peace, of equal rights for all, of -self-government. - -Our era, conscious of the mighty works that can be wrought, conscious -that we are all under sentence of speedy death, eagerly seeks out -the young man, the obscure man. It has need of all powers and all -talents, especially of the talents for creating, organizing, directing. -Instead of it being true that a good man doesn’t have a chance any -more, the reverse is true--inferior men have chances greatly beyond -their powers, and immature men are forced into important commands, and -discredited and ruined, so impatient is the pressure for men to do the -world’s important work. This is the day of the man who wants a chance. - -It is also a day in which we hear a great deal about the “unruly -class.” This phrase is employed to designate some vague element in the -masses of the people that is naturally turbulent and ever looking about -for an excuse to “rise” and “burn, slay, kill.” - -You may search through history page by page, line by line, and you -will find no trace of the doings of this alleged “unruly class.” The -more you read the more you will be struck by the universal and most -tenacious love of quiet and order in the masses of mankind. You will -see them robbed, oppressed, murdered wholesale upon mere caprice, the -victims of all manner of misery. Your cheeks will burn and your blood -run hot as you read. And you will note with wonder that they endured -with seemingly limitless patience until they were eating grass by the -wayside. Then, once in a while, but only once in a while, they “rose.” -All the machinery of law and order was in the hands of the oppressors, -so they were compelled to resort to violence. But even then they -established new machinery or patched up the old as quickly as possible. - -_Every society that has been overturned from, within has been -overturned by misrule; never by the unruly._ - -No; the real “unruly classes” are these “respectabilities” with the -“pulls,” and these governmental officers who are “pulled”;--they -violate the laws; they purchase or enact or enforce unjust legislation; -they abuse the confidence and the tolerant good nature of the people; -they misuse the machinery of justice. - -Turn to your history again. You find that every once in a while the -dominant element has begun to talk about the “unruly class,” to express -fear of “risings,” of mob violence. And in every instance you find -that the real reason for this denunciation and dread was that the -dominant element had begun to be acutely conscious of its own misdeeds. -It feared that its own weapons of injustice would be turned against -itself by outraged justice. It feared that its punishment would be in -proportion to its crimes. - -Gladstone said that the Nineteenth century was summed up in the phrase, -“Unhand me!” Its science struck off the shackles of ignorance upon the -intellect--shackles of error, of false reverence, of superstitions -about the causes of the inequalities of men. Thus, the Nineteenth -century made it possible for this to be the Age of the Common Man. Not -to states, not to institutions, not to class-made law, not to castes -and orders and rank belongs the Twentieth century. It belongs to the -Common Man--to you. You with your stout heart and your willing and -capable hands. You with your active, intelligent brain, impatient of -traditional nonsense, however poetically or plausibly englamoured. -You with your enlightened sense of the equal rights of all men. You -with your passionate resolve scientifically to correct the stupid and -cruel inequalities of opportunity, that are as intolerable in an era of -science as a cannibal feast in the temple of the Most High. - -What is the watchword of this new day? From lip to lip, from land to -land, from race to race, flies the “password eternal”--Democracy. - -How the Nineteenth century did belie all the prophecies of pessimism! -And how the Twentieth century will belie all the prophecies of its -pessimists! - -To realize this you must penetrate the dust and noise and clamor -that are the surface of things. You must discard prejudice and -that narrowness which makes you exaggerate the importance of the -things immediately at hand--the things that are mere details of the -great pattern which time is weaving in the loom of history--details -incomprehensible unless you look at the pattern as a whole. Disregard -tradition and egotism; free yourself of the small silliness that leads -you to confuse intelligence with etiquette and clothes, with formal -education which may or may not affect the intellect. Look deep into the -realities and see there the lines of the Common Man--the toiler at the -desk and bench and lever and plow, his mind bent upon his work, his -work the improvement of his own condition and the handing down of the -heritage of life richer and better in every way than he received it. - -Through the ages this Common Man has been building like the coral -insect--silently, secretly, steadily, strongly. History has little to -say about him or his work, and that little misleading; the historians -have been unable to get away from courts and battlefields and the -legislation halls where fierce but futile and evanescent class -struggles rage. But the real story of the past of the human race as -an interpreter and prophet of the future is the story of the building -of the coral continent founded broadly and deeply upon freedom and -justice, upon Intelligence and Democracy. And now at last this -continent of enduring civilization begins to emerge not here and there, -not merely above the ebbtides of ignorance and tyranny, but everywhere -and for all time. - -Let us read the past aright. Its departed civilizations are not a -gloomy warning, but a bright promise. If limited intelligence in a -small class produced such gleams of glory in the black sky of history, -what a day must be now dawning! - - -THE END - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REIGN OF GILT *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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