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Title: The Twentieth Century American
Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great
Anglo-Saxon Nations
Author: H. Perry Robinson
Release Date: November 26, 2009 [EBook #30549]
Language: EN
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left as in the original. Some typographical and punctuation errors have
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| The Twentieth |
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| BY |
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| H. PERRY ROBINSON |
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| AUTHOR OF "MEN BORN EQUAL," "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY |
| OF A BLACK BEAR," ETC. |
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| The Chautauqua Press |
| CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK |
| MCMXI |
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COPYRIGHT, 1908
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
TO
THOSE READERS,
WHETHER ENGLISH OR AMERICAN,
WHO
AGREE WITH WHATEVER IS SAID IN THE
FOLLOWING PAGES IN LAUDATION OF
THEIR OWN COUNTRY
THIS BOOK
IS INSCRIBED IN THE HOPE
THAT THEY WILL BE EQUALLY READY TO ACCEPT
WHATEVER THEY FIND IN PRAISE
OF
THE OTHER.
[Illustration: The British Isles and the United States.
A Comparison (see Chapter IV.)]
PREFATORY NOTE
There are already many books about America; but the majority of these
have been written by Englishmen after so brief an acquaintance with the
country that it is doubtful whether they contribute much to English
knowledge of the subject.
My reason for adding another volume to the list is the hope of being
able to do something to promote a better understanding between the
peoples, having as an excuse the fact that I have lived in the United
States for nearly twenty years, under conditions which have given rather
exceptional opportunities of intimacy with the people of various parts
of the country socially, in business, and in politics. Wherever my
judgment is wrong it is not from lack of abundant chance to learn the
truth.
Except in one instance--very early in the book--I have avoided the use
of statistics, in spite of frequent temptation to refer to them to
fortify arguments which must without them appear to be merely the
expression of an individual opinion.
H. P. R.
February, 1908.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
AN ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE 5
The Avoidance of Entangling Alliances--What the Injunction
Meant--What it Cannot Mean To-day--The Interests of the United
States, no less than those of England, Demand an Alliance--But
Larger Interests than those of the Two Peoples are
Involved--American Responsiveness to Ideals--The Greatest
Ideal of All, Universal Peace: the Practicability of its
Attainment--America's Responsibility--Misconceptions of the
British Empire--Germany's Position--American Susceptibilities.
CHAPTER II
THE DIFFERENCE IN POINT OF VIEW 35
The Anglo-Saxon Family Likeness--How Frenchmen and Germans
View it--Englishmen, Americans, and "Foreigners"--An Echo of
the War of 1812--An Anglo-American Conflict Unthinkable--
American Feeling for England--The Venezuelan Incident--The
Pilgrims and Some Secret History--Why Americans still Hate
England--Great Britain's Nearness to the United States
Geographically--Commercially--Historically--England's Foreign
Ill-wishers in America.
CHAPTER III
TWO SIDES OF THE AMERICAN CHARACTER 60
Europe's Undervaluation of America's Fighting Power--The
Americans as Sailors--The Nation's Greatest Asset--Self-reliance
of the People--The Making of a Doctor--And of a Surveyor--
Society in the Rough--New York and the Country--An Anglo-Saxon
Trait--America's Unpreparedness--American Consuls and Diplomats--
A Homogeneous People--The Value of a Common Speech--America
more Anglo-Saxon than Britain--Mr. Wells and the Future in
America.
CHAPTER IV
MUTUAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS 94
America's Bigness--A New Atlantis--The Effect of Expansion on
a People--A Family Estranged--Parsnips--An American Woman in
England--An Englishman in America--International Caricatures--
Shibboleths: dropped H's and a "twang"--Matthew Arnold's
Clothes--The Honourable S---- B----.
CHAPTER V
THE AMERICAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN 111
The Isolation of the United States--American Ignorance of the
World--Sensitiveness to Criticism--Exaggeration of their Own
Virtues--The Myth of American Chivalrousness--Whence it
Originated--The Climatic Myth--International Marriages--English
Manners and American--The View of Womanhood in Youth--
Co-education of the Sexes--Conjugal Morality--The Artistic
Sense in American Women--Two Stenographers--An Incident of
Camp-Life--"Molly-be-damned"--A Nice Way of Travelling--How do
they do it?--Women in Public Life--The Conditions which
Co-operate--The Anglo-Saxon Spirit again.
CHAPTER VI
ENGLISH HUMOUR AND AMERICAN ART 145
American Insularity--A Conkling Story--English Humour and
American Critics--American Literature and English Critics--The
American Novel in England--And American Art--Wanted, an
American Exhibition--The Revolution in the American Point of
View--"Raining in London"--Domestic and Imported Goods.
CHAPTER VII
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN EDUCATION 166
The Rhodes Scholarships--"Pullulating Colleges"--Are American
Colleges Superior to Oxford or Cambridge?--Other Educational
Forces--The Postal Laws--Ten-cent Magazines and Cheap Books--
Pigs in Chicago--The Press of England and America Compared--
Mixed Society--Educated Women--Generals as Booksellers--And as
Farmhands--The Value of War to a People.
CHAPTER VIII
A COMPARISON IN CULTURE 191
The Advantage of Youth--Japanese Eclecticism and American--The
Craving for the Best--_Cyrano de Bergerac_--Verestschagin--
Culture by Paroxysms--Mr. Gladstone and the Japanese--Anglo-Saxon
Crichtons--Americans as Linguists--England's Past and America's
Future--Americanisms in Speech--Why They are Disappearing in
America--And Appearing in England--The Press and the Copyright
Laws--A Look into the Future.
CHAPTER IX
POLITICS AND POLITICIANS 226
The "English-American" Vote--The Best People in Politics--What
Politics Means in America--Where Corruption Creeps in--The
Danger in England--A Presidential Nomination for Sale--Buying
Legislation--Could it Occur in England?--A Delectable Alderman--
Taxation while you Wait--Perils that England Escapes--The
Morality of Congress--Political Corruption of the Irish--
Democrat and Republican.
CHAPTER X
AMERICAN POLITICS IN ENGLAND 260
The System of Parties--Interdependence of National and Local
Organisations--The Federal Government and Sovereign States--
The Boss of Warwickshire--The Unit System--Prime Minister
Crooks--Lanark and the Nation--New York and Tammany Hall--
America's Superior Opportunities for Wickedness--How England
Is Catching up--Campaign Reminiscences--The "Hell-box"--Politics
in a Gravel-pit--Mr. Hearst and Mr. Bryan.
CHAPTER XI
SOME QUESTIONS OF THE MOMENT 285
Sovereign States and the Federal Government--California and
the Senate--The Constitutional Powers of Congress and the
President--Government by Interpretation--President Roosevelt
as an Inspiration to the People--A New Conception of the
Presidential Office--"Teddy" and the "fraid strap"--Mr.
Roosevelt and the Corporations--As a Politician--His
Imperiousness--The Negro Problem--The Americanism of the South.
CHAPTER XII
COMMERCIAL MORALITY 308
Are Americans more Honest than Englishmen?--An American
Peerage--Senators and other Aristocrats--Trade and the British
Upper Classes--Two Views of a Business Career--America's Wild
Oats--The Packing House Scandals--"American Methods" in
Business--A Countryman and Some Eggs--A New Dog--The Morals of
British Peers--A Contract of Mutual Confidence--Embalmed Beef,
Re-mounts, and War Stores--The Yellow Press and Mr. Hearst--
American View of the House of Lords.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GROWTH OF HONESTY 347
The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon--America's Resemblance to
Japan--A German View--Can Americans Lie?--Honesty as the Best
Policy--Religious Sentiment--Moral and Immoral Railway
Managers--A Struggle for Self-preservation--Gentlemen in
Business--Peculation among Railway Servants--How the Old
Order Changes, Yielding Place to New--The Strain on British
Machinery--Americans as Story-Tellers--The Incredibility of
the Actual.
CHAPTER XIV
A CONTRAST IN PRINCIPLES 371
The Commercial Power of the United States--British Workmanship--
Tin-tacks and Conservatism--A Prophetic Frenchman--Imperialism
in Trade--The Anglo-Saxon Spirit--About Chaperons--"Insist upon
Thyself"--English and American Banks--Dealing in Futures--Dog
Eat Dog--Two Letters--Commercial Octopods--Trusts in America
and England--The Standard Oil Company--And Solicitors--Legal
Chaperons--The Sanctity of Stamped Paper--Conclusions--Do
"Honest" Traders Exist?
CHAPTER XV
THE PEOPLES AT PLAY 408
American Sport Twenty-five Years Ago--The Power of Golf--A
Look Ahead--Britain, Mother of Sports--Buffalo in New York--
And Pheasants on Clapham Common--Shooting Foxes and the
"Sport" of Wild-fowling--The Amateur in American Sport--At
Henley--And at Large--Teutonic Poppycock.
CHAPTER XVI
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 429
A New Way of Making Friends--The Desirability of an Alliance--
For the Sake of Both Peoples--And of all the World--The Family
Resemblance--Mutual Misunderstandings--American Conception of
the British Character--English Misapprehension of Americans--
Foreign Influences in the United States--Why Politicians
Hesitate--An Appeal to the People--And to Cæsar.
APPENDIX 451
INDEX 453
The Twentieth Century
American
"_If I can say anything to show that my name is really
Makepeace, and to increase the source of love between the two
countries, then please, God, I will._"--W. M. Thackeray, in
_Letters to an American Family_.
"_Certainly there is nothing like England, and there never has
been anything like England in the world. Her wonderful
history, her wonderful literature, her beautiful architecture,
the historic and poetic associations which cluster about every
street and river and mountain and valley, her vigorous life,
the sweetness and beauty of her women, the superb manhood of
her men, her Navy, her gracious hospitality, and her lofty
pride--although some single race of men may have excelled her
in some single particular--make up a combination never
equalled in the world._"--The late United States Senator Hoar,
in _An Autobiography of Seventy Years_.
"_The result of the organisation of the American colonies into
a state, and of the bringing together of the diverse
communities contained in these colonies, was the creation not
merely of a new nation, but of a new temperament. How far this
temperament was to arise from a change of climate, and how far
from a new political organisation, no one could then foresee,
nor is its origin yet fully analysed; but the fact itself is
now coming to be more and more recognised. It may be that
Nature said at about that time: 'Thus far the English is my
best race; but we have had Englishmen enough; now for another
turning of the globe, and for a further novelty. We need
something with a little more buoyancy than the Englishman; let
us lighten the structure, even at some peril in the process.
Put in one drop more of nervous fluid and make the American.'
With that drop, a new range of promise opened on the human
race, and a lighter, finer, more highly organised type of
mankind was born._"--Thomas Wentworth Higginson, _Atlantic
Monthly_, 1886.
"_The foreign observer in America is at once struck by the
fact that the average of intelligence, as that intelligence
manifests itself in the spirit of inquiry, in the interest
taken in a great variety of things, and in alertness of
judgment, is much higher among the masses in the United States
than anywhere else. This is certainly not owing to any
superiority of the public school system in this country--or,
if such superiority exists, not to that alone--but rather to
the fact that in the United States the individual is
constantly brought into interested contact with a greater
variety of things and is admitted to active participation in
the exercise of functions which in other countries are left to
the care of a superior authority. I have frequently been
struck by the remarkable expansion of the horizon effected by
a few years of American life, in the minds of immigrants who
had come from somewhat benighted regions, and by the mental
enterprise and keen discernment with which they took hold of
problems to which, in their comparatively torpid condition in
their native countries, they had never given thought. It is
true that in the large cities with congested population,
self-government as an educator does not always bring the most
desirable results, partly owing to the circumstance that
government, in its various branches, is there further removed
from the individual, so that he comes into contact with it and
exercises his influence upon it only through various, and
sometimes questionable, intermediary agencies which frequently
exert a very demoralising influence._"--Carl Schurz's
_Memoirs_, II, 79.
"_Anglo-Saxon Superiority! Although we do not all acknowledge
it, we all have to bear it, and we all dread it; the
apprehension, the suspicion, and sometimes the hatred provoked
by l'Anglais proclaim the fact loudly enough. We cannot go one
step in the world without coming across the Anglo-Saxon. . . .
He rules America by Canada and the United States; Africa by
Egypt and the Cape; Asia by India and Burmah; Australasia by
Australia and New Zealand; Europe and the whole world, by his
trade and industries and by his policy._"--M. Edmond Demolins
in _Anglo-Saxon Superiority_ "_À quoi tient la Supériorité des
Anglo-Saxons?_"
"_It may be asking too much, but if statesmanship could kindly
arrange it, I confess I should like to see, before I die, a
war in which Britain and the United States in a just quarrel
might tackle the world. After that we should have no more
difficulty about America. For if the Americans never forget an
injury, they ever remember a service._"--The late G. W.
Steevens in _The Land of the Dollar_.
The Twentieth Century
American
CHAPTER I
AN ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE
The Avoidance of Entangling Alliances--What the Injunction
Meant--What it Cannot Mean To-day--The Interests of the United
States, no less than those of England, Demand an Alliance--But
Larger Interests than those of the Two Peoples are Involved--
American Responsiveness to Ideals--The Greatest Ideal of All,
Universal Peace: the Practicability of its Attainment--
America's Responsibility--Misconceptions of the British
Empire--Germany's Position--American Susceptibilities.
The American nation, for all that it is young and lacks reverence, still
worships the maxims and rules of conduct laid down by the Fathers of the
Republic; and among those rules of conduct, there is none the wisdom of
which is more generally accepted by the people than that which enjoins
the avoidance of "entangling alliances" with foreign Powers. But not
only has the United States changed much in late years, but the world in
its political relations and sentiments has changed also and the place of
the United States has changed in it. That sacred instrument, the
Constitution itself, holds chiefly by virtue of what is new in it.
Whatever is unaltered, or is not interpreted in a sense quite other than
the framers intended, is to-day comparatively unimportant. It must be
so. It would be impossible that any code or constitution drawn up to
meet the needs of the original States, in the phase of civilisation and
amid the social conditions which then prevailed, could be suited to the
national life of a Great Power in the twentieth century. In internal
affairs, there is hardly a function of Government, scarcely a relation
between the different branches of the Government itself, or between the
Government and any of the several States, or between the Government and
the people, which is not unlike what the framers of the Constitution
intended or what they imagined that it would be.
But it is in external affairs that the nation must find, indeed has
found, the old rules most inadequate. The policy of non-association
which was desirable, even essential, to the young, weak state, whose
only prospect of safety lay in a preservation of that isolation which
her geographical position made possible to her, is and must be
impracticable in a World-Power. Within the last decade, the United
States has stepped out from her solitude to take the place which
rightfully belongs to her among the great peoples. By the acquirement of
her colonial dependencies, still more by the inevitable exigencies of
her commerce, she has chosen (as she had no other choice) to make
herself an interested party in the affairs of all parts of the world.
All the conditions that made the old policy best for her have vanished.
A child is rightly forbidden by his nurse to make acquaintance with
other children in the street; but this child has grown to manhood and
gone out into the world to seek--and has found--his fortune. The old
policy of isolation has been cast aside, till nothing remains of it but
a few old formulæ which have no virtue--not even significance--now that
all the conditions to which they applied are gone. The United States has
been compelled to make alliances (some, as when she co-operated with the
other Powers in China, of the most "entangling" kind), and still the old
phrase holds its spell on the popular mind.
The injunction was originally intended to prevent the young Republic
from being drawn into the wars with which Europe at the time was rent,
by taking sides with any one party against any other. It was levelled
not against alliances, but against entanglements. It was framed, and
wisely framed, to secure to the United States the peace and isolation
necessary to her development. The isolation is no longer either possible
or desirable, but peace remains both. The nation would in fact be living
more closely up to the spirit of the injunction by entering into an
alliance which would secure peace and make entanglements impossible,
than she is when she leaves herself and the world exposed to the
constant menace of war, merely for the sake of seeming to comply with
the letter of a maxim which is now meaningless. If Washington were alive
to-day, it does not seem to me possible to doubt that he would favour a
new English treaty, even though he might have more difficulty in
compelling Congress to accept his views than he had once before.
As the case stands, the United States may easily become involved in war
with any one of the Great Powers, no matter how pacific or benevolent
her intentions may be. There are at least three Powers with which a
trivial incident might precipitate a conflict at almost any time; while
the possibilities of friction which might develop into open hostilities
with some one of the lesser states are almost innumerable. It is beside
the question to say that the United States need have no fear of the
result: indeed that very fact contributes largely to the danger. It is
ever the man who can fight, and knows it, who gets into trouble. Every
American who has lived much in the farther West knows that he who would
keep clear of difficulties had best not carry a revolver. In its very
self-confidence--a self-confidence amply justified by its strength--the
American people is, measured by the standards of other nations, an
eminently bellicose people--much more bellicose than it supposes.
Great Britain's alliance with Japan has with reasonable certainty, so
far as danger of conflict between any two of the Great Powers is
concerned, secured the peace of Asia for some time to come. The
understanding between Great Britain and France goes some way towards
assuring the peace of Europe, of which the imminent _rapprochement_ with
Russia (which all thinking Englishmen desire[8:1]) will constitute a
further guarantee. But an alliance between Great Britain and the United
States would secure the peace of the world. There is but one European
Power now which could embark on a war with either Great Britain or the
United States with any shadow of justification for hopefulness as to the
result; and no combination of Powers could deceive itself into
believing that it could make head against the two combined or would dare
to disturb the peace between themselves when the two allies bade them be
still.
In the days of her youth,--which lasted up to the closing decade of the
nineteenth century,--provided that she did not thrust herself needlessly
into the quarrels of Europe, her mere geographical position sufficed to
secure to America the peace which she required. The Atlantic Ocean, her
own mountain chains and wildernesses, these were bulwarks enough. She
has, by pressure of her own destiny, been compelled to come out from
behind these safeguards to rub shoulders every day with all the world.
If she still desires peace, she will be more likely to realise that
desire by seeking other shields. Nor must any American reader
misunderstand me, for I believe that I estimate the fighting power of
the United States more highly than most native-born Americans. She needs
no help in playing her part in the world; but no amount of
self-confidence, no ability to fight, if once the fight be on, will
serve to protect her from having quarrels thrust upon her--not
necessarily in wilfulness by any individual antagonist but by mere force
of circumstance. Considered from the standpoint of her own expediency,
an alliance with Great Britain would give to the United States an
absolute guarantee that for as many years as she pleased she would be
free to devote all her energies to the development of her own resources
and the increase of her commerce.
But there are other considerations far larger than that of her own
expediency. This is no question of the selfish interests either of the
United States or of Great Britain. There is no people more responsive
than the American to high ideals. Englishmen often find it hard to
believe that an American is not talking mere fustian when he gives
honest expression to his sentiments; but from the foundation of the
Republic certain large ideas--Liberty, Freedom of Conscience,
Equality--have somehow been made to seem very real things to the
American mind. Whether the Englishman does not in his heart prize just
as dearly as the American the things which these words signify, is
another matter; it is not the Englishman's habit to formulate them even
to himself, much less to talk about them to others. Most Englishmen have
large sympathy with Captain Gamble who, bewailing the unrest in Canada
at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, complained that the Colonials
talked too much about "that damned absurd word Liberty."[10:1]
It is rarely that an English political campaign is fought for a
principle or for an abstract idea, and equally rarely that in America
the watchword on one side or the other is not some such high-sounding
phrase as Englishmen rather shrink from using. It is true that behind
that phrase may be clustered a cowering crowd of petty individual
interests; the fact remains that it is the phrase itself--the large
Idea--on which orators and party managers rely to secure their hold on
the imaginations of the mass of the people. It does not necessarily
imply any superior morality on the part of the Americans; but is an
accident of the different conditions prevailing in the two countries.
British politics are infinitely more complex than American, and foreign
affairs play a much larger part in public controversies. The people of
the United States have been throughout their history able to confine
their attention almost wholly to their home affairs, and in those home
affairs, the mere vastness of the country, with the diverse and
conflicting interests of the various parts, has made it as a rule
impossible to frame any appeal to the minds of the voters as a whole
except in terms of some abstract idea. An appeal to the self-interests
of the people in the aggregate in any matter of domestic policy is
almost unformulable, because the interest of each section conflicts with
the interest of others; whence it has necessarily followed that the
American people has grown accustomed to be led by large
phrases--disciplined to follow the flag of an ideal.
Not all the early colonists who emigrated, even to New England, went
solely for conscience' sake. Under the cloak of the lofty principle for
which the Revolutionary War was fought there were, again, concealed all
manner of personal ambitions, sectional jealousies, and partisan
intrigues. It was in truth (as more than one American historian has
pointed out) a party strife and not a war of peoples. The precipitating
cause of the Civil War was not the desire to abolish slavery, but the
bitterness aroused by the political considerations of the advantage
given to one party or the other by the establishment or
non-establishment of slavery in a new territory. The motive which
impelled the United States to make war on Spain was not, as most
Europeans believe, any desire for an extension of territory, any more
than it was, as some Americans would say, a yearning to avenge the
blowing up of the _Maine_; it was the necessity of putting an end to the
disturbed state of affairs in Cuba, which was a constant source of
annoyance, as well as of trouble and expense, to the United States
Government. If a neighbour makes a disturbance before your house and
brings his family quarrels to your doorstep, you must after a time ask
him to stop; and when, after a sufficient number of askings, he fails to
comply with your request, it is justifiable to use force to make him.
That was America's justification--the real ground on which she went to
war with Spain. But the thing which actually inflamed the mind of the
American people was the belief that the Spanish treatment of Cuba was
brutal and barbarous. It was an indignation no less fine than that which
set England in a blaze in the days of the Bulgarian atrocities. The war
may been a war of expediency on the part of the Government; it was a
Crusade in the eyes of the people. Thus it may be easy to show that at
each crisis in its history there was something besides the nobility of a
Cause or the grandeur of a Principle which impelled the American nation
on the course which it took, but it has always been love of the Cause or
devotion to the Principle which has swayed the masses of the people.
And this people now has it in its power to do an infinitely finer thing
than ever it did when it established Liberty of Conscience, or founded a
republic on broader foundations than had been laid before, or abolished
slavery within its borders, or when it won Cuba's independence of what
it believed to be an inhuman tyranny. I believe that it has it in its
power to do no less a thing than to abolish war for ever--to give to
the peoples of the earth the blessing of Perpetual Peace. The question
for it to ask itself is whether it can, with any shadow of
justification, refuse to take this step and withhold this boon from
humanity.
If it does refuse and wars continue--if, within the coming decade, war
should break out, whether actually involving the United States itself or
not, more bloody and destructive than any that the world has seen--and
if then the facts should be presented to posterity for judgment,--will
the American people be held guiltless? It is improbable that the case
ever could be so presented, for there is none to put the United States
on trial, none to draw an indictment, none to prosecute. The world has
not turned to the United States to ask that it be saved; no one has
arisen to point at the United States and say, "Thou art the one to do
this thing." The historians of another generation will have no
depositions before them on which to base a verdict. But if the facts are
as stated and the United States knows them to be so, does the lack of
common knowledge of them make her responsibility any the less? It
remains that the nation has the power to do this, and it alone among
nations.
* * * * *
The first idea of most Americans, when a hard and fast alliance with
Great Britain is suggested to them, usually formulates itself in the
statement that they have no wish to be made into a cat's-paw for pulling
England's chestnuts out of the fire. America has no desire to be drawn
into England's quarrels. Until less than ten years ago, there was
justification for the point of view; for while England seemed to be
ever on the brink of war, the United States lived peacefully in her
far-off Valley of Avilion. But the map of the world has changed, and
while the United States has left her seclusion and come out to play her
part in the world-politics, England has been buttressing herself with
friendships, until it is at least arguable whether the United States is
not the more exposed to danger of the two. But it is no question now of
being dragged into other people's quarrels; but of making all
quarrelling impossible.
Again, the American will say that the United States needs no allies. She
can hold her own; let Great Britain do the same. And again I say that it
is no question now of whether either Power can hold its own against the
world or not. Great Britain, Americans should understand, has no more
fear for herself than has the United States. England "does not seek
alliances: she grants them." There is not only no single European Power,
but there is no probable combination of European Powers, which England
does not in her heart serenely believe herself quite competent to deal
with. British pride has grown no less in the last three hundred years:
"Come the four corners of the World in arms
And we shall shock them."
Americans should disabuse themselves finally of the idea that if England
desires an alliance with the United States it is because she has any
fear that she may need help against any other enemy. Englishmen are too
well satisfied with themselves for that (with precisely the same kind of
self-satisfaction as the United States suffers from), and much too
confident that, in whatever may arise, it will be the other fellow who
will need help. But if England has no misgiving as to her ability to
take care of herself when trouble comes, she is far from being ashamed
to say that she would infinitely prefer that trouble should not come,
either to her or to another, and she would join--oh, so gladly!--with
the United States (as for a partial attainment of the same end she has
already joined with France on the one hand and with Japan on the other)
to make sure that it should never come. Has the United States any right
to refuse to enter into such an alliance--an alliance which would not be
entangling, but which would make entanglements impossible?
At Christmas time in 1906, the following suggestion was made in the
London correspondence of an American paper[15:1]:
"The new ideals which mankind has set before itself, the infinitely
larger enlightenment and education of the masses, the desperate struggle
which every civilised people is waging against all forms of social
suffering and vice within itself, the mere complexity of modern commerce
with its all-absorbing interest--these things all cry aloud for peace.
War does not belong to this phase of civilisation. Least of all can it
have any appeal to the two peoples in whom the spirit of the Twentieth
Century is most manifest. Of all peoples, Great Britain and the United
States have most cause to desire peace.
"There should be a Christmas message sent from the White House which
should run something like this:
"TO HIS MAJESTY KING EDWARD THE SEVENTH:
"To your majesty, to her majesty the Queen, and to the people
of the British empire, I desire to express the best wishes of
myself and of the people of the United States. At the same
time, I wish to assure your majesty that you will have both
the sympathy and the practical support of the American people
in such action as it may seem right to you and to the British
people to take in the direction of securing to the nations of
the world that peace of which your majesty has always shown
yourself so earnest an advocate.
"(Signed), THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
"Some such an answer as this would be returned:
"TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
"In acknowledging with gratitude the expression of good wishes
to ourselves, to her majesty the Queen, and to the people of
the British empire of yourself and the population of the
United States, I desire most cordially to reciprocate the
sentiments of good will. Even more cordially and gratefully, I
acknowledge the assurance of sympathy and support of the great
American people in action directed to securing peace to the
nations of the world. It will be my immediate care to propose
such a course of joint action between us as may secure that
blessing to all peoples in the course of the coming year.
"(Signed), EDWARD.
"Does anybody doubt that, if the two nations bent themselves to the task
in earnest, universal peace could be so secured to all the peoples of
the earth in the course of the coming year? And if it is in truth in
their power to do this thing, how can either conceivably convince itself
that it is not its duty?
"And what a Christmas the world would have in 1907!"
* * * * *
Does any one doubt it? Does any one doubt that, if the two peoples were
in earnest, though the thing might not be brought about in one year, it
is far from improbable that it could be achieved in two years or three?
Since the paragraphs which I have quoted were published, a year has
passed and for a large part of that year the Conference has been in
session at The Hague; and of the results of that Conference it is not
easy for either an Englishman or an American to speak with patience.
Does any one doubt that if the two Governments had set themselves
determinedly, from the beginning of the _pourparlers_, to reach the one
definite goal those results might have been very different?
During the last few years, the two Powers, each acting in her own way,
have done more to establish peace on earth than has been done by all the
other Powers in all time; and I most earnestly believe that it only
needs that they should say with one voice that there shall be no more
wars and there will be none. Nor am I ignoring the complexities of the
situation; but I believe that all the details, the first step once
taken, would settle themselves with unexpected facility through the
medium of international tribunals. Of course this will be called
visionary: but whosoever is tempted so to call it, let him read history
in the records of contemporary writers and see how visionary all great
forward movements in the progress of the world have seemed until the
time came when the thing was to be accomplished. What we are now
discussing seems visionary because of its unfamiliarity. It has the
formidableness of the unknown. The impossible, once accomplished, looks
simple enough in retrospect. The fact is that never before has there
been a time when boundaries all over the world have been so nearly
established--when there were so few points outstanding likely to embroil
any two of the Great Powers in conflict--so few national ambitions
struggling for appeasement. It is easy not to realise this unless one
studies the field in detail: easy to fail to see how near is the
attainment of universal peace.
The Councils of the Powers have in the past been so hampered by the
traditions of a tortuous diplomacy, so tossed and perturbed within by
the cross-currents of intrigue, that they have shown themselves almost
childishly incapable of arriving at clear-cut decisions. Old policies,
old formulæ, old jealousies, old dynastic influences still hold control
of the majority of the chancelleries of Continental Europe, and these
things it is that have made questions simple in themselves seem complex
and incapable of solution. But there is nothing to be settled involving
larger territorial interests or more beset with delicacies than many
questions with which the Supreme Court of the United States has had to
deal--none so large as to seem formidable to his Majesty's Privy Council
or to the House of Lords. And under the guidance of Great Britain and
the United States acting in unison, assured in advance of the sympathy
of France and Japan and of whatever other Powers would welcome the new
order of things, a Hague committee or other international tribunal could
be made a businesslike organisation working directly for results,--as
directly as the board of directors of any commercial corporation. And it
is with those who consider this impracticable that the onus lies of
pointing out the direction from which insuperable resistance is to be
expected,--from which particular Powers in Europe, in Asia, or in
Central or South America.
The ultimate domination of the world by the Anglo-Saxon (let us call him
so) seems to be reasonably assured; and no less assured is it that at
some time wars will cease. The question for both Englishmen and
Americans to ask themselves is whether, recognising the responsibility
that already rests upon it, the Anglo-Saxon race dare or can for
conscience' sake--or still more, whether one branch of it when the other
be willing to push on, dare or can for conscience' sake--hang back and
postpone the advent of the Universal Peace, which it is in its power to
bring about to-day, no matter what the motives of jealousy, of
self-interest, or of self-distrust may be that restrain it.
It has been assumed in all that has been said that the onus of refusal
rests solely on the United States; as indeed it does. Great Britain, it
will be objected, has asked for no alliance. Nor has she. Great Britain
does not put herself in the position of suing for a friendship which may
be denied; and is there any doubt that if Great Britain had at any time
asked openly for such an alliance she would have been refused? Would she
not be bluntly refused to-day? Great men on either side--but never, be
it noted, an Englishman except for the purpose of agreeing with an
American who has already spoken--have said many times that a formal
alliance is not desirable: that things are going well enough as they are
and that it is best to wait. Things are never going well enough, so
long as they might go better. And these men who say it speak only with
an eye to the interests of the two countries, not considering the
greater stake of the happiness of the world at large; and even so (I say
it with deference) they know in their own minds that if indeed the thing
should become suddenly feasible, neither they nor any thinking man, with
the good of humanity at heart, would dare to raise a voice against it or
would dream of doing other than rejoice. It is only because it has
seemed impossible that it has been best to do without it; and it is
impossible only because the people of the United States have not yet
realised the responsibilities of the new position which they hold in the
councils of the world, but are still bound by the prejudices of the days
of little things, still slaves--they of all people!--to an old and
outworn formula. They have not yet comprehended that within their arm's
reach there lies an achievement greater than has ever been given to a
nation to accomplish, and that they have but to take one step forward to
enter on a destiny greater than anything foreshadowed even in the
promise of their own wonderful history.
And when those who would be their coadjutors are willing and waiting and
beckoning them on, have they any right to hold back? Is it anything
other than moral cowardice if they do?
* * * * *
I wish that each individual American would give one hour's unprejudiced
study to the British Empire,--would sit down with a map of the world
before him and, summoning to his assistance such knowledge of history as
he has and bearing in mind the conditions of his own country, endeavour
to arrive at some idea of what it is that Englishmen have done in the
world, what are the present circumstances of the Empire, what its aims
and ambitions. I do not think that the ordinarily educated and
intelligent American knows how ignorant he is of the nation which has
played so large a part in the history of his own country and of which he
talks so often and with so little restraint. The ignorance of Englishmen
of America is another matter which will be referred to in its place. For
the present, what is to be desired is that the American should get some
elementary grasp of the character of Great Britain and her dependencies
as a whole.
In the first place it is worth pointing out that the Empire is as much
bigger than the United States as the United States is bigger than the
British Isles. I am not now talking of mere geographical dimensions, but
of the political schemes of the two nations. Americans commonly speak of
theirs as a young country--as the youngest of the Great Powers,--but in
every true sense the British Empire is vastly younger. The United States
has an established form of government which has been the same for a
hundred years and, all good Americans hope, will remain unchanged for
centuries to come. The British Empire is still groping inchoate: it is
all makeshift and endeavour. It is in about that stage of growth in
which the United States found herself when her transcontinental railways
were still unbuilt, when she had not yet digested Texas or California,
and the greater part of the West remained unsettled and unsurveyed.
If the American will look to the north, he will see Canada in
approximately the phase in her material progress which the United
States had reached in, let us say, 1880 to 1885. Australia and New
Zealand are somewhat further behind; South Africa further still. Behind
that again are the various scattered portions of the Over-Sea Dominions
in divers states of political pupilhood. In some there are not even yet
the foundations on which a Constitutional or commercial structure can be
built. And while each unit has to be led or encouraged along the path of
individual development, beyond all is the great vision which every
imperially-thinking Englishman sets before himself--the vision of a
Federation of all the parts--a Federation not unlike that which the
United States has enjoyed for over a hundred years (save that Englishmen
hope that there will always be a monarchy at the centre) but which, as
has been said, is almost incomparably larger in conception than was the
Union of the States and requires correspondingly greater labour in its
accomplishment.
If the American will now consider the conditions of the growth of his
own country, he will recognise that the only thing which made that
growth possible was the fact that the people was undistracted by foreign
complications. The one great need of the nation was Peace. It was to
attain this that the policy of non-entanglement was formulated. Without
it, the people could not have devoted its energies with a single mind to
the gigantic task of its own development.
But the task before the British Empire is more gigantic; the need of
peace more urgent. It is more urgent, not merely in proportion to the
additional magnitude and complexity of the task to be done, but is
thrice multiplied by the conditions of the modern world. The British
Empire must needs achieve its industrial consolidation in the teeth of
a commercial competition a thousand times fiercer than anything which
America knew in her young days. The United States grew to greatness in a
secluded nursery. Great Britain must bring up her children in the
streets and on the high seas, under the eyes and exposed to the
seductions of the peoples of all the world.
The American is a reasoning being. A much larger portion of the American
people is habituated to reason for itself--to think independently--to
form and to abide by its individual judgment--than of any other people
in the world. No political fact is more familiar to the American people
than the immense advantage which it derived, during the period of its
internal development, from its enjoyment of external peace. Will not the
American people, then, reasoning from analogy, believe that, under more
compelling conditions, England also earnestly desires external peace?
I can almost hear the retort leaping to the lips of the American reader
who holds the traditional view of the British Empire. "It is all very
well for you to talk of peace now!" I hear him say. "Now that the world
is pretty well divided up and you have grabbed the greater part of it.
You haven't talked much of peace in the past." And here we are
confronted at once with the fundamental misconception of the British
Empire and the British character which has worked deplorable harm in the
American national sentiment towards England.
First, it is worth remarking that with the exception of the Crimean War
(which even the most prejudiced American will not regard as a war of
aggression or as a thing for which England should be blamed) Great
Britain has not been engaged in hostilities with any European Power
since the days of Napoleon. Nor can it be contended that England's share
in the Napoleonic wars was of England's seeking. Since then, if she has
avoided hostilities it has not been for lack of opportunity. The people
which, with Britain's intricate complexity of interests, amid all the
turmoils and jealousies of Europe, has kept the peace for a century can
scarcely have been seeking war.
And again the American will say: "That's all right; I am not talking of
Europe. You've been fighting all over the world all the time. There has
never been a year when you have not been licking some little tin-pot
king and freezing on to his possessions."
Americans are rather proud--justly proud--of the way in which their
power has spread from within the narrow limits of the original thirteen
States till it has dominated half a continent. It has, indeed, been a
splendid piece of work. But what the American is loth to acknowledge is
that that growth was as truly a colonising movement--a process of
imperial expansion--as has been the growth of the British Empire. Of
late years, American historical writers have been preaching this fact;
but the American people has not grasped it. Moreover there were tin-pot
kings already ruling America. Sioux, Nez Percé, or Cree--Zulu, Ashanti,
or Burmese: the names do not matter. And when the expansive energy of
the American people reached the oceans, it could no more stop than it
could stop at the Mississippi. Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico
were as inevitable as Louisiana and Texas. And the acquisition of the
two last-named was precisely as imperial a process as the acquisition
of the others. It is only the leap over-seas that, quite illogically,
gives the latter, to American eyes, a different seeming. It matters not
whether you vault a boundary pillar on the plain, a river, a mountain
barrier, or seven thousand miles of sea-water. The process is the same.
Nor in any of the cases was the forward movement other than commendable
and inevitable. It was the necessary manifestation of the unrestrainable
centrifugal impulse of the Anglo-Saxon.
The impulse which sent the first English colonists to North America sent
them also to Australia, to India and the uttermost parts of the earth.
The same impulse drove the American colonists westward, northward,
southward, in whatever direction they met no restraining force equal to
their own expansive energy. It drove them to the Pacific, to the Rio
Grande, to the Sault Ste. Marie; and it has driven them over oceans into
the Arctic Circle, to the shores of Asia, down the Caribbean. And as it
drove them it drove also those Englishmen who were left at home and they
too spread on all lines of least resistance. But no American (I have
never met one, though I must have talked on the subject to hundreds)
will agree that the dispersal of the Englishmen left at home was as
legitimate, as necessary, and every whit as peaceful as the dispersal of
those Englishmen who went first and made their new home in America.
With the acquisition of over-sea dominions of their own, many Americans
are coming to comprehend something of the powerlessness of a great
people in the grip of its destiny. They are also beginning to understand
that the ruling and civilising of savage and alien peoples is not
either all comfort or all profit. If Americans were given the option
to-day to take more Philippines, would they take them? Great Britain has
been familiar with _her_ Philippines for half a century and more. Does
America suppose that she also did not learn her lesson? Will not
Americans understand with what utter reluctance she has been compelled
again and again to take more? Some day Americans will come to believe
that England no more desired to annex Burmah than the United States
deliberately planned to take the Philippines; that Englishmen were as
content to leave the Transvaal and the Orange Free State alone as ever
Americans were to be without Hawaii or Puerto Rico. Egypt was forced
upon Great Britain precisely as Cuba is being foisted on America
to-day--and every Englishman hopes that the United States will be able
to do as much for the Cubans as Great Britain has done for the
Egyptians.
Great Britain would always vastly prefer--has always vastly
preferred--to keep a friendly independent state upon her borders rather
than be compelled to take over the burden of administration. The former
involves less labour and more profit; it retains moreover a barrier
between the British boundaries and those of any potentially hostile
Power upon the other side. England has shown this in India itself and in
Afghanistan. She tried to show it in South Africa. She has shown it in
Thibet. More conclusively than anywhere perhaps she has shown it in the
Federated Malay States--of which probably but few Americans know even
the name, but where more, it may be, than anywhere are Englishmen
working out their ambition--
"To make the world a better place
Where'er the English go."
It might happen that, under a weak and incompetent successor to
President Diaz, Mexico would relapse into the conditions of half a
century ago and the situation along the border be rendered intolerable
to Americans. Sooner or later the United States would be compelled to
protest and, protests being unheeded, to interfere. The incompetence of
the Mexican Government continuing, America would be obliged to establish
a protectorate, if not over the whole country, at least over that
portion the orderly behaviour of which was necessary to her own peace.
Thereafter annexation might follow. Now, at no stage of this process
would Englishmen, looking on, accuse the United States of greediness, of
bullying, or of deliberately planning to gratify an earth-hunger. They,
from experience, understand. But when the same thing occurs on the
British frontiers in Asia or South Africa, Americans make no effort to
understand. "England is up to the same old game," they say. "One more
morsel down the lion's throat."
I am well aware of the depth of the prejudice against which I am
arguing. The majority of Americans are so accustomed to consider their
own expansion across the continent, and beyond, as one of the finest
episodes in the march of human progress (as it is) and the growth of the
British Empire as a mere succession of wanton and brutal outrages on
helpless and benighted peoples, that the immediate impulse of the vast
majority of American readers will be to treat a comparison between the
two with ridicule. Minnesota Massacres and the Indian Mutiny--Cetewayo
and Sitting Bull--Aguinaldo and the Mahdi--Egypt and Cuba; the time
will come when Americans will understand. It is a pity that prejudice
should blind them now.
And if the American reader will refer to the map, which presumably lies
open before him, he might consider in what part of the world it is that
England is now bent on a policy of aggression--where it is that
collision with any Power threatens. In Asia? England's course in regard
to Afghanistan and Thibet surely shows that she is content with her
present boundaries, while her alliance with Japan and the
_rapprochement_ with Russia at which she aims should be evidences enough
of her desire for peace! In Africa? Where is it that spheres of
influence are not delimited? That there will be disturbances, ferments,
which will have to be suppressed at one time and another at various
points within the British sphere is likely--as likely as it was that
similar disturbances would occur in the United States so long as any
considerable number of Indians went loose unblanketed,--but what room is
left for anything approaching serious war? With the problem of the
mixture of races and the necessity of building up the structure of a
state, does not England before all things need peace both in the south
and north? In America? In Australia? With whom? That perils may arise at
almost any point--in mid-ocean even, far away from any land--of course
we recognise; but Americans can hardly fail to see, with the map before
them, that England cannot seek them, but must earnestly desire to avoid
them as she has avoided them with any European Power for this last
century. To borrow a happy phrase, Great Britain is in truth a
"Saturated Power." She has been compelled to shoulder burdens which she
would feign have avoided, to assume obligations which were not of her
creating and which she fulfils with reluctance. And she can assume no
more, or, if she must, will do it only with the utmost unwillingness.
What she needs is peace.
And now one must go as delicately as is compatible with making one's
meaning clear.
* * * * *
There is one Power in Europe whose ambitions are a menace to the peace
of the world--one only. I do not think that Americans as a rule
understand this, but it is true and there can be no harm in saying so,
for neither in her press nor in the mouths of her statesmen are those
ambitions denied by that Power herself. Indeed they are insisted on to
the taxpayer as the reason why she needs so powerful an army and a
fleet. It is not suggested that Germany's ambitions are other than
legitimate and inevitable: it would be difficult for either Englishman
or American to say that with grace. I am not arguing against Germany; I
am arguing for Peace.
Germany says frankly enough that she is cooped up within boundaries
which are intolerable--that she is an "imprisoned Power." She argues,
still with perfect frankness, that it was a mere accident that, to her
misfortune, she came into being as a great Power too late to be able to
get her proper share of the earth's surface, wherein her people might
expand and put forth their surplus energy. The time when there was
earth's surface to choose was already gone. But that fact has in no way
lessened the need of expansion or destroyed the energy. She must burst
her prison walls, she says. It would have been better could she have
flowed out quietly into unoccupied land--as the United States has done
and as Great Britain has done--but that being impossible, she must flow
where she can. And ringed around her are other Powers, great or small,
which bar her way. Therefore she needs the army and the fleet. It is
logical and it is candid.
It is evident that the Franco-Russian Alliance makes the bursting of her
banks difficult in what might seem to be the most natural direction. The
Anglo-French _entente_ and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance--perhaps even
more Germany's own partnership in the Triple Alliance with Italy and
Austria--also constitute obstacles which at least necessitate something
more of an army and more of a fleet than might otherwise have been
sufficient for her purpose. But those barriers are not in the long run
going to avert the fulfilment of--or at least the endeavour to
fulfil--that purpose.
There is only one instrumentality, humanly speaking,--one Power,--which
can ultimately prevent Germany from using that army and that fleet for
the ends for which they are being created; and that instrumentality
happens to be the United States. It is difficult to see how Germany can
make any break for freedom without coming in conflict not only with one
of the Great Powers but with a combination of two or more. It is
improbable that she will attempt the enterprise without at least the
benevolent neutrality of the United States. Assurances of positive
sympathy would probably go a long way towards encouraging her to the
hazard. But if the United States should range herself definitely on the
side of peace the venture would become preposterous.
I am not arguing against Germany; I am arguing for Peace. Least of all
am I arguing for an American alliance for England in the event of
Germany's dash for liberty taking an untoward direction. England needs
no help. What does need help is Peace--the Peace of Europe--the Peace of
the World.
There is no talk now of stifling Germany's ambitions: of standing in the
way of her legitimate aspirations. It may be that under other
conditions, under a different form of government, or even under another
individual ruler, those aspirations and ambitions would not appear to
the German people so vital as they do now. They certainly do not appear
so to an outsider; and the German people is far from being of one mind
on the subject. But assuming the majority of Germans to know their own
business best, and granting it to be essential that the people should
have some larger sphere, under their own flag, in which to attain to
their proper growth, if they were compelled to drop war as the means for
obtaining that larger sphere out of their calculations, it would not
mean that those ambitions and aspirations would have to go unsatisfied.
Violence is not the only means of obtaining what one wants.
There was a time when, as between individuals, if one man desired a
thing which his neighbour possessed he went with a club and took it; but
civilised society has abandoned physical force as a medium for the
exchange of commodities and has substituted barter. If physical force
were once discountenanced among nations, any nation which needed a thing
badly enough could always get it. Everybody who had facilities for sale
would be glad to sell, if the price was sufficiently high. It is not
unlikely that, in an age of compulsory peace, Germany would be able to
acquire all that she desires at a less price than the expenditure of
blood and treasure which would be necessary in a war. It would almost
certainly cost her less than the price of war added to the capitalised
annual burden of the up-keep of her army and navy.[32:1]
But the real cost of war does not fall upon the individual nation. And
for the last time let me say that I am not arguing against Germany: I am
arguing for Peace. It has been necessary to discuss Germany's position
because she is at the moment the only factor in the situation which
makes for war. All other Powers are satisfied, or could be satisfied,
with their present boundaries. Outside of the German Empire, the whole
civilised world earnestly desires peace. It may be that Great Britain,
acting in concert with France, Russia, and Japan, will in the near
future be able to take a longer step towards securing that peace for the
world than seems at present credible. But England's natural coadjutor is
the United States. The United States has but to take one step and the
thing is done. It is a _rôle_ which ought to appeal to the American
people. It is certainly one for the assumption of which all posterity
would bless the name of America.
* * * * *
Critics will, of course, ridicule this offhand dismissing in a few
sentences of the largest of world problems. Each one of several
propositions which I have advanced breaks rudely ground where angels
might fear to tread; each one ought to be put forth cautiously with much
preamble and historical introduction, to be circuitously argued through
several hundred pages; but that cannot be done here because those
propositions are not the main topic of this book. At the same time they
must be stated, however baldly, because they represent the basis on
which my plea for any immediate Anglo-American co-operation in the cause
of peace must rest.
I am also fully conscious of the hostility which almost everything that
I say will provoke from one or another section of the American people,
but I am not addressing the irreconcilables of any foreign element of
the population of the United States. I am talking to the reasoning,
intelligent mass of the two peoples as a whole. The subject of an
Anglo-American alliance is one of which it is the fashion to hush up any
attempt at the discussion in public. It must be spoken of in whispers.
It is better--so the argument runs--to let American good-will to England
grow of itself; an effort to hasten it will but hurt American
susceptibilities.
In the first place this idea rests largely on an exaggerated estimate of
the power of the Irish politician, a power which happily is coming every
day to be more nearly a thing of the past,--"tending," as Carlyle says,
"visibly not to be." In the second place, I believe that I understand
American susceptibilities; and they will not be hurt by any one who
shows that he does understand. What the American resents bitterly is the
arrogant and superficial criticism of the foreigner who sums up the
characteristics and destiny of the nation after a few weeks of
observation. Moreover, Americans do not as a rule like whispering or the
attempt to come at things by by-paths--in which they much resemble the
English. When they want a thing they commonly ask for it--distinctly.
When they think a thing ought to be done they prefer to say
so--unequivocally. They have not much love for the circuitousnesses of
diplomacy; and if England desires American co-operation in what is a
great and noble cause she had much better ask for it--bluntly.
Personally I wish that forty million Englishmen would stand up and shout
the request all at once.
FOOTNOTES:
[8:1] Since this was written, the Anglo-Russian agreement has been
arrived at.
[10:1] Justin H. Smith, _Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony_,
Putnams, 1907.
[15:1] _The Bellman_, Minneapolis, Dec. 22, 1906.
[32:1] A point which there is no space to dwell upon here but which I
would commend to the more leisurely consideration of readers--especially
American readers--is that under a _régime_ of physical force there can
in fact be hardly any transfer of commodities at all. What a man has, he
holds, whether his need of it be greater than another's, or whether he
needs it not at all. There is no inducement to part with it and pride
compels him to hold; so that only the strongest can come by the
possession of anything that he desires. If the dollar were substituted
for the club in the dealings of nations, the transfer of commodities
would forthwith become simplified, and such incidents as the purchase of
Alaska and the cession of Heligoland, instead of standing as isolated
examples of international accommodation, would become customary. To take
an example which will bring the matter home at once, many imperialist
Englishmen on visiting the West Indies have become convinced that
certain of England's possessions in those regions could with advantage
to all parties be transferred to the United States. But so long as the
military idea reigns--so long as an island must be regarded primarily as
an outpost, a possible naval base, a strategic point--so long will the
obstacles to such a transfer remain. As soon as war was put outside the
range of possibilities, commercial principles would begin to operate and
those territories, however much or little they might be worth, would be
acquired by the United States. The same thing would happen in all parts
of the world. Possessions, instead of being held by those who could hold
them, would tend to pass to those who needed them or to whom they
logically belonged by geographical relation, and neither Germany's
legitimate aspirations nor those of any other country would need to go
unsatisfied.
CHAPTER II
THE DIFFERENCE IN POINT OF VIEW
The Anglo-Saxon Family Likeness--How Frenchmen and Germans
View it--Englishmen, Americans, and "Foreigners"--An Echo of
the War of 1812--An Anglo-American Conflict Unthinkable--
American Feeling for England--The Venezuelan Incident--The
Pilgrims and Some Secret History--Why Americans still Hate
England--Great Britain's Nearness to the United States
Geographically--Commercially--Historically--England's Foreign
Ill-wishers in America.
The one thing chiefly needed to make both Englishmen and Americans
desire an alliance is that they should come to know each other better.
They would then be astonished to find not only how much they liked each
other, but how closely each was already in sympathy with the other's
ways of life and thought and how inconsiderable were the differences
between them. Some one (I thought it was Mr. Freeman, but I cannot find
the passage in his writings) has said that it would be a good way of
judging an Englishman's knowledge of the world to notice whether, on
first visiting America, he was most struck by the differences between
the two peoples or by their resemblances. When an intelligent American
has travelled for any time on the Continent of Europe, in contact with
peoples who are truly "foreign" to him, he feels on arriving in London
almost as if he were at home again. The more an Englishman moves among
other peoples, the more he is impressed, on reaching the United States,
with his kinship to those among whom he finds himself. Nor is it in
either case wholly, or even chiefly, a matter of a common speech.
"Jonathan," says Max O'Rell, "is but John Bull expanded--John Bull with
plenty of elbow room." And the same thing is said again and again in
different phraseology by various Continental writers. It is said most
impressively by those who do not put it into words at all, as by
Professor Münsterberg[36:1] who is apparently not familiar with England,
but shows no lack of willingness to dislike her. There is therefore no
intentional comparison between the two peoples, but the writer's point
of view has absorbing interest to an Englishman who knows both
countries. More than once he remarks with admiration or astonishment on
traits of the American character or institutions in the United States
which the Englishman would necessarily take for granted, because they
are precisely the same as those to which he has been accustomed at home.
Writing for a German public, the Professor draws morals from American
life which delight an English reader by their naïve and elementary
superfluousness. In all unconsciousness, Professor Münsterberg has
written a most valuable essay on the essential kinship of the British
and American peoples as contrasted with his own.
Two brothers will commonly be aware only of the differences between
them--the unlikeness of their features, the dissimilarities in their
tastes or capabilities,--yet the world at large may have difficulty in
distinguishing them apart. While they are conscious only of their
individual differences, to the neighbours all else disappears in the
family resemblance. So it is that Max O'Rell sees how like the American
is to the Englishman more clearly than Mark Twain: Professor Münsterberg
has involuntarily traced the features of the one in the lineaments of
the other with a surer hand than Matthew Arnold or Mr. Bryce.
When, in his remarkable book, M. Demolins uses the term Anglo-Saxon, he
speaks indifferently at one time of Englishmen and at another of
Americans. The peoples are to him one and indistinguishable. Their
greatness is a common greatness based on qualities which are the
inheritance of their Anglo-Saxon origin. Chief among these qualities,
the foundation-stone of their greatness, is the devotion to what we will
follow him in calling the "Particularistic" form of society,--a society,
that is, in which the individual predominates over the community, and
not the community over the individual; a society which aims at
"establishing each child in its full independence." This is, a Frenchman
sees, eminently characteristic of the English and the Americans, in
contrast with other peoples, with those which hold a republican form of
government no less than those which live under an autocracy. And it is
peculiarly Saxon in its origin,--not derived from the Celt or Norman or
Dane. These latter belonged (as do the peoples sprung from, or allied
to, them to-day) to that class of people which places the community
above the individual, which looks instinctively to the State or the
government for initiative. The Saxons alone (a people of earnest
individual workers, agriculturalists and craftsmen) relied always on the
initiative and impulse of the individual--what M. Demolins calls "the
law of intense personal labour"--and it was by virtue of this quality
that they eventually won social supremacy over the other races in
Britain. It is by virtue of the same quality that the Americans have
been enabled to subdue their continent and build up the fabric of the
United States. It is this quality, says the French writer almost
brutally, which makes the German and Latin races to-day stand to
_L'Anglais_ in about the same relation as the Oriental and the Redskin
stand to the European. And when M. Demolins speaks of _L'Anglais_, he
means the American as much as the "Englishman of Britain." It is a
convenient term and, so essentially one are they in his eyes, there is
no need to distinguish between the peoples. Mr. William Archer's remark
is worth quoting, that "It is amazing how unessential has been the
change produced in the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament [in America] by
the influences of climate or the admixtures of foreign blood."[38:1]
When individual Englishmen and Americans are thrown together in strange
parts of the world, they seldom fail to foregather as members of one
race. There may be four traders living isolated in some remote port; but
though the Russian may speak English with less "accent" than the
American and though the German may have lived for some years in New
York, it is not to the society of the German or the Russian that the
American or the Englishman instinctively turns for companionship. The
two former have but the common terms of speech; the Englishman and the
American use also common terms of thought and feeling.
The people who know this best are the officers and men of the British
and American navies, who are accustomed to find themselves thrown with
the sailors of all nations in all sorts of waters; and wherever they are
thus thrown together, the men who sail under the Stars and Stripes and
those who fly the Union Jack are friends. I have talked with a good many
British sailors (not officers) and it is good to hear the tone of
respect in which they speak of the American navy, as compared with
certain others.
The opportunities for similar companionship among the men of the armies
of the two nations are fewer, but when the allied forces entered China
the comradeship which arose between the American and British troops, to
the exclusion of all others, is notorious. Every night after mess,
British officers sought the American lines and _vice versa_. The
Americans have the credit of having invented that rigorous development
of martial law, by which, as soon as British officers came within their
lines, sentries were posted with orders not to let them pass out again
unless accompanied by an American officer. Thus the guests could not
escape from hospitality till such hour as their hosts pleased.
Some ten years ago military representatives of various nations were
present by invitation at certain manoeuvres of the Indian army, and
one night, when an official entertainment was impending, the United
States officers were guests at the mess of a British regiment. Dinner
being over, the colonel pushed his chair back and, turning to the
American on his right, said in all innocence:
"Well, come along! It's time to go and help to receive these d----d
foreigners."
An incident less obviously _à propos_, but which seems to me to strike
very truly the common chord of kinship of character between the races,
was told me by a well-known American painter of naval and military
subjects. He was the guest of the Forty-fourth (Essex) at, I think,
Gibraltar, when in the course of dinner the British officer on his right
broke a silence with the casual remark:
"I wonder whether we shall ever have another smack at you fellows."
The American was not unnaturally surprised.
"Why? Do you want it?" he asked.
"No; we should hate to fight you of course, but then, you know, the
Forty-fourth was at New Orleans."
It appealed to the American--not merely the pride in the regiment that
still smarted under the blow of ninety years ago, but still more the
feeling towards himself, as an American, that prompted the Englishman to
speak in terms which he knew that he would never have dreamed of using
under similar circumstances to the representative of any "foreign"
nation. The Englishman had no fear that the American would
misunderstand. It appealed to the latter so much that after his return
to the United States, being called upon to speak at some entertainment
or function at West Point, when, besides the cadets, there were many
officers of the United States Army in the room, he told the story.
Instantly, as he finished, a simultaneous cry from several places in the
hall called for "Three cheers for the Forty-fourth!" There was no
Englishman in the company, but, as he told me the story, never had he
heard so instantaneous, so crashing a response to any call, as then when
the whole room leaped to its feet and cheered the old enemies who had
not forgotten.[41:1]
It is not my wish here to discuss even the possibility of war between
Great Britain and the United States. The thing is too horrible to be
considered as even the remotest of contingencies--the "Unpardonable
War," indeed, as Mr. James Barnes has called it. None the less, there is
always greater danger of such a war than any Englishman imagines or than
many Americans would like to confess. However true it may be that it
takes two to make a quarrel, it is none the less true that if one party
be bent upon quarrelling it is always possible for him to go to lengths
of irritation and insult which must ultimately provoke the most
peaceful and reluctant of antagonists. However pacific and reluctant to
fight Great Britain might be at the outset, she is not conspicuously
lacking in national pride or in sensitiveness to encroachments on the
national honour.
Mr. Freeman makes the shrewd remark that "the American feels a greater
distinction between himself and the Englishman of Britain than the
Englishman of Britain feels between himself and the American," which
remains entirely true to-day, in spite of the seemingly paradoxical fact
that the American knows more of English history and English politics
than the Englishman knows of the politics and history of the United
States. This by no means implies that the American knows more of the
English character than the Englishman knows of his. On the contrary, the
Americans have seen infinitely less of the world than Englishmen, and
however many of the bare facts of English history and English politics
they may know, they are strangely ignorant of the atmosphere to which
those facts belong, and have never learned how much more foreign to them
other foreign nations are. The individual American will take the
individual Englishman into his friendship--will even accept him as a
sort of a relative--but as a political entity Great Britain is almost as
much a foreign nation as any.
The casual Englishman visiting the United States for but a short time
will probably not discover this fact. He only knows that he is cordially
received himself--even more cordially, he feels, than he deserves--and
most probably those persons, especially the ladies, whom he meets will
assure him that they are "devoted" to England. He may not have time to
discover that that devotion is not universal. Only after a while, in all
probability, will the fact as stated by Mr. Freeman dawn upon him, and
he will somehow be aware that with all the charming hospitality that he
receives he is in some way treated as more of a foreigner than he is
conscious of being. It is necessary that he should have some extended
residence in the country--unless his visit happens to coincide with such
an incident as the Venezuelan controversy or the outbreak of the Boer
War--before things group themselves in at all their right perspective
before his eyes. The intensity of the feeling displayed at the time of
the Venezuelan incident came as a shock to Englishmen at home; but those
who had lived for any length of time in America (west of New York) were
not surprised. It is probable that the greater number of the American
people at that time wished for war, and believed that it was nothing but
cowardice on the part of Great Britain--her constitutional dislike of
fighting anybody of her own size, as a number of the papers pleasantly
phrased it--that prevented their wish from being gratified.
The concluding paragraphs of ex-President Cleveland's treatise on this
subject are illuminating. In 1895, as I have said, a majority of the
American people unquestionably wished to fight; but that numerical
majority included perhaps a minority of the native-born Americans, a
small minority certainly of the richer or more well-to-do among them,
and an almost infinitesimal proportion of the best educated of the
native-born. This is what Mr. Cleveland says:
"Those among us who most loudly reprehended and bewailed our vigorous
assertion of the Monroe Doctrine were the timid ones who feared personal
financial loss, or those engaged in speculation and stock-gambling, in
buying much beyond their ability to pay, and generally in living by
their wits [_sic_]. The patriotism of such people traverses exclusively
the pocket nerve. . . . But these things are as nothing when weighed
against the sublime patriotism and devotion to their nation's honour
exhibited by the great mass of our countrymen--the plain people of the
land. . . . Not for a moment did their Government know the lack of their
strong and stalwart support. . . . It [the incident] has given us a
better place in the respect and consideration of the people of all
nations, and especially of Great Britain; it has again confirmed our
confidence in the overwhelming prevalence among our citizens of
disinterested devotion to our nation's honour; and last, but by no means
least, it has taught us where to look in the ranks of our countrymen for
the best patriotism."[44:1]
Mr. Cleveland, now that he is no longer in active politics, holds, as he
deserves, a secure place in the affections of the American people. But
at the time when this treatise was published, he was a not impossible
nominee of the Democratic party for another term as President; and the
"plain people of the land" have a surprising number of votes. Mr.
Cleveland knows his own people and knows that with a large portion of
them war with England would in 1895 have been popular. It is significant
also that he still thought it worth while to insist upon this fact at
the time when this treatise was given to the world in a volume; and
that was as late as 1904, very shortly before the Democratic party
selected its nominee for the Presidential contest of that year. It is
possible that if Mr. Cleveland had been that nominee instead of Justice
Parker, one of the leading features of his campaign would have been a
vigorous insistence on the Monroe Doctrine, as interpreted by himself,
with especial reference to Great Britain.
Englishmen are inclined (so far as they think about the matter at all)
to flatter themselves that the ill-feeling which blazed so suddenly into
flame twelve years ago was more or less effectually quenched by Great
Britain's assistance to the United States at the time of the Spanish
War. Those Englishmen who watched the course of opinion in America at
the time of the Boer War must have had some misgivings. It is evident
that so good a judge as Mr. Cleveland believed, as late as 1904, that
hostility to Great Britain was still a policy which would commend itself
to the "plain people of the land."
It is true that the war fever in 1895 was stronger in the West than in
the Eastern States. A traveller crossing the United States at that time
would have found the idea of hostilities with England being treated as
something of a joke in cultivated circles in New York, but among the
people in general to the West of Buffalo and Pittsburg it was terrible
earnest. A curious point, moreover, which I think I have never seen
stated in England, is that many good men in the Democratic Party at that
time stood by President Cleveland, though sincerely friendly to Great
Britain; the truth being that they did not believe that war with
England was seriously to be apprehended, while another Power was at the
moment seeking to obtain a foothold in South America, for whose benefit
a "vigorous assertion of the Monroe Doctrine" was much to be desired.
The thunders of the famous message indeed were, in the minds of many
excellent Americans in the East, directed not against Great Britain but
against Germany.
None the less it should be noted that it was in the hope of influencing
the voters in a local election in New York that Mr. Hearst, as recently
as in November, 1907, thought it worth while to appeal to the
"traditional hatred" of Great Britain. However little else Mr. Hearst
may have to commend him, he cannot be said to be out of touch with the
sentiments of the more ignorant masses of the people of New York. That
he failed did not signify that he was mistaken as to the extent or
intensity of the prejudice to which he appealed, but only that the cry
was raised too late and too obviously as an electioneering trick in a
campaign which was already lost.
In spite of what happened during the Spanish War, in spite of every
effort that England has made to convince America of her friendliness, in
spite of the improvement which has taken place in the feelings of (what,
without offence, I venture to call) the upper classes in America towards
Great Britain, the fact still remains that, with a large portion of the
people, war with England would be popular.
That is, perhaps, to state the case somewhat brutally. Let me rather say
that, if any pretext should arise, the minds of the masses of the
American people could more easily be inflamed to the point of desiring
war with England than they could to the point of desiring war with any
other nation. It is bitter to have to say it--horrible to think it. I
know also that many Americans will not agree with me; but I do not think
that among them will be many of those whose business it is, either as
politicians or as journalists, to be in touch with the sentiments of the
people.
Let me not be suspected of failing to attach sufficient importance to
those public expressions of international amity which we hear so
frequently, couched in such charming phraseology, at the dinners given
by the Pilgrims, either in London or New York, and on similar occasions.
The Pilgrims are doing excellent work, as also are other similar
societies in less conspicuous ways. The fact has, I believe, never been
published, but can be told now without indiscretion, that a movement was
on foot some twelve years ago for the organisation of an Anglo-American
League, on a scale much more ambitious than that of the Pilgrims or any
other of the existing societies. Certain members of the British Ministry
of the time had been approached and had welcomed the movement with
cordiality, and the active support of a number of men of corresponding
public repute in various parts of the United States had been similarly
enlisted. It was expected (though I think the official request had not
been made) that the Prince of Wales (now his Majesty King Edward VII.)
would be the President of the English branch of the League, while
ex-President Harrison was to have acted in a similar capacity in
America. By a grim pleasantry of Fate, the letter from England conveying
final and official information of the approval of the aforesaid
Ministers, and arranging for the publication of the first formal
overture from the United States (for the movement was to be made to
appear to emanate therefrom) arrived in America on the very day of the
appearance--and readers will remember how totally unexpected the
appearance was--of Mr. Cleveland's Venezuelan message. What would have
been the effect upon the crisis which then ensued if the organisation of
the League had been but a few weeks further advanced, is an interesting
subject for speculation. That, after a year or two of preparation, the
movement should have been beaten by so totally unforeseen a complication
at, as it were, the very winning post, was a little absurd. Thereafter,
the right moment for proceeding with the organisation on the same lines
never again presented itself.
Englishmen must not make the mistake of attaching the same value to the
nice things which are said by prominent Americans on public or
semi-public occasions as they attach to similar utterances by
Englishmen. It is not, of course, intended to imply that the American
speakers are not individually sincere; but no American can act as the
spokesman for his people in such a matter with the same authority as can
be assumed by a properly qualified Englishman. One of the chief
manifestations of the characteristic national lack of the sentiment of
reverence is the disregard which the American masses entertain for the
opinions of their "leading" men, whether in public life or not. The
English people is accustomed, within certain limits, to repose
confidence in its leaders and to suffer them in truth to lead; so that a
small handful of men can within limits speak for the English people.
They can voice the public sentiments, or, when they speak, the people
will modify its sentiments to accord with their utterances. There is no
man or set of men who can similarly speak for the American people; and
no one is better aware of that fact than the American, however honoured
by his countrymen, when he gives expression in London to the cordiality
of his own feelings for Great Britain and expresses guardedly his
conviction that a recurrence of trouble between the peoples will never
again be possible. For one thing, public opinion is not centralised in
America as it is in England. If not _tot homines_, at least _tot
civitates_; and each State, each class and community, instinctively
objects to any one presuming to speak for it (a prejudice based
presumably on political tradition) except its own locally elected
representative, and even he must be specifically instructed _ad hoc_.
Only the good-humoured common-sense of British diplomacy prevented war
at the time of the Venezuelan incident; and it may be that the same
influence would be strong enough to prevent it again. But it is
desirable that Englishmen should understand that just as they were
astounded at the bitterness against them which manifested itself then,
so they might be no less astounded again. It is, of course, difficult
for Englishmen to believe. It must necessarily be hard to believe that
one is hated by a person whom one likes. It happens to be just as
difficult for the mass of Americans (again I should like to say the
lower mass) to believe that Englishmen as a whole really like them. In
1895, the American masses believed that England's attitude was the
result of cowardice, pure and simple. Knowing their own feeling towards
Great Britain, they neither could nor would believe that she was then
influenced by a sincere and almost brotherly good-will--that, without
one shadow of fear, Englishmen refused to consider war with the United
States as possible because it had never occurred to them that the United
States was other than a friendly nation--barely by one degree of kinship
farther removed than one of Great Britain's larger colonies.
And this is the first great obstacle that stands in the way of a proper
understanding between the peoples--not merely the fact that the American
nation is so far from having any affection for Great Britain, but the
fact that the two peoples regard each other so differently that neither
understands, or is other than reluctant to believe in, the attitude of
the other. For the benefit of the English reader, rather than the
American, it may be well to explain this at some length.
* * * * *
The essential fact is that America, New York or Washington, has been in
the past, and still is in only a slightly less degree, much farther from
London than London is from New York or Washington. This is true
historically and commercially--and geographically, in everything except
the mere matter of miles. The American for generations looked at the
world through London, whereas when the Englishman turned his vision to
New York almost the whole world intervened.
Geographically, the nearest soil to the United States is British soil.
Along the whole northern border of the country lies the Dominion of
Canada, without, for a distance of some two thousand miles, any visible
line of demarcation, so that the American may walk upon the prairie and
not know at what moment his foot passes from his own soil to the soil of
Great Britain. One of the chief lines of railway from New York to
Chicago passes for half its length over Canadian ground; the effect
being precisely as if the Englishman to go from London to Birmingham
were to run for half the distance over a corner of France. A large
proportion of the produce of the wheat-fields of the North-western
States, of Minnesota and the two Dakotas, finds its way to New York over
the Canadian Pacific Railway and from New York is shipped, probably in
British bottoms, to Liverpool. When the American sails outward from New
York or other eastern port, if he goes north he arrives only at
Newfoundland or Nova Scotia; if he puts out to southward, the first land
that he finds is the Bermudas. If he makes for Europe, it is generally
at Liverpool or Southampton that he disembarks. On his very threshold in
all directions, lies land over which floats the Union Jack and the same
flag flies over half the vessels in the harbours of his own coasts.
It is difficult for the Englishman to understand how near Great Britain
has always been to the citizen of the United States, for to the
Englishman himself the United States is a distant region, which he does
not visit unless of set purpose he makes up his mind to go there. He
must undertake a special journey, and a long one, lying apart from his
ordinary routes of travel. The American cannot, save with difficulty and
by circuitous routes, escape from striking British soil whenever he
leaves his home. It confronts him on all sides and bars his way to all
the world. Is it to be wondered at that he thinks of Englishmen
otherwise than as Englishmen think of him?
Yet this mere matter of geographical proximity is trivial compared to
the nearness of Great Britain in other ways.
Commercially--and it must be remembered how large a part matters of
commerce play in the life and thoughts of the people of the United
States--until recently America traded with the world almost entirely
through Great Britain. It is not the produce of the Western wheat-fields
only that is carried abroad in British bottoms, but the great bulk of
the commerce of the United States must even now find its way to the
outer world in ships which carry the Union Jack, and in doing so must
pay the toll of its freight charges to Great Britain. If a New York
manufacturer sells goods to South America itself, the chances are that
those goods will be shipped to Liverpool and reshipped to their
destination--each time in British vessels--and the payment therefor will
be made by exchange on London, whereby the British banker profits only
in less degree than the British ship-owner. In financial matters, New
York has had contact with the outer world practically only through
London. Until recently, no great corporate enterprise could be floated
in America without the assistance of English capital, so that for years
the "British Bondholder," who, by the interest which he drew (or often
did not draw) upon his bonds, was supposed to be sucking the life-blood
out of the American people, has been, until the trusts arose, the
favourite bogey with which the American demagogue has played upon the
feelings of his audiences. Now, happily, with more wealth at home,
animosity has been diverted to the native trusts.
It is true that of late years the United States has been striking out to
win a world-commerce of her own; that by way of the Pacific she is
building up a trade free, in part at least, from British domination;
that she is making earnest efforts to develop her mercantile marine, so
that her own commerce may in some fair measure be carried under her own
flag; that New York is fast becoming a financial centre powerful enough
to be able to disregard the dictation--and promising ere long to be a
rival--of London; that during the last decade, America has been
relieving England of vast quantities of her bonds and shares, heretofore
held in London, and that the wealth of her people has increased so
rapidly that she can find within herself the capital for her industries
and (except in times like the recent panic) need no longer go abroad to
beg. It is also true that of recent years England has become not a
little uneasy at the growing volume of American trade, even within the
borders of the British Isles themselves; but this newly developed
uneasiness in British minds, however well grounded, can bear no
comparison to the feeling of antagonism towards England--an antagonism
compounded of mingled respect and resentment--which Americans of the
older generation have had borne in upon them from youth up. To
Englishmen, the growing commercial power of the United States is a new
phenomenon, not yet altogether recognised and only half-understood; for
they have been for so long accustomed to consider themselves the rulers
of the sea-borne trade of the world that it is with difficulty that they
comprehend that their supremacy can be seriously threatened. To the
American, on the other hand, British commercial supremacy has, at least
since 1862, been an incontrovertible and disheartening fact. The huge
bulk of British commerce and British wealth has loomed so large as to
shut out his view of all the world; it has hemmed him in on all sides,
obstructed him, towered over him. And all the while, as he grew richer,
he has seen that Great Britain only profited the more, by interest on
his bonds, by her freight charges, by her profit on exchange. How is it
possible that under such conditions the American can think about or feel
towards England as the Englishman has thought about and felt towards
him?
Yet even now not one half has been told. We have seen that the
geographical proximity of Great Britain and the overshadowing bulk of
British commerce could not fail--neither separately could fail--to
create in American minds an attitude towards England different from the
natural attitude of Englishmen towards the United States; but both these
influences together, powerful though each may be, are almost unimportant
compared to the factor which most of all colours, and must colour, the
American's view of Great Britain,--and that is the influence of the
history of his own country.
The history of the United States as an independent nation goes back no
more than one hundred and thirty years, a space to be spanned by two
human lives; so that events of even her very earliest years are still
recent history and the sentiments evoked by those events have not yet
had time to die. In the days of the childhood of fathers of men still
living (the thing is possible, so recent is it) the nation was born out
of the throes of a desperate struggle with Great Britain--a struggle
which left the name "British" a word of loathing and contempt to
American ears. American history proper begins with hatred of England:
nor has there been anything in the course of that history, until the
present decade, calculated to tend to modify that hatred in any material
degree.
During the nineteenth century, the United States, except for the war
with Spain at its close, had little contact with foreign Powers. She
lived isolated, concentrating all her energies on the developing of her
own resources and the work of civilising a continent. Foreign
complications scarcely came within the range of her vision. The Mexican
War was hardly a foreign war. The only war with another nation in the
whole course of the century was that with Great Britain in 1812.
Reference has already been made to the English ignorance of the War of
1812; but to the American it was the chief event in the foreign politics
of his country during the first century and a quarter of its existence,
and the Englishman's ignorance thereof moves him either to irritation or
to amusement according to his temperament. In the American Civil War,
British sympathy with the South was unhappily exaggerated in American
eyes by the _Alabama_ incident. The North speedily forgave the South;
but it has not yet entirely forgiven Great Britain.
The other chief events of American history have nearly all, directly or
indirectly, tended to keep Great Britain before the minds of the people
as the one foreign Power with whom armed conflict was an ever-present
possibility. The cession of her North American territory on the part of
France only served to accentuate England's position as the sole rival of
the United States upon the continent. Alaska was purchased from Russia;
but Russia has long ago been almost forgotten in the transaction while
it was with Great Britain that the troublesome question of the Alaskan
boundary arose. And through all the years there have been recurring at
intervals, not too far apart, various minor causes of friction between
the two peoples,--in the Newfoundland fisheries question on the east and
the seal fisheries on the west, with innumerable difficulties arising
out of the common frontier line on the north or out of British relations
(as in the case of Venezuela) with South American peoples.
If an Englishman were asked what had been the chief events in the
external affairs of England during the nineteenth century he would say:
the Napoleonic wars, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the China,
Ashanti, Afghan, Zulu, Soudan, Burmese, and Boer wars, the occupation of
Egypt, the general expansion of the Empire in Africa--and what not else
besides. He would not mention the United States. To the American the
history of his country has chiefly to do with Great Britain.
Just as geographically British territory surrounds and abuts on the
United States on almost every side; just as commercially Great Britain
has always hemmed in, dominated, and overshadowed the United States, so,
historically, Great Britain has been the one and constant enemy, actual
or potential, and her power a continual menace. How is it possible that
the American should think of England as the Englishman thinks of the
United States?
There have, moreover, been constantly at work in America forces the
chief object of which has been to keep alive hostility to Great Britain.
Of native Americans who trace their family back to colonial days, there
are still some among the older generation in whom the old hatred of the
Revolutionary War yet burns so strongly that they would not, when at
work on the old family farm in, let us say, Vermont, be very seriously
surprised on some fine morning to see a party of red-coated Hessians
come round the angle of the hill. There are those living whose chief
pastime as boys was to fight imaginary battles with the loathed British
in and out among the old farm-buildings--buildings which yet bear upon
them, perhaps, the marks of real British bullets fired in the real
war.[57:1] And those boys, moving West as they came to manhood, carried
the same spirit, the same inherited dislike of the name "British," into
the cities of the Mississippi Valley, across the prairies and over the
mountains to the Pacific slope. But it is not the real American--except
one here and there on the old New England homestead--who talks much of
his anti-British feeling. It is the imported American who has refused to
allow the old hostility to die but has kept pouring contumely on the
British name and insisted on the incorporation of an "anti-British"
plank in his party platform to catch the votes of the citizens of his
own nationality at each succeeding election.
Englishmen are generally aware of the importance in American politics of
the Irish vote. It is probable, indeed, that, particularly as far as the
conditions of the last few years are concerned, the importance of that
vote has been magnified to the English mind. In certain localities, and
more particularly in a few of the larger cities, it is still, of course,
an important factor by its mere numbers; but even in the cities in which
the Irish vote is still most in evidence at elections, the influx during
the past decade from all parts of Europe of immigrants who in the course
of the five-years term become voters has, of necessity, lessened its
relative importance.
In New York City, for instance, through which pass annually some
nineteen twentieths of all the immigrants coming into the country, the
foreign elements other than Irish--German, Italian (mainly from the less
educated portions of the Peninsula), Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Hebrew,
Roumanian, etc.,--now far outnumber the Irish. In New York, indeed, the
Germans are alone more numerous; but the Irish have always shown a
larger interest in, and a greater capacity for, political action, so
that they still retain an influence out of all proportion to their
voting number. On the other hand the Irish, or their leaders, have
maintained so corrupt a standard of political action (so that a large
proportion of the evils from which the affairs of certain of the larger
American cities suffer to-day may be justly charged to their methods and
influence) that it is uncertain whether their abuse of Great Britain
does not, in the minds of certain, and those not the worst, classes of
the people react rather to create good-will towards England than to
increase hostility.
The power of the Irish vote as an anti-British force, then, is
undoubtedly overrated in England; but it must be borne in mind that some
of the other foreign elements in the population which on many questions
may act as a counterpoise to the Irish are not themselves conspicuously
friendly to England. If we hear too much of the Irish in America, we
hear perhaps too little of some of the other peoples. And the point
which I would impress on the English reader is that he cannot expect the
American to feel towards England as he himself feels towards the United
States. The American people came in the first instance justly by its
hatred of the name "British," and there have not since been at work any
forces sufficiently powerful to obliterate that hatred, while there have
been some operating to keep it alive.
FOOTNOTES:
[36:1] _The Americans_, by Hugo Münsterberg, 1905.
[38:1] _America To-day_, by William Archer (1900). Mr. Archer's study of
the American people is in my opinion the most sympathetic and
comprehending which has been written by an Englishman.
[41:1] The battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812, is not one of
those incidents in English history which Englishmen generally insist on
remembering, and it may be as well to explain to English readers that it
was on that occasion that an inferior force of American riflemen (a
"backwoods rabble" a British officer called them before the engagement)
repulsed a British attack, from behind improvised earthworks, with a
loss to the attacking force of 3300 killed and wounded, and at a cost to
themselves of 13 wounded and 8 killed--or 21 casualties in all. Of the
Forty-fourth (Essex) Regiment 816 men went into action, and after less
than thirty minutes 134 were able to line up. The Ninety-third
(Sutherland) Highlanders suffered even more severely. Of 1008 officers
and men only 132 came out unhurt. The battle was fought after peace had
been concluded, so that the lives were thrown away to no purpose. The
British had to deliver a direct frontal attack over level ground, penned
in by a lake on one side and a swamp on the other. It was the same
lesson, in even bloodier characters, as was taught on several occasions
in South Africa.
[44:1] _Presidential Problems_, by Grover Cleveland, p. 281 (New York,
1904).
[57:1] I had written this before reading Senator Hoar's Reminiscences in
which, in speaking of his own youth, he tells how "Every boy imagined
himself a soldier and his highest conception of glory was to 'lick the
British'" (_An Autobiography of Seventy Years_).
CHAPTER III
TWO SIDES OF THE AMERICAN CHARACTER
Europe's Undervaluation of America's Fighting Power--The
Americans as Sailors--The Nation's Greatest Asset--Self-reliance
of the People--The Making of a Doctor--And of a Surveyor--
Society in the Rough--New York and the Country--An Anglo-Saxon
Trait--America's Unpreparedness--American Consuls and
Diplomats--A Homogeneous People--The Value of a Common
Speech--America more Anglo-Saxon than Britain--Mr. Wells and
the Future in America.
One circumstance ought in itself to convince Americans that cowardice or
fear has no share in the greater outspokenness of England's good-will
during these later years, namely that when Great Britain showed her
sympathy with the United States at the time of the Spanish War,
Englishmen largely believed that they were giving that sympathy to the
weaker Power,[60:1]--weaker, that is as far as organised fighting
strength, immediately available, was concerned. It is a century or two
since Englishmen did Spain the compliment of being afraid of her. How
then, in 1895, could they have had any fear of the United States?
Few Europeans, indeed, have any conception of the fighting power of the
United States, for it is not large on paper. Nor is an Englishman likely
to make special allowance for the fighting efficiency of either the
ships or the men, for the reason that, in spite of experiences which
might have bred misgivings (English memory for such matters is short),
it remains to him unthinkable that, in the last resort, any men or still
less any ships will prove--man for man and gun for gun--better than his
own. He might be glad to concede that 25,000 American troops are the
equivalent of 50,000 Germans or 100,000 Cossacks, or that two American
men of war should be counted as the equivalent of three Italian. He
makes no such concession when it comes to a comparison with British
troops or British ships. What then can there be in the fighting strength
of the United States, for all the figures that she has to show, to breed
in him a suggestion of fear?
This is a statement which will irritate many a patriotic American, who
will say that it is the same old British superciliousness. But it should
not irritate; and if the American understood the Englishman better and
the spirit which inspires him, he would like it. The Englishman prefers
not to regard the American troops or ships as potentially hostile, and
Great Britain has sufficient to do in measuring the strength of her
possible enemies. As for the people of the United States, he opines that
they know their own business. They are best able to judge how many ships
and how many men under arms will serve their purpose. England would,
indeed, be glad to see the United States with a few more ships than she
has, but--it is none of England's business. Englishmen can only wish her
luck and hope that she is making no mistake in her calculations and go
on about their own affairs, which are pressing enough. At the same time
if the United States should prove to have miscalculated and should ever
need . . .--well, England has a ship or two herself.
It would be a gain for the world if Americans would only understand!
* * * * *
The Englishman of the present generation knows practically nothing of
the Americans as a maritime nation; and again let me say that this
arises not from superciliousness or any intentional neglect, but merely
from the fact that the matter is one beyond his horizon. He is so
familiar with the fact that Britain rules the waves that he has no
notion that whenever opportunity of comparison has offered the Americans
have generally shown themselves (if there has been anything to choose)
the better sailors of the two. Every English reader will probably read
that sentence again to see if he has not misunderstood it. The truth is
that Englishmen have forgotten the incidents of the Revolutionary War
almost as completely as they have forgotten those of the War of 1812;
Paul Jones is as meaningless a name to them as Andrew Jackson. While it
is true that American historians have given the American people, up to
the present generation, an unfortunately exaggerated idea of the heroism
of the patriot forces and have held the British troops up to all manner
of unmerited odium, it is also true that English historians, while the
less partial of the two, have perhaps been over-careful not to err in
the same direction. Not until the last twenty years--hardly until the
last four or five--have there been accessible to the public of the two
countries the materials for forming a just judgment on the incidents of
the war. It must be confessed that there is at least nothing in the
evidence to permit the Englishman to think that a hundred years ago the
home-bred Briton could either sail or fight his ships better than the
Colonial. Nor has the Englishman as a rule any idea that in the middle
of the nineteenth century the American commercial flag was rapidly
ousting the British flag from the seas. Even with a knowledge of the
facts, it is still hard for us to-day to comprehend.
So amazing was the growth of the mercantile marine of the young
republic--such qualities did the Americans show as shipbuilders, as
sailors, and as merchants--that in 1860, the American mercantile marine
was greater in tonnage and number of vessels than that of all other
nations of the world combined, except Great Britain, and almost equal to
that of Great Britain herself. These were of course the days of glory of
the American clipper. It appeared then inevitable that in a few years
the Stars and Stripes--a flag but little more than half a century
old--would be the first commercial flag of the world; and but for the
outbreak of the Civil War, it is at least probable that by now
Englishmen would have grown accustomed to recognising that not they but
another people were the real lords of the ocean's commerce. When the
Civil War broke out, the tonnage of American registered vessels was
something over five and one-half millions; and when the war closed it
was practically non-existent. The North was able to draw from its
merchant service for the purposes of war no fewer than six hundred
vessels of an aggregate tonnage of over a million and carrying seventy
thousand men. Those ships and men went a long way towards turning the
tide of victory to the North; but when peace was made the American
commercial flag had disappeared from the seas.
It would be out of place here to go into a statement of the causes which
co-operated with the substitution of iron for wood in shipbuilding to
make it hard at first for America to regain her lost position, or into a
discussion of the incomprehensible apathy (incomprehensible if one did
not know the ways of American legislation) which successive Congresses
have shown in the matter.
A year or so back, the nation seemed to have made up its mind in earnest
to take hold of the problem of the restoration of its commercial marine;
but the defeat in the early part of 1907 of the Ship Subsidies Bill left
the situation much where it was when President Grant, President
Harrison, and President McKinley, in turn, attempted to arouse Congress
to the necessity of action; except that with the passage of time
conditions only become worse and reform necessarily more difficult. The
Ship Subsidies Bill was defeated largely by the votes of the
representatives of the Mississippi Valley and the Middle Western States,
and to an outsider the opposition of those regions looked very much
like a manifestation of selfishness and lack of patriotism, on the part
of the inland population jealous of the seaboard States. In the East,
various reasons were given at the time for the failure of the measure. I
happened myself to be travelling then through the States of the
Mississippi Valley, and I discussed the situation with people whom I
met, and particularly with politicians. The explanations which I
received fell into one of two categories. Some said: "It is true that
the Mississippi Valley and the West have little direct interest in our
shipbuilding industry, but none the less we should like to see our
merchant marine encouraged and built up. The trouble is that we have
from experience acquired a profound distrust of a certain 'gang' in the
Senate [and here would often follow the names of certain four or five
well-known Senators, chiefly from the East], and the mere fact that
these Senators were backing this particular bill was enough to convince
us Westerners that it included a 'steal.'"
Others took this ground: "The Mississippi Valley and the West believe in
the general principle of Protection, but we think that our legislation
has carried this principle far enough. We should now prefer to see a
little easing off. We do not believe that the right way to develop our
commercial marine is, first by our tariff laws to make it impossible for
us to build or operate ships in competition with other countries and
then to be obliged, in order to equalise things, to have recourse to
bounties. What we want is a modification of our law which will help us,
in the first instance, to build and to run the ships at a reasonable
price. When a bill to that effect comes along, the Mississippi Valley
will be found all right."
Not a few of the voters in the East, also cordially interested in any
plan that seemed to them promising and equitable for building up the
American commercial marine, took the ground that it was an absurdity to
build up barriers against foreign trade by enacting a tariff bill, such
as the Dingley measure, with higher duties than the country had ever
known, and then to attempt to overcome that barrier by means of bounty
measures, which must themselves constitute a fresh form of taxation on
the general public.
The mass of the people, in fact, are in sympathy with the movement to
encourage American shipping, but, for sectional or other reasons, a
large proportion of them objected to the particular form in which the
end was sought to be reached in the last Congress. So long as the voice
and opinion of Mr. Roosevelt have any weight, it is not to be expected
that the subject is going to be allowed to drop; and with his strength
of will and determination of character it is at least not improbable
that, where successive Presidents before him have failed, he will,
whether still in the Presidential chair or not, ultimately succeed, and
that not the smallest of the reasons for gratitude to him which future
generations of Americans will recognise will be that he helped to
recreate the nation's merchant marine. At present, less than nine
percent of the American foreign commerce is carried in American bottoms,
a situation which is not only sufficiently humiliating to a people who
but a short while ago hoped to dominate the carrying trade of all
countries but also, what perhaps hurts the Americans almost as much as
the injury to their pride, absurdly wasteful and unbusinesslike.
English shipping circles may take the prospect of efforts being made by
the United States to recover some measure of its lost prestige seriously
or not: but it would be inadvisable to admit as a factor in their
calculations any theory as to the inability of the Americans either to
build ships or sail them as well as the best. With the growth of an
American merchant marine--if a growth comes--will come also the obvious
need of a larger navy; and other nations might do well to remember that
Americans have never yet shown any inability to fight their ships, any
more than they have to build or sail them.
In basing any estimate of the fighting strength of the United States on
the figures of her army or navy as they look on paper, the people of
other nations--Englishmen no less than any--leave out of sight, because
they have no standard for measuring, that remarkable attribute of the
American character, which is the greatest of the national assets, the
combination of self-reliance and resourceful ingenuity which seems to
make the individual American equal to almost any fortune. It is
remarkable, but not beyond explanation. It is an essentially Anglo-Saxon
trait. The British have always possessed it in a degree, if inferior to
the present day American, at least in excess of other peoples. The
history of the Empire bears witness to it on every page and it is in
truth one of the most fundamentally English things in the American
character. But the conditions of their life have developed it in
Americans beyond any need which the Englishman has felt. The latter,
living at home amid the established institutions of a society which
moves on its way evenly and without friction regardless of any effort
or action on his part, has had no occasion for those qualities on which
the American's success, his life, have commonly depended from day to day
amid the changing emergencies of a frontier life. The American of any
generation previous to that which is now growing up has seldom known
what it meant to choose a profession or a vocation in life; but must
needs do the work that came to him, and, without apprenticeship or
training, turn to whatever craft has offered.
The notion that every American is, without any special training, by mere
gift of birthright, competent to any task that may be set him, is
commonly said to have come in with Andrew Jackson; and President Eliot,
of Harvard, has dubbed it a "vulgar conceit."[68:1] It is undoubtedly a
dangerous doctrine to become established as a tenet of national belief
and least of all men can the head of a great institution for the
training of the nation's youth afford to encourage it. None the less,
when the American character is compared with that of any European
people, it has, if not justification, at least considerable excuse.
* * * * *
Once into a new mining camp in the West there drove in the same
"stage-coach" two young men who became friends on the journey. Each was
out to seek his fortune and each hoped to find it in the new community.
Each had his belongings in a "valise" and in each "valise" among those
belongings was a "shingle," or name-plate, bearing each the name of its
respective owner followed by the words "Attorney at Law." The young men
compared their shingles and considered. The small camp would not need
two lawyers, even if it would provide a living for one. So they
"matched" coins (the American equivalent of tossing up) to see which of
the two should erase "Attorney at Law" from his sign and substitute
"Doctor of Medicine." Which is history; as also is the following:
In another mining camp, some twenty-three years ago, there was at first
no surveyor. Men paced off the boundaries of their claims and went to
work as fancy inclined them, and in the town which began to grow up
houses were built at random regardless of any street-line and with no
finnicking considerations of a building frontage. So a young fellow
whose claim was unpromising sent out to civilisation for a set of
instruments (he had never seen a transit or a level before) and began
business as a surveyor. He used to come to me secretly that I might
figure out for him the cubic contents of a ditch or the superficial area
of a wall. He could barely write and knew no arithmetic at all; but he
worked most of the night as well as all the day, and when the town took
to itself a form of organised government he was appointed official
surveyor and within a few weeks thereafter was made surveyor to the
county. I doubt not that G---- T---- is rich and prosperous to-day.
On a certain wharf, no matter where, lounged half a dozen seamen when to
them came the owner of a vessel. It was in the days of '49 when anything
that could be made to float was being put into commission in the
California trade, and men who could navigate were scarce.
"Can any of you men" said the newcomer "take a boat out for me to San
Francisco?"
"I'll do it, sir" said one stepping forward.
"Thunder, Bill!" exclaimed a comrade in an undertone, "you don't know
nothing about navigating."
"Shut your mouth," said Bill. "Maybe I don't know nothing now, but you
bet I will by the time I get to 'Frisco."
The same spirit guides almost every young American who drifts West to
tackle hopefully whatever job the gods may send. The cases wherein he
has any destiny marked out for him or any especial preference as to the
lines on which his future career shall run (except that he may hope
ultimately to be President of the United States) are comparatively few.
In ten years, he may be a grocer or a banker or a dry-goods merchant or
a real-estate man or a lawyer. Whatever he is, more likely than not ten
years later he will be something else.
"What is your trade?" is the first question which an Englishman asks of
an applicant for employment; and the answer will probably be truthful
and certainly unimaginative.
"What can you do?" the American enquires under the same circumstances.
"'Most anything. What have you got to do?" is commonly the reply.
It is an extraordinarily impressive experience for an Englishman to go
out from the old-established well-formulated ways of the club-life and
street-life of London, to assist in--not merely to watch but to
co-operate in--the organisation of society in the wilderness: to see a
town grow up--indeed, so far as his clumsy ability in the handling of an
ax will permit, to help to build it; to join the handful of men,
bearded, roughly clad, and unlettered most of them, proceeding
deliberately to the fashioning of the framework of government, the
election of town officers, the appointment of a sheriff, and the
necessary provisions, rough but not inadequate, for dealing with the
grosser forms of crime. Quickly thereafter, in the case which I have
especially in mind, came the formation of the county government and,
simultaneously therewith, the opportunity (automatically and by mere
right of the number of the population) to elect a representative to the
Territorial Legislature. In the first year, however, this last privilege
had to be pretermitted. The Territorial laws required that any member
must have been resident in the district from which he came for not less
than six months prior to his election and must be able to read and
write; and, as cruel chance would have it, among the first prospectors
to find their way into the new diggings in the preceding winter, who
alone could comply with the required term of residence, not one could
write his name. Had but one been able to do it ever so crudely--could
one but have made a reasonable pretence of an ability to stumble through
the opening paragraphs of the Constitution of the United States,--that
man would inevitably and unanimously have been elected a full-blown
Legislator. As it was, the new district was perforce compelled to go
without representation in the Territorial Capital.
"But," it will be objected, and by no one more quickly than by the
American of the Eastern States, "All Americans do not go through these
experiences. How many New Yorkers have helped to organise a new mining
town?" Not many, certainly; and that is one of the reasons why New York
is, perhaps, the least representative section of all the United States.
But though the American of to-day may not have had to do these things,
his father and his grandfather had to. The necessity has long ago left
New York, but Illinois was not far removed from the circumstances of
frontier life when Abraham Lincoln was a youth; and the men who laid the
foundations of Minneapolis, and Kansas City, and Omaha, and Duluth, are
still alive. The frontiersman is latent in every American.
For the benefit of many Englishmen who think that they have been to the
United States, when as a matter of fact they have only been to New York,
it may be as well to explain why New York City is the least typically
American of all parts of the country. There are some who go back as far
as Revolutionary days for the explanation, and point out that even then
New York was more loyalist than patriot; one might go even farther back
and show that New York always had a conspicuously large non-Anglo-Saxon
element. But there is no need to go back even to the Revolution. In the
century that has passed since then, the essential characteristics of the
American character have been the products of the work which the people
had to do in the subduing of the wilderness and of the isolation of the
country--of its segregation from contact with the outside world. New
York has been the one point in America farthest removed from the
wilderness and most in touch with Europe, and it has been there that the
chief forces which have moulded the American character have been least
operative. The things in a New Yorker which are most characteristic of
his New-Yorkship are least characteristically American, and among these
is a much greater friendliness towards Great Britain than is to be found
elsewhere except in one or two towns of specialised traits. This is not
in any way to depreciate the position of New York as the greatest and
most influential city in the United States, as well as (whatever may
have been the relative standing of it and Boston up to twenty years ago)
the literary and artistic centre of the country; and I do not know that
any city of the world has a sight more impressive in its way than
upper-middle New York--that is to say, than Fifth Avenue from Madison
Square to the Park. But the English visitor who acquires his ideas of
American sentiments from what he hears in New York dining-rooms or in
Wall Street offices, is likely to go far astray. There is an
instructive, if hackneyed, story of the little girl whose father boasted
that she had travelled all over the United States. "Dear me!" said the
recipient of the information, "she has travelled a great deal for one of
her age!" "Yes, sir! all over the United States--all, except east of
Chicago."
* * * * *
In the course of a long term of residence in the United States, this
adaptability, this readiness to turn to whatever seems at the time to
offer the best "opening" (which is so conspicuously a national trait but
is not especially noticeable in the typical New Yorker) becomes so
familiar that it ceases to be worth comment. I have seen among my own
friends journalists become hotel managers, advertising solicitors turn
to "real estate agents," merchants translated straight into responsible
positions in the executive departments of railway companies, and railway
men become merchants and bankers, editors change into engineers and
engineers into editors, and lawyers into anything from ambassadors to
hotel clerks. I am not now speaking in praise of these conditions or of
the results in individual cases. The point to be noticed is that the
people among whom these conditions prevail must in the long run develop
into a people of extraordinary resourcefulness and versatility. And in
the individual cases, the results are not nearly as deplorable as an
Englishman might suppose or as they would be if the raw material
consisted of home-staying Englishmen.
The trait however is, as has been said, essentially an Anglo-Saxon
trait--an English trait--and the colonial Englishman develops the same
qualities in a not incomparable degree. The Canadian and the New
Zealander acquire a like unconquerable soul, but the Englishman at home
is not much impressed thereby, chiefly for the reason that he is almost
as ignorant of the Canadian and the New Zealander as he is of the
American, and with the same benevolent ignorance.
In the individual citizen of the United States, he recognises the
quality in a vague way. "Yankee ingenuity" is familiar to him and he is
interested in, and amused at, the imperturbability with which the
individual American--and especially the individual American
woman--confronts and rises at least equal to whatever new and unheard of
conditions he (or she) may find himself (or herself) placed among in
England. But just as the American will not from the likability and
kindliness of individual Englishmen draw any general inference as to the
likability and kindliness of the nation, so the Englishman or other
European rarely gives to these occasional attributes, which he sees
reproduced again and again in particular Americans, their proper value
as the manifestations of a national trait of the first importance, a
trait which makes the people unquestionably formidable as competitors in
peace and would make them correspondingly formidable as antagonists in
war. The trait is, as I have said, perhaps the most precious of all the
American national assets.
Great Britain has recently had abundant evidence of the difficulty of
turning out all the paraphernalia of victory ready made and is now
making earnest effort to guard against the necessity of attempting it
again. But the rules which apply to European peoples do not apply, with
anything like equal force, to America. England in the South African war
found by no means despicable fighting material almost ready made in her
colonial troops; and that same material, certainly not inferior, America
can supply in almost unlimited quantities. From the West and portions of
the South, the United States can at any time draw immense numbers of men
who, in the training of their frontier life, their ability to ride and
shoot, their habituation to privations of every kind, possess all those
qualities which made the Boers formidable, with the better moral fibre
of the Anglo-Saxon to back them.
But this quality of resourcefulness and self-reliance is not a mere
matter of the moral or physical qualities of the individual. Its spirit
permeates the nation as a unit. The machinery of the government will
always move in emergencies more quickly than that of any European
country; and unpreparedness becomes a vastly less serious matter. The
standing army of the United States, in spite of the events of the last
few years, remains little more than a Federal police force; and with no
mercantile marine to protect and no colonies, there has been till lately
no need of an American navy. But the European who measures the
unpreparedness of the nation in the terms of the unpreparedness of his
own, or any other European, country, not taking into account the
colonial character of the population, the alertness and audacity of the
national mind, the resourcefulness and confident self-reliance of the
people, is likely to fall into error.
The reverse of the medal is, perhaps, more familiar to Europeans, under
the form of what has generally been called the characteristic American
lack of the sentiment of reverence. The lack is indubitably there--is
necessarily there; for what the Englishman does not commonly understand
is that that lack is not a positive quality in itself. It is but the
reflection, as it were, or complement, of the national self-reliance.
How should the American in his new country, with his "Particularist"
spirit, his insistence on the independence and sovereignty of the
individual, seem to Europeans other than lacking in reverence?
It is true that now, by mere passage of years, there are monuments in
the United States which are beginning to gather the dignity and respect
which naturally attach to age. The American of the present day has great
veneration for the wisdom of the Fathers of the Republic, much love for
the old buildings which are associated with the birth of the nation.
Even the events of the Civil War are beginning to put on something of
the majesty of antiquity, but there are still alive too many of the
combatants in that war--who are obviously but commonplace men--for the
figures of any but some three or four of the greatest of the actors to
have yet assumed anything like heroic proportions. For the rest, what is
there in the country which the living American has not made himself, or
which his fathers did not make? The fabric of society is of too new a
weaving, he knows too well the trick of it, for it to be wonderful in
his eyes.
Lack of reverence is only a symptom of the American's strength--not
admirable in itself, yet, as the index to something admirable, not,
perhaps, altogether to be scorned. Nor must it be supposed that the lack
of reverence implies any want of idealism, or any poverty of
imagination, any absence of love or desire of the good and beautiful.
The American is idealist and imaginative beyond the Englishman.
The American national character is, indeed, a finer thing than the
European generally supposes. The latter sees only occasional facets and
angles, offshoots and outgrowths, some of them not desirable but even
grotesque in themselves, while those elements which unify and harmonise
the whole are likely to escape him. The blunders of American
diplomats--the _gaucheries_ and ignorances of American consular
representatives--these are familiar subjects to Europeans; on them many
a travelling Englishman has based his rather contemptuous opinion of the
culture of the American people as a whole. But it is unsafe to argue
from the inferiority of the representative to the inferiority of the
thing represented.
If two fruit-growers have adjoining orchards and, for the purpose of
making a display at an agricultural show, one spends months of careful
nourishing, training, and pruning of certain trees wherefrom he selects
with care the finest of his fruit, while the other without preparation
goes out haphazard to his orchard and reaches for the first fruit that
he sees, it is probable that, judging by their exhibits, the public will
get an erroneous idea of the characters of the orchards as a whole. And
this is precisely the difference between the representatives whom the
United States sends abroad and those sent to be displayed beside them by
other nations.
There is no recognised diplomatic service in the United States, no
school for the training of consular representatives, no training or
nurturing or pruning of any sort. The fundamental objection of the
American people to the creation of any permanent privileged class, has
made the thing impossible in the past, while, under the system of party
patronage, practically the entire representation of the country
abroad--commercial as well as diplomatic--is changed with each change of
government. The American cannot count on holding an appointment abroad
for more than four years; and while four years is altogether too short a
term to be considered a career, it is over-long for a holiday. So in
addition to the lack of any trained class from which to draw, even among
the untrained the choice is much restricted by the undesirability of the
conditions of the service itself.
Though the conditions have improved immensely of late years, the fact
remains that the consular service as a whole is not fairly to be
compared on equal terms with that of other countries; and the majority
of appointments are still made as the reward for minor services to the
party in power. Nor are the conditions which govern the appointments to
the less important diplomatic posts much different; but Great Britain
has abundant cause to be aware that when the place is one which appeals
to the ambition of first-class men, first-class men enough are
forthcoming; though even Ambassadors to London are generally lacking in
any special training or experience up to the time of their appointment.
Sydney Smith's phrase has been often enough quoted--that when a woman
makes a public speech, we admire her as we admire a dog that stands upon
its hind legs, not because she does it well, but because she does it at
all. Congress includes among its members many curious individuals and,
as a unit, it does queer things at times. State legislatures are
sometimes strange looking bodies of men and on occasions they achieve
legislation which moves the country to mirth. The representatives of the
nation abroad make blunders which contribute not a little to the gaiety
of the world. But the thing to admire is that they do these things at
all--that the legislators, whether Federal or State, and the members of
the consular service, appointed or elected as they are, and from the
classes which they represent, do somehow manage to form legislative
bodies which, year in and year out, will bear comparison well enough
with other Parliaments, and do in one way and another succeed in giving
their country a service abroad which is far from despicable as compared
with that of other peoples, nor all devoid of dignity. The fact that
results are not immeasurably worse than they are is no small tribute to
the adaptability of the American character. There is no other national
character which could stand the same test.
In the absence of any especially trained or officially dedicated class,
the American people in the mass provides an amazing quantity of not
impossible material out of which legislators and consuls may be
made--just as it might equally well be made into whatever should happen
to be required.
And this fact strikes at the root of a common misapprehension in the
minds of foreigners as to the constitution of the American people, a
misapprehension which is fostered by what is written by other foreigners
after inadequate observation.
Much is thus written of the so-called heterogeneousness of the people of
America. The Englishman who visits the United States for a few weeks
only, commonly comes away with an idea that the New Yorker is the
American people; whereas we have seen why it is that good American
authorities maintain that in all the width and depth of the continent
there is no aggregation of persons so little representative of the
American people as a whole as the inhabitants of New York. After the
Englishman has been in the United States for some months or a year or
two, he grows bewildered and reaches the conclusion that there is no
common American type--nothing but a patchwork of unassimilated units. In
which conclusion he is just as mistaken as he was at first. There does
exist a clearly defined and homogeneous American type.
Let us suppose that all the negroes had been swept as with some vast net
down and away into the Gulf of Mexico; that the Irishmen had been
gathered out of the cities and deposited back into the Atlantic; that
the Germans had been rounded up towards their fellows in Chicago and
Milwaukee and then tipped gently into Lake Michigan, while the
Scandinavians, having been assembled in Minnesota, had been edged
courteously over the Canadian border;--when all this had been done,
there would still remain the great American People. Of this great People
there would remain certain local variations--in parts of the South, in
New England, on the plains--but each clearly recognisable as a variety
only, differing but superficially and in substance possessing
well-defined all the generic and specific attributes of the race.
If the entire membership of the Chicago Club were to be transferred
bodily to the Manhattan Club-house in New York, and all the members of
the Manhattan were simultaneously made to migrate from Fifth Avenue to
Michigan Avenue, the club servants, beyond missing some familiar faces,
would not find much difference. Could any man, waking from a trance,
tell by the men surrounding him whether he was in the Duquesne Club at
Pittsburgh or the Minnesota Club in St. Paul? And, if it be urged that
the select club-membership represents a small circle of the population
only, would the disturbance be much greater if the entire populations of
Erie and Minneapolis and Kansas City were to execute a three-cornered
"general post" or if Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine, swapped
inhabitants? How long would it take the inhabitants of any one town to
settle down in their new environment and go to work on precisely the
same lines as their predecessors whom they dislodged? The novelty would,
I think, be even less than if Manchester and Birmingham were
miraculously made to execute a similar change in a night.
I do not underrate the magnitude of the problem presented to the people
of America by the immense volume of immigration from alien races, and
chiefly from the most undesirable strata in those races, of the last
few years. On the other hand, I have no shadow of doubt of the ability
of the people to cope with the problem and to succeed in assimilating to
itself all the elements in this great influx while itself remaining
unchanged.
It seems to me that the American himself constantly overestimates the
influence on his national character of the immigration of the past. To
persons living in New York, especially if, from philanthropic motives or
otherwise, they are brought at all into immediate contact with the
incoming hordes as they arrive, this stream of immigration may well be a
terrifying thing. Those who are in daily touch with it can hardly fail
to be oppressed by it, till it gets upon their nerves and breeds
nightmares; and to such I have more than once recommended that they
would do well to take a holiday of six months; journey through the West,
and so come to a realisation of the magnitude of their country and
correct their point of view. With every mile that one recedes from
Castle Garden, the phenomenon grows less appalling: the cloud which was
dense enough to blacken New York harbour makes not a veil to stop one
ray of sunlight when shredded out over the Mississippi Valley and the
Western plains.
A bucket of sewage (or of Eau de Cologne), however formidable in itself,
makes very little difference when tipped into the St. Lawrence River. It
is, of course, a portentous fact that some twenty millions of foreigners
should have come into the country to settle in the course of half a
century; but, after all, the process of assimilation has been
constantly and successfully at work throughout those fifty years, and I
think the figures will show that in no one year (not even in 1906, when
the volume of immigration was the largest and contained the greatest
proportion of the distinctly "undesirable" elements), if we set against
the totals the number of those aliens returning to their own countries
and deduct those who have come from the English-speaking countries, has
the influx amounted to three quarters of one per cent of the entire
population of the country.
So far, the dilution of the original character of the people by the
injection of the foreign elements has been curiously slight, and while
recognising that the inflow of the last few years has been more serious,
both in quantity and character, than at any previous period, there does
not seem to me any reason for questioning the ability of the country to
absorb and assimilate it without any impairment of the fundamental
qualities of the people. That at certain points near the seaboard, or in
places where the newly introduced aliens become congested in masses of
industrial workers, they present a local problem of extreme difficulty
may be granted, but I think that those who are in contact with these
local problems are inclined to exaggerate the general or national
danger. The dominating American type will persist, as it persists
to-day; the people will remain, in all that is essential, an Anglo-Saxon
and a homogeneous people.
In one sense--and that the essential one--the American people is more
homogeneous than the English. What individuals among them may have been
in the last generation does not matter. The point is here:--When one
speaks of the "average Englishman" (as, without regard to grammar, we
persist in doing) what he really means is the typical representative of
a comparatively small section of the population, from the middle, or
upper middle, classes upward. It is the same when one speaks of
Frenchmen. When he says "the average Frenchman dresses," or "thinks," or
"talks" in such and such a way, he merely means that so does the normal
specimen of a class including only a few hundred thousand men, and those
city dwellers, dress or think or speak. The figure is excusable because
(apart from the fact that an "average" of the entire population would be
quite unfindable) the comparatively small class does indeed guide, rule,
and, practically, think for, the whole population. So far as foreign
countries are concerned, they represent the policy and mode of thought
of the nation. The great numerical majority is practically negligible.
The same is true of the people of the United States, but with this
difference, that the class represented by the "average"--the class of
which, when grouped together, it is possible to find a reasonably
typical representative--includes in the United States a vastly larger
proportion of the whole people than is the case in other countries. It
would not be possible to find a common mental or moral divisor for the
members of Parliament in the aggregate, and an equal number of Norfolk
fishermen or Cornish miners. They are not to be stated in common terms.
But no such incongruity exists between the members of Congress, Michigan
lumbermen, and the men of the Texas plains.
It may be that within the smaller circle in England, the
individuals--thanks to the public schools and the universities--are more
nearly identical and the type specimen would more closely represent the
whole. But as soon as we get outside the circle, much greater
divergences appear. The English are _homogeneous_ over a small area: the
Americans _homogeneous_ over a much larger.
"You may go all over the States," said Robert Louis Stevenson (and
Americans will, for love of the man, pardon his calling their country
"the States") "and--setting aside the actual intrusion and influence of
foreigners, negro, French, or Chinese--you shall scarce meet with so
marked a difference of accent as in forty miles between Edinburgh and
Glasgow, or of dialect as in the hundred miles between Edinburgh and
Aberdeen." And Stevenson understates the case. There are differences of
speech in America, but at the most they remain so slight that, after
all, the resident in one section will rather pride himself on his
acuteness in recognising the intonation of the stranger as being that of
some other--of the South, it may be, or of New England. An educated
Londoner has difficulty in understanding even the London cockney.
Suffolk, Cornish, or Lancashire--these are almost foreign tongues to
him. The American of the South has at least no difficulty in
understanding the New Englander: the New Yorker does not have to make
the Californian repeat each sentence that he utters.
And this similarity of tongue--this universal mutual
comprehensibility--is a fact of great importance to the nation. It must
tend to rapidity of communication--to greater uniformity of thought--to
much greater readiness in the people to concentrate as a nation on one
idea or one object. How much does England not lose--there is no way of
measuring, but the amount must be very great--by the fact that
communication of thought is practically impossible between people who
are neighbours? How much would it not contribute to the national
alertness, to national efficiency, if the local dialects could be swept
away and the peasantry and gentry of all England--nay of the British
Isles--talk together easily in one tongue? It is impossible not to
believe that this ease in the interchange of ideas must in itself
contribute greatly to uniformity of thought and character in a people.
Possessing it, it is not easy to see how the American people could have
failed to become more homogeneous than the English.
But there is a deeper reason for their homogeneousness. The American
people is not only an English people; it is much more Anglo-Saxon than
the English themselves. We have already seen how the essential quality
of both peoples is an Anglo-Saxon quality--what has been called (and the
phrase will do as well as any other) their "Particularist" instinct. The
Angles and Saxons (with some modification in the former) were tribes of
individual workers, sprung from the soil, rooted in it, accustomed
always to rely on individual labour and individual impulse rather than
on the initiative, the protection, or the assistance of the State or the
community. The constitutional history of England is little more than the
story of the steps by which the Anglo-Saxon, by the strength which this
quality gave him, came to dominate the other races which invaded or
settled in Britain and finally worked his way up to and through the
Norman crust which, as it were, overlay the country.
In England many institutions are of course Norman. An hereditary
aristocracy, the laws of primogeniture and entail--these are Norman. By
the help of them the Norman hoped to perpetuate his authority over the
Saxon herd; and failed. Magna Charta, Cromwell, the Roundheads, the
Puritans, the spirit of nonconformity, most of the limitations of the
power of the Throne, the industrial and commercial greatness of
Britain--these things are Anglo-Saxon. The American colonists (however
many individuals of Norman blood were among them) were Anglo-Saxon; they
came from the Anglo-Saxon body of the people and carried with them the
Anglo-Saxon spirit. They did not reproduce in their new environment an
hereditary aristocracy, a law of primogeniture or of entail. It is
probable that no single English colony to-day, if suddenly cut loose
from the Empire and left to fashion its form of society anew, would
reproduce any one of these things. In the United States the Anglo-Saxon
spirit went to work without Norman assistance or (as we choose to view
it) Norman encumbrances. The Anglo-Saxon spirit is still working in
England--never perhaps has its operation been more powerfully visible
than in the trend of thought of the last few years. It is working also
in the United States; but, because it there works independently of
Norman traditions, it works faster.
In many things--in almost everything, as we shall see--the two peoples
are progressing along precisely the same path, a path other than that
which other nations are treading. In many things--in almost
everything--the United States moves the more rapidly. It seems at first
a contradiction in terms to say that the Americans are an English people
and then to show that in many individual matters the English people is
approximating to American models. It is in truth no contradiction; and
the explanation is obvious. Both are impelled by the same spirit, the
same motives, the same ambitions; but in England that spirit, those
motives and ambitions work against greater resistance.
What looks at first like a peculiar departure on the part of the
American people will again and again, on investigation, be found to be
only the English spirit shooting ahead faster than it can advance in
England. When, in a particular matter, it appears as if England was
coming to conform to American precedent, it is, in truth only that,
having given the impulse to America, she herself is following with less
speed than the younger runner, but with such speed as she can.
If we bear this fact in mind we shall see how it is illustrated, borne
out, supported by a score of things that it falls in our way to notice;
as it is by many hundred things that lie outside our present province.
* * * * *
We shall have occasion to notice hereafter how in the past the American
disposition to dislike England has been fed by the headlong and
superficial criticism of American affairs by English "literary"
visitors; and it is unfortunate that the latest[88:1] English visitor to
write on the United States has hurt American susceptibilities almost as
keenly as any of his predecessors. With all its brilliant qualities, few
more superficial "studies" of American affairs have been given to the
world than that of Mr. H. G. Wells.
Mr. Wells, by his own account, went about the country confronting all
comers with the questions, "What are you going to make of your future?"
. . . "What is the American Utopia, how much Will is there shaping to
attain it?" This, he says, was the conundrum to find an answer to which
he crossed the Atlantic, and he is much depressed because he failed in
his search. "When one talks to an American of his national purpose he
seems a little at a loss"; and when he comes to sum up his conclusions:
"What seems to me the most significant and pregnant thing of all is
. . . best indicated by saying that the typical American has no 'sense
of the State.'"[89:1]
Has Mr. Wells ever gone about England asking Englishmen the same
question: "What are you going to make of your future?" How much less "at
a loss" does he anticipate that he would find them? Mr. Wells apparently
expected to find every American with a card in his vest pocket
containing a complete scheme of an American Utopia. He was disappointed
because the government at Washington was not inviting bids for roofing
in the country and laying the portion north of Mason and Dixon's Line
with hot-water pipes.
The quality which Mr. Wells--seeing only its individual manifestations,
quite baffled and unable to look beyond the individuals to any vision of
the people as a whole (he travelled over a ludicrously small portion of
the country)--sums up as a "lack of sense of the State" is in truth the
cardinal quality which has made the greatness of the United States--and
of England. It is precisely because the peoples rely on individual
effort and not on the State that they have become greater than all
other peoples. That is their peculiar political excellence--that they
are not for ever framing schemes for a paternal all-embracing State, but
are content to work each in his own sphere, asserting his own
independence and individuality, from the things as they are, little by
little towards the things as they ought to be.
If Mr. Wells had prevailed on any typical American to sit down and write
what, as he understood it, his people were working to accomplish, the
latter would have written something like this:
"We have got the basis of a form of government under which, when
perfected, the individual will have larger liberty and better
opportunity to assert himself than he has ever had in any country since
organised states have existed. We have a people which enjoys to-day more
of the material comforts of life than any other people on earth, and the
chief political problem with which we are wrestling to-day is to see
that that enjoyment is confirmed to them in perpetuity--not taken from
them or hampered or limited by any power of an oppressive capitalism. We
are spending more money, more energy, more earnest thought on the study
of education as a science or art and on the endowment of educational
establishments than any other people; as a result we hope that the next
generation of Americans, besides being the most materially blessed, will
be the most educated and intelligent of peoples. We are doing all we can
to weed out dishonesty from our commercial dealings. In the period of
our growth there was necessarily some laxity in our business ethics, but
we are doing the best we know how to improve that, and we believe that
on the whole our methods of doing business are calculated to produce
more honest men than those in vogue in other countries. What we hope to
make of our future therefore is to produce a nation of individuals
freer, better off, and more honest than the world has yet seen. When
that people comes it can manage its own government."
Not only are these, I fear, larger national aims than the average
Englishman dares to propose to himself, but they are, I venture to say,
much more definitely formulated in the "typical American's" mind. If Mr.
Wells desires to find a people which considers it the duty of good
citizenship to go about to fashion first the roofs and walls, rafters,
cornices, and chimney-pots of a governmental structure, relying on the
State afterwards to legislate comfort and culture and virtue into the
people, he visited the wrong quarter of the globe. In the Latin races he
will find the "sense of the State" luxuriantly developed.
Mr. Wells appears infinitely distressed by his failure to find any
unified national feeling in the American people--by "the chaotic
condition of the American Will"--by "the dispersal of power"--by the
fact that "Americans knew of America mainly as the Flag." Which is a
most curiously complete demonstration of the inadequacy of his judgment.
If Mr. Wells had seen the United States twenty-five years ago, ten years
ago, and five years ago, before his present visit, the one thing that
would have most impressed him would have been the amazing growth of the
sense of national unity. Mr. Wells looks superficially upon the country
as it is to-day and finds society more chaotic, distances larger,
sentiment less crystallised than--_mirabile!_--in the older countries of
Europe, and is plunged in despair. Had he had any knowledge of
America's past conditions by which to measure the momentary phase in
which he found the people, he would have known that exactly that thing
of which he most deplores the absence is the thing which, in the last
thirty years, has grown with more wonderful rapidity than anything else
in all this country of wonderful growths.
The mere fact of this development of national feeling is a thing which
will necessarily call for attention as we go on; for the present it is
enough to say that Mr. Wells could hardly have exposed more calamitously
the superficial and cursory quality of his "study" of the country.[92:1]
As a man may not be able to see the forest because of the trees, so Mr.
Wells is as one who has stood by a great river's bank for a few minutes
and has not seen the river for the flash of the ripples in the sun, the
swirl of an eddy here and there, the flotsam swinging by on the current;
and he has gone away and prattled of the ripples and the eddy and the
floating branch. The great flow of the river down below does not expose
itself to the vision of three minutes. He only comes to understand it
who lives by the river for awhile, sits down by it and studies it--sees
it in flood and drought--swims in it, bathes in it. Then he will forget
the ripples and the branches and will come to know something of the
steadiness of purpose, the depth and strength of it, its unity and its
power. Nothing but a little more experience would enable Mr. Wells to
see the national feeling of the American people.
Literature contains few pictures more delightful than that of Mr. Wells,
drawn by himself, standing with Mr. Putnam--Herbert Putnam of all
people!--in the Congressional Library at Washington and saying (let me
quote): "'With all this,' I asked him 'why doesn't the place _think_?'
He seemed, discreetly, to consider it did."
Mr. Putnam is fortunately always discreet. Otherwise it would be
pleasant to know what _he_ thought--of his questioner.
_Note._--On the subject of the homogeneousness of the American
people, see Appendix A.
FOOTNOTES:
[60:1] As a statement of this nature is always liable to be challenged
let me say that it is based on the opinions expressed in conversation by
the correspondents of English papers who came to America at that time in
an endeavour to reach Cuba. They certainly did not anticipate that the
American fleet would be able to stand against the Spanish. And, lest
American readers should be in danger of taking offence at this, let it
be remembered with how much apprehension the arrival of Admiral
Cervera's ships was awaited along the eastern coast and how cheaply
excellent seaside houses were to be acquired that year. Events have
moved so rapidly since then (above all has the position of the United
States in the world changed so much) that it is not easy now to conjure
up the circumstances and sentiments of those days. If Americans
generally erred as widely as they did in their estimate of the Spanish
sea-power as compared with their own, it is not surprising that
Englishmen erred perhaps a little more.
[68:1] _History of the United States_, by James Ford Rhodes, vol. vi.
[88:1] Mr. Crosland has written since; but he has fortunately not been
taken sufficiently seriously by the American people even to cause them
annoyance.
[89:1] _The Future in America_, by H. G. Wells, 1906.
[92:1] The futility of this kind of impressionist criticism is well
illustrated by the fact that almost simultaneously with the appearance
of Mr. Wells' book, a distinguished Canadian (Mr. Wilfred Campbell) was
recording his impressions of a visit to England and said: "The people of
Britain leave national and social affairs too much in the hands of such
men [professional politicians]. There is a sad lack of the education of
the people in the direction of a common patriotism. . . . She must get
back to the sane idea that it is only as a nation and through the
national ideal that she can help humanity. . . . She has great men in
all walks of life; she has still the highest-toned Press in the world;
she has . . . the most ideal legislature, she has great universities and
churches with the finest and greatest Christian ideals. But none of
these influences are used, as they should be, for the general national
good. They work separately, or too much as individuals. It is only the
leavening of these institutions with a large spirit of the national
destiny that will lift Britain . . . out of its present material
slough." (_The Outlook_, November 17, 1906.) These words are almost a
paraphrase of Mr. Wells' indictment of the United States.
CHAPTER IV
MUTUAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS
America's Bigness--A New Atlantis--The Effect of Expansion
on a People--A Family Estranged--Parsnips--An American
Woman in England--An Englishman in America--International
Caricatures--Shibboleths: dropped H's and a "twang"--Matthew
Arnold's Clothes--The Honourable S---- B----.
"John Bull with plenty of elbow-room" was the phrase. It does not
necessarily follow that the widest lands breed the finest people; and
there is worthless territory enough in the United States to cut up into
two or three Englands. Yet no patriotic American would wish one rod,
pole, or perch of it away, whether of the Bad Lands, the Florida Swamps,
the Alkali Plains of the Southwest, or the most sterile and inaccessible
regions of the Rockies. If of no other use, each, merely as an
instrument of discipline, has contributed something to the hardening of
the fibre of the people; and good and bad together the domain of the
United States is very large. Englishmen are aware of the fact, merely as
a fact; but they seldom seem to appreciate its full significance.
Let us consider for a minute what would be the effect on the British
people if it suddenly came into possession of such an estate. We are not
talking now of distant colonies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South
Africa--these may be equal together to more than another United States,
and they are working out their own destiny. The inhabitants of each are
a band of British men and women just as were the early inhabitants of
the United States and as, essentially, the people of the United States
still remain to-day. Each of those bands will follow its own path and
work its own miracles--whether greater than that which the people of the
United States has wrought or not, only later generations will know. Each
of these, though British still and always, is launched on its individual
career; and it is not of them that we are speaking now, but of the
Englishmen who remain at home, of the present-day population of the
British Isles.
What would be the result if suddenly the limits of the British Isles
were to be miraculously expanded? What would happen if the floor of the
ocean heaved itself up and Great Britain awoke to find the coast of
Cornwall and Wales mysteriously reaching westward, the Irish Sea no more
than a Hudson River which barely kept the shores of Lancashire and
Cumberland from touching Ireland,--an Ireland of which the western
coast--the coast of Munster and Connaught--was prolonged a thousand
leagues towards the setting sun; while the west coast of the north of
Scotland, Ross and Sutherland, had absorbed the Hebrides and stretched
unbroken into two thousand miles of plain and mountain range--Britain no
longer but Atlantis come again and all British soil? It was to nothing
less miraculous that the thirteen original States fell heir. And what
would be the effect on the British race?
Coal and iron, silver and gold, rivers full of fish, forest and prairie
teeming with game, pasture for millions of cattle, wheat land and corn
land, cotton land and orchard for any man who chose to take them;--the
wretches struggling and stifling in the London slums having nothing to
do but grasp axe and rifle and go out to subdue the wilderness;--farms,
not by the half-acre, but by the hundred acres for every one of the
unemployed. Is it possible to doubt that the race would be strengthened,
not materially only, but in its moral qualities,--that Englishmen in
another generation would not only be a wealthier and a more powerful
people but a healthier, lustier, nobler? How then are we to suppose that
just such a change, such an uplifting, has not come about in that other
British people to whom all this has happened, who came into their
wonderful birthright four generations ago and for a century and a
quarter have been fashioning it to their will and being fashioned by it
after the will of Another? By what process of logic, English reader, are
you going to convince yourself that this race--your own with larger
opportunities--is not the finer race of the two?
I have not, be it observed, expressed the opinion that the American
national character is finer than the English; only that it is finer than
the European commonly supposes. Nor am I expressing such an opinion now
but only setting forth certain elementary considerations for the
reader's judgment. When the European sees in the individual American, or
in a dozen individual Americans, certain peculiarities, inelegancies,
and sometimes even impertinences--call them what you will,--he is too
prone to think that these are the essentials of the American character.
The essentials of the American character are the essentials of the
English character--with elbow-room. "While the outlook of the New
Yorker is wider than ours," says Mr. Archer, "his standpoint is the
same." In that elbow-room, with that wider outlook, it is likely that
new offshoots from the character will have developed--excrescences, not
perhaps in themselves always lovely--but if we remember what the trunk
is from which they spring, or what it was, we shall probably think
better, or less, of those excrescences, while remembering also the
likelihood that in the larger room and richer soil the trunk itself may
also have expanded and strengthened and solidified.
The English reader might decide for himself what justification there is
for supposing that the character of that offset from the British stock
which, a century and a quarter ago, was put in possession of this
magnificent estate should have deteriorated rather than improved as
compared with the character of that portion of the stock which remained
rooted in the old soil hemmed in between the ancient boundaries.
* * * * *
There have been, of course, many other influences at work in the
moulding of the American character, besides the mere vastness of his
continent; but the fact remains that this has been immensely the most
powerful of all the factors. English originally, the American is still
English in his essentials, modified chiefly by the circumstances of his
material environment, the magnificence of his estate, the width of his
horizons, the disciplining of his nature by the Titanic struggle with
the physical conditions of the wilderness and the necessary development
of those qualities of resourcefulness, buoyancy, and self-reliance which
the exigencies of that struggle have demanded. Moreover, what is almost
the most important item of all, his entire national life has been lived,
and that struggle conducted, in practical isolation from all contact
with other peoples. Immigrants, indeed, from all of them, the United
States has constantly been receiving; but as a nation the American
people has been singularly segregated from the rest of the earth,
blessedly free from friction with, and dependence on, other countries.
As we have seen, it has had no friction with any Power except Great
Britain; and with Great Britain itself so little that Englishmen hardly
recall that it has occurred.
It may be worth while to stop one minute to rehearse and to re-enforce
the points which so far it has been my aim to make.
* * * * *
For their own sakes, anything like conflict between the two nations is
not to be dreamed of; but, for the world's sake, an intimate alliance
between them in the cause of peace would be the most blessed conceivable
thing. There is every justification for such an alliance, not merely in
the incalculable benefits that would result, but in the original kinship
of the peoples, the permanent and fundamental sympathy of their natures,
and their community of ambitions and ways of thought. Unfortunately
these reasons for union have been obscured by a century of aloofness, so
that to-day neither people fully understands the other and they look,
one at the other, from widely different standpoints. By reason chiefly
of their isolation, in which they have had little contact with other
peoples, the Americans have come to think of Great Britain as little
less foreign (and by the accidents of their history as even more
hostile) than any other Power. Still acknowledging as an historical
fact the original kinship, they, like many a son who has gone out into
the world and prospered exceedingly, take pleasure chiefly in
contemplating how far they have travelled since they struck out for
themselves and how many characteristics they have developed which were
not part of the inheritance from the old stock. Dwelling on these they
have become blind to the essential family likeness to that old stock
which still remains their dominant trait. Moreover, seeing how during
all these years the old folk have let them go their own way, seemingly
indifferent to their future, at times, intentionally or not, making that
future none the easier of accomplishment, they have come to nurse a
resentment against those at home and will not believe that the family
still bears them an affectionate good-will quite other than it feels for
even the best-liked of the friends who are not of the same descent.
On England's part, she saw the younger ones go out into the world with
regret, strove to restrain them unwisely, obstinately, unfairly--and
failed. Since then she has been very busy, supremely occupied with her
own affairs. The young ones who had gone out into the world in, as
seemed to her, such headstrong fashion, for all that she knows now that
she was wrong, have been doing well, and she has always been glad to
hear it, but--well, they were a long way off. At times she has thought
that the young ones were somewhat too pushing--too anxious to get on
regardless of her or others' welfare,--and half-heartedly (not all
unintentionally, but certainly with no thought of alienating the
affection of the others) she has interfered or passively stood in the
young folk's way. At last the day came when she was horrified to find
that the younger branch--very prosperous and independent now--had not
only ceased to regard her as a mother but had come almost to the point
of holding her as an enemy. It was at first incredible and she strove as
best she could to put matters right and to explain how foreign to her
wishes it was and how unnatural it seemed to her that there should be
any approach to ill-feeling between them. But she does not convince the
other, partly because she herself has in her turn grown out of touch
with that other's ideas. At intervals she has met members of the younger
branch who have come home to visit and she has discovered all sorts of
new tricks of manner, new ways of speech, new points of view that they
have picked up in their new surroundings, and, like the members of the
younger branch themselves, she sees more of these little things than she
does of the character that is behind them. Her vision of the family
likeness is blurred by the intrusion of provoking little points of
difference. She sees the mannerisms, but the strength of the qualities
of which they are manifestations escapes her.
So it comes about that the two are at cross purposes. "We may call this
country Daughter," wrote G. W. Steevens, "she does not call us Mother."
The elder sincerely desires the affection of the younger--sincerely
feels affection herself; but is hampered in making the other realise her
sincerity by a constant desire to criticise those little foreign ways
that the other has acquired. Just so does a parent obscure her love for
a son by deploring the strange manners which he picks up at school; just
so is she blinded to his real qualities as a man, because he will insist
on giving his time to messing about with machinery instead of settling
down properly to study for the Church.
Burke (was it not?) spoke of his love for Ireland as "dearer than could
be justified to reason." Englishmen might well have difficulty in
justifying to their reason their affection for America; for to hear an
Englishman speak of American peculiarities and eccentricities, it would
often seem that to love such men would be pure unreason. But these
criticisms are no true index to the British national feeling for the
Americans as a people. Does a brother not love his sister because he
says rude things about her little failings? Americans hear the
criticisms and, their own hearts being alienated from Great Britain,
cannot believe that Britishers have any affection for them.
* * * * *
I am well aware that I make--and can make--no general statement from
which many readers, both in England and America, will not dissent.
Englishmen will arise to say that they do not love America; and
Americans--many Americans--will vow with their hands on their hearts
that they have the greatest affection for Great Britain. Vast numbers of
Americans will protest against being called a homogeneous people, and a
vast number more against the accusation of being still essentially
English; the fact being that it is no easier now than it was in the days
of Burke (I am sure of my author this time) to "draw up an indictment
against a whole people." A composite photograph is commonly only an
indifferent likeness of any of the individuals--least of all will the
individual be likely to recognise it as a portrait of himself. But the
type-character will stand out clearly--especially to the eyes of others
not of the type. Most of the notions of Englishmen about Americans are
drawn from the casual contact with individual Americans in England
(where from contrast with their surroundings the little peculiarities
stand out most conspicuously) or from the hasty "impressions" of
visitors who have looked only on the surface--and but a small portion of
that. Even, I am aware, after a lifetime spent in studying the two
peoples, in pondering on their likenesses and unlikenesses and striving
to measure the feeling of each for the other, there is always danger of
talking what I will ask to be permitted to call "parsnips."
* * * * *
When I first went to the United States I carried with me a commission
from certain highly reputable English papers to incorporate my
"impressions" in occasional letters. Among the earliest facts of any
moment which I was enabled to communicate to English readers was that
the middle classes in America (I was careful to explain what the "middle
classes" were in a country where none existed)--that the middle classes,
I say, lived almost entirely on parsnips. I had not arrived at this
important ethnological fact with any undue haste. I had already lived in
the United States for some three months, half of which time had been
spent in New York hotels and boarding houses and half in Northern New
York and rural New England, where, staying at farms or at the houses of
families in the smaller towns to which I bore letters of introduction, I
flattered myself that I had probed deep--Oh, ever so deep!--below the
surface and had come to understand the people as they lived in their own
homes. And my ripened judgment was that the bulk of the well-to-do
people of the country supported life chiefly by consumption of parsnips.
Some fifteen years later I was at supper at the Century Club in New
York and the small party at our table as we discussed the scalloped
oysters (which are one of the pillars of the Century) included a
well-known American author and journalist and an even better known and
much-loved artist. But why should I not mention their names? They were
Montgomery Schuyler and John La Farge. Both had been to Europe that
year--La Farge to pay his first visit to Italy, while Schuyler, whether
with or without La Farge I forget, had made a somewhat extensive trip
through rural England in, I think, a dog-cart. The conversation ran
chiefly on their experiences and suddenly Schuyler turned to me with:
"Here, you Englishman, why do the middle classes of England live chiefly
on parsnips?"
The thing is incredible--except that it happened. Schuyler, no less than
I fifteen years before, spoke in the fulness of conviction arising from
what he, no less than I, believed to have been wide and adequate
experience. The memory of that experience has made me tolerant of the
cocksure generalisations with which the Englishman who has visited
America, or the American who has been in England, for a few months
delights to regale his compatriots on his return. Quite recently a
charming American woman who is good enough to count me among her
friends, was in London for the first time in her life. She is perhaps as
typical a representative of Western American womanhood--distinctively
Western--as could be found; very good to look upon, warm-hearted,
fearless and earnest in her truth-loving, straightforward life. But in
voice, in manner, and in frankness of speech she is peculiarly and
essentially Western. She loved England and English people, so she told
me at the Carlton on the eve of her return to America,--just loved them,
but English women (and I can see her wrinkling her eyebrows at me to
give emphasis to what she said) were so _dreadfully_ outspoken: they did
say such _awful_ things! I thought I knew the one Englishwoman from
whose conversation she had derived this idea and remembering my own
parsnips, I forgave her. She has, since her return, I doubt not, dwelt
often to her friends on this amazing frankness of speech in
Englishwomen. And if she only knew what twenty Englishwomen thought of
her outspokenness!
Not long ago I heard an eminent member of the medical profession in
London, who had just returned from a trip to Canada and the United
States with representatives of the British Medical Association, telling
a ring of interested listeners all about the politics, geography,
manners, and customs of the people of America. Among other things he
explained that in America there was no such thing known as a _table d'
hôte_; all your meals at hotels and restaurants had to be ordered _à la
carte_. "I should have thought," he said, "that a good _table d' hôte_
at an hotel in New York and other towns would pay. It would be a
novelty." It may be well to explain to English readers who do not know
America, that fifteen years ago a meal _à la carte_ was, and over a
large part of the country still is, practically unknown in the United
States. The system of buying one's board and lodging in installments is
known in America as "the European plan."
If it would not be too long a digression, I would explain how this is a
cardinal principle of the American business mind. The disposition of
every American is to take over a whole contract _en bloc_, which in
England, where every man is a specialist, would be split into twenty
different transactions. The American thinks in round numbers: "What will
the whole thing come to?" he asks; while the Englishman wants to know
the items. This habit permeates American life in every department. It is
labour-saving. Few things amuse or irritate the American visitor to
England more than the having to pay individually for a number of small
conveniences which at home he is accustomed to have "thrown in"; and the
first time when he is presented with an English hotel bill (I am not
speaking of the modern semi-American hotels in London) with its infinite
list of items, is an experience that he never forgets.
All of which is only to explain that the distinguished physician, when
he spoke of the absence of _tables d'hôte_ in America, was talking
parsnips. His experience had been limited to a few hotels and
restaurants in New York and one or two other large towns.
If only it were possible to catch in some great "receiver" or "coherer,"
or some similar instrument, all the things that were said in London in
the course of twenty-four hours about the United States by people who
had been there, and all the things that were said in New York in the
same period about England by people of equal experience, and set them
down side by side, it would make entertaining reading. The wonder is,
not that we misunderstand each other as much as we do, but that somehow
we escape a vast mutual, international contempt.
Several times in the course of my residence in the United States I have
had said to me: "What! Are you an Englishman? But you don't drop your
H's!"
Which is ridiculous, is it not, English reader? But before you smile at
it, permit me to explain that it is no whit worse than when you
say:--"What! Are you an American? But you don't speak with an accent!"
Or possibly you call it a "twang" or you say "speak through your nose."
You may be dining, English reader, at, let us say, the Carlton or Savoy
when a party of Americans comes into the room--Americans of the kind
that every one knows for Americans as soon as he sees or hears them. The
women are admirably dressed--perhaps a shade too admirably--and the
costumes of the men irreproachable. But there is that something of
manner, of walk, of voice which draws all eyes to them as they advance
to their table, and the room is hushed as they arrange their seats.
"Those horrid Americans!" says one of your party and no one protests.
But at the next table to you there is seated another party of delightful
people--low-voiced, well-mannered, excellently bred in every tone and
movement. You wonder dimly if you have not met them somewhere. At all
events you would very much like to meet them. They are infinitely more
distressed than you at the behaviour of the American party which has
just come in--because they are Americans also. And I may add that they
will not be in the least flattered, if you should be lucky enough to
meet them, by your telling them that you "never would have thought it."
Perhaps, English reader, you have lived long enough in some other
country than England to have learned what a loathsome thing the
travelling Englishman often appears. Possibly you have been privileged
to hear the frank and unofficial opinion of some native of that
country--an opinion not intended for your ears, but addressed to a
compatriot of the speaker--of English people in general, based upon his
experience of those whom he has seen. Such an experience is quite
illuminating. I know few things more offensive than the behaviour of a
certain class of German when he is in Paris. The noisy, nasal American
at the Carlton or Savoy is no more representative of America than the
loud-voiced, check-suited Englishman at Delmonico's or the
Waldorf-Astoria is the man by whom you wish your nation to be judged. It
may be a purposeful provision of a higher Power that the people of all
countries should appear unprepossessing when they are abroad, for the
fostering in each nation of the spirit of patriotism; for why should any
of us be patriots if all the foreigners who came to our shores were as
inoffensive as ourselves? The truth is that those who are inoffensive
pass unnoticed. It is the occasional caricature--the parody--of the
national type that catches our eye; and on him we too often base our
judgment of a whole people.
Those Englishmen who only England know are inclined to think that the
check-suited fellow countryman is a creation of the French and German
comic press. Those who have lived outside of England for some
considerable number of years have learned better. The late Senator Hoar
in his _Autobiography of Seventy Years_ has some very shrewd remarks
about Matthew Arnold. The Senator had a cordial regard for Matthew
Arnold--"a huge liking" he calls his feeling,--and he has this
delightful sentence in regard to him: "I do not mean to say that his
three lectures on translating Homer are the greatest literary work of
our time. But I think, on the whole, that I should rather have the pair
of intellectual eyes which can see Homer as he saw him, than any other
mental quality I can think of." "But"--and mark this--"Mr. Arnold has
never seemed to me fortunate in his judgment about Americans . . . The
trouble with Mr. Arnold is that he never travelled in the United States
when on this side of the Atlantic. . . . He visited a great City or two,
but never made himself acquainted with the American people. He never
knew the sources of our power or the spirit of our people."
Senator Hoar, with a generous nature made thrice generous by the
mellowness of years, speaking of the man he hugely liked, tempered the
truth to a more than paternal mildness. But it is the truth. Matthew
Arnold, to put it bluntly, was wrong-headed in his judgment of America
and Americans to a degree which one living long in the United States
only comes slowly and reluctantly to understand. And if he so erred, how
shall all the lesser teachers from whom England gets its knowledge of
America keep straight?
But what the American people really objected to in Matthew Arnold was
not any blundering things that he said of them, but the fact that he
wore on inappropriate occasions in New York a brown checked suit.
* * * * *
And across all the gulf of more than twenty years there looms up in my
memory--"looms like some Homer-rock or Troy-tree"--the figure of the
Hon. S----y B----l flaunting his mustard coloured suit, gridironed with
a four-inch check, across three thousand miles of continent, to the
delight of cities, filling prairies with wonder and moving the Rocky
Mountains to undisguised mirth. And how could we others explain that he,
with his undeniably John-Bull-like breadth of shoulder and ruddy face,
was not a fair sample of the British aristocrat? Was he not an
Honourable and the son of a Baron and the "real thing" in every way? I
have no doubt that there still live in the prairie towns of North Dakota
and in the recesses of the mountains of Montana hundreds of men and
women, grown old now, who through all the mists of the years still
remember that lamentable figure; and to them, though they may have seen
and barely noticed ten thousand Englishmen since, the typical Britisher
still remains the Hon. S----y B----l.
It is not possible to say how far the influence of one man may extend. I
verily believe that twenty years ago those clothes of Matthew Arnold
stood for more in America's estimate of England than the _Alabama_
incident. Ex-President Cleveland, as we have seen, speaks of the
"sublime patriotism and devotion to their nation's honour" of the "plain
people of the land" who backed him up when war with Great Britain seemed
to be so near. But I wonder in how many breasts the desire for war was
inspired not by patriotism but by memory of the Hon. S----y B----l. And
when the Englishman thinks of the possibility of war with the United
States, with whom is it that he pictures himself as fighting? Some one
individual American, whom he has seen in London, drunk perhaps,
certainly noisy and offensive. Such a one stands in the mind of many an
Englishman who has not travelled as the type of the whole people of the
United States.
If it were possible for the two peoples to come to know each other as
they really are--if one half of the population of each country could for
a season change places with one half of the other, so that all the
individuals of both nations would be acquainted with the ways and
thoughts of the other, not as the comic artists draw them, nor as they
are when they are abroad, but as they live their daily lives at
home--then indeed would all thought of difference between the two
disappear, and war between them be as impossible as war between Surrey
and Kent.
CHAPTER V
THE AMERICAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN
The Isolation of the United States--American Ignorance of the
World--Sensitiveness to Criticism--Exaggeration of their Own
Virtues--The Myth of American Chivalrousness--Whence it
Originated--The Climatic Myth--International Marriages--
English Manners and American--The View of Womanhood in
Youth--Co-education of the Sexes--Conjugal Morality--The
Artistic Sense in American Women--Two Stenographers--An
Incident of Camp-Life--"Molly-be-damned"--A Nice Way of
Travelling--How do they do it?--Women in Public Life--The
Conditions which Co-operate--The Anglo-Saxon Spirit again.
It will be roughly true to say that the Englishman's misunderstanding of
America is generally the result of misinformation--of "parsnips"--of
having had reported to him things which are superficial and untrue;
whereas the American's misunderstanding of England is chiefly the result
of his absorption in his own affairs and lack of a standard of
comparison. The Americans as a people have been until recently, and
still are in only a moderately less degree, peculiarly ignorant of other
peoples and of the ways of the world.
This has been unfortunate, so far as their judgment of England is
concerned, in two ways,--first, as has already been said, because they
have had no opportunity of measuring Great Britain against other
nations, so that one and all are equally foreign, and second and more
positively, in the general misconception in the American mind as to the
character and aims of the British Empire and the temper of British rule.
From the same authorities, the popular histories and school manuals, as
supplied the American people for so long with their ideas of the conduct
of the British troops in the Revolutionary War, they also learned of
India and the British; and the one fact which every American, twenty
years ago, knew about British India was that the English blew Sepoys
from the mouths of cannon. Every American youth saw in his school
history a picture of the thing being done. It helped to point the moral
of British brutalities in the War of Independence and it was beaten into
the plastic young minds until an impression was made which was never
effaced. Of late years not a few Americans have arisen to tell the
people something of the truth about British rule in India--of its
uprightness, its beneficence, its tolerance,--but it will be a
generation yet before the people as a whole has any approximate
conception of the facts.
It was in no way to the discredit of the American people--and enormously
to their advantage--that they were for so long ignorant of the world.
How should they have been otherwise when separated from that world by
three thousand miles of ocean? They had, moreover, in the problems
connected with the establishment of their own government, and the
expansion of that government across the continent, enough to occupy
their thoughts and energies. For a century the people lived
self-concentrated, introspective, their minds filled only with thoughts
of themselves. If foreign affairs were discussed at all it was in
curiously childlike and impracticable terms. The nation grew up a
nation of provincials (there is no other word for it), with a
provincialism which was somewhat modified, but still provincial, in the
cities of the Atlantic coast, and which, after all, had a dignity of its
own from the mere fact that it was continent-wide.
The Spanish-American War brought the people suddenly into contact with
the things of Europe and widened their horizon. The war itself was only
an accident; for the growth of American commerce, the increase of
wealth, the uncontainable expansive force of their industrial energy,
must have compelled a departure from the old isolation under any
circumstances. The quarrel with Spain did but furnish, as it were, a
definite taking-off place for the leap which had to be made.[113:1]
Since then, foreign politics and foreign affairs have acquired a new
interest for Americans. They are no longer topics entirely alien from
their every-day life and thoughts. It would still be absurd to pretend
that the affairs of Europe (or for that matter of Asia) have anything
like the interest for Americans that they have for Europeans, or that
the educated American is not as a rule still seriously uninformed on
many matters (all except the bare bones of facts and dates) of
geography, of ethnology, of world-politics which are elementary matters
to the Englishman of corresponding education;[113:2] but with their
_début_ as a World-Power--above all with the acquisition of their
colonial dependencies--Americans have become (I use the phrase in all
courtesy) immensely more intelligent in their outlook on the affairs of
the world. With a longer experience of the difficulties of colonial
government, they will also come to appreciate more nearly at its true
value the work which Great Britain has done for humanity.
Americans may retort that their knowledge of Europe was at least no
scantier than the Englishman's knowledge of America, and the mistakes of
travelling Englishmen in regard to the size, the character, and the
constitution of the country have been a fruitful source of American
witticism. But why should Englishmen know anything of the United
States? The affairs of the United States were, after all, however big,
the affairs of the United States and not of any other part of the rest
of the world; while the affairs of Europe were the affairs of all the
world outside of the United States. Undoubtedly the American could
fairly offset the Englishman's ignorance of America against the
American's ignorance of England; but what has never failed to strike an
Englishman is the American's ignorance of other parts of the world,
which might be regarded as common to both. They were not common to both;
for, as has been said, since the beginning of her history, which has
stretched over some centuries, England has been constantly mixed up with
the affairs, not only of Europe, but of the remoter parts of the earth,
while the United States for the single century of her history has lived
insulated and almost solely intent on her own affairs. So though the
American has no adequate retort against the Englishman for his
ignorance, he need not defend it. It has been an accident of his
geographical situation and needs no more apology than the Rocky
Mountains. But, like the Rocky Mountains, it is a fact which has had a
distinct influence on his character. It is probably unavoidable that a
people--as an individual--which lives a segregated life, with its
thoughts turned almost wholly on itself, should come to exaggerate,
perhaps its own weaknesses, but certainly its virtues.
The boy who lives secluded from companionship, when he goes out into the
world, will find not merely that he is diffident and sensitive about his
own defects, real or imaginary, but that he is different from other
people. It may take him all his life to learn--perhaps he will never
learn--that his emotional and intellectual experiences are no prodigies
of sentiment and phoenixes of thought, but the common experiences of
half his fellows. It has been such a life of seclusion that the American
people lived--though they hardly know it (and perhaps some American
readers will resent the statement), because the mere fact of their
seclusion has prevented them from seeing how secluded, as compared with
other peoples, they have been. It is true that individual Americans of
the well-to-do classes travel more (and more intelligently) than any
other people except the English; but this, as leavening the nation, is a
small off-set against the daily lack of mental contact with foreign
affairs at home.
But if this sheltered boy be further occasionally subjected to the
inspection and criticism of some one from the outside world--a candid
and outspoken elderly relative--he is likely to become, on the one hand,
morbidly sensitive about those things which the other finds to blame,
and, on the other, no less puffed up with pride in whatever is awarded
praise.
Both these tendencies have been acutely developed in the American
character--an extraordinary sensitiveness to criticism by outsiders of
certain national foibles, and a no less conspicuous belief in the heroic
proportions of their good qualities. For surely no people has ever been
blessed in its seclusion with such an abundance of criticism of singular
candour. The frank brutality with which the travelling Englishman has
made his opinions known on any peculiar trait or unusual institution
which he has been pleased to think that he has noticed in the United
States has been vastly more ill-mannered than anything in the manners of
the Americans themselves on which he has animadverted so freely. The
thing most comparable to it--most nearly as ill-mannered--is, perhaps,
the frank brutality with which the travelling American expresses
himself--and herself--in regard to things in Europe. In it, in fact, we
see again another aspect of the same fundamentally English trait,--the
insistence on the sovereignty of the individual--and Americans come by
it legitimately. Every time that they display it they do but make
confession of their original Anglo-Saxon descent and essentially English
nature. The Englishman in America has, however, had some excuse for his
readiness to criticise, in the interest, the anxiety, with which, at
least until recent years, the Americans have invited his opinions. But
if that has gone some way to justify his expression of those opinions,
it has furnished no sort of excuse for the lack of tact and breeding
which he has shown in the process. The American does not commonly wait
for the invitation.
"My! But isn't that quaint! Now in America we . . ." etc. So speaks an
uncultivated American on seeing something that strikes him--or her--as
novel in London, not unkindly critical, but anxious to give information
about his country--and uninvited. But whereas the Englishman is so
accustomed to the abuse and criticism of other peoples that the harmless
chatter of the American ripples more or less unheeded by him, the
American, less case-hardened in his isolation, hears the Englishman's
bluntly worded expression of contempt, and it hurts. It does not hurt
nearly as much now as it did twenty years ago; but the harm has largely
been done.
The harm would not be so serious but for the American sensitiveness
bred of his seclusion,--if that is (at the risk of seeming to repeat
myself I must again say) he knew enough of the world to know that he
himself has precisely the same critical inclination as the Englishman
and that it is a trait inherited from common ancestors. The Anglo-Saxon
race acquired early in its life the conviction that it was a trifle
better than any other section of the human kind. And it is justified.
We--Americans and Englishmen alike--hold that we are better than any
other people. That the root-trait has developed somewhat differently in
the two portions of the family is an accident.
The Englishman--who, when at home, has himself lived, not entirely
secluded, but in a measure shut off from contact with other peoples--by
continual going abroad and never-ceasing friction with his neighbours,
by perpetual disheartenment with the perplexities of his colonial
empire, has become less of a critic than a grumbler; and to do him
justice he is, in speech, infinitely more contemptuous of his own
government than he is of the American or any other. The American on the
contrary remains cheerfully, light-heartedly, garrulously critical. He
comes out in the world and gazes on it young-eyed, and he prattles: "My
father is bigger than your father, and my sister has longer hair than
yours, and my money box is larger than yours." It is neither unkindly
meant nor, by Englishmen, very unkindly taken. It is less offensive than
the mature, corrosive sullenness of the Englishman; but it is the same
thing. "The French foot-guards are dressed in blue and all the marching
regiments in white; which has a very foolish appearance. And as for blue
regimentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the Artillery," says
the footman in Moore's _Zeluco_.
Similarly, when he has been praised, the lad has plumed himself unduly
on the thing that found approval. He would not do it now; for the
American people of to-day is, as it were, grown up; but, again, the harm
has been done. Americans rarely make the mistake of underestimating the
excellence of their virtues. Nor is it their fault, but that of their
critics.
The American people labours under delusions about its own character and
qualities in several notable particulars. It exaggerates its own energy
and spirit of enterprise, its sense of humour and its chivalrousness
towards women. That it should be aware that it possesses each of these
qualities in a considerable degree would do no harm, for self-esteem is
good for a nation; but it believes that it possesses them to the
exclusion of the rest of mankind. And that is unfortunate; for it makes
the individual American assume the lack of these qualities in the
English and thereby decreases his estimate of the English character. I
am not endeavouring to reduce the American's good opinion of
himself--only to make him think better of the Englishman by assuring him
that in each of these particulars there is remarkably little to choose
between them. And what excellence he has in each he owes to the fact
that he is in the main English in origin.
That Americans should think that they have a higher respect for
womanhood than any other people is not surprising; for every other
people thinks precisely the same thing. They would be unique among
peoples if they thought otherwise. Frenchman, German, Italian,
Spaniard, Greek--each and every one who has not had his eyes opened by
travel and knowledge of the world believes, with no less sincerity of
conviction than the American, that to him alone of all peoples has it
been vouchsafed to know how duly to reverence the divine feminine. To
the Englishman it seems that the German not seldom treats his wife much
as if she were a cow; and he is sometimes distressed at the way in
which, for all the pretty things he says to her, the Frenchman, not of
the labouring classes only, will allow his wife to work for and wait on
him. While the language which an Italian can, on occasions, use towards
the partner of his joys is, to English ears, appalling. But each goes on
serenely satisfied of his own superiority. You others, you may pay
lip-service, yes; but deep down, in the heart of hearts--_we_ know. The
American has as good a right to this same foible as any other; but what
is to be noted is that whereas Englishmen laugh at the pretensions of
Continental peoples, they have been willing to accept the chivalry of
the American at his own valuation: the fact being that the valuation is
not originally American, but was made by the travelling Englishmen of
the past who communicated their appraisement to the people at home as
well as to the American whom they complimented. Englishmen of the
present day have accepted the belief as an inheritance and without
question; for it was at least a generation and a half ago that the myth
first obtained vogue, and the two facts most commonly adduced in its
support by the English visitors who spread it were, first, that women
could walk about the streets of New York or any other American city,
unattended and at such hours as pleased them, without being insulted;
and, second (absurdly enough), the provision of special "ladies'
entrances" to hotels, which seem to have enormously impressed several
English visitors to the United States who afterwards wrote their
"impressions."
For the first of these, it is a mere matter of local custom and police
regulation. When it is understood that in certain streets of certain
cities, at certain hours of the day, no women walk unattended except
such as desire to be insulted, it is probable that other women, who go
there in ignorance, will suffer inconvenience. Nor has the difference in
local custom any bearing whatever on the respective morality of
different localities. These things are arranged differently in different
countries; that is all. Moreover, in this particular a great change has
come over American cities in late years, nor are all American cities or
all English by any means alike.
A similar change has come in the matter of "ladies' entrances" to
hotels. If the provision of the separate doors was a sign of peculiar
chivalry, are we then to conclude that their disappearance shows that
chivalry is decaying? By no means. It only means that the hotels are
improving. The truth is that as the typical old-fashioned hotel was
built and conducted in America, with the main entrance opening directly
from the street into the large paved lobby, where men congregated at all
hours of the day to talk politics and to spit, where the porters banged
and trundled luggage, and whither, through the door opening to one side,
came the clamour of the bar-room, it was out of the question that women
should frequent that common entrance. Had a hotel constructed and
managed on the same principles been set down in any English town, women
would have declined to use it at all, nor would Englishmen have
expected their womenfolk to do so. Americans avoided the difficulty by
creating the "ladies' entrance." But it was no evidence of superior
chivalry on the part of the people that, having devised a place not fit
for woman's occupancy and more unpleasant than was to be found in any
other part of the world, they provided (albeit rather inadequate) means
by which women could avoid visiting it.
Once I saw two young English girls--sweet girls, tall and graceful, with
English roses blooming in their cheeks--come down-stairs in the evening,
after dinner, as they might have done in any hotel to which they had
been accustomed in Europe, to the lobby of the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New
York. It was a time of some political excitement and there are enough
men living now who remember what the Fifth Avenue Hotel used to be at
such seasons twenty years ago. The girls--it was probably their first
night on American soil and they could not stand being cooped up in their
room upstairs all the evening--made their way to the nearest seat and
sat down clinging each to the other's hand. Around them surged perhaps a
hundred men, chewing, spitting, smoking, slapping each other on the
backs, and laughing coarsely. The girls gazed in wonder and with visibly
increasing embarrassment for perhaps five minutes, before they slipped
away, the roses in their cheeks doubly carmine and still clinging each
to the other's hand.
For the benefit of my companion (whose appearance indicated an
Englishman) an American on an adjoining seat held forth to his friends
on what he called the "indecency" of the conduct of the girls in coming
down to the public hall and the "effrontery" of Englishwomen in
general.
In hotels of the modern type there is no need for women to use a
separate entrance or to draw their skirts aside and hurry through the
public passages. But it is sad if we must conclude that the building of
such hotels is an evidence of dying national chivalry.
Every American firmly believes that he individually, as well as each of
his countrymen, has by heritage a truer respect for womanhood than the
peoples of less happy countries are able to appreciate. But many
Americans also believe that every Englishman is rough and brutal to his
wife, who does daily all manner of menial offices for him, a belief
which is probably akin to the climatic fiction and of Continental
origin. In the old days, when there was no United States of America, the
peoples of the sunny countries of Southern Europe jibed at the English
climate; and with ample justification. English writers have never denied
that justification--in comparison with Southern Europe; and volumes
could be compiled of extracts from English literature, from Shakespeare
downwards, in abuse of British fog and mist and rain. But because Nice
and Naples are entitled to give themselves airs, under what patent do
Chicago and Pittsburgh claim the same right? Why should Englishmen
submit uncomplainingly when Milwaukee and Duluth arrogate to themselves
the privilege of sneering at them which was conceded originally and
willingly enough to Cannes? Riverside in California, Columbia in South
Carolina, Colorado Springs or Old Point Comfort--these, and such as
they, may boast, and no one has ground for protest; but it is time to
"call for credentials" when Buffalo, New Haven, and St. Paul and the
rest propose to come in in the same company. If, in the beginning of
things, English writers had had to compare the British climate not with
that of Europe but with the northern part of the United States, the
references to it in English literature would constitute a hymn of
thanksgiving.
As the case stands, however, the people of all parts of the United
States alike, in many of which mere existence is a hardship for some
months in the year, are firmly convinced that the inhabitants of the
British Isles are in comparison with themselves profoundly to be pitied
for their deplorable climate; and it is probable that the prevailing
idea as to the Englishman's habitual treatment of his wife has much the
same origin. It is an inheritance of the Continental belief that John
Bull sold his womenfolk at Smithfield. The frequency of international
marriages and the continued stream of travel across the Atlantic is, of
course, beginning to correct the popular American point of view, but
there are still millions of honest and intelligent people in the United
States who, when they read that an American girl is going to be married
to an Englishman, pity her from their hearts in the belief that, for the
sake of a coronet or some such bauble, she is selling herself to become
a sort of domestic drudge.
Occasionally also even international marriages turn out unhappily; and
whenever that is the case the American people hear of it in luxuriant
detail. But of the thousands of happy unions nothing is said. Not many
years ago there was a conspicuous case, wherein an American woman, whom
the people of the United States loved much as Englishmen loved the
Empress Frederick or the Princess Alice, failed to find happiness with
an English husband. Of the rights and wrongs of that case, neither I nor
the American people in the mass know anything, but it is the generally
accepted belief in the United States that the lady's husband was some
degrees worse than Bluebeard. I would not venture to hazard a guess at
the number of times that I have heard a conversation on this subject
clinched with the argument: "Well, now, look at N---- G----!" Against
that one instance the stories of a thousand American women who are
living happy lives in Europe would not weigh. If they do not confess
their unhappiness, indeed, "it is probably only because they are proud,
as a free-born American girl should be, and would die rather than to let
others know the humiliations to which they are subjected."
"Oh, yes, you Englishmen!" an American woman will say, "your manners are
better than our American men's and you are politer to us in little
things. But you despise us in your hearts!" It is an argument which, in
anything less than a lifetime, there is no way of disproving. American
men also, of course, habitually comfort themselves with the same
assurance, viz.,--that with less outward show of courtesy, they cherish
in their hearts a higher ideal of womanhood than an Englishman can
attain to. Precisely at what point this possession of a higher ideal
begins to manifest itself in externals does not appear. After twenty
years of intimacy in American homes I have failed to find any trace of
it.
Let me not be misunderstood! I know scores of beautiful homes in the
United States, in many widely sundered cities, where the men are as
courteous, as chivalrous, as devoted to their wives--and where the women
are as sweet and tender to, and as wholly wrapped up in, their
husbands--as in any homes on earth. As I write, the faces of men and
women rise before me, from many thousand miles away, whom I admire and
love as much as one can admire and love one's fellow-beings. There are
these homes I hope and believe--there are noble men and beautiful women
finding and making for themselves and each other the highest happiness
of which our nature is capable--in every country. But we are not now
speaking of the few or of the best individuals, but of averages; and
after twenty years of opportunity for observing I have entirely failed
to find justification for believing that there is any peculiar inward
grace in the American which belies the difference in his outward manner.
This is, of course, only an individual opinion,[126:1] which is
necessarily subject to correction by any one who may have had superior
opportunities for forming a trustworthy judgment. I contend, however,
not as a matter of opinion, but as what seems to me to be a certainty,
that whatever may be the inward feeling in regard to the other sex on
the part of the men of either nation after they have arrived at mature
years, the young Englishman, as he comes to manhood, possesses a much
higher ideal of womanhood than is possessed by the young American of
corresponding age. And I hold to this positively in spite of the fact
that many Americans possessing a large knowledge of transatlantic
conditions may very possibly not admit it.
I rejoice to believe that to the majority of English youths of decent
bringing up at the age at which they commonly leave the public school to
go to the university, womanhood still is a very white and sacred thing,
in presence of which a mere man or boy can but be bashful and awkward
from very reverence and consciousness of inferiority, even as it surely
was a quarter of a century ago and as, at the same time, it as surely
was not to the youth of the United States. Again, of course, in both
countries there are differences between individuals, differences between
sets and cliques; but I am not mistaken about the tone of the English
youth of my own day nor am I mistaken about the tone of the American
youths, of the corresponding class, with whom I have come in intimate
contact in the United States. Their language about, their whole mental
attitude towards, woman was during my first years in America an
amazement and a shock to me. It has never ceased to be other than
repellent.
The greater freedom of contact allowed to the youth of both sexes in the
United States, and above all the co-educational institutions (especially
those of a higher grade), must of course have some effect, whether for
good or ill. It may be that the early-acquired knowledge of the American
youth is in the long run salutary; that his image of womanhood is, as is
claimed, more "practical," and likely to form a better basis for
happiness in life, than the dream and illusion of the English boy; but
here we get into a quagmire of mere speculation in which no individual
opinion has any virtue whatsoever.
I am well aware also of the serious offence that will be given to
innumerable good and earnest people in the United States by what I now
say. This is no place to discuss the question of co-education. I am
speaking only of one aspect of it, and even if it were to be granted
that in that one aspect its results are evil, that evil may very
possibly be outweighed many times over by the good which flows from it
in other directions. Even in expressing the opinion that there is this
one evil result, I am conscious that I shall call down upon myself much
indignation and some contempt. It will be said that I have not studied
the subject scientifically (which may be true) and that I am not
acquainted with what the statistics show (which is less true), and that
my observation has been prejudiced and superficial. Let me say however
that I have been brought to the conclusions to which I have been forced
not by prejudice but against prejudice and when I would have much
preferred to feel otherwise. Let me also say that my condemnation is not
directed against the elementary public schools so much as against that
more select class of co-educational establishments for pupils of less
juvenile years. It would, I think, be interesting to know what
percentage of the girls at present at a given number of such
establishments are the daughters of parents--fathers especially--who
were at those same institutions in their youth. It is a subject
which--so amazed was I, coming with an English-trained mind, at certain
things which were said in incidental conversation--I sought a good many
opportunities of enquiring into; with the result that I know that there
are some parents who, though they had fifty daughters, would never allow
one to go to the institutions at which they themselves spent some years.
And this condemnation covers, to my present memory, five separate
institutions scattered from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River.
* * * * *
"If you marry an American girl," says _Life_--I quote from memory,--"you
may be sure that you will not be the first man she has kissed. If you
marry an English one, you may be certain you will not be the last."
Whether this is true, viz., that, granting that the American girl is,
before marriage, exposed to more temptation than her English sister, the
latter more than makes up for it in the freedom of married life, is
another quagmire. No statistics, whether of marriage, of divorce, or of
the ratio of increase in population, are of any use as a guide. Each man
or woman, who has had any opportunity of judging, will be guided solely
by the narrow circle of his or her personal experience; and I know that
the man whose opinion on the subject I would most regard holds exactly
opposite views to myself--and what my own may be I trust I may be
excused from stating. But while on the subject of the relative conjugal
morality of the two peoples opinions will differ widely with individual
experience, I have never met a shadow of disagreement in competent
opinion in regard to the facts about the youth of the two countries. It
may be, as I have heard a clever woman say, that the way for a member of
her sex to get the greatest enjoyment out of life is to be brought up in
America and married in England. If so let us rejoice that so many
charming women choose the way which opens to them the possibility of the
greatest felicity.
There is, of course, a widespread impression in England that American
women as a rule are not womanly. The average American girl acquires when
young a self-possession and an ability to converse in company which
Englishwomen only, and then not always, acquire much later in life.
Therefore the American girl appears, to English eyes, to be "forward,"
and she is assumed to possess all the vices which go with "forwardness"
in an English maiden. Which is entirely unjust. Let us remember that
there is hardly a girl growing up in England to-day who would not have
been considered forward and ill-mannered to an almost intolerable degree
by her great-grandmother. But that the girls of to-day are any the less
womanly, in all that is sweet and essential in womanliness, than any
generation of their ancestors, I for one do not believe. Nor do I
believe that in another generation, when they will perhaps, as a matter
of course, possess all the social precocity (as it seems to us) of the
American girl of to-day, they will thereby be any the less true and
tender women than their mothers.
In particular, are American girls supposed to be so commercially
case-hardened that their artistic sensibilities have been destroyed. A
notorious American "revivalist" some years ago returned from a
much-advertised trip to England and told his American congregations of
the sinfulness which he had seen in the Old World. Among other things he
had seen, so he said, more tipsy men and women in the streets of London
in (I think) a month than he had seen in the streets of his native town
of Topeka, Kansas, in some--no matter what--large number of years. Very
possibly he was right. But he omitted to say that he had also seen
several million more sober ones. A population of 6,000,000 frequently
contains more drunkards than one of 30,000. It also contains more
metaphysicians. On the same principle it is entirely likely that the
American girl, who talks so much, says many more foolish things than the
English one who, if she can help it, never talks at all. The American
girl is only a girl after all, and because she has acquired a
conversational fluency which the Englishwoman will only arrive at twenty
years later, it is not just to suppose that she must also have acquired
an additional twenty years' maturity of mind.
Most English readers are familiar with the picture of the American girl
who flits through Europe seeing nothing in the Parthenon or in Whitehall
beyond an inferiority in size and splendour to the last new insurance
company's building in New York. She has been a favourite character in
fiction, and the name of the artist who first imagined her has long been
lost. Perhaps she was Daisy Miller's grandmother. In reality, in spite
of that lack of reverence which is undoubtedly a national American
characteristic, the average American woman has an almost passionate love
for those glories of antiquity which her own country necessarily lacks,
such as few Englishwomen are capable of feeling.
"How in our hearts we envy you the mere names of your streets!" said an
American woman to me once. It is not easy for an English man or woman to
conceive what romance and wonder cluster round the names of Fleet Street
and the Mall to the minds of many educated Americans. We, if we are
away from them for half a dozen years, long for them in our exile and
rejoice in them on our return. The American of sensibility feels that
he--and more especially she--has been cut off from them for as many
generations and adores them with an ardour proportionately magnified.
But he (or she) would not exchange Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Euclid
Avenue or the Lake Shore Drive, as the case may be, for all London.
It was once my fortune to show over Westminster Abbey an American woman
whose name, by reason of her works--sound practical common-sense
works,--has come to be known throughout the United States, and I heard
"the wings of the dead centuries beat about her ears." I took her to
Poet's Corner. She turned herself slowly about and looked at the names
carved on either side of her, and then looked down and saw the names
that lay graven beneath her feet; and she dropped sobbing on her knees
upon the pavement. Johnson was not kind to the American colonies in his
life. Those tears which fell upon his name, where it is cut into the
slab of paving, were part of America's revenge.
We all remember Kipling's "type-writer girl" in San Francisco,--"the
young lady who in England would be a Person,"--who suddenly quoted at
him Théophile Gautier. It is an incident which many Englishmen have read
with incredulity, but which has nothing curious in it to the American
mind. A stenographer in my own offices subsequently, I have heard,
married a rich owner of race-horses and her dinners I understand are
delightful. She was an excellent stenographer.
In all frontier communities, where women are few and the primitive
instincts have freer play than in more artificial societies, there
blossoms a certain rough and ready chivalrousness which sets respect of
womanhood above all laws and makes every man a self-constituted champion
of the sex. This may be seen in a thousand communities scattered over
the farther West; but it is no outgrowth of the American character, for
it flourishes in all new societies in all parts of the world, no matter
to what nationality the men of those societies belong.
In a certain mining camp, late at night, a man--a man of some means, the
son of a banker in a neighbouring town--was walking with a woman.
Neither was sober and the woman fell to the ground. The man kicked her
and told her to get up. As she did not comply he cursed her and kicked
her again. Then chanced to come along one Ferguson, a gambler and a
notoriously "bad man," who bade the other stop abusing the woman,
whereupon he was promptly told to go to ---- and mind his own business.
Ferguson replied that if the other touched the woman again he would
shoot him. It was at this point that the altercation brought me out of
my cabin, for the thing was happening almost where my doorstep (had I
had a doorstep) ought to have been. The banker's son paid no heed to the
warning, and once more proceeded to kick the woman. Thereupon Ferguson
shot him. And, with the weapon which Ferguson carried and his ability as
a marksman, when he shot, it might be safely regarded as final.
No attempt was made to punish Ferguson. The deputy sheriff, arriving on
the scene, heard his story and mine and those of one or two others who
had heard or seen more or less of what passed; and Ferguson was a free
man. Nor was there any shadow of a suggestion in camp that justice
should take any other course. The fact was established that the dead man
had been abusing a woman. Ferguson had only done what any other man in
camp must have done under the same circumstances.
And while the banker's son was a person of some standing, there was
certainly nothing in her whom he had maltreated, beyond her mere
womanhood, to constitute a claim on one grain of respect.
I trust that I am not reflecting on the chivalry of the camp when I
record the fact that the name by which the lady was universally known
was "Molly-be-damned." The camp, to a man, idolised her.
* * * * *
One of my earliest revelations of the capacity of the American woman was
vouchsafed to me in this way:
A party of us, perhaps fifteen in all, had travelled a distance of some
two thousand miles to assist at the opening of a new line of railway in
the remote Northwest. We duly arrived at the little mountain town at
which the junction was to be made between the line running up from the
south and that running down from the north, over which we had come. The
ceremony of driving the last spike was conducted with due solemnity,
after which a "banquet" was given to us by the Mayor and citizens of the
small community. After the banquet--which was really a luncheon--we
again boarded our train to complete the run to the southern end of the
line, a number of the citizens of the town with their wives accompanying
us on the jaunt. It chanced to be my privilege to escort to the car,
and for the remainder of the journey to sit beside, the wife of the
editor of the local paper. She was pretty, charming, and admirably
dressed. We talked of many things,--of America and England, of the red
Indians, and of books,--when in a pause in the conversation she
remarked:
"I think this is such a nice way of travelling, don't you?"
It puzzled me. What did she mean? Was she referring to the fact that we
were on a special train composed of private cars, or what? The truth did
not at first occur to me--that she was referring to railway travelling
as a whole, it being the first time that she had ever been on or seen a
train. Explanations followed. She had been brought by her parents, soon
after the close of the Civil War, when two or three years old, across
the plains in a prairie schooner (the high-topped waggon in which the
pioneers used to make their westward pilgrimage), taking some four
months for the trip from the old home in, I think, Kentucky. At all
events she was a Southerner. Since then during her whole life she had
known no surroundings but those of the little mining settlement huddled
in among the mountains, her longest trips from home having been for a
distance of thirty or forty miles on horseback or on a buckboard. She
had lived all her life in log cabins and never known what it meant to
have a servant. She read French and Italian, but could not take any
interest in German. She sketched and painted, and was incomparably
better informed on matters of art than I, though she knew the Masters
only, of course, through the medium of prints and engravings. What she
most dearly longed to do in all the world was to see a theatre--Irving
for choice--and to hear some one of the Italian operas, with the
libretti of which, as well as the music, so far as her piano would
interpret for her, she was already familiar.
Now at last the railway had come and she was, from that day forward,
within some six days' travelling of New York; and her husband had
faithfully promised that they should go East together for at least three
or four weeks that winter. And as she sat and talked in her soft
Southern voice, there in the heart of the wilds which had been all the
world to her, she might, so far as a mere man's eyes could judge, have
been dropped down in any country house in England to be a conspicuously
charming member of any charming house-party.
Familiarity with similar instances, though I think with none more
striking, has robbed the miracle, so far as its mere outward
manifestation is concerned, of something of its wonder; but the inward
marvel of it remains as inexplicable as ever. By what power or instinct
do they do it? With nothing of inheritance, so far as can be judged, to
justify any aspirations towards the good or beautiful, among the poorest
and hardest of surroundings, with none but the most meagre of
educational facilities, by what inherent quality is it that the American
woman, not now and again only, but in her tens of thousands, rises to
such an instinctive comprehension of what is good and worth while in
life, that she becomes, not through any external influence, but by mere
process of her own development, the equal of those who have spent their
lives amid all that is most beautifying and elevating of what the world
has to afford? When she takes her place, graciously and composedly, as
the mistress of some historic home or amid the surroundings of a Court,
we say that it is her "adaptability." But adaptability can do no more
than raise one to the level of one's surroundings--not above them. Is it
ambition? But whence derived? And by what so tutored and guided that it
reaches only for what is good? How is it tempered that she remains all
pure womanly at the last?
It may be that the extent to which, especially in the Western States,
American women of wealth and position are called upon to bear their
share in public work--in the management of art societies, the building
of art buildings and public libraries, the endowment and conduct of
hospitals, and in educational work of all kinds--gives them such an
opportunity of showing the qualities which are in them, as is denied to
their English sisters of similar position but who live in older
established communities. And there are, of course, women in England who
lead lives as beautiful and as beneficent as are lived anywhere upon
earth. The miracle is that the American woman--and, again I say, not now
and again but in her tens of thousands--becomes what she is out of the
environment in which her youth has so often been lived.
It will be necessary later to refer to the larger part played by
American women, as compared with English, in the intellectual life of
the country,--a matter which itself has, as will be noticed, no little
bearing on the question of the merits and demerits of the co-education
of the sexes. The best intellectual work, the best literary work, the
best artistic work, is still probably done by the men in the United
States; but an immensely larger part of that work is done by women than
in England, and in ordinary society (outside of the professional
literary and artistic circles) it is the women who are generally best
informed, as will be seen, on literature and art. To which is to be
added the fact that they take a much livelier and more intelligent
interest than do the majority of Englishwomen in public affairs, and
assume a more considerable share of the work of a public or quasi-public
character in educational and similar matters. It might be supposed that
this greater prominence of women in the national life of the country was
in itself a proof that men deferred more to them and placed them on a
higher level; but when analysed it will be found far from being any such
proof. Rather is woman's position an evidence of, and a result of, man's
neglect. By which it is not intended to imply any discourteous or
inconsiderate neglect; but merely that American men have been, and still
are, of necessity more busy than Englishmen, more absorbed in their own
work, whereby women have been left to live their own lives and thrown on
their own resources much more than in England. The mere pre-occupation
of the men, moreover, necessarily leaves much work undone which, for the
good of society, must be done; and women have seized the opportunity of
doing it. They have been especially ready to do so, inasmuch as the
spirit of work and of pushfulness is in the atmosphere about them, and
they have been educated at the same schools as the men. The contempt of
men for idleness, in a stage of society when there was more than enough
work for all men to do, necessarily extended to the women. It is not
good, in the United States, for any one, woman hardly more than man, to
be idle.
Women being compelled to organise their own lives for themselves, they
carried into that organisation the spirit of energy and enthusiasm which
filled the air of the young and growing communities. Finding work to
their hands to do, they have done it--taking, and in the process fitting
themselves to take, a much more prominent part in the communal life than
is borne by their sisters in England or than those sisters are to-day,
in the mass, qualified to assume. Precisely so (as often in English
history) do women, in some beleaguered city or desperately pressed
outpost, turn soldiers. No share in, or credit for, the result is to be
assigned to any peculiar forethought, deference, or chivalrousness on
the part of the men, their fellows in the fight. It is to the women that
credit belongs.
And while we are thus comparing the position of women in America with
their position in England, it is to be noted that so excellent an
authority among Frenchmen as M. Paul Cambon, in speaking of the position
of women in England, uses precisely the same terms as an Englishman must
use when speaking of the conditions in America. Americans have gone a
step farther--are a shade more "Feminist"--than the English, impelled,
as has been seen, by the peculiar conditions of their growing
communities in a new land. But it is only a step and accidental.
Englishmen looking at America are prone to see only that step, whereas
what Frenchmen or other Continental Europeans see is that both
Englishmen and Americans together have travelled far, and are still
travelling fast, on a path quite other than that which is followed by
the rest of the peoples. In their view, the single step is
insignificant. What is obvious is that in both is working the same
Anglo-Saxon trait--the tendency to insist upon the independence of the
individual. Feminism--the spirit of feminine progress--is repugnant to
the Roman Catholic Church; and we would not look to see it developing
strongly in Roman Catholic countries. But, what is more important, it is
repugnant to all peoples which set the community or the state or the
government before the individual, that is to say to all peoples except
the Anglo-Saxon.
We see here again, as we shall see in many things, how powerless have
been all other racial elements in the United States to modify the
English character of the people. The weight of all those elements must
be, and, so far as they have any weight, is directly against the
American tendency to feminine predominance. All the Germans, all the
Irish, all the Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or other foreigners who
are in the United States to-day or have ever come to the United States
have not, as Germans, or Irish, or Frenchmen, contributed among them one
particle, one smallest impulse, to the position which women hold in the
life of the country to-day; rather has it been achieved in defiance of
the instincts and ideas of each of those by the English spirit which
works irrepressibly in the people. There could hardly be stronger
testimony to the dominating quality of that spirit. One may approve of
the conditions as they have been evolved; or one may not. One may be
Feminist or anti-Feminist. But whether it be for good or evil, the
position which women hold in the United States to-day they hold by
virtue of the fact that the American people is _Anglais_--an English or
Anglo-Saxon people.
* * * * *
And in spite of all the precautions that I have taken to make myself
clear and to avoid offence, I feel that some word of explanation, lest I
be misunderstood, is still needed. It is not here said that American men
do not place woman on a higher plane than any Continental European
people. I earnestly believe that both branches of the Anglo-Saxon stock
do hold to a higher ideal of womanhood than some (and for all I know to
the contrary, than all) of the peoples of Europe. What I am denying is
that Americans have any greater reverence for women, any higher
chivalrousness, than Englishmen. And this denial I make not with any
desire to belittle the chivalry of American men but only in the
endeavour to correct the popular American impression about Englishmen,
which does not contribute to the promotion of that good-will which ought
to exist between the peoples. I am not suggesting that Americans should
think less of themselves, only that, with wider knowledge, they would
think better of Englishmen.
And, on the subject of co-education, it seems that yet another word is
needed, for since this chapter was put into type, it has had the
advantage of being read by an American friend whose opinion on any
subject must be valuable, and who has given especial attention to
educational matters. He thinks it would be judicious that I should make
it clearer than I have done that, in what I have said, I am not
criticising the American co-educational system in any aspect save one.
He writes:
"The essential purpose of the system of co-education which had been
adopted, not only in the State universities supported by public funds,
but in certain colleges of earlier date, such as Oberlin, in Ohio, and
in comparatively recent institutions like Cornell University, of New
York, is to secure for the women facilities for training and for
intellectual development not less adequate than those provided for the
men.
"It was contended that if any provision for higher education for women
was to be made, it was only equitable, and in fact essential, that such
provision should be of the best. It was not practicable with the
resources available in new communities, to double up the machinery for
college education, and if the women were not to be put off with
instructors of a cheaper and poorer grade and with inadequate
collections and laboratories, they must be admitted to a share of the
service of the instructors, and in the use of the collections, of the
great institutions.
"It is further contended by well-informed people that what they call a
natural relation between the sexes, such as comes up in the competitive
work of university life, so far from furthering, has the result of
lessening the risk of immature sentiment and of undesirable flirtations.
By the use of the college system, the advantages of these larger
facilities can be secured to women, and have in fact been secured
without any sacrifice of the separate life of the women students.
"In Columbia University, for instance (in New York City), the women
students belong to Barnard College. This college is one of the seven
colleges that constitute Columbia University: but it possesses a
separate foundation and a faculty of its own. The women students have
the advantage of the university collections and of a large number of the
university lectures. The relation between the college and the university
is in certain respects similar to that of Newnham and Girton with the
University of Cambridge, with the essential difference that Barnard
College constitutes, as stated, an integral part of the university, and
that the Barnard students are entitled to secure their university
degrees from A.B. to Ph.D."
From the above it is by no means certain that on the one point on which
I have dwelt, his opinion coincides with mine; and the best explanation
thereof that I can offer is that while he knows certain parts of the
country and some institutions better than I, I know certain parts of the
country and some institutions better than he. And we will "let it go at
that."
As for the rest, for the general economic advantages of the
co-educational system to the community, I think I am prepared to go as
far as almost anyone. I am even inclined to follow Miss M. Carey Thomas,
the President of Bryn Mawr College, who attributes the industrial
progress of the United States largely to the fact that the men of the
country have such well-educated mothers. It seems to me a not
unreasonable or extravagant suggestion. I am certainly of the opinion
that the conversational fluency and mental alertness of the American
woman, as well as in large measure her capacity for bearing her share in
the civic labour, are largely the result of the fact that she has in
most cases had precisely the same education as her brothers.
At present I believe that something more than one-half (56 per cent.) of
the pupils in all the elementary and secondary schools, whether public
or private, in the United States are girls; and that the system is
permanently established cannot be questioned. What are known as the
State universities, that is to say universities which are supported
entirely, or almost entirely, by State grants, or by annual taxes
ordered through State legislation, have from their first foundation been
available for women students as well as for men. The citizens, who, as
taxpayers, were contributing the funds required for the foundation and
the maintenance of these institutions, took the ground, very naturally,
that all who contributed should have the same rights in the educational
advantages to be secured. It was impossible from the American point of
view to deny to a man whose family circle included only daughters the
university education, given at public expense, which was available for
the family of sons.
Co-education had its beginning in most parts of the United States in the
fact that in the frontier communities there were often not enough boy
pupils to support a school nor was there enough money to maintain a
separate school for girls; but what began experimentally and as a matter
of necessity has long become an integral part of the American social
system. So far from losing ground it is continually (and never more
rapidly than in recent years) gaining in the Universities as well as in
the schools, in private as well as public institutions.
But, as I said in first approaching the subject, the merits or demerits
of co-education are not a topic which comes within the scope of this
book. It was necessary to refer to it only as it impinged on the general
question of the relation of the sexes.
FOOTNOTES:
[113:1] The English reader will find this explained at length in Mr. A.
R. Colquhoun's work, _Greater America_.
[113:2] That Americans may understand more clearly what I mean and, so
understanding, see that I speak without intention to offend, I quote
from the list of "arrangements" in London for the forthcoming week, as
given in to-day's London _Times_, those items which have a peculiarly
cosmopolitan or extra-British character:
Friday--Pilgrims' Club, dinner to Lord Curzon of Kedleston, ex-Viceroy
of India.
Saturday--Lyceum Club, dinner in honour of France to meet the French
Ambassador and members of the Embassy, etc.
Sunday--Te Deum for Greek Independence, Greek Church, Moscow Road.
Monday--Royal Geographical Society, Sir Henry MacMahon on "Recent
Exploration and Survey in Seistan."
Tuesday--Royal Colonial Institute, dinner and meeting. Royal Asiatic
Society, Major Vost on "Kapilavastu." China Association, dinner to
Prince Tsai-tse and his colleagues, Mr. R. S. Grundy, C. B., presiding.
Wednesday--Central Asian Society, Mr. A. Hamilton on "The Oxus River."
Japan Society, Professor J. Takakusu on "Buddhism as we Find it in
Japan."
This, it should be explained, is not a good week, because it is "out of
the season," but the list will, I fancy, as it stands suffice to give
American readers an idea of the extent to which London is in touch with
the interests of all the world--an idea of how, by comparison, it is
impossible to speak of New York (and still more of America as a whole)
as being other than non-cosmopolitan, or in a not offensive sense,
provincial.
[126:1] It is worth remarking that Dr. Emil Reich (whose opinion I quote
not because I attach any value to it personally, but in deference to the
judgment of those who do) prophesies that the "silent war" between men
and women in the United States "will soon become so acute that it will
cease to be silent." It is to be borne in mind, of course, that the
Doctor's experience in the United States has as yet been but
inconsiderable.
CHAPTER VI
ENGLISH HUMOUR AND AMERICAN ART
American Insularity--A Conkling Story--English Humour and
American Critics--American Literature and English Critics--The
American Novel in England--And American Art--Wanted, an
American Exhibition--The Revolution in the American Point of
View--"Raining in London"--Domestic and Imported Goods.
It is no uncommon thing to hear an American speak of British
insularity--the Englishman's "insular prejudices" or his "insular
conceit." On one occasion I took the opportunity of interrupting a man
who, I was sure, did not know what "insular" might mean, to ask for an
explanation.
"Insular?" he said. "It's the same as insolent--only more so."
* * * * *
Flings at Britain's "insularity" were (like the climatic myth)
originally of Continental European origin; and from the Continental
European point of view, the phrase, both in fact and metaphor, was
justified. England _is_ an island. So far as the Continent of Europe is
concerned, it is _the_ island. And undoubtedly the fact of their insular
position, with the isolation which it entailed, has had a marked
influence on the national temperament of Englishmen. Ringed about with
the silver sea, they had an opportunity to meditate at leisure on their
superiority to other peoples, an opportunity which, if not denied, was
at least restricted in the case of peoples only separated from
neighbours of a different race by an invisible frontier line, a well
bridged stream, or a mountain range pierced by abundant passes. Their
insularity bred in the English a disposition different from the
dispositions of the Continental peoples just as undeniably as it kept
them aloof from those peoples geographically.
Vastly more than Great Britain, has the United States been isolated
since her birth. England has been cut off from other civilisations by
twenty miles of sea; America by three thousand. As a physical fact, the
"insularity" of America is immensely more obvious and more nearly
complete than that of Britain; and it is no less so as a moral fact. It
is true that America's island is a continent; but this superiority in
size has only resulted in producing more kinds of insularity than in
England. The American character is, in all the moral connotation of the
word, pronouncedly more insular than the British.
Like the English, except that they were much more effectively staked off
from the rest of the world, the Americans have found the marvel of their
own superiority to all mankind a fit and pleasing subject for
contemplation. Perhaps there was a time when Englishmen used to go about
the world talking of it; but for some generations back, having settled
the fact of their greatness entirely to their satisfaction, they have
ceased to put it into words, merely accepting it as the mainspring of
their conduct in all relations with other peoples, and without, it is to
be feared, much regard for those other peoples' feelings. Americans are
still in the boasting stage. Mr. Howells has said that every American
when he goes abroad goes not as an individual citizen but as an envoy.
He walks wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. It is only the insularity of
the Britisher magnified many times.
It is as if there were gathered in a room a dozen or so of well-bred
persons, talking such small talk as will pass the time and hurt no
susceptibilities. It may be that the Englishman in his small talk is
unduly dogmatic, but in the main he complies with the usages of the
circle and helps the game along. To them enters a newcomer who will hear
nothing of what the others have to say--will take no share in the
discussion of topics of common interest--but insists on telling the
company of his personal achievements. It may be all true; though the
others will not believe it. But the accomplishments of the members of
the present company are not at the moment the subject of conversation;
nor is it a theme under any circumstances which it is good manners to
introduce. This is what not a few American people are doing daily up and
down through the length and breadth of Europe; and they must pardon
Europe if, occasionally, it yawns, or if at times it expresses its
opinions of American manners in terms not soothing to American ears.
"The American contribution to the qualities of nations is hurry," says
the author of _The Champagne Standard_, and this has enough truth to let
it pass as an epigram; but many Americans have a notion that their
contribution is neither more nor less than All Progress. With their eyes
turned chiefly upon themselves, they have seen beyond a doubt what a
splendid, energetic, pushful people they are, and they have talked it
all over one with another. Moreover, have not many visitors, though
finding much to criticise, complimented them always on their rapidity of
thought and action? So they have come to believe that they monopolise
those happy attributes and, going abroad, whenever they see--it may be
in England, or in Germany--an evidence of energy and force, they say:
"Truly the world is becoming Americanised!" Bless their insular hearts!
America did not invent the cosmic forces.
When the first suspension bridge was thrown over Niagara, there was a
great and tumultuous opening ceremony, such as the Americans love, and
many of the great ones of the United States assembled to do honour to
the occasion, and among them was Roscoe Conkling. Conkling was one of
the most brilliant public men whom America has produced: a man of
commanding, even beautiful, presence and of, perhaps, unparalleled
vanity. He had been called (by an opponent) a human peacock. After the
ceremonies attending the opening of the bridge had been concluded,
Conkling, with many others, was at the railway station waiting to
depart; but, though others were there, he did not mingle with them, but
strutted and plumed himself for their benefit, posing that they might
get the full effect of all his majesty.
One of the station porters was so impressed that, stepping up to another
who was hurrying by trundling a load of luggage, he jerked his thumb in
Conkling's direction and:
"Who's that feller?" he asked. "Is he the man as built the bridge?"
The other studied the great man a moment.
"Thunder! No," said he. "He's the man as made the Falls."
It is curious that with their sense of humour Americans should so
persistently force Europeans into the frame of mind of that railway
porter. The Englishman, in his assurance of his own greatness, has come
to depreciate the magnitude of whatever work he does; nor is it
altogether a pose or an affectation. He sees the vastness of the British
Empire and the amazing strides which have been made in the last two
generations, and wonders how it all came about. He knows how
proverbially blundering are British diplomacy and British
administration, so he puts it all down to the luck of the nation and
goes grumbling contentedly on his way. There is no country in which
policies have been so haphazard and unstable, or ways of administration
so crude and so empirical, as in the United States. "Go forth, my son,"
said Oxenstiern, "go forth and see with how little wisdom the world is
governed"; and on such a quest, it is doubtful if any civilised country
has offered a more promising field for consideration than did the United
States from, say, the close of the Civil War to less than a decade ago.
All thinking Americans recognise this fact to the full; but whereas the
Englishman sees only the blunders that he has made and marvels at the
luck that pulled him through, the American generally ignores the luck
and is more likely to believe that whatever has been achieved is the
result of his peculiar virtues.
I never heard an American ascribe the success of any national
undertaking to the national luck. The Englishman on the other hand is
for ever speaking of the "luck of the British Army," and the "luck that
pulls England through."
And there is one point which I have never seen stated but which is worth
the consideration of Americans. It has already been said that it would
be of great benefit if the American people knew more of the British
Empire as a whole. They have had an advantage in appreciating the
magnitude of their own accomplishments in the fact that their work has
all to be done at home. They have had the outward signs of their
progress constantly before their eyes. It is true that the United States
is a large country; but it is continuous. No oceans intervene between
New York and Illinois, or between Illinois and Colorado; and the people
as a whole is kept well informed of what the people is doing.
The American comes to London and he sees things which he regards with
contemptuous amusement much as the Englishman might regard some peculiar
old-world institution in a sleepy Dutch community. The great work which
is always being done in London is not easy to see; there is so much of
Old London (not only in a material sense) that the new does not always
leap to the eye. The man who estimates the effective energy of the
British people by what he sees in London, makes an analogous mistake to
that of the Englishman who judges the sentiments of America by what is
told him by his charming friends in New York. The American who would get
any notion of British enterprise or British energy must go afield--to
the Upper Nile and Equatorial Africa, to divers parts of Asia and
Australia. He cannot see the Assouan dam, the Cape to Cairo Railway, the
Indian irrigation works, from the Carlton Hotel, any more than a
foreigner can measure the destiny of the American people by dining at
the Waldorf-Astoria.
This is a point which will bear insisting on. Not long ago an American
stood with me and gazed on the work which was being done in the Strand
Improvement undertaking, and he said that it was a big thing. "But," he
added thoughtfully, "it does not come up to what we have on hand in the
Panama Canal." I pointed out that the Panama Canal was not being cut
through the heart of New York City and apparently the suggestion was new
to him. The American rarely understands that the British Isles are no
more--rather less--than the thirteen original states. Canada and India
are the British Illinois and Florida, Australia and New Zealand
represent the West from Texas to Montana, while South Africa is the
British Pacific Slope; just as Egypt may stand for Cuba, and Burma and
what-not-else set against Alaska and the Philippines. Many times I have
known Americans in England to make jest of the British railways,
comparing them in mileage with the transcontinental lines of their own
country. But the British Transcontinental lines are thrown from Cairo to
the Cape, from Quebec to Vancouver, from Brisbane to Adelaide and
Peshawar to Madras. The people of the United States take legitimate
pride in the growth of the great institutions of learning which have
sprung up all over the West; but there are points of interest of which
they take less account, in similar institutions in, say, Sydney and
Allahabad.
It is not necessary to say that I do not underestimate the energy of the
American character. I have seen too much of the people, am familiar
with too many sections of the country, and have watched it all growing
before my eyes too fast to do that. But I think that the American
exaggerates those qualities in himself at the expense of other peoples,
and he would acquire a new kind of respect for Englishmen--the respect
which one good workman necessarily feels for another--if he knew more of
the British Empire.
A precisely similar exaggeration of his own quality has been bred by
similar causes in the American mind in his estimate of his national
sense of humour. I am not denying the excellence of American humour, for
I have in my library a certain shelf to which I go whenever I feel dull,
and for the books on which I can never be sufficiently grateful. The
American's exaggeration of his own funniness is not positive but
comparative. Just as he is tempted to regard himself as the original
patentee of human progress, and the first apostle of efficiency, so he
is very ready to believe that he has been given something like a
monopoly among peoples of the sense of humour. With a little more
humour, he would undoubtedly have been saved from this particular error.
Especially are the Americans convinced that there is no humour in
Englishmen. Germans and Frenchmen may possess humour of an inferior
sort, but not Englishmen. It is my belief that in the American clubs
where I find copies of _Fliegende Blätter_ and the _Journal Amusant_,
these papers are much more read than _Punch_, and in not a few cases, I
fear, by men who have but slight understanding of the languages in which
they are printed. Indeed, _Punch_ is a permanent, hebdomadally-recurrent
proof to American readers that Englishmen do not know the meaning of a
joke.[153:1] Americans, of course, do not understand more than a small
proportion of the pages of _Punch_ any more than they would understand
those pages if they were printed in Chinese; but because _Punch_ is
printed in English they think that they do understand it, and because
they cannot see the jokes, they conclude that the jokes are not there.
A certain proportion of American witticisms are recondite to English
readers for precisely similar reasons, but the American belief is that
when an Englishman fails to understand an American joke, it is because
he has no sense of humour; when an American cannot understand an English
one, it is because the joke is not funny. It is a view of the situation
eminently gratifying to Americans; but it is curious that their sense of
humour does not save them from it.
Whatever American humour may be, it is not subtle. It has a
pushfulness--a certain flamboyant self-assertiveness--which it shares
with some other things in the United States; and, however fine the
quality of mind required to produce it, a rudimentary appreciative sense
will commonly suffice for its apprehension. The chances are, when any
foreigner fails to catch the point of an American joke or story, that
it is due to something other than a lack of perceptive capability.
What I take to be (with apologies to Mr. Dunne) the greatest individual
achievement in humorous writing that has been produced in America in
recent years, the Wolfville series of books of Mr. Alfred Henry Lewis,
is practically incomprehensible to English readers, not from any lack of
capacity on their part, but from the difficulties of the dialect and
still more from the strangeness of the atmosphere. In the same way the
Tablets of the scribe Azit Tigleth Miphansi must indeed be but ancient
Egyptian to Americans. But it would not occur to an Englishman to say,
because Americans have not within their reach the necessary data for a
comprehension of Mr. Reed, that, therefore, they do not understand a
joke. Still less because he himself falls away baffled from the Old
Cattleman does the Englishman conclude that the Wolfville books are not
funny. He merely deplores his inability to get on terms with his author.
The English public indeed is curiously ready to accept whatever is said
to be funny and comes from America as being in truth humorous even if
largely unintelligible; but few Americans would give credit for the
existence of humour in those parts of an English book outside their ken.
Yet I think, if it were possible to get the opinion of an impartial jury
on the subject, their verdict would be that the number of humorous
writers of approximately the first or second class is materially greater
in England than in the United States to-day. I am sure that the sense of
humour in the average of educated Englishmen is keener, subtler, and
eminently more catholic than it is in men of the corresponding class in
the United States. The Atlantic Ocean, if the Americans would but
believe it, washes pebbles up on the beaches of its eastern shores no
less than upon the western.[155:1]
American humour [distinctively American humour, for there are humorous
writers in America whose genius shows nothing characteristically
American; but among those who are distinctively American I should class
nearly all the writers who are best known to-day, Mr. Clemens (Mark
Twain), Mr. Dunne, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Lorimer, Mr. Ade]--this distinctively
American humour, then, stands in something the same relation to other
forms of _spirituellisme_ as the work of the poster artist occupies to
other forms of pictorial art. Poster designing may demand a very high
quality of art, and the American workmen are the Cherets, Grassets,
Muchas, of their craft. Few of them do ordinary painting, whether in oil
or water colour. Fewer still use the etcher's needle. None that I am
aware of attempts miniatures--except Mr. Henry James, who, if Americans
may be believed, is not an American, and he has invented a department of
art for himself more microscopic in detail than that of any miniaturist.
The real American humourist, however small his canvas, strives for the
same broad effects.
It is not the quality of posters to be elusive. Their appeal is to the
multitude, and it must be instantaneous. It is easily conceivable that a
person of an educated artistic sense might stand before a poster and
find himself entirely unable to comprehend it, because the thing
portrayed might be something altogether outside his experience. His
failure would be no indictment either of his perceptivity or of the
merit of the work of art.
It is a pity that Americans as a rule do not consider this, for I know
few things that would so much increase American respect for Englishmen
in the mass as the discovery that the latter were not the ponderous
persons they supposed, but even keener-witted than themselves. At the
time of the Venezuelan incident, it is probable that more than all the
laborious protests of good men on both sides of the ocean, more than all
the petitions and the interchange of assurances of good-will between
societies in either country, the thing that did most to allay American
resentment and bring the American people to its senses was that
delightful message sent (was it not?) by the London Stock Exchange to
their _confrères_ in New York, begging the latter to see that when the
British fleet arrived in New York harbour there should be no crowding by
excursion steamers. Like Mr. Anstey's dear German professor, who had
once laboriously constructed a joke and purposed, when he had ample
leisure, to go about to ædificate a second, will Americans please
believe that Englishmen too, if given time, can certainly make others?
And need I say again that in each of the things that I have said,
whether on the subject of American chivalry, American energy, or
American humour, I am not decrying the American's qualities but only
striving to increase his respect for Englishmen?
* * * * *
Now let us look at the other side of the picture. Just as undue
flattery awoke in the American people an exaggerated notion of their
chivalry and their sense of humour, so the reiteration of savage and
contemptuous criticism made them depreciate their general literary
ability. It goes farther back than the "Who ever reads an American
book?" Three quarters of a century earlier the _Edinburgh Review_ (I am
indebted for the quotation to Mr. Sparks) asked: "Why should Americans
write books when a six-weeks' passage brings them in their own tongue
our sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads? Prairies,
steamboats, gristmills are their natural objects for centuries to come."
Franklin's _Autobiography_ and Thoreau's _Walden_ are only just, within
the last few years, beginning to find their way into English popular
reprints of the "classics." Few Englishmen would listen with patience to
an argument that the contribution to literature of the Concord school
was of greater or more permanent value than, let us say, the work of the
Lake Poets. So little thought have Englishmen given to the literature of
the United States, that they commonly assume any author who wrote in
English to be, as a matter of course, an Englishman. It is only the
uneducated among the educated classes who do not know that Longfellow
was an American--though I have met such,--but among the educated a small
percentage only, I imagine, would remember, unless suggestion was made
to them, that, for instance, Motley and Bancroft among historians, or
Agassiz and Audubon among men of science (even though one was born in
Switzerland) were Americans. To the vast majority, of course, such names
are names and nothing more, which may not be particularly reprehensible.
But while on the one hand a general indifference to American literature
as a whole has carried with it a lack of acquaintance with individual
writers, that lack of acquaintance with the individuals naturally
reacted to confirm disbelief in the existence of any respectable body of
American literature. And the chilling and century-long contempt of the
English public and of English critics for all American writing produced
its result in a national exaggeration in American minds of their own
shortcomings. Only within the last ten years have Americans as a whole
come to believe that the work of an American writer (excepting only a
very small group) can be on a plane with that of Englishmen.
In England the situation has also changed. American novelists now enjoy
a vogue in England that would have seemed almost incredible two decades
ago. At that time the English public did not look to America for its
fiction, while Americans did look to England; and each new book by a
well-known English novelist was as certain of its reception in the
United States as--perhaps more certain than it was--in England. That has
changed. There are not more than half a dozen writers of fiction in
England to-day of such authority that whatever they write is of
necessity accepted by the American public. Americans turn now first to
their own writers--a dozen or a score of them--and only then do they
seek the English book, always provided that, no matter whose the name
may be that it bears, it has won the approval of their own critics on
its merits. They no longer take it for granted that the best work of
their own authors is as a matter of course inferior to the work of a
well-known Englishman. It may not be many years before the American
public will be so much preoccupied with its own literary output--before
that output will be so amply sufficient for all its needs--that it will
become as contemptuously indifferent to English literature of the day as
Englishmen have, in the past, shown themselves to the product of
American writers. There is, perhaps, no other field in which the
increase of the confidence of the nation in itself is more marked than
in the honour which Americans now pay to their own writers.
It is worth noticing that the English appreciation of American
literature as yet hardly extends beyond works of fiction. Specialists in
various departments of historical research and the natural sciences know
what admirable work is being done in the same fields by individual
workers in the United States; but hardly yet has the specialist--still
less has the general public--formed any adequate conception of the great
mass of that work in those two fields, still less of its quality.
Englishmen do not yet take seriously either American research or
American scholarship. It would be absurd to count noses to prove that
there were more competent historians writing--more scientific
investigators searching into the mysteries--in America than in England
or vice versa; but this I take to be an undoubted fact, namely, that men
of science in more than one field in other countries are beginning to
look rather to the United States than to Great Britain for sound and
original work.
The English ignorance of American literature extends even more markedly
to other departments of productive art.[159:1] The ordinary educated and
art-loving Englishman would be sore put to it to name any single
American painter or draughtsman, living or dead, except Mr. C. D.
Gibson. Whistler and Sargent, of course, are not counted as Americans.
There is not a single American sculptor whose name is known to one in a
hundred of, again I say, educated and art-loving Englishmen, though I
take it to be indisputable that the United States has produced more
sculptors of individual genius in the last half-century than Great
Britain. American architecture conveys to the educated and art-loving
Englishman no other idea than that of twenty-storey "sky-scrapers" built
of steel and glass. Richardson is not even a name to him. He knows
nothing of all the beauty and virility of the work that has been done
in the last thirty years. In the minor arts, he may have heard of
Rookwood pottery and have a vague notion that the Americans turn out
some quite original things in silver work; but of American stained
glass--of Tiffany and La Farge--he has never heard. It would do England
a world of good--it would do international relations a world of good--if
a thoroughly representative exhibition of American painting and
sculpture could be made in London. I commend the idea to some one
competent to handle it; for it would, I think, be profitable to its
promoters. It would certainly be a revelation to Englishmen.
The English indifference to--nay, disbelief in the existence
of--American art is precisely on a par with the American incredulity in
the matter of British humour; and the removal of each of the
misconceptions would tend to the increase of international good-will.
Americans believe the British Empire to be a sanguinary and ferocious
thing. They believe themselves to be possessed of a sense of humour, a
sense of chivalry, and an energy quite lacking in the Englishman; and
each one of the illusions counts for a good deal in the American
national lack of liking for Great Britain. Similarly, Englishmen believe
Americans to be a money-loving people without respectable achievement in
art or literature. I am not sure that it would make the Englishman like
the American any the more if the point of view were corrected, but at
least he would like him more intelligently, and it would prevent him
from saying things--in themselves entirely good-humoured and quite
unintentionally offensive--which hurt American feelings. We cannot
correct an error without recognising frankly that it exists, and the
first step towards making the American and the Englishman understand
what the other really is must be to help each to see how mistaken he is
in supposing the other to be what he is not.
That the American should hold the opinions that he does of England is no
matter of reproach. Not only is it natural, but inevitable. Absorbed as
he has been with his own affairs and his own history, and viewing Great
Britain only in her occasional relations thereto, seeing nothing of her
in her private life or of her position and policies in the world at
large, how could the American have other than a distorted view of
her--how could she assume right proportions or be posed in right
perspective? Nor is the Englishman any more to be blamed. America has
been beyond and below his horizon, and among the travellers' tales that
have come to him of her people and her institutions has been much
misinformation; and if he has not yet--as in the realms of literature
and art--come to any realisation of America's true achievements, how
should he have done so, when Americans themselves have only just shaken
off the morbid sensitiveness and diffidence of their youth, and have so
recently arrived at some partial comprehension of those achievements
themselves?
Probably the most successful joke which _Life_ ever achieved (Americans
will please believe that it is not with any disrespect that I explain to
English readers that _Life_ is the _Punch_ of New York), successful,
that is, measured by the continent-wide hilarity which it provoked, had
relation to the New York dandy who turned up the bottoms of his trousers
because it was "raining in London." That was published--at a
guess--some twenty years ago.
Some ten years later a Chicagoan (one James Norton--he died, alas! all
too soon afterwards) leaped into something like national notoriety by a
certain speech which he delivered at a semi-public dinner in New York.
In introducing Mr. Norton as coming from Chicago the chairman had made
playful reference to the supposed characteristic lack of modesty of
Chicagoans and their pride in their city. Norton, in acknowledgment,
confessed that there was justice in the accusation. Chicagoans, he said,
were proud of their city. They had a right to be. They were as proud of
Chicago as New Yorkers were of London! And the quip ran from mouth to
mouth across the continent.
It would be too much to say that those jokes are meaningless to-day, but
to the younger generation of Americans they have lost most of their
point, for Anglomania has ceased to be the term of reproach that once it
was--it has, at least, dropped from daily use--partly because the
official relations of the country with Great Britain have so much
improved, but much more because the United States has come to consider
herself as Great Britain's equal and, in the new consciousness of her
greatness, the idea of toadying to England has lost its sting. It is
already difficult to throw one's mind back to the conditions of twenty
years ago--to remember the deference which (in New York and the larger
cities at least) was paid to English ideas, English manners, English
styles in dress--the enthusiasm with which any literary man was received
who had some pretension to an English reputation--the disrepute in which
all "domestic" manufactured articles were held throughout the country
in comparison with the "imported," which generally meant English. In all
manufactured products this was so nearly universal that "domestic" was
almost synonymous with inferior and "imported" with superior grades of
goods. That an immense proportion of American manufactured articles were
sold in the United States masquerading as "imported"--and therefore
commanding a better price--goes without saying, and in some lines, in
which the British reputation was too well established and well deserved
to be easily shaken, the practice still survives; but in the great
majority of things, the American now prefers his home-made article, not
merely from motives of patriotism but because he believes that it is the
better article. It is not within our present province to discuss how far
this opinion is correct, or how far the policy of protection, by
assisting manufacturers to obtain control of their own markets and so
distract attention from imported goods, has helped to bring about the
change. The point is that the change has taken place. And, so far as the
ordinary commodities of commerce are concerned, the Englishman is in a
measure aware of what has occurred. He could not be otherwise with the
figures of his trade with the United States before him. Nor can he
conceal from himself the fact that the change of opinion in America may
have some justification when he sees how many things of American
manufacture he himself uses daily and prefers--patriotism
notwithstanding--to the British-made article.
But Englishmen have little conception as yet that the same revolution
has taken place in regard to the less material--less easily
exploited--commodities of art and literature. American novels and the
drawings of Mr. Gibson have made their way in England in the wake of
American boots and American sweetmeats; but Americans would be unwilling
to believe that their creative ability ends with the production of
Western romances and drawings of the American girl.
Until recent years, the volume as well as the quality of the literary
and artistic output of Great Britain was vastly superior to that of the
United States. The two were not comparable; but they are comparable
to-day, though England is as yet unaware of it. In time, Englishmen will
awake to a realisation of the fact; but what the relative standing of
the two countries will be by that time it is impossible to say.
Englishmen would, perhaps, not find it to their disadvantage, and it
would certainly (if not done in too condescending a spirit) not be
displeasing to the people of the United States, if they began, even now,
to take a livelier interest in the work that the other is doing.
FOOTNOTES:
[153:1] At this point my American friend, to the value of whose
criticisms I have already paid tribute, interjects marginally: "none the
less _Fliegende Blätter_ presents more real humour in a week than is to
be found in _Punch_ in a month." To which I can but make the obvious
reply that I have already said that Americans think so. He points out,
however, further that, while the Munich paper is always to be found in
the higher-class American clubs, it is comparatively infrequent in the
clubs of Great Britain, which is undoubtedly true; and that is a subject
(the relative breadth of outlook on the world-literature of the day in
the two countries) which will necessarily receive attention later on.
[155:1] Lest any American readers should assume that some personal
feeling is responsible for my point of view (which would entirely
destroy any value in my argument) it seems necessary to explain that I
have become calloused to being told that I am the only Englishman the
speaker ever met with an American sense of humour. Sometimes I have
taken it as a compliment.
[159:1] It is merely pathetic to find such a paper as the London
_Academy_ at this late day summing up the American æsthetic impulse as
follows: "Their culture is now a borrowed thing animated by no life of
its own. Their art is become a reflection of French art, their
literature a reflection of English literature, their learning a
reflection of German learning. A velleity of taste in their women of the
richer class seems to be all that maintains in their country the
semblance of a high, serious, and disinterested passion for the things
of the mind."
It would be interesting to learn from the _Academy_ what school of
English writers it is that the American humourists "reflect," who among
English novelists are the models for the present school of Western
fiction, where in English historiography is to be found the prototype of
the great histories of their country, collaborated or otherwise, which
the Americans are now producing, which journals published in England are
responsible for American newspapers, what English magazine is so happy
as to be the father of the _Century_, _Harper's_, or _Scribner's_. The
truth is that the writer in the Academy, like most Englishmen, knows
nothing of American literature as a whole, or he would know that,
whether good or bad, the one quality which it surely possesses is that
it is individual and peculiar to the people. The _Academy_, it is only
fair to say, has recently changed hands and I am not sure that under its
present direction it would make the same mistake.
CHAPTER VII
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN EDUCATION
The Rhodes Scholarships--"Pullulating Colleges"--Are American
Universities Superior to Oxford or Cambridge?--Other Educational
Forces--The Postal Laws--Ten-cent Magazines and Cheap Books--
Pigs in Chicago--The Press of England and America Compared--
Mixed Society--Educated Women--Generals as Booksellers--And as
Farmhands--The Value of War to a People.
It may be presumed that when Cecil Rhodes conceived the idea of
establishing the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford, it did not occur to him
that Americans might not care to come to Oxford--might think their own
universities superior to the English. Nor is it likely that there will
in the immediate future be any dearth of students anxious to take those
scholarships, for the mere selection has a certain amount of _kudos_
attaching to it and, at worst, the residence abroad should be of
advantage to any young American not destined to plunge at once into a
business life. If it were a mere question of the education to be
received, it is much to be feared that the great majority of Americans,
unless quite unable to attend one of their own universities, would
politely decline to come to England. At the time when the terms of the
will were made public, a good many unpleasant things were said in the
American press; and it was only the admiration of Americans for Mr.
Rhodes (who appealed to their imagination as no other Englishman,
except perhaps Mr. Gladstone, has appealed in the last fifty years),
coupled with the fact that he was dead, that prevented the foundation of
the scholarships from being greeted with resentment rather than
gratitude.
There was a time, of course, when the name of Oxford sounded very large
in American ears; and it will probably be a surprise to Englishmen to be
told that to-day the great majority of Americans would place not only
Harvard and Yale, but probably also several other American universities,
ahead of either Oxford or Cambridge. Nor is this the opinion only of the
ignorant. Trained educational authorities who come from the United
States to Europe to study the methods of higher education in the various
countries, seldom hesitate to say that the education to be obtained at
many of the minor Western colleges in America is fully as good as that
offered by either of the great English universities, while that of
Harvard and Yale is far superior to it.[167:1] And it must be remembered
that education itself, as an art, is incomparably more studied, and more
systematically studied in America than in England.
Matthew Arnold spoke of the "pullulating colleges and universities" of
America--"the multitude of institutions the promoters of which delude
themselves by taking seriously, but which no serious man can so take";
and he would be surprised to see to what purpose some of those
institutions have "pullulated" in the eighteen years that have passed
since he wrote--to note into what lusty and umbrageous plants have grown
such institutions as the Universities of Chicago and Minnesota, though
one of those is further west by some distance than he ever penetrated.
That these or any other colleges have more students than either Oxford
or Cambridge need not mean much; and they cannot of course acquire in
twenty years the old, history-saturated atmosphere. Against that are to
be set the facts that the students undoubtedly work, on the average,
much harder than do English undergraduates and that the teaching staffs
are possessed of an enthusiasm, an earnestness, a determination not
merely to fill chairs but to get results, which would be almost "bad
form" in some Common (or Combination) Rooms in England. Wealth,
moreover, and magnificence of endowment can go a considerable way
towards even the creation of an atmosphere--not the same atmosphere as
that of Oxford or Cambridge, it is true; for no money can make another
Addison's Walk out of Prairie Avenue, or convert the Mississippi by St.
Anthony's Falls into new "Backs."
"We may build ourselves more gorgeous habitations,
Fill our rooms with painting and with sculpture,
We cannot buy with gold the old associations----."
But an atmosphere may be created wholly scholastic, and well calculated
to excite emulation and inspire the ambition of youths.
Nor is it by any means certain that the American people would desire to
create the atmosphere of an old-world university if they could. The
atmosphere of Oxford produces, as none other could, certain qualities;
but are they the qualities which, if England were starting to make her
universities anew, she would set in the forefront of her
endeavour?[169:1] Are they really the qualities most desirable even in
an Englishman to-day? Are they approximately the qualities most likely
to equip a man to play the noblest part in the life of modern America?
The majority of American educators would answer unhesitatingly in the
negative. There are things attaching to Oxford and Cambridge which they
would dearly love to be able to transplant to their own country, but
which, they recognise, nothing but the passage of the centuries can
give. Those things are unattainable; and, frankly, if they could only be
attained by transplanting with them many other attributes of English
university life, they would rather forego them altogether.
What Englishmen most value in their universities is not any
book-learning which is to be acquired thereat, so much as the manners
and rules for the conduct of life which are supposed to be imparted in a
university course,--manners and rules which are of an essentially
aristocratic tendency. Without wishing to push a point too far, it is
worth noting that that aristocratic tendency is purely Norman, quite out
of harmony with the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon. It would never occur to
an Anglo-Saxon, pure and simple, to make his university anything else
than an institution for scholastic training, in which every individual
should be taught as much, and as equally, as possible. The last thing
that would occur to him would be to make it a weapon of aristocracy or
an institution for perpetuating class distinctions. The aim and effect
of the English universities in the past has been chiefly to keep the
upper classes uppermost.
That there are too many "universities" in America no one--least of all
an educated American--denies; but with the vast distances and immense
population of the country there is room for, perhaps, more than Matthew
Arnold eighteen years ago could have foreseen, and not a few of those
establishments which in his day he would doubtless have unhesitatingly
classed among those which could not be taken seriously, have more than
justified their existence.
To the superiority of the American public school system over the
English, considered merely as an instrumentality for the general
education of the masses of a people, and not for the production of any
especially privileged or cultivated class, is generally ascribed the
confessedly higher average of intelligence and capacity among (to use a
phrase which is ostensibly meaningless in America) the lower orders. But
the educational system of the country has been by no means the only
factor in producing this result; and it may be worth while merely as a
matter of record, and not without interest to American readers, to note
what some of those other factors have been during the last twenty
years--factors so temporary and so elusive that even now they are in
danger of being forgotten.
First among these factors I would set the American postal laws, an
essential feature of which is the extraordinarily low rates at which
periodical literature may be transmitted. A magazine which may be sent
to any place in the United States for from an eighth of a penny to a
farthing, according to its weight, will cost for postage in England from
two-pence-halfpenny to fourpence. It is not the mere difference in cost
of the postage to the subscriber that counts, but the low American rate
has permitted the adoption by the publishers of a system impossible to
English magazine-makers, a system which has had the effect of making
magazines, at least as good as the English sixpenny monthlies, the
staple reading matter of whole classes of the population, the classes
corresponding to which in England never read anything but a local
weekly, or halfpenny daily, paper. It might be that the reading matter
of a magazine would not be much superior to that of a small weekly
paper. But at least it encourages somewhat more sustained reading and,
what is the great fact, it accustoms the reader to handling something
_in the form of a book_. That is the virtue. A people weaned from the
broad-sheets by magazines readily takes next to book-reading.
Moreover, under the American plan, books themselves, if issued
periodically, used to have the same postal advantages as the
magazines.[171:1] A so-called "library" of the classical English,
writers could be published at the rate of a book a month, call itself a
periodical, and be sent through the post in precisely the same way. The
works of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, or anybody else could be published
in weekly, fortnightly, or monthly parts. If in monthly parts at
sixpence, the cost to the subscriber would be practically the same as
that of a monthly magazine, only that the reader would accumulate at the
rate of twelve volumes a year--and read at the rate of one a month--the
works of Scott, or Dickens, or Thackeray. Of course much worthless
literature, fiction of the trashiest, has been circulated in the same
way--much more perhaps than of the better class. But even so, the
reading matter was superior to that previously accessible, and the vital
fact still remains that the people acquired the habit of book-reading.
In America, the part thus played by some of the periodical libraries was
of much importance, but it was probably not comparable to the influence
of the ten-cent magazine. In the United States itself, the immense
beneficence of that influence has hardly been appreciated. The magazines
came into vogue, and the people accepted the fact as they accept the
popularity of a new form of "breakfast food." The quickening of the
national intelligence which resulted was no more immediate, no more
readily traceable or conspicuous to the public eye, than would be the
improvement in the national stamina which might result from the
introduction of some new article of diet. A change which takes five or
ten years to work itself out is lost sight of, becomes invisible, amid
the jostling activities of a national life like the American. Moreover,
several causes were contributing to the same end and, had any one
stopped to endeavour to do it, it would not have been at any time easy
to unravel the threads and show what proportion of the fabric was woven
by each; but if it had been possible to affix an intellect-meter to the
aggregate brain of the American people during the last twenty years, of
such ingenious mechanism that it would have shown not only what the
increase in total mental power had been but also what proportions of
that increase were ascribable to the various contributing
causes--education, colonial expansion, commercial growth, ten-cent
magazines, and so forth--and if, further, the "readings" of that meter
could be interpreted into terms of increase in national energy, national
productiveness, national success, I do not think that Parliament would
lose one unnecessary day in passing the legislation necessary to reform
the English postal laws.
* * * * *
One other point is worth dwelling upon--equally trivial in seeming,
equally important in its essence--which is the selling of books by the
great department stores, the big general shops, in America. Taking all
classes of the British population together and both sexes--artisans and
their wives, peasants in country districts, slum residents in London and
other large cities,--what proportion of the population of the British
Isles do of set purpose go into a bookseller's shop once a year or once
in their lives? Is it ten per cent.--or five per cent.--or two per
cent.? The exact proportion is immaterial; but the number must be very
small. In America some years ago, the owners of department stores and
publishers found that there was considerable profit to be made in the
handling of books--cheap reprints of good books in particular. The
combined booksellers' and stationers' shops in the cities of the United
States are in themselves more frequent and more attractive than in
England: and I am going back to the days before the drug-store library
which is as yet too recent an institution to have had an easily
measurable influence. But incomparably more influential than these, in
bringing the multitude in immediate contact with literature, have been
the department stores, of almost every one of which the "book and
stationery" department is a conspicuously attractive, and generally most
profitable, feature. Here every man or woman who goes to do any shopping
is brought immediately within range of the temptation to buy books--is
involuntarily seduced into a bookshop where the wares are temptingly
displayed and artfully pressed on the attention of customers. New books
of all kinds are sold at the best possible discount; but what was of
chief importance was the institution of the cheap libraries of the
"Classics"--tables heaped with them in paper at fourpence, piles of them
shoulder high in cloth at ninepence, shelves laden with them in
glittering backs and by no means despicable in typography at one and
sevenpence. Thus simultaneously with the inculcation of the book-reading
habit by the magazines came the facility for book-buying, and, always
remembering the difference in the scale of prices in the two countries,
it was easy for the woman doing her household shopping to fall a victim
to the importunities of the salesman and lavish an extra eighteen or
thirty-eight cents on a copy of _The Scarlet Letter_ or _Ivanhoe_,
Irving's _Alhambra_, or _Bleak House_, to take home as a surprise. In
this way, whole classes in America, the English counterparts of which
rarely read anything more formidable than a penny paper, acquired the
habit of book-buying and the ambition to form a small library. The
benefit to the people cannot be computed.
Incidentally, as we know, not a little injustice was done to English
authors by the pirating of their books, without recompense, while the
copyright still lived. It was after I went to America, though I had
heard Ruskin lecture at Oxford, that I first read _Fors Clavigera_ and
_Sesame and Lilies_ in Lovell's Library, at five-pence a volume, and,
about the same time, Tolstoi's _War and Peace_ in the _Franklin Square
Library_, at the same price. Of older works, I can still remember Lamb
and part of De Quincey, _Don Quixote_ and _Rasselas_ (those four for
some reason stand out in my mind from their fellows in the row), all
bought for the modest ten-cent piece per volume--the price of two daily
newspapers (for all newspapers in America then cost five cents) or one
blacking of one's shoes. Much has, of course, been done of late years in
England in popularising the "Classics" in the form of cheap libraries;
but the facilities for buying the books--or rather the temptations to do
so--are incomparably less, while the relative prices remain higher.
Even at fourpence halfpenny (supposing them to be purchasable at the
price) Lamb's Essays still cost more in London than a drink of whiskey.
In America, more than twenty years ago, the whiskey cost half as much
again as the book.
All of which is in the nature of a digression, but it has not led us far
from the main road, for the object that I am aiming at is to convey to
the English reader some idea of what the forces are which are at work on
the education of the American people. The Englishman generally knows
that in the United States there is nothing analogous to the great public
schools of England--Winchester, Westminster, Eton, and the rest--and
that they have a host of more or less absurd universities in no way to
be compared to Oxford or Cambridge. The American, as has been said,
challenges the latter statement bluntly; while, as for the public
schools, he maintains that it is not the American ideal (if he wished to
fortify his position, he might say it was not an Anglo-Saxon ideal) to
produce a limited privileged and cultivated class, but that the aim is
to educate the whole nation to the highest level; that, barring such
qualities as their mere selectness may enable the great English schools
to give to their pupils, the national high schools of America do, as a
matter of fact, prepare pupils just as efficiently for the university as
do the English institutions, while the great system of common schools
secures for the mass of the people a much better education than is given
in England to the same classes. Added to which, various other causes
co-operate with the avowedly educational instrumentalities to produce a
higher level of intellectual alertness and a more general love of
reading in the people.
And what is the result? Is the American people as well educated or as
well informed or as well cultivated as the English? To endeavour to
make a comparison between the two is to traverse a very morass, full of
holes, swamps, sloughs, creeks, inlets, quicksands, and pitfalls of
divers and terrifying natures. If it is to be threaded at all, it must
be only with the greatest caution and, at times, indirectness.
* * * * *
The charming English writer, the author of _Sinners and Saints_,
affected, on alighting from the train in the railway station at Chicago,
to be immensely surprised by the fact that there was not a pig in sight.
"I had thought," he said, "Chicago was all pigs." There are a good many
English still of the same opinion.
The one institution in any country of which the foreigner sees most, and
by which perhaps every people is, if unwittingly, most commonly judged
by other peoples, is its press; and it is difficult for a superficial
observer to believe that the nation which produces the newspapers of
America is either an educated or a cultivated nation. Max O'Rell's
comment on the American press is delightful: "Beyond the date, few
statements are reliable." Matthew Arnold called the American newspapers
"an awful symptom"--"the worst features in the life of the United
States." Americans also--the best Americans--have a great dislike of the
London papers.
The fact is that merely as newspapers (as gatherers of news) the
American papers are probably the best in the world. What repels the
Englishman is primarily the form in which the news is dressed--the
loudness, the sensationalism but if he can overcome his repugnance to
these things sufficiently to be able to judge the paper as a whole, he
will find, apart from the amazing quantity of "news" which it contains,
a large amount of literary matter of a high order. I am not for one
moment claiming that the American paper (not the worst and loudest,
which are contemptible, nor the best, which are almost as
non-sensational as the best London papers, but the average American
daily paper) is, or ought to be, as acceptable reading to a cultivated
man--still less to a refined woman--as almost any one of the penny, or
some halfpenny, London papers. But the point that I would make and which
I would insist on very earnestly is that the two do not stand for the
same thing in relation to the peoples which they respectively represent.
We have seen the same thing before in comparing the consular and
diplomatic services of the two countries. Just as in the United States
the consuls are plucked at random from the body of the people, whereas
in England they are a carefully selected and thoroughly trained class by
themselves, so the press of the United States represents the people in
its entirety, whereas the English press represents only the educated
class. The London papers (I am omitting consideration of certain
halfpenny papers) are not talking for the people as a whole, nor to the
people as a whole. Consciously or unconsciously they are addressing
themselves always to the comparatively small circle of the educated
class. When they speak of the peasant or the working man, even of the
tradesman, they discuss him as a third person: it is not to him that
they are talking. They use a language which is not his language; they
assume in their reader information, sentiments, modes of thought, which
belong not to him, but only to the educated class--that class which,
whether each individual thereof has been to a public school and a
university or not, is saturated with the public school and university
traditions.
It was said before that the English people has a disposition to be
guided by the voice of authority--to follow its leaders--as the American
people has not. The English newspaper speaks to the educated class,
trusting, not always with justification, that opinion once formulated in
that class will be communicated downwards and accepted by the people.
The American newspaper endeavours to speak to the people direct.
That English papers are immensely more democratic than once they were
goes without saying. A man need not be much past middle age to be able
to remember when the _Daily Telegraph_ created, by appealing to, a whole
new stratum of newspaper readers. The same thing has been done again
more recently by the halfpenny papers, some of which come approximately
near to being adapted to the intelligences, and representing the tastes,
of the whole population, or at least the urban population, down to the
lowest grade. But it is not by those papers that England would like to
be judged. Yet when Englishmen draw inferences about the American people
from the papers which they see, they are doing what is intrinsically as
unjust. It would be no less unjust to take the first hundred men that
one met with, on Broadway or State Street, and compare them--their
intellectuality and culture--with one hundred members of the London
university clubs.
Let us also remember here what was said of the Anglo-Saxon spirit--that
spirit which is so essentially non-aristocratic, holding all men equal
in their independence. We have seen how this spirit is more untrammelled
and works faster in the United States than in England; but where, in
any case, it has moved ahead among Americans the tendency in England
generally is to follow in the same lines, not in imitation of America
but by the impulse of the common genius of the peoples.
The American dailies, even the leading dailies, are made practically for
those hundred men on Broadway; the London penny papers are addressed in
the main to the university class. Judging from the present trend of
events in England it may not be altogether chimerical to imagine a time
when in London only two or three papers will hold to the class tradition
and will still speak exclusively in the language of the upper classes
(as a small number of papers in New York do to-day), while the great
body of the English press will have followed the course of the American
publishers; and when the English papers are frankly adapted to the
tastes and intelligence of as large a proportion of the English people
as are now catered for by the majority of the American papers, he would
be a rash Englishman whose patriotism would persuade him to prophesy
that the London papers would be any more scholarly, more refined, or
more chastened in tone than are the papers of New York or Chicago.
And while the Englishman is generally ready to draw unfavourable
inferences from the undeniably unpleasant features of the majority of
American daily papers, he seldom stops to draw analogous inferences from
a comparison of the American and English monthly magazines. Great
Britain produces no magazines to compare with _Harper's_, _The Century_,
or _Scribner's_. Those three magazines combined have, I believe, a
number of readers in the United States equalling the aggregate
circulation of the London penny dailies; which is a point that is worth
consideration. When, moreover, the cheaper magazines became a
possibility, how came it that such publications as _McClure's_ and _The
Cosmopolitan_ arose? The illustrated magazines of the United States are
indeed a fact of profound significance, for which the Englishman when he
measures the taste and intellectuality of the American people by its
press makes no allowance. Magazines of the same excellence cannot find
the same support in England. At least two earnest attempts have been
made in late years to establish English monthlies which would compare
with any of the three first mentioned above, and both attempts have
failed.
What has been said about the much more representative character of the
American daily press--the fact that the same papers are read by a vastly
larger proportion of the population--brings us face to face with a
root-fact which vitiates almost any attempt at a rough and ready
comparison between the peoples. In America, there exist the counterparts
of every class of man who is to be found in England--men as refined, men
no less crass and brutal--some as vulgar and some as full of the pride
of birth. Most Englishmen will be surprised to hear that the American,
democrat though he is, is as a rule more proud of an ancestor who fought
in the Revolutionary War than is an Englishman of one who fought in the
Wars of the Roses. I am sure that he sets more store by a direct and
authentic descent from one of the company of the _Mayflower_ than the
Englishman does by an equally direct and authentic line back to the days
of William the Conqueror. Incidentally it may be said that the American
will talk more about it. But while in America all classes exist, they
are not fenced apart, as in England, in fact any more than they are in
theory. The American people (_pace_ the leaders of the New York Four
Hundred) "comes mixed"; dip in where you will and you bring up all sorts
of fish. In England if you go into educated society, you are likely to
meet almost exclusively educated people--or at least people with the
stamp of educated manners. Sir Gorgius Midas is not of course inexorably
barred from the society of duchesses. Her Grace of Pentonville must have
met him frequently. But in America the duchesses have to rub shoulders
with him every day. And--which is worth noting--their husbands also rub
shoulders with his wife.
* * * * *
Which brings us to the second root-fact, which is almost as disturbing
and confounding to casual observation as the first, namely, the much
larger part in the intellectual life of the country played by women in
America. Intellectuality or culture in its narrower sense--meaning a
familiarity with art and letters--is not commonly regarded by Englishmen
as an essential possession in a wife. The lack of it is certainly not
considered by the American woman a cardinal offence in a husband. I know
many American men who, on being consulted on any matter of literary or
artistic taste, say at once: "I don't know. I leave all that to my
wife."
An Englishman in an English house, looking at the family portraits, may
ask his hostess who painted a certain picture.
"I don't know," she will say, "I must ask my husband. Will, who is the
portrait of your grandfather by--the one over there in his robes?"
"Raeburn," says Will.
"Of course," says the wife. "I never can remember the artists' names;
they are so confusing--especially the English ones."
The Englishman thinks no worse of her; but the American woman,
listening, wishes that she had a portrait of her husband's grandfather
by Raeburn and opines that she would know the artist's name.
The same Englishman goes to America and, being entertained, asks a
similar question of his host.
"I don't know," says the man, "I must ask my wife. Mary, who painted
that picture over there--the big tree and the blue sky?"
"Rousseau," says Mary.
"Of course," says the husband. "I never can remember the names of these
fellows. They mix me all up--especially the French ones."
And the Englishman returning home tells his friends of the queer fellow
with whom he dined over there--"an awfully good chap, you know"--who
owned all sorts of jolly paintings--Rousseaux and things--and did not
even know the names of the artists: "Had to ask his wife, by Jove!"
It is not for one moment claimed that there are not in England many
women fully as cultured as the most cultured and fairest Americans; that
there are not many Englishwomen much better informed, much more widely
read, than their husbands. The phenomenon, however, is not nearly as
common as in America, where, it has already been suggested, it is
probably the result of the fact that the women have at the outset
received precisely the same education as the men and, since leaving
school or college, have had more leisure, being less engrossed in
business and material things.
But this feminine predominance in matters of æsthetics in the United
States does not as a rule increase the Englishman's opinion of the
intellectuality or culture of the people as a whole. He still judges
only by the men. Indeed, he is not entirely disposed to like so much
intellectuality in women--such interest in politics, educational
matters, art, and literature. Not having been accustomed to it he rather
disapproves of it. Blue regimentals are only fit for the blue horse or
the artillery.
The Englishman in an American house meets a man more rough and less
polished than a man holding a similar position in society would be in
England; and he thinks poorly of American society in consequence. He
also meets that man's wife, who shows a familiarity with art, letters,
and public affairs vastly more comprehensive than he would expect to
find in a woman of similar position in England. But he does not
therefore strike a balance and re-cast his estimate of American society,
any more than in his estimate of the American press he makes allowance
for the American magazines. He only thinks that the woman's knowledge is
rather out of place and conjectures it to be probably superficial.
Wherein he is no less one-sided in his prejudice than the American who
will not believe in English humour because he cannot understand it.
Philistinism is undoubtedly more on the surface in educated society in
the United States than in Great Britain; but in England outside that
society it is nearly all Philistinism. Step down from a social class in
England, and you come to a new and lower level of refinement and
information. In America the people still "come mixed."
Twenty-five years ago in England, you did not expect a stock-broker, and
to-day you do not expect a haberdasher (even though he may have been
knighted), to know whether Botticelli is a wine or a cheese. In America,
because the Englishman meets that stock-broker or that haberdasher in a
society in which he would not be likely to meet him in England, he does
expect him to know; and I suspect that if a census were taken there
would be found more stock-brokers and haberdashers in America than in
England who do know something of Botticelli. I am quite certain that
more of their wives do. Matthew Arnold spoke not too pleasantly of the
curious sensation that he experienced in addressing a bookseller in
America as "General." The "bookseller" in question was a man widely
respected in the United States, the head of a great house of publishers
and booksellers, a conspicuously public-spirited citizen, and a _bona
fide_ General who saw stern service in the Civil War. To Englishmen,
knowing nothing of the background, the mere fact as stated by Matthew
Arnold is curious.
But if civil war were to break out in Great Britain--England and Wales
against Scotland and Ireland--and the conflict assumed such titanic
proportions that single armies of a million men took the field, then
would Tennyson's "smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue" indeed have to "leap
from his counter and till and strike, were it but with his cheating
yard-wand, home." The entire population of England that was not
actually needed at home would be compelled to take the field, and in the
slaughter (it is curious how little English men know of the terrific
proportions of the conflict between the North and South) the demand for
officers would be so great that there would not be enough men of
previous training to fill the places. Men would rise from the ranks by
merit and among those who rose to be generals there might well be a
publisher or bookseller or two. On the termination of the war, the
soldiers would turn from their soldiering to their old trades and it
might be General Murray or General Macmillan or General Bumpus; and the
thing would not then be strange to English ears.
An American story tells how, soon after the close of the Civil War, a
stranger asked a farmer if he needed any labourers; and the farmer
replied in the negative. He had just taken on three new ones, he said,
all of them disbanded soldiers. One, he added, had been a private, one a
captain, and one a full-blown colonel.
"And how do you find them?" asked the other.
"The private's a first-class workman," said the farmer, "and the captain
he isn't bad."
"And the colonel?"
"Well, I don't want to say nothing agin a man as fit as a colonel in the
war," said the farmer, "but I know I ain't hiring no brigadier-generals
if they come this way."
They are growing old now, and fewer, the men who held commissions in the
war that ended over forty years ago; but during those forty years there
has been no community, no trade or profession or calling, in which they
have not been to be found, indistinguishable from their civilian
colleagues, except by the tiny button in the lapels of their coats.
Until Mr. Roosevelt, (and he won his spurs in another war) there has
been no man elected President of the United States, except Mr.
Cleveland, the one Democrat, who had not a distinguished record as an
officer in the Union armies--Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and
McKinley were all soldiers. You may still see that little button in many
pulpits. Farmers wear it, and cabinet ministers, millionaires, and
mechanics.
The Anglo-Saxon is a fighting breed. The population of the British Isles
sprang from the loins of successive waves of fighting men. It was not
the weaklings of the Danes or Normans, Jutes, Saxons, or Angles who came
to conquer Britain, but the bold, the hardy, the venturesome of each
tribe or people. It was not the mere mixture of bloods that made the
English character what it was, the race a race of empire builders; it
was because of each blood there came to Britain only of the most
adventurous. And through the centuries it has been the constant stress
and training of the perpetual turmoil in which the people have lived
that have kept the stock from degeneration. There has never been a time
in English history, save when the people have been struggling in wars
among themselves, when there has been an English family that has not at
any given moment had sons or fathers, uncles or cousins out somewhere
doing the work of the Empire.
And some are drowned in deep water,
And some in sight of shore,
And word goes back to the weary wife
And ever she sends more.
For since that wife had gate or gear
And hearth and garth and bield
She willed her sons to the white Harvest,
And that is a bitter yield.
. . . . . . .
The good wife's sons come home again
With little into their hands,
But the lore o' men that ha' dealt wi' men
In the new and naked lands,
But the faith o' men that ha' brothered men
By more than the easy breath,
And the eyes o' men that ha' read wi' men
In the open book of death.[188:1]
I have already explained how far Americans are from understanding the
British Empire. It is a pity; they would understand Englishmen better
and like them better. And what the building of the Empire and the
keeping of it have done for Englishmen, the Civil War did in large
measure for the Americans. Even the struggle with their own wilderness
might not have sufficed to keep the people hard and sound of heart and
limb through a century of peace and growing prosperity. The Civil War is
already beginning to slip into the farther reaches of the people's
memory; but twenty-five years ago the echoes of the guns had hardly died
away--the minds of the people were still inspired. It was an awful, and
a splendid, experience for the nation. It is not necessary, with
Emerson, "always to respect war hereafter"; but there have been times
when it has seemed to me that I would rather be able to wear that little
tri-colour button of the American Loyal Legion than any other
decoration in the world.[189:1]
It is the great compensation of war that it does not breed in a people
only a fighting spirit. All history shows that it is in the mental
exhilaration and the moral uplift after a period of war successfully
waged that a people puts forth the best that is in it, in the production
of works of art and in its literature. It is an old legend--older than
Omar--that the most beautiful flowers spring from the blood of heroes.
And it is true. When the genius of a nation has been ploughed up with
cannon-shot and bayonets and watered with blood--then it is that it
breaks into the most nearly perfect blossom. It has been so through all
history, back beyond the times of gun and bayonet, when spears and
swords were the plough-shares, as far as we can see and doubtless
farther. In America, the necessities of the case compelled the people to
turn first to material works; it was to the civilising of their
continent, the repairing of their shattered commercial and industrial
structure (shattered when it was yet only half built), that their new
inspiration had perforce to turn first. But there was impetus enough for
that and to spare, and, after satisfying their mere physical needs, they
swept on with a sort of inspired hunger for things to satisfy their
minds and souls. Europeans are accustomed to think that the American
desire for culture is something superficial--something put on for
appearance's sake; and nothing could well be farther from the truth. It
is an intense, deep-seated, national craving. War on the scale of the
Civil War ploughs deep. It may be impossible for a nation to make itself
cultivated--to grow century-old shrubberies and five-century-old
turf--in ten years or forty; and when the Americans in their ravening
famine reach out to grasp at once all that is good and beautiful in the
world, it may be that at first they cannot assimilate all that they draw
to them--they can grasp, but not absorb. To that extent there may be
much that is superficial in American culture. But every year and every
day they are sucking the nourishment deeper--the influences are
penetrating, percolating, permeating the soil of their natures (yes, I
know that I am running two metaphors abreast, but let them run)--and it
is a mistake to conclude because in some places the culture lies only on
the surface that there are not others where it has already sunk through
and through. Above all is it a mistake to suppose that the emotion
itself is shallow or that the yearning is not as deep as their--or any
human--natures.
* * * * *
It is possible that some critics may be found cavilling enough to accuse
me of inconsistency in thus celebrating the praise of War in a work
which is avowedly intended for the promotion of Peace. Carlyle wisely,
if somewhat brutally, pointed out that if an Oliver Cromwell be
assassinated "it is certain you may get a cart-load of turnips from his
carcase." But one does not therefore advocate regicide for the sake of
the kitchen-gardens.
FOOTNOTES:
[167:1] What is said above--or at least what can be read between the
lines--may throw some light on the fact, on which the English press
happens as I write to be commenting in some perplexity, that whereas
certain Australians among the Rhodes scholars have distinguished
themselves conspicuously in the schools, the only honours that have
fallen to Americans have been those of the athletic field. Those
journals which have inferred therefrom a lack of aptitude for
scholarship on the part of American youth in general may be amiss in
their diagnosis.
[169:1] To avoid misapprehension, let me say that, as an Oxford man, I
have all the Oxford prejudices as fully developed as any Englishman
could wish. Rather a year of Oxford than five of Harvard or ten of
Minnesota. How much of this is sentiment, and worthless, and how much
reason, it would be hard to say and is immaterial. The personal
prepossession need not blind one either to the greatness of the work
which the other institutions do, nor to the defensibility of that point
of view which sets other qualities, in an institution the professed
object of which is to educate and to fit youths for life, above even
those possessed by Oxford or Cambridge.
[171:1] In 1906, under a stricter definition of the term "periodical,"
the privilege of sending as second-class matter books issued at regular
intervals was withdrawn.
[188:1] Rudyard Kipling, "The Sea Wife" (_The Seven Seas_).
[189:1] The Loyal Legion is the society of those who held commissions as
officers on the side of the North. The Grand Army of the Republic is the
society which includes all ranks.
CHAPTER VIII
A COMPARISON IN CULTURE
The Advantage of Youth--Japanese Eclecticism and American--The
Craving for the Best--_Cyrano de Bergerac_--Verestschagin--
Music and the Drama--Culture by Paroxysms--Mr. Gladstone and
the Japanese--Anglo-Saxon Crichtons--Americans as Linguists--
England's Past and America's Future--Americanisms in Speech--
Why they are Disappearing in America--And Appearing in
England--The Press and the Copyright Laws--A Look into the
Future.
Ruskin, speaking of the United States, said that he could never bring
himself to live in a country so unfortunate as to possess no castles.
But, with its obvious disadvantages, youth in a nation has also
compensations. Max O'Rell says that to be American is to be both fresh
and mature, and I have certainly known many Americans who were fresh.
The shoulders are too young for the head to be very old. But when a
man--let us say an Englishman of sixty--full of worldly wisdom, having
travelled much and seen many men and cities, looks on a young man, just
out of the university, perhaps, very keen on his profession, very
certain of making his way in the world, with a hundred interests in what
seem to the other "new-fangled" things--telephones and typewriters and
bicycles and radio-activity and motor cars, things unknown to the old
man's youth,--talking of philosophies and theories and principles which
were not taught at college when the other was an undergraduate, the
elder is likely to think that the young man's judgment is sadly crude
and raw, that his education has been altogether too diffused and made up
of smatterings of too many things, and to say to himself that the old
sound, simple ways were better. Yet it may be--is it not almost
certain?--that the youth has had the training which will give him a
wider outlook than his father ever had, and will make him a broader man.
In our grandfathers' days, a man of reasonable culture could come
approximately near to knowing all that then was known and worth the
knowing. The wisdom and science of the world could be included in the
compass of a modest bookshelf. But the province of human knowledge has
become so wide that, however much "general information" a man may have,
he can truly know nothing unless he studies it as a specialist. It is,
perhaps, largely as a reaction against the Jacksonian theory of
universal competence that the avowed ideal of American education to-day
is to cultivate the student's power of concentration--to give him a
survey, elementary but sound, of as wide a field as possible, but above
all to teach him so to use his mind that to whatever corner of that
field he may turn for his walk in life, he will be able to focus all his
intellect upon it--to concentrate and bring to bear all his energies on
whatever tussock or mole-hill it may be out of which he has to dig his
fortune. When the youth steps out into life, it may be that his actual
store of knowledge is superficial--a smattering of too many things--but
superficiality is precisely the one quality which, in theory at least,
his training has been calculated not to produce. Englishmen know that
the American throws tremendous energy and earnestness into his business.
They know that he throws the same earnestness into his sports. Is it not
reasonable to suppose that he will be no less earnest in the study of
Botticelli? And it is a great advantage (which the American nation
shares with the American youth) to have the products, the literature,
the art, the institutions of the whole world to choose from, with
practically no traditions to hamper the choice.
When the Japanese determined to adopt Western ways, seeing that so only
could they hold their own against the peoples of the West, they did not
model their civilisation on that of any one European country. They sent
the most intelligent of their young men abroad into every country, each
with a mission to study certain things in that country; and so,
gathering for comparison the ways of thought and the institutions of all
peoples, they were able to pick and choose from each what seemed best to
them and to reject all else. They did not propose to make themselves a
nation of imitation Englishmen or Germans or Americans. "But," we can
imagine them saying, "if we take whatever is best in each country we
ought surely to be able to make ourselves into a nation better than
any." They modelled their navy on the British, but not their army, nor
their banking system, nor did they copy much from British commercial or
industrial methods--nor did they take the British system of education.
The United States has been less free to choose. The Japanese had a new
house, quite empty, and they could do their furnishing all at once. The
American nation, though young, has, after all, a century of domestic
life behind it, in the course of which it has accumulated a certain
amount of furniture in the form of institutions, prejudices, and
traditions, some of which are fixtures and could not be torn out of the
structure if the nation wished it; others, though movable, possess
associations for the sake of which it would not part with them if it
could. Fortunately, however, the house has been much built on to of late
years and what goods, or bads, are already amassed can all be stowed
away in a single east wing. All the main building (the eastern wing used
to be the main building, but it is not now), and particularly the
western end and the annex to the north, are new and empty, to be
decorated and furnished as the owner pleases. And while the owner, like
a sensible man, intends to do all that he can to encourage home
manufactures, he does not hesitate to go as far afield as he likes to
fill a nook with something better than anything that can be turned out
at home.
Nothing strikes an Englishman more, after he comes to know the people,
than this eclectic habit, paradoxically combined as it is with an
intense--an over-noisy--patriotism. "The best," the American is fond of
saying, "is good enough for me"; and it never occurs to him that he has
not entire right to the best wherever he may find it. In England it is
only a small part of the population which considers itself entitled to
the best of anything. The rest of the people may covet, but the best
belongs to "their betters." The American knows no "betters." He comes to
England and walks, as of right, into the best hotels, the best
restaurants, the best seats at the theatres--and the best society. He
buys, so far as his purse permits, and often his purse permits a great
deal, the best works of art. The consequence is that the world brings
him of its best. It may defraud him once in a while into buying an
imitation or a second-class article patched up; but, on the whole, the
American people has something like the best of the world to choose from.
And what is true of the palpable and material things is equally true of
the intangible and intellectual.
Englishmen have long been familiar with one aspect of this fact, in the
honours which America has in the past been ready to shower on any
visiting Englishman of distinction: in the extraordinary number of
dollars that she has been willing to pay to hear him lecture. Of this
particular commodity--the lecturing Englishman--the people has been
fairly sated; but because Americans are no longer eager to lionise any
English author or artist with some measure of a London reputation, it
does not by any means imply that they are not still seeking for, and
grappling, the best in art and letters wherever they can find it. They
only doubt whether the Englishman who comes to lecture is, after all,
the best.
A Frenchman has pronounced American society to be the wittiest in the
world. A German has said that more people read Dante in Boston than in
Berlin. I take it that many more read Shakespeare in the United States
than in Great Britain--and they certainly try harder to understand him.
Nor need it be denied that they have to try harder. Without any
knowledge of actual sales, I have no doubt that the number of copies of
the works of any continental European author, of anything like a
first-class reputation, sold in America is vastly greater than the
number sold in England. Tolstoi, Turgeniev, Sienkiewicz, Ibsen,
Maeterlinck, Fogazzaro, Jokai, Haeckel, Nietzsche--I give the names at
random as they come--of any one of these there is immeasurably more of a
"cult" in the United States than in England--a far larger proportion of
the population makes some effort to master what is worth mastering in
each. Rodin's works--his name at least and photographs of his
masterpieces--are familiar to tens of thousands of Americans belonging
to classes which in England never heard of him. Helleu's drawings were
almost a commonplace of American illustrated literature six years before
one educated Englishman in a hundred knew his name. Zörn's etchings are
almost as well known in the United States as Whistler's. Englishmen
remain curiously engrossed in English things.
It may be a very disputable judgment to say that the most nearly
Shakespearian literary production of modern times--at least of those
which have gained any measure of fame--is M. Rostand's _Cyrano de
Bergerac_. Immediately on its publication it was greeted in America with
hardly less enthusiasm than in Paris; and within a few weeks it became
the chief topic of conversation at a thousand dinner tables. In a few
months I had seen the play acted by three different companies--all
admirable, scholarly productions, of which the most famous and most
"authorised" was by no means the best--and soon thereafter I came to
England, for a short visit, but with the determination to find time to
make the trip to Paris to see M. Coquelin as "Cyrano." I found
Englishmen--educated Englishmen, including not a few authors and
critics to whom I spoke--practically unaware of the existence of such a
play. Of those who had heard of it and read _critiques_, I met not one
who had read the work itself. Some time after, Sir Charles Wyndham
produced it in London and it was, I believe, not a success. To-day
_Cyrano de Bergerac_ (I am speaking of it not as an acting play but as
literature) is practically unknown even to educated Englishmen, except
such as make French literature their special study.
_Cyrano_ may or may not be on a level with any but the greatest of
Shakespeare's plays (it is evident from his other work that M. Rostand
is not a Shakespeare) but that it was an immeasurably finer thing than
ninety-nine per cent of the books of the year which English people were
reading that winter on the advice of English critics is beyond question.
The nation which was reading and discussing M. Rostand's work was
conspicuously better engaged than the nation which was reading and
discussing the English novels of the season.
Again when poor Vasili Verestschagin met his death so tragically off
Port Arthur, his name meant little or nothing to the great majority of
educated Englishmen, though there had been exhibitions of his work in
London--the same exhibitions as were made throughout the larger cities
of the United States. In America regret for him was wide-spread and
personal, for he stood for something definite in American eyes--rather
unfortunately, perhaps, in one way, because Verestschagin, too, had
painted those miserable sepoys being eternally blown from British guns.
The general English misapprehension of the present condition of art and
literature in America sometimes shows itself in unexpected places. I
have a great love for _Punch_. Since the time when the beautifying of
its front cover with gamboge and vermilion and emerald green constituted
the chief solace of wet days in the nursery, I doubt if, in the course
of forty years, I have missed reading one dozen copies of the London
_Charivari_. After a period of exile in regions where current literature
is unobtainable one of the chief delights of a return to civilisation is
"catching up" with the back numbers of _Punch_; nor, in spite of gibes
to the contrary, has the paper ever been more brilliant than under its
present editorship. Yet _Punch_ in this present week of September 11,
1907, represents an American woman, apparently an American woman of
wealth and position (at all events she is at the time touring in Italy),
as saying on hearing an air from _Il Trovatore_: "Say, these Italians
ain't vurry original. Guess I've heard that tune on our street organs in
New York ever since I was a gurl."
The weaknesses of the peoples of other nations are fair game; but it is
the essence of just caricature that it should have some verisimilitude.
_Punch_ could not publish that drawing with the accompanying legend
unless it was the belief of the editor or the staff that such a solecism
was more or less likely to proceed from the mouth of such an American as
is depicted; which is precisely the error of the Frenchman who believes
that Englishmen sell their wives at Smithfield. Thirty years ago, the
lampoon would have had some justification; but at the present time both
the actual number and the percentage of women who are familiar with the
Italian operas is, I believe, vastly greater in America than in
England. This statement will undoubtedly be received with incredulity by
the majority of Englishmen who know nothing about the United States; but
no one who does know the people of the country will dispute it. In
England, the opera is still, for all the changes that have occurred in
the last quarter of a century, largely a pleasure of a limited class. It
may be (and personally I believe) that in that class there is a larger
number of true musicians who know the operas well and love them
appreciatively than is to be found in the United States; but the number
of people who have a reasonable acquaintance with the majority of
operas, and are familiar with the best known airs from each and with the
general characteristics of the various composers, is immensely larger in
America. It is only the same fact that we have confronted so often
before--the fact of the greater homogeneousness or uniformity of tastes
and pursuits in the American people.
It must be clearly understood, here as elsewhere, that I am not
comparing merely the people of New York with the people of London, but
the people of the whole United States of all classes, urban and
provincial, industrial and peasant, East and West, with the whole
population of all classes in the British Isles; for a large percentage
of the mistakes which Englishmen make about America arises from the fact
that they insist on comparing the educated classes of London with such
people as they may chance to have met in New York or one or two Eastern
cities, under the impression that they are thereby drawing a comparison
between the two peoples. Senator Hoar's opinion of Matthew Arnold has
been already quoted; and the truth is that very few Englishmen who have
written about America have lived in the country long enough to grasp how
much of the United States lies on the other side of the North River. Not
only does not New York alone, but New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and
Washington combined do not bear anything like the same relation to
America as a whole as London bears to the British Isles. Englishmen take
no account of, for they have not seen and no one has reported to them,
the intense craving for and striving after culture and self-improvement
which exists (and has existed for a generation) not only in such larger
cities as Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and New Orleans,
but in many hundreds of smaller communities scattered from the Atlantic
to the Pacific. One must have such a vision of the United States as a
whole as will enable him to imagine all this endeavour, now dissipated
over so vast a stretch of country, as all massed together into a
territory no larger than the British Isles before he can arrive at an
intelligent basis of comparison between the peoples. What is centralised
in England in America is diffused over half a continent and much less
easily measurable.
It happens that as I am correcting the proofs of the chapter the London
newspapers of the day (January 25, 1908) contain announcements of the
death in New York of Edward MacDowell. He was often spoken of as "the
American Grieg"; but it was a phrase which irritated many good musical
critics in America, for the reason that they considered their countryman
the greater man of the two. They would have had Grieg spoken of as the
Norwegian MacDowell. In that judgment they may have been right or they
may have been wrong; but it is characteristic of the attitudes of the
British and American peoples that, whereas the people of the United
States know Grieg better than he is known in England (that is to say,
that a larger proportion of the people, outside the classes which
professedly account themselves musical, have more or less acquaintance
with his music), just as they know the work of half a dozen English
composers, MacDowell, though he had played his pianoforte concertos in
London, remained almost unknown in England outside of strictly musical
circles. It is certain that had MacDowell been an Englishman he would
have been immensely better known in America than, being an American, he
ever was in England.
In the kindred field of the drama the general English idea of the
American stage is based chiefly on acquaintance with that noisy type of
"musical comedy" of which so many specimens have in recent years been
brought to England from the other side of the Atlantic. It is as if
Americans judged English literature by Miss Marie Corelli and Guy
Thorne. Those things are brought to England because they are opined by
the managers to be the sort of thing that England wants or which is
likely to succeed in England, not because they are what America
considers her best product. To attempt any comparison of the living
playwrights or actors in the two countries would be a thorny and
perilous undertaking; and if any comparison is to be made at all it must
be done lightly and as far as possible examples must be drawn from those
who are no longer actively on the boards. Madame de Navarro (Miss Mary
Anderson) has deliberately put on record her opinion of Miss Clara
Morris as "the greatest emotional actress I ever saw." It is not likely
that when Madame de Navarro pronounced that estimate she was forgetting
either Miss Terry or Mrs. Campbell--or Mesdames Rejane and Bernhardt or
Signora Duse. Madame de Navarro is no mean judge: and those who have
read Miss Morris's wonderful book, _Life on the Stage_, will think the
judgment in this case not incredible.
Similarly I believe that in Mr. Richard Mansfield the United States has
just lost an actor who had not his peer in earnestness, scholarship,
restraint, and power on the English stage. I am not acquainted with an
English actor to-day who, in the combination of all these qualities, is
in his class. His "Peer Gynt" was a thing which, I believe, no living
English actor could have approached, and I gravely doubt whether England
would have furnished a public who would have appreciated it in
sufficient numbers to make its presentation a success if it had been
achieved in London.
It was said that in any effort to arrive at an estimate of American
culture, or to state that culture in terms of English culture, we should
have to find landmarks in trifles. All these things are such trifles.
Let us concede that _Cyrano_ is not the greatest literature, nor is
Verestschagin's work the highest art; still neither the one nor the
other is properly a negligible quantity in the sum-total of the creative
work of the generation. There may be many American women who do not know
their Verdi, and it may be that Madame de Navarro's estimate of Miss
Morris, mine of Mr. Mansfield, and that of certain American critics of
Edward MacDowell are equally at fault; but it still remains absurd to
take ignorance of the Italian operas as characteristic of American
women or to talk contemptuously, as many Englishmen do, of the American
theatre, because they have no knowledge of it beyond what they have seen
of the one class of production from _The Belle of New York_ to _The
Prince of Pilsen_, or of American music, because their acquaintance with
it begins and ends with Sousa and the writers of "coon songs."
* * * * *
It will be urged that successive "crazes" for individual artists or
authors, for particular productions or even isolated schools, are no
evidence of any general culture. Conceding this, it remains impossible
to avoid the question: supposing a nation or an individual to spend each
successive six months in a new enthusiasm--six months on Plato and
Aristotelianism,--six months, taking the _Light of Asia_, Mr. Sinnett,
and _Kim_ as a starting point, on Buddhism and esoteric philosophy,--six
months, inspired by Fitzgerald, on Omar, Persian literature and history
and the various ramifications thereof,--six months on M. Rodin, his
relation to the art of sculpture in general and particularly to the
sculpture of the Greeks,--a similar six months devoted to Mr. Watt with
like excursions into his environment, proximate and remote,--six months
to Millet, Barbizon, and the history of French painting,--six months of
Russian art with Verestschagin and six with Russian literature and
politics working outwards from Count Tolstoi,--six months of philosophic
speculation radiating from Haeckel,--six months absorbed in Japanese
art,--six months burrowing in Egyptian excavations and Egyptian
history--the question is, I say, supposing a nation or an individual to
have passed through twenty such spasms (of which I have suggested ten,
every one of which ten is a subject which I have in my own experience
known to become the rage in America more or less wide-spread and for a
greater or lesser period) and supposing that nation or that individual
to be possessed of extraordinary earnestness and power of concentration,
with a great desire to learn, how far will that nation or that
individual have travelled on the road toward something approaching
culture? Let it be granted that the individual or the nation starts with
something less of the æsthetic temperament, less well grounded in, or
disposed towards, artistic or literary study than the average Englishman
who has made decent use of his opportunities at school, at the
university, and in the surroundings of his every-day life; the
intellectual condition of that individual or nation will not at the end
of the ten years of successive _furores_ be the same intellectual
condition as that of the Englishman who, after leaving college, has
spent ten years in the ordinary educated society of England, but it is
probable that, besides the accumulation of a great quantity of
information, some not entirely inadequate or incorrect general standards
of taste and criticism will have been arrived at. It is worth
remembering that at least one eminently competent English critic has
declared that while there may be less erudition in America, there is
conspicuously more culture.
When the Englishman hears the American, and especially the American
woman, slip so glibly from Rodin to Rameses, from Kant to kakemonos, he
dubs her superficial. Perhaps she is, considering only the actual
knowledge possessed compared with the potentiality of knowledge on any
one of the topics. There is a story which has been fitted to many
persons and many occasions, but which thirty years ago was told of Mr.
Gladstone, though for all I know it may go back to generations before he
was born. Mr. Gladstone, so the story ran, was present at a dinner where
among the guests was a distinguished Japanese; and, as not seldom
happened, Mr. Gladstone monopolised the conversation, talking with
fluency and seeming omniscience on a vast range of subjects, among which
Japan came in for its share of attention. The distinguished stranger was
asked later for his opinion of the English statesman. "A wonderful man,"
he said, "a truly wonderful man! He seems to know all about everything
in the world except Japan. He knows nothing at all about Japan."
The specialist in a single subject can always find the holes in the
information on that subject of the "universal specialist." But it is
worth noticing that, like almost every other salient trait of the
American character, this American desire to become a universal
specialist--this reaching after the all-culture and all-knowledge--is an
essentially Anglo-Saxon or English characteristic. The German may be
content to spend his whole life laboriously probing into one small hole.
The Frenchman (let me say again that I thoroughly recognise that all
national generalisations are unsound) will cheerfully wave aside with a
_la-la-la_ whole realms of knowledge which do not interest him. But all
Englishmen and all Americans would be Crichtons and Sydneys if they
could. And--perhaps on the principle of setting a thief to catch a
thief--although the all-round man is the ideal of both peoples, each is
equally suspicious of an intellectual rotundity (in another person) too
nearly complete.
Americans rather like to repeat that story of Mr. Gladstone, when the
talk is of English culture.
The American as a rule is a better linguist than the Englishman,--he is
quicker, that is, to pick up a modern language and likely to speak it
with a better accent. "Never trust an Englishman who speaks French
without an English accent," said Prince Bismarck; and the remark,
however unjust it may be to an occasional individual, showed a shrewd
insight into the English character. There is always to be recognised the
fact that there are tens--perhaps hundreds--of thousands of Englishmen
who speak Hindustani, Pushtu, or the language of any one of a hundred
remote peoples with whom the Empire has traffic, while the American has
had no contact with other peoples which called for a knowledge of any
tongue but his own, except that in a small way some Spanish has been
useful. But so far as European languages go, the Englishman, in more or
less constant and intimate relation with each of the peoples of Europe,
has been so well satisfied of his own superiority to each that it has
seemed vastly more fitting that they should learn his language than that
he should trouble to learn theirs. Under any circumstances, is it not
obviously easier for each one of the European peoples to learn to talk
English than for the Englishman to learn eight European tongues with
eighty miscellaneous dialects?
When an Englishman does learn a foreign language, it is most commonly
for literary or scholastic purposes, rather than (with the exception of
French in certain classes) for conversational use. The American on the
other hand, having had no need of languages in the past, coming now in
contact with the world, sees that there are three or four languages of
Europe which it is most desirable that he should know, if only for
commercial purposes; and a language learned for commercial purposes must
be mastered colloquially and idiomatically. The American is not
distracted by the need of Sanskrit or of any one of the numerous more or
less primitive tongues which a certain proportion of the English people
must acquire if the business of the Empire is to go on. Nor is his
vision confused by seeing all the European tongues jumbled, as it were,
together before him at too close range. He can distinguish which are the
essential or desirable languages for his purposes; and the rising
generation of Americans is learning those languages more generally, and
in a more practical way, than is the rising generation of Englishmen.
* * * * *
And yet we have not crossed that morass;--nor perhaps, however superior
in folly we may be to the angels, is it desirable that we should in
plain daylight. We have at most found some slight vantage-ground: thrown
up a mole-hill of a Pisgah from which we can attain a distant view of
what lies beyond the swamp, even if perchance we have taken some mirages
and _ignes fatui_ for solid landscape and actual illuminations.
The ambitions and ideals of the two peoples are fundamentally alike; nor
is there so great a difference as appears on the surface in their method
of striving to attain those ideals and realise those ambitions, albeit
the American uses certain tools (modern he calls them, the Englishman
preferring to say new-fangled) to which the Englishman's hands have not
taken kindly. It is natural that the English nation, having a so much
larger past, should be more influenced by it than the American. It is
natural that the American, conscious that his national character has but
just shaped itself out of the void, with all the future before it,
should look more to the present and the future than the Englishman.
The Englishman prefers to turn almost exclusively to the study of
antiquity--the art and philosophies and letters of past ages--for the
foundation of his work, and thence to push on between almost strictly
British lines. The American seeks rather to absorb only so much of the
wisdom and taste of antiquity as may serve for an intelligent
comprehension of the world-art, the world-philosophies, the
world-literature of to-day, and then, borrowing what he will from each
department of those, to strive on that foundation to build something
better than any. There are many scholars and students in America who
would prefer to see the people less eager to push on. There are many
thinkers and educators in England who hold that English scholarship and
training dwell altogether too much in the past and that it were better
if England would look more abroad and would give larger attention to the
conditions of modern life--the conditions which her youth will have to
meet in the coming generation.
If an American were asked which of the two peoples was the more
cultivated, the more widely informed, he would probably say: "You
fellows have been longer at the game than we have. You've had more
experience in the business; but we believe we've got every bit as good
raw material as you and a blamed sight better machinery. Also we are
more in earnest and work that machinery harder than you. Maybe we are
not turning out as good goods yet--and maybe we are. But it's a dead
sure thing that if we aren't yet, we're going to."
A common index to the degree of cultivation in any people is found in
their everyday language--their spoken speech; but here again in
considering America from the British standpoint we have to be careful or
we may be entrapped into the same fallacy as threatens us when we
propose to judge the United States by its newspapers. In the first place
the right of any people to invent new forms of verbal currency to meet
the requirements of its colloquial exchange must be conceded. There was
a time when an Americanism in speech was condemned in England because it
was American. When so many of the Americanisms of ten years ago are
incorporated in the daily speech even of educated Englishmen to-day, it
would be affectation to put forward such a plea nowadays. Going deeper
than this, we undoubtedly find that the educated Englishman to-day
speaks with more precision than the educated American. The educated
Englishman speaks the language of what I have already called the public
school and university class. But while the Englishman speaks the
language of that class, the American speaks the language of the whole
people. That is not, of course, entirely true, for there are grades of
speech in the United States, but it is relatively true--true for the
purpose of a comparison with the conditions in Great Britain. The
Englishman may be surprised at the number of solecisms committed in the
course of an hour's talk by a well-to-do New Yorker whom he has met in
the company of gentlemen in England. He would perhaps be more surprised
to find a mechanic from the far West commit no more. The tongue of
educated Englishmen is not the tongue of the masses--nor is it a
difference in accent only, but in form, in taste, in grammar, and in
thought. If in England the well-to-do and gentle classes had commercial
transactions only among themselves, it is probable that a currency
composed only of gold and silver would suffice for their needs; copper
is introduced into the coinage to meet the requirements of the poor.
American speech has its elements of copper for the same reason--that all
may be able to deal in it, to give and take change in its terms. It is
the same fact as we have met before, of the greater homogeneousness of
the American people--the levelling power (for want of a better phrase)
of a democracy.
The Englishman may object, and with justice, that because an educated
man must incorporate into his speech words and phrases and forms which
are necessary for communication with the vulgar, there is no reason why
he should not be able to reserve those forms and phrases for use with
the vulgar only. A gentleman does not pay half-a-crown, lost at the card
table to a friend, in coppers. Why cannot the educated American keep his
speech silver and gold for educated ears? All of which is just. There
are people in the United States who speak with a preciseness equal to
that of the most exacting of English precisians, but they are not fenced
off as in England within the limits of a specified class; while the
common speech of the American people, which is used by a majority of
those who would in England come within the limits of that fenced area,
is much more careless in form and phrase than the speech of educated
Englishmen. It may be urged that it is much less careless, and better
and vastly more uniform, than any one of the innumerable forms of speech
employed by the various lower classes in England; which is true. The
level of speech is better in America; but the speech of the educated and
well-to-do is generally much better in England. All this, however (which
is mere commonplace) may be conceded, but, though educated Americans may
use a more debased speech than educated Englishmen, the point is that it
is not safe to argue therefrom to an inferiority in culture in America;
because the American uses his speech for other and wider purposes than
the Englishman. The different American classes, just as they dress
alike, read the same newspapers and magazines, and, within limits, eat
the same food, so they speak the same language. It is unjust to compare
that language with the language used in England only by the educated
classes.
But, what is an infinitely larger fact, the inferiority of the American
speech to the English is daily and rapidly disappearing. Twenty years
ago, practically all American speech fell provincially on educated
English ears. That is far from being the case to-day; and what is most
interesting is that the alteration has not come about as the result of a
change in the diction of Americans only. The change has been in
Englishmen also. To whatever extent American speech may have improved,
it is certain also that English speech has become much less
precise--much less uniform among the educated and "gentlemanly"
classes--and English ears are consequently less exacting.
With the gradual elimination of class distinctions in England, or rather
with the blurring of the lines which separate one class from another, a
multitude of persons pass for "gentlemen" in England to-day who could
not have dreamed--and whose fathers certainly did not dream--of being
counted among the gentry thirty-five years ago. The fact may be for good
or ill; but one consequence has been that the newcomers, thrusting up
into the circles above them, have taken with them the speech of their
former associates, so that one hears now, in nominally polite circles,
tones of voice, forms of speech, and the expression of points of view
which would have been impossible in the youth of people who are now no
more than middle-aged.
There was a time when the dress proclaimed the man of quality at once.
That distinction began to pass away with the disappearance of silk and
ruffles and wigs from masculine costume. For a century longer, the
shibboleths of voice and manner kept their force. But now those too are
going; and the result is that the English speech of the educated class
has become less precise and less uniform. The same speech is now common
to a larger proportion of the people. In the days when nearly all the
members of educated society--we are speaking of the men only, for they
only counted in those days--had been to one or other of the same "seven
great public schools" (which not one public school man in a hundred can
name correctly to-day) and to one or other of the same two universities,
they kept for use among themselves all through their after life the
forms of speech, the catchwords, the classical references which passed
current in their school and undergraduate days. It was a free-masonry of
speech on which the outsider could not intrude. To-day, when not a
quarter of the members of the same circles have been to one of those
same seven schools nor a half to the same universities, when at least a
quarter have been to no recognised classical school at all, it is
impossible that the same free-masonry should prevail. There were a
hundred trite classical quotations (no great evidence of scholarship,
but made jestingly familiar by the old school curricula) which our
fathers could use with safety in any chance company of the society to
which they were accustomed; but even the most familiar of them would be
a parlous experiment in small talk to-day. They have vanished from
common conversation even more completely than they have disappeared from
the debates of the House of Commons. And this is only a type of the
change which has come over the educated speech of England, which we may
regret or we may welcome. It may be sad that the English gentleman
should speak in less literary form than he did thirty years ago, but the
loss may be outweighed many times by the fact that so much larger a
proportion of the people speak the same speech as he--not so refined as
his used to be, but materially better than the majority of those who use
it to-day could then have shaped their lips to frame. Few Englishmen at
least would acquiesce in the opinion that it showed a decay of culture
in England--that the people were more ignorant or less educated. It may
not be safe to draw an analogous conclusion in the case of the American
people.
A story well-known to most Englishmen has to do with the man who,
arriving at Waterloo station to take a train, went into the refreshment
room for a cup of coffee. In his haste he spilled the coffee over his
shirt front and thereupon fell to incontinent cursing of "this d----d
London and South-Western Railway."
An American variant of, or pendant to, the same story tells of the
Eastern man who approached Salt Lake City on foot and sat by the wayside
to rest. By ill luck he sat upon an ants' nest. Shortly he rose
anathematising the "lustful Mormon city" and turned his face eastward
once more, a Mormon-hater to the end of his days.
Not much less illogical is an Englishman I know who, having spent some
three weeks in the United States, loathes the people and all the
institutions thereof, almost solely (though the noise of the elevated
trains in New York has something to do with it) because he found that
they applied the name of "robin" to what he calls "a cursed great
thrush-beast." Nearly every English visitor to the United States has
been irritated at first by discovering this, or some similar fact; but
it is not necessary on that account to hate the American people, to
express contempt for their art and literature, and to belittle their
commercial greatness and all the splendours of their history.[214:1]
Rather ought Englishmen to like this application by the early colonists
to the objects of their new environment of the cherished names of the
well-known things of home. It shows that they carried with them into the
wilderness in their hearts a love of English lane and hedgerow, and
strove to soften the savagery of their new surroundings by finding in
the common wild things the familiar birds and flowers which had grown
dear to them in far-off peaceful English villages.
We will not now potter again over the well-trodden paths of the
differences in phraseology in the two peoples which have been so
fruitful a source of "impressions" in successive generations of English
visitors to the United States, for the thing grows absurd when "car,"
and "store," and "sidewalk," and "elevator" are commonplaces on the lips
of every London cockney; nor is there any need here to thread again the
mazes of the well-worn discussion as to how far the peculiarities of
modern American speech are only good old English forms which have
survived in the New World after disappearance from their original
haunts.[215:1] The subject is worth referring to, however, for the very
reason that its discussion _has_ become almost absurd,--because by a
process which has been going on, as we have already said, on both sides
of the ocean simultaneously, the differences themselves are
disappearing, the tongues of the two peoples are coming together and
coalescing once more. The two currents into which the stream divided
which flowed from that original well of English are drawing
together--are, indeed, already so close that it will be but a very short
time when the word "Americanism" as applied to a peculiarity in language
will have ceased to be used in England. The "Yankee twang" and the
"strong English accent" will survive in the two countries respectively
for some time yet; but the written and spoken language of the two
nations will be--already almost is--the same, and English visitors to
the United States will have lost one fruitful source of impressions.
The process has been going on in both countries, but in widely different
forms. And this seems to me a peculiarly significant fact. In America
the language of the people is constantly and steadily tending to
improve; and this tendency is, Englishmen should note, the result of a
deliberate and conscious effort at improvement on the part of the
people. This can hardly be insisted upon too strongly.
The majority of "Americanisms" in speech were in their origin mere
provincialisms--modes of expression and pronunciation which had sprung
up unchecked in the isolated communities of a scattered people. They
grew with the growth of the communities, until they threatened to graft
themselves permanently on the speech of the nation. The United States is
no longer a country of isolated and scattered communities. After the
Civil War, and partly as a result thereof, but still more as a result of
the knitting together of the whole country by the building of the
American railway system, with the consequent sudden increase in
intimacy of communication between all parts, there developed in the
people a new sense of national unity. England saw a revolution in her
means of communication when railways superseded stage-coaches and when
the penny post was established; but no revolution comparable to that
which has taken place in the United States in the present generation.
Prior to 1880--really until 1883--Portland, Oregon, was hardly less
removed from Portland, Maine, than Capetown is from Liverpool to-day,
and the discomforts of travel from one to the other were incomparably
greater. Now they are morally closer together than London and Aberdeen,
in as much as nowhere between the Atlantic and Pacific is there any such
consciousness of racial difference as separates the Scots from the
English.
The work of federation begun by the original thirteen colonies is not
yet completed, for the individuality of the several States is destined
to go on being continuously more merged--until it will finally be almost
obliterated--in the Federal whole; but it may be said that in the last
twenty-five years, and not until then, has the American people become
truly unified--an entity conscious of its oneness and of its commercial
greatness in that oneness, thinking common thoughts, co-operating in
common ambitions, and speaking a common speech. Into that speech were at
first absorbed, as has been said, the peculiarities, localisms, and
provincialisms which had inevitably grown up in different sections in
the days of non-communication. But precisely those same causes--the
settlement of the country, the construction of the railways, the
development of the natural resources--which contributed to the
unification and laid the foundations of the greatness, produced, with
wealth and leisure, new ambitions in the people. The desire for art and
literature and, what we have called the all-culture, was no new growth,
but an instinct inherited from the original English stock. Quickened it
must have been by the moral uplifting of the people by the Civil War,
but, as we have already seen, for some time after the close of that war
the whole energies of the people were necessarily devoted to material
things. Only with the completion of the repairing of the ravages of that
war, and with the almost coincident settlement of the last great waste
tracts of the country, were the people free to reach out after things
immaterial and æsthetic; and only with the accession of wealth, which
again these same causes produced, came the possibility of gratifying the
craving for those things. And in the longing for self-improvement and
self-culture, thus newly inspired and for the first time truly national,
one of the things to which the people turned with characteristic
earnestness was the improvement of the common speech. The nation has set
itself purposefully and with determination to purify and prevent the
further corruption of its language.
The movement towards "simplification" of the spelling may or may not be
in the direction of purification, but it will be observed that the
movement itself could not have come into being without the national
desire for improvement. The American speech is now the speech of a
solidified and great nation; and it cannot be permitted to retain the
inelegancies and colloquialisms which were not intolerable, perhaps, in
the dialect of a locality in the days when that locality had but
restricted intercourse with other parts of the country. This effort to
purify the common tongue is conscious, avowed, and sympathised with in
all parts of the country alike.
When any point of literary or grammatical form is under discussion in a
leading American newspaper to-day, the dominant note is that of a purism
more strict than will appear in a similar discussion in England. In many
American newspaper offices the rules of "style" forbid the use of
certain words and phrases which are accepted without question in the
best London journals. There have of course always been circles--as,
notoriously, in and around Boston, and, less notoriously but no less
truly, in Philadelphia and New York--wherein the speech, whether written
or spoken, has been as scrupulous in form and grammar as in the most
scholarly circles in Great Britain. These circles corresponded to what
we have called the public-school and university class of England, and,
no more than it, did they speak the common speech of their country. Only
now is the people as a whole consciously striving after an uplifting of
such common speech.
In England, on the other hand, the process that has been going on has
been quite involuntary and is as yet almost entirely unconscious.
We have spoken so far of only one factor in that process--namely, the
democratisation of the English people which is in progress and the
blurring of the lines between the classes. Co-operating with this are
other forces. Just as the most well-bred persons can afford on occasions
to be most careless of their manners--just as only an old-established
aristocracy can be truly reckless of the character of new associates
whom it may please to take up--so it may be that the well-educated man,
confident of his impeccability and altogether off his guard, more
readily absorbs into his daily speech cant phrases and even solecisms
than the half-educated who is ever watchful lest he slip. The American
has a way of writing, figuratively, with a dictionary at his elbow and a
grammar within reach. There are few educated Englishmen who do not
consider their own authority--the authority drawn from their school and
university training--superior to that of any dictionary or grammar,
especially of any American one.[220:1] So it has come about that, while
the tendency of the American people is constantly to become more exact
and more accurate in its written and spoken speech, the English tendency
is no less constantly towards a growing laxity; and while the American
has been sternly and conscientiously at work pruning the inelegancies
out of his language, the Briton has been lightheartedly taking these
same inelegancies to himself. It is obviously impossible that such a
twofold tendency can go on for long without the gulf between the quality
of the respective languages becoming appreciably narrower.
* * * * *
The American writers who now occupy places on the staffs of London
journals are thoroughly deserving of their places. They have earned
these and retain them on the ground of their capacity as news gatherers,
and through the brilliancy of their descriptive writing. They possess
what is described as "newspaper ability" as opposed to "literary
ability." It is, nevertheless, the fact that in the majority of the
newspaper offices, the "copy" of these writers is permitted to pass
through the press with an immunity from interference on the part either
of editor or proof-reader, which, a decade back, would not have been
possible in any London office. Thus the British public, unwarned and
unconscious, is daily absorbing at its breakfast table, and in the
morning and evening trains, American newspaper English, which is the
output of English newspaper offices. It is not now contended that this
English is any worse than the public would be likely to receive from the
same class of English writers, but the fact itself is to be noted. I am
not prepared to agree with Mr. Andrew Lang in holding the English writer
necessarily blameworthy who "in serious work introduces, needlessly,
into our tongue an American phrase." Such introductions, however
needless, may materially enrich the language, and I should, even with
the permission of Mr. Lang, extend the same latitude to the introduction
of Scotticisms.
A more important matter for consideration is the present condition of
the copyright laws of the two countries. English publishers understand
well enough why it is occasionally cheaper, or, taking all the
conditions together, more advantageous to have put into type in the
United States rather than in Great Britain the work of a standard
English novelist, and to bring the English edition into print from a
duplicate set of American plates. On the other hand, it is exceptional
for a novel, or for any book by an American writer, to be put into type
in England for publication in both countries. For the purpose of
bringing the text of such books into line with the requirements of
English readers, it is the practice of the leading American publishers
to have one division of their composing-rooms allotted to typesetting by
the English standard, with the use by the proof-readers of an English
dictionary. It occasionally happens, however, that the attention of
these proof-readers to the task of securing an English text limits
itself to a few typical examples, such as spelling "colour" with a "u"
and seeing that "centre" does not appear as "center," while all that
constitutes the essence of American style, as compared with the English
style, is passed unmolested and without change.
Such a result is, doubtless, inevitable in the case of a work by an
American writer who has his own idea of literary expression and his own
standard of what constitutes literary style, but the resulting text not
infrequently gives ground for criticism on the part of English
reviewers, and for some feeling of annoyance on the part of cultivated
English readers.
In the case of books by English authors which are put into type in
American printing-offices, there is, of course, no question of
modification of style or of form of expression, but with these, as
stated, the proof-readers are not always successful in eliminating
entirely the American forms of spelling.
The English publisher, even though he give a personal reading to the
book in the form in which it finally leaves his hands, (and, in the
majority of cases, having read it once in manuscript, he declines to go
over the pages a second time, but contents himself with a cursory
investigation of the detail of "colour," of "centre,") is not
infrequently dissatisfied, but it is too late for any changes in the
text, and he can only let the volume go out. In the case of books
printed in England from plates made in America, there is nothing at all
to warn the reader; while in the case of books bound in England from
sheets actually printed in the United States, there is nothing which the
reader is likely to notice; and in nine cases out of ten the Englishman
is unconscious that he is reading anything but an English book. The
critic may understand, and the man who has lived long in the United
States and who can recognise the characteristics of American diction,
assuredly will understand, but these form, of course, a very small class
in the community; and when the rest of the public is constantly reading
American writing without a thought that it is other than English
writing, it is hardly strange that American forms of speech creep daily
more and more largely into the English tongue. What is really strange is
that the educational authorities have been prepared to accept and to
utilise in English schools many American educational books carrying
American forms of speech and American spelling.
The morality or the wisdom of the English copyright laws is not at the
moment under discussion, but it is my own opinion (which I believe to be
the opinion of every Englishman who has given any attention to the
matter) that not on any ground of literary criticism, or because of any
canons of taste, but merely as a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence
to England, and for the sake of securing additional employment for
British labour, the laws of copyright are in no less radical and urgent
need of amendment than the English postal laws. What we are here
concerned with, however, is the effect of the present condition of these
laws as one of the contributory factors which are co-operating to lessen
the difference, once so wide and now so narrow, between the American and
the English tongue.
Nor can there be any doubt of the result of this twofold process if it
be allowed to continue indefinitely, working in England towards a
democratisation and Americanisation of the speech, and in America
towards a higher standard of taste, based on earlier English literary
models. The two currents, once divergent, now so closely confluent, will
meet; but will they continue to flow on in one stream? Or will the same
tendencies persist, so that the currents will cross and again diverge,
occupying inverse positions?
In a hundred years from now, when, as a result of the apparently
inevitable growth of the United States in wealth, in power, and in
influence, its speech and all other of its institutions will come to be
held in the highest esteem, is it possible that Londoners may vehemently
put forward their claim to speak purer American than the Americans
themselves--just as many Americans assert to-day that their speech is
nearer to the speech of Elizabethan England than is the speech of modern
Englishmen? Is it possible that it will be only in the common language
of Englishmen that philologists will be able to find surviving the racy,
good old American words and phrases of the last decades of the
nineteenth century--a period which will be to American literature what
the Elizabethan Age is to English. It may, of course, be absurd, but
already there are certain individual Americanisms which have long been
_taboo_ in every reputable office in the United States, but are used
cheerfully and without comment in London dailies.
* * * * *
Once more it seems necessary to take precaution lest I be interpreted as
having said more than I really have said. It would be a mere
impertinence to affect to pronounce a general judgment on the level of
culture or of achievement of the two peoples in all fields of art and
effort; and the most that an individual can do is to take such isolated
examples drawn from one or from the other, as may serve in particular
matters as some sort of a standard of measurement. What I am striving to
convey to the average English reader is, of course, not an impression of
any inferiority in the English, but only the fact that the Englishman's
present estimate of the American is almost grotesquely inadequate.
FOOTNOTES:
[214:1] Mr. Archer, I find, has this delightful story: "A friend of mine
returned from a short tour in the United States, declaring that he
heartily disliked the country and would never go back again. Enquiry as
to the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited no more definite or
damning charge than that 'they' (a collective pronoun presumed to cover
the whole American people) hung up his trousers instead of folding
them--or _vice versa_, for I am heathen enough not to remember which is
the orthodox process."
[215:1] But I cannot resist recording my astonishment at finding in Ben
Jonson the phrase "to have a good time" used in precisely the sense in
which the American girl employs it to-day, or at learning from Macaulay
that Bishop Cooper in the time of Queen Elizabeth spoke of a "platform"
in its exact modern American political meaning.
[220:1] Though it is worth noting that incomparably the best dictionary
of the English language yet completed is an American one.
CHAPTER IX
POLITICS AND POLITICIANS
The "English-American" Vote--The Best People in Politics--What
Politics Means in America--Where Corruption Creeps in--The
Danger in England--A Presidential Nomination for Sale--Buying
Legislation--Could it Occur in England?--A Delectable Alderman--
Taxation while you Wait--Perils that England Escapes--The
Morality of Congress--Political Corruption and the Irish--
Democrat and Republican.
The American people ought cordially to cherish Englishmen who come to
the United States to live, if only for the reason that they have never
organised for political purposes. In every election, all over the United
States, one hears of the Irish vote, the German vote, the Scandinavian
vote, the Italian vote, the French vote, the Polish vote, the Hebrew
vote, and many other votes, each representing a _clientêle_ which has to
be conciliated or cajoled. But none has ever yet heard of the English
vote or of an "English-American" element in the population. It is not
that the Englishman, whether a naturalised American or not, does not
take as keen an interest in the politics of the country as the people of
any other nation; on the contrary, he is incomparably better equipped
than any other to take that interest intelligently. But he plays his
part as if it were in the politics of his own country, guided by
precisely the same considerations as the American voters around
him.[227:1]
The individual Irishman or German will often take pride in splitting off
from the people of his own blood in matters political and voting "as an
American." It never occurs to the Englishman to do otherwise. The
Irishman and the German will often boast, or you will hear it claimed
for them, that they become assimilated quickly and that "in time," or
"in the second generation," they are good Americans. The Englishman
needs no assimilation; but feels himself to be, almost from the day when
he lands (provided that he comes to live and not as a tourist), of one
substance and colour with the people about him. Not seldom he is rather
annoyed that those around him, remembering that he is English, seem to
expect of him the sentiments of a "foreigner," which he in no way feels.
More than once, it is true, during my residence in America I have been
approached by individuals or by committees, with invitations to
associate myself with some proposed political organisation of Englishmen
"to make our weight felt;" but in justice to those who have made the
suggestion it should be said that it has always been the outcome of
exasperation at a moment either when Fenianism was peculiarly rampant in
the neighbourhood, or when members of other nationalities were doing
their best to create ill-will between Great Britain and the United
States. The idea of organising, as the members of other nationalities
have organised, for the mere purpose of sharing in the party plunder,
has, I believe, never been seriously contemplated by any Englishmen in
America; though there are many communities in which their vote might
well give them the balance of power. It would, as a rule, be easier to
pick out--say, in Chicago--a Southerner who had lived in the North for
ten years than an Englishman who had lived there for the same length of
time. It would certainly be safer to guess the Southerner's party
affiliation.
The ideas of Englishmen in England about American politics are vague.
They have a general notion that there is a great deal of politics in
America, that it is mostly corrupt, and that "the best people" do not
take any interest in it. As for the last proposition, it is only locally
or partially true, and quite untrue in the sense in which the Englishman
understands it.
The word "politics" means two entirely separate things in England and in
the United States. Understanding the word in its English sense, it is
conspicuously untrue that the "best people" in America do not take at
least as much an interest in politics as the "best people" take in
England. Selecting as a representative of the "best people" of America,
any citizen eminent in his particular community--capitalist, landed
proprietor or "real-estate owner," banker, manufacturer, lawyer, railway
president, or what not,--that man as a usual thing takes a very active
interest in politics, and not in the politics of the nation only, but of
his State and his municipality. He is known to be a pillar of one party
or the other; he gives liberally of his own funds and of the funds of
his firm or company to the party treasury[229:1]; he is consulted by,
and advises with, the local committees; representatives of the national
committees or from other parts of the State call upon him for
information; he concerns himself intimately with the appointments to
political office made from his section of the country; he attends public
meetings and entertains visiting speakers at his house; as far as may be
judicious (and sometimes much further), he endeavours by his example or
precept to influence the votes and ways of thought of those in his
service. The chances of his being sent to Congress or to the Senate, of
his becoming a cabinet minister, being appointed to a foreign mission,
or accepting a position on some commission of a public character, are
vastly greater than with the man of corresponding position in England.
So far from not taking an interest in politics, as Englishmen understand
the phrase, he is commonly a most energetic and valuable supporter of
his party.
But--and here is the nub of the matter--politics in America include
whole strata of political work which are scarcely understood in England.
When the English visitor is told in the United States that "our best
people will not take any interest in politics," it is usually in the
office of a financier, or at a fashionable dinner table, in New York or
some other of the great cities. What is intended to be conveyed to him
is that the "best people" will not take part in the active work in
municipal politics or in that portion of the national politics which
falls within the municipal area. The millionaire, the gentleman of
refinement and leisure, will not "take off his coat" and attend primary
meetings, or make tours of the saloons and meet Tammany or "the City
Hall gang" on its own ground. As a matter of fact it is rather
surprising to see how often he does it; but it is spasmodically and in
occasional fits of enthusiasm for Reform, "with a large R." And,
whatever temporary value these intermittent efforts may have (and they
have great value, if only as a warning to the "gangs" that it is
possible to go too far), they are in the long run of little avail
against the constant daily and nightly work of the members of a
"machine" to whom that work means daily bread.
I have said that it is surprising to see how often these "best people"
do go down into the slums and begin work at the beginning; and the
tendency to do so is growing more and more frequent. The reproach that
they do not do it enough has not the force to-day that once it had.
Meanwhile in England there is little complaint that the same people do
not do that particular work, for the excellent reason that that work
does not exist to be done. It would only be tedious here to go into an
elaborate explanation of why it does not exist. The reason is to be
found in the differences in the political structure of the two
countries--in the much more representative character of the government
(or rather of the methods of election to office) in America--in the
multiplication of Federal, State, county, and municipal
office-holders--in the larger number of offices, including many which
are purely judicial, which are elective, and which are filled by party
candidates elected by a partisan vote--in the identification of national
and municipal politics all over the country.
Of all these causes, it is probably the last which is fundamentally most
operative. The local democracy, local republicanism everywhere, is a
part of the national Democratic or Republican organisation. The party as
a whole is composed of these municipal units. Each municipal campaign is
conducted with an eye to the general fortunes of the party in the State
or the nation; and the same power that appoints a janitor in a city hall
may dictate the selection of a presidential candidate.
Until very recently, this phenomenon was practically unknown in England.
The "best person"--he who "took an interest in politics" as a Liberal or
as a Conservative--was no more concerned, as Liberal or Conservative, in
the election of his town officers than he was accustomed to take part in
the weekly sing-song at the village public house. National politics did
not touch municipal politics. Within the last two decades or so,
however, there has been a marked change, and not in London and a few
large cities alone.
Englishmen who have been accustomed to believe that the high standard of
purity in English public life, as compared with what was supposed to be
the standard in America, was chiefly owing to the divorcement of the
two, are not altogether gratified at the change or easy in their mind as
to the future. London is still a long way from having such an
organisation as Tammany Hall in either the Moderate or Progressive
party; but it is not easy to see what insuperable obstacles would exist
to the formation of such an organisation, with certain limitations, if a
great and unscrupulous political genius should arise among the members
of either party in the London County Council and should bend his
energies to the task. It is not, of course, necessary that, because
Englishmen are approximating to the American system in this particular,
they should be unable to avoid adopting its worst American abuses. But
it will do no harm if Englishmen in general recognise that what is, it
is to be hoped, still far from inevitable, was a short time ago
impossible. If Great Britain must admit an influence which has, even
though only incidentally, bred pestilence and corruption elsewhere, it
might be well to take in time whatever sanitary and preventive measures
may be available against similar consequences.[232:1]
Meanwhile in the United States there is continually being raised, in
ever increasing volume, the cry for the separation of local and national
politics. It is true that small headway has yet been made towards any
tangible reform; but the desire is there. Again, therefore, it is
curious that in politics, as in so many other things, there are two
currents setting in precisely opposing directions in the two
countries--in America a reaction against corruptions which have crept in
during the season of growth and ferment and an attempt to return to
something of the simplicity of earlier models, and, simultaneously in
England, hardly a danger, but a possibility of sliding into a danger, of
admitting precisely those abuses of which the United States is
endeavouring to purge itself. The tendencies at work are exactly
analogous to those which, as we have seen, are operating to modify the
respective modes of speech of the two peoples. What the ultimate effect
of either force will be, it is impossible even to conjecture. But it is
unpleasant for an Englishman to consider even the remotest possibility
of a time coming, though long after he himself is dead, when the people
of America will draw awful warnings from the corrupt state of politics
in England, and bless themselves that in the United States the municipal
rings which dominate and scourge the great cities in England are
unknown.
At present that time is far distant, and there can be no reasonable
doubt that there is much more corruption in public affairs in the United
States than in England. The possibilities of corruption are greater,
because there are so many more men whose influence or vote may be worth
buying; but it is to be feared that the evil does not exceed merely in
proportion to the excess of opportunity. Granted that bribery and the
use of undue influence are most obvious and most rampant in those
spheres which have not their counterpart in Great Britain--in municipal
wards and precincts, in county conventions and State legislatures--it
still remains that the taint has spread upwards into other regions which
in English politics are pure. There is every reason to think that the
Englishman is justified in his belief that the motives which guide his
public men and the principles which govern his public policy are, on the
whole, higher than those which guide and inspire and govern the men or
policies of any other nation. Bismarck's (if it was Bismarck's)
confidence in the _parole de gentleman_ is still justified. In America,
a similar faith in matters of politics would at times be sorely tried.
Perhaps as good an illustration as could be cited of the greater
possibilities of corruption in the United States, is contained in a
statement of the fact that a very few thousand dollars would at one time
have sufficed to prevent Mr. Bryan from becoming the Democratic
candidate for the Presidency in 1896. This is not mere hearsay, for I am
able to speak from knowledge which was not acquired after the event. Nor
for one moment is it suggested that Mr. Bryan himself was thus easily
corruptible, nor even that those who immediately nominated him could
have been purchased for the sum mentioned.
The fact is that for a certain specified sum the leaders of a particular
county convention were willing to elect an anti-Bryan delegation. The
delegation then elected would unquestionably control the State
convention subsequently to be held; and the delegation to be elected
again at that convention would have a very powerful influence in
shaping the action of the National Convention at St. Louis. The
situation was understood and the facts not disputed. Those to whom the
application for the money was made took all things into consideration
and determined that it was not worth it; that it would be better to let
things slide. They slid. If those gentlemen had foreseen the full volume
of the avalanche that was coming, I think that the money would have been
found.
It was, however, better as it was. The motives which prompted the
refusal of the money were, as I was told, not motives of morality. It
was not any objection to the act of bribery, but a mere question of
expediency. It was not considered that the "goods" were worth the money.
But, as always, it was better for the country that the immoral act was
not done. The Free Silver poison was working in the blood of the body
politic, and it was better to let the malady come to a head and fight it
strenuously than to drive it back and let it go on with its work of
internal corruption. Looking back now it is easy to see that the fight
of 1896 must have come at some time, and it was best that it came when
it did. The gentlemen who declined to produce the few thousand dollars
asked of them (the sum was fifteen thousand dollars, if I remember
rightly, or three thousand pounds) would, a few weeks later, have given
twice the sum to have the opportunity back again. Now, I imagine, they
are well content that they acted as they did.
As illustrating the methods which are not infrequent in connection with
the work of the State legislatures, I may mention that I once acted
(without premeditation) as witness to the depositing of two thousand
dollars in gold coin in a box at a safety deposit vault, by the
representative of a great corporation, the key of which box was
afterwards handed to a member of the local State legislature. The vote
and influence of that member were necessary for the defeat of certain
bills--bills, be it said, iniquitous in themselves--which would have
cost that particular corporation many times two thousand dollars; and
two thousand dollars was the sum at which that legislator valued the
aforesaid vote and influence.
It is not always necessary to take so much precaution to secure secrecy
as was needed in this case. The recklessness with which State
legislators sometimes accept cheques and other easily traceable media of
exchange is a little bewildering, until one understands how secure they
really are from any risk of information being lodged against them. A
certain venerable legislator in one of the North-western States some
years ago gained considerable notoriety, of a confidential kind, by
being the only member of his party in the legislature at the time who
declined to accept his share in a distribution which was going on of the
mortgage bonds of a certain railway company. It was not high principle
nor any absurd punctiliousness on his part that made him decline. "In my
youth," said he to the representative of the railway company, "I was an
earnest anti-slavery man and I still recoil from bonds." It was said
that he received his proportion of the pool in a more negotiable form.
It would be easy, even from my own individual knowledge, to multiply
stories of this class; but the effect would only be to mislead the
English reader, while the American is already familiar with such
stories in sufficiency. The object is not to insist upon the fact that
there is corruption in American public life, but rather to show what
kind of corruption it is, and that it is largely of a kind the
opportunity for indulgence in which does not exist in England. The
method of nominating candidates for Parliament in England removes the
temptation to "influence" primaries and bribe delegations. In the
absence of State legislatures, railway and other corporations are not
exposed to the same system of blackmail.
Let us suppose that each county in England had its legislature of two
chambers, as every State has in America, the members of these
legislatures being elected necessarily only from constituencies in which
they lived, so that a slum district of a town was obliged to elect a
slum-resident, a village a resident of that village; let us further
suppose that by the mixture of races in the population certain districts
could by mere preponderance of the votes be expected to elect only a
German, a Scandinavian, or an Irishman--in each case a man who had been
perhaps, but a few years before, an immigrant drawn from a low class in
the population of his own country; give that legislature almost
unbridled power over all business institutions within the borders of the
county, including the determination of rates of charge on that portion
of the lines of great railway companies which lay within the county
borders--is there not danger that that power would be frequently abused?
When one party, after a long term of trial in opposition, found itself
suddenly in control of both houses, would it always refrain from using
its power for the gratification of party purposes, for revenge, and for
the assistance of its own supporters? Local feeling sometimes becomes,
even in England, much inflamed against a given railway company, or some
large employer of labour, or great landlord, whether justly or not. It
may be that in the case of a railway, the rates of fare are considered
high, the train service bad, or the accommodations at the stations poor.
At such a time a local legislature would be likely to pass almost any
bill that was introduced to hurt that railway company, merely as a means
of bringing pressure to bear upon it to correct the supposed
shortcomings. It obviously then becomes only too easy for an
unscrupulous member to bring forward a bill which will have plausible
colour of public-spirited motive, and which if it became a law would
cost the railway company untold inconvenience and many tens of thousands
of pounds; and the railway company can have that bill withdrawn or
"sidetracked" for a mere couple of hundred.
Personally I am thankful to say that I have such confidence in the
sterling quality of the fibre of the English people (so long as it is
free, as it is in England, from Irish or other alien influence) as to
believe that, even under these circumstances, and with all these
possibilities of wrong-doing, the local legislatures would remain
reasonably honest. But what might come with long use and practice, long
exposure to temptation, it is not easy to say. Some things occur in the
colonies which are not comforting. If, then, the corruption in American
politics be great, the evil is due rather to the system than to any
inherent inferiority in the native honesty of the people. Their
integrity, if it falls, has the excuse of abundant temptation.
The most instructive experience, I think, which I myself had of the
disregard of morality in the realm of municipal politics was received
when I associated myself, sentimentally rather than actively, with a
movement at a certain election directed towards the defeat of one who
was probably the most corrupt alderman in what was at the time perhaps
the corruptest city in the United States. Of the man's entire depravity,
from a political point of view, there was not the least question among
either his friends or his enemies. Nominally a Democrat, his vote and
policy were never guided by any other consideration than those of his
own pocket. On an alderman's salary (which he spent several times over
in his personal expenditure each year), without other business or
visible means of making money, he had grown wealthy--wealthy enough to
make his contributions to campaign funds run into the thousands of
dollars,--wealthy enough to be able always to forget to take change for
a five-dollar or a ten-dollar bill when buying anything in his own
ward,--wealthy enough to distribute regularly (was it five hundred or a
thousand?) turkeys every Thanksgiving Day among his constituents. No one
pretended to suggest that his money was drawn from any other source than
from the public funds, from blackmail, and from the sale of his vote and
influence in the City Council. In that Council he had held his seat
unassailably for many years through all the shifting and changing of
parties in power. But a spirit of reform was abroad and certain
public-spirited persons decided that it was time that the scandal of his
continuance in office should be stopped. The same conclusion had been
arrived at by various campaign managers and bodies of independent and
upright citizens on divers preceding occasions, without any result worth
mentioning. But at last it seemed that the time had come. There were
various encouraging signs and portents in the political heavens and all
auguries were favourable. There were, it is true, experienced
politicians who shook their heads. They blessed us and wished us well.
They even contributed liberally to our campaign fund; but the most
experienced among them were not hopeful.
It was a vigorous campaign--on our side; with meetings, brass bands,
constant house-to-house canvassing, and processions _ad libitum_. On the
other side, there was no campaign at all to speak of; only the man whom
we were seeking to unseat spent some portion of every day and the whole
of every night going about the ward from saloon to saloon, always
forgetting the change for those five-dollar and ten-dollar bills, always
willing to cheer lustily when one of our processions went by, and, as we
heard, daily increasing his orders for turkeys for the approaching
Thanksgiving season.
So far as the saloon keepers, the gamblers, the owners and patrons of
disorderly houses went, we had no hope of winning their allegiance; but,
after all, they were a small numerical minority of the voters of the
ward. The majority consisted of low-class Italians, unskilled labourers,
and it was their votes that must decide the issue. There was not one of
them who was not thoroughly talked to, as well as every member of his
family of a reasoning age. There was not one who did not fully recognise
that the alderman was a thief and an entirely immoral scamp; but their
labour was farmed by, perhaps, half a dozen Italian contractors. These
men were the Alderman's henchmen. As long as he continued in the
Council, he was able to keep their men employed--on municipal works and
on the work of the various railway and other large corporations which he
was able to blackmail. We, on our part, had obtained promises of
employment, from friends of decent government regardless of politics in
all parts of the city, for approximately as many men as could possibly
be thrown out of work in case of an upheaval. But of what use were
these, more or less unverifiable, promises, when on the eve of the
election the half a dozen contractors (who of course had grown rich with
their alderman's continuance in office) gave each individual labourer in
the ward to understand clearly that if the present alderman was defeated
each one of them would have to go and live somewhere--live or
starve,--for not one stroke of work would they ever get so long as they
lived in that ward?
It was, as I have said, a vigorous campaign on our side; and the
Delectable One was re-elected by something more than his usual majority.
On the night of the election it was reported--though this may have been
mere rumour--that the bills which he laid on the counter of each saloon
in the ward (and always forgot to take any change) were of the value of
fifty dollars each. That was some years ago, but I understand that he is
still in that same City Council, representing that same ward.
It was in the same city that one year I received notice of my personal
property tax, the amount assessed against me being about ten times
higher than it ought to have been. Experience had taught me that it was
useless to make any protest against small impositions, but a
multiplication of my obligations by tenfold was not to be submitted to
without a struggle. I wrote therefore to the proper authority, making
protest, and was told that the matter would be investigated. After a
lapse of some days, I was invited to call at the City Hall. There I was
informed by one of the subordinate officials that it was undoubtedly a
case of malice--that the assessment had been made by either a personal
or a political enemy. I was then taken to see the Chief. The Chief was a
corpulent Irishman of the worst type. My guide leaned over him and in an
undertone, but not so low that I did not hear, gave him a brief _résumé_
of the story, stating that it was undoubtedly a case of intentional
injustice, and concluding with an account of myself and my interests
which showed that the speaker had taken no little trouble to post
himself upon the subject. He emphasised the fact of my association with
the press. At this point for the first time the Chief evinced some
interest in the tale. His intelligence responded to the word
"newspapers" as promptly as if an electrical current had suddenly been
switched into his system. "H'm! newspapers!" he grunted. Then, heaving
his bulk half round in his chair so as partially to face me----
"This is a mistake," he said. "We will say no more about it. Your
assessment's cancelled."
"I beg your pardon," I said, "I have no objection to paying one-tenth of
the amount. If an '0' is cut off the end----"
"That's all right," he said. "The whole thing is cut off."
I made another protest, but he waved me away and my guide led me from
the room. Because it was opined that, through the press, I might be able
to make myself objectionable if the imposition was persisted in, I paid
no tax at all that year. Which was every whit as immoral as the original
offence.
Stories of this class it would be easy to multiply indefinitely; but
again I say that it is not my desire to insist on the corruptness which
exists in American political life, but rather to explain to English
readers what the nature of that corruptness is and in what spheres of
the political life of the country it is able to find lodgment. What I
have endeavoured to illustrate is, first, how the peculiar political
system of the United States may, under some exceptional conditions, make
it possible for even the nomination of a President to be treated as a
matter of purchase, though the candidate himself and those who
immediately surround him may be of incorruptible integrity; second, the
unrivalled opportunities for bribery and other forms of political
wrong-doing furnished by the existence of the State legislatures, with
their eight thousand members, drawn necessarily from all ranks and
elements of the population, and possessing exceptional power over the
commercial affairs of the people of their respective States; and, third,
the methods by which, in certain large cities, power is attained, used,
and abused by the municipal "bosses" of all degrees, a condition of
affairs which is in large measure only made possible by the
identification of local and national politics and political parties. In
each case the conditions which make the corruption possible do not exist
in England, even though in the last named (the identification of local
with national politics and parties) the tendency in Great Britain is
distinctly in the direction of the American model. It is, perhaps, an
inevitable result of the working of the Anglo-Saxon "particularistic"
spirit, which ultimately rebels against any form of national government
or of national politics in which the individual and the individual of
each locality, is debarred from making his voice heard.
* * * * *
As for the corruptness which is supposed to exist in Congress itself,
this I believe to be largely a matter of partisan gossip and newspaper
talk. It may be that every Congress contains among its members a few
whose integrity is not beyond the temptation of a direct monetary bribe;
and it would perhaps be curious if it were not so. But it is the opinion
of the best informed that the direct bribery of a member of either the
Senate or the House is extremely rare. It happens, probably, all too
frequently that members consent to acquire at a low figure shares in
undertakings which are likely to be favourably affected by legislation
for which they vote, in the expectation or hope of profit therefrom; but
it is exceedingly difficult to say in any given case whether a member's
vote has been influenced by his financial interest (whether, on public
grounds, he would not have voted as he did under any circumstances), and
at what point the mere employment of sound business judgment ends and
the prostitution of legislative influence begins. The same may be said
of the accusations so commonly made against members of making use of
information which they acquire in the committee room for purposes of
speculation.
Washington, during the sessions of Congress is full of "lobbyists"--_i.
e._, men who have no other reason for their presence at the capital
than to further the progress of legislation in which they are interested
or who are sent there for the purpose by others who have such an
interest; but it is my conviction (and I know it is that of others
better informed than myself) that the instances wherein the labours of a
lobbyist go beyond the use of legitimate argument in favour of entirely
meritorious measures are immensely fewer than the reader of the
sensational press might suppose. The American National Legislature is,
indeed, a vastly purer body than demagogues, or the American press,
would have an outsider believe.
There is no doubt that large manufacturing and commercial concerns do
exert themselves to secure the election to the House, and perhaps to the
Senate, of persons who are practically their direct representatives,
their chief business in Congress being the shaping of favourable
legislation or the warding off of that which would be disadvantageous to
the interests which are behind them. Undoubtedly also such large
concerns, or associated groups of them, can bring considerable pressure
to bear upon individual members in divers ways, and there have been
notorious cases wherein it has been shown that this pressure has been
unscrupulously used. Except in the case of the railways, which have only
a secondary interest in tariff legislation, this particular abuse must
be charged to the account of the protective policy, and its development
in some measure would perhaps be inevitable in any country where a
similar policy prevailed.
In the British Parliament there are, of course, few important lines of
trade or industry which are not abundantly represented, and both Houses
contain railway directors and others who speak frankly as the
representatives of railway interests, and lose thereby nothing of the
respect of the country or their fellow-members. It is not possible here
to explain in detail why the assumption, which prevails in America, that
a railway company is necessarily a public enemy, and that any argument
in favour of such a corporation is an argument against the public
welfare, does not obtain in England. It will be necessary later on not
only to refer to the fact that fear of capitalism is immensely stronger
in America than it is in England, but also to explain why there is good
reason why it should be so. For the present, it is enough to note that
it is possible for members of Parliament to do, without incurring a
shadow of suspicion of their integrity, things which would damn a member
of Congress irreparably in the eyes alike of his colleagues and of the
country. There is hardly a railway bill passed through Parliament the
supporters of which would not in its passage through Congress have to
run the gauntlet of all manner of insinuation and abuse; and when the
sensational press of the United States raises a hue and cry of "Steal!"
in regard to a particular measure, the Englishman (until he understands
the difference in the conditions in the two countries) may be bewildered
by finding on investigation that the bill is one entirely praiseworthy
which would pass through Parliament as a matter of course, the only
justification for the outcry being that the legislation is likely,
perhaps most indirectly, to prove advantageous to some particular
industry or locality. The fact that the measure is just and deserving of
support on merely patriotic grounds is immaterial, when party capital
can be made from such an outcry. I have on more than one occasion known
entirely undeserved suffering to be inflicted in this way on men of the
highest character who were acting from none but disinterested motives;
and he who would have traffic with large affairs in the United States
must early learn to grow callous to newspaper abuse.
In wider and more general ways than have yet been noticed, however, the
members of Congress are subjected to undue influences in a measure far
beyond anything known to the members of Parliament.
In the colonial days, governors not seldom complained of the law by
which members of the provincial assemblies could only be elected to sit
for the towns or districts in which they actually resided. The same law
once prevailed in England, but it was repealed in the time of George
III., and had been disregarded in practice since the days of
Elizabeth.[247:1] Under the Constitution of the United States it is,
however, still necessary that a member of Congress should be a resident
(or "inhabitant") of the State from which he is elected. In some States
it is the law that he must reside in the particular district of the
State which elects him, and custom has made this the rule in all. A
candidate rejected by his own constituency, therefore, cannot stand for
another; and it follows that a member who desires to continue in public
life must hold the good will of his particular locality.
So entirely is this accepted as a matter of course that any other system
(the British system for instance) seems to the great majority of
Americans quite unnatural and absurd; and it has the obvious immediate
advantage that each member does more truly "represent" his particular
constituents than is likely to be the case when he sits for a borough or
a Division in which he may never have set foot until he began to canvas
it. On the other hand, it is an obvious disadvantage that when a member
for any petty local reason forfeits the good will of his own
constituency, his services, no matter how valuable they may be, are
permanently lost to the State.
The term for which a member of the Lower House is elected in America is
only two years, so that a member who has any ambition for a continuous
legislative career must, almost from the day of his election, begin to
consider the chance of being re-elected. As this depends altogether on
his ability to hold the gratitude of his one constituency, it is
inevitable that he should become more or less engrossed in the effort to
serve the local needs; and a constituency, or the party leaders in a
constituency, generally, indeed, measure a man's availability for
re-election by what is called his "usefulness."
If you ask a politician of local authority whether the sitting member is
a good one, he will reply, "No; he hasn't any influence at Washington at
all. He can't do a thing for us!" Or, "Yes, he's pretty good; he seems
to get things through all right." The "things" which the member "gets
through" may be the appointment of residents of the district to minor
government positions, the securing of appropriations of public moneys
for such works as the dredging or widening of a river channel to the
advantage of the district or the improvement of the local harbour, and
the passage of bills providing for the erection in the district of new
post-offices or other government buildings. Many other measures may, of
course, be of direct local interest; but a member's chief opportunities
for earning the gratitude of his constituency fall under the three
categories enumerated.
It is obvious that two years is too short a term for any but an
exceptionally gifted man to make his mark, either in the eyes of his
colleagues or of his constituency, by conspicuous national services.
Even if achieved, it is doubtful if in the eyes of the majority of the
constituencies (or the leaders in those constituencies) any such
impalpable distinction would be held to compensate for a demonstrated
inability to get the proper share of local advantages. The result is
that while the member of Parliament may be said to consider himself
primarily as a member of his party and his chief business to be that of
co-operating with that party in securing the conduct of National affairs
according to the party beliefs, the member of Congress considers himself
primarily as the representative of his district and his chief business
to be the securing for that district of as many plums from the Federal
pie as possible.
Out of these conditions has developed the prevalence of log-rolling in
Congress: "You vote for my post-office and I'll help you with your
harbour appropriation." Such exchange of courtesies is continual and, I
think, universal. The annual River and Harbour Bill (which last year
appropriated $25,414,000 of public money for all manner of works in all
corners of the country) is an amazing legislative product.
Another result is that the individual member must hold himself
constantly alert to find what his "people" at home want: always on the
lookout for signs of approval or disapproval from his constituency. And
the constituency on its side does not hesitate to let him know just what
it thinks of him and precisely what jobs it requires him to do at any
given moment. Nor is it the constituency as a whole, through its
recognised party leaders, which alone thinks that it has a right to
instruct, direct, or influence its representative, but individuals of
sufficient political standing to consider themselves entitled to have
their private interest looked after, manufacturing and business concerns
the payrolls of which support a large number of voters, labour unions,
and all sorts of societies and organisations of various kinds--they one
and all assert their right to advise the Congressman in his policies or
to call for his assistance in furthering their particular ends, under
threat, tacit or expressed, of the loss of their support when he seeks
re-election. The English member of Parliament thinks that he is
subjected to a sufficiency of pressure of this particular sort; but he
has not to bear one-tenth of what is daily meted out to his American
_confrère_, nor is he under any similar necessity of paying attention to
it.
Under such conditions it is evident that a Congressman can have but a
restricted liberty to act or vote according to his individual
convictions. It is only human that, in matters which are not of great
national import, a man should at times be willing to believe that his
personal opinions may be wrong when adherence to those opinions would
wreck his political career. So the Congressman too commonly acquires a
habit of subservience which is assuredly not wholesome either for the
individual or for the country; and sometimes the effort to trim sails to
catch every favouring breeze has curious oblique results. As an
instance of this may be cited the action taken by Congress in regard to
the army canteen. A year or more back, the permission to army posts to
retain within their own limits and subject to the supervision of the
post authorities, a canteen for the use of soldiers, was abolished. The
soldiers have since been compelled to do their drinking outside, and, as
a result, this drinking has been done without control or supervision,
and has produced much more serious demoralisation. The action of
Congress was taken in the face of an earnest and nearly unanimous
protest from experienced army officers--the men, that is, who were
directly concerned with the problem in question. The Congressmen acted
as they did under the pressure of the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union, and with the dread lest a vote for the canteen should be
interpreted as a vote for liquor, and should stand in the way of their
own political success.
From what has been said it will be seen that the member of Congress is
compelled to give a deplorably large proportion of his time and thought
to paltry local matters, leaving a deplorably small portion of either to
be devoted to national questions; while in the exercise of his functions
as a legislator he is likely to be influenced by a variety of motives
which ought to be quite impertinent and are often unworthy. These things
however seem to be almost inevitable results of the national political
structure. The individual corruptibility of the members of either House
(their readiness, that is to be influenced by any considerations, other
than that of their re-election, of their own interests, financial or
otherwise), I believe to be grossly exaggerated in the popular mind.
Certainly a stranger is likely to get the idea that the Congress is a
much less honourable and less earnest body than it is.
* * * * *
The subject of the corruptness of the public service in the larger
cities brings up again a matter which has been already touched upon,
namely the extent to which this corruptness is in its origin Irish and
not an indigenous American growth. Under the favourable influences of
American political conditions the Irish have developed exceptional
capacity for leadership (a capacity which they are also showing in some
of the British colonies) and they do not generally use their ability or
their powers for the good of the community. The rapidity with which the
Irish immigrant blossoms into political authority is a commonplace of
American journalism:
"Ere the steamer that brought him had got out of hearing,
He was Alderman Mike introducing a bill."
It is commonly held by Americans that all political corruptness in the
United States (certainly all municipal wickedness) is chargeable to
Irish influence; but it is a position not easy to maintain in the face
of the example of the city of Philadelphia, the government of which has
from the beginning been chiefly in the hands of Americans, many of whom
have been members of the oldest and best Philadelphia families. Yet the
administration of Philadelphia has been as corrupt and as openly
disregardful of the welfare of the community as ever was that of New
York. While Irishmen are generally Democrats, both Philadelphia and the
State of Pennsylvania, are overwhelmingly Republican and devoted to the
protective policy under which so many of the industries of the State
have prospered exceedingly. Those who have fought for the cause of
municipal reform in Philadelphia find that, while the masses of the
people of the city would prefer good government, it is almost impossible
to get them to reject an official candidate of the Republican party. The
Republican "bosses" have thus been able to impose on the city officials
of the worst kind, who have served them faithfully to the disaster of
the community.[253:1] None the less, notwithstanding particular
exceptions, it is a fact that as a general rule the corrupt
maladministration of affairs in American cities is the direct result of
Irish influence.
The opportunities of the Irish leaders for securing control of the city
administration, or of certain important and lucrative divisions of this
administration, have been furthered, particularly in such cities as New
York and San Francisco, by the influence they are able to gain over
bodies of immigrants who are also in the fold of the Roman Catholic
Church, and who, on the ground of difference of language and other
causes, have less quickness of perception of their own political
opportunities. The Irish leaders have been able to direct in very large
measure the votes of the Italians (more particularly the Italians from
the South), the Bohemians, and the other groups of immigrants from
Catholic communities. As the Irish immigration has decreased both
absolutely and relatively, the numbers of voters supporting the
leadership of the bosses of Tammany Hall and of the similar
organisations in Chicago and San Francisco have been made good, and in
fact substantially increased, by the addition of Catholic voters of
other nationalities.
I wish the English reader to grasp fully the significance of these facts
before he allows the stories which he hears of the municipal immorality
which exists in the United States to colour too deeply his estimate of
the character of the American people. That immorality is chiefly Irish
in its origin and is made continuously possible by the ascendency of the
Irish over masses of other non-Anglo-Saxon peoples. The Celts were never
a race of individual workers either as agriculturists or in handicraft.
That "law of intense personal labour" which is the foundation of the
strength of the Anglo-Saxon communities never commanded their full
obedience, as the history of Ireland and the condition of the country
to-day abundantly testify. It is not, then, the fault of the individual
Irishman that when he migrates to America, instead of going out to the
frontier to "grow up" with the territory or taking himself to
agricultural work in the great districts of the West which are always
calling for workers, he prefers to remain in the cities to engage when
possible in the public service, or, failing that, to enter the domestic
service of a private employer.
It should not be necessary to say (except that Irish-American
susceptibilities are sometimes extraordinarily sensitive) that I share
to the full that admiration which all people feel for the best traits in
the Irish character; but, in spite of individual exceptions, I urge that
it is not in the nature of the race to become good and helpful citizens
according to Anglo-Saxon ideals, and that, as far as those qualities are
concerned which have made the greatness of the United States, the
contribution from the Irish element has been inconsiderable. The
deftness of the Irishman in political organisation and his lack of
desire for individual independence, as a result of which he turns either
to the organising of a governing machine or to some form of personal
service (in either case merging his own individuality) is as much
foreign to the American spirit as is the docility of the less
intelligent class of Germans under their political leaders--a docility
which, until very recently has caused the German voters in America to be
used in masses almost without protest.
It is the Anglo-Saxon, or English, spirit which has played the dominant
part in moulding the government of the United States, which has made the
nation what it is, which to-day controls its social usages. The Irish
invasion of the political field may fairly be said to be in its essence
an alien invasion; and, while it may be to the discredit of the American
people that they have allowed themselves in the past to be so engrossed
in other matters that they have permitted that invasion to attain the
success which it has attained, I do not fear that in the long run the
masterful Anglo-Saxon spirit will suffer itself to be permanently
over-ridden (any more than it has allowed itself to be kept in permanent
subjection in England), even in the large cities where the Anglo-Saxon
voter is in a small minority. Ultimately it will throw off the incubus.
In the meanwhile it is unjust that Englishmen or other Europeans should
accept as evidence of native American frailty instances of municipal
abuses and of corrupt methods in a city like New York, where it has not
been by native Americans that those abuses and those methods were
originated or that their perpetuation is made possible. On the contrary
the American minority fights strenuously against them, and I am not sure
that, being such a minority as it is, it has not made as good a fight as
is practicable under most difficult conditions. The American people as a
whole should not be judged by the conditions to which a portion of it
submits unwillingly in certain narrow areas.
* * * * *
It may be well to explain here (for it is a subject on which the
Englishman who has lived in America is often consulted) that the
Republican party may roughly be said to be the equivalent of the
Conservative party in England, while the Democrats are the Liberals. It
happens that a precisely reverse notion has (or had until very recent
years) some vogue in England, the misconception being an inheritance
from the times of the American Civil War.
British sympathy was not nearly so exclusively with the South at the
time of the war as is generally supposed in the United States; none the
less, the ruling and aristocratic classes in England did largely wish to
see the success of the Southern armies. The Southerner, it was
understood, was a gentleman, a man of mettle and spirit, and in many
cases the direct descendant of an old English Cavalier family; while the
Northerners were for the most part but humdrum and commercially minded
people who inherited the necessarily somewhat bigoted, if excellent,
characteristics of their Dutch, Puritan, or Quaker ancestors. The view
had at least sufficient historical basis to serve as an excuse if not
as a justification. So it came about that those classes which came to
form the backbone of the Conservative party were largely sympathisers
with the South; and, after the war, that sympathy naturally descended to
the Democratic party rather than to the Northern Republicans. Except,
however, in one particular the fundamental sentiments which make a man a
Republican or a Democrat to-day have nothing to do with the issues of
war times.
I do not know that any one has successfully defined the fundamental
difference either between a Conservative and a Liberal, or between a
Republican and a Democrat, nor have I any desire to attempt it; and
where both parties in each country are in a constant state of flux and
give-and-take, such a definition would perhaps be impossible. It may be
that Ruskin came as near to it as is practicable when he spoke of
himself as "a Tory of the old school,--the school of Homer and Sir
Walter Scott."
Many people in either country accept their political opinions ready made
from their fathers, their early teachers, or their chance friends, and
remain all their lives believing themselves to belong to--and voting
for--a party with which they have essentially nothing in sympathy. If
one were to say that a Conservative was a supporter of the Throne and
the Established Church, a Jingo in foreign politics, an Imperialist in
colonial matters, an advocate of a strong navy and a disbeliever in free
trade, tens of thousands of Conservatives might object to having
assigned to them one or all of these sentiments, and tens of thousands
of Liberals might insist on laying claim to any of them. Precisely so is
it in America. None the less the Republican party in the mass is the
party which believes in a strong Federal government, as opposed to the
independence of the several States; it is a party which believes in the
principle of a protective tariff; it conducted the Cuban War and is a
party of Imperial expansion; it is the party which has in general the
confidence of the business interests of the country and fought for and
secured the maintenance of the gold standard of currency. It is obvious
that, however blurred the party lines may be in individual cases, the
man who in England is by instinct and conviction a Conservative, must in
America by the same impulse be a Republican.
In both countries there is, moreover, a large element which furnishes
the chief support to the miscellaneous third parties which succeed each
other in public attention and whenever the lines are sharply drawn
between the two great parties, the bulk of these can be trusted to go to
the Liberal side in England and to the Democratic side in America. Nor
is it by accident that the Irish in America are mostly Democrats.
I am acutely aware of the inadequacy of such an analysis as the
foregoing and that many readers will have cause to be dissatisfied with
what I say; but I have known many Englishmen of Conservative leanings
who have come to the United States understanding that they would find
themselves in sympathy with the Democrats and have been bewildered at
being compelled to call themselves Republicans. Whatever the individual
policy of one or the other party may be at a given moment, ultimately
and fundamentally the English Conservative, especially the English Tory,
is a Republican, and the Liberal, especially the Radical, is a
Democrat. Both Homer and Sir Walter Scott to-day would (if they found
themselves in America) be Republicans.
FOOTNOTES:
[227:1] For myself, I confess that my interest began somewhat
prematurely. I had been in the country but a few months and had taken no
steps towards naturalisation when I voted at an election in a small town
in a Northwestern Territory where I had been living only for a week or
two. My vote was quite illegal; but my friends (and every one in a small
frontier town is one's friend) were all going to vote and told me to
come along and vote too. The election, which was of the most friendly
character, like the election of a club committee, proved to be closely
contested, one man getting in (as City Attorney or Town Clerk or
something) only by a single vote--my vote. Since then, the Territory has
become a populous State, the frontier town has some hundred thousand
inhabitants, and the gentleman whom I elected has been for some years a
respected member of the United States Senate. I have never seen any
cause to regret that illegal vote.
[229:1] The laws governing expenditures for electoral purposes, and the
conduct of elections generally, are stricter in England than in the
United States, and I think it is not to be questioned that there is much
less bribery of voters. Largely owing to the exertions of Mr. Roosevelt,
however, laws are now being enacted which will make it more difficult
for campaign managers to raise the large funds which have heretofore
been obtainable for election purposes.
[232:1] In as much as a demand that the control of the police force
should be vested in the County Council has appeared in the programme of
one political party in London, it may be well to call the attention of
Englishmen to the fact that it is precisely the association of politics
with the police which gives to American municipal rings their chief
power for evil.
[247:1] See Bryce, _The American Commonwealth_, vol. i., p. 188.
[253:1] Inasmuch as I have twice within a small space referred to evils
which incidentally grow out of the protective system, lest it be thought
that I am influenced by any partisan feeling, I had better state that my
personal sympathies are strongly Republican and Protectionist.
CHAPTER X
AMERICAN POLITICS IN ENGLAND
The System of Parties--Interdependence of National and Local
Organisations--The Federal Government and Sovereign States--The
Boss of Warwickshire--The Unit System--Prime Minister Crooks--
Lanark and the Nation--New York and Tammany Hall--America's
Superior Opportunities for Wickedness--But England is Catching
up--Campaign Reminiscences--The "Hell-box"--Politics in a
Gravel-pit--Mr. Hearst and Mr. Bryan.
The subject of this chapter will, perhaps, be more easy of comprehension
to the English reader if he will for a moment surrender his imagination
into my charge while we transfer to England certain political conditions
of the United States.
There are in the first place, then, the great political parties, in the
nation and in Parliament (Congress); with the fact always to be borne in
mind that the members of Congress are not nominated by any central
committee or association, but are selected and nominated by the people
of each district. A candidate is not "sent down" to contest a given
constituency. He is a resident of that constituency, selected in small
local meetings by the voters themselves.
Next, every County (State) has its own machinery of government,
including a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and other County officials as
well as a bi-cameral Legislature, with a membership ranging from seventy
in some Counties to over three hundred in others. In these County
Legislatures and governments, parties are split on precisely the same
lines as in the nation and in Parliament. Members of the House of
Commons have usually qualified for election by a previous term in the
County Legislature, while members of the House of Lords are actually
elected direct, not by the people in the mass, but by the members of the
County Legislatures only, each county sending to Westminster two members
so elected. Nor is it to be supposed that these County governments are
governments in name only.
It is not easy to imagine that in England the Counties, each with its
separate and sovereign government, preceded the National Government and
voluntarily called it into existence only as a federation of themselves.
But that, we must for the present understand, was indeed the course of
history; and when that federation was formed, the various Counties
entrusted to the Central Government only a strictly limited list of
powers. The Central Government was authorised to treat with foreign
nations in the name of the United Counties; to maintain a standing army
of limited size, and to create a navy; to establish postal routes,
regardless of County boundaries; to regulate commerce between the
different Counties, to care for the national coast line and all
navigable waters within the national dominions, and to levy taxes for
national purposes. All powers not thus specifically conceded to the
central authority were, in theory at least, reserved by the individual
Counties to themselves; and to-day a County government, except that it
cannot interfere with the postal service within its borders, nor erect
custom-houses on its County lines to levy taxes on goods coming in from
neighbouring Counties, is practically a sovereign government within its
own territory.
It is only within the last ten years that the right of the Central
Government--the Crown--to use the King's troops to protect from violence
the King's property, in the shape of the Royal mails, in defiance of the
wishes of the Governor of a County, was established by a decision of the
Supreme Court. The Governor protested that the suppression of mobs and
tumults within his County borders was his business, his County police
and militia being the proper instruments for the purpose, and for the
Crown to intervene without his request and sanction was an invasion of
the sovereign dignity of the County.
Although so much has been said on this subject by various English
writers, from Mr. Bryce downwards, few Englishmen, I think, have
comprehended the theoretical significance of this independence of the
individual States, and fewer still grasp its practical importance.
Perhaps the most instructive illustration of what it means is to be
found in the dilemma in which the American government has, on two
occasions in recent years, found itself from its inability to compel a
particular State to observe the national treaty obligations to a foreign
power.
The former of the two cases arose in Louisiana when a number of citizens
of New Orleans (including not only leading bankers and merchants but
also, it is said, at least one ex-Governor of the State and one Judge),
finding that a jury could not, because of terrorisation, be found to
convict certain murderers, Italians and members of the Mafia, took the
murderers out of gaol and hanged them in a public square in broad
daylight. The Italian government demanded the punishment of the
lynchers, and the American government had to confess itself entirely
unable to comply with the request. Whether it would have given the
satisfaction if it could is another question; but the dealing with the
criminals was a matter solely for the Louisiana State authorities, and
the Federal Government had no power to interfere with them or to dictate
what they should do. The only way in which it could have obtained
jurisdiction over the offenders would have been by sending Federal
troops into the State to take them by force, a proceeding which the
State of Louisiana would certainly have resisted by force, and civil war
would have followed. Ultimately, the United States, without
acknowledging any liability in the matter, paid to the Italian
government a certain sum of money as a voluntary _solatium_ to the
widows and families of those who had been killed, and the incident was
closed.
The second case, which has recently strained so seriously the relations
between the United States and Japan, arose with the State of California,
which refused to extend to Japanese subjects the privileges to which
they are unquestionably entitled under the "most favoured nation" clause
of the treaty between the two governments. It is a matter which cannot
be dealt with fully here without too long a digression from the path of
our present argument, and will be referred to later. It is enough for
the present to point out that once again the National Government--or
what we have called the Crown--has been seen to be entirely incapable,
without recourse to civil war, of compelling an individual State--or
County--to respect the national word when pledged to a treaty with a
foreign power.[264:1]
The States then, or Counties, are independent units, in each of which
there exists a complete party organisation of each of the great parties,
which organisations control the destinies of the parties within the
County borders and have no concern whatever with the party fortunes
outside. The great parties in the nation and in Parliament must look to
the organisations within the several Counties for their support and
existence. The loss of a County, say Hampshire, by the local
Conservative organisation will mean to the Conservative party in the
nation not merely that the members to be elected to the lower house of
Parliament by the Hampshire constituencies will be Liberal, but that the
County Legislature will elect two Liberal Peers to the upper house as
well; and it is likely that in one or other of the two houses parties
may be so evenly balanced that the loss of the members from the one
County may overthrow the government's working majority. Moreover, the
loss of the County in the local County election will probably mean the
loss of that County's vote at the next presidential election, which may
result in the entire dethronement of the party from power.
Wherefore it is obviously necessary that the party as a whole--in the
nation and in Congress--should do all that it can to help and strengthen
the party leaders in the County. This it does in contests believed to be
critical, and particularly just in advance of a national election, by
contributing to the local campaign funds when a purely County (State)
election is in progress (with which, of course, the national party ought
theoretically to have nothing to do) and in divers other ways; but
especially by judicious use of the national patronage in making
appointments to office when the party is in power.
The President--or let us say the Prime Minister--would rarely presume to
appoint a postmaster at Winchester or Petersfield, or a collector of the
port of Portsmouth or Southampton, without the advice and consent of the
Hampshire Peers or Senators. And the advice of the Hampshire Peers, we
may be sure, would be shaped in accordance with their personal political
interests or by considerations of the welfare of the party in the
County. They would not be likely to recommend for preferment either a
member of the opposite party or a member of their own party who was a
personal opponent. Moreover, besides the appointments in the County
itself, there are many posts in the government offices in Whitehall, as
well as a number of consulates and other more remote positions, to be
filled. In spite of much that has been done to make the United States
civil service independent of party politics, it remains that the bulk of
these posts are necessarily still filled on recommendations made by the
Congressmen or party leaders from the respective Counties, and again it
is the good of the party inside those Counties which inspires those
recommendations.
Thus we see how the national party when in power is able to fatten and
strengthen the hands of the party organisations within the several
Counties; and strengthen them it must, for if they lose control of the
voters within their territory then is the national party itself ruined
and dethroned.
And below the County party organisations, the County governments, are
the organisations and governments in the cities, which again are split
on precisely the same lines of cleavage. The City Council of Petersfield
or Midhurst is divided into Conservatives and Liberals precisely as the
Hampshire Legislature or the Parliament at Westminster. Jealousies often
arise between the County organisations and those in the cities. The
influence of Birmingham might well become overpowering in the
Warwickshire Legislature, whereby it would be difficult for any but a
resident of Birmingham to become Governor of the County or to be elected
to the House of Lords. If the Birmingham municipal organisation chanced
to be controlled by a strong hand, it is not difficult to see how he
might impose his will upon the County Legislature and the County party
organisation, how he might claim more than his share of the sweets and
spoils of office for his immediate friends and colleagues in the city,
to the disgust of the other parts of the County. For the most part,
however, such quarrels, between the city and County organisations of the
same party, when they arise, are but lovers' quarrels, rarely pushed to
the point of endangering the unity of the party in the State at election
time.
But now if we remember what was said at first, that no candidates for
Parliament or other elected functionaries are "sent down" by a central
organisation, but all are "sent up" from the bottom, the impulse
starting from small meetings in public-house parlours and the like (in
the case of cities, meetings being held by "precincts" to elect
delegates to a meeting of the "ward," which meeting again elects
delegates to the meeting of the city), when we see how the city can
coerce the County and the County sway the nation, then we have also no
difficulty in seeing how it is, as has been said already, that the same
power that appoints a janitor in a town-hall may dictate the nomination
of a President. Even more than the County organisation is to the
national party, is the city organisation to the County. The party, both
as a national and as a County organisation, must fatten and strengthen
the hands of the city machine. Thus comes it that such an alderman as
the Delectable One is unassailable. His power reaches far beyond the
city. The party organisation in the city cannot dispense with him,
because he can be relied upon always to carry his ward, and that ward
may be necessary, not to the city machine only, but to the County and
the nation.
It is hardly necessary to explain that in a general election in England
the party which is returned to power need not necessarily have a
majority of the votes throughout the country. A party may win ten seats
by majorities of less than a hundred in each and lose one, being therein
in a minority of a thousand; with the result that, with fewer votes than
were cast for its opponents, it will have a clear majority of nine in
the eleven seats. This is of course well understood.
But in an American general or presidential election, this anomaly is
immensely aggravated by the fact that the electoral unit is not a city
or a borough but a whole County or State. The various States have a
voice in proportion to their population, but that vote is cast as a
unit. A majority of ten votes in New York carries the entire
thirty-seven votes of that State, while a majority of one thousand in
Montana only counts three. There are forty-six States in the Republic,
but the thirteen most populous possess more than half the votes, and a
presidential candidate who received the votes of those thirteen, though
each was won by only the narrowest majority, would be elected over an
antagonist who carried the other thirty-three States, though in each of
the thirty-three his majority might be overwhelming. Bearing this in
mind, we see at once what immense importance may, in a doubtful
election, attach to the control of a single populous State.
If in an English election, similarly conducted, the country was known to
be so equally divided that the vote of Warwickshire, with, perhaps,
twenty votes, would certainly decide the issue, the man who could
control Warwickshire would practically control the country. We have seen
further, however, that the man who controls Warwickshire will probably
be the man who controls Birmingham. He may be the Mayor of Birmingham,
or, more likely, the chairman (or "boss") of the municipal machine who
nominated and elected the Mayor and whose puppet the Mayor practically
is. It then becomes evident that the man who can sway the politics of
the nation is not merely the man who controls the single County of
Warwickshire, but the man who, inside that County, controls the single
city.
To go a step below that again, the control of the city may depend
entirely on the control of a given ward in the city. That ward may
contain a very large labouring vote, by reason of the existence of a
number of big factories within its limits. Unless that labouring vote
can be polled for the Liberal party, the ward will not go Liberal, and
without it the city will be lost. The loss of the city involves the loss
of the County, and the loss of the County means the loss of the nation.
The man therefore who by his personal influence, or by his leadership in
a perfectly organised party machine in one ward of Birmingham, can be
relied on to call out the full Liberal strength in that one ward of a
single city may be absolutely indispensable to the success of the party
in the country as a whole. And it is even conceivable that that man
again may be dependent on one of his own henchmen, the "Captain" of a
single precinct in the ward or the man who has the ear and confidence of
the hands in the largest of the factories.
Let me not be understood as saying that the personal influence of an
individual may not be extremely powerful in an English election; and
that power may rest, similarly, on his popularity in, and consequent
ability to carry with him into the party fold, one particular district.
But there is not the same established form of County government on
avowedly national lines, nor the same city government, as in America,
through which that influence can make itself definitely and continuously
felt.
* * * * *
We will state the situation in another way, which will make it clear to
Englishmen from another point of view:
Let it be imagined that at the next general election in England, the
decision is to be arrived at by a direct vote of the country as a whole
for a Conservative or a Liberal Prime Minister. Instead of each County
and borough electing its members of Parliament (they will do that only
incidentally) the real struggle will take the form of a direct contest
between two men. Each of the great parties will choose its own
candidate, and the Conservatives have already nominated Mr. Balfour. It
remains for the Liberals to name their man who is to run against Mr.
Balfour. The selection is to be made in a National Convention, to be
held in Manchester, at which each County will be represented by a number
of delegates proportioned to its population. Those delegates have
already been elected in each County by local meetings within the
Counties themselves, and in nearly every case the delegations so elected
will come into the Convention Hall at Manchester prepared to vote and
act as a unit. Whether that has been arrived at by choice of the
individual Counties when they elected their delegations or whether the
Convention itself has decided the matter by adopting the "unit rule"
does not matter. The fact is that each county will be compelled to vote
in a body, _i. e._, that if London has forty votes and Kent twenty,
those forty votes or those twenty will have to be cast solidly for some
one man. They cannot be split into thirty votes for one man and ten for
another; or into fifteen for one man and one each for five other men.
The Convention meets and it is plain from the first that the two
strongest candidates are Lord Rosebery and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
There are scattering votes for Mr. Morley and Mr. Asquith, each of them
getting the vote of one or more small Counties. But after the first
ballot, which is always more or less preliminary, it is apparent that
neither of those gentlemen can hope to be chosen, so the Counties which
voted for them, having expressed their preference, proceed on the next
ballot to give their suffrages either to Lord Rosebery or to Sir Henry.
The second ballot is completed. Every County has voted, with the result
that (out of a total vote of 521, of which 261 are necessary for a
choice) there are 248 votes for Lord Rosebery and 253 for Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman. But there is still one County which has not voted
for either. Kent at both ballots has cast its twenty votes for Mr. Will
Crooks. The reason why Kent does this is because the representatives
from Woolwich and the neighbourhood are a numerical majority of the Kent
delegation and those men are devoted to Mr. Crooks.
The third ballot produces the same result: Rosebery 248; Bannerman, 253;
Crooks, 20. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh ballots show no change
except that once in a while Rutland with three votes and Merioneth with
four have amused themselves or caused a temporary flutter by swinging
their votes from one side to the other or, perhaps, again casting them
for Mr. Morley or Mr. Asquith. There is a deadlock. The Convention
becomes impatient. The evening wears on and midnight arrives and still
there is no change. Neither Lord Rosebery nor Sir Henry can get the
extra dozen votes that are needed: still with regularity when the name
of Kent is called the leader of the delegation rises and responds "Kent
casts twenty votes for William Crooks."
At last in the small hours of the morning something happens. How it has
been arrived at nobody seems to know; but when the roll is called for
the thirteenth time, Norfolk, heretofore loyal to Sir Henry, suddenly
votes for Crooks. Tremendous excitement follows. The word goes round
that Campbell-Bannerman is beaten; his friends have given up and it is
useless to vote for him any longer. Meanwhile in the course of the
evening feeling between the supporters of Sir Henry and the Roseberyites
has grown so bitter that whatever the deserting Bannermanites do, they
will not help to elect Lord Rosebery. Here and there a Scotch County
remains firm to its leader, but Oxford swings off to Mr. Morley;
Suffolk, amid yells that make it difficult to tell who the vote is cast
for, follows Norfolk and plumps for Crooks. Sussex brings in Mr. Asquith
again and Warwickshire goes for Crooks. Amid breathless silence the
result of the thirteenth ballot is read out: Rosebery, 248; Crooks, 96;
Morley, 72; Asquith, 50; Bannerman, 43; etc.
The fourteenth ballot begins. "Aberdeen!" calls the Chairman. The head
of the Aberdeen delegation stands up in a suspense so tense that it
almost hurts. "Aberdeen casts seventeen votes for Mr. Will Crooks!" In
an instant the whole hall is filled with maniacs. County after County
rushes to range itself on the winning side. Before the roll is more than
half completed it is evident that Crooks must be chosen. Thereafter
there is no dissentient voice. The ballot is interrupted by a voice
which is known to belong to Lord Rosebery's personal representative. He
moves that the nomination of Mr. Crooks be made unanimous. In a din
wherein no voice can be heard the erstwhile leader of the Bannermanite
forces is seen waving his arms and is known to be seconding the motion.
In ten minutes the hall is singing _God Save the King_ and Mr. Will
Crooks is the chosen candidate of the Liberal party to oppose Mr.
Balfour at the coming election.
That is not materially different from what happened when Mr. Bryan was
first nominated for the Presidency against Mr. McKinley--except that it
did not take so long to accomplish. I have said that Mr. Bryan's
nomination could have been defeated if a certain local delegation had
been "attended to" in advance. What is to be noted is that Mr. Crooks
has been nominated simply because he had a hold which could not be
shaken on a small but compact body of men at Woolwich. It is true that
it is not often that so dramatic a thing would happen as the nomination
of Mr. Crooks himself but more frequently an arrangement--a "trade" or
"deal"--would be entered into by which in consideration of the Crooks
vote being thrown to one or other of the leading candidates, in the
event of the latter's defeating Mr. Balfour and being elected to the
Premiership, certain political advantages, in the form of appointments
to office and "patronage" generally, would accrue, not necessarily to
Mr. Crooks himself, but to his "machine," the citizens of Woolwich, and
the Liberal party in the County of Kent at large. We see here how the
local "boss" may become all-powerful in national affairs (and this is of
course only one of fifty ways) and how the interdependence of the party
in the nation with the party organisation in the County or the
municipality tends to the fattening of the latter and, it must be added,
the debauching of all three.
At the last general election in England, in January, 1906, there is no
doubt that the Conservative party owed the loss of a large number of
seats merely to the fact that it had been in office for so long, without
serious conflict, that the local party organisations had not merely
grown rusty but were practically defunct. In the United States the same
thing, in anything like the same degree, would be impossible, because
between the periods of the general elections (which themselves come
every four years) come the State and municipal elections for the
purposes of which the local party organisations are kept in continuous
and more or less active existence. A State or a city may, of course, be
so confirmedly Republican or Democratic that, even though elections be
frequent, the ruling party organisation will become, in a measure, soft
and careless, but it can never sink altogether out of fighting
condition. When a general election comes round, each great party in the
nation possesses--or organises for the occasion--a national committee as
well as a national campaign organisation; but that committee and that
national organisation co-operate with the local organisations in each
State and city and it is the local organisations that really do the
work--the same organisations as conduct the fight, in intermediate
years, for the election of members to the State Legislature or of a
mayor and aldermen. And each of those local organisations necessarily
tends to come under the control of a recognised "boss."
Let us see another of the fifty ways in which, as has been said, one of
these local bosses may be all-powerful in national affairs. A general
election is approaching in Great Britain, and, as before, the Liberal
party is in doubt whether to select as its candidate for the
Premiership Lord Rosebery or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The political
complexion of almost every County is known and there is no chance of
changing that complexion--a condition, be it said, which exists in
America in the case of a large majority of the States. It is evident
that at the coming election the vote is going to be extremely close, the
most important of the "doubtful" Counties being Lanarkshire, which has
25 votes; which 25 votes will of course be governed by the course of the
working population of Glasgow. Whichever party can secure Lanarkshire's
vote will probably be successful; so that the destiny of the country
really depends on the temper of the labouring men of Glasgow. Glasgow
has, let us suppose, a strong and well-organised local Liberal "machine"
which carried the city at the last municipal election, so that the mayor
and a large majority of the aldermen of Glasgow are Liberals to-day; and
the dictator or "boss" of this machine is (we are merely using a name
for the sake of illustration) Lord Inverclyde. Lord Inverclyde does not
believe that Lord Rosebery is the right man for the Premiership. So he
lets his views be known to the Liberal National Committee. "I am, as you
know," he says, "a strong Liberal; but frankly I would rather see Mr.
Balfour made Prime Minister than Lord Rosebery. Glasgow will not vote
for Lord Rosebery. The party can nominate any other man whom it pleases
and we will elect him. I will undertake to carry Lanark for Sir Henry or
Mr. Morley or anybody else; but I warn you that if Lord Rosebery is
nominated, we will 'knife' him"--that being the euphonious phrase used
to describe the operation when a party leader or party machine turns
against any particular candidate nominated by the party.
What are the party leaders to do in such a case? To nominate Lord
Rosebery after that warning (Lord Inverclyde is known to be a man of his
word) will be merely to invite defeat at the election; consequently,
though he may be the actual preference of a large majority of the
Liberals of the country, Lord Rosebery does not get the nomination. It
goes to some one who can carry Lanarkshire,--some one, that is, who is
pleasing to the boss of the local machine of Glasgow. It would be not
unlikely that the national leaders might resent the dictation of Lord
Inverclyde and might (but not until after the election was safely over)
start intriguing in Glasgow politics to have him dethroned from the
position of local "boss,"--might, in fact, begin "knifing" him in turn.
Whether they would succeed in their object before another general
election supervened would depend on the security of his hold on the
local Liberal organisation; and that would depend on his personal
ability as a politician and--very largely--on his unscrupulousness. For
it may, I think, be stated as an axiom that no man can long retain his
hold as "boss" of the machine in a large city except by questionable
methods,--methods which sometimes involve dishonesty. He must--no matter
whether he likes it or not--use his patronage and his power to advance
unworthy men; and he must in some measure show leniency to certain forms
of lawlessness. Otherwise the influence of the saloons, gamblers,
keepers of disorderly houses, and all the other non-law-abiding elements
will be thrown against him with sufficient weight to work his downfall.
Unscrupulousness and friendship with wickedness in the slums of a city
may thus be the direct road to influence in the councils of the national
party. When it is remembered that not a few large cities, and therefore
some States, are practically controlled, through the balance of power,
by voters of an alien nationality, it is further plain how such an alien
vote may become a serious factor in the politics of the nation. Thus is
the German element very strong in Milwaukee, and the Scandinavian
element in the towns and State of Minnesota. Thus the Irish influence
has been almost paramount in New York, though now outnumbered by
Germans, Italians, and others; and it is there, in New York, that the
conditions which we have imagined in connection with Glasgow and Lord
Inverclyde are actually being almost exactly repeated in American
Democratic politics as often as a general election comes round.
You may frequently hear it said in America that "as goes New York, so
goes the country"; which is to say that in a presidential election the
party which carries New York will carry the nation. In theory this is
not necessarily so, although it is evident that New York's thirty-six
votes in the electoral college must be an important contribution to the
support of a candidate. In practice it has proven itself a good rule,
partly by reason of the importance of those thirty-six votes, but more,
perhaps, because the popular impetus which sways one part of the country
is likely to be felt in others--that, in fact, New York goes as the
country goes.
But let us assume that the New York vote is really essential to the
election of a candidate--that the vote in the country as a whole is
evidently so evenly divided that whichever candidate can win New York
must be elected the next President. Tammany Hall is a purely local
organisation of the Democratic party in New York City. New York State,
outside the city, is normally Republican, but many times the great
Democratic majority in the Metropolitan district has swamped a
Republican majority in the rest of the State. That Democratic vote in
the Metropolitan district can only be properly "brought out" and
controlled by Tammany; so that the cordial support of Tammany Hall,
though, as has been said, it is in reality a strictly local
organisation, and as such is probably the worst and most corrupt
organisation (as it is also the best managed) that has been built up in
the country, may be absolutely vital to the success of a Democratic
presidential candidate. Tammany is practically an autocracy, the power
of the Chief being almost absolute. England and English society have had
some acquaintance with one Chief, and do not like him. But, as Chief of
Tammany Hall, it is easy to see how even a coarse-grained Irishman may
become for a time influential in American national affairs--even to the
dictating of a nominee for the Presidency.
I am not prepared to say that under the same conditions the same things
could occur in England. What I am saying is that they do occur in the
United States under conditions which do not exist in England; and, while
it may be that British civic virtue would be proof against the manifold
temptations of a similar political system, we have no sufficient data to
justify us in being sure of it, nor is it wise or charitable to assume
that because a certain number of American politicians yield to
temptations which Englishmen have never experienced, therefore the
people are of a less rigid virtue. Mr. Bryce has recorded his opinion
that the mass of the public servants in America are no more corrupt than
those in England. I prefer not to agree with him for, if it was true
when he wrote it, the Americans to-day must be much the better, because
since then there has unquestionably been an enormous improvement in the
United States, while we have no evidence of a corresponding improvement
in England. I believe, not only that many more public men are corrupt in
America than in England, but that a larger proportion of the public men
are corrupt, which, however, need not imply a lower standard of
political incorruptibility: only that there are much greater
opportunities of going wrong.
It is interesting to note, moreover, that in the public service the
opportunities of malfeasance in public officers in Great Britain are
increasing rapidly and, moreover, in precisely those lines wherein they
have proved most demoralising in America. I have elsewhere recorded the
apprehension with which many Englishmen cannot help regarding the
closeness of the relations which are growing up between the national and
local party organisations, but in addition to this the urban public
bodies are coming to play a vastly larger rôle in the life of the
people, while the multiplication of electric car lines and similar
enterprises is exposing the members of those bodies to somewhat the same
class of untoward influence as has so often proven fatal to the civic
virtue of similar bodies in America. Whether, as a result, any large
number of cases of individual frailty have exposed themselves, probably
only those immediately interested know; the exposure at least has not
reached the general public.
It may not, however, be amiss to remember that a century and a half ago,
when the conditions in the two countries were widely different from what
they are to-day, Benjamin Franklin, coming to England, was shocked and
astounded at the corruption then prevalent in English public life.
* * * * *
The procedure of an American presidential campaign has been sufficiently
often described for the benefit of English readers. Suffice it to say
that it is devastating, at times almost titanic. I have had some
experience of the amenities of political campaigning in England, but the
most bitterly contested fight in England never produces anything like
the intensity of passion that is let loose in the quadrennial upheavals
in the United States.
It was my lot to be closely associated with the conduct of a national
campaign--as bitterly fought a campaign as the country has seen since
the days of the war,--namely that of 1896 when Mr. Bryan was the
candidate of the Free Silver Democracy. Early in the fight I began to
receive abusive letters, for which a large and capacious drawer was
provided in the office, into which they were tossed as they came, on the
chance of their containing some reading which might be interesting when
the trouble was over. As the fight waxed, they came by every post and in
every form, ranging from mere incoherent personal abuse to threats of
assassination. Hundreds of them were entirely insane: many hundred more
the work, on the face of them, of anarchists pure and simple. A large
proportion of them were written in red ink, and in many--very
many--cases the passions of the writers had got so far beyond their
control that you could see where they had broken their pens in the
futile effort to make written words curse harder than they would. The
receptacle in which they were placed was officially known in the office
as the Chamber of Horrors, but it was, I think, universally spoken of
among the staff as the "Hell-box." Before the end of the campaign,
capacious though it was, it was crowded to overflowing, and hardly a
document that was not as venomous as human wrath could make it.
Incidentally I wish to say that never was a campaign--at least as far as
my colleagues in our particular department were concerned--more purely
in the interest of public morality, without any sort of selfish aims,
and less deserving of abuse. What the correspondence of a presidential
candidate himself must be in like circumstances, it is horrible to
think.[281:1]
The intense feverishness of the campaign is of course increased by the
vastness of the country, the tremendous distances over which the
national organisation has to endeavour to exercise control, and the
immense diversity in the conditions of the people and communities to
whom appeal has to be made. The voting takes place all over the country
on the same day; and it must be remembered that the area of the United
States (not counting Alaska or any external dependencies) is so great
that it reaches from west to east about as far as from London to
Teheran, and north and south from London to below the southern boundary
of Morocco. The difficulty of organisation over such an area can,
perhaps, be imagined. In the course of the campaign there came in one
day in my mail a letter written on a torn half of a railway time-card.
It ran:
"DEAR SIR--There is sixty-five of us here working in a gravel
pit and we was going to vote solid for Bryan and Free Silver.
Some of your books [_i. e._, campaign leaflets, etc.] was
thrown to us out of a passing train. We have organised a Club
and will cast sixty-five votes for William McKinley.--Yours,
etc."
So far as those sixty-five were concerned our chief interest thereafter
lay in seeing that the existence of that gravel-pit was never discovered
by the enemy. A faith which had been so speedily and unanimously
embraced might perhaps not have been unassailable.
Before leaving this subject it may be well to say a few words on a
recent election in New York which excited, perhaps, more interest in
England than any American political event of late years. The eminence
which Mr. Hearst has won is an entirely deplorable thing, which has been
made possible by the fact, already sufficiently dwelt upon, that
political power in the United States is so largely exerted from the
bottom up. In their comments on the incident after the event, however,
English papers missed some of its significance. Most English writers
spoke of Mr. Hearst's appeal to the forces of discontent as a new
phenomenon and drew therefrom grave inferences as to what would happen
next in the United States. The fact is that the phenomenon is not new in
any way. Mr. Hearst, in but a slightly different form, appealed to
precisely the same passions as Mr. Bryan aroused--the same as every
demagogue has appealed to throughout, at least, the northern and western
sections of the country any time in this generation. Mr. Hearst began
from the East and Mr. Bryan from the West, but in all essentials the
appeal was the same. And Mr. Hearst was not elected. And Mr. Bryan was
not elected. What will happen next will be that the next man who makes
the same appeal will not be elected also.
It is the allegory of the river and its ripples over again. Englishmen
need not despair of the United States, for the great body of the people
is extraordinarily conservative and well-poised. In America, man never
is, but always to be, cursed. Dreadful things are on the eve of
happening, and never happen. There is a great saving fund of
common-sense in the people--a sense which probably rests as much on the
fact that they are as a whole conspicuously well-to-do as on anything
else--which as the last resort shrinks from radicalism. In spite of the
yellow press, in spite of all the Socialist and Anarchist talk, in spite
of corruption and brass bands and torchlight processions, when the
people as a whole is called upon to speak the final word, that word has
never yet been wrong. Perhaps some day it will be, for all peoples go
mad at times; but the nation is normally sound and sane, with a sanity
that is peculiarly like that of the English.
FOOTNOTES:
[264:1] I trust that, because, for the purpose of making an illustration
which will bring the matter home familiarly to English minds, I speak of
the States as English Counties, I shall not be suspected of thinking (as
some writers appear to have thought) that there is really any historical
or structural analogy between the two.
[281:1] None the less my friendly American critic (already quoted)
holds, and remains firm in, the opinion that "however strenuous the
fighting, the political issues produce no such social changes or
personal differences in the United States as have frequently obtained in
England, say at the time of the leadership of Gladstone, or more
recently, in connection with the 'tariff reform' of Chamberlain." It is
his contention that Americans take their politics on the whole more
good-humouredly than has always been found possible by their English
cousins, and that when the campaign is over, there is more readiness in
the United States than in England to let pass into oblivion any
bitterness that may have found expression during the fighting.
CHAPTER XI
SOME QUESTIONS OF THE MOMENT
Sovereign States and the Federal Government--California and
the Senate--The Constitutional Powers of Congress and the
President--Government by Interpretation--President Roosevelt
as an Inspiration to the People--A New Conception of the
Presidential Office--"Teddy" and the "'fraid strap"--Mr.
Roosevelt and the Corporations--As a Politician--His
Imperiousness--The Negro Problem--The Americanism of the
South.
It was said that it would be necessary to refer again to the subject of
the relations of the General Government to the several States, as
illustrated by the New Orleans incident and the treatment of the
Japanese on the Pacific Coast; and the first thing to be said is that no
well-wisher of the United States living in Europe can help deploring the
fact that the General Government has not the power to compel all parties
to the Union to observe the treaties to which the faith of the nation as
a whole has been pledged. It is a matter on which the apologist for the
United States abroad has, when challenged, no defence. Few people in
other countries do not consider the present situation unworthy of the
United States; and I believe that a large majority of the American
people--certainly a majority of the people east of the Rocky
Mountains--is of the same opinion.
It is no excuse to urge that when another Power enters into treaty
relations with the United States it does so with its eyes open and with
a knowledge of the peculiarities of the American Constitution. This is
an argument which belongs to the backwoods stage of American
statesmanship. In the past, it is true, the United States has been in a
measure the spoilt child among the nations and has been permitted to sit
somewhat loosely to the observance of those formalities which other
Powers have recognised as binding on themselves; but the time has gone
by when the United States can claim, or ought to be willing to accept,
any especial indulgences. It cannot at once assert its right to rank as
one of the Great Powers and affect to enter into treaties on equal terms
with other nations, and at the same time admit that it is unable to
honour its signature to those treaties.
This, I say, is the general opinion of thinking men in other countries;
but, however desirable it may be that the General Government should have
the power to compel the individual States to comply with the
requirements of the national undertakings, it is difficult, so long as
the several States continue jealous of their sovereignty without regard
to the national honour, to see how the end is to be arrived at.
The first obvious fact is that all treaties are made by the President
"by and with the advice and consent of the Senate" and no treaty is
valid until ratified by a vote of the Senate in which "two thirds of the
Senators present concur." The Senate occupies a peculiar position in the
scheme of government. It does not represent either the nation as a whole
nor, like the House of Representatives, the people as a whole. The
Senate represents the individual States each acting in its sovereign
capacity[287:1]; and the voice of the Senate is the voice of those
States as separate entities. When the Senate passes upon any question it
has been passed upon by each several State and it is not easy to see how
any particular State can claim to be exempt from the responsibility of
any vote of the Senate as a whole.
It would appear to follow of necessity that when the Senate has by a
formal two-thirds vote ratified a treaty, every State is bound to accept
all the obligations of that treaty, not merely as part of the nation but
as a separate unit. The provision in the Constitution which makes the
vote of the Senate on any treaty necessary can have no other intent than
to bind the several States themselves. As a matter of historical
accuracy it had no other intent when it was framed.
In the particular case of the Japanese treaty, the time for the State of
California to have made its attitude known was surely when the treaty
passed the Senate. The California Senators, or the people of the State,
had then two honest courses open to them. They could have let it be
known unequivocally that they did not propose to hold themselves bound
by the action of the Senate but would, if any attempt were made to force
them to comply with the terms of the treaty, secede from the Union; or
they could have determined there and then to abide loyally by the terms
of the treaty and no matter at what cost to the State, or at what
sacrifice of their _amour propre_, to see that all the rights provided
in the treaty were accorded to Japanese within the State. Either of
these courses would have been honest; and Japanese who came to
California would have come with their eyes open. The course which was
followed, of allowing them to settle in the State in the expectation of
receiving that treatment to which the faith of the United States was
pledged, and then denying them that treatment, was distinctly dishonest.
If, however, the State of California, or any other individual State,
refuses to acknowledge the responsibilities which it has assumed by the
vote of the Chamber of which its representatives are members, there
appears no way in which the Federal Government can compel such
acknowledgment except those of force and what the believers in the
extreme doctrine of State Sovereignty consider Constitutional
Usurpation.
It has in many cases been necessary as the conditions of the country
have changed so to interpret the phrases of the Constitution as to give
to the General Government powers which cannot have been contemplated by
the framers of that instrument. In this case there is every evidence,
however, that the framers did intend that the General Government should
have precisely those powers which it now desires--or that the individual
States should be subject to precisely those responsibilities which they
now seek to evade--and if any sentence in the Constitution can be so
interpreted as to give to the General Government the power to compel
States to respect the treaties made by the nation, it seems unnecessary
to shrink from putting such interpretation upon it.
Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to "regulate commerce
with foreign nations"--and commerce is a term which has many
meanings--as well as "to define and punish offences against the law of
nations" and to "make all laws which shall be necessary for carrying
into execution the foregoing powers." The President is invested with the
power, "by and with the advice of the Senate, to make treaties," and he
is charged with the duty of taking "care that the laws be faithfully
executed." It would seem that among these provisions there is specific
authority enough to cover the case, if the will to use that authority be
there. And I believe that in a large majority of the people the will is
there.
It would appear to be competent for Congress to "define" any failure on
the part of the citizens of any State to comply with whatever
requirements in the treatment of foreigners may be imposed on them by a
treaty into which the nation has entered, as an "offence against the law
of nations." This power of "definition" on the part of Congress is quite
unhampered. So also is the power "to make all laws which shall be
necessary and proper for carrying into execution" the powers of
definition and punishment. And it would be the duty of the President and
the Federal Courts to take care that the laws were executed.
If there would be any "usurpation" involved in such an interpretation of
the phrases of the Constitution it is certainly less--much less, when
regard is had to the intention of the framers of the Constitution--than
other "usurpations" which have been effected, and sometimes without
protest from the individual States; as, for instance, by the expansion
of the right to regulate commerce between the several States into an
authority to deal with all manner of details of the control of railways
of which the framers of the Constitution never contemplated the
existence. It cannot even remotely be compared with such an extension of
the Federal power as would be involved in the translation of the
authority to "establish post-offices and post-roads" as empowering the
government to take an even larger measure of control over those
railroads than can be compassed under the right to regulate commerce--a
translation which seems to have the approval of President Roosevelt.
Incidentally it may be remarked that it would be peculiarly interesting
if, at this day, that authority to construct post-roads should thus be
invoked to give the General Government new powers of wide scope, when we
remember that it was this same provision of the Constitution which stood
sponsor for the very earliest steps which, in the construction of the
Cumberland Road and other military or post routes, the young republic
took in the path of practical federalism.
To those Americans who received the cause of State Sovereignty as a
trust from their fathers and grandfathers before them, the cause
doubtless appears a noble one; but to the outsider, unbiassed by such
inherited sentiment, it seems evident, first, that the cause, however
noble, is also hopeless; and, second, that it is unreasonable that in
the forlorn effort to preserve one particular shred of a fabric already
so tattered, the United States as a nation should be exposed to frequent
dangers of friction with other Powers, and, what is more serious, should
be made, once in every decade or so, to stand before the world in the
position of a trader who repudiates his obligations.
And if I seem to speak on what is after all a domestic subject with
undue vehemence (as I cannot hope that I shall not seem to do to the
minds of residents on the Pacific Coast), it is only because it is
impossible for an earnest well-wisher of the United States living abroad
not to feel acutely (while it does not seem to me that Americans at home
are sensible) how much the country suffers in the estimate of other
peoples by its present anomalous position. When two business concerns in
the United States enter into any agreement, each assumes the other to be
able to control its own agents and representatives, nor will it accept a
plea of inability to control them as excuse for breach of contract.
It may be that a select circle of the statesmen and foreign office
officials in other countries are familiar with the intricacies of the
American Constitution, but the masses of the people cannot be expected
so to be, any more than the masses of the American people are adepts in
the constitutions of those other countries. And it is, unfortunately,
the masses which form and give expression to public opinion. In these
days it is not by the diplomacies of ambassadors or the courtesies of
monarchs that friendships and enmities are created between nations. The
feelings of one people towards another are shaped in curious and
intangible ways by phrases, sentiments, ideas--often trivial in
themselves--which pass current in the press or travel from mouth to
mouth. It is a pity that the United States should in this particular
expose itself to the contempt of lesser peoples, giving them excuse for
speaking lightly of it as of a nation which does not keep faith. It does
not conduce to increase the illuminating power of the example of America
for the enlightenment of the world.
It might be well also if Americans would ask themselves what they would
do if a number of American citizens were subjected to outrage (whether
they were murdered as in New Orleans, or merely forced to submit to
indignities and inconvenience as in California) in some South American
republic, which put forward the plea that under its constitution it was
unable to control the people or coerce the administration of the
particular province in which the offences were committed. Would the
United States accept the plea? Or if the outrages were perpetrated in
one of the self-governing colonies of Great Britain and the British
Government repudiated liability in the matter? The United States, if I
understand the people at all, would not hesitate to have recourse to
force to endeavour to compel Great Britain to acknowledge her
responsibility.
In the matter of the relation of the general government to the several
States the most important factor to be considered at the present moment
is undoubtedly the personality of President Roosevelt, and any attempt
to make intelligible the change which has come over the United States of
recent years would be futile without some recognition of the part which
he has played therein. Mr. Roosevelt has been credited with being the
author of "a revival of the sense of civic virtue" in the American
people. Certainly he has been, by his example, a powerful agent in
directing into channels of reform the exuberant energy and enthusiasm
which have inspired the people since the great increase in material
prosperity and the physical unification of the country bred in it its
quickened sense of national life. In the period of activity and
expansiveness--one is almost tempted to say explosiveness--which
followed the Cuban war, such a man was needed to guide at least a part
of the national energy into paths of wholesome self-criticism and
reformation. He set before the youth of the country ideals of patriotism
and of civic rectitude which were none the less inspiring because easily
intelligible and even commonplace.[293:1] The ideals have, it is true,
since then, perhaps inevitably and surely not by his will, been dragged
about in the none too clean mud of party politics; but the impetus which
he gave, before his single voice became largely drowned in the factional
hubbub around him, endures and will endure. Whatever comes, the American
people is a different people and a better people for his preaching and
example.
Moreover, what touches the question of State sovereignty nearly, he has
given a new character to the Presidential office. I have expressed
elsewhere my belief that the process of the federalising of the country,
the concentration of power in the central government, must proceed
further than it has yet gone; but it is difficult now to measure, what
history will see clearly enough, how much Mr. Roosevelt has contributed
to the hastening of the process. No President, one is tempted to say
since Washington, but certainly since Lincoln, has had anything like
the same conception of the Presidential functions as Mr. Roosevelt,
coupled with the courage to insist upon the acceptance of that
conception by the country. Whether for good or ill the office of
President must always stand for more, reckoned as a force in the
national concerns, than it did before it was occupied by Mr. Roosevelt.
A weak President may fail to hold anything like Mr. Roosevelt's
authority; but the office must for a long time at least be more
authoritative, and I think more honourable, for the work which he has
done in it.
* * * * *
I first came in contact with Mr. Roosevelt some twenty-five years ago,
when his personality already pervaded the country from the Bad Lands of
Dakota to the Rocky Mountains. I had a great desire to meet this person
about whom, not only in his early life but, as it were, in his very
presence, myth was already clustering,--a desire which was almost
immediately gratified by chance,--but the particular detail about him
which at the time made most impression on my mind was that he was the
reputed inventor of the "'fraid strap." The "'fraid strap" is--or was--a
short thong, perhaps two feet in length, fastened to the front of the
clumsy saddle, which, at signs of contumacy in one's pony, one could,
with a couple of hitches, wrap round his hand, in such a way as to
increase immensely the chance of a continuity of connection with his
seat. The pony of the Plains in those days was not as a rule a gentle
beast, and I was moved to gratitude to the inventor of the "'fraid
strap"--though whether it was really Mr. Roosevelt's idea or not it is
(without confession from himself) impossible to guess, for, as I have
said, he was already, though present almost a half-mythical person to
the men of the north-western prairie country.
What vexed me no little at the time was that it was with some effort
that I could get his name right. I could not remember whether it was
Teddy Roosevelt or Roosy Teddevelt. The name now is familiar to all the
world; but then it struck strangely on untrained English ears and to me
it seemed quite as reasonable whichever way one twisted it round. Mr.
Jacob Riis (or Mr. Leupp) has protested against the President of the
United States being called "Teddy" and we have his word for it that Mr.
Roosevelt's own intimates have never thought of addressing him otherwise
than as "Theodore." Doubtless this is correct (certainly I know men who
assure me that they call him "Theodore" now) but at least the more
friendly "Teddy" has, as is proved by that confusion in my mind of a
quarter of a century ago, the justification of long prescription. Nor am
I sure that it has not been a fortunate thing both for Mr. Roosevelt and
the country that his name has been Teddy to the multitude. I doubt if
the men of the West, the rough-riders and the plainsmen, would give so
much of their hearts to Theodore.
It is not easy to estimate the value, or otherwise, of Mr. Roosevelt's
work in that capacity in which he has of late come to be best known to
the world, namely as an opponent of the Trusts; but it is a pity that so
many English newspapers habitually represent him as an enemy of all
concentrated wealth. He has been called "the first Aristocrat to be
elected President." Whether that be strictly true or not, he belongs
distinctly to the aristocratic class and his sympathies are naturally
with that class. His instincts are not destructive. No one, I have
reason to believe, has a shrewder estimate of the worthlessness of the
majority of those politicians who use his name as a cloak for their
attacks on all accumulated wealth than he. It is only necessary to read
his speeches to see how constantly he has insisted that it is not
wealth, but the abuse of it, which he antagonises: "We draw the line not
against wealth, but against misconduct." He has many times protested
against the "outcry against men of wealth," for most of which he has
declared "there is but the scantiest justification." Again and again he
has proclaimed his desire not to hurt the honest corporation, "but we
need not be over-tender about sparing the dishonest."[296:1]
One of the chief difficulties in the practical application of his
policies has been that the Government cannot have the power to punish
dishonest corporations without first being entrusted with a measure of
control over all corporate operations, the concession of which control
the honest corporations have felt compelled to resist. Nor is it
possible to say that their resistance has not been justified. However
wisely and forbearingly Mr. Roosevelt himself might use whatever power
was placed in his hands, there has been little in the experience of the
corporations in America to make them believe that they can trust either
office-holders in general or, for any long term, the Government itself.
Dispassionate students of the railway problem in the United States are
aware that there is nothing which the corporations have done to the
injury of the public worse than the wanton and gratuitous injuries which
have been done by the politicians, by the State governments, and even on
occasions by the Federal Government itself, to the corporations. If
particular railway companies have at times abused the power of which
they were possessed as monopolising the transportation to and from a
certain section of the country, that abuse has not excelled in
wantonness and immorality the abuses of their power over the
corporations of which several of the Western States have been
systematically guilty. There has been little encouragement to the
corporations to submit themselves to any larger measure of public
control than has been necessary; and the lessons of the past have shown
that it would be injudicious for the railways to surrender
uncomplainingly to the State governments authority which the British
companies can leave to the Board of Trade without misgiving. And there
was a time when the national Interstate Commerce Commission was, if more
honest, not much less prejudiced in its dealing with the corporations
subject to its authority than were the governments or railway
commissions of the individual States.
Mr. Roosevelt's desire may have been (as it is) only to protect the
people against the misuse of their power by dishonest corporations; and
the honest corporations would be no less glad than Mr. Roosevelt himself
to see the dishonest brought to book. But in the necessity of resisting
(or what has seemed to the corporations the necessity of resisting) the
extensions of the federal power which were requisite before reform could
be achieved, the honest have been compelled to make common cause with
the dishonest, so that the President has, in particular details, been
forced into an attitude of hostility towards all corporations (and the
corporations have for the most part been forced to put themselves in an
attitude of antagonism to him) in spite of their natural sympathies and
common interests.
The result has been unfortunate for business interests generally because
the mere fact that the President was "against the companies" (no matter
on what grounds, or whether he was against them all or only against
some) has encouraged throughout the country the anti-corporation feeling
which needed no encouragement. Any time these forty years, or since the
early days of the Granger agitation, the shortest road to notoriety and
political advancement (at least in any of the Western States) has been
by abuse of the railroad companies. A thousand politicians and
newspapers all over the country are eager to seize on any phrase or
pronouncement of the President which can be interpreted as giving
countenance to the particular anti-railroad campaign at the moment in
progress in their own locality. A vast number of people are interested
in distorting, or in interpreting partially, whatever is said at the
White House, so that any phrase, regardless of its context,--each
individual act, without reference to its conditions,--which could be
represented as an encouragement to the anti-capitalist crusade has been
seized upon and made the most of. All over the West there have always,
in this generation, been a sufficient number of persons only too
anxious, for selfish reasons, to inflame hostility against the railroad
companies or against men of wealth; but only within the last few years
has it been possible for the most unscrupulous demagogue to find colour
and justification for whatever he has chosen to preach in the example
and precept of the President--and of a President whose example and
precept have counted for more with the masses of the people than have
those of any occupant of the White House since the war. In this way Mr.
Roosevelt has done more harm than could have been accomplished by a much
worse man.
If the corporations have suffered, the course of events has been
unfortunate too for Mr. Roosevelt. No one is better aware than he of the
misrepresentation to which he is subjected and the unscrupulous use
which is made of his example; and it is impossible that at times it can
fail to be very bitter. It must also be bitter to find arrayed against
him many men whose friendship he must value and whose co-operation in
his work it must seem to him that he ought to have. It happens that his
is not a character which is swayed by such considerations one hair's
breadth from the course which he has marked out for himself; but it is
deplorable that a very large proportion of precisely that class of men
in which Mr. Roosevelt ought (or at least is justified in thinking that
he ought) to find his strongest allies have felt themselves compelled to
become his most determined opponents, while those interests which ought
(or at least are justified in thinking that they ought) to to find in
Mr. Roosevelt, as the occupant of the White House, their strongest
bulwark against an unreasoning popular hostility only see that that
hostility is immensely inflamed and strengthened by his course and
example. The conditions are injurious to the business interests of the
country and weaken Mr. Roosevelt's influence for good.
Yet it seems impossible--or certainly impossible for one on the
outside--to place the responsibility anywhere except on those general
conditions of the country which make possible both the misrepresentation
of the position of the President and the wide-spread hostility to the
corporations, or on those laxities in political and commercial morality
in the past which have put it in the power alternately of the politician
to plunder the railways and the railways to prey upon the people. In the
ill-regulated conditions of the days of ferment there grew up abuses,
both in politics and in commerce, which can only be rooted out with much
wrenching of old ties and tearing of the roots of things; but it is
worth an Englishman's understanding that the fact that this wrenching
and this tearing are now in progress is only an evidence of that effort
at self-improvement, an effort determined and conscious, which, as we
have already seen more than once, the American people is making.
Whatever certain sections of the American press, certain politicians, or
certain financial interests, may desire the world to think, there is no
need for those at a distance to see in the present conflict evidence
either of a wicked and radically destructive disposition in the
President or of an approaching disintegration of the American commercial
fabric.
Meanwhile, as has been said, one result has been to weaken Mr.
Roosevelt's personal influence for good. I have been assured by men of
undoubted truthfulness, who are at the head of large financial
interests, that he has, in the last few years, become as tricky and
unscrupulous in his political methods as the oldest political
campaigner; a statement which I believe to be entirely mistaken.
"Practical politics," said Mr. Roosevelt once, "is not dirty politics.
On the contrary in the long run the politics of fraud and treachery is
unpractical politics, and the most practical of all politicians is the
one who is clean and decent and upright." There is no evidence which I
have been able to find that Mr. Roosevelt does not now believe this as
thoroughly and act upon it as consistently as when he first entered the
New York State Legislature.
A more reasonable accusation against him, which is made by many of his
best friends, is that his imperious will and his confidence in his own
opinions make him at times unjust and intolerant in his judgment of
others. There have been occasions when he has seemed over-ready to
accuse others of bad faith without other ground than his own opinion or
the recollection of what has occurred at an interview. He may have been
right; but it is certain that he has alienated the friendship of not a
few good men by the vehemence and positiveness with which he has
asserted his views. And anything, independent of all questions of party,
which weakens his influence is, for the country's sake, a thing to be
deplored.
* * * * *
The negro question has contributed not a little to Mr. Roosevelt's
difficulties, as it has to the misunderstanding of the American people
in England. I know intelligent Englishmen who have visited the United
States and honestly believe that in the not very distant future the
country will again be torn with civil war, a war of black against white,
which will imperil the permanence of the Republic no less seriously than
did the former struggle. I do not think that the apprehension is shared
by many intelligent Americans.
It is perhaps inevitable that Americans should frequently be irritated
by the tone of the comments in English papers on the lynchings of
negroes which occur in the South. Some of these incidents are barbarous
and disgraceful beyond any possibility of palliation, but it is certain
that if Englishmen understood the conditions in the South better they
would also understand that in some cases it is extremely difficult to
blame the lynchers. Many of those people who in London (or in Boston)
are loudest in condemnation of outrages upon the negro would if they
lived in certain sections of the South not only sympathise with but
participate in the unlawful proceedings.
It has already been mentioned that among the men in New Orleans who
assisted at the summary execution of the Italian Mafiotes there were, it
is believed, an ex-Governor of the State and a Judge: men, that is to
say, as civilised and of as humane sentiments as the members of any club
in Pall Mall. They were not bloodthirsty ruffians, but gentlemen who did
what they did from a stern sense of necessity. It has been my lot to
live for a while in a community in which the maintenance of law and
order depended entirely on a self-constituted Vigilance Committee; and
the operations of that committee were not only salutary but necessary.
It has also been my lot to live in a community where the upholders of
law and order were not strong enough to organise a Vigilance Committee.
I have been one of three or four who behind closed doors earnestly
canvassed the possibilities of forming such an organisation, and neither
I nor any of the others (among whom I remember were included one
attorney-at-law and one mining engineer and surveyor) would have
hesitated to serve on such a committee could it have been made of
sufficient strength to achieve any useful purpose, but the disparity
between our numbers and those of the "bad men" who at that time
controlled the community was too obvious to give us any hope of being
able to enforce our authority. There may, therefore, be conditions of
society infinitely worse than those where order is preserved by lynch
law; and I make no doubt that neither I myself nor any fellow-member of
my London Club would, if living in one of the bad black districts of the
South, act otherwise than do the Southern whites who live there now.
What is deplorable is not the spirit which prompts the acts of summary
justice (I am speaking only of one class of Southern "outrage") but the
conditions which make the perpetration of those acts the only
practicable way of rendering life livable for white people; and for the
responsibility for these conditions we must go back either to the
institution of slavery itself (for which it should be remembered that
England was to blame) or to the follies and passions of half a century
ago which gave the negro the suffrage and put him on a plane of
political equality with his late masters.[303:1] If, since then, the
problem has grown more, rather than less, difficult, it has not been so
much by the fault of the Southern white, living under conditions in
which only one line of conduct has been open to him, as of Northern
philanthropists and negro sympathisers who have helped to keep alive in
the breasts of the coloured population ideas and ambitions which can
never be realised.
The people of the North have of late years come to understand the South
better, and whereas what I have said above would, twenty years ago, have
found few sympathisers in any Northern city, I believe that to-day it
expresses the opinion of the large majority of Northern men. I also
believe that the necessary majority could be secured to repeal so much
of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution as would
be necessary to undo the mistake which has been committed. It is true
that in some Southern States the majority of the blacks are practically
disfranchised now; but it would remove a constant cause of friction and
of political chicanery if the fact were recognised frankly that it is
not possible to contemplate the possibility of the negro ever becoming
the politically dominant race in any community where white people live.
There is no reason to believe that the two races cannot live together
comfortably even though the blacks be in a large majority, but there
must be no question of white control of the local government and of the
machinery of justice.
Taking away the franchise from the negro would not, of course, put an
end to many of the social difficulties of the situation, but, the
present false relations between the two being abolished, those
difficulties are no more than have to be dealt with in every community.
There would be a chance for the negroes as a race to develop into useful
members of the community, _as negroes_, filling the stations of negroes
and doing negroes' work, along such lines as those on which Mr. Booker
Washington is working. The English have had a wide experience of native
races in all parts of the world and they have not yet found the problem
of living with them and of holding at least their respect, together with
some measure of their active good-will, anywhere insoluble. To an
Englishman it does not seem that it should be insoluble in the United
States. He is rather inclined to think that the rapidity with which the
negro of the South would work out his economic salvation, if once the
political difficulty were removed, would depend chiefly on the ability
of the race to produce a continuity of men like Mr. Booker Washington,
with, perhaps, the concurrent ability of the north to produce men (shall
I say, like the late W. H. Baldwin?) to co-operate with the leaders and
teachers of the blacks and to interpret them and their work to the
country.
The Englishman in England is chiefly impressed by the stories of
Southern outrages upon the blacks and he gets therefrom an erroneous
idea of the character of the Southern white. An Englishman who studies
the situation on the spot is likely to acquire great sympathy with the
Southern white and to condemn only the political ineptitude which has
made the existing conditions possible.
Whether Mr. Roosevelt's course has been the one best adapted to
facilitate a solution of the difficulties it would be idle to enquire.
The laws being as they are, and he being the kind of man he is and, as
President, entrusted with the duty of seeing that the laws are
faithfully executed, he could not have taken a different line. Another
man (and an equally good man) might have refrained from making one or
two of his appointments and from entertaining Mr. Washington at the
White House. But if Mr. Roosevelt did not do precisely those things, he
would not do fifty other of the things which have most endeared him to
the people.
* * * * *
In this connection, it may be that there will be readers who will think
that in many things which I say, when generalising about the American
people as a whole, I fail to take into proper account the South and
characteristics of such of the people of the South as are distinctively
Southern. It is not from any lack of acquaintance with the South; still
less from any lack of admiration of or affection for it. But what has
been said of New York may in a way be said of the South, for whatever
therein is typically Southern to-day is not typically American; and all
that is typically Southern is moreover rapidly disappearing. In the
tremendous activity of the new national life which has been infused into
the country as a result of its solidification and knitting together of
the last thirty years, there is no longer room for sectional divergences
of character. They are overwhelmed, absorbed, obliterated; and the
really vital parts of the South are no longer Southern but American.
What has the spirit of Atlanta in Georgia, of Birmingham in Alabama, of
any town in the South-west, from St. Louis to Galveston, to do with the
typical spirit of the South? However strong Southern _sentiment_ may
still be, what is there of the Southern _spirit_ even in Richmond or in
Louisville? I need hardly say that America produces no finer men than
the best Virginian or the best Kentuckian, but, with all his Southern
love and his hot rhetoric, the man of this generation who is a leader
among his fellows in Kentucky or in Virginia is so by virtue of the
American spirit that is in him and not by virtue of any of the dying
spirit of the old South.
FOOTNOTES:
[287:1] Mr. Bryce felicitously speaks of the Senate as "a sort of
Congress of Ambassadors from the respective States" (_The American
Commonwealth_, vol. 1, page 110).
[293:1] "He stands for the commonplace virtues; he is great along lines
on which each one of us can be great if he wills and dares" (_Theodore
Roosevelt, the Man and Citizen_, by Jacob A. Riis). Mr. Roosevelt has
spoken of himself as "a very ordinary man." A pleasant story is told by
Mr. Riis of the lady who said: "I have always wanted to make Roosevelt
out a hero, but somehow, every time he did something that seemed really
great, it turned out, upon looking at it closely, that it was only just
the right thing to do."
[296:1] See his _Addresses and Presidential Messages_, with an
introduction by Henry Cabot Lodge (Putnams, 1904).
[303:1] To those who would understand the negro question and the
mistakes of the people of the North during the Reconstruction period (to
which the present generation owes the legacy of the problem in its acute
form) I commend the reading of Mr. James Ford Rhodes's _History of the
United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Restoration of Home
Rule in the South in 1877_ (Macmillan).
CHAPTER XII
COMMERCIAL MORALITY
Are Americans more Honest than Englishmen?--An American
Peerage--Senators and other Aristocrats--Trade and the British
Upper Classes--Two Views of a Business Career--America's Wild
Oats--The Packing House Scandals--"American Methods" in
Business--A Countryman and Some Eggs--A New Dog--The Morals of
British Peers--A Contract of Mutual Confidence--Embalmed Beef,
Re-mounts, and War Stores--The Yellow Press and Mr. Hearst--
American View of the House of Lords.
It would seem to be inevitable that any general diffusion of corruption
in political circles should act deleteriously on the morals of the whole
community. It will therefore seem almost absurd to Englishmen to
question whether on the whole the code of commercial ethics in
America--the standard of morals which prevails in the every-day
transaction of business--is higher or lower than that which prevails in
Great Britain. The answer must be almost a matter of course. But,
setting aside any expression of individual opinion and all preconceived
ideas based on personal experience, let us look at the situation and
see, if we can, what, judging only from the circumstances of the two
countries, would be likely to be the relative conditions evolved in
each. To do this it will be necessary first to clear away a common
misapprehension in the minds of Englishmen.
It is somehow generally assumed--for the most part unconsciously and
without any formulation of the notion in the individual mind--that
American society is a sort of truncated pyramid: that it is cut off
short--stops in mid-air--before it gets to the top. Because there are no
titles in the United States, therefore there are no Upper Classes;
because there is no Aristocracy therefore there is nothing that
corresponds to the individual Aristocrat.[309:1] If there were a peerage
in the United States, the country would have its full complement of
Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts, and the rest. And--this is the
point--they would be precisely the same men as lead America to-day;--but
how differently Englishmen would regard them!
The middle-class Englishman, when he says that he is no respecter of
titles and declares that it does not make any difference to him whether
a man be a Lord or not, may think he is speaking the truth. It is even
conceivable that there are some so happily constituted as to be able to
chat equally unconcernedly with a Duke and with their wife's cousin, the
land agent. Such men, I presume, exist in the British middle classes.
But the fact remains that in the mass and, as it were, at a distance the
effect of titles on the imagination of the British people is
extraordinarily powerful.
That the men in America are precisely the same men, though they have no
titles, as they would be if they had, is best shown by the example of
Americans who have crossed the Canadian border. If Sir William Van Horne
had not gone to Canada in 1881 or thereabouts, he would still be plain
"Bill" Van Horne and just as wonderful a man as he is to-day. On the
other hand if fortune had happened to place Mr. James J. Hill a little
farther north--in Winnipeg instead of in St. Paul--it is just as certain
that he would to-day be Lord Manitoba (or some such title) as that his
early associates George Stephen and Donald Smith are now Lord Mount
Stephen and Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal. But somehow--it were
useless to deny it--Englishmen would think of him as quite a different
man. Mr. C. M. Hays in Montreal is still what he was in St.
Louis--Charlie Hays. He will not change his nature when he becomes Lord
Muskoka.
And what is true of a few individuals is no less true all over the
United States. In the immediate neighbourhood of Mr. Hill, there should
be at least one peerage in the Washburn family and a couple of
baronetcies among the Pillsburys. Chicago would have of course one Duke
in the head of the McCormick family, Mr. Marshall Field would have died
Earl Dearborn, and Mr. Hughitt might be Viscount Calumet. In New York
Lord Waldorf would be the title of the eldest son of the (at present
third) Duke of Astoria. The Vanderbilt marquisate--of Hudson
probably--would be a generation more recent. So throughout the country,
from Maine to Mississippi, from Lord Penobscot to the Marquis of Biloxi,
there would be a peerage in each of the good old houses--the Adamses,
the Cabots, and the Quincys, the Livingstons, the Putnams, and
Stuyvesants, the Carters and Randolphs and Jeffersons and Lees.
Americans will say: "Thank Heaven and the wisdom of our Anglo-Saxon
forefathers that it is not so!" If it were so, however, a good deal of
British misunderstanding of the United States would be removed. Nor will
it be contended that any of the Americans whom Englishmen have known
best--Mr. Bayard, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Choate, or Mr. Whitelaw Reid, or
General Horace Porter--would be other than ornaments to any aristocracy
in the world. It would be idle to enquire whether Mr. Roosevelt or Mr.
Chamberlain, Mr. Cleveland or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. Root or
Lord Rosebery, Mr. Olney or Sir Edward Grey were the better man, for
every Englishman will probably at once concede that the United States
does somehow manage to produce individuals of as fine a type as England
herself. But what no Englishman confesses in his heart is that there is
any class of these men--that there is as good an upper stratum to
society there as in England. These remarkable individuals can only be
explained as being what naturalists call a "sport"--mere freaks and
accidents. This idea exists in the English mind solely, I believe, from
the lack of titles in America; which is because the colonists were
inspired by Anglo-Saxon and not by Norman ideas. Had Englishmen been
accustomed for a generation or two to have relations, diplomatic and
commercial, not with Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith, but with Lord Savannah
and the Earl of Chicopee, the idea would never have taken root. And if
Englishmen knew the United States better, they would be astonished to
find how frequent these "sports" and accidents seem to be. And it must
be remembered that the country does at least produce excellent Duchesses
and Countesses in not inadequate numbers.
Because American society is not officially stratified like a medicine
glass and there is, ostensibly at least, no social hierarchy, Englishmen
would do well to disabuse themselves of the idea that therefore the
people consists entirely of the lower middle class, with a layer of
unassimilated foreign anarchists below and a few native and accidental
geniuses thrusting themselves above. Democracy, at least in the United
States, is not nearly so thorough a leveller as at a first glance it
appears. You will, it is true, often hear in America the statement that
it is "four generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves," which is
to say that one man, from the farm or the workshop, builds up a fortune;
his son, being born in the days of little things and bred in the school
of thrift, holds it together; but his sons in turn, surrounded from
their childhood with wealth and luxury, have lost the old stern fibre
and they slip quickly back down the steep path which their grandfather
climbed with so much toil. But no less often will you hear the statement
that "blood will tell."
In a democracy the essential principle of which is that every man shall
have an equal chance of getting to the top, it is a matter of course
that that top stratum will be constantly changing. The idea of anything
in the nature of an hereditary privileged class is abhorrent to the
mind of every good American. If he had to have an official Aristocracy,
he would insist on a brand new one with each generation; or more likely
that it should be re-elected every four years. We are not now discussing
the advantages or disadvantages of the hereditary principle; the point
that I desire to make is that at any given time American society,
instead of being truncated and headless, has the equivalent of an
aristocracy, whether the first, second, third, or fifth generation of
nobility, just as abundant and complete as if it were properly labelled
and classified into Dukes, Marquises, Viscounts, and the rest. And this
aristocracy is quite independent of any social _cachet_, whether of the
New York Four Hundred or of any other authority.
It is a commonly accepted maxim among thoughtful Americans that the
United States Senate is as much superior to the House of Lords as the
House of Representatives is inferior to the House of Commons. One may,
or may not, agree with that dictum; but it is worth noticing that, in
the opinion of Americans themselves, it is, at least, not by comparison
with the hereditary aristocracy that they show to any disadvantage.
Nor need one accept the opinion (in which many eminent Englishmen
coincide with the universal American belief) that the United States
Supreme Court is the ablest as well as the greatest judicial tribunal in
the world. But when one looks at the membership of that Court and at the
majority of the members of the Senate (especially those members from the
older States which hold to some tradition of fixity of tenure), when one
sees the men who constitute the Cabinets of successive Presidents and
those who fill the more distinguished diplomatic posts, when, further,
one becomes acquainted with the class of men from which, all over the
country, the presidents and attorneys of the great railway corporations
and banks and similar institutions are drawn (all of which offices, it
will be noticed, with the exception of the senatorships, are filled by
nomination or appointment and not by popular election)--when one looks
at, sees, and becomes acquainted with all these, he will begin to
correct his impressions as to the non-existence of an American
aristocracy which, though innocent of heraldry, can fairly be matched
against the British.
* * * * *
The average Englishman looks at America and sees a people wherein there
is no recognised aristocracy nor any titles. Also he sees that it is,
through all its classes, a commercial people, immersed in business.
Therefore he concludes that it is similar to what the English people
would be if cut off at the top of the classes engaged in business and
with all the upper classes wiped out. It will be much nearer the truth
if he considers the people as a whole to be class for class just like
the English people, subject to the accident that there are no titles,
but with the difference that all classes, including the untitled Dukes
and Marquises and Earls, take to business as to their natural element.
The parallel may not be perfect; but it is incomparably more nearly
exact than the alternative and general impression.
It is of course necessary to recognise how rapidly the constitution of
English society is changing, how old traditions are dying out, and in
accordance with the Anglo-Saxon instinct the social scheme is tending
to assimilate itself to the American model. The facts in outline are
almost too familiar to be worth mentioning, except perhaps for the
benefit of some American readers, for Americans in England are
continually puzzled by anomalies which they see in English society. In
my childhood I was taught that no gentleman could buy or sell anything
for profit and preserve either his self-respect or the respect of his
fellows. The only conceivable exceptions--and I think I was not informed
of them at too early an age--were that a gentleman might deal in horses
or in wines and still remain, if somewhat shaded, a gentleman; the
reason being that a knowledge of either horses or wines was a
gentlemanly accomplishment. The indulgence extended to the vendor of
wines did not extend to the maker or seller of beer. I remember the
resentment of the school when the sons of a certain wealthy brewer were
admitted; and those boys had, I imagine, a cheerless time of it in their
schooldays. The eldest of those boys, being now the head of the family,
is to-day a peer. But at that time, though brewers or brewers' sons
might be admitted grudgingly to the company of gentlemen, they were not
gentlemen themselves. An aunt or a cousin who married a manufacturer, a
merchant, or a broker--no matter how rich or in how large a way of
business--was coldly regarded, if not actually cut, by the rest of the
family. There are many families--though hardly now a class--in which the
same traditions persist, but even the families in which the horror of
trade is as great as ever make an exception as a rule in favour of trade
conducted in the United States. The American may be pardoned for being
bewildered when in an aristocracy which is forbidden, so he is told, to
make money in trade, he finds no lack of individuals who are willing to
take shares in any trading concern in which money in sufficient
quantities may be made. The person who will not speak to an English
farmer except as to an inferior, sends his own sons to the Colonies or
to the United States to farm. These things, however, are, to Englishmen,
mere platitudes. But though all are familiar with the change which is
passing over the British people, few Englishmen, perhaps, have realised
how rapidly the peerage itself is coming to be a trade-representing
body. Of seventeen peers of recent creation, taken at random, nine owe
their money and peerages to business, and the present holders of the
title were themselves brought up to a business career. It may not be
long before the English aristocracy will be as universally occupied in
business as is the American; and it will be as natural for an Earl to go
to his office as it is for the American millionaire (perhaps the father
of the Countess) to do so to-day.
In spite of all the change that has taken place, however, it still
remains very difficult for the English gentleman, or member of a gentle
family, to engage actively in business--certainly in trade--without
being made to feel that he is stepping down into a lower sphere where
there is a new and vitiated atmosphere. The code of ethics, he
understands, is not that to which he is accustomed at his club and in
his country house. He trusts that it will not be necessary to forget
that he himself is a gentleman, but at least he will have to remember
that his associates are only business men.
The American aristocrat, on the other hand, takes to business as being
the most attractive and honourable career. Setting aside all question of
money-making, he believes it to be (and his father tells him that it is)
the best life for him. Idleness is not good for any man. He will enjoy
his annual month or two of shooting or fishing or yachting all the
better for having spent the last ten or eleven months in hard work.
Moreover, immersion in affairs will keep him active and alert and in
touch with his fellow-men, besides being in itself one of the largest
and most fascinating of pastimes. There is also the money; but when
business is put on this level, money has a tendency to become only one
among many objects. In England no man can with any grace pretend that he
goes into business for any other reason than to make money. In America a
man goes into it in order to gain standing and respect and make a
reputation.
Under these conditions, to return to our original point, in which
country, putting other things aside, would one naturally expect to find
the better code of business morals? Let us, if we can, consider the
matter, as has been said before, without preconceived ideas or
individual bias; let us imagine that we are speaking of two countries in
which we have no personal stake whatever. If in any two such
countries--in Gombroonia and Tigrosylvania, let us say--we should see
two peoples approximately matched, of one tongue and having similar
political ideals, not visibly unequal in strength, in abilities, or in
the individual sense of honour, and if in one we should further see the
aristocracy regarding the pursuit of commerce as a thing beneath and
unworthy of them, in which they could not engage without contamination,
while in the other it was followed as the most honourable of
careers,--in which of the two should we expect to find the higher code
of commercial ethics?
It does not seem to me that there can be any doubt as to the answer.
Other things being equal, and as a matter of theory only, business in
the United States ought to be ruled by much higher standards of conduct
than in England.
Before proceeding to an analysis of any particular conditions, there is
one further general consideration which I would urge on the attention of
English readers, most of whom have preconceived ideas on this subject
already formed.
I am not among those who believe that trade or commerce of ordinary
kinds either requires or tends to develop great intellectuality in those
engaged in it. Indeed, my opinion (for which I am willing to be abused)
is that any considerable measure of intellect is a hindrance to success
in retail trade or in commerce on a small scale. It is a thesis which
some one might develop at leisure, showing that it is not merely not
creditable for a man to make money in trade but that it is an explicit
avowal of intellectual poverty. Whence, of course, it follows that the
London tradesman who grows rich and retires to the country or suburbs to
build himself a statelier mansion is more justly an object of pity, if
not of contempt, than is often consciously acknowledged. Any imaginative
quality or breadth of vision which contributes to distract the mind of a
tradesman from the one transaction immediately in hand and the immediate
financial results thereof is a disqualification. I state my views thus
in their extreme form lest the English reader should think that I
entertain too much respect (or too little contempt) for the purely
commercial brain. At the same time the English reader will concede that
commercial enterprises and industrial undertakings may be on such a
scale as to offer full exercise to the largest intellects.
As an illustration of this: Cecil Rhodes grew, as we know, wealthy from
the proceeds of vast undertakings; but men closely associated with him
have assured me that Rhodes was a very indifferent "business man." We
may, I think, take it for certain that if Rhodes had been condemned to
conduct a retail grocery he would have conducted it to speedy
irretrievable disaster. We are probably all agreed that the conduct of a
small grocery does not require fineness of intellect; most English
readers, I think, will follow me in believing that success in such a
sphere of life implies at least an imperfect intellectual development.
On the other hand enterprises truly Rhodian do call for intellectual
grasp of the largest.
The consideration which I wish to urge is that business in the United
States during the period of growth and settlement of the country has
been largely on Rhodian lines. The great enterprises by which the
country has been developed, and on which most of the large fortunes of
individual Americans are based have been of truly imperial proportions.
The flinging of railways across thousands of miles of wilderness
(England has made peers of the men who did it in Canada) with the laying
out of cities and the peopling of provinces; the building of great
fleets of boats upon the lakes; the vast mining schemes in remote and
inaccessible regions of the country; lumbering enterprises which (even
though not always honestly) dealt with virgin forests by the hundreds
of square miles; "bonanza" wheat farming and the huge systems of grain
elevators for the handling of the wheat and the conveyance of it to the
market or the mill; cattle ranching on a stupendous scale (perhaps even
the collecting of those cattle in their thousands daily for slaughter in
the packing houses); the irrigating of wide tracts of desert;--these
things and such as these are the "businesses" out of which the Americans
of the last and present generations have largely made their fortunes.
And they are enterprises, most of them, not unworthy to rank with
Chartered Companies and the construction of railways from the North to
the South of Africa.
Not only this, but something of the same qualities of spaciousness, as
of trafficking between large horizons, attach to almost all lines of
business in the United States,--to many which in England are necessarily
humdrum and commonplace. Almost every Englishman has been surprised on
making the acquaintance of an accidental American (no "magnate" or
"captain of industry" but an ordinary business man) to learn that though
he is no more than the manufacturer of some matter-of-fact article, his
operations are on a confusing scale and that, with branch offices in
three or four towns and agents in a dozen more, his daily dealings are
transacted over an area reaching three thousand miles from his home
office, in which the interposition of prairies, mountain ranges, and
chains of lakes are but incidents. Business in the United States has
almost necessarily something of the romance of remote and adventurous
enterprises.
It has been said (and the point is worth insisting on) that the
Englishman cannot pretend that he goes into business with any other
object than to make money. His motives are on the face of them mercenary
if not sordid. The American is impelled primarily by quite other
ambitions. Similarly, when the Englishman thinks of business, the image
which he conjures up in his mind is of a dull commonplace like, on lines
so long established and well-defined that they can embrace little of
novelty or of enterprise; a sedentary life of narrow outlook from the
unexhilarating atmosphere of a London office or shop. To the American,
except in small or retail trade in the large cities, the conditions of
business are widely different. All around him, lies, both actually and
figuratively, new ground, wilderness almost, inviting him to turn
Argonaut. The mere vastness and newness of the country make it full of
allurement to adventure, the rewards of which are larger and more
immediate than can be hoped for in older and more straitened
communities.
It has been said that the American people was, by its long period of
isolation and self-communion, made to become, in its outlook on the
policies of the world, a provincial people; but that the very
provincialism had something of dignity in it from the mere fact that it
was continent-wide. So it is with American business. The exigencies of
their circumstances have made the American people a commercial people;
but whereas in England a commercial life may not offer scope for any
intellectual activity and may even have a necessary tendency to stunt
the mentality of any one engaged in it, business in the United States
offers exercise to a much larger gamut of abilities and, by its mere
range and variety, instead of dwarfing has a tendency to keep those
abilities trained and alert. A business in England has not approximately
the same large theatre of operation or the same variety of incident as a
business of the same turn over in America. It is almost the difference
between the man who furnishes his larder by going out to his farmyard
and wringing the necks of tame ducks therein, and him who must snatch
the same supply with his gun from the wild flocks in the wilderness.
But, indeed, no argument should be needed on the subject; for one solid
fact with which almost every Englishman is familiar is that in any
American (let us use the word) shopkeeper whom he may meet travelling in
Europe there is a certain mental alertness, freshness, and vigour,
however objectionably they may at times display themselves--which are at
least not characteristic of the English shopkeeping class.
Just, then, as we have seen that, if we knew nothing about the peoples
of the two countries, beyond the broad outlines of their respective
social structures, we should be compelled, other things being equal, to
look for a higher code of commercial morality in America than in
England, so, when we see one further fact, namely that of the difference
in the conditions under which business is conducted, we must naturally,
other things being equal, look for a livelier intellect and a higher
grade of mentality in the American than in the English business man.
* * * * *
Unfortunately other things never are equal. First, there is the taint of
the political corruption in America which must, as has been said, in
some measure contaminate the community. Then, England is an old
country, with all the machinery of society running in long-accustomed
grooves; above all it is a wealthy country and the first among creditor
nations, to whose interest it has been, and is, to see that every bond
and every engagement be literally and exactly carried out. The United
States in the nineteenth century was young and undisciplined, with all
the ardour of youth going out to conquer the world, seeing all things in
rose-colour, but, for the present,--poor. It was, like any other youth
confident of the golden future, lavish alike in its borrowings and its
spendings, over-careless of forms and formalities. Happily the
confidence in the future has been justified and ten times justified, and
it is rich--richer than it yet knows--with resources larger even than it
has learned properly to appraise or control. Whatever obligations it
incurred in the headlong past are trifles to it now,--a few hundreds of
college debts to a man who has come into millions. And with its position
now assured it has grown jealous of its credit, national and individual.
It was inevitable that the heedless days should beget indiscretions, the
memories of which smart to-day. It was inevitable that amid so much
recklessness and easy faith there should be some wrong-doing. Above all,
was it inevitable that in the realisation of its dreams, when wealth and
power grew and money came pouring into it, there should be bred in the
people an extraordinary and unwholesome love of speculation which in
turn opened their opportunities to the gambler and the confidence-man of
all kinds and sizes. They flourished in the land,--the man who wrecked
railways and issued fictitious millions of "securities," the man who
robbed the government of moneys destined for the support of Indians or
the establishment of postal routes in the farther West, the man who
salted mines, the "land-grabber" and the "timber-shark" who dealt not in
acres but in hundreds of square miles, the bogus trust company, and the
fraudulent land and investment agent. When even the smallest community
begins to "boom," the people of the community lose their heads and the
harvest ripens to the sickle of the swindler. And the entire United
States--sometimes in one part, sometimes in another, sometimes all
together,--with only an occasional and short-lived panic to check the
madness, boomed continuously for half a century.
It is still booming, but with wealth, established institutions, and
invested capital, have come comparative soberness and a sense of
responsibility. The spirit which governs American industrial life to-day
is quite other than that which ruled it two or three decades ago. The
United States has sown its wild oats. It was a generous sowing,
certainly, for the land was wide and the soil rich. But that harvest has
been all but garnered and the country is now for the most part given
over to more legitimate crops.
[Tares still spring up among the wheat. The commercial community is not
yet as well ordered as that of England or another older country; and
since the foregoing paragraphs were written, the panic which fell upon
the United States in the closing months of 1907 has occurred. The
country had enjoyed a decade of extraordinary financial prosperity, in
the course of which, in the spirit of speculation which has already been
mentioned, all values had been forced to too high a level, credits had
been extended beyond the margin of safety, and the volume of business
transactions had swollen to such bulk in proportion to the amount of
actual monetary wealth in existence that any shock to public confidence,
any nervousness resulting in a contraction of the circulating medium,
could not fail to produce catastrophe. The shock came; as sooner or
later it had to come. In the stern period of struggle and retrenchment
which followed, all the weak spots in the financial and industrial
fabric of the country have been laid bare and, while depression and
distress have spread over the whole United States, until all parts are
equally involved, not only have the exposures of anything approaching
dishonest or illegitimate methods been few, but the way in which the
business communities at large have stood the strain has shown that there
is nothing approaching unsoundness in the general business conditions.
With the system of credit shattered and with hardly circulating medium
enough to conduct the necessary petty transactions of everyday life, the
country is already recovering confidence and feeling its way back to
normal conditions. The results have not been approximately as bad as
those which followed the panic of 1893; and the difference is an index
to the immensely greater stability of the country's industries.
Meanwhile there was at first (and still exists) a feeling of intense
indignation in all parts of the country that so much suffering should
have been thrown upon the whole people by the misbehaviour of a small
circle of men in New York. The experience, however painful, will in the
long run be salutary. It will be salutary in the first place for the
obvious reason that business will have to start again conservatively and
with inflated values reduced to something below normal levels. But it
will be even more salutary for the less obvious reason that it has
intensified the already acute disgust of the business men of the country
as a whole with what are known as "Wall Street methods." Englishmen
generally have an idea that Wall Street methods are the methods of all
the United States; and, while they have had impressed upon them every
detail of those financial irregularities in the small New York clique
which precipitated the catastrophe, they have heard and know nothing of
the coolness and cheery resolution with which the crisis has been faced
by the commercial classes as a whole.]
England has not yet forgotten the disclosures in the matter of the
Chicago packing houses. That the light which was then turned on that
industry revealed conditions that were in some details inconceivably
shocking, is hardly to be doubted: and I trust that those are mistaken
who say that if similar investigation had been made into the methods of
certain English establishments, before warning was given, the state of
affairs would have been found not much different. What is certain,
however, is that the English public received an exaggerated idea of the
extent of the abuses. In part, this was a necessary result of the
exigencies of journalism. A large majority of the newspapers even of
London--certainly those which reach a large majority of the
readers--prefer sensationalism. Even those which are anxious in such
cases to be fair and temperate are sadly hampered both by the
limitations of space in their own columns and by the costliness of
telegraphic correspondence. It is inevitable that the most conservative
and judicial of correspondents should transmit to his papers whatever
are the most striking items--revelations--accusations in an indictment
such as was then framed against the packers. The more damning details
are the best news. On the other hand he cannot, save to a ridiculously
disproportionate extent, transmit the extenuating circumstances, the
individual denials, the local atmosphere. Telegraph tolls are heavy and
space is straitened while atmosphere and extenuating circumstances are
not news at all. An Englishman is generally astonished when he reads the
accounts of some conspicuous divorce case or great financial scandal in
England as they appear in the American (or for that matter the French or
German) papers, with the editorial comments thereupon. In the picture of
any event happening at a great distance the readers of even the
best-intentioned journals necessarily have presented to their view only
the highest lights and the blackest shadows. In this instance a certain
section of the American press--what is specifically known as the
"yellow" press--had strong motives, of a political kind, for making the
case against the packers as bad as possible. It is unfortunate that many
of the London newspapers look much too largely to that particular class
of American paper for their American news and their views on current
American events.
If we assume that any reasonable proportion of the accusations made
against the packing houses were true of some one or other establishment,
it still remains that a considerable proportion of the American business
community is otherwise engaged than in the canning of meats. There is a
story well known in America of a countryman who entered a train with a
packet of eggs, none too fresh, in his coat-tail pocket. He sat down
upon them; but deemed it best to continue sitting rather than give the
contents a chance to run down his person. Meanwhile the smell permeated
through the car and at last the passenger sitting immediately behind the
countryman saw whence the unpleasantness arose. Whereupon he fell to
abusing the other.
"Thunder!" exclaimed the countryman. "What have you got to complain of?
You've only got the smell. _I'm sitting in it!_"
This is much how Americans feel in regard to foreign criticisms of the
packing house scandals. Whatever wrong-doing there may have been in
individual establishments in this one industry in Chicago, is no more to
be taken as typical of the commercial ethics of the American people than
the discovery of a fraudulent trader or group of traders in one
particular line in Manchester or Glasgow would imply that the British
trading public was corrupt. The mere ruthlessness with which, in this
case, the wrong-doers were exposed ought in itself to be a sufficient
evidence to outsiders that the American public is no more willingly
tolerant of dishonesty than any other people. Judged, indeed, by that
criterion, surely no other country can detest wrong-doing so
whole-heartedly.
* * * * *
And I wish here to protest against the habit which the worst section of
the English newspapers has adopted during the last year or so of holding
"American methods" in business up to contempt. It is true that it is not
done with any idea of directing hostility against the United States; and
those who use the catchword so freely would undoubtedly much prefer to
speak of "German methods" or even "French" or "Russian methods," if they
could. All that is meant is that the methods are un-English and alien;
but whether the intention is to lessen the public good-will towards the
United States or not, that must inevitably be the effect. Even if it
were not, the American public is abundantly justified in resenting it.
The idea that America is trust-ridden to the extent popularly supposed
in England has been carefully fostered by those extreme journals in
America already referred to (it is impossible not to speak of them as
the Yellow Press) for personal and political reasons--reasons which
Englishmen would comprehend if they understood better the present
political situation in the United States. The idea has been encouraged
by divers English "impressionist" authors and writers on the English
press who, with a superficial knowledge of American affairs, have caught
the jargon of the same school of American journalist-politicians. It has
been further confirmed by a misunderstanding of the attitude and policy
of President Roosevelt himself, which has already been sufficiently
dealt with.
England is, in the American sense, much more "trust-ridden" than the
United States. It is not merely that (as any reference to statistics
will show) wealth is less concentrated in America than in England--that
nothing like the same proportion of the capital of the country is lodged
in a few hands--for that, inasmuch as the majority of large fortunes in
Great Britain are not commercial in their origin, might mean little; but
in business the opportunity for the small trader and the man without
backing to win to independence is a hundred times greater in America,
while the control exercised by "rings" and "cliques" over certain large
industries in England and over the access to certain large markets is, I
think, much more complete than has been attained, except most
temporarily, by any trust or ring in the United States, except, as in
the case of oil, where artificial monopoly has been assisted by natural
conditions.
The tendency in the United States even in the last twenty years has not
been in the direction of a concentration of wealth, but towards its
diffusion in a degree unparalleled in any country in the world. The
point in which the United States is economically almost immeasurably
superior to England is not in the number of her big fortunes but in the
enormously greater well-to-do-ness of the middle classes--the vastly
larger number of persons of moderate affluence, who are in the enjoyment
of incomes which in England would class them among the reasonably rich.
Consolidation and amalgamation are the necessary and unavoidable
tendencies of modern business. As surely as the primitive partnership
succeeded individual effort and as, later, corporations were created to
enlarge the sphere of partnerships, so is it certain that the industrial
units which will fight for control of trade in the much larger markets
of the modern world will represent vastly larger aggregations of capital
than (except in extraordinary and generally state-aided institutions)
were dreamed of fifty years ago. That must be accepted as a certainty.
It does not by any means necessarily follow that this process entails a
concentration of wealth in fewer hands; on the contrary the larger a
corporation is, the wider proportionally, as a general rule, is the
circle of the shareholders in whom the property is vested. But
presuming the commercial growth of the United States to continue for
half a century yet on the lines on which it has developed in the last
two decades, the country will then, not so much by any concentration of
wealth, but by the mere filling up of the commercial field (so that by
increase in the intensity of competition the opportunity for the small
or new trader to force his way to the surface will be more curtailed,
and the gulf between owner or employer and non-owner or employed will
become greater and more permanent)--if, I say, that growth should
continue for another fifty years then will the conditions in America
approximate to those in England. This it is against which the masses in
America are more or less blindly and unconsciously fighting to-day. The
comparison with European conditions is generally not formulated in the
individual mind; but an approach to those conditions is what the masses
of America see--or think they see--in the tendency towards greater
aggregations of corporate power. It is not the process of aggregation,
but the protest against it, which is peculiar to the United States: not
the trust-power but the hatred of it.
This being so, for Englishmen or other Europeans to speak of all
manifestations of the process itself as "American" is not a little
absurd. Besides which, to so speak of it in the tone which is generally
adopted is extremely impolite to a kindred people whose good-will
Englishmen ought to, and do, desire to keep.
The thing is best illustrated by taking a single example. The term
"Trust" is, of course, very vaguely used, being generally taken, quite
apart from its proper significance, to mean any form of combination,
corporate aggregation, or working agreement which tends to extend
control of a company or individual, or group of companies or
individuals, over a larger proportion of a particular trade or industry.
In the United States, with the possible exception of the Standard Oil
Company (which is not properly a trust), the form of corporate power
against which there has been the most bitterness is that of the
railways, and the specific form of railway organisation most fiercely
attacked has been the Pool or Joint Purse--which is, in all essentials,
a true trust. In 1887 the formation of a Pool, or Joint Purse Agreement,
was made illegal in the United States; but Englishmen can have no
conception of the popular hatred of the word "Pools" which exists in
America or of the obloquy which has been heaped upon railway companies
for entering into them. Few Englishmen on the other hand have any clear
idea of what a Joint Purse Agreement is; and they jog along contentedly
ignorant that this iniquitous engine for their oppression is in daily
use by the British railway companies.
My personal belief is that the prohibition of pools in America was a
mistake: that it would have been better for the country from the first
to have authorised, even encouraged, their formation, as in England,
under efficient governmental supervision. But the point is that the
majority of the American people thought otherwise and no other
manifestation of the trust-tendency has been more virulently attacked
than the--to English ideas--harmless institution of a joint purse. And
whether the American people ultimately acted wisely or unwisely, they
were justified in regarding any form of association or agreement between
railways with more apprehension than would be reasonable in England. It
is not possible here to explain why this is so, except to say broadly
that the longer distances in America and the lack of other forms of
transportation render an American community, especially in the West,
more dependent upon the railway than is the case in England. The
conditions give the railway company a larger control over, or influence
in, the well-being of the people.
An excellent illustration of the difference in the point of view of the
two peoples has been furnished since the above was written by the
announcements, within a few weeks of each other in December 1907, of the
formation of two "working agreements" between British railway
companies,--that namely between the Great Northern and Great Central
railways and that between the North British and Caledonian. In the
former case the Boards of Directors of the two companies merely
constituted themselves a Joint Committee to operate the two railways
conjointly. In the latter, not many details of the agreement were made
public, except that it was intended to control competition in all
classes of traffic and, as the first fruits thereof, there was an
immediate and not unimportant increase in certain classes of passenger
rates. Neither agreement has, I think, yet received the sanction of the
proper authorities, but the public generally received the announcement
of both with approval amounting almost to enthusiasm. Of these
agreements the former, certainly, and presumably the latter, would be
flagrantly illegal in the United States. If, moreover, an attempt were
made in America to arrive at the same ends in some roundabout way which
would avoid technical illegality, the outburst of popular indignation
would make it impossible. Personally I sympathise with the English view
and believe both agreements to be not only just and proper but in the
public interest; but it is certain that they would have created such an
uproar in the United States that English newspapers would inevitably
have reflected the disturbance, and English readers would have been
convinced that once more the Directorates of American railways were
engaged in a nefarious attempt to use the power of capital for the
plundering and oppression of the public. In the still more recent debate
(February 1908) in the House of Commons, the views expressed by both Mr.
Lloyd George and Mr. Bonar Law in favour of the lessening of competition
between railway companies would have exposed them to the hysterical
abuse of a large part of the American press. Both those gentlemen would
have been openly accused of being the tools of (if not actually
subsidised by) the corporations, and (but for Mr. Bonar Law's company)
Mr. Lloyd George's attitude would, I think, be sufficient to ruin an
Administration. These statements contain no reflection on the American
point of view. The conditions are such that that point of view may, in
America, be the right one. But the absurdity is that Englishmen hear
these things, or read of them as being said in the United States, and
thereupon assume that terrible offences are being perpetrated; whereas
nothing is being done which in England would not receive the approval of
the majority of sensible men and be temperately applauded by the
spokesmen of both the great parties in Parliament. It is not, I say
again, the Trust-power, but the hatred of it, which is peculiar to
America.
The same is true of the field as a whole. Things harmless in England
might be very dangerous in America. We have so far considered the trust
power only as a commercial and industrial factor--in its tendency, by
crystallisation or consolidation in the higher strata, to depress the
economic status of the industrial masses and to make the emergence of
the individual trader into independence more difficult. In this aspect
capital is immensely more dominant in England than in America. But there
is a political side to the problem.
In the United States, owing to the absence of a throne and an
established aristocracy, there is, as it were, no counterpoise to the
power of wealth. This is, in practice, the chief virtue of the throne in
the British constitution, that, in its capacity as the Fountain of
Honour, it prevents wealth from becoming the dominant power in the
country and thereby (which Americans are slow to understand) is the most
democratic of forces, protecting the proletariat in some measure against
the possibility of unhindered oppression by an omnipotent capitalism.
The English masses are already by the mere impenetrability of the
commercial structure above them much worse off than the corresponding
masses in the United States. What their condition might be if for a
generation the social restraint put upon wealth by the power of the
throne and the established aristocracy were to be relaxed, it is not
pleasant to consider. Nor need it be considered.[335:1]
It is, I think, evident that in America the danger to the industrial
independence of the individual which might arise from the aggregation of
wealth in a few hands is much greater than in England. The power would
be capable of greater abuse; the evils which would flow from such abuse
would be greater. It is not wealth, but the abuse of it that he is
attacking, says President Roosevelt--not the wealthy class, but the
"wealthy criminal class." The distinction has not been digested by those
in England who rail against American methods or who write of American
politics. It is necessary--or so it seems to a large number of the
American people--that extraordinary checks should be put upon the
possibility of the abuse of wealth in the United States, such as do not
exist or are not needed (or at least we have heard no energetic demand
for them) in England. As a political fact there is need of especial
vigilance in the United States lest corporate power be abused. As a
commercial fact it is merely preposterous to rail at the modern tendency
to consolidation and amalgamation as specifically "American."
It is probably safe to say that if the United States had such a social
counterweight as is furnished in England by the throne and the
recognised aristocracy, the growth of what is called "trust-power" would
be viewed to-day with comparative unconcern. At all events England is
able to view with something like unconcern the conditions, as they exist
in England, worse than, as has been said, the trust power is humanly
capable of imposing on the American people in another half-century of
unhindered growth. Which, American readers will please understand, is
not a suggestion that the United States would be benefited, even
commercially, by the institution of a monarchy.
Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Englishmen long ago acquired the
idea that American business methods in what may be called large affairs
were too often unscrupulous; and of such methods, there were certainly
examples. I have explained why the temptations to, and the opportunities
for, dishonesty were very great in the earlier days and it would be
impossible to find language too severe to characterise many of the
things which were done--not once, but again and again--in the
manipulation of railways, the stealing of public lands, and the
plundering of the public treasury. The dog deserved as bad a name as he
received. But that dog died. The Americans themselves stoned him to
death--with precisely the same ferocity as they have recently exhibited
when they discovered, as they feared, some of his litter in the Chicago
packing houses--or a year before in the offices of certain insurance
companies. The present generation of Americans may not be any better men
than their fathers (let us hope that they are, if only for the
reputation of the vast immigration of Englishmen and Scotchmen which has
poured into the country) but at least they are much less tempted. They
live under a new social code. They have nothing like the same
opportunity for successful dishonesty and immeasurably greater chance of
punishment, whether visited on them by the law or by the opinion of
their fellows, if unsuccessful or found out. It is not fair that the new
dog should be damned to drag around the old dog's name.
There is an excellent analogy in which the relations of the two peoples
are reversed.
* * * * *
Americans are largely of the opinion that the British aristocracy is a
disreputable class. They gave that dog its name too; and there have been
individual scandals enough in the past to justify it. It is useless for
an Englishman living in America to endeavour to modify this opinion in
even a small circle, for it is only a question of time--probably of a
very short time--before some peer turns up in the divorce court and the
Englishmen's friends will send him newspaper clippings containing the
Court Report and will hail him on street corners and at the club with:
"How about your British aristocracy now?"
Americans cannot see the British peerage as a whole; they only hear of
those who thrust themselves into unsavoury notoriety. So Englishmen get
no view of the American business community in its entirety, but only
read with relish the occasional scandal. Of the two, the American has
the better, or at least more frequent, justification for his error than
has the Englishman; but it is a pity that the two cannot somehow agree
to an exchange. Perhaps a treaty might be entered into (if it were not
for the United States Senate) which, when ratified, should be published
in all newspapers and posted in all public places in both countries,
setting forth that:
"IN CONSIDERATION of the Party of the Second Part hereafter
cherishing a belief in the marital fidelity and general moral
purity of all members of the British peerage, their wives,
heirs, daughters, and near relations, and further agreeing
that when, by any unfortunate mishap, any individual member of
the said Peerage or his wife, daughter, or other relation
shall have been discovered and publicly shown to have offended
against the marriage laws or otherwise violated the canons of
common decency, to understand and take it for granted that
such mishap, offence, or violation is a quite exceptional
occurrence owing to the unexplainable depravity of the
individual and that it in no way reflects upon the other
members of the said Peerage, whether in the mass or
individually, or their wives, daughters, or near relations:
THEREFORE the Party of the First Part hereby agrees to decline
to give any credence whatsoever to any story, remark, or
reflection to the discredit of the general honesty of the
American commercial classes or public men, but agrees that he
will hereafter assume them to be trustworthy and truthful
whether individually or in the mass, except in such cases as
shall have been publicly proven to the contrary, and that he
will always understand and declare that such isolated cases
are purely sporadic and not in any way to be taken as
evidences either of an epidemic or of a general low state of
public morality, but that on the contrary the said American
commercial classes do, whether in the mass or individually,
hate and despise an occasional scoundrel among them as
heartily as would the Party of the First Part hate and despise
such a scoundrel if found among his own people--as, he
confesses, does occasionally occur."
Nonsense? Of course it is nonsense. But the desirable thing is that
Englishmen should be brought to understand that after all it is but an
inconsiderable portion of the American business community that is
permanently employed in the manufacture of wooden nutmegs, in selling
canned horrors for food, or in watering railway shares, and that
Americans should believe that there are quite a large number of men of
high birth in England who are only infrequently engaged in either
beating their own wives or running away with those of other men.
The brief confessional clause at the conclusion of the above draft I
take to be an important portion of the document. It is not necessary
that a similar confession should be incorporated in the behalf of the
Party of the Second Part, not because there are no family scandals in
America, but because, in the absence of a peerage, it is not easy to
tell when a divorce or other scandal occurs among the aristocracy.
"Scandal in High Life" is such a tempting heading to a column that the
American newspapers are generous in their interpretation of the term and
many a man and woman, on getting into trouble, must have been surprised
to learn for the first time that their ambitions had been realised,
unknown to themselves, and that they did indeed belong to that class
which they had for so long yearned to enter.
This fact also is worth considering, namely, that whereas in England it
is not impossible that there may be more scandals of a financial sort,
both in official circles and outside, than the public ever hears of
through the press; it is reasonably certain that in America the press
publishes full details of a good many more scandals than ever occur.
This peculiarity of the American press (for it is still peculiar to
America, in degree at least, if not in kind) does not arise from any
set purpose of blackening the reputation of the country in the eyes of
the outside world, but is entirely the result of "enterprise," of
individual ambition, and the extremity of partisan enthusiasm. Other
nations may be quite certain that they hear all the worst that is to be
told of the people of the United States. Out of the Spanish war arose
what came to be known as the "embalmed beef" scandal. American soldiers
in Cuba were furnished with a quantity of rations which, by the time
they reached the front and an effort was made to serve them out, were
entirely unfit for human consumption. Undoubtedly much suffering was
thereby caused to the men and probably some disease. But, equally
undoubtedly, the catastrophe arose from an error in judgment and not
from dishonesty of contractors or of any government official. But, as
the incident was handled by a section of the American press, it might
well, had the two great parties at the time been more evenly balanced in
public favour, have resulted in the ruin of the reputation of an
administration and the overthrow of the Republican party at the next
election.
If the Re-mount scandals and the Army Stores scandals which arose out of
England's South African war had occurred in America, I doubt if any
party could have stood against the storm that would have been provoked,
and, deriving their ideas of the affairs from the cabled reports,
Englishmen of all classes would still be shaking their heads over the
inconceivable dishonesty in the American public service and the
deplorable standard of honour in the American army. It may be necessary
and wholesome for a people that occasionally certain kinds of dirty
linen should be washed in public; but the speciality of the American
"yellow press"[342:1] is the skill which it shows in soiling clean linen
in private in order to bring it out into the streets to wash.
* * * * *
POSTSCRIPT--Reference has been made in the foregoing chapter to the
British peerage and I now propose to have the temerity to enter a
serious protest against the tone in which even the thoughtful American
commonly refers to the House of Lords. I cherish no such hopeless
ambition as that of inducing the American newspaper paragrapher to
surrender his traditional right to make fun of a British peer on any and
every occasion. I am speaking now to the more serious teachers of the
American people; for it is a deplorable fact that even the best of those
teachers when speaking of the House of Lords use language which is
generally flippant, nearly always contemptuous, and not uncommonly
uninformed.
My own belief (and I think it is that of the majority of thinking
Englishmen) is that if the discussion in the House of Lords on any large
question be laid side by side with the debate on the same question in
the House of Commons and the two be read concurrently, it will almost
invariably be seen that the speeches in the Upper House show a marked
superiority in breadth of view, expression and grasp of the larger
aspects and the underlying principles of the subject. I believe that
such a debate in the House of Lords is characterised by more ability and
thoroughness than the debate on a similar question in either the Senate
or the House of Representatives. It does not appear from the respective
membership of the chambers how it could well be otherwise.
Let us from memory give a list of the more conspicuous members of the
present House of Peers whose names are likely to be known to American
readers, to wit: the Dukes of Devonshire and Norfolk; the Marquises of
Ripon and Landsdowne; Earls Roberts, Rosebery, Elgin, Northbrook, Crewe,
Carrington, Cromer, Kimberley, Minto, Halsbury, Spencer; Viscounts,
Wolseley, Goschen, Esher, Kitchener of Khartoum, St. Aldwyn
(Hicks-Beach), Milner, Cross; the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Bishop of London; Lords Lister, Alverstone, Curzon of Kedleston, Mount
Stephen, Strathcona and Mount Royal, Avebury, Loreburn, and Rayleigh.
Let me emphasise the fact that this is not intended to be a list of the
ablest members of the House, but only a list of able members something
of whose reputation and achievements is likely to be known to the
intelligent American reader. If the list were being compiled for English
readers, it would have to be twice as long; but, as it stands, I submit
that it is a list which cannot approximately be paralleled from among
the members of the House of Commons or from among the members of the
Senate and House of Representatives combined. I take it to be
incontrovertible that a list representing such eminence and so great
accomplishment in so many fields (theology, statesmanship, war,
literature, government, science, and affairs) could not be produced from
the legislative chambers of any single country in the world.
The mistake which Americans make is that they confuse the hereditary
principle with the House of Lords. The former is, of course, spurned by
every good American and no one denies his right to express his
disapproval thereof in such terms as he sees fit. But few Americans
appear to make sufficient allowance for the fact that whatever the House
of Lords suffers at any given time by the necessary inclusion among its
members (as a result of its hereditary constitution) of a proportion of
men who are quite unfit to be members of any legislative body (and these
are the members of the British peerage with whom America is most
familiar) is much more than counterbalanced by the ability to introduce
into the membership a continuous current of the most distinguished and
capable men in every field of activity, whose services could not
otherwise (and cannot in the United States) be similarly commanded by
the State.
We have seen how in the United States a man can only win his way to the
House of Representatives, and hardly more easily to the Senate, without
earning the favour of the local politicians and "bosses" of his
constituency, and how, when he is elected, his tenure of office is
likely to be short and must be always precarious. It is probable that in
the United States not one of the distinguished men whose names are given
in the above list would (with the possible exception of two or three who
have devoted their lives to politics) be included in either chamber.
They would, so far as public service is concerned (unless they were
given cabinet positions or held seats upon the bench), be lost to the
State.
It is, of course, impossible that Americans should keep in touch with
the proceedings of the House of Lords; nor is there any reason why they
should. The number of Americans, resident at home, who in the course of
their lives have read _in extenso_ any single debate in that House must
be extremely small; and first-hand knowledge of the House Americans can
hardly have. Then, of the English publicists or statesmen who visit the
United States it is perhaps inevitable that those whose conversation on
political topics Americans (especially American economic thinkers and
sociologists) should find most congenial are those of an advanced
Liberal or Radical--even semi-Republican--complexion. I have chanced to
have the opportunity of seeing how much certain American economists of
the rising school (which has done such admirable work as a whole) have
been influenced by the views of particular Englishmen of this class. I
should like to mention names, but not a few readers will be able to
supply them for themselves. It has not appeared to occur to the American
disciples of these men that the views which they impart on English
political subjects are purely partisan, and generally very extreme,
views. Their opinions of the House of Lords no more represent the
judgment of England on the subject than the opinions of an extreme Free
Trade Democrat represent the views of America on the subject of
Protection.
Merely as a matter of manners and good taste, it would, I think, be well
if Americans endeavoured to arrive at and express a better understanding
of the legislative work of the Lords. Englishmen have not much more
regard for the principle of a quadrennially elected President than
Americans have for an hereditary aristocracy; but they do not habitually
permit that lack of regard to degenerate into the use of contemptuous
language about individual Presidents. Even in contemplating the result
of what seems to them so preposterous a system as that of electing a
judiciary by popular party vote, Englishmen have generally confined
themselves to a complimentary expression of surprise that the results
are not worse than they are. Surely, while being as truculent as they
please in their attitude towards the hereditary principle, it would be
well if Americans would similarly endeavour to dissociate their
detestation of that principle from their feelings for the actual
personnel of the House of Lords. There is a good deal both in the
constitution and work of the House to command the respect even of the
citizens of a republic.
I address this protest directly to American economic and sociological
writers in the hope that, recognising that it comes from one who is not
unsympathetic, some of them may be influenced to speak less heedlessly
on the subject than is their wont. I may add that these remarks are
suggested by certain passages in the recently published book of an
American author for whom, elsewhere in this volume, I express, as I
feel, sincere respect.
FOOTNOTES:
[309:1] It is delightful to find, some weeks after this was written,
that Mr. Wells makes precisely this common blunder and states it in
almost the exact words that I have used later on. His excuse lies in the
fact that, as he says, he had it "in his mind before ever he crossed the
Atlantic"; but that hardly excuses his failure to disabuse himself after
he was across. Most curious is it that Mr. Wells appears to think that
this erroneous notion is a discovery of his own and he enlarges on it
and expounds it at some length; the truth being, as I say above, that it
is the common opinion of all uninformed Englishmen. Mr. Wells is in fact
voicing an almost universal--even if unformulated--national prejudice,
but it is a pity that he took it over to America and brought it back
again.
[335:1] The reader will, of course, understand that the political or
industrial power of capital is entirely a separate thing from the
ability of wealth to buy luxury, deference or social recognition for its
possessor. In this particular there is little to choose between the two
and curiously enough, each country has been called by visitors from the
other the "paradise of the wealthy."
[342:1] Englishmen often ask the meaning of the phrase "the yellow
press." The history of it is as follows: In 1895, Mr. W. R. Hearst,
having had experience as a journalist in California, purchased the New
York _Journal_, which was at the time a more or less unsuccessful
publication, and, spending money lavishly, converted it into the most
enterprising, as well as the most sensational, paper that New York or
any other American city had ever seen. In catering to the prejudices of
the mass of the people, he invaded the province of the New York _World_.
In the "war" between the two which followed, one began and the other
immediately adopted the plan of using yellow ink in the printing of
certain cartoons (or pictures of the _Ally Sloper_ type) with which they
adorned certain pages of their Sunday editions especially. The term
"yellow press" was applied at first only to those two papers, but soon
extended to include other publications which copied their general style.
The yellow ink was, I believe, actually first employed by the _World_;
but the _Journal_ was the aggressor in the fight and in most particulars
it was that paper which set the pace, and it, or Mr. Hearst, rightly
bears the responsibility for the creation of yellow journalism.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GROWTH OF HONESTY
The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon--America's Resemblance to
Japan--A German View--Can Americans Lie?--Honesty as the Best
Policy--Religious Sentiment--Moral and Immoral Railway
Managers--A Struggle for Self-Preservation--Gentlemen in
Business--Peculation among Railway Servants--How the Old Order
Changes, Yielding Place to New--The Strain on British
Machinery--Americans as Story-Tellers--The Incredibility of
the Actual.
My desire is to contribute, if possible, something towards the
establishment of a better understanding between the two peoples by
correcting certain misapprehensions which exist in the mind of each in
regard to the other. At the present moment we are concerned with the
particular misapprehension which exists in the English mind in regard to
the commercial ethics--the average level of common honesty--in the
masses of American business men. I have endeavoured to show, first, that
the majority of Englishmen have, even though unconsciously, a
fundamental misconception of the character of the American people,
arising primarily from the absence of a recognised aristocracy in the
United States:--that, in fact, the two peoples are, in the construction
of their social fabrics, much more alike than the Englishman generally
assumes. I have endeavoured to show, next, that if we were entirely
without any knowledge of, or any prejudices in regard to, the code of
commercial ethics at present existing in either country, but had to
deduce for ourselves _a priori_ from what we knew of the part which
commerce and business played in the social life of the two countries the
probable degree of morality which would be found in the respective
codes, we should be forced to look for a higher standard in the United
States than in England. We have seen how it comes that Englishmen have,
justifiably and even unavoidably, acquired the erroneous notions which
they have acquired, first, from the fact that, in the rough days of the
past, American business morality was, at least in certain parts of the
country, looser than that which prevailed in the older-established and
better constituted society of the England of the same day (and in the
older communities of the United States itself); and, second, from the
fact that the chief channel through which Englishmen must necessarily
derive their contemporary ideas on the subject, namely, the American
press, is, by reason of qualities peculiar to itself, not to be trusted
to correct the misapprehensions which exist. Finally, we have seen that
there exist in certain American minds some mistaken notions, not much
dissimilar in character to those which I am trying to point out are
present in the minds of Englishmen, about the character of a
considerable section of the people of Great Britain; and if Americans
can be thus mistaken about England, there is no inherent improbability
in the suggestion that Englishmen may be analogously mistaken about the
United States.
The English people has had abundant justification in the past for
arriving at the conclusion that in many of the qualities which go to
make a great and manly race it stands first among the peoples of the
earth. The belief of Englishmen in their own moral superiority as a
people is justified by the course of history, and is proven every day
afresh by the attitudes of other races,--especially by the behaviour in
their choice of friends, when compelled to choose as between England and
other European powers, of the peoples more or less unlike the
Anglo-Saxon in their civilisations in the remoter corners of the world.
It is to the eternal honour of England that in countless out-of-the-way
places, peoples more or less savage have learned to accept the word of a
British official or trader as a thing to be trusted, and have grown
quick to distinguish between him and his rivals of other European
nationalities. There has been abundant testimony to the respect which
the British character has won from the world,--from the frank admiration
of the Prince-Chancellor for the "Parole de Gentleman" to the unshakable
confidence of the far red Indian in the faith of a "King George Man";
from the trust of an Indian native in the word of a Sahib to the dying
injunction to his successor of one of the greatest of the Afghan Ameers:
"Trust the English. Do not fight them. They are good friends and bad
enemies."[349:1] And the most solemn oath, I believe, which an Arab can
take is to swear that what he says is as "true as the word of an
Englishman."
But, granting all that has happened in the past, and recognising that
British honour and the sacredness of the British word have stood above
those of any other peoples, the American nation of to-day is a new
factor in the situation. It did not exist at the time when the old
comparisons were made. I have suggested elsewhere that the popular
American contempt for the English climate is only an inheritance of the
opinions based on a comparison of that climate with the climates of
Southern Europe. If the climate of certain parts--of the greater
part--of the United States had then been a factor to be taken into
consideration, English skies would have had at least one fellow to share
with them the opprobrium of the world. So in the matter of commercial
morality; we are thinking and speaking in terms of a day that has gone,
when other standards governed.
Englishmen have been very willing, within the last year or two, to
believe in the revolution which has taken place in the character of
another people, less akin to them than the Americans and farther away.
The promptitude with which the British masses have accepted the fact
that, in certain of the virtues on which Englishmen have most peculiarly
prided themselves in the past, the Japanese are their superiors, has
been curiously un-British. There should be no greater difficulty in
believing that another revolution, much more gradual and less
picturesque, and by so much the more easily credible, has taken place in
the American character. The evidence in favour of the one is, rightly
viewed, no less strong than that in favour of the other. It would have
been impossible for the Japanese to have carried on the recent war as
they did had they not been possessed of the virtues of courage and
patriotism in the highest degree. It would have been equally impossible
for the Americans to have built up their immense trade in competition
with the great commercial powers of the world, unless they had in an
equally high degree possessed the virtue of commercial honesty. No one
ought to know better than the English business man that a great national
commercial fabric is not built up by fraud or trickery.
On this subject Professor Münsterberg,[351:1] striving to eradicate
from the minds of his German countrymen the same tendency to
underestimate the honesty of American business men, says (and let me say
that neither my opinion, nor the form in which it is expressed, was
borrowed from him): "It is naïve to suppose that the economic strength
of America has been built up through underhanded competition, without
respect to law or justice, and impelled by nothing but a barbarous and
purely material ambition. One might better suppose that the twenty-story
office buildings on lower Broadway are supported by the flag-stones in
the street. . . . The colossal fabric of American industry is able to
tower so high only because it has its foundations on the hard rock of
honest conviction."
"It has been well said," says the same author, "that the American has no
talent for lying, and distrust of a man's word strikes the Yankee as
specifically European." Now in England "an American lie" has stood
almost as a proverb; yet the German writer is entirely in earnest,
though personally I do not agree with him. He sees the symptoms, but the
diagnosis is wrong. The American has an excellent talent for lying, but
in business he has learned that falsehood and deception are poor
commercial weapons. Business which is obtained by fraud, any American
will tell you, "doesn't stick"; and as every American in his business is
looking always to the future, he prefers, merely as a matter of
prudence, that his foundations shall be sound.
All society is a struggle for the survival of the fittest; and in crude
and early forms of society, it is the strongest who proves himself most
fit. In savage communities--and Europe was savage until after the feudal
days--it is the big man and brutal who comes to the top. In the savage
days of American commerce, which, at least for the West, ended only a
generation back, it was too often the man who could go out and subdue
the wilderness and beat down opposition, who rode rough-shod over his
competitors and used whatever weapons, whether of mere brute strength or
fraud, with the greatest ferocity and unscrupulousness, who made his
mark and his fortune. But in a settled and complex commercial community
it is no longer the strongest who is most fit; it is the most honest.
The American commercial community as a whole, in spite of occasional
exceptions and in defiance of the cynicism of the press, has grasped
this fact and has accepted the business standards of the world at large.
Let me not be interpreted as implying that there are any fewer Americans
than there are Englishmen who live rightly from the fear of God or for
the sake of their own self-respect. The conclusion of most observers has
been that the American people is more religious than the English, that
the temperament, more nervous and more emotional, is more susceptible to
religious influence. It may be so. It is a subject on which the evidence
is necessarily so intangible--on which an individual judgment is likely
to be so entirely dependent on individual observation in a narrow
field--that comparison becomes extremely difficult. My own opinion would
be that there is at least as much real religious feeling in England as
in the United States, and certainly more in Scotland than in either;
but that the churches in America are more active as organisations and
more efficient agents in behalf of morality.
But we are now speaking of the business community as a whole, and the
force which ultimately keeps the ethics of every business community pure
is, I imagine, the same, namely that without honesty the community
itself cannot live or prosper and that, with normal ability, he who is
most honest prospers most. American business was dishonest before
society had settled down and knitted itself together.
The change which has come over the American business world can perhaps
best be made clear to English readers by taking a single example; and it
must necessarily be an example from a field with which I am familiar.
* * * * *
There is in my possession an interesting document, being one of the (I
think) two original manuscript copies of the famous "Gentleman's
Agreement," bearing the signatures of the parties thereto, which was
entered into by the Presidents or Chairmen of a number of railway
companies at Mr. Pierpont Morgan's house in New York in 1891. In the
year following the signing of the Agreement, I was in London in
connection with affairs which necessitated rather prolonged interviews
with many of the Chairmen or General Managers of the British
railways,--Sir George Findlay, Sir Edward Watkin, Mr. J. Staats Forbes,
and others. With all of them the mutual relations existing between
railway companies in the two countries respectively formed one of the
chief topics of our conversations, and that at that time the good faith
and loyalty of attitude of one company towards another were much
greater in England than in America it is not possible to question.
British companies are subject to a restraining influence which does not
exist in the United States, in the parliamentary control which is
exercised over them. Every company of any size has, with more or less
frequency, to go to Parliament for new powers or privileges, and any
Chairman or Board of Directors which established a reputation for
untrustworthiness in dealings with other companies would probably be
able to expect few favours from the next Parliamentary Committee. But
(although the two last of the gentlemen whose names I have mentioned
were notoriously parties to a peculiarly bitter railway war) I believe
that the motives which have chiefly operated to make the managers of
English companies observe faith with each other better than the American
have ever succeeded in doing, are chiefly the traditional motives of a
high sense of personal honour--the fact that they were gentlemen first
and business men afterwards.
The circumstances which led up to the formation of the Gentlemen's
Agreement were almost inconceivable to English railway operators. The
railways, it must always be borne in mind, have been the chief
civilisers of the American continent. It is by their instrumentality
that the Great American Desert of half a century ago is to-day among the
richest and most prosperous agricultural countries in the world. The
railways have always thrust out ahead of the settler into whatever
territory, by reason of the potential fertility of its soil or for other
causes, has held out promise of some day becoming populated. Along the
railway the population has then flowed. In forcing its way westward
each company in its course has sought to tap with its lines the richest
strips of territory: all alike endeavoured to obtain a share of the
traffic originating from a point where a thriving town was already
established or topographical conditions pointed out a promising site. As
the American laws impose practically no restrictions on railway
construction it necessarily followed that certain districts and certain
favourable strategic points were invaded by more lines than could
possibly be justified either by the traffic of the moment or the
prospective traffic of many years to come. This was conspicuously the
case in the region Northwestward from Chicago. Business which might have
furnished a reasonable revenue to two companies was called upon to
support six or seven and the competition for that business became
intense,--all the more intense because, unlike English railway
companies, few American railways in their early days have had any
material reserve of capital to draw upon. They have had to earn their
living as they went, out of current receipts, or submit to liquidation.
The officials in charge of the Traffic Departments of each company had
to justify their retention in their positions by somehow getting more
than their share of the business, and the temptations to offer whatever
inducements were necessary to get that business amounted almost to
compulsion. Without it, not the particular official only, but his
company, would be extinguished. The situation was further aggravated by
the fact that the goods that were to be carried were largely staples
shipped in large quantities by individual shippers--millers, owners of
packing houses, mining companies from the one end, and coal and oil
companies from the other. One of these companies might be able to offer
a railway more business in the course of a year than it could hope to
get from all the small traders on its lines combined--enough to amount
almost to affluence if it could be secured at the regularly authorised
rates. The keenness of the competition to secure the patronage of these
large shippers can be imagined; for it was, between the companies, a
struggle for actual existence. All that the shipper had to do was to
wait while the companies underbid each other, each in turn cutting off a
slice from the margin of profit that would result from the carrying of
the traffic until, not infrequently and in some notorious cases, not
only was that margin entirely whittled away but the traffic was finally
carried at a figure which meant a heavy loss to the carrier. The extent
to which the Standard Oil Company has profited by this necessity on the
part of the railways to get the business of a large shipping concern at
almost any price, rather than allow its cars and motive power to remain
idle, has been made sufficiently public.
In some measure the companies were able to protect themselves by the
making of pooling (or joint-purse) arrangements between themselves; but
the enactment of the Interstate Commerce Law in 1887 made pooling
illegal. The companies endeavoured to frame agreements which would not
be repugnant to the law but would take the place of the pools; but it
was impossible to attach any penalties to infringements of such
agreements and under pressure of the necessity of self-preservation, no
agreement, however solemnly entered into, was strong enough to restrain
the parties. The Passenger Agents framed agreements to control the
passenger traffic and the Freight Agents made agreements to control the
goods traffic, and both were equally futile. Then the Traffic Managers
made agreements to cover both classes of business, which held no longer
than the others. So the General Managers tried their hands. But the
inexorable exigencies of the situation remained. Each official was still
confronted with the same dilemma: he must either secure more business
than he was entitled to or he--and his company--must starve. And the
agreements made by General Managers bound no better than those which
Passenger Agents or Traffic Managers had made before. Then it was that
the Gentlemen stepped in.
The Gentlemen, it should be explained, were the Presidents and Chairmen
of the Boards of the respective companies. They, it was hoped, would be
able to reach an agreement which, if once their names were signed to it,
would hold. The meeting, as has been said, was held at Mr. Pierpont
Morgan's house[358:1] and an agreement was in fact arrived at and
signed, as has been said, in duplicate. It is lamentable to have to
record that that agreement--except in so far as it set a precedent for
other meetings of the same gentlemen, which in turn led to others out of
which finally grew large movements in the direction of joint ownerships
and consolidations of interests which have helped materially to make the
conditions more tolerable--except for that, the Gentlemen's Agreement
did no more good, and it lasted not appreciably longer, than any of the
others which had been made by mere officials.
Englishmen will all agree that it is unthinkable that the Chairmen of
the great British railway companies could meet and give their words _as
gentlemen_ that each of their companies would observe certain rules in
the conduct of its business and that a few weeks thereafter it should
become evident that no single company was keeping the word so pledged.
But it would be just as absurd to question the personal integrity or
sense of honour of such men as Mr. Marvin Hughitt, Mr. E. W. Winter, Mr.
W. H. Truesdale, and the others, as it would be to question that of the
most upright man in England. The fact is that the conditions are almost
unthinkable to Englishmen. No company, in becoming party to the
agreement, had surrendered its right to retaliate when another violated
the provisions. The actual conduct of the business of the companies--the
quoting of the rates to secure the traffic--was in the hands of a host
of subordinate officials, and when a rate is cut it is not cut openly,
but in secret and by circuitous devices. It was, on subsequent
investigation, always impossible to tell where the demoralisation had
begun, amid the cloud of charges, counter-charges, and denials. There
was not one of the subordinate officials but declared (and seemingly
proved) that he had acted only in retaliation and self-defence. As there
was no way of obtaining evidence from the shippers, in whose favour the
concessions had been made, it was impossible to sift out the truth. Each
Chairman or President could only say that he had entire confidence in
his own staff. There was no visible remedy except to discharge the
entire membership of the Traffic Departments of all the companies
simultaneously and get new men, to the number of several hundreds, who
would be no better able to accomplish the impossible than their
predecessors.
* * * * *
My reason for going into this, I fear, somewhat tedious narration is
that British distrust of American commercial honesty was originally
created, perhaps, more than by anything else, by the scandals which were
notoriously associated with the early history of railways in the United
States. It is not desired here either to insist on the occurrence of
those scandals or to palliate them. The point is that the conditions
which made those scandals possible (of which the incapacity on the part
of the North-western lines to keep faith with each other may be regarded
as symptomatic) were concomitants of a particular stage only in the
development of the country. Competition must always exist in any
business community; but in the desperate form of a breathless,
day-to-day struggle for bare existence it need only exist among railway
companies where lines have been built in excess of the needs of the
population. With the increase in population and the growth of trade the
asperity of the conditions necessarily becomes mitigated, until at last,
when the traffic has assumed proportions which will afford all
competitors alike a reasonable profit on their shares, the management
ceases to be exposed to any more temptation than besets the Boards of
the great British companies. Not a few railway companies in the United
States have arrived at that delectable condition--are indeed now more
happily circumstanced than any English company--and among them are some
the names of which, not many years ago, were mere synonyms for
dishonesty. In the North-western territory of which I have spoken the
fact that the current values of all railway shares had on the average
increased (until the occurrence of the financial crisis of the close of
1907) by about three hundred per cent. in the last ten years is
eloquent.
In the old days the wrong-doing which was rampant, through excess of
opportunity and more than abundant temptation, in the higher circles,
ran also through all grades of the service; and there was one case at
least of a railway company which used in fact to have to discharge all
its servants of a certain class at intervals of once a month or
thereabouts. The Northern Pacific Railway line was opened across the
continent in 1883, and during the next twelve months it was my fortune
to have to travel over the western portion of the road somewhat
frequently. The company had a regularly established tariff of charges,
and tickets from any one station to another could be bought at the
booking offices just as on any other railway line in America or England.
But few people bought tickets. The line was divided, of course, into
divisions, of so many hundreds of miles each, the train being in charge
of one conductor (or guard) to the end of his division, where he turned
it over to his successor for the next division. It was the business of
the conductor to take up the tickets, or collect the fares, while the
train was running, and it was well understood among regular passengers
on the line that each conductor expected to receive one dollar to the
end of his division, no matter at what point a passenger entered the
train. The conductor merely walked through the cars collecting silver
dollars, of which he subsequently apportioned to the treasury of the
company as many as he saw fit. They were probably not many.
On one occasion I stood at a booking-office and, speaking through the
small window, asked the clerk for a ticket to a certain place. The
conductor of the train, already waiting in the station, had strolled
into the office and heard my request.
"Don't you buy a ticket!" said he to me. "I can let you travel cheaper
than he can, can't I, Bill?"--this last being addressed to the clerk
behind the window; and Bill looked out through the hole and said he
guessed that was so.
The company, as I have said, used to discharge its conductors with
regularity, or they resigned, at intervals depending on the periods at
which accounts were made up, but it was said in those days that there
was not a town between the Mississippi and the Pacific Coast which did
not contain a drinking saloon owned by an ex-Northern Pacific conductor,
and established out of the profits that he had made during his brief
term of service.
In the American railway carriages, the method of communication between
passengers and the engine, in case of emergency, is by what is known as
the "bell-cord" which runs from end to end of the train, suspended from
the middle of the ceiling of each car in a series of swinging rings. The
cord sways loosely in the air to each motion of the train like a
slackened clothes-line in a gale. On the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé
Railway the story used to be told that at the end of the day the
conductors would toss each coin received into the air to see if it would
balance on the bell-cord. The coins which balanced went to the company;
those which did not, the conductor took as his own.
That, be it noted, was the state of affairs some twenty-four years ago.
I question if there is much more peculation on the part of the employees
of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé to-day than there is on the part
of the servants of the Great Western of England or any other British
company.
The place where the conductor advised me not to buy a ticket had then a
few yards of planking laid on the prairie for a platform and a small
shed as a station building. The town consisted of three or four brick
buildings and a huddle of wooden shanties. To-day it is one of the
twenty most populous cities in the United States with tall office
buildings, broad busy streets, and sumptuous private residences. I used
to have excellent trout-fishing in what is now the centre of a great
town. Where the air to-day is filled with the hum of wheels and the roar
of machinery, then was only open prairie innocent of any evidence of
human occupation beyond some three or four things like dog-kennels badly
built of loose lattice-work on the river's bank. These were the red
Indians' Turkish baths.
The old code of morality has vanished with the red Indian and the
trout-fishing. In the early days of that town there used to be nobody to
maintain public order but an efficient Vigilance Committee, which
executed justice by the simple process of hanging persons whom the
public disliked, and which was still in nominal existence when I was
there. Now the city has the proper complement of courts, from the United
States Court downwards, and a bar which has already furnished one or two
members to the United States Senate. Of course this has happened in the
very far West but the change which has come over New York in the same
length of time is no less astonishing if less picturesque. It is as
unjust to compare the morals or manners of the American people of to-day
with those of even three decades ago as it would be to compare the state
of twentieth-century society in New Zealand with the old convict days.
In one generation Japan has stepped from the days of feudalism to the
twentieth century. America, in all that goes to constitute civilisation,
has in the last twenty-five years jumped, according to European canons,
at least a hundred.
Certain outward manifestations of the change which has been wrought, the
peoples of Europe have been unable to ignore;--the immense growth in the
power of the United States as a nation, her invasion of the markets of
the world even in lines wherein, twenty years ago, the internal markets
of America herself were at the mercy of British manufacturers, the
splendid generosity which individual citizens of the United States are
showing in buying wherever they can all that is most beautiful or
precious among the treasures of the Old World for the enrichment of
their museums and galleries at home--these things the people of Europe
cannot help but see. It would be well if they would strive also to
understand the development of the moral forces which underlies these
things, which alone has made them possible.
* * * * *
What has been the course of events in England in the same period? I have
already said that I believe that Englishmen justly earned the reputation
of being the most upright of all peoples in their commercial dealings;
and for the sake of the context perhaps Americans who have had little
opportunity of gauging the opinions of the world will accept it as true.
It is probable that the world has seen no finer set of men engaged in
commerce than those who laid the foundations of England's commercial
greatness; and I imagine that there are more honest men in England
to-day than ever there were--more men of what is, it will be noticed,
instructively called "old-fashioned" honesty. Yet no one will be quicker
than just one of these "old-fashioned" honest men to declare that the
standard of commercial morality in England is deteriorating.
The truth is that a vast new trading community has sprung up with new
ideas which no longer accepts the old canons or submits to the old
authority. The old maxims pass current; there is the same talk of honest
goods and honest methods, but under stress of keener competition and the
pressure of the more rapid movement of modern life, there is more
temptation to allow products to deteriorate, greater difficulty in
living always up to the old rigid standards. The words "English made" no
longer carry, even to English minds, the old guarantee of excellence.
In no small measure it may be that it is the example and influence of
America itself which is working the mischief; which by no means implies
that American example and influence must in themselves be bad. American
methods, both in the production and sale of goods, might be wholly good,
but the attempt to graft them upon established English practice might
have nothing but deplorable results. It is not necessarily the fault of
the new wine if old bottles fail to hold it. One factory may have the
capacity to turn out one thousand of a given article, all of the highest
quality and workmanship, _per diem_. If a factory with one tenth the
capacity strains itself to compete and turns out the same number of
articles of the same kind in the same time, something will be wrong with
the quality of those articles. I am not prepared to say that in any
given line English manufacturers are overstraining the capacity of their
plants to the sacrifice of the quality of their goods in their effort to
keep pace with American rate of production; but I do most earnestly
believe that something analogous to it is happening in the commercial
field as a whole, and that neither English commercial morality nor the
quality of English-made goods has been improved by the necessity of
meeting the intense competition of the world-markets to-day, with an
industrial organisation which grew up under other and more leisurely
conditions.
* * * * *
POSTSCRIPT.--Not necessarily as a serious contribution to my argument
but rather as a gloss on Professor Münsterberg's remark that the
American has no talent for lying, I have often wondered how far the
Americans reputation for veracity has been injured by their ability as
story-tellers. "Story" it must be remembered is used in two senses. The
American has the reputation of being the best narrator in the world; and
he loves to narrate about his own country--especially the big things in
it. In nine cases out of ten, when he is speaking of those big things,
he is conscientiously truthful; but not seldom it happens that what may
be a mere commonplace to the American seems incredible to the English
listener unacquainted with the United States and unable to give the
facts as narrated their due proportion in the landscape.
More than a quarter of a century ago, when electric light was still a
very new thing to Londoners, an American casually told myself and three
or four others that the small town from which he came in the far
Northwest of America was lighted entirely by a coronal of electric
lights of some prodigious candle-power on the top of a mast, erected in
the centre of the town, of a, to us, incredible height. It was, at the
time, quite unbelievable; but in less than a year chance took me all the
way to that identical little town in the far Northwest, and what the
American had said was strictly true--true, I doubt not, to a single
candle-power and to a fraction of a foot of mast. And a costly and
indifferent method of lighting, for a whole town, it may be remarked, it
was.
In an earlier stage of my youth I lost all confidence in an elderly and
eminently respectable friend of the family who had travelled much
because he once informed me that the Japanese watered their horses out
of spoons. Of course I knew that the old gentleman was a liar.
An American travelling in an English railway carriage fell into
conversation with the other occupants, who were Englishmen. Among divers
pieces of information about things in the United States which he gave
them he told (it was at the time when the steel construction of high
buildings was still a novelty) of a twenty-storey "sky-scraper" which he
passed daily on his way to and from his office on which, to save time,
the walls were being put up simultaneously at, perhaps, the second,
eighth, and fifteenth floors, working upwards from each point, the
intervening floors being in the meanwhile left untouched. He explained
that, in the system of steel construction, the walls did not support the
building; that being done by the skeleton framework of metal, on which
the walls were subsequently hung as a screen. They might, theoretically,
be of paper; though as a matter of fact the material used was generally
terra-cotta or some fire-proof brick. The American said that it was
queer to see a house being built at the eighth storey in midair, as it
were, with nothing but the thin steel supports and open sky below.
"I should imagine it would look very queer," said the Englishman whom he
was addressing, with obvious coolness; and the American was entirely
aware that every person in that carriage regarded him as a typical
American liar. Time passed and the carriage relapsed into silence, each
of the occupants becoming immersed in such reading-matter as he had with
him. Suddenly one of them aroused the others with the ejaculation:
"By Jove! If here isn't a picture of that very building you were talking
of!"
It was a _Graphic_ or _Illustrated London News_, or some other such
undoubtedly trustworthy London paper which he was reading, and he passed
it round for the inspection of the rest of the company. The American
looked at it. It was not his particular building but it did as well,
and there was the photograph before them, with the walls complete, to
window casing and every detail of ornament, on the eighth and ninth
floors, while not a brick had been laid from the second storey to the
seventh. A god from the machine had intervened to save the American's
reputation. Often have I seen incredulity steal over the faces of a
well-bred company in England at some statement from an American of a
fact in itself commonplace enough, when no such providential
corroboration was forthcoming.
Curiously enough, the true Yankee in America, especially of the rural
districts, has the same distrust of the veracity of the Western American
as the Englishman generally has of the Yankee himself (in which he
includes all Americans). I had been living for some years in Minnesota
when, standing one day on the platform of the railway station at, I
think, Schenectady, in New York State, I was addressed by one who was
evidently a farmer in the neighbourhood. Learning that I had just come
from Minnesota he referred to the two towns of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
"Right lively towns," he had heard them to be. "And how many people
might there be in the two together?" he asked. "About a quarter of a
million," I replied--the number being some few thousand less than the
figure given by the last census. The farmer, perhaps, had not heard
anything of the two towns for ten or a dozen years, when their
population had been not much more than a third of what it had grown to
at that time; and he looked at me. He did not say anything; he merely
looked at me, long and fixedly. Then he deliberately turned his back and
walked to the other end of the platform as far as possible from my
contaminating influence. I was never so explicitly and categorically
called a liar in my life; and he doubtless went home and told his family
of the magnificent Western exaggerator whom he had met "down to the
depot." I fear the American reputation often suffers no less unjustly in
England.
FOOTNOTES:
[349:1] Even up to a quarter of a century ago, there was at least one
corner of the United States, near to the Canadian border, where among
Indians not yet rounded up or blanketed the old feeling still existed,
so that an Englishman, proclaiming himself a "King George Man," could go
and hunt and fish safely, sure of the friendship and protection of the
red man, while an American would not have been safe for a night. The
subject of the relations between the British and the Indian tribes in
Revolutionary times has, of course, been provocative of much bitterness
in the hearts of Americans; but happily their own historians of a later
day have shown that this bitterness has only been partially justified.
There was not much to choose between Patriots and Loyalists. Those who
know the Indian know also that the universal liking for the Englishman
cannot have rested only on motives of political expediency or from
temporary alliances made in Revolutionary times. They must have had
abundant proof of the loyalty and trustworthiness of Englishmen before
so deep-rooted a sentiment could have been created. The contrast, of
course, was not with the American colonist, but with the French. The
colonists, too, were King George Men once.
[351:1] Yes; I am aware that elsewhere I quote Professor Münsterberg
without enthusiasm, but on another class of subject. Except for the
limitations which his national characteristics and upbringing impose
upon him (and for the fact that he seems to be unacquainted with the
West) the Professor has written a just and clear-sighted estimate of the
American character. We do not look to a German for a proper
understanding of the sporting instinct, as British and Americans
understand it, nor perhaps for views that will coincide with ours on the
subject of morality in the youth of either sex. But the laws of common
honesty are the same in all countries. A German is as well able to
estimate the commercial morality of a people as an Englishman, however
little he may be qualified to talk about their games or about the
_nuances_ in the masculine attitude towards women.
[358:1] That meeting has an incidental historical interest from the fact
that it was then that Mr. Morgan first stepped into the public view as a
financial power. Up to that time, his name was not particularly well
known outside of New York or the financial circles immediately connected
with New York. Most Western papers found it necessary to explain to
their readers (if they could) who the Mr. Morgan was at whose house the
meeting was being held.
CHAPTER XIV
A CONTRAST IN PRINCIPLES
The Commercial Power of the United States--British Workmanship--
Tin-tacks and Conservatism--A Prophetic Frenchman--Imperialism
in Trade--The Anglo-Saxon Spirit--About Chaperons--"Insist
upon Thyself"--English and American Banks--Dealing in Futures--
Dog Eat Dog--Two Letters--Commercial Octopods--Trusts in
America and England--The Standard Oil Company--And Solicitors--
Legal Chaperons--The Sanctity of Stamped Paper--Conclusions--
American Courts of Justice--Do "Honest" Traders Exist?
The Englishman, even the Englishman with industrial experience and
commercial training, generally, when he makes a short visit to the
United States, comes away with a certain distrust of the stability of
the American commercial fabric--a distrust which he cannot altogether
explain to himself. The rapidity of movement, the vastness of the
results, these things are before his eyes; but there insists on
obtruding itself a sense of unsubstantiality. Habituated to English
surroundings, with their ages-old traditions, the rugged deep-rooted
institutions, the deliberate revolutions of all the fly-wheels of a
long-constituted society, he cannot believe that the mushroom
establishments, thrust up as it were from the soil of a continent which
is yet one half but partially broken wilderness, have permanence. He
cannot deny the magnitude or the excellence of the work that is being
done now, at this moment, under his eyes; but it all has too much the
seeming of unreality, as though suspended in midair, unsupported. He
misses the foundations of centuries of civilisation below and the lines
of shafting running back into the past. Often, it is to be feared,
having all his life been accustomed to see power exerted only in
cumbersome processes and through old-fashioned channels, he has come to
regard the cumbersomeness and the antiquity as necessary conditions of
such exertion--nay, even to confuse them with the sources of the power
themselves. It will be remembered that the first pig that was roasted in
China was roasted by the accidental burning down of a house; and for a
long time the Chinese supposed that only by burning down a house was it
possible to come at roast pig. Finally arose a great philosopher ("like
our Locke") who discovered that it was not necessary to burn houses, but
that pigs might be cooked by much less costly and more rapid methods.
Unquestionably many of those who had been accustomed to house-burning
must have looked at the new and summary culinary processes with profound
distrust. It may even be asserted with confidence that many of the older
generation died unconverted, though pig-roasting over all sorts of
makeshift fires had been going on around them for some years.
After a more or less prolonged residence in the United States, the
Englishman finds his distrust lessening. He in turn becomes accustomed
to doing without those traditions, those foundations, those lines of
shafting, which once he considered so essential to all sound
workmanship. When in due time he returns to England he is not seldom
amazed to see how many of the things which he was wont to regard as
effective links in the machinery are really no more than waste parts
which do but retard the motion and cause loss of power. It is not
difficult to make machinery so complicated that the power exhausts
itself in overcoming the resistance of belts and pulleys and cogs.
I had lived in the United States for many years before I ceased to cling
to the notion--which I never hesitated to impart cheerfully to Americans
when occasion offered--that though American workmen turned out goods
that served their purpose well enough, for really sound and honest
workmanship you had, after all, to come to England. It was only after I
had been back in England and had experience of the ways of English
workmen once more that doubts began to accumulate. English furniture
makers told me that England nowadays did not produce such well-made or
solid furniture as pieces that I showed them from America, and which are
made in America in wholesale quantities. English picture-frame makers
marvelled at the costliness of material and the excellence of the work
in American frames. A Sackville Street tailor begged me to leave in his
hands for a few days longer some clothes which he was pressing for me,
made in a far Western State, in order that he might keep them--where
they then were--hanging in his work-room as an object-lesson to his men
in how work ought to be done. These are but isolated instances out of
many which have bred misgiving in one who for many years cherished the
conviction that a British-made article was always the best. That English
workmen should be slower, less quick-minded, more loth to take up new
ideas, or to make things as you wanted them and not as they had always
made them--these things I had expected to find, and found less often
than I had expected. But that the English workman did ultimately produce
a better and more trustworthy article--that I never doubted, till I
found it, from the confessions of the workmen and manufacturers
themselves, far from necessarily true.
Few Englishmen returning to England after many years of residence in the
United States (unless perchance they have lived on a ranch where their
contact with the industrial or commercial life of the people has been
slight) do not find themselves more or less frequently appealed to for
opinions, in giving which they are compelled, however reluctantly, to
pose as prophets, warning their countrymen to flee from the wrath to
come, telling them that they underestimate the commercial power of the
United States. Sometimes it may be that there will be some one in the
company who has spent some few weeks, perhaps, in the United States.
"Now, I don't agree with you there," this traveller will say. "When I
was in the States, I saw . ." He saw, in fact, pigs being roasted at a
commonplace sort of fire, made for the purpose, of logs and sticks and
coal and things, whereas everybody knows that no pig can be duly roasted
unless chimney stacks and window-casings and front-door handles be mixed
up with the combustibles. And the others present take comfort and are
convinced that the Old Country is a long way from going to the dogs as
yet. Of course she is, bless her! But it is not many years since an
eminently distinguished authority on iron and steel (was he not
President of the Iron and Steel Association?), after having made a tour
of the United States, assured British manufacturers that they had
nothing to fear from American competition in the steel trade. It was
some years earlier that Chatham declared that he would not allow the
American colonies to manufacture even one hobnail for themselves.
* * * * *
I have no desire now to join the band of those who are urging England so
insistently to "wake up." This is not the place for such evangelism, for
that is not the gospel which this book is intended to spread. None the
less one story I must tell, told to me many years ago in America by one
who claimed to have had some part in the transactions; a story that has
to do with (let us say, to avoid hurting any susceptibilities) the sale
of tin-tacks to Japan. And whether the story is true or not, it is at
least well found.
England, then, had had for years a monopoly of the sale of tin-tacks to
the Japanese, when a trader in Japan became impressed with the fact that
the traffic was badly handled. The tacks came out from England in
packages made to suit the needs of the English market. They were
labelled, quite truthfully of course, "Best English Tacks," and each
package contained an ounce, two ounces, or four ounces in weight, and
was priced in plain figures at so much in English money. The trader had
continual trouble with those packages. His customers were always wanting
them to be split up. They wanted two or three _sen_ worth--not four
pennyworth; also they did not care about ounces. So the trader, starting
for a visit to England, had some labels written in Japanese characters,
and when he arrived in England he went to the manufacturers and
explained matters. He showed them the labels that he had had written and
said:
"The Japanese trade is worth considering and worth taking some little
trouble to retain; but the people dislike your present packages and I
have to spend most of my time splitting up packages and counting tacks.
If you will make your packages into two thirds of an ounce each and put
a label like that on them, you will be giving the people what they want
and can understand, and it will save a lot of trouble all around."
But the manufacturers, one after another, shook their heads. They could
not read the label. They never had put any such outlandish stuff on
anything going out of their works, nor had their fathers before them.
The Japanese ought to be satisfied with the fact that they were getting
the Best English Tacks and not be unreasonable about it. And the trader
exhausted himself with argument and became discouraged.
He returned to Japan _via_ the United States, and stopped to see the
nearest tack-manufacturer. He showed him the label and told his story.
"Looks blamed queer!" said the manufacturer, "but you say that's what
they want out there? Let's catch a Jap and see if he can read the
thing."
So a clerk was sent out to fetch a Japanese, which he did.
"How' do, John?" said the manufacturer to the new arrival. (Chinese and
Japanese alike were all "John" to the American until a few years ago.)
"You can read that, eh?"
The Japanese smiled, looked at the label and read it aloud.
"All straight goods, eh, John?" asked the manufacturer. The Japanese
answered in the affirmative and retired.
Then the manufacturer called for his manager.
"Mr. Smith," he said, as the manager came in, "this is Mr. Brown of
Tokio, Japan. He tells me that if we do up tacks in two third of an
ounce lots and stick that label on each package, we might do some good
business out there. That label--it don't matter which is the top of the
thing--calls for a price that figures out to us at about two cents a
pound more than our regular export rates. I want this gentleman to have
a trial lot shipped out to him and he'll see what he can do. Just go
ahead will you and see to it?"
"Yes, sir," said the manager; and when the trader sailed from San
Francisco a couple of weeks later the same vessel carried out a trial
order of tacks consigned to him at Tokio, made up in two thirds of an
ounce packages with mysterious hieroglyphics on the labels. It only took
the trader a few days, after his return, to satisfy himself that the
sooner he cabled the American manufacturer to duplicate the order the
better. There never has been anybody in the American works who has been
able to read what is on that label; but when instructions were given for
printing new labels after six months of trial the order was for a
quarter of a million, and British manufacturers were astonished to
discover that by some unexplainable chicanery they had lost the Japanese
market for tacks.
I have said that I do not know whether the story is true or not; but
fifty similar stories are. And in the aggregate they explain a good
deal.
But let me say again that the conservatism of British manufacturers is
not now my theme. But I do most earnestly believe that Englishmen as a
whole--even English traders and manufacturers--unwisely underestimate
the commercial power of the United States. What the United States has
accomplished in the invasion of the world's markets in the last ten
years (since the trade revival of 1896-97) is only a foretaste of what
is to come. So far from there being anything unsubstantial--any danger
of lack of staying power, any want of reserve force--the power has
hardly yet begun to exert itself. Of Europeans who have recently written
upon the subject, it seems to me that none has shown a truer
appreciation of the situation than M. Gabriel Hanotaux, the former
French Minister for Foreign Affairs.[378:1] He sees the shadow of
America's commercial domination already falling across Europe; and, so
far as France is concerned, he discerns only two directions from which
help can come. He pleads with young Frenchmen to travel more, so that
the rising generation may be less ignorant of the commercial conditions
of the modern world and may see more clearly what it is that they have
to fight, and, second, he points to the Colonial Empire of France, with
an area not much inferior to that of the United States, and believes
that therein may be laid the foundations of a commercial power which
will be not unable to cope even with that of America.
It may be only the arrogance and superciliousness of the Anglo-Saxon
that prevent one sharing the sanguineness of M. Hanotaux as to any
relief coming to the help of France from these two sources, for British
hopes can only lie in analogous directions. Englishmen also need to
understand better the conditions which have to be met and the power of
their competitors; and it is the young men who must learn. Also, if it
be impossible that the British Isles should hold their own against the
United States, there appears no reason why the British Empire should not
be abundantly able to do so.
It is not easy for one who has not lived all his life in England to
share the satisfaction with which the English papers commonly welcome
the intelligence that some great American manufacturing concern is
establishing branch works in Canada. It is well for Canada that such
works should be established; but it is pitiable for the Empire that it
should be left to the United States to establish them. British capital
was the chief instrumentality with which the United States was enabled
to build its own railways and conduct the other great enterprises for
the development of the resources of its mighty West, and it is, from the
point of view of a British Imperialist, deplorable that British
capitalists should not now be ready to take those risks for the sake of
the Empire which American capital is willing to take with no other
incentive than the probable trade profits.
His conservatism, it should be noticed, has a tendency to fall away from
the Englishman when he goes out from the environment and atmosphere of
the British Isles. The Canadian, or the Englishman who has gone to
Canada young enough to imbibe the colonial spirit, is not easily to be
distinguished from the citizen of the United States in his ways of
doing business. Even the Anglo-Indian refuses to subject himself, in
India, to all the cumbersome formalities with which he is compelled to
conduct any business transaction when at home. Mr. Kipling in one of his
latest stories has given us a delightful picture of the bafflement of
the Australasian Minister struggling to bring his Great Idea for the
Good of his Colony and the Empire to the attention of the officials in
Whitehall.
The encumbering conservatism which now hangs upon the wheels of British
commerce is no part of--no legitimate offshoot of--the English genius.
It is a fungoid and quite alien growth, which has fastened upon that
genius, taking advantage of its frailties. Englishmen, we hear, are slow
to change and to move; yet they have always moved more quickly than
other European peoples as the Empire stands to prove. And if the people
of Great Britain had the remodelling of their society to do over again
to-day, they, following their native instincts, would hardly rebuild it
on its present lines. With the same "elbow room" they would, it may be
suspected, produce something but little dissimilar (except in the
monarchical form of government) from that which has been evolved in the
United States.
When Englishmen, looking at the progress of the United States, doubt its
permanence--when they distrust the substantiality or the honesty in the
workmanship in the American commercial fabric--it might be well if they
would say to themselves that the men who are doing these things are only
Englishmen with other larger opportunities. Behind all this that meets
the eye is the same old Anglo-Saxon spirit of pluck and energy which
made Great Britain great when she was younger and had in turn her larger
opportunities. Above all, that pluck and energy are unhampered by
tradition and precedent in exerting themselves in whatever direction may
be most advantageous; and to be unhampered does not necessarily mean
freedom only to go wrong.
An American girl once explained why it was much pleasanter to have a
chaperon than to be without one:
"If I am allowed about alone," she explained, "I feel that I am on my
honour and can never do a thing that I would not like mama to see; but
when a chaperon is with me, the responsibility for my behaviour is
shifted to her. It is her duty to keep me straight. I have a right to be
just as bad as I can without her catching me."
The tendency of American business life is first to develop the
individuality and initiative of a man and, second, to put him, as it
were, on his honour. It is, of course, of the essence of a democracy
that each man should be encouraged to develop whatever good may be in
him and to receive recognition therefor; but there have been other
factors at work in the shaping of the American character besides the
form of government. Chief among these factors have been the work which
Americans have had to do in subduing their own continent and that they
have had to do it unaided and in isolation. Washington Irving has a
delightful sentence somewhere (in _Astoria_ I think) about the
frontiersman hewing his way through the back woods and developing his
character by "bickering with bears." "The frontiersmen, by their
conquest of nature, had come to despise the strength of all enemies,"
says Dr. Sparks in his _History of the United States_. It was only to be
expected, it was indeed inevitable, that the first of American
thinkers--the man whose philosophy caught the national fancy and has
done more towards the moulding of a national temperament than, perhaps,
any man who ever wrote, should have been before all things the Apostle
of the Individual. "Insist upon Thyself!" Emerson says--not once, but it
runs as a refrain through everything he wrote or thought. "Always do
what you are afraid to do!" "The Lord will not make his works manifest
by a coward." "God hates a coward." "America is only another name for
Opportunity." My quotations come from random memory, but the spirit is
right. It is the spirit which Americans have been obliged to have since
the days when the Fathers walked to meeting in fear of Indian arrows.
And they need it yet. It has become an inheritance with them and it,
more than anything else, shapes the form and method of their politics
and above all of their business conduct.
I have said elsewhere that in society (except only in certain circles in
certain cities of the East) it is the individual character and
achievements of the man himself that count; neither his father nor his
grandfather matters--nor do his brothers and sisters. And it is the same
in business. I am not saying that good credentials and strong friends
are not of use to any man; but without friends or credentials, the man
who has an idea which is commercially valuable will find a market in
which to sell it. If he has the ability to exploit it himself and the
power to convince others of his integrity, he will find capital ready
to back him. It is difficult to explain in words to those accustomed to
the traditions of English business how this principle underlies and
permeates American business in all its modes.
One example of it--trivial enough, but it will serve for
illustration--which visiting Englishmen are likely to be confronted
with, perhaps to their great inconvenience, is in the bank practice in
the matter of cheques. There is, as is well known, no "crossing" of
cheques in America, but all cheques are "open"; and many an Englishman
has gone confidently to the bank on which it was drawn with a cheque,
the signature to which he knew to be good, and has expected to have the
money paid over the counter to him without a word. All that the English
paying teller needs to be satisfied of is that the signature of the
drawer is genuine and that there is money enough to the credit of the
account to meet the cheque. But the Englishman in the strange American
bank finds that the document in his hands is practically useless, no
matter how good the signature or how large the account on which it is
drawn, unless he himself--the person who presents the cheque--is known
to the bank officials. "Can you identify yourself, sir?" The Englishman
usually feels inclined to take the question as an impertinence; but he
produces cards and envelopes from his pocket--the name on his
handkerchief--anything to show that he is the person in whose favour the
cheque is drawn. Perhaps in this way he can satisfy the bank official.
Perhaps he will have to go away and bring back somebody who will
identify him. It is the _personality of the individual with whom the
business is done_ that the American system takes into account.[384:1]
It is, as I have said, a trivial point, but it suffices. Vastly more
important is the whole banking practice in America. This is no place to
go into the details at the controversy which has raged around the merits
and demerits of the American banking system. In the financial panic of
1893 something over 700 banks suspended payment in the United States. At
such seasons, especially, but more or less at all times, a great
proportion of the best authorities in the United States believe that it
would be better for the country if the Scotch--or the Canadian
adaptation of the Scotch--system were to take the place of that now in
vogue. Possibly they are right. The gain of having the small local banks
in out-of-the-way places possess all the stability of branches of a
great central house is obvious, both in the increase of security to
depositors in time of financial stress and also in the ability of such a
house to lend money at lower rates of interest than is possible to the
poorer institution with its smaller capital which has no connections and
no resources beyond what are locally in evidence. It may be questioned,
however, whether the country as a whole would not lose much more than it
would gain by the less complete identification of the bank with local
interests. It would be inevitable that in many cases the local manager
would be restrained by the greater conservatism of the authorities of
the central house from lending support to local enterprises, which he
would extend if acting only by and for himself as an independent member
of the local business community. It is difficult to see how the country
as a whole could have developed in the measure that it has under any
system differing much from that which it has had.
In theory it may be that the functions of a bank are precisely the same
in Great Britain and in America. In practice different functions have
become dominant in the two. In England a bank's chief business is to
furnish a safe depository for the funds of its clients. In America its
chief business is to assist--of course with an eye to its own profit and
only within limits to which it can safely go--the local business
community in extending and developing its business. The American
business man looks upon the bank as his best friend. If his business be
sound and he be sensible, he gives the proper bank official an insight
into his affairs far more intimate and confidential than the Englishman
usually thinks of doing. He invites the bank's confidence and in turn
the bank helps him beyond the limits of his established credit line in
whatever may be considered a legitimate emergency. In any small town
whenever a new enterprise of any public importance is to be started, the
bank is expected to take shares and otherwise assist in promoting a
movement which is for the common good. The credits which American
banks--especially in the West--give to their customers are astoundingly
liberal according to an English banker's standards. Sometimes of
course they make mistakes and have to pocket losses. When a storm
breaks, moreover (as in the case already quoted of the panic of 1893),
they may be unable to call in their loans in time to take care
of their liabilities. But that they have been a tremendous--an
incalculable--factor in the general advancement of the country cannot be
questioned.
The difference between the parts played by the banks in the two
countries rests of course on two fundamental differences in the
condition of the countries themselves. The first of these is the fact
that while England is a country of accumulated wealth and large fortunes
which need safeguarding, America has until recently been a country of
small realised wealth but immense natural resources which needed
developing. The policy of the banks has been shaped to meet the demands
of the situation.
In the second place (and too much stress cannot be laid upon this in any
comparison of the business-life of the two peoples) the American is
always trading on a rising market. This is true of the individual and
true of the nation. Temporary fluctuations there are of course, but
after every setback the country has only gone ahead faster than before.
The man with faith in the future, provided only that he looked far
enough ahead to be protected against temporary times of depression, has
always won. Just as the railway companies push their lines out into the
wilderness, confident of the population that will follow, and are never
disappointed, so in all other lines the man who is always in advance,
who does not wait for the demand to be there before he enlarges his
plant to meet it, but who sees it coming and is ready for it when it
comes--the man who has always acted in the belief that the future will
be bigger than the present,--that man has never failed to reap his
reward. Of course the necessary danger in such a condition is that of
over-speculation. But nearly every man who amasses wealth or wins large
commercial success in the United States habitually takes risks which
would be folly in England. They are not folly in him, because the
universal growth of the country, dragging with it and buoying up all
industries and all values, as it goes, is on his side. It is inevitable
that there should result a national temperament more buoyant, more
enterprising, more alert.
* * * * *
What is important, too, is that whereas in England the field is already
more or less full and was handed down to the present generation well
occupied, so that new industries can, as it were, only be erected on the
ruins of old, and a site has to be cleared of one factory before another
can be built (all of which is, in a measure, only relative and
metaphorical), in the United States there is always room for the
newcomers. New population is pouring in to create new markets: new
resources are being developed to provide the raw material for new
industries; there is abundance of new land, new cities, new sites
whereon the new factories can be built. This is why "America" and
"opportunity" are interchangeable terms; why young men need never lack
friends or backing or the chance to be the architects of their own
fortunes. Society can afford to encourage the individual to assert
himself, because there is space for and need of him.
From this flow certain corollaries from which we may draw direct
comparison between the respective spirits in which business in the two
countries is carried on. In the first place, in consequence of the more
crowded condition of the field and the greater intensity of
competition, the business community in England is much more ruthless,
much less helpful, in the behaviour of its members one towards the
other. It is not a mere matter of the more exacting scrutiny of credits,
of the more rigid insistence on the exact fulfilment of a bond (provided
that bond be stamped), but it colours unconsciously the whole tone of
thought and language of the people. There are two principles on which
business may be conducted, known in America respectively as the "Live
and let live" principle, and the "Dog eat dog" principle. There was
until recently in existence in the United States one guild, or
association, representing a purely parasitical trade--that of
ticket-scalping--which was fortunately practically peculiar to the
United States. This concern had deliberately adopted the legend "Dog eat
dog" as its motto and two bull-dogs fighting as its crest; but in doing
so its purpose was to proclaim that the guild was an Ishmaelite among
business men and lived avowedly in defiance of the accepted canons of
trade. On the other hand one meets in America with the words "Live and
let live" as a trademark, or motto, on every hand and on the lips of the
people. Few men in America but could cite cases which they know wherein
men have gone out of their way to help their bitterest competitor when
they knew that he needed help. The belief in co-operation, on which
follows a certain comradeship, as a business principle is ingrained in
the people.
I was once given two letters to read, of which one was a copy and the
other an original. The circumstances which led up to the writing of them
were as follows: Two rich men, A. and B., had been engaged in a
business duel. It was desperate--_à outrance_,--dealing in large
figures; and each man had to call up all his reserves and put out all
his strength. At last the end came and A. was beaten--beaten and ruined.
Then the letters passed which I quote from memory:
"DEAR MR. B.:
"I know when I'm beaten and if I was quite sure you wouldn't
kick a man when he's down, I would come round to see you and
grovel. As perhaps you can guess, I am in a bad way.
"Yours truly, A."
"DEAR A.:
"There's no need to grovel. Come around to my house after
supper to-morrow night and let us see what we can do together
to put you straight.
"Yours truly, B."
I need hardly say that it was the second letter of which I saw the
original, or that it was A. who showed them to me, when they were
already several years old but still treasured, and A. was a wealthy man
again as a result of that meeting after dinner. A. told me briefly what
passed at that meeting. "He gave me a little more than half a million,"
he said. "Of course he has had it back long ago; but he did not know
that he would get it at the time and he took no note or other security
from me. At the time it was practically a gift of five hundred thousand
dollars."
And as I write I can almost hear the English reader saying, "Pooh! the
same things are done times without number in England." And I can hear
the American, still smarting under the recollection of some needlessly
cruel and unfair thrust from the hands of a competitor, smile cynically
and say that he would like to tell me certain things that he knows. Of
course there are exceptions on either side. It takes, as the American is
so fond of saying, "all kinds of men to make a world." It is the same
old difficulty of generalising about a nation or drawing up an
indictment against a whole people. But I do not think that any man who
has engaged for any length of time in business in both countries, who
has lived in each sufficiently to absorb the spirit of the respective
communities, will dissent from what I have said. Many Englishmen,
without knowledge of business in England, go to America and find the
atmosphere harder and less friendly than they were accustomed to at
home, and come to quite another conclusion. But they are comparing
American business life with the social club-and-country-house life of
home. Let them acquire the same experience of business circles in
England, and then compare the tone with that of business circles in
America, and they will change their opinions.
Let me recall again what was said above as to the difference in the
motives which may impel a man to go into business or trade in the two
countries. An Englishman cannot well pretend that he does it with any
other purpose than to make money. The American hopes to make money too,
but he takes up business as an honourable career and for the sake of
winning standing and reputation among his fellows. This being so,
business in America has a tendency to become more of a game or a
pastime--to be followed with the whole heart certainly--but in a measure
for itself, and not alone for the stakes to be won. It is not difficult
to see how, in this spirit, it may be easier to forego those stakes--to
let the actual money slip--when once you have won the game.
* * * * *
It is necessary to refer briefly again to the subject of trusts. In
England a great corporation which was able to demonstrate beyond dispute
that it had materially cheapened the cost of any staple article to the
public, and further showed that when, in the process of extending its
operations, it of necessity wiped out any smaller business concerns, it
never failed to provide the owners or partners of those concerns with
managerial positions which secured to them a larger income than they
could have hoped to earn as individual traders, and moreover took into
their service the employees of the disbanded concerns at equal
salaries,--such a corporation would generally be regarded by the English
people as a public benefactor and as a philanthropically and charitably
disposed institution. In America the former consideration has some
weight, though not much; the latter none at all.
When a trust takes into its service those men whom it has destroyed as
individual traders, the fact remains that their industrial independence
has been crushed. The individual can no longer "insist upon himself." He
is subordinate and no longer free. One of the first principles of
American business life, the encouragement of individual initiative, has
been violated, and nothing will atone for it.
The Standard Oil Company can, I believe, prove beyond possibility of
contradiction that the result of its operations has been to reduce
immensely the cost of oil to the public, as well as to give facilities
in the way of distribution of the product which unassociated enterprise
could never have furnished. It can also show that in many, and, I
imagine, in the majority, of cases, it has endeavoured to repair by
offers of employment of various sorts whatever injuries it has done to
individuals by ruining their business. But these things constitute no
defence in the eyes of the American people.
There is the additional ground of public hostility that the weapons
employed to crush competitors have often been illegal weapons. Without
the assistance of the railway companies (which was given in violation of
the law) the Standard Oil Company might have been unable to win more
than one of its battles; but this fact, while it furnishes a handle
against the company and exposes a side of it which may prove to be
vulnerable, and is therefore kept to the front in any public indictment
of the company's methods, is an immaterial factor in the popular
feeling. Few Americans (or Englishmen) will not accept a reduced rate
from a railway company when they can get it. Whatever actual bitterness
may be felt by the average man against the Standard Oil Company because
it procured rebates on its freight bills is rather the bitterness of
jealousy than of an outraged sense of morality. The real bitterness--and
very bitter it is--is caused by the fact that the company has crushed
out so many individuals. On similar ground nothing approaching the same
intensity of feeling could be engendered in the British public.
Let us now recur for a moment to the views of the young woman quoted
above on the interesting topic of chaperons. We have seen that
insistence on the individuality is a conspicuous--perhaps it is the most
conspicuous--trait of the American character. Encouraged by the wider
horizon and more ample elbow-room and assisted by the something more
than tolerant good-will of his business associates, colleagues, or
competitors, the individual, once insisted on, has every chance to
develop and become prosperous and rich. Everything helps a man in
America to strike out for himself, to walk alone, and to dispense with a
chaperon. The Englishman is chaperoned at almost every step of his
business career; and I am not speaking now of the chaperonage of his
colleagues, of his fellows in the community, or of his elders among whom
he grows up and, generally, in spite of whom the young man must make his
way to the top. There is another much more significant form of
chaperonage in English business circles, of which it is difficult to
speak without provoking hostility.
The English business world is solicitor-cursed. I mean by this no
reflection on solicitors either individually or in the mass. I am making
no reference to such cases as there have been of misappropriation by
solicitors here and there of funds entrusted to their charge, nor to
their methods of making charges, which are preposterous but not of their
choosing. Let us grant that, given the necessity of solicitors at all,
Great Britain is blessed in that she has so capable and upright and in
all ways admirable a set of men to fill the offices and do the work.
What I am attacking is solicitordom as an institution.
It is not merely that there are no solicitors, as such, in the United
States, for it might well be that the general practising lawyers who
fill their places, so far as their places have to be filled, might be
just as serious an incubus on business as solicitordom is on the
business of London to-day. Names are immaterial. The essential fact is
that the spirit and the conditions which make solicitors a necessity in
England do not exist in America. I do not propose to go into any
comparison in the differences in legal procedure in the two countries;
not being a lawyer, I should undoubtedly make blunders if I did. What is
important is that a man who is accustomed to walking alone does not
think of turning to his legal adviser at every step. Great corporations
and large business concerns have of course their counsel, their
attorneys, and even their "general solicitors." But the ordinary
American engaged in trade or business in a small or moderate way gets
along from year's end to year's end, perhaps for his lifetime, without
legal services. I am speaking only on conjecture when I say that, taking
the country as a whole, outside of the large corporations or among rich
men, over ninety per cent. of the legal documents--leases, agreements,
contracts, articles of partnership, articles of incorporation, bills of
sale, and deeds of transfer--are executed by the individuals concerned
without reference to a lawyer. Probably not less than three fourths of
the actual transactions in the purchase of land, houses, businesses, or
other property are similarly concluded without assistance. "What do we
need of a lawyer?" one man will ask the other and the other will
immediately agree that they need one not at all.
Of course troubles often arise which would have been prevented had the
documents been drawn up by a competent hand. The constitutional
reluctance to go to a lawyer is sometimes carried to lengths that are
absurd. But I do not believe that the amount of litigation which arises
from that cause is in any way comparable to that which is avoided by the
mere fact that legal aid is outside the mental horizon. The men who
conduct most of the affairs of life directly without legal help are most
likely to adjust differences when they arise in the same way. That is a
matter of opinion, however, based only on reasonable analogy, which I
can advance no figures to support; but what is not matter of opinion,
but matter of certainty, is, first, that the general gain in the
rapidity of business movement is incalculable, and, second, that
business as a whole is relieved of the vast burden of solicitors'
charges.
The American, accustomed to the ways of his own people, on becoming
engaged in business in London is astounded, first, at the disposition of
the Englishman to turn for legal guidance in almost every step he takes,
second, at the stupendous sums of money which are paid for services
which in his opinion are entirely superfluous, and, finally, at the
terrible loss of time incurred in the conclusion of any transaction by
the waiting for the drafting and redrafting and amending and engrossing
and recording of interminable documents which are a bewilderment and an
annoyance to him.
The Englishman often says that American business methods are slip-shod;
and possibly that is the right word. But Englishmen should not for a
moment deceive themselves into thinking that the American envies the
Englishman the superior niceties of his ways or would think himself or
his condition likely to be improved by an exchange. An example of
difference in the practice of the two countries which has so often been
used as to be fairly hackneyed (and therefore perhaps stands the better
chance of carrying conviction than a more original, if better,
illustration) is drawn from the theory which governs the building of
locomotive engines in the two countries.
The American usually builds his engine to do a certain specified service
and to last a reasonable length of time. During that time he proposes to
get all the work out of it that he can--to wear it out in fact--feeling
well assured that, when that time expires, either the character of the
service to be performed will have altered or such improvements will have
been introduced into the science of locomotive construction as will make
it cheaper to replace the old engine with one of later build. The
Englishman commonly builds his engines as if they were to last for all
time. There are many engines working on English railways now, the
American contemporaries of which were scrapped twenty years ago. The
Englishman takes pride in their antiquity, as showing the excellence of
the workmanship which was put into them. The American thinks it would
have been incomparably better to have thrown the old things away long
ago and replaced them with others of recent building which would be more
efficient.
The same principle runs through most things in American life, where they
rarely build for posterity, preferring to adapt the article to the work
it has to perform, expecting to supersede it when the time comes with
something better. If a thing suffices, it suffices; whether it be a
locomotive or a contract. "What is the use," the American asks, "when
you can come to an agreement with a fellow in ten minutes and draw up
your contract with him that afternoon,--what is the use of calling in
your solicitors to negotiate and then paying them heavily to keep you
waiting for weeks while they draft documents? We shall have had the
contract running a month and be making money out of it before the
lawyers would get through talking."
Out of this divergence in point of view and practice have of course
grown other differences. One thing is that the American courts have
necessarily come to adopt more liberal views in the interpretation of
contracts than the English; they are to a greater extent inclined to
look more to the intent than to the letter and to attach more weight to
verbal evidence in eliciting what the intent was. No stamping of
documents being necessary in America, the documents calling themselves
contracts, and which are upheld as such, which appear in American courts
are frequently of a remarkable description; but I have a suspicion that
on the whole the American, in this particular, comes as near to getting
justice on the average as does the Englishman.
And the point is that I believe it to be inevitable that the habit of
doing without lawyers in the daily conduct of business, the habit of
relying on oneself and dealing with another man direct, must in the long
run breed a higher standard of individual business integrity.
Englishmen, relying always on their solicitors' advice, are too tempted
to consider that so long as they are on the right side of the law they
are honest. It is a shifting of the responsibility to the chaperon;
whereas, if alone, you would be compelled to act on your honour.
What I think and hope is the last word that I have to say on this rather
difficult subject has to do with the matter already mentioned, namely
the absence of the necessity of stamping documents in America.
Englishmen will remember that the Americans always have evinced a
dislike of stamps and stamp duties and acts relating thereto. Of late
years the necessity of meeting the expenses of the Spanish war did for a
while compel the raising of additional internal revenue by means of
documentary and other stamps. The people submitted to it, but they hated
it; and hated it afresh as often as they drew or saw a cheque with the
two-cent stamp upon it. The act was repealed as speedily as possible and
the stamping of papers has for six years now been unknown.
I think--and I am not now stating any acknowledged fact, but only
appealing to the reader's common-sense--that it is again inevitable that
where a superior sanctity attaches to stamped paper a people must in the
long run come to think too lightly of that which is unstamped. I do not
say that the individual Englishman has as yet come to think too lightly
of his word or bond because it is informal, but I do think there is
danger of it. The words "Can we hold him?" or (what is infinitely worse)
"Can he hold us?" spring somewhat readily to the lips of the business
man of this generation in England.
Continual dependence on the law and the man of law, and an extra respect
for paper because it is legal, have--they surely cannot fail to have--a
tendency to breed in the mind a disregard for what is not of a
strictly legal or actionable character. It is Utopian to dream of a
state of society where no law will be needed but every man's written
and spoken word will be a law to him; but it is not difficult to imagine
a state of society in which there is such universal dependence on the
law in all emergencies that the individual conscience will become
weakened--pauperised--atrophied--and unable to stand alone.
That is, as I have said, the last point that I wish to make on this
subject; and the reader will please notice that I have nowhere said that
I consider American commercial morality at the present day to be higher
than English. Nor do I think that it is. Incontestably it is but a
little while since the English standard was appreciably the higher of
the two. I have cited from my own memory instances of conditions which
existed in America only twenty years ago in support of the fact--though
no proof is needed--that this is so. I by no means underestimate the
fineness of the traditions of British commerce or the number of men
still living who hold to those traditions. On the other hand, better
judges than I believe that the standard of morality in English business
circles is declining. In America it is certainly and rapidly improving.
Present English ideas about American commercial ethics are founded on a
knowledge of facts, correct enough at the time, which existed before the
improvement had made anything like the headway that it has, which facts
no longer exist. I have roughly compared in outline some of the
essential qualities of the atmosphere in which, and some of the
conditions under which, the business men in the two countries live and
do their business, showing that in the United States there is a much
more marked tendency to insist on the character of the individual and a
much larger opportunity for the individuality to develop itself; and
that in certain particulars there are in England inherited social
conditions and institutions which it would appear cannot fail to hamper
the spirit of self-reliance, on which self-respect is ultimately
dependent.
* * * * *
And the conclusion? For the most part my readers must draw it for
themselves. My own opinion is that, whatever the relative standing of
the two countries may be to-day, it is hardly conceivable that, by the
course on which each is travelling, in another generation American
commercial integrity will not stand the higher of the two. The
conditions in America are making for the shaping of a sterner type of
man.
* * * * *
_Postscript._--The opinion has been expressed in the foregoing pages
that in one particular the American on the average comes as near to
getting justice in his courts as does the Englishman. I have also given
expression to my great respect, which I think is shared by everyone who
knows anything of it, for the United States Supreme Court. Also I have
spoken disparagingly of the English institution of solicitordom. But
these isolated expressions of opinion on particular points must not be
interpreted as a statement that American laws and procedure are on the
whole comparable to the English. I do not believe that they are. None
the less Englishmen have as a rule such vague notions upon this subject
that some explanatory comment seems to be desirable.
Especially do few Englishmen (not lawyers or students of the subject)
recognise that the abuses in the administration of justice in America,
of which they hear so much, do not occur in the United States courts,
but in the local courts of the several States. So far as the United
States (_i. e._, the Federal) Courts are concerned I believe that the
character and capacity of the judges (all of whom are appointed and not
elected) compare favourably with those of English judges. It is in the
State courts, the judges of which are generally elected, that the
shortcomings appear; and while it might be reasonable to expect that a
great State like New York or Massachusetts should have a code of laws
and an administration of justice not inferior to those of Great Britain,
it is perhaps scarcely fair to expect as much of each of the 46 States,
many of which are as yet young and thinly populated.
The chief vice of the State courts arises, of course, from the fact that
the judges are elected by a partisan vote; from which it follows almost
of necessity that there will be among them not a few who in their
official actions will be amenable to the influence of party pressure. It
is perhaps also inevitable that under such a system there will not
seldom find their way to the bench men of such inferior character that
they will be directly reachable by private bribes; though this, I
believe, seldom occurs. The State courts, however, labour under other
disadvantages.
We have seen how Congressmen are hampered in the execution of their
duties by the constant calls upon their time made by the leaders of
their party, or other influential interests, in their constituencies.
The same is true on a smaller scale of members of the State
legislatures. Congress and the legislatures of the several States alike
are moreover limited by the restrictions of written constitutions. The
British Parliament is paramount; but the United States legislatures are
always operating under fear of conflict with the Constitution. Their
spheres are limited, so that they can only legislate on certain subjects
and within certain lines; while finally the country has grown so fast,
the conditions of society have changed with such rapidity, that it has
been inherently difficult for lawmaking bodies to keep pace with the
increasing complexity of the social and industrial fabric.
If the limitations of space did not forbid, it would be interesting to
show how this fact, more than any other (and not any willingness to
leave loopholes for dishonesty) makes possible such offences as those
which, committed by certain financial institutions in New York, were the
immediate precipitating cause of the recent panic. Growth has been so
rapid that, with the best will in the world to erect safeguards against
malfeasance, weak spots in the barricades are, as it were, only
discovered after they have been taken advantage of. With the
preoccupation of the legislators stable doors are only found to be open
by the fact that the horses are already in the street.
But, after all has been said in extenuation, there remain many things in
American State laws for which one may find explanation but not much
excuse.
Reference has already been made to the entirely immoral attitude of many
of the State legislatures towards corporations, especially towards
railway companies; and in some of the Western States prejudice against
accumulated wealth is so strong that it is practically impossible for a
rich man or corporation to get a verdict against a poor man. It would
be easy to cite cases from one's personal experience wherein jurors have
frankly explained their rendering of a verdict in obvious contradiction
of the weight of evidence, by the mere statement that the losing party
"could stand it" while the other could not. Of a piece with this is a
class of legislation which has been abundant in Western States, where
the legislators as well as most of the residents of the States have been
poor, giving extraordinary advantages to debtors and making the
collection of debts practically impossible. In some cases such
legislation has defeated itself by compelling capitalists to refuse to
invest, and wholesale traders to refuse to give credit, inside the
State.
Yet another source of corruption in legislation is to be found in the
mere numerousness of the States themselves. It may obviously inure to
the advantage of the revenues of a particular State to be especially
lenient in matters which involve the payment of fees. It is evidently
desirable that a check should be put on the reckless incorporation of
companies with unlimited share capital, the usual form of such a check
being, of course, the graduation of the fee for incorporation in
proportion to such capital. One State which has laws more generous than
any of its neighbours in this particular is likely to attract to it the
incorporation of all the companies of any magnitude from those States,
the formal compliance with the requirements of having a statutory
office, and of holding an annual meeting, in that State being a matter
of small moment. Similar considerations may govern one State in enacting
laws facilitating the obtaining of divorce.
There are, then, obviously many causes which make the attainment of
either an uniform or a satisfactory code of jurisprudence in all States
alike extremely difficult of attainment. It will only be arrived at by,
on the one hand, the extension of the Federal authority and, on the
other the increase in population and wealth (and, consequently, a sense
of responsibility) in those States which at present are less forward
than their neighbours. But, again, it is worth insisting on the fact
that the faults are faults of the several States and not of the United
States. They do not imply either a lack of a sense of justice in the
people as a whole or any willingness to make wrong-doing easy. But it is
extremely difficult for the public opinion of the rest of the country to
bring any pressure to bear on the legislature of one recalcitrant State.
The desire to insist on its own independence is indeed so strong in
every State that any attempt at outside interference must almost
inevitably result only in developing resistance.
* * * * *
And again I find myself regretfully in direct conflict with Mr. Wells.
But it is not easy to take his meditations on American commercial
morality in entire seriousness.
"In the highly imaginative theory that underlies the reality of an
individualistic society," he says (_The Future in America_, p. 168),
"there is such a thing as honest trading. In practice I don't believe
there is. Exchangeable things are supposed to have a fixed quality
called their value, and honest trading is I am told the exchange of
things of equal value. Nobody gains or loses by honest trading and
therefore nobody can grow rich by it." And more to the same effect.
A trader buys one thousand of a given article per month from the
manufacturer at ninepence an article and sells them to his customers at
tenpence. The extra penny is his payment for acting as purveyor, and the
customers recognise that it is an equitable charge which they pay
contentedly. That is honest trading; and the trader makes a profit of a
trifle over four pounds a month, or fifty pounds a year.
Another trader purveys the same article, buying it from the same
manufacturer, but owing to the possession of larger capital, better
talent for organisation, and more enterprise, he sells, not one
thousand, but one million per month. Instead of selling them at
tenpence, however, he sells them at ninepence half-penny; thereby making
his customers a present of one half-penny, taking to himself only one
half of the sum to which they have already consented as a just charge
for the services which he renders. Supposing that he pays the same price
as the other trader for his goods (which, buying by the million, he
would not do), he makes a profit of some £2083 a month, or £25,000 a
year. Evidently he grows rich.
This is the rudimentary principle of modern business; but because one
man becomes rich, though he gives the public the same service for less
charge than honest men, Mr. Wells says that he cannot be honest.
If two men discover simultaneously gold mines of equal value, and one,
being timid and conservative, puts twenty men to work while the other
puts a thousand, and each makes a profit of one shilling a day on each
man's labour, it is evident that while one enjoys an income of a pound a
day for himself the other makes fifty times as much. It is not only
obvious that the latter is just as honest as the former, but he can
well afford to pay his men a shilling or two a week more in wages. He
can afford to build them model homes and give them reading-rooms and
recreation grounds, which the other cannot.
Others, besides Mr. Wells, lose their heads when they contemplate large
fortunes made in business; but the elementary lesson to be learned is
not merely that such large fortunes are likely to be as "honestly"
acquired as the smaller ones, but also that the man who trades on the
larger scale is--or has the potentiality of being--the greater
benefactor to the community, not merely by being able to furnish the
people with goods at a lower price but also by his ability to employ
more labour and to surround his workmen with better material conditions.
The tendency of modern business industry to agglutinate into large units
is, as has been said, inevitable; but, what is better worth noting, like
all natural developments from healthy conditions, it is a thing
inherently beneficent. That the larger power is capable of greater abuse
than the smaller is also evident; and against that abuse it is that the
American people is now struggling to safeguard itself. But to assail all
trading on a scale which produces great wealth as "dishonest" is both
impertinent (it is Mr. Wells's own word, applied to himself) and absurd.
The aggregate effect of the great consolidations in America and in
England alike (of the "trusts" in fact) has so far been to cheapen
immensely the price of most of the staples of life to the people; and
that will always be the tendency of all consolidations which stop at any
point short of monopoly. And that an artificial monopoly (not based on
a natural monopoly) can ever be made effective in any staple for more
than the briefest space of time has yet to be demonstrated.
The other consideration, of the destruction of the independence of the
individual, remains; but that lies outside Mr. Wells' range.
FOOTNOTES:
[378:1] Preface to the _Encyclopædia of Trade between the United States
and France_, prepared by the Société du Repertoire Général du Commerce.
[384:1] I do not know whether the story is true or not that Signor
Caruso was compelled, in default of other means of identification in a
New York bank, to lift up his voice and sing to the satisfaction of the
bank officials. As has been remarked, this is not the first time that
gold has been given in exchange for notes.
CHAPTER XV
THE PEOPLES AT PLAY
American Sport Twenty-five Years Ago--The Power of Golf--A
Look Ahead--Britain, Mother of Sports--Buffalo in New York--And
Pheasants on Clapham Common--Shooting Foxes and the "Sport" of
Wild-fowling--The Amateur in American Sport--At Henley--And at
Large--Teutonic Poppycock.
In "An Error in the Fourth Dimension," Kipling tells how one Wilton
Sargent, an American, came to live in England and earnestly laboured to
make himself more English than the English. He learned diligently to do
many things most un-American:--"Last mystery of all he learned to
golf--well; and when an American knows the innermost meaning of '_Don't
press, slow back and keep your eye on the ball_,' he is, for practical
purposes, de-nationalised." Some six years after that was written an
American golfer became Amateur Champion of Great Britain. Yes; I know
that Mr. Travis was not born in the United States, but _qua_ golfer he
is American pure and simple. Which shows the danger of too hasty
generalisation, even on the part of a genius. And it shows more. When he
wrote those words Kipling was fully justified by the facts as they
stood. It is the fault of the character of the American people, which
frustrates prophecy.
Twenty-five years ago there was no amateur sport in America--none. Men,
it is true, went off and shot ("hunted" as Americans call it) and fished
and yachted for a few days, or weeks, in summer or autumn, in a rather
rough-and-ready sort of way. Also, when at college they played baseball
and football and, perhaps, they rowed. After leaving college there was
probably not one young American in a hundred who entered a boat or
played a game of either football or baseball on an average of once in a
year. The people as a whole had no open-air games. Baseball was chiefly
professional. Cricket had a certain foothold in Philadelphia and on
Staten Island, but it was an exotic sport, as it remains to-day, failing
entirely to enlist the sympathies of the multitude. Polo was not played.
Lawn tennis had been introduced, but had made little headway. In all
America there were, I think, three racquet courts, which were used
chiefly by visiting Englishmen, and not one tennis court. Lacrosse was
quite unknown, and as for the "winter sports" of snow-shoeing, ski-ing,
ice-boating, curling, and tobogganing, they were practised only here and
there by a few (except for the "coasting" of children) as rather a
curious fad.
It was a strange experience for an Englishman in those days, fond of his
games, to go from his clubs and the society of his fellows at home, to
mix in the same class of society in America. As in the circles that he
had left behind him, so there, the conversation was still largely on
sporting topics, but while in England men talked of the games in which
they played themselves and of the feats and experiences of their
friends, in the leading young men's clubs of New York--the Union, the
Knickerbocker, and the Calumet--the talk was solely of professional
sport: of the paid baseball nines, of prize fighters (Sullivan was then
just rising to his glory), and professional scullers (those were the
days of Hanlan), and the like. No man talked of his own doings or of
those of his friends, for he and his friends did nothing, except perhaps
to spar for an hour or so once or twice a week, or go through
perfunctory gymnastics for their figures' sakes.
Until a dozen years ago the situation had not materially changed. Lawn
tennis had made some headway, but the thing that wrought the revolution
was the coming of golf. It may be doubted if ever in history has any
single sport, pastime, or pursuit so modified the habits, and even the
character, of a people in an equal space of time as golf has modified
those of the people of the United States.
Enough has already been written of the enthusiasm with which the
Americans took up the game itself, of the social prestige which it at
once obtained, of the colossal sums of money that have been lavished on
the making of courses, of the sumptuousness of the club-houses that have
sprung up all over the land. That golf is in itself a fascinating game,
is sufficiently proved in England, where it has drawn so many thousands
of devotees away from cricket, football, lawn tennis, and other sports.
But can we imagine what the result might have been if there had been in
Great Britain no cricket, or football, or other sports, so that all the
game-loving enthusiasm of the nation had been free to turn itself loose
into that one channel? And this is just what did happen in America. Golf
had a clear field and a strenuous sport-loving nation, devoid of
open-air games, at its mercy.
The result was not merely that people took to playing golf and that
young men neglected their offices and millionaires stretched unwonted
muscles in scrambling over bunkers. Golf taught the American people to
play games. It took them out from their great office-buildings and from
their five-o'clock cocktails at the club, into the open air; and they
found that the open air was good. So around nearly every golf club other
sports grew up. Polo grounds were laid out by the side of the links,
croquet lawns appeared on one side of the club-house and lawn-tennis
nets arose on the other, while traps for the clay-pigeon shooters were
placed safely off in a corner.
Golf came precisely at the moment when the people were ready for it.
Just as America, having in a measure completed the exploitation of her
own continent and developed a manufacturing power beyond the resources
of consumption in her people, was commercially ripe for the invasion of
the markets of the world; just as she came, in her overflowing wealth
and power, to a recognition of her greatness as a nation, and was
politically ripe for an Imperial policy of colonial expansion; just as,
tired of the loose code of ethics of the scrambling days, when the
country was still one half wilderness and none had time to care for the
public conscience, she was morally ripe for the wonderful revival which
has set in in the ethics of politics and commerce and of which Mr.
Roosevelt has been and is the chief apostle: so, by the individual
richness of her citizens, giving larger leisure in which to cultivate
other pleasures than those which their offices or homes could afford,
she was ripe for the coming of the day of open-air games. And having
turned to them, she threw herself into their pursuit with the ardour
and singleness of purpose which are characteristic of the people and
which, as applied to games, seem to English eyes to savour almost of
professionalism. As a matter of fact they are only the manifestations of
an essential trait of the American character.
The result was that almost at the same time as an American player was
winning the British Amateur Golf Championship, an American polo team was
putting All England on her mettle at Hurlingham, and it was not with any
wider margin than was necessary for comfort that Great Britain retained
the honours in lawn tennis, which she has since lost to one of her own
colonies.
It is curious that this awakening of the amateur sporting spirit in the
United States should have come just at the time when many excellent
judges were bewailing the growing popularity of professional sport in
England. Any day now, one may hear complaints that the British youth is
giving up playing games himself for the purpose of watching professional
wrestlers or football games or county cricket matches. My personal
opinion is that there is no need to worry. The growing interest in
exhibition games reacts in producing a larger number of youths who
strive to become players. Not only in spite of, but largely because of,
the greater spectacular attraction of both football and cricket than in
years gone by, there is an immensely larger number of players of
both--and of all other--games than there ever was before. It is little
more than a score of years since Association football, at least, was
practically the monopoly of a few public schools and of the members of
the two Universities--of "gentlemen" in fact. Any loss which the nation
can have suffered from the tendency to sit on benches and applaud
professional players must have been made up a thousand times over in the
benefit to the national physique from the spreading of the game into
wide classes which formerly regarded it, much as they might fox-hunting,
as a pastime reserved only for their "betters."
It is none the less interesting and instructive that in this field as in
so many others the directly opposite tendencies should be at work in the
two countries: that just when America is beginning to learn the delight
of being a game-loving nation and amateur sport is thriving, not yet to
the detriment of, but in proportions at least which stand fair
comparison with, professional, the cry should be raised in England that
Englishmen are forgetting to play games themselves in their eagerness to
watch others do them better. Here, as in other things, the gap between
the habits of the two peoples is narrowing rapidly. They have not yet
met; for in England the time and attention given to games and sports by
amateurs is still incomparably greater than on the other side. But that
the advancing lines will meet--and even cross--seems probable. And when
they have crossed, what then? Will America ever oust Great Britain from
the position which she holds as the Mother of Sports and the athletic
centre of the world?
Some things, it appears, one can predict with certainty. America has
already taken to herself a disagreeable number of the records in track
athletics; and she will take more. On the links the performance of Mr.
Travis, isolated as yet, is only a warning of many similar experiences
in the future. In a few years it will be very hard for any visiting golf
team of less than All England or All Scotland strength to win many
matches against American clubs on their home courses; and the United
States will be able to send a team over here that will be beaten only by
All England--or perhaps will not be beaten by All Britain. At polo the
Americans will go on hammering away till they produce a team that can
stand unconquered at Hurlingham. It will be very long before they can
turn out a dozen teams to match the best English dozen; but by mere
force of concentration and by the practice of that quality which, as has
already been said, looks so like professionalism to English eyes, one
team to rival the English best they will send over. In lawn tennis it
cannot be long before a pair of Americans will do what an Australian
pair did in 1907, just as the United States already holds the Ladies'
Championship; and England is going to have some difficulty in recovering
her honours at court tennis. In rifle shooting America must be expected
to beat England oftener than England beats America; but the edge will be
taken off any humiliation that there might be by the fact that Britain
will have Colonial teams as good as either.
And when all this has happened, will England's position be shaken? Not
one whit! Not though the _America's_ cup never crosses the Atlantic and
though sooner or later an American college crew succeeds--as surely, for
their pluck, they deserve to succeed--in imitating the Belgians and
carrying off the Grand at Henley. There remain games and sports enough
which the United States will never take up seriously, at which if she
did she would be debarred by climatic conditions or other causes from
ever threatening British supremacy.
The glory of England lies in the fact that she "takes on" the best of
all the nations of the world at their own games. It is not the United
States only, but all her Colonies and every country of Europe that turn
to Great Britain as to their best antagonist in whatever sport they find
themselves proficient. Just now England's brow is somewhat bare of
laurels, but year in and year out Britain will continue to win the
majority of contests in her meetings with all the world; and if she lose
at times, is it not better to have rivals good enough to make her extend
herself? And is it not sufficient for her pride that she, one people,
should win--if it be only--half of all the world's honours?
Meanwhile Englishmen can afford to rejoice ungrudgingly at the new
spirit which has been born in the United States. Each year the number of
"events" in which an international contest is possible increases. The
time may not be far away when there will be almost as long a list of
Anglo-American annual contests as there is now between Oxford and
Cambridge. But it will be a very long time before the United States can
displace Great Britain from the pre-eminence which she holds--and the
wonderful character of which, I think, few Englishmen appreciate. Before
that time comes such other sweeping changes will probably have come over
the map of the world and the relations of the peoples that Britain's
displacement will have lost all significance.
And Englishmen can always remember that, whatever triumphs the
Americans may win in the domain of sport, they win them by virtue of the
English blood that is in them.
* * * * *
It is, of course, inevitable that in many particulars the American and
English ideas of sport should be widely different. There is an old, old
story in America of the Englishman who arrived in New York and, on the
day after his arrival, got out his rifle and proceeded to make enquiries
of the hotel people as to the best direction in which to start out to
find buffalo--the nearest buffalo at the time being, perhaps, two
thousand miles away. It is a story which has contributed not a little to
contempt of the Britisher in many an innocent American mind. It happens
that in my own experience I have known precisely that same blunder made
by an American in England.
I had met an American friend, with whom I have shot in America, at his
hotel on the evening of his arrival in London one day in November. In
the course of conversation I mentioned that the shooting season was in
full swing.
"Good," he said. "Let me hire a gun somewhere to-morrow and let's go
out, if you've nothing to do, and have some shooting."
Nothing, he opined, would be simpler, or more agreeable, than to drive
out--or possibly take a train--to some wild spot in the vicinity of
London--Clapham Common perhaps--and spend a day among the pheasants. It
was precisely the Englishman and his buffalo--the prehistoric instinct
of the race ("What a beautiful day! Let us go and kill something!")
blossoming amid unfamiliar conditions. My American friend wanted to
kill an English pheasant. He had heard much of them as the best of
game-birds. He had eaten them, much refrigerated, in New York and found
them good. And he knew nothing of preserving and of a land that is all
parcelled out into parks and gardens and spinneys. Why not then go out
and enjoy ourselves? Before he left England he had some pheasant
shooting, and it is rarely that a man on his first day at those
conspicuous but evasive fowl renders as good an account of himself as
did he. Similarly every American with a sound sporting instinct must
hope that that traditional Englishman ultimately got his buffalo.
Many times in the United States in the old days have I done exactly what
that American then wished to do in London. Finding myself compelled to
spend a night at some crude and unfamiliar Western town, I have made
enquiries at the hotel as to the shooting--duck or prairie chicken--in
the neighbourhood. Hiring a gun of the local gunsmith and buying a
hundred cartridges, one then secured a trap with a driver, who probably
brought his own gun and shot also (probably better than oneself), but
who certainly knew the ground. The best ground might be three or five or
ten miles out--open prairie where chicken were plentiful, or a string of
prairie lakes or "sloughs" (pronounced "sloo") with duck-passes between.
That evening one came home, hungry and happy as a hunter ought to be,
with perhaps half a dozen brace of spike-tailed grouse (the common
"chicken" of the Northwestern States) or ten or a dozen duck--mallard,
widgeon, pintail, two kinds of teal, with, it might be, a couple of
red-heads or canvas-backs,--or, not improbably, a magnificent Canada
goose as the spoils.
With the settlement of the country, the multiplication of shooters, and
the increase in the number of "gun-clubs," which have now included most
of the easily accessible duck-grounds in the country in their private
preserves, the possibilities of those delightful days are growing fewer,
but even now there are many parts of the West where the stranger can
still do as I have done many times.
Though the people had so few outdoor games, the great majority of
Americans, except the less well-to-do of the city-dwellers of the
Eastern States, have been accustomed to handle gun and rod from their
childhood. The gun may at first have been a rusty old muzzle-loader, and
the rod a "pole" cut from the bank of the stream with a live grasshopper
for bait; and there are few better weapons to teach a boy to be a keen
sportsman. The birds that he shot were game--duck or geese, turkeys,
quail, grouse, or snipe--and the fish that he caught were mostly game
fish--trout and bass. It is true that the American generally shoots
foxes; so does the Englishman when he goes to the Colonies where there
are no hounds and too many foxes, with game birds which he wishes kept
for his own shooting, and domestic chickens which he destines for his
own table. On the other hand the American does not mount a miniature
cannon in a punt and shoot waterfowl by wholesale when sitting on the
water. It is only the gunner for the market, the man who makes his
living by it, who does that, and the laws do their best to stop even
him. The American sportsman who cannot get his duck fairly on the wing
with a 12- or 16-bore prefers not to get them at all. "But," objects
the English wildfowl shooter, "suppose the birds are not get-at-able in
any other way?" "So much," the American would retort, "the better for
the birds. They have earned their lives; get them like a sportsman or
let them go."
The time may not be far away--and many Englishmen will be glad when it
comes--when to kill waterfowl at rest with a duck gun will no longer be
considered a "sport" that a gentleman can engage in in England. Perhaps
fox-hunting will become so popular in the United States that foxes will
be generally preserved. The sportsmen of each country will then think
better of those of the other. Meanwhile it would be pleasanter if each
would believe that such little seemingly unsportsmanlike peculiarities
that the other may have developed are only the accidents of his
environment, and that under the same circumstances there is not a pin to
choose between their sportsmanship.
* * * * *
Reference has more than once been made to the quality which looks to
English eyes so much like semi-professionalism in American sport. It is
a delicate subject, in handling which susceptibilities on one side or
the other may easily be hurt.
The intense earnestness and concentration of the American on his one
sport--for most Americans are specialists in one only--does not commend
itself to English amateurs. The exclusiveness, which seems to be
suspicious of foul play, and the stringent training system of certain
American crews at Henley have been out of harmony with all the
traditions of the great Regatta and have caused much ill feeling, some
of which has occasionally come to the surface. Some of the proceedings
of American polo teams have not coincided with what is ordinarily
considered, in England, the behaviour of gentlemen in matters of amateur
sport. On the other hand, Americans universally believe that Lord
Dunraven acted in a most unsportsmanlike manner in the unfortunate cup
scandal; and in one case they are--or were at the time--convinced that
one of their crews was unfairly treated at Henley. Honours therefore on
the surface are fairly easy; and, while every Englishman knows that both
the American charges quoted are absurd, every American is no less of the
opinion that the English grounds of complaint are altogether
unreasonable.
We must remember that after all a good many of the best English golfers
and lawn-tennis players do nothing else in life but golf or play
lawn-tennis. And this tendency to specialise is undoubtedly increasing.
Meanwhile it will never be rooted out of the American character and in
departments of sport where it, and it alone, will bring pre-eminence,
Englishmen will either have to do as Americans do or, sooner or later,
consent to be defeated. There is nothing in the practice at which the
Englishman can fairly cavil. Americans have still much the fewer sports;
and it is the national habit to take up one and concentrate on it with
all one's might.[420:1]
A more difficult aspect of the situation has to do with the question of
the definition of "gentleman-amateur"; the fact being, of course, that
the same definition has not the same significance in the two countries.
The radical difficulty lies in the fact that the word "gentleman" in its
English sense of a man of gentle birth has no application to America.
Let this not be understood as a statement that there are any fewer
gentlemen in America or that the word is not used. But its usage is not
re-inforced, its limits are not defined, as in England, by any line of
cleavage in the social system. A large number of the gentlemen of
America are farmers' sons; more than half are the sons of men who
commenced life in very humble positions, and nearly all are the sons of
men who are engaged in trade or in business, the majority of them being
destined to go into trade or business (and to begin at the beginning)
themselves. In England, of course, the process of the obliteration of
the old line is going on with great rapidity. In America, on the other
hand, there is a tendency towards the drawing of a somewhat
corresponding line. But the fact remains that at present there exists
this fundamental distinction and the consequence is that Englishmen
continue to find among American "amateurs" and in teams of American
"gentlemen," individuals who would not be accepted into the same
categories in England.
But what Englishmen should endeavour to understand is that the man who
on the surface seems to belong to a class which in England would be
objectionable in the company of gentlemen probably has none of those
characteristics which would make him objectionable were he English. He
has far more of the characteristics of a gentleman than of the other
qualities. The qualities which go to make a "gentleman," even in the
English sense, are many and complex; but the assumption is that they are
all present in the man who bears the public school and university stamp.
The Englishman is accustomed to accept the presence or absence of one or
a few of those qualities in an individual as evidence of the presence or
absence of them all. In judging other Englishmen, the rule works
satisfactorily. But in America, with its different social system, the
qualities are not tied up in the same bundles, so that the same
inference fails. The same, or a similar, peculiarity of voice or speech
or manner or dress or birth does not denote--much less does it
connote--the same or similar things in representatives of the two
peoples. Particular Englishmen have learned this often enough in
individual cases. How often has it not happened that an Englishman,
meeting an American first as a stranger, not even being informed that he
is an American, has, judging from some one external characteristic,
turned from him as being an Undesirable, only to be introduced to him
later, or meet him under other conditions, and find in him one of the
best fellows that he ever met? The thing is happening every day. Very
often, with a little more knowledge or a little clearer understanding,
Englishmen would know that their judgment of some American amateur
athlete is shockingly unjust. To bar him out would be incomparably more
unjust to him than his inclusion is unjust to any antagonist.
This of course does not touch the fact--which is a fact--that in America
what answers to the gentleman-amateur in England is drawn from a much
larger proportion of the people. This does not however mean, when
rightly viewed, what Englishmen generally think it means, that Americans
go down into other--and presumably not legitimate--classes for their
recruits. It only means that a very much larger proportion of the people
belong to one class. There is no point at which an arbitrary line can be
drawn. This is in truth only another way of saying what has been said
already more than once, that the American people is really more
homogeneous than the English, or rather is homogeneous over a larger
part of its area, so that the type-American represents a greater
proportion of the people of the United States than the type-Briton
represents of the people of the British Isles.
This is obviously in the realm of sport so much to America's advantage.
It is not a condition against which the Englishman has any right to
protest, any more than he has to move amendments to the Constitution of
the United States. When better comprehended, Englishmen will accept it
without either resentment or regret. The United States has a larger
population than Great Britain: so much the better for the United
States. Also a larger proportion of that population must be admitted
into the category of gentleman-amateur in sport; so much the more the
better for them.
But, curiously enough, this condition has its inherent drawback, which
not impossibly more than compensates for its advantages. The fact that
young Americans grow up so much of a class involves the essential fact
that the enormous majority of them are educated at the Public Schools,
that is at the Board Schools or Government Schools or whatever they
would be called if their precise counterpart existed in England. The
United States has not (the fact has been touched on before) any group of
institutions comparable to the great schools of England. A few excellent
schools there are which bear some resemblance to the English models, but
they are not numerous enough to go any way towards leavening the nation.
It is to the Public Schools that, in the mass, the English
gentleman-amateur owes his training, not only in sports but in many
other things besides: especially in those things which stamp on him the
mark by which he is recognised as belonging to his right class through
life. The American, as has been said, is not so stamped; but in missing
that stamp--or in failing to receive it--he necessarily missed also all
that discipline and training in games which the Public School gave to
the Englishman. The very same cause as gives America an advantage in the
numbers from which she can draw her amateur athletes, also forbids that
these recruits should have had the same advantages of early training as
fall to the Englishman.
The thing is about as broad as it is long. It is not difficult to
imagine that the great schools might never have come into existence in
England, so that a larger proportion of the population than is now the
case would be educated at some intermediate institutions, at the Grammar
Schools let us say, when the English gentleman-amateur athletes--the
polo, golf, and tennis teams and the crews that row at Henley--would be
drawn from a larger circle of the population, and the individuals would
not bear as close a superficial resemblance, one to the other, as they
do to-day. They would in fact be more like the members of American
athletic teams as Englishmen know them. The question is whether England
would gain or lose in athletic efficiency. When Englishmen find
something to cavil at in an individual American amateur or in an
American amateur team or crew, would it not be better to stop and
consider whether the disadvantages which compel America to be
represented by such an individual or team or crew, do not outweigh the
advantages which enable her to use him or them? If the United States
were to develop the same educational machinery as exists in England,
which would stamp practically all their gentlemen-amateurs with the same
hall-mark, as they are so stamped in England, and would at the same time
give them the English public-school boy's training in games, would not
England, as a mere matter of athletic rivalry, be worse off instead of
better?
* * * * *
For the purpose of pointing the moral of the essential likeness of the
American and English characters, as contrasted with those of other
peoples, reference has already been made to Professor Münsterberg and
his book. It is an excellent book; but what English writer would think
it necessary to inform English readers that "the American student
recreates himself on the athletic field rather than in the ale-house"?
We know something of the life of a German student; but it is only when a
German himself says a thing like that that he illuminates in a flash the
abyss which yawns between the moral qualities of the youth of his
country and the young American or young Englishman.
Again the same author speaks on the subject of the Anglo-Saxon love of
fair play (the sporting instinct, I have called it) as follows:
"The demand for 'fair play' dominates the whole American people, and
shapes public opinion in all matters whether large or small. And with
this finally goes the belief in the self-respect and integrity of one's
neighbour. The American cannot understand how Europeans" (Continental
Europeans, if you please, Mr. Münsterberg!) "so often reinforce their
statements with explicit mention of their honour which is at stake, as
if the hearer was likely to feel a doubt of it; and even American
children are often apt to wonder at young people abroad who quarrel at
play and at once suspect one another of some unfairness. The American
system does not wait for years of discretion to come before exerting its
influence; it makes itself felt in the nursery, where already the word
of one child is never doubted by his playmates."
There is an excellent American slang word, which is "poppycock." The
Century Dictionary speaks disrespectfully of it as a "United States
vulgarism," but personally I consider it a first-class word. The Century
Dictionary defines it as meaning, "Trivial talk; nonsense; stuff and
rubbish," which is about as near as a dictionary can get to the elusive
meaning of any slang word. English readers will understand the exact
shade of meaning of the word when I say that the paragraph above quoted
is most excellent and precise poppycock. Every American who read that
paragraph when the book was published must have chuckled inwardly, just
as every Englishman would chuckle. But the point which I wish to
emphasise is that it is not at all poppycock from the author's point of
view. I doubt not that his countrymen have been most edified by that
excellent dictum, and the trouble is that one could never make a typical
German understand wherein it is wrong. No, Mr. Münsterberg, it is not
that the sentence is untrue--far be it from me to suggest such a thing.
It is merely absurd; and you, sir, will never, never, never comprehend
why it is so.
It is in the presence of such a remark, seriously made by so excellently
capable a foreigner, that the Englishman and American ought to be able
to shake hands and realise how much of a kin they are and how far
removed from some other peoples.
* * * * *
I have dwelt on this subject of the games of the two peoples at what may
seem to many an unnecessary length, because I do not think its
importance can well be exaggerated. It is not only desirable, but it is
necessary, for a thorough mutual liking between them that there should
be no friction in matters of sport. No incident has, I believe, occurred
of late years which did so much harm to the relations between the
peoples as did the Dunraven episode in connection with the _America's_
cup races. I should be inclined to say that it did more harm (I am not
blaming Lord Dunraven) than the Venezuelan incident.
On the other hand, it is doubtful whether the more recent attempts to
recover the cup, and the spirit in which they have been conducted, have
not contributed as much as, say, the attitude of England in the Spanish
War to the increased liking for Great Britain which has made itself
manifest in the United States of recent years. Few Englishmen, probably,
understand how much is made of such matters in the American press. The
love of sport is in the blood of both peoples and neither can altogether
like the other until it believes it to have the same generous sporting
instincts and the same clean methods as itself. As a matter of fact,
they do--as in so many other traits--stand out conspicuously alike from
among all other peoples, but neither will give the other full credit for
this, till each learns to see below such slight surface appearances as
at present provoke occasional ill-will in one party or the other. Fuller
understanding will come with time and with it entire cordiality.
FOOTNOTES:
[420:1] Though immaterial to the argument, it may be as well to state
that my personal sympathies are entirely with the English practice. In
the matter of college athletics especially the spirit in which certain
sports (especially football and, in not much less degree, rowing and
baseball) are followed at some of the American universities, is entirely
distasteful to me. On the other hand, I know nothing more creditable to
the English temperament than the spirit in which the contests in the
corresponding sports are conducted between the great English
universities. And this feeling is shared, I know, by some (and I believe
by most) of those Americans who, as Rhodes scholars or otherwise, have
had an opportunity of coming to understand at first hand the difference
between the practice in the two countries. But this is an individual
prepossession only; against which stands the fact that my experience of
Americans who have won notoriety in athletics at one or other of the
American universities, is that they are unspoiled by the system through
which they have passed and possess just as sensitive and generous a
sporting instinct as the best men turned out by Oxford or Cambridge.
CHAPTER XVI
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
A New Way of Making Friends--The Desirability of an Alliance--
For the Sake of Both Peoples--And of All the World--The Family
Resemblance--Mutual Misunderstandings--American Conception of
the British Character--English Misapprehension of Americans--
Foreign Influences in the United States--Why Politicians
Hesitate--An Appeal to the People--And to Cæsar.
At first sight it may not seem the likeliest way to make two people care
for each other to go laboriously about to tell each how the other
underestimates his virtues. Don Pedro's wile would appear to be the more
direct--to tell Benedick how Beatrice doted on him, and Beatrice how
Benedick was dying for her love. I have always had my doubts, however,
about the success of that alliance.
In the case of two peoples so much alike as the English and the
American, between whom friendship and alliance would be so entirely in
accord with eternal fitness, who are yet held apart by misunderstanding
on the part of each of the other's character, there seems no better way
than to face the misunderstandings frankly and to endeavour to make each
see how unjustly it undervalues the other's good qualities or
overestimates its faults. At present neither Americans nor Englishmen
understand what good fellows the others are. Least of all do they
understand how essentially they are the same kind of good fellows.
In summarising the contents of the foregoing pages, there is no need
here to rehearse, except in barest outline, the arguments in favour of
alliance between the countries. The fact that war between them is an
ever-present possibility ought in itself to suffice--war which could
hardly fail to be more sanguinary and destructive than any war that the
world has known. The danger of such a war is greater, perhaps, than the
people of either country recognises, certainly greater than most
Englishmen imagine. The people of England do not understand the
warlike--though so peace-loving--character of the American nation. It is
just as warlike as, though no less peace-loving than, the English,
without the restraint of that good-will which the English feel for the
United States; without, moreover, the check, to which every European
country is always subjected, of the fear of complications with other
Powers. The American people, as a whole, it cannot be too earnestly
impressed on Englishmen, have no such good-will towards Great Britain as
Englishmen feel for them; and not even English reluctance to draw the
sword, nor the protests of the better informed and the more well-to-do
people in the United States would be able to restrain what Mr. Cleveland
calls "the plain people of the land" if they once made up their mind to
fight.
Apart from the possibility of war between the two nations themselves,
there is the constant peril, to which both are exposed, of conflict
forced upon them by the aggressions of other Powers. That peril is
always present to both, to the United States now no less--perhaps even
more--than to Great Britain. The fact that neither need fear a trial of
strength with any other Power or any union of Powers, is beside the
question. Consciousness of its own strength is no guarantee to any
nation that it will not be forced into conflict. Rather, by making it
certain that it, at least, will not draw back, does it close up one
possible avenue of escape from catastrophe when a crisis threatens.
But beyond all this--apart from, and vastly greater than, the
considerations of the interest or the security of either Great Britain
or the United States--is the claim of humanity. The two peoples have it
in their hands to give to the whole world no less a gift than that of
Universal and Perpetual Peace. It involves no self-sacrifice, the giving
of this wonderful boon, for the two peoples themselves would share in
the benefit no less than other peoples, and they would be the richer by
the giving. It involves hardly any effort, for they have but to hold out
their hands together and give. It matters not that the world has not
appealed to them. The fact remains that they can do this thing and they
alone; and it is for them to ask their own consciences whether any
considerations of pride, any prejudice, any absorption in their own
affairs--any consideration actual or conceivable--can justify them in
holding back. Still more does it rest with the American people--usually
so quick to respond to high ideals--to ask its conscience whether any
consideration, actual or conceivable, can justify it in refusal when
Great Britain is willing--anxious--to do her share.
That such an alliance must some day come is, I believe, not
questionable. That it has not already come is due only to the
misunderstanding by each people of the character of the other.
Primarily, the two peoples do not understand how closely akin--how of
one kind--they are, how alike they are in their virtues, and how their
failings are but the defects of the same inherited qualities, even
though shaped to somewhat diverse manifestations by differences of
environment. Two brothers seldom recognise their likeness one to the
other, until either looks at the other beside a stranger. Members of one
family do not easily perceive the family resemblance which they share;
rather are they aware only of the individual differences. But strangers
see the likeness, and in their eyes the differences often disappear. So
Englishmen and Americans only come to a realisation of their resemblance
when either compares the other critically with a foreign people.
Foreigners, however, see the likeness when they look at the two
together. And those foreigners who know only one of the peoples will
sketch the character of that people so that it might be taken for a
portrait of the other. In all essentials the characters are the same; in
minor attributes only, such as exist between the individual members of
any family, do they differ.
Not only does neither people understand with any clearness how like it
is to the other, but each is under many misapprehensions--some trivial,
some vital--in regard to the other's temperament and ways of life. These
misapprehensions are the result chiefly of the geographical remoteness
of the lands, so that intimate contact between anything like an
appreciable portion of the two peoples has been impossible; and, when
thus separated by so wide a sea, Great Britain has been too consumedly
engrossed in the affairs of the world to be able to give much time or
thought to the United States, while America has been too isolated from
that world, too absorbed in her own affairs, to be able to look at
England in anything like true perspective.
Arising thus from different causes, the errors of the two peoples in
regard to each other have taken different forms. Great Britain, always
at passes with a more or less hostile Europe, has never lost her
original feeling of kinship with, or good-will towards, the United
States. There has been no time when she would not gladly have improved
her knowledge of, and friendship with, the other, had she at any time
been free from the anxieties of the peril of war with one Power or
another, from the burden of concern for her Empire in India, from the
weight of her responsibilities in regard to Australia, South Africa,
Egypt, and the various other parts of Britain over seas. Engrossed as
she has been with things of immediate moment to her existence, she has
been perforce compelled to take the good-will of the remote United
States for granted, and to assume that there was no need to voice her
own. Until at last she was awakened with a rudeness of awakening that
shocked and staggered her.
For the United States had had no such constant burden of anxiety, no
perpetual friction with other peoples, to keep her occupied. Rather,
sitting aloof in her isolation she had looked upon all the Powers of
Europe as actors in a great drama with which she had no other than a
spectacular concern. Only of all the Powers, by the very accident of
common origin, by the mere circumstances of the joint occupation of the
continent, Great Britain alone has been constantly near enough to the
United States to impinge at times upon her sphere of development, to rub
against her, to stand in her way. Great Britain herself has hardly known
that this was so. But it has had the effect to make Great Britain in the
mind of the United States the one foreign Power most potentially
hostile.
In aloofness and silence, ignorant of the world, the American people
nursed its wrath and brooded over the causes of offence which have
seemed so large to it, though so trivial or so unintentional on the part
of England, till the minds of the majority of the people held nothing
but ill-feeling and contempt in response to England's good-will towards
them. And always the United States has had those at her elbow who were
willing--nay, for their own interests, eager--to play upon her wounded
feelings and to exaggerate every wrong and every slight, however small
or imaginary, placed upon her by Great Britain.
Thus the two peoples not only misunderstand each other but they
misunderstand each other in different ways. They look at each other from
widely sundered points of view and in diverse spirits. The people of the
United States dislike and distrust Great Britain. They cannot believe
that Great Britain's good-will for them is sincere. The expressions of
that good-will, neglected while the American people was comparatively
weak and finding expression now when it is strong, the majority of
Americans imagine to be no more than the voice of fear. That alone shows
their ignorance of England--their obliviousness of the kinship of the
peoples. The two are of one origin and each may take it for granted that
neither will ever be afraid of the other--or of any other earthly
Power. That is not one of the failings of the stock.
The American people has thus never attained to any right view of the
British Empire. By the accident of the war which gave the nation birth,
the name "British" became a name of reproach in American ears. They have
never since been able to look at Great Britain save through the
cross-lights of their own interests, which have distorted their vision,
while there have always been those at hand poisoning the national mind
against the English. So they think of the British Empire as a bloody and
brutal thing: of her rule of India in particular as a rule of barbarity
and cruel force. Of late years American writers have come to tell
Americans the truth; namely, that if the power of Great Britain were to
be wiped out to-morrow and all her monuments were to perish except only
those that she has built in India, the historians of future generations,
looking only to those monuments in India, would pronounce Great Britain
to have been, of all the Powers that have held great Empire since the
beginning of time, the largest benefactor to the human race. But of this
the American people as a whole knows nothing. It only knows that sepoys
were blown from the mouths of British guns. So Englishmen, know that
negroes in the South are lynched.
And as the American people has formed no comprehension of the British
Empire as a whole and is without any understanding of its spirit, so it
has drawn for itself a caricature of the British character. As the
Empire is brutal and sanguinary, so is the individual bullying and
overbearing and coarse. The idea was originally inherited from
England's old enemies in Europe. It was a reflection of the opinion of
the French; but it has been confirmed by the frankness of criticism of
English travellers of all things in the United States. Americans do not
recognise that by their own sensitiveness and anxiety for the judgment
of others--a necessary, if morbid, result of their isolation and
self-absorption--they invited the criticism, even if they did not excuse
its occasional ill-breeding; nor has it occurred to them that the habit
of outspoken criticism of all foreign things is a common inheritance of
the two peoples and that they themselves are even more garrulously, if
less bluntly--even more vaingloriously, if less arrogantly--frank in
their habit of comment even than the English.
The same isolation and self-absorption as bred in them their
sensitiveness to the opinions of others, made the Americans also unduly
proud of such traits or accomplishments as strangers found to praise in
them. This in itself might be good for a nation; but, so far as their
understanding of Englishmen is concerned, it has unfortunately led them
to suppose that those characteristics which they possess in so eminent a
degree are proportionately lacking in the English character, which
thereby incurs their contempt. Having been over-complimented on their
own humour, they have determined that the Englishman is slow-witted,
with no sense of fun--an opinion in itself so lacking in appreciation of
its own absurdity as to be self-confounding. Too well assured of their
own chivalrousness (a foible which they share with all peoples) they
know the Englishman to be a domestic tyrant, incapable of true reverence
of womanhood. Proud, not without reason, of their own form of
government, wherein there is no room for a titled aristocracy, they
delight in holding the peerage of Great Britain up to contempt (withal
that there is a curious unconfessed strain of jealousy mingling
therewith), and piecing together, like a child playing with bricks, the
not too infrequent appearances of individual peers in the divorce or
bankruptcy courts, they have constructed a fantastic image of the
British aristocracy as a whole, wherein every member appears as either a
_roué_ or a spendthrift. Because they are--and have been so much told
that they are--so full of push and energy themselves, they believe
Englishmen to be ponderous and without enterprise; whereas if, instead
of keeping their eyes and minds permanently intent on their own
achievements, they had looked more abroad, they would have seen that,
magnificent as has been the work which they have done in the upbuilding
of their own nation and wonderful as is the fabric of their greatness,
there has simultaneously been evoked out of chaos a British Empire,
vaster than their own estate, and which is only not so near completion
as their own structure in proportion as it is on a larger ground plan,
inspired by larger ideas and involving greater (as well as infinitely
more diffused) labour in its uprearing.
The statement of these facts involves no impugnment of American
urbanity, American wit, American chivalry, or American enterprise. Only
they are not so unique as Americans, in their isolation, conceive them
to be. There are, in fact, others. It might not even be worth saying so
much, if it were not that the belief in their uniqueness has necessarily
resulted in American minds in a depreciation of the English character,
which by so much helps to keep the two peoples estranged. Americans will
be vastly more ready to believe in their English kinship, to like the
English people, and to welcome a British alliance if they once get it
into their heads that the English, as a nation, are just as fearless,
just as chivalrous, no less fond of a joke or more depraved, nor much
less enterprising or more careless of the feelings of others than
themselves. That they think of Englishmen as they do to-day is not to be
wondered at, and no blame attaches to them; for it is but a necessary
result of causes which are easily seen. But the time has come when some
effort to correct the errors in their vision is possible and
desirable--not merely because they are unfair to Englishmen, which might
be immaterial, and is no more than a fair exchange of discourtesies, but
because the misunderstandings obstruct that good-will which would be
such an untellable blessing, not only to the two peoples themselves, but
to all the human race.
I am well aware that many American readers will say: "What is the man
talking of? I do not think of Englishmen like that!" Of course you do
not, excellent and educated reader--especially if you have travelled
much in Great Britain or if you are a member of those refined and
cultured classes (what certain American democrats would call the
"silk-stocking element") which constitute the select and entirely
charming society of most of the older cities of the Atlantic seaboard as
well as of some of the larger communities throughout the country. If,
belonging to those classes, you do not happen to have made it your
business, either as a politician or a newspaper man, to be in close
touch with the real sentiments of the masses of the country as a whole,
you scarcely believe that anybody in America--except a few Irishmen and
Germans--does think like that. If, however, you happen to be a good
"mixer" in politics or have enjoyed the austerities of an apprenticeship
in journalism,--if in fact you know the sentiments of your countrymen, I
need not argue with you. Nor perhaps are very many Americans of any
class conscious of holding all these views at once. None the less, if a
composite photograph could be made of the typical Englishman as he is
figured in the minds of, let us say, twenty millions of the American
people--excluding negroes, Indians, and foreigners--the resultant figure
would be little dissimilar from the sketch which I have made.
And I have said that, in holding these ideas, the Americans do but make
a fair exchange of discourtesies; for the Englishman has likewise queer
notions of the typical American. There is always this vast difference,
however, that the Englishman is predisposed to like the American. In
spite of his ignorance he feels a great--and, in view of that ignorance,
an almost inexplicable--good-will for him. But it is not inexplicable,
for once more the causes of his misapprehensions are easily traced.
First, there has been the eternal pre-occupation of the English people
with the affairs of other parts of the world. When Great Britain has
been so inextricably involved with the policies of all the earth that
almost any day news might come from Calcutta, from Berlin, from St.
Petersburg, from Pekin, or Teheran, or from almost any point in Asia,
Africa, or Australia, which would shake the Empire to its foundation,
how could the people spare time to become intimately acquainted with
the United States? Of coarse Englishmen talk of the "State of Chicago,"
and--as I heard an English peasant not long ago--of "Yankee earls."
During all these years individual Americans have come to England in
large numbers and have been duly noted and observed; but what the people
of any nation notices in the casually arriving representatives of any
other is not the points wherein the visitors resemble themselves, but
the points of difference. In the case of Americans coming to England the
fundamental traits are all resemblances and therefore escape notice,
while only the differences--which by that very fact stand proclaimed as
non-essentials--attract attention. So it is that the English people,
having had acquaintance with a number of typical New Englanders, have
drawn their conclusion as to the universality of one strong nasal
American accent; they think the American people garrulously outspoken in
criticism, with a rather offensive boastfulness, without any
consciousness that precisely that same trait in themselves, in a
slightly different form, is one of the chief causes why Englishmen are
not conspicuously popular in any European country. From peculiarities of
dress and manner which are not familiar to him in the product of his own
public schools and universities, the Englishman has been inclined to
think that the American people is not, even in its "better classes," a
population of gentlemen.
Moreover, many Englishmen go to the United States--the vast majority for
a stay of a few days or weeks, or a month or two--and they tell their
friends, or the public at large in print, all about America and its
people. It is not given to every one to be able, in the course of a few
weeks or a month or two, to see below the surface indications down to
the root-traits of a people--a feat which becomes of necessity the more
difficult when those root-traits are one's own root-traits and the
fundamental traits of one's own people at home, while on the surface are
all manner of queer, confusing dazzlements of local peculiarities which
jump to the stranger's vision and set him blinking. Yet more difficult
does the feat appear when it is realised that the American people is
scattered over a continent some three thousand miles across--so that San
Francisco is little nearer to New York than is Liverpool--and that the
section of the people with whom the Englishman necessarily comes first
and, unless he penetrates both far and deep into the people, most
closely in contact is precisely that class from which it is least safe
to draw conclusions as to the thoughts, manners, or politics of the
people as a whole. Therefore it is that one of the most acute observers
informed Europe that in America "a gentleman had only to take to
politics to become immediately _déclassé_"--which, speaking of the
politics of the country as a whole, is purely absurd. The visiting
Englishman has generally found the whole sphere of municipal and local
politics a novel field to him and has naturally been interested. Probing
it, he comes upon all manner of tales of corruption and wickedness. He
does not see that the body of American "politics," as the word is
understood in England, is moderately free from these taints, but he
tells the world of the corruption in that sphere of politics which he
has studied merely because it does not exist at home and is new to him;
and all the world knows that American politics are indescribably
corrupt.
Similarly the visiting European goes into polite society and is amazed
at the peculiar qualities of some of the persons whom he meets there. He
tells stories about those peculiar people, but the background of the
society, against which these people stood out so clearly, a background
which is so much like his own at home, almost escapes his notice or is
too uninteresting and familiar to talk about. There is no one to explain
fully to the English people that while in England educated society keeps
pretty well to itself, there are in America no hurdles--or none that a
lively animal may not easily leap--to keep the black sheep away from the
white, or the white from straying off anywhere among the black, so that
a large part of the English people has imbibed the notion that there are
really no refined or cultured circles in the United States.
Whenever a financial fraud of a large size is discovered in America, the
world is told of it, just as certainly as it is told when an English
peer finds his way to the divorce court; but nobody expounds to the
nations the excellence of the honourable lives which are led by most
American millionaires, any more than the world is kept informed of the
drab virtue of the majority of the British aristocracy. Wherefore the
English people have come to think of American business ethics as being
too often of the shadiest; whereas they ought on reflection to be aware
that only in most exceptional cases can great or permanent individual
commercial success be won by fraud, and that nothing but fundamental
honesty will serve as the basis for a great national trade such as the
United States has built up.
Visiting Englishmen are bewildered by the strange types of peoples whom
they see upon the streets and by the talk which they hear of "German
elements" and "French elements" and "Scandinavian elements" in the
population. But they do not as a rule see that these various "elements,"
when in the first generation of citizenship, are but a fringe upon the
fabric of society, and when in the second or third generation they have
a tendency to become entirely swallowed up and to merge all their
national characteristics by absorption in the Anglo-Saxon stock; and
that apart from and unheeding all these irrelevant appendages, the great
American people goes on its way, homogeneous, unruffled, and English at
bottom.
Finally Englishmen read American newspapers and, not understanding the
different relation in which those newspapers stand to the people, they
compare with them the normal English papers and draw inferences which
are quite unjust. Similar inferences no less unjust may be drawn from
hearing the speech of a certain number of well-to-do Americans,
belonging, as Englishmen opine, to the class of "gentlemen."
These misunderstandings do less harm to the Englishman than to the
American, inasmuch as the Englishman has that predisposition to national
cordiality which the American has not. But, though the Englishman's
mistakes do not influence his good-will to the United States, though he
himself attaches no serious importance to them, his utterance of them is
taken seriously by the Americans themselves and does not tend to the
promotion of international good feeling. Therefore it is that it is no
less desirable that English misconceptions of the United States should
be corrected than it is that the American people should be brought to a
juster appreciation of the British character and Empire.
It is in America, doubtless, that missionary work is most needed,
inasmuch as all England would at any minute welcome an American alliance
with enthusiasm; while in the United States any public suggestion of
such an alliance never fails to provoke immediate and vehement protest.
It is true that that protest issues primarily from the Irish and German
elements; and it may seem absurd that the American people as a whole
should suffer itself to be swayed in a matter of so national a character
by a minority which is not only comparatively unimportant in numbers,
but which the true American majority regards with some irritability as
distinctly alien.
There are a large number of constituencies in the United States,
however, where the Irish and German votes, individually or in
combination, hold the balance of power in the electorate, and not only
must many individual members of Congress hesitate to antagonise so
influential a section of their constituents, but it is even questionable
whether the united and harmonious action of those two elements might
not, under certain conditions, be able to unseat a sufficient number of
such individual members as to change the political complexion of one or
both of the Houses of Congress, and even, in a close election, of the
Administration itself. Nor is it necessary to repeat again that when the
anti-British outcry is raised, though primarily by a minority and an
alien minority, it finds a response in the breasts of a vast number of
good Americans in whom the traditional dislike of England, though
latent, still persists solely by reason of misapprehension and
misunderstandings. Therefore it is that so many of the best Americans,
who in their hearts know well how desirable an alliance with England
would be, are content to deprecate its discussion and to say that things
are well enough as they are; though again I say that things are never
well enough so long as they might be better. However desirable such an
alliance may be, however much to the benefit of the nation, it would,
they say, be bad politics to bring it forward as a party question. And
to bring it forward without its becoming from the outset a party
question would be plainly impossible.
* * * * *
But would it be bad politics? Can it ever, in the long run, be bad
politics to champion any cause which is great and good? It might be that
it would be difficult for an individual member of Congress to come
forward as the active advocate of a British alliance and not lose his
seat; but in the end, the man who did it, or the party which did it,
would surely win. When two peoples have a dislike of each other based on
intimate knowledge by each of the other's character, to rise as the
champion of their alliance might be hopeless; but when two peoples are
held apart only by misunderstanding and by lack of perception of the
boons that alliance between them would bring, it can need but courage
and earnestness to carry conviction to the people and to bring success.
In such a cause there is one man in America to whom one's thoughts of
necessity turn; and he is hampered by being President of the United
States. Perhaps when his present term of office is over Mr. Roosevelt,
instead of seeking the honourable seclusion which so often engulfs
ex-Presidents, will find ready to his hand a task more than worthy of
the man who was instrumental in bringing peace to Russia and Japan,--a
task in the execution of which it would be far from being a disadvantage
that he is as cordially regarded in Germany as he is in England and has
himself great good-will towards the German Empire. Any movement on the
part of Great Britain in company with any European nation could only be
regarded by Germany as a conspiracy against herself: nothing that
England or France or Japan--or any Englishman, Frenchman, or
Japanese--could say or do would be received otherwise than with
suspicion and resentment. But, after all, the good of humanity must come
before any aspirations on the part of the German Empire, and it is the
American people which must speak, though it speaks through the mouth of
its President. If the American people makes up its mind that its
interest and its duty alike dictate that it should join hands with
England in the cause of peace, neither Germany nor any Power can do
otherwise than acquiesce.
It is no novelty, either in the United States or in other countries, for
considerations of temporary political expediency to stand in the way of
the welfare of the people, nor is there any particular reason why an
American politician should attach any importance to the desires of
England. But we find ourselves again confronted with the same old
question, whether the American people as a whole, who have often shown
an ability to rise above party politics, can find any excuse for setting
any consideration, either of individual or partisan interest, above the
welfare of all the world. Yet once more: It is for Americans
individually to ask their consciences whether any considerations
whatever, actual or conceivable, justify them in withholding from all
humanity the boon which it is in their power, and theirs alone, to
give,--the blessing of Universal and Perpetual Peace.
* * * * *
And yet, when this much has been said, it seems that so little has been
told. It was pointed out, in one of the earlier chapters, how the people
of each country in looking at the people of the other are apt to see
only the provoking little peculiarities of speech or manner on the
surface, overlooking the strength of the characteristics which underlie
them. So, in these pages, it seems that we, in analysing the individual
traits, have failed to get any vision of the character of either people
as a whole. It is the trees again which obscure the view of the forest.
We have arrived at no general impression of the British Empire or of the
British people. We have shown nothing of the majesty of that Empire; of
its dignity in the eyes of a vast variety of peoples; of the high
ambitions (unspoken, after the way of the English, but none the less
earnest), which have inspired and still inspire it; of its maintenance
of the standards of justice and fair dealing; of its tolerance or the
patience with which it strives to guide the darkened peoples towards the
light. Nothing has been said of the splendid service which the Empire
receives from the sons of the Sea Wife; yet certainly the world has seen
nothing comparable to the Colonial services of Great Britain, of which
the Indian Civil Service stands as the type.
Nor have we said anything of the British people, with its
steadfastness, in spite of occasional frenzies, its sanity, and its
silent acceptance, and almost automatic practice, of a high level of
personal and political morality. Above all we have seen nothing of the
sweetness of the home life of the English country people, whereof the
more well-to-do lead lives of wide sympathies, much refinement, and
great goodness; while the poor under difficult conditions, hold fast to
a self-respecting decency, little changed since the days when from among
them, there went out the early settlers to the New England over seas,
which never fails, notwithstanding individual weaknesses, to win the
regard of one who lives among them.
So of the American people; we have conveyed no adequate impression of
the manly optimism, the courageous confidence in the ultimate virtue of
goodness and sound principles, on which the belief in the destiny of
their own country is based. The nation has prospered by its virtues.
Every page of their history preaches to the people that it is honesty
and faith and loyalty which succeed, and they believe in their future
greatness because they believe themselves to possess, and hope to hold
to, those virtues as in the past.
It may be that, living in the silences and solitudes of the frontier and
the wilderness, they have found the greater need of ready speech when
communication has offered. It may be that the mere necessity of planning
together the framework of their society and of building up their State
out of chaos has imposed on them the necessity of more outspokenness.
Certainly they have discarded, or have not assumed, the reticence of the
modern English of England; and much of this freedom of utterance
Europeans misinterpret, much (because the fashion of it is strange to
themselves) they believe to be insincere. In which judgments they are
quite wrong. The American people are profoundly sincere and intensely in
earnest.
Since the establishment of the Republic, in the necessity of civilizing
a continent, in the breathless struggle of the Civil War, in the
rapidity with which society has been compelled to organize itself, in
the absorption and assimilation of the continuous stream of foreign
immigrants, the people have always been at grips with problems of
immediate, almost desperate urgency; and they have never lost, or come
near to losing, heart or courage. They have learned above all things the
lesson of the efficacy of work. They have acquired the habit of action.
Self-reliance has been bred in them. They know that in the haste of the
days of ferment abuses grew up and went unchecked; and they know that in
that same haste they missed some of the elegancies which a more
leisurely and easier life might have given opportunity to acquire. But
for a generation back, they have been earnestly striving to eradicate
those abuses and to lift themselves, their speech, their manners, their
art and literature to, at least, a level with the highest. It has been
impossible in these pages (it would perhaps be impossible in any pages)
to give any unified picture of this national character with its
activity, its self-reliance, its belief in the homely virtues and its
earnest ambition to make the best of itself. But of the future of a
people with such a character there need be no misgivings, and Americans
are justified in the confidence in their destiny.
What is needed is that these two peoples holding, with similar
steadfastness, to the same high ideals, pushing on such closely parallel
lines in advance of all other peoples, should come to see more clearly
how near of kin they are and how much the world loses by any lack of
unison in their effort.
* * * * *
Once more let me ask readers to turn back and read again the paragraphs
from other pens with which this book is introduced.
APPENDIX. (See Chapter III., pp. 81, _sqq._)
This book was almost ready for the press when Dr. Albert Shaw's
collection of essays was published under the title of _The Outlook for
the Average Man_. Dr. Shaw is one of America's most lucid thinkers and
he contributes what I take to be a new (though once stated an obviously
true) explanation of what I have spoken of as the homogeneousness of the
American people. The West, as we all know, was largely settled from the
East. That is to say that a family or a member of a family in New York
moved westward to Illinois, thence in the next generation to Minnesota,
thence again to Montana or Oregon. A similar movement went on down the
whole depth of the United States, families established in North Carolina
migrating first to Kentucky, then to Ohio, so to Texas, and finally on
to California. All parts of the country therefore have, as the nucleus
of their population, people of precisely the same stock, habits, and
ways of thought. The West was settled "not by radiation of influence
from the older centres, but by the actual transplantation of the men and
women." Dr. Shaw proceeds:
"England is not large in area and the people are generally regarded as
homogeneous in their insularity. But as a matter of fact the populations
of the different parts of England are scarcely at all acquainted in any
other part. Thus the Yorkshireman would only by the rarest chance have
relatives living in Kent or Cornwall. The intimacy between North
Carolina and Missouri, for example, is incomparably greater than that
between one part of England and another part. In like manner, the people
of the North of France know very little of those of the South of France,
or even of those living in districts not at all remote. Exactly the same
thing is true of Italy and Germany, and is characteristic of almost
every other European land. As compared with other countries, we in
America are literally a band of brothers."--_The Outlook for the Average
Man_, pages 104, 105.
INDEX
A
_Academy_, newspaper, the, 159
Alderman, election of an, 239;
"Mike," 252
Alliance, Anglo-American, desirable, 7, 430
Alliances, entangling, what they mean, 5
Amateurs, in sport, 421
American accent, the, 106
American dislike of England, 43, 46, 98 _sqq._, 112, 430
American journalists in London, 220
"American methods," in business, 328
American people, the, a bellicose people, 8;
its fondness for ideal, 10;
sensitive to criticism, 34;
dislike of subterfuges, 34;
an Anglo-Saxon people, 37, 87, 140;
and its leading men, 48;
foreign elements in, 58, 80, 227, 443;
self-reliant, 67;
resourceful, 70;
homogeneous, 80, 211, 451;
quick to move, 87;
"sense of the state" in, 89;
its ambitions, 90;
character of, influenced by the country, 97;
likes round numbers, 105;
its provincialism, 113;
its isolation, 116, 434;
effect of criticism on, 115, 157;
its attitude toward women, 119 _sqq._;
its insularity, 146;
manners of, 147;
pushfulness, 148;
did not invent all progress, 151;
humour of, 152;
its literature, 157;
science, 159;
art, 160;
architecture, 160;
its self-confidence, 164;
factors in the education of, 171;
influence of the Civil War on, 188;
its hunger for culture, 189;
not superficial, 193, 204;
eclecticism, 194;
musical knowledge of, 199;
drama of, 201;
takes culture in paroxysms, 203;
looks to the future, 208;
political corruption in, 234;
great parties in, 256;
political sanity of, 284;
purifying itself, 300, 324, 336, 353, 364;
aristocracy in, 309;
shrinks from European commercial conditions, 331;
hatred of trusts, 331;
misrepresented by its press, 340;
contempt for hereditary legislators, 346;
commercial integrity, 351;
religious feeling in, 353;
insistence of an individuality, 382;
a character sketch, 448
American speech, uniformity of, 85, 209
Americanisms, in English speech, 209;
their origin in America, 216;
disappearing, 224
Americans, at home in England, 36;
fraternise with English abroad, 38;
and "foreigners," 39;
as sailors, 62;
their ambitions, 90;
in London, 106;
ignorant of foreign affairs, 113;
treatment of women, 119 _sqq._;
their insularity, 146;
energy, 148;
humour, 152;
what they think of English universities, 169;
pride of family in, 181;
know no "betters," 194;
ambitious of versatility, 205;
as linguists, 206;
purists in speech, 219;
cannot lie, 352;
as story-tellers, 366;
non-litigious, 394;
do not build for posterity, 396;
dislike stamps, 398;
as sportsmen, 409
_Anglais, l'_, 2, 37, 141
Anglomania, 163
Anglo-Saxon, family likeness, the, 35, 432;
particularist spirit, 37;
versatility, 74;
spirit in America, 87, 244;
superiority, 118;
attitude towards women, 140;
ideals in education, 170;
a fighting race, 187;
ambition to be versatile, 205;
and Celt in politics, 254;
superior morality of, 349;
pluck and energy, 381;
the sporting instinct, 426
Anstey, F. L., his German professor, 156
Archer, Wm., on the Anglo-Saxon type, 38;
on the American's outlook on the world, 97;
on pressing clothes, 214
Architecture, American, 160
Aristocracy, in the U. S., 309;
the British disreputable, 338, 442
Arnold, Matthew, his judgment of Americans, 108;
his clothes, 108;
on American colleges, 167;
on American newspapers, 177;
on generals as booksellers, 185
Art, American, 160;
feminine knowledge of, 182
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad, the, 363
Athletics in England and America, 420
Atlantis, a new, 94
B
Baldwin, W. H., 305
Banks, American and English, 383
Barnard College, 142
Bears, bickering with, 381
Bell-cord, divination by the, 363
Benedick and Beatrice, 429
Bonds, recoiling from, 236
Books, advantage of reading, 172;
ease of buying, in America, 174;
prices of, 175;
publishing American, in England, 221
Booksellers as soldiers, 185
Bosses in politics, 239, 252, 274
Boston, culture of, 195, 219
Botticelli, 185
Brewers as gentlemen, 315
Bribery in American politics, 234
"British," hatred of the name, 57
British bondholders, 52
British commerce, 52
British Empire, American misunderstanding of, 20, 112, 151, 435;
its size, 437;
its beauty, 447
Bryan, W. J., first nomination of, 234, 273;
and W. R. Hearst, 283
Bryce, James, on American electoral system, 247;
on State sovereignty, 262;
on political corruption, 279;
on the U. S. Senate, 287
Buffalo in New York, 416
Buildings, tall, built in sections, 368
Burke, Edward, in Ireland, 101;
indictment against a whole people, 101
Business, as a career, 317;
its effect on mentality, 318;
the romance of American, 319;
frauds in, 324;
the tendency of modern, to consolidations, 330;
speculation in America, 386;
less ruthless in America, 388;
slipshod, 395;
principles of modern, 404
C
California, the Japanese in, 263, 287
Cambon, M. Paul, 139
Campbell, Wilfred, in England, 92
Canada, American investments in, 379
Canadian opinion of England, 92;
resemblance to Americans, 379
Carlyle, Thomas, 190
Caruso, Signor, 384
Celts, non-Anglo-Saxon, 254
Century Club, the, 103
_Champagne Standard, The_, 147
Chaperons, 381, 393
Chatham and American manufactures, 375
Cheques, cashing, 383
Chicago, pride in itself, 163;
pigs in, 177
Civil War, the navy in the, 64;
causes of, 11;
magnitude of, 186;
its value to the people, 188, 218
Classics, American reprints of English, 174
Cleveland, Grover, on Venezuela, 43, 109
Climate, the English, 121, 350
Co-education, its effect on the sexes, 127;
in America, 142
Colonies, destiny of British, 94
Colquhoun, A. R., 113
Commercial morality, 308
Concord school, the, 157
Congress, corruption in, 244;
compared with Parliament, 246, 249;
more honest than supposed, 252;
powers of, 289;
best men excluded from, 345
Congressmen, how influenced, 247, 251;
how elected, 247;
log-rolling among, 249;
hampered by the Constitution, 402
Conkling, Roscoe, 148
Constitution, U. S., growth of, 6;
interpretation of, 288;
and Congress, 402
Consular service, the American, 78
Contract, a proposed international, 338
Convention, a National Liberal, 270
Copyright laws, English, faulty, 221
Corporations, Mr. Roosevelt and the, 296;
persecuted by individual States, 403
Corruption, in municipal affairs, 232, 239, 242;
in national affairs, 234;
in State legislatures, 235;
in English counties, 237;
in Congress, 244;
in the railway service, 361
Court, U. S. Supreme, 400
Criticism, English, of America, 116, 157;
American, of England, 117
Croker, Richard, 278
Cromwell as a fertiliser, 190
Crooks, William, elected Premier, 271
Crosland, W. H., 88
Cuba as a cause of war, 12
Cyrano de Bergerac, 196, 202
D
Debtors favoured by laws, 403
Democrats correspond to Liberals, 256
Demolins, Edmond, on Anglo-Saxon superiority, 2;
on _l'Anglais_, 37
Doctor, the making of a, 69
"Dog eat dog," 388
Domestic and imported goods, 163
Drama, the, in England and America, 201
Drunkenness, in London, 131
Dunne, F. P., 154
E
Education, in England and America, 166;
object of American, 193
Elections, purity of, 229 (note);
municipal, 239;
to Congress, 241;
of a Prime Minister, 265;
the last English general, 274;
virulence of American, 281
Electric light, towns lighted by, 367
Embalmed beef scandals, 341
Emerson, R. W., on the Civil War, 188;
the apostle of the individual, 382
English-made goods, 365, 373
English society, changes in, 314
English "style" in printing, 221
Englishmen, local varieties of, 85;
effect of expansion on, 95;
feeling of, toward Americans, 99, 434;
as specialists, 105;
dropping their H's, 106;
check-suited, 108;
their cosmopolitanism, 114;
as husbands, 123;
insularity of, 145;
as grumblers, 149;
lecturing, 195;
as linguists, 206;
study of antiquity, 208;
careless of speech, 220;
in American politics, 226;
in English politics, 231;
political integrity of, 238, 278;
and business, 321;
misunderstand American people, 347;
the world's admiration of, 349;
religious feeling in, 353;
sense of honour in, 359;
commercial morality of, 365;
distrust American industrial stability, 371;
as investors in U. S. and Canada, 379;
slowness of, 380;
as sportsmen, 415;
admirable qualities of, 448
European plan, the, 104
Exhibition, an American, in London, 161
F
Federal Government, the, and Illinois, 262;
and Louisiana, 262;
and California, 263;
powers of, 288
Federalism, progress of, in America, 217
Feminism, 139
Ferguson, 133
_Fliegende Blätter_, 153
Football in England, 412
Foreign elements in the American people, 58, 80, 82, 138, 226
Forty-fourth Regiment, the, 40
France, England's _entente_ with, 8;
and American commerce, 378
Franklin, Benjamin, his _Autobiography_, 157;
and English political morality, 280
Frauds in American business, 324
Free silver, poison, the, 235;
campaign of 1896, 280
Freeman, E. A., on the Englishman of America, 42
Frenchmen, opinions of, 2, 36, 37, 92, 139, 177, 378;
attitude towards women, 120;
towards learning, 205
Frontier life, as a discipline, 72, 381
G
_Gentleman_, Bismarck's _parole de_, 234
Gentlemen, brewers as, 315;
and business men, 316;
in sport, 420
Gentlemen's agreement, the, 354
George, Lloyd, 334
Germans, outnumber Irish in N. Y., 58;
attitude toward women, 120, 140;
humour of, 153;
laboriousness of, 205;
in politics, 226, 255;
as judges of honesty, 351 (note);
in sport, 426
Germany, ambitions of, 29;
Monroe Doctrine aimed at, 46
Gibson, C. D., 160
Girl, the American, 130
Gladstone, W. E., American admiration for, 167;
on Japan, 205
Golf, the power of, 409
Granger agitation, the, 298
Gravel-pit, politics in a, 282
Great Britain, peaceful disposition of, 8, 23;
pride of, 14, 61;
desires alliance with U. S., 19;
American hostility to, in 1895, 46;
its nearness to America geographically, 50;
commercially, 52;
historically, 54;
America's only enemy, 55;
its army in S. Africa, 75;
diversity of tongues in, 85;
Norman influence in, 87;
Canadian opinion of, 92;
miraculously enlarged, 94;
insularity of, 145;
luck of, 149;
cannot be judged from London, 150;
class distinctions disappearing, 212;
politics in, 231;
municipal bosses in, 232;
American conditions transplanted to, 237, 266;
electing a Prime Minister in, 270;
municipal politics in, 279;
becoming democratised, 314;
a creditor nation, 323;
trust-ridden, 329;
wealth of, 386;
solicitor-cursed, 393;
as the mother of sports, 414;
preoccupation of, 433
"Grieg, the American," 200
H
Hague, Conference at The, 17
Hanotaux, Gabriel, on American commerce, 378
Harrison, Benjamin, 47
Hays, C. M., 310
Hearst, W. R., and England, 46;
bad influence of, 282;
inventor of the yellow press, 342 (note)
Hell-box, the, 281
Helleu, Paul, 196
Higginson, T. W., on American temperament, 2
Hill, James J., 310
Hoar, U. S. Senator, on England, 1;
on the hatred of the British, 57
Homer as a Tory, 257
Homogeneousness of the American people, 83, 211, 451
Hotel, the Fifth Avenue, 122
Hotels, ladies' entrances to, 120
Howells, W. D., 147
Hughitt, Marvin, 311, 359
Humour, American and English, 152
I
Ideals, American devotion to, 10
Illinois and the Federal Government, 262
Immigration problem, the, 81
India, 112
Indians, red, regard of, for Englishmen, 349;
in the war of Independence, 350 (note);
Turkish baths of, 363
Individuality, American insistence on, 382, 391
Insularity, English and American, 145
International sentiments, how formed, 291
Ireland, Burke's feeling for, 101
Irish, the influence of, against England, 58, 444;
attitude towards women, 140;
vote in politics, 227;
as a corrupting influence, 252;
non-Anglo-Saxon, 254;
lack independence, 255;
in New York, 277
Irving, Washington, on frontiersmen, 381
Italians, in municipal politics, 241, 253;
lynched in New Orleans, 262
J
James, Henry, 155
Japan, England's alliance with, 8;
its eclectic method, 193;
Mr. Gladstone on, 205;
and California, 263, 287;
tin-tacks for, 375
Japanese, in California, 263;
British admiration of, 351;
watering their horses, 367;
as "John," 376
Johnson, Samuel, 132
Joint purses, 332
Jonson, Ben, 215
Justice in American courts, 400
K
King George men, 349
Kipling, Rudyard, his "type-writer girl," 132;
"The Sea Wife," 187;
"The Monkey-Puzzler," 380;
"An Error in the Fourth Dimension," 408
L
La Farge, John, 103, 161
Lang, Andrew, on Americanisms, 221
Law, Bonar, 334
Legislators must read and write, 71
Legislatures, quality of American State, 79, 401
Letters, two, 389
Lewis, Alfred Henry, 154
Liberals, English, and Democrats, 256;
influence of, on American thought, 346
"Liberty, that damned absurd word," 10
_Life_, New York, 129, 162
Literature, English ignorance of American, 157
Litigation, American dislike of, 394
"Live and let live," 388
Lobbyists, 244
Locomotives, temporary and permanent, 396
Log-rolling, 249
London, foreign affairs in, 114;
Strand improvements, 151;
"raining in," 163;
a Tammany Hall in, 232
Lord, Englishmen's love of a, 309
Lords, the House of, and the U. S. Senate, 313;
a defence of, 342
Louisiana and the Federal Government, 262
Loyal Legion, the, 187, 189
Luck, English belief in, 108
Lying, American ability in, 352
Lynchings, 302
M
MacDowell, Edward, 200
Mafia in New Orleans, 263
Magazines, American, 160, 171, 180
Mansfield, Richard, 202
Max O'Rell, on John Bull and Jonathan, 36, 92;
on American newspapers, 177
Merchant marine, the American, 63
Mexico, possible annexation of, 27
Mining camp life, 70, 132
"Molly-be-damned," 134
Monopolies, artificial and natural, 407
Moore, _Zeluco_, 119
Morality, of the two people, sexual, 120;
political, _see under_ Corruption;
commercial, 308, 400;
sporting, 426
Morgan, Pierpont, 358
Mormons and ants, 214
Morris, Clara, 201
Mount Stephen, Lord, 310
Municipal politics, 231, 239, 242
Münsterberg, Hugo, on England, 36;
on American commercial ethics, 351;
on sport, 426
Music in England and America, 198
N
N---- G----, 125
Navarro, Madame de, 201
Navigating, how to learn, 70
Navy, the American, 62
Negro problem, the, 301
New Orleans, battle of, 41;
the Mafia in, 263
New York, not typically American, 72;
proud of London, 163;
culture of, 219;
Irish influence in, 256;
in national politics, 277
Newspapers, American and English, 177;
sensationalism in, 326;
peculiarities of American, 340
Norman influence in England, 87
Northern Pacific Railroad, the, 361
Norton, James, 163
O
Operas, American knowledge of, 198
Opportunity, America and, 387
Oxenstiern, Count, 149
Oxford, value of, 169
P
Packing-house scandals, 326
Panic, financial, the, of 1907, 325, 402
Parliament, railway influence in, 246;
compared with Congress, 249, 344
Parsnips, 102
Parties, the two great, in America, 256;
interdependence of national and local organisations, 264
Patronage, party, 265
Peace, universal, the possibility of, 13, 32, 431
Peerage, an American, 310;
democracy of the British, 316;
morals of, 338
Pheasants in London, 416
Philadelphia, corruption in, 252
Philistinism in England and America, 185
Pigs, in Chicago, 177;
how to roast, 372
Pilgrims, the Society of, 47
Platform in American sense, 215
Poet's Corner, 132
Police, corruption through the, 232
Politics, American, the foreign vote in, 227, 443;
the "best people" in, 228, 441;
what it means in America, 230;
municipal, 231;
Republican and Democrat, meaning of, 256;
national and municipal, 264;
President Roosevelt in, 300
Polo, American, 412
Pooling, railway, 332, 357
Poppycock, 426
Postal laws, 171
Posters, American humour and, 155
Presidency, Mr. Roosevelt and the, 293
Protection, policy of, 65, 245, 253
Publishers, American and English, 222
_Punch_, London, 152, 198
Putnam, Herbert, and H. G. Wells, 93
R
Railways, oppression of, by States, 297, 403;
pooling by, 332;
working agreements in English, 333;
English and American attitude towards, contrasted, 334;
morality on American, 355;
and English, 359;
peculation on, 361;
and the Standard Oil Co., 392
Reed, E. T., 154
Reich, Dr. Emil, 126
Religious feeling of the two peoples, 353
Re-mount scandal, 341
Representative system, the, 247
Republican party, the, in Philadelphia, 252;
corresponds to English conservatives, 256
Reverence, American lack of, 48, 76
Rhodes, Cecil, 319
Rhodes scholarships, 166
River and harbour bills, 249
Robin, the American, 215
Robinson, Philip, on Chicago, 177
Rodin, A., 196
Roman Catholic Church in relation to women, 140
Roosevelt, imaginary telegram from, 16;
and the merchant marine, 66;
and purity of elections, 229 (note);
and post-route doctrine, 290;
his influence for good, 293;
his commonplace virtues, 293 (note);
inventor of the "'fraid strap," 294;
"Teddy" or "Theodore," 295;
an aristocrat, 295;
and the corporations, 296;
misrepresentation of, 298;
as a politician, 300;
his imperiousness, 301;
and the negro problem, 305;
and wealth, 336;
as peacemaker, 445
Rostand, M. E., 196
Ruskin, John, price of his books, 175;
on America's lack of castles, 191;
on Tories, 257
Russia, England's agreement with, 8
S
S---- B----, the Hon., 108
Sailors, British and American, fraternise, 39;
Americans as, 63
Schools, American, 170;
English, 176
Schurz, Carl, on American intelligence, 2
Schuyler, Montgomery, 103
Scotland, religious feeling in, 354
Sea-wife's sons, the, 187
Senate, the, its place in the Constitution, 286;
treaty-making power of, 287;
and the House of Lords, 313
Sepoys, blown from cannon, 112
Shakespeare in America, 195
Shaw, Albert, 451
Ship subsidies, 64
Shooting in America, 418
Sky-scrapers, 368
Speculation in America, 387
Smith, Sydney, on women speaking, 79
Society, American, mixed, 182, 442
Soldiers, American and British, in China, 39;
compared, 61;
material for, in U. S., 75;
British, in S. Africa, 75;
as farm hands, 186;
as Presidents, 187
Solicitors, 393
South, the dying spirit of the, 306
Southerners, in Northern States, 228;
lynchings by, 303
Spanish war, the, reasons for, 11;
England's feeling in, 60;
effect on the American people, 113
Sparks, Edwin E., on frontiersmen, 382
Speech, uniformity of American, 85;
American and English compared, 209, 219;
purism in, 219
Sport, amateur, in America, 409
Stage, the American, 201
Stamp tax, American dislike of, 398
Stamped paper, 398
Standard Oil Co., 391
State legislatures, corruption in, 235;
shortcomings of, 401
States, governments of the, 260;
sovereignty of, 261, 285, 290;
and English counties, 264 (note);
justice in, 401
Steel, American competition in, 375
Steevens, G. W., on Anglo-American alliance, 3;
on American feeling for England, 100
Stenographers as hostesses, 132
Stevenson, R. L., on American speech, 85
Strap, the 'fraid, 294
Strathcona and Mount Royal, Lord, 310
Style, American and English literary, 221
Superficiality of Americans, 193, 204
Surveyor, the making of a, 69
T
_Table d'hôte_ in America, 104
Tammany Hall, 278
Taxes, corrupt assessment of, 242
Thackeray, W. M., on Anglo-American friendship, 1
Thomas, Miss M. Carey, 143
Thoreau, his _Walden_, 157
Throne, the British, as a democratic force, 335
Tin-tacks for Japan, 375
Travis, W. J., 408
Treaties, inability of U. S. to enforce, 263, 285;
how made in America, 286
Truesdale, W. H., 359
Trusts, Mr. Roosevelt and the, 295;
in England and America, 329, 334, 391;
beneficial, 406
U
Unit rule, the, 267, 270
United States, the, has become a world-power, 6;
in danger of war, 8;
power of, 14;
expansion of, 24;
further from England than England from it, 50;
the future of, 90;
size of, 94;
the equal of Great Britain, 163;
unification of, 217;
politics in, 227;
Congress of, 244;
and Italy, 262;
and Japan, 263;
its treaty relations with other powers, 286;
a peerage in, 310;
its reckless youth, 323;
has sown its wild oats, 324;
growth of, 364;
commercial power of, 371;
a debtor nation, 384
Universities, American and English, 167
Usurpation by the general government, 289
V
Van Horne, Sir William, 310
Venezuelan incident, the, 43, 156
Verestschagin, Vasili, 197, 202
Vigilance Committees, 302, 364
Vote, foreign in America, the, 227
Voting, premature, 227
W
Wall Street methods, 326
War stores scandal, 341
Washington, Booker, 305
Wealth, President Roosevelt and, 296;
its diffusion in America, 330;
no counterpoise to, in U. S., 335;
purchasing power of, in England and America, 335 (note);
prejudice against, 403
Wells, H. G., on American "sense of the State," 89;
on the lack of an upper class in America, 309 (note);
on trade, 404
West, the feeling of, for the East, 73;
English ignorance of, 200;
Yankee distrust of, 369
West Indies, transfer to the U. S., 32
West Point, incident at, 41
Whiskey and literature, 175
Wild-fowling, 418
Winter, E. W., 359
Woman, an American, in England, 103;
in Westminster Abbey, 132;
in a mining camp, 133;
on a train, 134
Women, American attitude toward, 119 _sqq._;
in the streets of cities, 120;
English, in America, 122;
English treatment of, 123;
the morality of married, 129;
adaptability of American, 137;
their share in civic life, 137;
Anglo-Saxon attitude toward, 140;
effect of co-education on, 143;
culture of American, 182;
musical knowledge of American, 198
_World_, the N. Y., 342 (note)
Y
Yankee, the real, 369;
earls, 440
Yellow press, the, 327, 340, 342 (note)
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
The following words use an oe ligature in the original:
manoeuvres phoenixes
The following corrections have been made to the text:
Page 85: the Americans _homogeneous_[original has
_homoeogeneous_] over a much larger
Page 101: Americans will protest against being called[original
has call] a homogeneous
Page 118: It is less offensive than[original has that] the
mature
Page 153: Englishmen do not know the meaning of a
joke.[153:1][Footnote anchor is missing in original]
Page 153: the clubs of Great Britain[original has Britian]
Page 208: he has not entire right to the best
wherever[original has where-ever hyphenated across a line
break] he may find it
Page 252: a stranger is[original has as] likely to get the
idea
Page 321: conditions of business are widely different.[period
is missing in original]
Page 354: copies of the famous "Gentleman's
Agreement,"[original has single quote]
Page 389: "[quotation mark missing in original]DEAR A.:
Page 453, under the entry for American people,
eclecticism,[comma missing in original] 194
Page 457: Helleu[original has Hellen], Paul, 196
Footnote 287-1: _The American Commonwealth_, vol. 1[original
has extraneous period], page 110
On page 193, the original reads "... be able to remember when the _Daily
Telegraph_ created, by appealing...." There should be a word of
explanation after "created".
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